Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Socioeconomic consequences of climate induced human displacement and migration in Bangladesh

The main objective of this study was to explore the types and nature of climate induced human displacement and migration, and their socioeconomic consequences in the agro-ecological zones of Bangladesh. The study followed a qualitative research design, where six agro-ecological zones were selected purposively from different parts of Bangladesh. A multi-method data collection method was applied, where the study conducted six participatory rural appraisals (PRAs), eight focus group discussions (FGDs), 24 key informant interviews (KIIs) and 12 in-depth case studies. Data were collected in 2012, and the study used a thematic approach for data analysis. Results showed that the dramatic onset disasters usually caused mass displacement, while the slow onset disasters affected the environment, local ecosystem services and employment opportunities that forced people to undergo routine economic migration at first, followed later by permanent migration. This permanent migration had long-term negative consequences on their livelihoods in terms of poverty, and especially for women, the elderly and those with a disability. It is concluded that while the study focuses on Bangladesh, the implications are international in scope. The findings serve as important guidelines to policy makers, disaster managers and development practitioners.
Distributed interacting Multiple model joint probabilistic data association algorithm based on fuzzy weighted method

A distributed interacting Multiple model joint probabilistic data association algorithm based on fuzzy weighted method is presented in this paper. The model probabilities, state estimation and its covariance of same target corresponding to different sensors are fused in the fusion centre using fuzzy weighted method in the algorithm. The fuzzy weight is membership degree of trace of covariance of same target corresponding to different sensors. The effectivity and validity of the algorithm are tested by computer simulation.
Visual Psychophysics and Physiological Optics Perceptual Learning Improves Adult Amblyopic Vision Through Rule-Based Cognitive Compensation

Citation: Zhang J-Y, Cong L-J, Klein SA, Levi DM, Yu C. Perceptual learning improves adult amblyopic vision through rule-based cognitive compensation. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2014;55:2020–2030. DOI: 10.1167/iovs.13-13739 PURPOSE. We investigated whether perceptual learning in adults with amblyopia could be enabled to transfer completely to an orthogonal orientation, which would suggest that amblyopic perceptual learning results mainly from high-level cognitive compensation, rather than plasticity in the amblyopic early visual brain. METHODS. Nineteen adults (mean age 1⁄4 22.5 years) with anisometropic and/or strabismic amblyopia were trained following a training-plus-exposure (TPE) protocol. The amblyopic eyes practiced contrast, orientation, or Vernier discrimination at one orientation for six to eight sessions. Then the amblyopic or nonamblyopic eyes were exposed to an orthogonal orientation via practicing an irrelevant task. Training was first performed at a lower spatial frequency (SF), then at a higher SF near the cutoff frequency of the amblyopic eye.
High Performance Bit Search Mining Technique

Searching algorithms are closely related to the concept of dictionaries. String searching algorithms are too complex in all sorts of applications. To analyze an algorithm is to determine the amount of resources (such as time and storage) necessary to execute it. Most algorithms are designed to work with inputs of arbitrary length. Usually the efficiency or running time of an algorithm is stated as a function relating the input length to the number of steps (time complexity) or storage locations (space complexity). Time efficiency estimates depend on what defined to be all step. For the analysis to correspond usefully to the actual execution time, the time required to perform a step must be guaranteed to be bounded above by a constant. The main objective of this paper is to reduce the scanning the dataset by introducing new searching technique. So far, arrays, trees, hashing, depth first, breadth first, prefix tree based searching are used in association rule mining algorithms. If the size of the input is large, run time analysis of the algorithm is also increased. In this paper, a novel data structure is introduced so that it reduced dataset scan to one search. This new search technique is bit search. This bit search technique is to find the k th itemsets (where k =1,2,3,……n) in one search scan.
CMB power spectrum contribution from cosmic strings using field-evolution simulations of the Abelian Higgs model

