Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validation of the use of homogeneous reference phantoms for optical tomography of the neonatal brain

Optical tomography is being developed at UCL as a tool for understanding the mechanisms of haemorrhagic and hypoxic-ischaemic brain injury and assessing the effectiveness of novel neural rescue therapies in the newborn infant. Our 32-channel time-resolved optical imaging system measures photon flight times between multiple pairs of points on the surface of the head, and images sensitive to local variation in tissue absorption and scattering properties are reconstructed using non-linear algorithms. Several studies have been performed on premature infants using custom-built helmets, which hold up to 32 sources and detectors in contact with the head. Simulations have revealed that combining data with reference measurements acquired on a homogeneous object using the same fibre locations can significantly reduce errors in reconstructions due to uncertainty in the location of the sources and detectors. To provide the reference data, a homogeneous phantom based on a balloon filled with a scattering fluid of precisely known optical properties was made and inserted into the helmet immediately following each infant scan. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of this approach by acquiring data on a realistically head-shaped phantom containing a small perturbation, and reconstructing it using the homogeneous head-shaped phantom and the fluid-filled balloon.
An Efficient Trinocular Rectification Method for Stereo Vision

In this paper, we introduce an efficient method of trinocular rectification to enhance the performance of stereo vision. In order to perform the trinocular rectification, we first obtain trinocular images by three cameras lying on a plane that faces the target objects. Then, we extract the original camera parameters, and compute the new camera parameters that transform the epipole on each image to the point at infinity. After that, we determine the homographies which relate the original camera parameters to the new ones, and decide an affine matrix which ensure 45 degrees for the epipolar line between top and left image. Finally, the trinocular rectification is finished by applying homographies and an affine transform to the obtained trinocular images. In contrast to conventional trinocular rectification methods that are mathematically and geometrically complicated, the proposed method is simple but efficient and accurate.
Glycemic Variability Correlates Strongly With Postprandialβ-Cell Dysfunction in a Segment of Type 2 Diabetic Patients Using Oral Hypoglycemic Agents

OBJECTIVE Glucose fluctuations trigger activation of oxidative stress, a main mechanism leading to secondary diabetes complications. We evaluated the relationship between glycemic variability and β-cell dysfunction. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional study in 59 patients with type 2 diabetes (aged 64.2 ± 8.6 years, A1C 6.5 ± 1.0%, and BMI 29.8 ± 3.8 kg/m2[mean ± SD]) using either oral hypoglycemic agents (OHAs) (n = 34) or diet alone (nonusers). As a measure of glycemic variability, the mean amplitude of glycemic excursions (MAGE) was computed from continuous glucose monitoring data recorded over 3 consecutive days. The relationships between MAGE, β-cell function, and clinical parameters were assessed by including postprandial β-cell function (PBCF) and basal β-cell function (BBCF) obtained by a model-based method from plasma C-peptide and plasma glucose during a mixed-meal test as well as homeostasis model assessment of insulin sensitivity, clinical factors, carbohydrate intake, and type of OHA. RESULTS MAGE was nonlinearly correlated with PBCF (r = 0.54, P < 0.001) and with BBCF (r = 0.31, P = 0.025) in OHA users but failed to correlate with these parameters in nonusers (PBCF P = 0.21 and BBCF P = 0.07). The stepwise multiple regression analysis demonstrated that PBCF and OHA combination treatment were independent contributors to MAGE (R2 = 0.50, P < 0.010), whereas insulin sensitivity, carbohydrate intake, and nonglycemic parameters failed to contribute. CONCLUSIONS PBCF appears to be an important target to reduce glucose fluctuations in OHA-treated type 2 diabetes.
Why is PHASE different from other phylogenetic programs ?

Copyright 2002, 2003 by the University of Manchester. PHASE is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Mobilising Resources for Union Learning: A Strategy for Revitalisation?

This article examines attempts by UNISON to embed a culture of learning within the workplace. The analysis, which is rooted in resource-based mobilisation theory, shows how UNISON was able to draw on the Union Learning Fund to create new resources in the form of project workers. These project workers subsequently played a vital role in building support for learning at regional and branch levels. The article also examines ways in which UNISON activists were able to progress the learning agenda through proactive engagement with ‘opportunity structures’.
Toward a Taxonomy of a Set of Discourse Markers in Dialog: A Theoretical and Computational Linguistic Account

