Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Face Fitting using a Genetic Algorithm

The ability to estimate the three-dimensional structure of a human face from a single image has many useful applications, including but not limited to the ﬁelds of face recognition, modelling and actors’ head replacement. Although a lot of promising techniques have been developed in this area a number of signiﬁcant technical hurdles exist preventing the development of a reliable method to extract three-dimensional structure without human intervention. Inthisposter we present work in progress on a new technique that should overcome some of the problems associated with the current state-of-the-art methods. We intend to use Genetic Algorithms to search the face space to ﬁnd a match with a given input image. We hope to show that this method will avoid local-minima problems associated with traditional gradient descent techniques as well as provide a method that locates the position, pose and shape of the face without any user interaction.
EDUCATING STUDENTS ABOUT INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE: COMPARING TWO METHODS

This pilot study (N=63) used a mixed methods design to compare the impact ofpeer theater education, traditional peer education, and a comparison group onthe in-depth attitudes and knowledge concerning interpersonal violence (IPV)among social work students in an introductory social work course. Six focusgroups were conducted with students to assess their attitudes and thoughtsabout IPV prior to the intervention and 2 months after the intervention. Theresults indicate greater knowledge and healthier attitudes toward IPV for boththe peer education and peer theater groups, with little change in the comparisongroup. Participants in the peer theater group, however, communicated abetter ability to integrate their knowledge with real-life situations and practicallyapply this knowledge.
A Camera-Projector System for Robot Positioning by Visual Servoing

Positioning a robot with respect to objects by using data provided by a camera is a well known technique called visual servoing. In order to perform a task, the object must exhibit visual features which can be extracted from different points of view. Then, visual servoing is object-dependent as it depends on the object appearance. Therefore, performing the positioning task is not possible in presence of nontextured objets or objets for which extracting visual features is too complex or too costly. This paper proposes a solution to tackle this limitation inherent to the current visual servoing techniques. Our proposal is based on the coded structured light approach as a reliable and fast way to solve the correspondence problem. In this case, a coded light pattern is projected providing robust visual features independently of the object appearance.
Organizational Justice and Quality of Working Life: A Road That Leads to a Virtuous Organization

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to find the effects of distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational justices on quality of working life (QWL)—namely, job and career satisfaction, working conditions, control at work, home–work interface, and general well-being. A total 1,732 full-time employees from a set of 10 health and rehabilitation centers were surveyed, and 511 usable questionnaires were received. Correlations and regression analysis techniques were used in data analysis. Data revealed that fair distribution of resources and fair use of procedures improved 5 dimensions of QWL. Social exchange theory, multifocal perspective, and virtue ethics were used to explain the findings. This information is relevant for future research in the area of staff–client relations and quality of service. Theoretical, practical, and professional implications, directions for future research, and limitations of the study are discussed.
Gender-specific association of the factor V Leiden mutation with fertility and fecundity in a historic cohort. The Leiden 85-Plus Study.

BACKGROUND Factor V Leiden (FVL, Arg506Gln) mutation may facilitate embryo implantation and increase fertility and fecundity. This was studied in subjects who were of childbearing age in a time with minimal fertility control without modern contraceptive methods. METHODS From 1986 to 1999, 1502 inhabitants of Leiden, The Netherlands, reaching the age of 85 years were enrolled in the Leiden 85-Plus Study. Of 1176 subjects the FVL status was analysed, in 365 male and 811 female subjects. RESULTS The FVL carrier rate was 4.3%. Fertility was not affected by FVL status. In male subjects, fecundity (interval between marriage and birth of first child) was significantly increased in FVL carriers; 67% of male FVL carriers had a child within 371 days of marriage (therefore conceived within 3 months of marriage), compared with 19% of male non-carriers [relative risk (RR), 3.5; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.1-5.7; P < 0.001]. Within 6 months of marriage, 75% of male FVL carriers had conceived a child compared with 34% male non-carriers (RR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.5-3.2; P = 0.01). In female subjects, fecundity was not influenced by FVL status. CONCLUSION Fecundity is increased in male FVL carriers; in female subjects, no such association was observed.
Modiied Chebyshev Polynomial Preconditioner for Least Squares Problems on Massively Distributed Memory Computers

| In this paper, we mainly concern with precon-ditioners for sparse least squares problems which can be eeciently solved by CGLS, a basic iterative method whose main idea is to organize the computation of conjugate gradient method applied to normal equations, because the pre-conditioning part is often the most problematic part in a parallel environment. The modiied Chebyshev polynomial preconditioner is naively proposed to be constructed based on the observation that good estimates for the eigenval-ue distribution can be derived after only a few steps of the conjugate gradient-type method. It is clear that this preconditioning technique does not require any inner product operations which often present the bottleneck of parallel performance on modern massively parallel distributed memory computers. Theoretically this is optimal for which the eigenvalue distribution is highly ill-conditioned. The experimental comparison results carried out on Parsytec GC/PowerPlus with other preconditioning techniques are reported as well.
Management and the Organisation

