Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From Videos to Verbs : Mining Videos for Events using a Cascade of Dynamical Systems

Clustering video sequences in order to infer and extract events from a single video stream is an extremely important problem and has significant potential in video indexing, surveillance, activity discovery and event recognition. Clustering a video sequence into events requires one to simultaneously recognize event boundaries (event consistent subsequences) and cluster these event subsequences. In order to do this, we build a generative model for events (in video) using a cascade of dynamical systems and show that this model is able to capture and represent a diverse class of events. We then derive algorithms to learn the model parameters from a video stream and also show how a single video sequence may be clustered into different clusters where each cluster represents an event. We also propose a novel technique to build affine, view, rate invariance of the activity into the distance metric for clustering. Experiments are shown both for far field and near field activity videos. The clusters found by the algorithm are shown to correspond to semantically meaningful events in both scenarios.
Fair and Consistent Hardware Evaluation of Fourteen Round Two SHA-3 Candidates

The first contribution of our paper is that we propose a platform, a design strategy, and evaluation criteria for a fair and consistent hardware evaluation of the second-round SHA-3 candidates. Using a SASEBO-GII field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board as a common platform, combined with well defined hardware and software interfaces, we compare all 256-bit version candidates with respect to area, throughput, latency, power, and energy consumption. Our approach defines a standard testing harness for SHA-3 candidates, including the interface specification for the SHA-3 module on our testing platform. The second contribution is that we provide both FPGA and 90-nm CMOS application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) synthesis results and thereby are able to compare the results. Our third contribution is that we release the source code of all the candidates and by using a common, fixed, publicly available platform, our claimed results become reproducible and open for a public verification.
The Potential of a Brown Microalga Cultivated in High Salt Medium for the Production of High-Value Compounds

Amphora sp. was isolated from the Sfax Solar Saltern and cultivated under hypersaline conditions. It contains moderate rates of proteins, lipids, sugars, and minerals and a prominent content of bioactive compounds: polyphenols, chlorophyll a, carotenoids, and fatty acids. The analysis of fatty acids with GC/MS showed that the C16 series accounted for about 75% of Amphora sp. lipids. Saturated fatty acids whose palmitic acid was the most important (27.41%) represented 41.31%. Amphora sp. was found to be rich in monounsaturated fatty acids with dominance of palmitoleic acid. It also contains a significant percentage of polyunsaturated fatty acids with a high amount of eicosapentaenoic acid (2.36%). Among the various solvents used, ethanol at 80% extracted the highest amounts of phenols and flavonoids that were 38.27 mg gallic acid equivalent and 17.69 mg catechin equivalent g−1 of dried extract, respectively. Using various in vitro assays including DPPH and ABTS radicals methods, reducing power assay, and β-carotene bleaching assay, the 80% ethanolic extract showed high antioxidant activity. A strong antibacterial activity was checked against Gram-positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Micrococcus luteus) and Gram-negative bacteria (Klebsiella pneumoniae and Salmonella enterica). These results are in favor of Amphora sp. valorization in aquaculture and food and pharmaceutical industries.
Graph signal decomposition for multi-scale detail manipulation

In this paper we introduce a new unified framework for multi-scale detail manipulation of graph signals. The key to this unification is to model any kind of data as signals defined on appropriate weighted graphs. Graph signals are represented as the sum of successive layers, each capturing a given scale of detail. Detail layers are obtained through a series of regularization procedures based on total variation penalization over graphs. Layers are then processed separately before being recombined, thus achieving detail manipulation. The benefit of the approach is shown on images, 3D meshes and 3D colored point clouds.
Fabrication of Silicon Photovoltaic Micro-Particles for Low-Cost Solar Energy Generation