Discourse markers are verbal and nonverbal devices that mark transition points in communication. They presumably facilitate the construction of a mental representation of the events described by the discourse. A taxonomy of these relational markers is one important beginning in investigations of language use. Although several taxonomies of coherence relations have been proposed for monolog, only a few have been proposed for dialog. This article argues that discourse markers are important in language use because they operate at different levels of the dialog. What these levels are and how markers function is discussed by amalgamating 2 leading theories of language use. Based on this theory, a taxonomy of between-turn coherence relations in dialog is presented and several issues that arise out of constructing such a taxonomy are discussed. By sampling a large number of discourse markers from a corpus and substituting each marker for all other markers, this extensive substitution test could determine whether hyponymous, hypernymous, and synonymous relations existed between the markers from this corpus of dialogs. Evidence is presented for clustering this set of discourse markers into four categories: direction, polarity, acknowledgment, and emphatics.
Taste Indicators and Heterogeneous Revealed Preferences for Congestion in Recreation Demand

Researchers using revealed preference data have mostly relied on the Mixed Logit (ML) framework to model unobserved heterogeneity. In this paper, we suggest an extension of this model where we integrate direct measures of taste and revealed preferences, under a unified econometric setting, to describe heterogeneous preferences for congestion in recreation demand. ML is a random parameter discrete choice model, which decomposes the coefficients of the regression equation into a mean effect shared by all individuals in the sample, and a deviation with respect to this mean, specific to each individual. Within this structure, heterogeneity is summarized using a parametric density function for the coefficients of the model. From this distribution one can identify the portion of people who like or dislike an attribute of the good. On the other hand, taste indicators, represented in a like-dislike scale, constitute complementary information about the distribution of tastes in the population. We combine both sources of information to characterize preferences in our model. The traditional ML suggests almost 60% of people in the sample like crowded places while our integrated model implies almost 100% of the people dislike congestion. These results show the bene…ts of using taste indicators to describe heterogeneous preferences for attributes describing alternatives of a choice set.
CRITICAL REVIEW OF SENTIMENT ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

The innovation of Web 2.0 is increasing day by day and its latest hype is Microblogging. Short messages exchange platforms connect people worldwide in an unprecedented manner by publishing short text updates regarding various topics. People freely express their views and opinions on microblogging sites that give rise to multiple user sentiments. In order to precisely determine the mood and nature of user it is essential to analyze the sentiments based on contextual information. Further, sentiment analysis is required for different markets to consider their consumer views and critics to improve their products. We have analyzed different sentiment analysis techniques and algorithms in order to highlight their pros and cons. Along with their comparison on basis of Precision, Recall, F-measure, and Accuracy. This study helps to identify the major difficulties in the area of sentiment analysis that are still not resolved and being considered by the researchers.
DAHLIA: A visual analyzer of database schema evolution

In a continuously changing environment, software evolution becomes an unavoidable activity. The mining software repositories (MSR) field studies the valuable data available in software repositories such as source code version-control systems, issue/bug-tracking systems, or communication archives. In recent years, many researchers have used MSR techniques as a way to support software understanding and evolution. While many software systems are data-intensive, i.e., their central artefact is a database, little attention has been devoted to the analysis of this important system component in the context of software evolution. The goal of our work is to reduce this gap by considering the database evolution history as an additional information source to aid software evolution. We present DAHLIA (Database ScHema EvoLutIon Analysis), a visual analyzer of database schema evolution. Our tool mines the database schema evolution history from the software repository and allows its interactive, visual analysis. We describe DAHLIA and present our novel approach supporting data-intensive software evolution.
ACE–An Effective Anti-forensic Contrast Enhancement Technique

Detecting Contrast Enhancement (CE) in images and anti-forensic approaches against such detectors have gained much attention in multimedia forensics lately. Several contrast enhancement detectors analyze the first order statistics such as gray-level histogram of images to determine whether an image is CE or not. In order to counter these detectors various anti-forensic techniques have been proposed. This led to a technique that utilized second order statistics of images for CE detection. In this letter, we propose an effective anti-forensic approach that performs CE without significant distortion in both the first and second order statistics of the enhanced image. We formulate an optimization problem using a variant of the well known Total Variation (TV) norm image restoration formulation. Experiments show that the algorithm effectively overcomes the first and second order statistics based detectors without loss in quality of the enhanced image.
Climate change and plant dispersal along corridors in fragmented landscapes of Mesoamerica

