Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regularization parameter estimation for underdetermined problems by the χ 2 principle with application to 2D focusing gravity inversion

The χ 2 ? > principle generalizes the Morozov discrepancy principle to the augmented residual of the Tikhonov regularized least squares problem. For weighting of the data fidelity by a known Gaussian noise distribution on the measured data, when the stabilizing, or regularization, term is considered to be weighted by unknown inverse covariance information on the model parameters, the minimum of the Tikhonov functional becomes a random variable that follows a χ 2 ? > -distribution with m + p − n ? > degrees of freedom for the model matrix G of size m × n ? > , m ⩾ n ? > , and regularizer L of size p × n. Then, a Newton root-finding algorithm, employing the generalized singular value decomposition, or singular value decomposition when L = I, can be used to find the regularization parameter α. Here the result and algorithm are extended to the underdetermined case, m < n ? > , with m + p ⩾ n ? > . Numerical results first contrast and verify the generalized cross validation, unbiased predictive risk estimation and χ 2 ? > algorithms when m < n ? > , with regularizers L approximating zeroth to second order derivative approximations. The inversion of underdetermined 2D focusing gravity data produces models with non-smooth properties, for which typical solvers in the field use an iterative minimum support stabilizer, with both regularizer and regularizing parameter updated each iteration. The χ 2 ? > and unbiased predictive risk estimator of the regularization parameter are used for the first time in this context. For a simulated underdetermined data set with noise, these regularization parameter estimation methods, as well as the generalized cross validation method, are contrasted with the use of the L-curve and the Morozov discrepancy principle. Experiments demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the χ 2 ? > principle and unbiased predictive risk estimator, moreover showing that the L-curve and Morozov discrepancy principle are outperformed in general by the other three techniques. Furthermore, the minimum support stabilizer is of general use for the χ 2 ? > principle when implemented without the desirable knowledge of the mean value of the model.
Lycopene as A Carotenoid Provides Radioprotectant and Antioxidant Effects by Quenching Radiation-Induced Free Radical Singlet Oxygen: An Overview

Radio-protectors are agents that protect human cells and tissues from undesirable effects of ionizing radiation by mainly scavenging radiation-induced free radicals. Although chemical radio-protectors diminish these deleterious side effects they induce a number of unwanted effects on humans such as blood pressure modifications, vomiting, nausea, and both local and generalized cutaneous reactions. These disadvantages have led to emphasis on the use of some botanical radio-protectants as alternatives. This review has collected and organized studies on a plant-derived radio-protector, lycopene. Lycopene protects normal tissues and cells by scavenging free radicals. Therefore, treatment of cells with lycopene prior to exposure to an oxidative stress, oxidative molecules or ionizing radiation may be an effective approach in diminishing undesirable effects of radiation byproducts. Studies have designated lycopene to be an effective radio-protector with negligible side effects.
Searching for Age and Gender Discrimination in Mortgage Lending

This paper tests for the presence of age and gender discrimination in the loan underwriting process. We modify the tools used during the past exams to test for racial discrimination and apply them here to test for the presence of disparate treatment on the basis of age and gender. Using HMDA data along with data from 18 fair lending exams recently conducted by the OCC, between1996 – 2001, we find no evidence of systematic discrimination on the basis of age or gender. Further, the tools used and tested for in this analysis are now readily available for use in future fair lending exams.
In vitro treatment of HepG2 cells with saturated fatty acids reproduces mitochondrial dysfunction found in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis

Activity of the oxidative phosphorylation system (OXPHOS) is decreased in humans and mice with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Nitro-oxidative stress seems to be involved in its pathogenesis. The aim of this study was to determine whether fatty acids are implicated in the pathogenesis of this mitochondrial defect. In HepG2 cells, we analyzed the effect of saturated (palmitic and stearic acids) and monounsaturated (oleic acid) fatty acids on: OXPHOS activity; levels of protein expression of OXPHOS complexes and their subunits; gene expression and half-life of OXPHOS complexes; nitro-oxidative stress; and NADPH oxidase gene expression and activity. We also studied the effects of inhibiting or silencing NADPH oxidase on the palmitic-acid-induced nitro-oxidative stress and subsequent OXPHOS inhibition. Exposure of cultured HepG2 cells to saturated fatty acids resulted in a significant decrease in the OXPHOS activity. This effect was prevented in the presence of a mimic of manganese superoxide dismutase. Palmitic acid reduced the amount of both fully-assembled OXPHOS complexes and of complex subunits. This reduction was due mainly to an accelerated degradation of these subunits, which was associated with a 3-tyrosine nitration of mitochondrial proteins. Pretreatment of cells with uric acid, an antiperoxynitrite agent, prevented protein degradation induced by palmitic acid. A reduced gene expression also contributed to decrease mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)-encoded subunits. Saturated fatty acids induced oxidative stress and caused mtDNA oxidative damage. This effect was prevented by inhibiting NADPH oxidase. These acids activated NADPH oxidase gene expression and increased NADPH oxidase activity. Silencing this oxidase abrogated totally the inhibitory effect of palmitic acid on OXPHOS complex activity. We conclude that saturated fatty acids caused nitro-oxidative stress, reduced OXPHOS complex half-life and activity, and decreased gene expression of mtDNA-encoded subunits. These effects were mediated by activation of NADPH oxidase. That is, these acids reproduced mitochondrial dysfunction found in humans and animals with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.
Using Ground-Truth Data To Design Priors In Bayesian Spect Reconstruction