The practice of management, which is very much a product of the 20th century, has evolved from respectable historical antecedents. In the Old Testament, (Exodus Chapter 18, verses 17–26), Moses was faced with management problems, and the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans also showed evidence of administrative, if not management knowledge. Prior to the industrial revolution the main administrative institutions were government, the military and the church. These organisations were fairly flexible, operated according to strict rules and demanded unquestioning obedience from their members. However, developments in command and control of military institutions, especially as they became larger and more diverse, were characterised by many of the management principles adopted by modern organisations; (e.g. the scalar principle, centralisation of command with decentralisation of operations, line and staff etc.).
Translation Inhibition of the Developmental Cycle Protein HctA by the Small RNA IhtA Is Conserved across Chlamydia

The developmental cycle of the obligate intracellular pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis serovar L2 is controlled in part by the small non-coding RNA (sRNA), IhtA. All Chlamydia alternate in a regulated fashion between the infectious elementary body (EB) and the replicative reticulate body (RB) which asynchronously re-differentiates back to the terminal EB form at the end of the cycle. The histone like protein HctA is central to RB:EB differentiation late in the cycle as it binds to and occludes the genome, thereby repressing transcription and translation. The sRNA IhtA is a critical component of this regulatory loop as it represses translation of hctA until late in infection at which point IhtA transcription decreases, allowing HctA expression to occur and RB to EB differentiation to proceed. It has been reported that IhtA is expressed during infection by the human pathogens C. trachomatis serovars L2, D and L2b and C. pneumoniae. We show in this work that IhtA is also expressed by the animal pathogens C. caviae and C. muridarum. Expression of HctA in E. coli is lethal and co-expression of IhtA relieves this phenotype. To determine if regulation of HctA by IhtA is a conserved mechanism across pathogenic chlamydial species, we cloned hctA and ihtA from C. trachomatis serovar D, C. muridarum, C. caviae and C. pneumoniae and assayed for rescue of growth repression in E. coli co-expression studies. In each case, co-expression of ihtA with the cognate hctA resulted in relief of growth repression. In addition, expression of each chlamydial species IhtA rescued the lethal phenotype of C. trachomatis serovar L2 HctA expression. As biolayer interferometry studies indicate that IhtA interacts directly with hctA message for all species tested, we predict that conserved sequences of IhtA are necessary for function and/or binding.
Estimation of Absolute Protein Quantities of Unlabeled Samples by Selected Reaction Monitoring Mass Spectrometry

For many research questions in modern molecular and systems biology, information about absolute protein quantities is imperative. This information includes, for example, kinetic modeling of processes, protein turnover determinations, stoichiometric investigations of protein complexes, or quantitative comparisons of different proteins within one sample or across samples. To date, the vast majority of proteomic studies are limited to providing relative quantitative comparisons of protein levels between limited numbers of samples. Here we describe and demonstrate the utility of a targeting MS technique for the estimation of absolute protein abundance in unlabeled and nonfractionated cell lysates. The method is based on selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mass spectrometry and the “best flyer” hypothesis, which assumes that the specific MS signal intensity of the most intense tryptic peptides per protein is approximately constant throughout a whole proteome. SRM-targeted best flyer peptides were selected for each protein from the peptide precursor ion signal intensities from directed MS data. The most intense transitions per peptide were selected from full MS/MS scans of crude synthetic analogs. We used Monte Carlo cross-validation to systematically investigate the accuracy of the technique as a function of the number of measured best flyer peptides and the number of SRM transitions per peptide. We found that a linear model based on the two most intense transitions of the three best flying peptides per proteins (TopPep3/TopTra2) generated optimal results with a cross-correlated mean fold error of 1.8 and a squared Pearson coefficient R2 of 0.88. Applying the optimized model to lysates of the microbe Leptospira interrogans, we detected significant protein abundance changes of 39 target proteins upon antibiotic treatment, which correlate well with literature values. The described method is generally applicable and exploits the inherent performance advantages of SRM, such as high sensitivity, selectivity, reproducibility, and dynamic range, and estimates absolute protein concentrations of selected proteins at minimized costs.
Constructing Web Views from Automated Navigation Sessions