Climate change is a threat to biodiversity, and adaptation measures should be considered in biodiversity conservation planning. Protected areas (PA) are expected to be impacted by climate change and improving their connectivity with biological corridors (BC) has been proposed as a potential adaptation measure, although assessing its effectiveness remains a challenge. In Mesoamerica, efforts to preserve the biodiversity have led to the creation of a regional network of PA and, more recently, BC. This study evaluates the role of BC for facilitating plant dispersal between PA under climate change in Mesoamerica. A spatially explicit dynamic model (cellular automaton) was developed to simulate species dispersal under different climate and conservation policy scenarios. Plant functional types (PFT) were defined based on a range of dispersal rates and vegetation types to represent the diversity of species in the region. The impacts of climate change on PA and the role of BC for dispersal were assessed spatially. Results show that most impacted PA are those with low altitudinal range in hot, dry, or high latitude areas. PA with low altitudinal range in high cool areas benefit the most from corridors. The most important corridors cover larger areas and have high altitude gradients. Only the fastest PFT can keep up with the expected change in climate and benefit from corridors for dispersal. We conclude that the spatial assessment of the vulnerability of PA and the role of corridors in facilitating dispersal can help conservation planning under a changing climate.
An Evaluation of Legal, Legislative And Financial Factors Affecting Performance of Women Micro Entrepreneurs In Kenya

Women owned enterprises in the Micro and Small Enterprise sector have been identified as the engine for economic growth and technological innovations in developing countries. Consequently, the Kenyan government has put in place interventions geared towards improving the business environment through appropriate policy frameworks. However, these businesses continue to be dodged with myriad of constraints which include lack of appropriate technology, access to market information, credit, business management skills and rigid legal and regulatory framework among others. This paper aimed at determining the effect of Legal, legislative and financial factors on performance of women enterprises in the micro and small enterprise sector of Kenya. The study specifically focused on two main issues; (a) Determining impact of legal and legislative factors on performance of women micro entrepreneurs and (b) Investigating how the financial sector influences performance of women micro entrepreneurs. The study was based on Embu County of Kenya. A descriptive research design was used to carry out the study. Snowballing technique was employed to select a sample of fifty interviewees. An interview schedule was the main instrument for data collection. Data was analyzed using SPSS software. The main findings were twofold: (1). There was a very strong negative correlation between legal and legislative factors and performance of women entrepreneurs which suggested that these factors have been too harsh on women entrepreneurs and (2). Financial sector had very high positive correlation with performance of women entrepreneurs implying that the sector had been very instrumental in supporting women enterprises. Major recommendations from the paper is that local councils should reduce license fee as they also listen to women grievances, most of which are very genuine. Likewise, women entrepreneurs need be encouraged to save their earnings however little they are and finally, women entrepreneurs should be allowed to own property and make crucial decisions regarding their business operations. To boost women owned enterprises, further studies have been suggested on effect of mushrooming Business Development Services (BDS) geared towards women entrepreneurs. Keywords: MSE, women entrepreneurs, micro finance institutions Institution: Management University of Africa Gel classification ; kpp5
Time-Lag between Subretinal Fluid and Pigment Epithelial Detachment Reduction after Polypoidal Choroidal Vasculopathy Treatment

Purpose The goal of the present research was to study post-treatment changes in polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV) shown by optical coherence tomography (OCT). Methods The study included 12 patients with naive PCV. Photodynamic therapy and 3 consecutive intravitreal bevacizumab injections at 6-week intervals were given. Best corrected visual acuity, subretinal fluid (SRF), pigment epithelium detachment (PED), central macular thickness (CMT), and total macular volume (TMV) were measured before and after treatment as assessed by Stratus OCT3. Results After treatment, the SRF height decreased earlier than the PED height. The SRF diameter decreased with statistical significance. However, the PED diameter did not show a statistically significant improvement, persisting at pre-treatment levels. Both CMT and TMV decreased significantly after treatment. Conclusions After PCV treatment, SRF and PED stabilized, as shown by OCT. However, the PED treatment response was both delayed and refractory compared to the SRF response. The small change in post-treatment PED diameter may suggest the possibility of PCV recurrence.
Visualizing Co-Change Information with the Evolution Radar

Software evolution analysis provides a valuable source of information that can be used both to understand a system's design and predict its future development. While for many program comprehension purposes, it is sufficient to model a single version of a system, there are types of information that can only be recovered when the history of a system is taken into account. Logical coupling, the implicit dependency between software artifacts that have been changed together, is an example of such information. Previous research has dealt with low-level couplings between files, leading to an explosion of the data to be analyzed, or has abstracted the logical couplings to the level of modules, leading to a loss of detailed information. In this paper, we present a visualization-based approach that integrates logical coupling information at different levels of abstraction. This facilitates an in-depth analysis of the logical couplings, and at the same time, leads to a characterization of a system's modules in terms of their logical coupling. The presented approach supports the retrospective analysis of a software system and maintenance activities such as restructuring and redocumentation. We illustrate retrospective analysis on two large open-source software systems.
The Transition Zone in Balmer-dominated Shocks