We present the first field-theoretic calculations of the contribution made by cosmic strings to the temperature power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Unlike previous work, in which strings were modeled as idealized one-dimensional objects, we evolve the simplest example of an underlying field theory containing local U(1) strings, the Abelian Higgs model. Limitations imposed by finite computational volumes are overcome using the scaling property of string networks and a further extrapolation related to the lessening of the string width in comoving coordinates. The strings and their decay products, which are automatically included in the field theory approach, source metric perturbations via their energy-momentum tensor, the unequal-time correlation functions of which are used as input into the CMB calculation phase. These calculations involve the use of a modified version of CMBEASY, with results provided over the full range of relevant scales. We find that the string tension required to normalize to the WMAP 3-year data at multipole [script-l]=10 is G=[2.040. 06(stat.)0.12(sys.)]10-6, where we have quoted statistical and systematic errors separately, and G is Newton's constant. This is a factor 23 higher than values in current circulation.
A model driven ontology-based architecture for supporting the quality of services in pervasive telemedicine applications

Advanced telemedicine systems based on ubiquitous computing need to be designed in order to deliver high quality of services at anytime and anywhere. The optimal management of the telemedical assistance process in emergency situations, taking into consideration different communication and material resources availability, is still a major problem in telemedicine. In this paper we propose an ontology-based architecture model enabling an intelligent pervasive telemedicine tasks management. The aim of this methodological approach is to optimize the messages exchange between the different actors who are geographically located in different environments, to assure high level of quality of services delivered by the healthcare providers and consequently enable a more rapid and reliable telemedical assistance, especially in case of emergency scenarios.
Role of the gp85/Trans-Sialidases in Trypanosoma cruzi Tissue Tropism: Preferential Binding of a Conserved Peptide Motif to the Vasculature In Vivo

Background Transmitted by blood-sucking insects, the unicellular parasite Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative agent of Chagas' disease, a malady manifested in a variety of symptoms from heart disease to digestive and urinary tract dysfunctions. The reasons for such organ preference have been a matter of great interest in the field, particularly because the parasite can invade nearly every cell line and it can be found in most tissues following an infection. Among the molecular factors that contribute to virulence is a large multigene family of proteins known as gp85/trans-sialidase, which participates in cell attachment and invasion. But whether these proteins also contribute to tissue homing had not yet been investigated. Here, a combination of endothelial cell immortalization and phage display techniques has been used to investigate the role of gp85/trans-sialidase in binding to the vasculature. Methods Bacteriophage expressing an important peptide motif (denominated FLY) common to all gp85/trans-sialidase proteins was used as a surrogate to investigate the interaction of this motif with the endothelium compartment. For that purpose phage particles were incubated with endothelial cells obtained from different organs or injected into mice intravenously and the number of phage particles bound to cells or tissues was determined. Binding of phages to intermediate filament proteins has also been studied. Findings and Conclusions Our data indicate that FLY interacts with the endothelium in an organ-dependent manner with significantly higher avidity for the heart vasculature. Phage display results also show that FLY interaction with intermediate filament proteins is not limited to cytokeratin 18 (CK18), which may explain the wide variety of cells infected by the parasite. This is the first time that members of the intermediate filaments in general, constituted by a large group of ubiquitously expressed proteins, have been implicated in T. cruzi cell invasion and tissue homing.
Optimal Wind Reversible Hydro Offering Strategies for Midterm Planning

A coordinated strategy between wind and reversible hydro units for the midterm planning that reduces the imbalance of wind power and improves system efficiency is proposed. A stochastic mixed integer linear model is used, which maximizes the joint profit of wind and hydro units, where conditional value at risk (CVaR) is used for model risk. The offering strategies studied are 1)separate wind and hydro pumping offer, where the units work separately without a physical connection and 2)a single wind and hydro pumping offer with a physical connection between them to store wind energy for future use. The effects of a coordinated wind-hydro strategy for midterm planning are analyzed, considering CVaR and the future water value. The future water value in the reservoirs is analyzed hourly for a period of 1 week and 2 months, in two realistic case studies.
The Personalization Services Firm : What to Sell , Whom to Sell to and For How Much ? *