Existing web search engines provide users with the ability to query an off-line database of indices in order to decide on an entry point for further manual navigation. Results are often presented as a list of URLs in descending order of relevance, with no information on the underlying topology of the result set. We believe that information on the topology is important for useful exploration and can also help to reduce the feeling of disorientation that users experience. We present an alternative to the result set of a conventional search engine, which we call a web probabilistic view – a weighted subgraph of the underlying document space which maximizes the overall expected relevance of trails. We model a web database as a probabilistic grammar and present several algorithms to calculate its weights, expressed as probabilities attached to transition rules. We provide results from a recent set of experiments, showing the effectiveness of our approach measured as improvement in the expected relevance of the grammar.
A psychological contract perspective to the link between non-profit organizations' management practices and volunteer sustainability

This study applies the concept of the psychological contract to the relationship between management practices and volunteers. Formalization of the voluntary sector is impacting on volunteers' experiences and may breach the psychological contract from the volunteers' perspective. This mixed method study interviewed 67 volunteers and volunteer coordinators/administrators, and collected mail survey information from 152 volunteer organizations. The transactional management practices of keeping formal records and not paying volunteers out of pocket expenses are negatively associated with volunteer recruitment and retention. Alternatively, publicly recognizing volunteers through a volunteer newsletter supports volunteers' relational expectations and is positively linked to adequate volunteer numbers. Our findings have important implications for the human resource development practices of non-profit organizations in dealing with theirvolunteers: they suggest that the relational expectations of volunteers are animportant aspect of the psychological contract, which could be used by organizations as a framework for developing management practices that fit the volunteer ethos of trust and networks.
Computer Simulations Support a Morphological Contribution to BDNF Enhancement of Action Potential Generation

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) regulates both action potential (AP) generation and neuron morphology. However, whether BDNF-induced changes in neuron morphology directly impact AP generation is unclear. We quantified BDNF’s effect on cultured cortical neuron morphological parameters and found that BDNF stimulates dendrite growth and addition of dendrites while increasing both excitatory and inhibitory presynaptic inputs in a spatially restricted manner. To gain insight into how these combined changes in neuron structure and synaptic input impact AP generation, we used the morphological parameters we gathered to generate computational models. Simulations suggest that BDNF-induced neuron morphologies generate more APs under a wide variety of conditions. Synapse and dendrite addition have the greatest impact on AP generation. However, subtle alterations in excitatory/inhibitory synapse ratio and strength have a significant impact on AP generation when synaptic activity is low. Consistent with these simulations, BDNF rapidly enhances spontaneous activity in cortical cultures. We propose that BDNF promotes neuron morphologies that are intrinsically more efficient at translating barrages of synaptic activity into APs, which is a previously unexplored aspect of BDNF’s function.
The European Union and State Building in the Western Balkans

This paper examines the feasibility of network governance in the context of the EU's expansion in the Western Balkans. The EU is formally committed to promoting network governance but the realities of enlargement require the creation of effective states, in other words of the primacy of hierarchy over network. Networks are created in enlargement and reflect the complexities of public policy but these networks do not represent, as yet, a significant shift of power away from the state. Despite a normative preference for network governance, the political reality of enlargement is that the EU seeks the creation of effective hierarchy.
Cortical Synchronization and Perceptual Framing

How does the brain group together different parts of an object into a coherent visual object representation? Different parts of an object may be processed by the brain at different rates and may thus become desynchronized. Perceptual framing is a process that resynchronizes cortical activities corresponding to the same retinal object. A neural network model is presented that is able to rapidly resynchronize desynchronized neural activities. The model provides a link between perceptual and brain data. Model properties quantitatively simulate perceptual framing data, including psychophysical data about temporal order judgments and the reduction of threshold contrast as a function of stimulus length. Such a model has earlier been used to explain data about illusory contour formation, texture segregation, shape-from-shading, 3-D vision, and cortical receptive fields. The model hereby shows how many data may be understood as manifestations of a cortical grouping process that can rapidly resynchronize image parts that belong together in visual object representations. The model exhibits better synchronization in the presence of noise than without noise, a type of stochastic resonance, and synchronizes robustly when cells that represent different stimulus orientations compete. These properties arise when fast long-range cooperation and slow short-range competition interact via nonlinear feedback interactions with cells that obey shunting equations.
Postlipolytic insulin-dependent remodeling of micro lipid droplets in adipocytes