We examine the structure of the postshock region in supernova remnants (SNRs). The "shock transition zone" is set up by charge transfer and ionization events between atoms and ions and has a width ~(1015 cm-2)n, where n0 is the total preshock density (including both atoms and ions). For Balmer-dominated SNRs with shock velocity vs ≳ 1000 km s-1, the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions for ion velocity and temperature are obeyed instantly, leaving the full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the broad Hα line versus vs relation intact. However, the spatial variation in the postshock densities is relevant to the problem of Lyα resonant scattering in young, core-collapse SNRs. Both two- (preshock atoms and ions) and three-component (preshock atoms, broad neutrals, and ions) models are considered. We compute the spatial emissivities of the broad (ξb) and narrow (ξn) Hα lines; a calculation of these emissivities in SN 1006 is in general agreement with the computed ones of Raymond and coworkers. The (dimensionless) spatial shift, Θshift, between the centroids of ξb and ξn is unique for a given shock velocity and fion, the preshock ion fraction. Measurements of Θshift can be used to constrain n0.
Why Doesn't the Market Fully Insure Long-Term Care?

This paper examines the failure of the private market to fully insure long-term care. I argue that the failure is a result of large intertemporal variability in the cost of long-term care. Unlike variability in cross section use, variability in the cost of care affects everyone in a pool and therefore cannot be diversified within a cohort. Further, since costs are serially correlated, the cost risk cannot be diversified across cohorts. Estimates suggest that the standard deviation of cost uncertainty is on the order of 4 to 14 percent for an average long-term care policy. In response to this cost risk, most long-term care policies do not insure real benefits. Policies generally pay a fixed nominal amount for care, which is updated using predetermined nominal rules. Many policies also have lifetime maximum payments and other restrictions on aggregate risk bearing by the insurer. The lack of complete long-term care insurance may be one explanation for the low rate of purchase of long-term care policies.
Symbolic Interpretation of Artificial Neural Networks

Hybrid intelligent systems that combine knowledge-based and artificial neural network systems typically have four phases, involving domain knowledge representation, mapping of this knowledge into an initial connectionist architecture, network training and rule extraction, respectively. The final phase is important because it can provide a trained connectionist architecture with explanation power and validate its output decisions. Moreover, it can be used to refine and maintain the initial knowledge acquired from domain experts. In this paper, we present three rule extraction techniques. The first technique extracts a set of binary rules from any type of neural network. The other two techniques are specific to feedforward networks, with a single hidden layer of sigmoidal units. Technique 2 extracts partial rules that represent the most important embedded knowledge with an adjustable level of detail, while the third technique provides a more comprehensive and universal approach. A rule-evaluation technique, which orders extracted rules based on three performance measures, is then proposed. The three techniques area applied to the iris and breast cancer data sets. The extracted rules are evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively, and are compared with those obtained by other approaches.
T-Cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphomas: Spectrum of Disease and the Role of Imaging in the Management of Common Subtypes

T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs) are biologically diverse, uncommon malignancies characterized by a spectrum of imaging findings according to subtype. The purpose of this review is to describe the common subtypes of T-cell NHL, highlight important differences between cutaneous, various peripheral and precursor subtypes, and summarize imaging features and the role of imaging in the management of this diverse set of diseases.
Surgical Resection of Brain Metastases—Impact on Neurological Outcome

Brain metastases (BM) develop in about 30% of all cancer patients. Surgery plays an important role in confirming neuropathological diagnosis, relieving mass effects and improving the neurological status. To select patients with the highest benefit from surgical resection, prognostic indices (RPA, GPA) have been formulated which are solely focused on survival without considering neurological improvement. In this study we analyzed the impact of surgical resection on the neurological status in addition to overall survival in 206 BM patients. Surgical mortality and morbidity was 0.0% and 10.3% respectively. New neurologic deficits occurred in 6.3% of all patients. The median overall survival was 6.3 months. Poor RPA class and short time interval between diagnosis of cancer and the occurrence of BM were independent factors predictive for poor survival. Improvement of neurological performance was achieved in 56.8% of all patients, with the highest improvement rate seen in patients presenting with increased intracranial pressure and hemiparesis. Notably, the neurological benefits were independent from RPA class. In conclusion, surgical resection leads to significant neurological improvement despite poor RPA class and short overall survival. Considering the low mortality and morbidity rates, resection should be considered as a valid option to increase neurological function and quality of life for patients with BM.