Personalization services such as individual-specific advertising and couponing are a growth market. Some personalization service firms offer their services on an exclusive basis to manufacturers in a product category while others offer it on a non-exclusive basis. Some restrict the length of purchase history data used for personalization, while others use very long purchase histories. Despite these differences, there is little empirical guidance on what is the optimal business strategy for a particular firm. This paper fills this void by offering an empirical framework to help a personalization services firm choose the right strategy. It also enables the firm to identify new types of future competitors. We illustrate the approach in the context of a personalized coupon vendor in grocery retailing. We find that personalization using the maximum available purchase history data on a non-exclusive basis is the most profitable strategy for the vendor. We also evaluate the possibility of a grocery retailer using consumer information from its loyalty card programs to offer these personalized coupon services. We find that since personalization improves the retailer's profits due to the sale of groceries, the retailer can use this profit increase to subsidize the sale of personalized coupon services. Therefore retailers may be the most potent competitive threat to personalized coupon vendors in grocery retailing.
Exploring Semantic Inter-Class Relationships (SIR) for Zero-Shot Action Recognition

Automatically recognizing a large number of action categories from videos is of significant importance for video understanding. Most existing works focused on the design of more discriminative feature representation, and have achieved promising results when the positive samples are enough. However, very limited efforts were spent on recognizing a novel action without any positive exemplars, which is often the case in the real settings due to the large amount of action classes and the users' queries dramatic variations. To address this issue, we propose to perform action recognition when no positive exemplars of that class are provided, which is often known as the zero-shot learning. Different from other zero-shot learning approaches, which exploit attributes as the intermediate layer for the knowledge transfer, our main contribution is SIR, which directly leverages the semantic inter-class relationships between the known and unknown actions followed by label transfer learning. The inter-class semantic relationships are automatically measured by continuous word vectors, which learned by the skip-gram model using the large-scale text corpus. Extensive experiments on the UCF101 dataset validate the superiority of our method over fully-supervised approaches using few positive exemplars.
Spatial data fusion with visual feedback

This paper outlines our ongoing work towards developing a system for extracting patterns embedded in heterogeneous data streams that contain people’s recorded movements in both physical and virtual spaces. Examples of such spatial data sources are satellite-based sensors (GPS), ultrasound acoustic trackers, radio frequency (WLAN, Bluetooth, UWB) and infrared-based sensors. The core work on pattern extraction relies on the spatial data fusion component aiming to bring various data types to a common format. The additional benefit of this system will consist in the graphical interface that will enable interactive visualisation of the extracted patterns. The rationale of this work is outlined through the relevance of location aware system in the context of ubiquitous computing, which so far have received limited benefits from fields such as Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and interactive visualisation.
Functionally specialized CMA-ES: a modification of CMA-ES based on the specialization of the functions of covariance matrix adaptation and step size adaptation

This paper aims the design of efficient and effective optimization algorithms for function optimization. This paper presents a new framework of the derandomized evolution strategy with covariance matrix adaptation (CMA-ES). Recent studies modified the CMA-ES from the viewpoint of covariance matrix adaptation and resulted in drastic reduction of the number of generations. In addition to their modification, this paper modifies the CMA-ES from the viewpoint of step size adaptation. The main idea of modification is semantically specializing functions of covariance matrix adaptation and step size adaptation. This new method is evaluated on 8 classical unimodal and multimodal test functions and the performance is compared with standard CMA-ES. The experimental result demonstrates an improvement of the search performances in particular with large populations. This result is mainly because the proposed Hybrid-SSA instead of the existing CSA can adjust the global step length more appropriately under large populations and function specialization helps appropriate adaptation of the overall variance of the mutation distribution.
Edge Detection of High Resolution Image Introducing Spatial Relationship