We propose a method for estimating hyperparameters for prior models used in SPECT reconstruction. Our method uses a maximum-likelihood technique to t hyperparameters to a training set that is itself representative of ground-truth objects to be reconstructed. We argue that autoradiography may be a good source for such exemplars. For a simple smoothing prior, we derive a closed-form expression for the hyperparam-eter, and for a more complex prior that promotes piecewise smoothness, we evaluate the likelihood expression numerically. Numerical experiments demonstrate that parameters derived from training sets are fairly close to parameter values optimal in the sense of various measures of image quality.
The Effects of Tertiary and Quaternary Infections on the Epidemiology of Dengue

The epidemiology of dengue is characterised by irregular epidemic outbreaks and desynchronised dynamics of its four co-circulating virus serotypes. Whilst infection by one serotype appears to convey life-long protection to homologous infection, it is believed to be a risk factor for severe disease manifestations upon secondary, heterologous infection due to the phenomenon of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE). Subsequent clinical infections are rarely reported and, since the majority of dengue infections are generally asymptomatic, it is not clear if and to what degree tertiary or quaternary infections contribute to dengue epidemiology. Here we investigate the effect of third and subsequent infections on the transmission dynamics of dengue and show that although the qualitative patterns are largely equivalent, the system more readily exhibits the desynchronised serotype oscillations and multi-annual epidemic outbreaks upon their inclusion. More importantly, permitting third and fourth infections significantly increases the force of infection without resorting to high basic reproductive numbers. Realistic age-prevalent patterns and seroconversion rates are therefore easier reconciled with a low value of dengue's transmission potential if allowing for more than two infections; this should have important consequences for dengue control and intervention measures.
Radiation Effects on the Electrical Properties of Hafnium Oxide Based MOS Capacitors

Hafnium oxide-based MOS capacitors were investigated to determine electrical property response to radiation environments. In situ capacitance versus voltage measurements were analyzed to identify voltage shifting as a result of changes to trapped charge with increasing dose of gamma, neutron, and ion radiation. In situ measurements required investigation and optimization of capacitor fabrication to include dicing, cleaning, metalization, packaging, and wire bonding. A top metal contact of 200 angstroms of titanium followed by 2800 angstroms of gold allowed for repeatable wire bonding and proper electrical response. Gamma and ion irradiations of atomic layer deposited hafnium oxide on silicon devices both resulted in a midgap voltage shift of no more than 0.2 V toward less positive voltages. This shift indicates recombination of radiation induced positive charge with negative trapped charge in the bulk oxide. Silicon ion irradiation caused interface effects in addition to oxide trap effects that resulted in a flatband voltage shift of approximately 0.6 V also toward less positive voltages. Additionally, no bias dependent voltage shifts with gamma irradiation and strong oxide capacitance room temperature annealing after ion irradiation was observed. These characteristics, in addition to the small voltage shifts observed, demonstrate the radiation hardness of hafnium oxide andmore » its applicability for use in space systems. « less
Pedometer-driven Walking for Chronic Low Back Pain: A Feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives:To evaluate the feasibility of an RCT of a pedometer-driven walking program and education/advice to remain active compared with education/advice only for treatment of chronic low back pain (CLBP). Methods:Fifty-seven participants with CLBP recruited from primary care were randomly allocated to either: (1) education/advice (E, n=17) or (2) education/advice plus an 8-week pedometer-driven walking program (EWP, n=40). Step targets, actual daily step counts, and adverse events were recorded in a walking diary over the 8 weeks of intervention for the EWP group only. All other outcomes (eg, functional disability using the Oswestry Disability Questionnaire (ODQ), pain scores, physical activity (PA) measurement etc.) were recorded at baseline, week 9 (immediately post-intervention), and 6 months in both groups. Results:The recruitment rate was 22% and the dropout rate was lower than anticipated (13% to 18% at 6 mo). Adherence with the EWP was high, 93% (n=37/40) walked for ≥6 weeks, and increased their steps/day (mean absolute increase in steps/d, 2776, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1996-3557) by 59% (95% CI, 40.73%-76.25%) from baseline. Mean percentage adherence with weekly step targets was 70% (95% CI, 62%-77%). Eight (20%) minor-related adverse events were observed in 13% (5/40) of the participants. The EWP group participants demonstrated an 8.2% point improvement (95% CI, −13 to −3.4) on the ODQ at 6 months compared with 1.6% points (95% CI, –9.3 to 6.1) for the E group (between group d=0.44). There was also a larger mean improvement in pain (d=0.4) and a larger increase in PA (d=0.59) at 6 months in EWP. Discussion:This preliminary study demonstrated that a main RCT is feasible. EWP was safe and produced a real increase in walking; CLBP function and pain improved, and participants perceived a greater improvement in their PA levels. These improvements require confirmation in a fully powered RCT.
Visualization of Ebstein's Anomaly of the Tricuspid Valve by Two‐dimensional and Standard Echocardiography