The relatively high cost of the high quality semiconductor materia ls (typically silicon) and complex conventional techniques for the fabrication of sol ar cells result in the overall high cost of the commercially available solar cel ls. Although, research in the field of solar technologies has been going on for a long time, but, uti lization of solar energy still remains limited to a very few applications, owing to the high manufacturing costs and lower efficiency. In this work we present a new solar technology based on silicon photovoltaic micro-particles and demonstrate a fabrication t echnique for such particles. The photovoltaic micro-particles can be manufactured from waste or low grade silicon, thus, keeping the material and manufacturing costs low. Diff erent diffusion techniques have been explored in this work to implement this fabrication process and manufacture the most efficient silicon PV particles. Different sets of silicon PV particles of different sizes have been fabricated, tested, and compared. It has also been demonstrated, how these silicon photovoltaic particles can be used to ge nerate hydrogen from electrolytic solutions. Some future applications have also been proposed, such as, micro-particles based photo-electrochemical hydrogen gene ration system, self-assembled micro-particle based thin solar cells, and solar spray-paint. Fur her research in the growth of this technology may give rise to a whole new revolutionary solar cell technolog y.
A linux kernel cryptographic framework: decoupling cryptographic keys from applications

This paper describes a cryptographic service framework for the Linux kernel. The framework enables user-space applications to perform operations with cryptographic keys, while at the same time ensuring that applications cannot directly access or extract the keys from storage. The framework makes use of the higher privilege levels of the operating system in order to provide this isolation. The paper discusses the relevant security requirements and expectations, and presents the design of the framework. A comparison with alternative designs is also provided.
Impact of electromagnetic radiation exposure during pregnancy on embryonic skeletal development in rats

Objective: To evaluate the teratogenic effect of mobile phone radiation exposure during pregnancy on embryonic skeletal development at the common used mobile phone frequency in our environment. Methods: Sixty female Sprague-Dawley rats were distributed into three experiment groups; control and two exposed groups (1 h/day, 2 h/day exposure groups) (n=20/ each group) and exposed to whole body radiation during gestation period from day 1- day 20. Electromagnetic radiofrequency signal generator was used to generate 1 800 MHz GSM-like signals at specific absorption rate value 0.974 W/kg. Animals were exposed during experiment in an especial designed Plexiglas box (60 cm × 40 cm × 30 cm). At the end of exposure duration at day 20 of pregnancy animals were sacrificed and foetuses were removed, washed with normal saline and processed to Alizarin red and Alcian blue stain. Skeleton specimens were examined under a stereo microscope and skeleton’s snaps were being carefully captured by built in camera fixed on the stereo microscope. Results: Intrauterine exposure to electromagnetic radiation lead to variation in degree of ossification, mineralization, formation of certain parts of the skeleton majorly in head and lesser in other parts. Deformity and absence of formation of certain bones in the head, ribs, and coccygeal vertebrae were recorded in skeleton of foetuses from exposed dams compare to control group. Conclusions: The electromagnetic radiation exposure during pregnancy alter the processes of bone mineralization and the intensity of bone turnover processes, and thus impact embryonic skeleton formation and development directly.
Securing Untrusted Full-Duplex Relay Channels in the Presence of Multiple External Cluster-Based Eavesdroppers

We investigate the physical layer security of a wireless cooperative network where communication between Alice and Bob is assisted by a full-duplex (FD) untrusted relay, Ray, in the presence of multiple external eavesdroppers, Eves. A cluster-based colluding eavesdropping setting is considered, where illegitimate nodes with common interests are grouped in a cluster. To confuse the different eavesdropping clusters, we employ artificial-noise (AN) aided beamforming at the source node. Moreover, FD relay jamming is used to improve the system's security. To maintain secure communications against the untrusted relay node, an FD destination jamming scheme is adopted. Our proposed scheme is designed based on the channel state information of the legitimate nodes only. We optimize the transmit power allocation factors between data and AN signals, the data and AN precoders at Alice, the AN precoder at Bob, and the data and AN precoders at Ray. Numerical results show that the optimal power allocation factor between data and AN depends on the total number of antennas of the different colluding eavesdropping clusters.
HoDOr: histogram of differential orientations for rigid landmark tracking in medical images