Generally, traditional edge detection methods don't consider the spatial relationship between the adjacent image areas to extract the edges. For the traditional algorithm insufficiency, this paper purposes a novel edge detection algorithm by introducing spatial relationship. This method can be divided into three main steps: firstly, a measure of similarity between pair wise pixels is taken into account by orientation energy. Then, the spatial relationship is needed to find regions where similarity between pixels in a given region is high and similarity between pixels in different regions is low. After that, edge detection is completed with spectral clustering method. Using IKONOS image, the experimental results show that the edge detection method of this paper gained ideal result.
Prediction of Mobility Limitations after Hospitalization in Older Medical Patients by Simple Measures of Physical Performance Obtained at Admission to the Emergency Department

Objective Mobility limitations relate to dependency in older adults. Identification of older patients with mobility limitations after hospital discharge may help stratify treatment and could potentially counteract dependency seen in older adults after hospitalization. We investigated the ability of four physical performance measures administered at hospital admission to identify older medical patients who manifest mobility limitations 30 days after discharge. Design Prospective cohort study of patients (≥65 years) admitted to the emergency department for acute medical illness. During the first 24 hours, we assessed: handgrip strength, 4-meter gait speed, the ability to rise from a chair (chair-stand), and the Cumulated Ambulation Score. The mobility level 30 days after discharge was evaluated using the de Morton Mobility Index. Results A total of 369 patients (77.9 years, 62% women) were included. Of those, 128 (40%) patients had mobility limitations at follow-up. Univariate analyzes showed that each of the physical performance measures was strongly associated with mobility limitations at follow-up (handgrip strength(women), OR 0.86 (0.81–0.91), handgrip strength(men), OR 0.90 (0.86–0.95), gait speed, OR 0.35 (0.26–0.46), chair-stand, OR 0.04 (0.02–0.08) and Cumulated Ambulation Score OR 0.49 (0.38–0.64). Adjustment for potential confounders did not change the results and the associations were not modified by any of the covariates: age, gender, cognitive status, the severity of the acute medical illness, and the Charlson Comorbidity Index. Based on prespecified cut-offs the prognostic accuracy of the four measures for mobility limitation at follow-up was calculated. The sensitivity and specificity were: handgrip strength(women), 56.8 (45.8–67.3), 75.7 (66.8–83.2), handgrip strength(men), 50.0 (33.8–66.2), 80.8 (69.9–89.1), gait speed, 68.4 (58.2–77.4), 81.4 (75.0–86.8), chair-stand 67.8 (58.6–76.1), 91.8 (86.8–95.3), and Cumulated Ambulation Score, 40.2 (31.6–49.2), 92.0 (87.1–95.4), respectively. Conclusion Physical performance measures, particularly chair-stand and gait speed assessed at admission to an emergency department, were able to identify mobility limitation in acutely admitted older medical patients 30 days after hospital discharge.
Finder highlights: field evaluation and design of an augmented file browser

Navigating to files through a hierarchy is often a slow, laborious, and repetitive task. Recent lab studies showed that file browser interface augmentations, such as Icon Highlights and Search Directed Navigation, have the potential to reduce file retrieval times. However, for this potential to be realised in actual systems, further study is necessary to address two important issues. First, there are important design and implementation challenges in advancing the research prototypes previously evaluated into complete interactive systems that can be used for real work. Second, it is unknown how real users would employ these systems while engaged in actual work; would the potential performance improvements suggested by the earlier lab studies be realised? We therefore describe the design, implementation, and longitudinal field study evaluation of Finder Highlights, a file browser plugin for the OS X 'Finder' that adds support for Icon Highlights and Search Directed Navigation. Study results confirm that the augmentations are effective in reducing real-world file retrieval times, with retrieval times 13% faster when using Finder Highlights compared to the standard tool (10.6 s versus 12.2 s), while also emphasising important differences between lab and field studies. In summary, the paper strongly suggests that large-scale deployment of interface augmentations to file browsers, particularly Icon Highlights, will have a marked effect in improving users' real-world file retrieval.
Optimal Local Approximation Spaces for Component-Based Static Condensation Procedures