Seven patients with Ebstein's anomaly were studied by two-dimensional echocardiography, with and without stop-action technique, and by standard echocardiography. Sagittal two-dimensional echocardiograms visualized a small functional right ventricle and a large atrialized right ventricle. These two parts of the chamber were separated by the anterior tricuspid leaflet and its chordae tendineae. The echocardiograms corresponded to the findings of the right ventriculogram.In horizontal two-dimensional echocardiograms a huge anterior tricuspid leaflet, atrialized right ventricle, and a displaced septal tricuspid leaflet, intervening between the functional right ventricle and the sinus portion of the functional right ventricle, were visualized. The origin of the septal tricuspid leaflet was clearly shown to be abnormal in five cases. The left ventricle was small with distinct clockwise rotation of the interventricular septum. Two-dimensional echocardiography provided information useful in evaluation of the functions of the right ventricle and the tricuspid valve and determination of what surgical procedure to follow.
Routine ultrasonography in utero and subsequent handedness and neurological development.

OBJECTIVE--To examine any associations between routine ultrasonography in utero and subsequent brain development as indicated by non-right handedness at primary school age and neurological development during childhood. DESIGN--Follow up of 8 and 9 year old children of women who took part in two randomised, controlled trials of routine ultrasonography during pregnancy. SETTING--Clinics of 60 general practitioners in Norway during 1979-81. Maternal and child health centres. SUBJECTS--2161 (89%) of 2428 eligible singletons were followed up, partly through a questionnaire to their parents and partly through information from health centres. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES--The dominant hand of the child was assessed by 10 questions. Deficits in attention, motor control, and perception were evaluated by five questions. Impaired neurological development during the first year of life was assessed by an abbreviated version of the Denver developmental screening test. RESULTS--The odds of non-right handedness were higher among children who had been screened in utero than among control children (odds ratio 1.32; 95% confidence interval 1.02 to 1.71). No clear differences were found between the groups with regard to deficits in attention, motor control, and perception or neurological development during the first year of life. CONCLUSION--Our data suggest a possible association between routine ultrasonography in utero and subsequent non-right handedness, whereas no association with impaired neurological development was found. As the question on non-right handedness was one of six initial hypotheses, the observed results may be due to chance. None the less, the results suggest that the hypothesis may have some merit and should be tested in future studies.
Skew detection and correction of ancient Tamil documents using particle swarm optimization

When a document is fed to a scanner either mechanically or by a human operator for digitization, it suffers from some degrees of skew or tilt. Skew detection is one of the first operations to be applied to scanned documents when converting data to a digital format. Its aim is to align an image before processing because text segmentation and recognition methods require properly aligned lines. This paper presents a new approach for skew detection and correction of documents. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is used for solving skew optimization. A new objective function based on local maxima and minima of projection profile is formulated and PSO is used to find the best angle that maximizes the objective function. The proposed method is compared with existing methods like Hough transform, Fourier transform. Experimental results show that the proposed method corrects the skew with the maximum error rate of ± 1° .
Image processing assisted stress estimation method for ring compression tests of polymer composite pipes at large displacements