Feature extraction plays a pivotal role in pattern recognition and matching. An ideal feature should be invariant to image transformations such as translation, rotation, scaling, etc. In this work, we present a novel rotation-invariant feature, which is based on Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG). We compare performance of the proposed approach with the HOG feature on 2D phantom data, as well as 3D medical imaging data. We have used traditional histogram comparison measures such as Bhattacharyya distance and Normalized Correlation Coefficient (NCC) to assess efficacy of the proposed approach under effects of image rotation. In our experiments, the proposed feature performs 40%, 20%, and 28% better than the HOG feature on phantom (2D), Computed Tomography (CT-3D), and Ultrasound (US-3D) data for image matching, and landmark tracking tasks respectively.
Regulatory Effect of Xiaoqinglong Decoction on Thymic Stromal Lymphopoietin (TSLP) Inflammation Promoter in Mice with Cold Asthma.

Allergic asthma is a complex and chronic inflammatory airway disease. The thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) signaling pathway plays an important role in asthma. Xiaoqinglong Decoction (XQL) is the first choice to treat cold asthma in clinical settings. In this study, the role of the TSLP pathway in the onset of asthma and the protective mechanism of XQL were investigated. A total of 50 female mice were randomly divided into the following groups: the blank group (A), the model group (B), the XQL group (C), the dexamethasone group (D), and the XQL + dexamethasone group (E). Asthma was induced with ovalbumin, and corresponding drug intervention was carried out for 7 days, after which serum and lung tissue end points were analyzed. Serum interleukin 1β (IL-1β), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), and TSLP levels were higher in group B than in group A (p<0.05). However these levels were lower in group C and D than in group B (p<0.05), and there was no significant difference between groups C and D (p>0.05). Interestingly, these end points were significantly lower in group E than in groups C and D (p<0.05). Regarding pathologic changes, the inflammatory infiltrate in the lungs of groups C, D, and E was lower than that of group B, especially in group E. We conclude that the TSLP pathway plays an important role in the course of asthma, and can be used as an important target for asthma treatment; XQL may play a role in reducing inflammation and relieving asthma by regulating the TSLP signaling pathway.
Long‐term care reform and the role of housing finance

Abstract The Clinton administration's recently announced home and community‐based care proposals have potentially important implications not only for long‐term care policy, but also for housing policy in the United States. This article attempts to draw out some of those implications. The first section examines problems inherent in the current “medical/welfare” system of financing long‐term care, which constrains consumer choice by limiting the supply of providers to control costs and by increasing medical professionals’ control over the types of services provided in the name of quality control. The medical/welfare dominance of long‐term care policy has resulted in an overreliance on nursing homes as providers, resulting in both escalating costs and continued consumer dissatisfaction. The second half of the article looks at recent market and policy developments in response to consumer demand for lower cost alternatives to nursing homes. These alternatives promote more consumer autonomy and control in suppo.
A Prospective Study of Interbody Fat Graft Application With the Anterior Contralateral Cervical Microdiscectomy to Preserve Segmental Mobility

BACKGROUND Any surgical procedure aims at protecting mobile segments at the operated level, and the sagittal balance of the columna vertebralis. Interbody fusion has become an often applied technique in anterior cervical discectomy. OBJECTIVE To indicate that a minimally invasive technique in which we use interbody fat graft placement showed great results and effectiveness, especially in patients who were suffering from cervical paramedian disc herniation. METHODS In this study, 432 patients were observed from 2000 to 2013. All these consecutive patients had paramedian disc herniation. The initial 239 patients (group 1) underwent microdiscectomy without graft placement, whereas the remaining 193 patients (group 2) had a microdiscectomy with interbody fat graft insertion. The Neck Disability Index (NDI) and Short Form-36 (SF-36) were used to evaluate clinical outcomes. They were followed up for 5.3 years (range 2-13 years). RESULTS Spontaneous radiological fusion was noticed in 12% of group 1 patients and none of the group 2 patients. It has been observed that the mean overall cervical curvature (C2-7) angles and segmental lordosis did not change significantly in late follow-up findings. During both early and late follow-ups, all patients indicated a decreasing NDI score, but in late follow-up, an improving SF-36 score. CONCLUSION This surgical technique provides good direct decompression and preserves mobility at the treated level, while preventing disc collapse.
Integrity monitoring of navigation systems using repetitive journeys