In this paper we introduce local approximation spaces for component-based static condensation (sc) procedures that are optimal in the sense of Kolmogorov. To facilitate simulations for large structures such as aircraft or ships, it is crucial to decrease the number of degrees of freedom on the interfaces, or “ports,” in order to reduce the size of the statically condensed system. To derive optimal port spaces we consider a (compact) transfer operator that acts on the space of harmonic extensions on a two-component system and maps the traces on the ports that lie on the boundary of these components to the trace of the shared port. Solving the eigenproblem for the composition of the transfer operator and its adjoint yields the optimal space. For a related work in the context of the generalized finite element method, we refer the reader to [I. Babuska and R. Lipton, Multiscale Model. Simul. , 9 (2011), pp. 373--406]. We further introduce a spectral greedy algorithm to generalize the procedure to the parameter.
Middle-aged rat hippocampus and some early changes accompanying aging

BackgroundStudies of the middle-aged hippocampus may clarify the early mechanisms of aging and may lead to timely initiation of treatment for age-related cognitive impairments.MethodologyYoung (2-m/o) and middle aged (15- and 17-m/o) rats were used with the aim to characterize early differences in electrophysiological properties, morphometrical changes and 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolite content in the hippocampus.ResultsA decrease of the neuronal number accompanied by reduced width of the CA1 pyramidal cell layer was observed in middle-aged rats which may correspond to their reduced neurotransmission found in the CA3-CA1 synapse. An absolute value of mean magnitude of baseline field potential as well as of response obtained 51–60 min after high frequency stimulation was significantly lower in the middle-aged rats. The measurement of 1H-NMR metabolite content in hippocampal extracts of 2- and 17-m/o rats revealed that none of the sixteen metabolites identified can serve as a marker for middle-age-related changes.ConclusionsFunctional and morphological changes are observed in middle-aged hippocampus. Therefore, 15–17-m/o rats could serve as proper animal model in studies focused on aging. Further studies aimed at timely prevention of early changes in the brain may contribute in slowing down of physiological brain aging.
Platelet thrombospondin modulates endothelial cell adhesion, motility, and growth: a potential angiogenesis regulatory factor

Components of the extracellular matrix have been shown to modulate the interaction of endothelial cells with their microenvironment. Here we report that thrombospondin (TSP), an extracellular matrix component, induces adhesion and spreading of murine lung capillary (LE-II) and bovine aortic (BAEC) endothelial cells. This TSP-induced spreading was inhibited by heparin and fucoidan, known to bind the amino-terminal globular domain of the molecule. In addition, endothelial cells were induced to migrate by a gradient of soluble TSP (chemotaxis). The chemotactic response was inhibited by heparin and fucoidan, as well as by the mAb A2.5, which also binds to the amino-terminal domain. These data are in agreement with our previous observation that the TSP aminoterminal heparin binding region is responsible for the induction of tumor cell spreading and chemotactic motility. The inhibition of chemotaxis and spreading by antibodies against the beta 3 but not the beta 1 chain of the integrin receptor points to a role for the integrins in the interaction of endothelial cells with TSP. We also found that TSP modulates endothelial cell growth. When added to quiescent LE-II cells, it inhibited the mitogenic effects of serum and the angiogenic factor bFGF, in a dose-dependent manner. The inhibition of DNA synthesis detected in the mitogenic assay resulted in a true inhibition of BAEC and LE-II cell growth, as assessed by proliferation assay. This work indicates that TSP affects endothelial cell adhesion, spreading, motility and growth. TSP, therefore, has the potential to modulate the angiogenic process.