A novel method for estimating the fracture stress of ring specimens cut from polymer composite pipes is presented. The method applies image processing for determining the large displacements of the specimen. For image processing, photographs of the deformed specimen were taken before fracture, and a Fourier polynomial was fitted to the points of the digitalized cross section of the ring specimen. The presented mechanical model is based on the captured deformed shape, and it considers the geometrical nonlinearities of the problem. For stress calculation from bending moments, the Navier formula was selected. It was found that the developed method is capable of estimating the stress at break of polymer composite specimens under ring compression.
Transmission of 3-Gb/s uncompressed HD video in a optoelectronic-oscillator-based radio over fiber link

A radio over fiber system for transmission of 3-Gb/s uncompressed HD video is proposed and demonstrated. By using a polarization modulator (PoIM) in the transmitter, the power fading caused by the dispersion of the optical fiber is effectively reduced. In the receiver, an injection-locked frequency-doubling optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) is employed to simultaneously extract the RF carrier and perform photonic microwave downconversion. The system features simple configuration, high performance and stable operation.
Microcantilever surface modification for chem-/bio-sensing

One focus o f the m icrocantilever (M CL) sensing area is to develop a novel surface m odification approach to increase the m icrocantilever bending am plitudes and thus further im prove sensitivities. In this dissertation, enzym e incorporated using the Layerby-Layer (LbL) process, LbL deposition o f m irco-, nanohydrogel particles and electrophoretic deposition (EPD) o f m icro-, nanohydrogel particles w ere applied to prepare a m ultilayer o r th in hydrogel film s on the surface o f m icrocantilevers. P rior to applying to the m icrocantilevers, LbL and electrophoretic deposition techniques w ere also applied to gold coated silicon w afer surfaces to investigate the feasibility and deposition behavior using these techniques. The m ultilayers prepared through self­ assem bling o f poly(styrenesulfonate) (PSS), poly(ethylenim ine) (PEI), and organophosphorus hydrolase (OPH), responded to organic phosphorus com pounds such as paraoxon, parathion, and dim ethyl phosphate at different bending am plitudes and bending rates. The bending m echanism investigation suggested that the conform ational change o f the OPH m ight be the prim ary contributor o f the M CL bending. The m icro-, nanohydrogel particle deposition on the silicon w afer and m icrocantilever through LbL process w as investigated and discussed based on the observation and characterization using optical m icroscope, SEM and A FM techniques. A pseudo-3D m echanism was prom oted to explain the hydrogel particle deposition process. The research on the EPD dem onstrated that the technique w as a convenient and reliable approach to deposit a
Understanding and Predicting Image Memorability at a Large Scale

Progress in estimating visual memorability has been limited by the small scale and lack of variety of benchmark data. Here, we introduce a novel experimental procedure to objectively measure human memory, allowing us to build LaMem, the largest annotated image memorability dataset to date (containing 60,000 images from diverse sources). Using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), we show that fine-tuned deep features outperform all other features by a large margin, reaching a rank correlation of 0.64, near human consistency (0.68). Analysis of the responses of the high-level CNN layers shows which objects and regions are positively, and negatively, correlated with memorability, allowing us to create memorability maps for each image and provide a concrete method to perform image memorability manipulation. This work demonstrates that one can now robustly estimate the memorability of images from many different classes, positioning memorability and deep memorability features as prime candidates to estimate the utility of information for cognitive systems. Our model and data are available at: http://memorability.csail. mit.edu.
Effect of LFSR seeding, scrambling and feedback polynomial on stochastic computing accuracy

Stochastic computing (SC) [1] has received attention recently as a paradigm to improve energy efficiency and fault tolerance. SC uses hardware-generated random bitstreams to represent numbers in the [0:1] range - the number represented is the probability of a bit in the stream being logic-1. The generation of random bitstreams is typically done using linear-feedback shift register (LFSR)-based random number generators. In this paper, we consider how best to design such LFSR-based stochastic bitstream generators, as a means of improving the accuracy of stochastic computing. Three design criteria are evaluated: 1) LFSR seed selection, 2) the utility of scrambling LFSR output bits, and 3) the LFSR polynomials (i.e. locations of the feedback taps) and whether they should be unique vs. uniform across stream generators. For a recently proposed multiplexer-based stochastic logic architecture [8], we demonstrate that careful seed selection can improve accuracy results vs. the use of arbitrarily selected seeds. For example, we show that stochastic logic with seed-optimized 255-bit stream lengths achieves accuracy better than that of using 1023-bit stream lengths with arbitrary seeds: an improvement of over 4× in energy for equivalent accuracy.