Currently, Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) increasingly rely on information stored in vehicle on board digital maps. The vehicle position is projected onto the map to establish oncoming road context. However, errors might exist in the road geometry stored in the maps. The integrity of this map-matched estimate must be monitored in real-time to avoid errors that can lead to hazardous situations. This paper presents a monitoring system and fault detection, isolation and adaptation formalism which benefits of multiple vehicle journeys (e.g. commuting). We demonstrate that it is possible to assert correct navigation information within the first journey to a new area and to isolate areas where the road geometry is erroneous after the second journey. The approach takes into account errors that might occur on the estimation of the global vehicle position. The proposed formalism was experimentally validated using a passenger vehicle driven in different map and GNSS conditions.
Programmable Low-Power Low-Noise Capacitance to Voltage Converter for MEMS Accelerometers

In this work, we present a capacitance-to-voltage converter (CVC) for capacitive accelerometers based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Based on a fully-differential transimpedance amplifier (TIA), it features a 34-dB transimpedance gain control and over one decade programmable bandwidth, from 75 kHz to 1.2 MHz. The TIA is aimed for low-cost low-power capacitive sensor applications. It has been designed in a standard 0.18-μm CMOS technology and its power consumption is only 54 μW. At the maximum transimpedance configuration, the TIA shows an equivalent input noise of 42 fA/Hz at 50 kHz, which corresponds to 100 μg/Hz.
Classification-based Approximate Reachability with Guarantees Applied to Safe Trajectory Tracking

Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) reachability analysis has been developed over the past decades into a widely-applicable tool for determining goal satisfaction and safety verification in nonlinear systems. While HJ reachability can be formulated very generally, computational complexity can be a serious impediment for many systems of practical interest. Much prior work has been devoted to computing approximate solutions to large reachability problems, yet many of these methods apply to only restricted problem classes, do not generate controllers, and/or are extremely conservative. In this paper, we present a novel approach to approximate HJ reachability in which computing an optimal controller is viewed as a sequential classification problem. Even though we employ neural networks for this classification task, our method still provides safety guarantees in many cases. We demonstrate the utility of our approach in the context of safe trajectory following with specific application to quadrotor navigation. Offline computation and online evaluation confirm that our method preserves safety.
Genetic Diversity of Avian Paramyxovirus Type 6 Isolated from Wild Ducks in the Republic of Korea

Abstract: Eleven avian paramyxovirus type 6 (APMV-6) isolates from Eurasian Wigeon (n=5; Anas penelope), Mallards (n=2; Anas platyrhynchos), and unknown species of wild ducks (n=4) from Korea were analyzed based on the nucleotide (nt) and deduced amino acid sequences of the fusion (F) gene. Fecal samples were collected in 2010–14. Genotypes were assigned based on phylogenetic analyses. Our results revealed that APMV-6 could be classified into at least two distinct genotypes, G1 and G2. The open reading frame (ORF) of the G1 genotype was 1,668 nt in length, and the putative F0 cleavage site sequence was 113PAPEPRL119. The G2 genotype viruses included five isolates from Eurasian wigeons and four isolates from unknown waterfowl species, together with two reference APMV-6 strains from the Red-necked Stint (Calidris ruficollis) from Japan and an unknown duck from Italy. There was an N-truncated ORF (1,638 nt), due to an N-terminal truncation of 30 nt in the signal peptide region of the F gene, and the putative F0 cleavage site sequence was 103SIREPRL109. The genetic diversity and ecology of APMV-6 are discussed.
Screening and quantification of 18 glucocorticoid adulterants from herbal pharmaceuticals and health foods by HPLC and confirmed by LC-Q-TOF-MS/MS

ABSTRACT A procedure for the screening and quantification of 18 glucocorticoids, i.e. hydrocortisone sodium succinate (HSS), prednisolone (PDL), prednisone (PDS), hydrocortisone (HCS), methylprednisolone (MPS), betamethasone (BTM), dexamethasone (DXM), triamcinolone acetonide (TA), prednisolone acetate (PLA), hydrocortisone acetate (HA), fludrocortisone acetate (FA), prednisone acetate (PA), cortisone acetate (CA), dexamethasone acetate (DA), hydrocortisone butyrate (HB), triamcinolone acetonide acetate (TAA), fluocinonide (FN) and halcinonide (HC) from herbal pharmaceuticals and health foods was established and fully validated. The samples were extracted by methanol and separated by HPLC. The retention times and ultraviolet spectra were used for the preliminary screening, and the suspected adulterants were then confirmed by liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS/MS) and quantified by HPLC. The developed procedure was successfully applied to 14 herbal samples, and 316.3 µg g–1 of DA and 13.6 µg mL–1 of BTM were found in a tablet sample and a spray sample, respectively. To our best knowledge, this is the first report of the simultaneous screening and quantification of these 18 glucocorticoids from any matrix.
Notoginsenoside R1 ameliorates diabetic encephalopathy by activating the Nrf2 pathway and inhibiting NLRP3 inflammasome activation

Numerous researches supported that oxidative stress and inflammation play important roles in the development of diabetic encephalopathy (DEP). Notoginsenoside R1 (NGR1), one major component of Panax notoginseng, is believed to have anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties. However, its neuroprotective effects against DEP and underlying mechanisms are still unknown. In this study, db/db mice as well as high-glucose (HG)-treated HT22 hippocampal neurons were used as in vivo and in vitro models to estimate NGR1 neuroprotection. NGR1 administration for 10 weeks could ameliorate cognitive dysfunction, depression-like behaviors, insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, dyslipidemia, and inflammation in db/db mice. NGR1 markedly decreased the oxidative stress induced by hyperglycemia in hippocampal neurons. NGR1 significantly activated the protein kinase B (Akt)/nuclear factor-erythroid 2-related factor2 (Nrf2) pathway, and inhibited NLRP3 inflammasome activation in hippocampal neurons, which might be essential for the neuroprotective effects of NGR1. Further supporting these results, we observed that pretreatment with the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitor LY294002 abolished NGR1-mediated neuroprotective effects against oxidative stress and NLRP3 inflammasome activation in HG-treated HT22 hippocampal neurons. In conclusion, the present study demonstrates the neuroprotective effects of NGR1 on DEP by activating the Akt/Nrf2 pathway and inhibiting NLRP3 inflammasome activation. This study also provides a novel strategy for the application of NGR1 as a therapeutic agent for patients with DEP.
Regarding realities: Using photo-based projective techniques to elicit normative and alternative discourses on gender, relationships, and sexuality in Mozambique

ABSTRACT This paper argues for the methodological merit of photo-based projective techniques (PT) in formative HIV communication research. We used this technique in Mozambique to study multiple sexual partnerships (MSPs) and the roles of social and gender norms in promoting or discouraging these behaviours. Facilitators used ambiguous photographs and vignettes to ease adult men and women into discussions of sexual risk behaviour and HIV transmission. Visuals upheld a third-person perspective in discussions, enabling participants to safely project their worldviews onto the photographed characters, and indirectly share their attitudes, normative environments, personal and peer experiences, perceived risks and benefits, and theories about motivations for extramarital sex. Visually grounded storylines contained rich detail about the circumstances and interpersonal conversations that contextualise MSP behaviour and norms. The research yielded findings about conflicting social practices of public encouragement and private disapproval. Despite concerns around the verifiability of PTs, the repetition and convergence in the elicited conversations – and confirmation through subsequent campaign design and evaluation – suggest these techniques can reliably elicit information for formative public health and communication research on psychosocial and normative factors.