Micro lipid droplets (mLDs) form during lipolysis in both primary and cultured adipocytes. Surprisingly, mLDs do not appear to bud from large LDs or require an intact cytoskeleton to form. Insulin and fatty acids trigger fusion and growth of mLDs to reform macroLDs, a process that is microtubule dependent.
A lightweight network anomaly detection technique

While the network anomaly detection is essential in network operations and management, it becomes further challenging to perform the first line of detection against the exponentially increasing volume of network traffic. In this work, we develop a technique for the first line of online anomaly detection with two important considerations: (i) availability of traffic attributes during the monitoring time, and (ii) computational scalability for streaming data. The presented learning technique is lightweight and highly scalable with the beauty of approximation based on the grid partitioning of the given dimensional space. With the public traffic traces of KDD Cup 1999 and NSL-KDD, we show that our technique yields 98.5% and 83% of detection accuracy, respectively, only with a couple of readily available traffic attributes that can be obtained without the help of post-processing. The results are at least comparable with the classical learning methods including decision tree and random forest, with approximately two orders of magnitude faster learning performance.
Identification of Berezin-Toeplitz Deformation Quantization

We give a complete identification of the deformation quantization which was obtained from the Berezin- Toeplitz quantization on an arbitrary compact Kahler manifold. The deformation quantization with the opposite star-product proves to be a differential deformation quantization with separation of variables whose dassifying form is explicitly calculated. Its characteristic dass (which dassifies star-products up to equivalence) is obtained. The proof is based on the microlocal description of the Szego kernel of a strictly pseudoconvex domain given by Boutet de Monvel and Sjostrand.
Model reduction of strong-weak neurons

We consider neurons with large dendritic trees that are weakly excitable in the sense that back propagating action potentials are severly attenuated as they travel from the small, strongly excitable, spike initiation zone. In previous work we have shown that the computational size of weakly excitable cell models may be reduced by two or more orders of magnitude, and that the size of strongly excitable models may be reduced by at least one order of magnitude, without sacrificing the spatio–temporal nature of its inputs (in the sense we reproduce the cell's precise mapping of inputs to outputs). We combine the best of these two strategies via a predictor-corrector decomposition scheme and achieve a drastically reduced highly accurate model of a caricature of the neuron responsible for collision detection in the locust.
Physical Activity is Associated with Percent Body Fat and Body Composition but not Body Mass Index in White and Black College Students

The objective of this study was to examine the association of self-reported physical activity (PA) with body composition in 290 college students (49% male, 60% White) 18–25 years of age. Outcome measures included: self-reported PA levels calculated in MET-hrs·wk−1 from the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ); body mass index (BMI; in kg·m−2); and body composition variables estimated by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Mean activity levels of the sample were 39.8 ± 23.8 MET-hrs·wk−1. Participants were divided into quartiles of PA levels: ≥0 to <24.0, ≥24.0 to <34.0, ≥34.0 to <51.25, and ≥51.25 MET-hrs ·wk−1 and body composition variables were compared by group. Chi-square analyses revealed a significant difference for gender by PA quartile [χ2 (3, N=290) = 32.42, p < 0.0001], and for gender by race by PA quartile [χ2 (9, N=290) = 37.82, p < 0.0001]. MET-hrs·wk−1 was inversely correlated with %BF (r = −0.40, p < 0.0001) but not BMI (r = 0.05, p = 0.43). When comparing body composition variables across PA quartiles, no significant differences were observed for BMI; however, subjects in the highest quartile of PA had a lower percent body fat (%BF) and fat mass (FM), and a higher lean-tissue mass (LTM) compared to subjects in the other three groups. In this cohort of young adults, participants in the highest activity group had a more fit body composition profile (e.g., lower %BF, lower FM, and higher LTM) which was not reflected in BMI and was independent of gender and race.
Molecular and Functional Characterization of Organic Cation/Carnitine Transporter Family in Mice*

Carnitine is essential for β-oxidation of fatty acids, and a defect of cell membrane transport of carnitine leads to fatal systemic carnitine deficiency. We have already shown that a defect of the organic cation/carnitine transporter OCTN2 is a primary cause of systemic carnitine deficiency. In the present study, we further isolated and characterized new members of the OCTN family, OCTN1 and -3, in mice. All three members were expressed commonly in kidney, and OCTN1 and -2 were also expressed in various tissues, whereas OCTN3 was characterized by predominant expression in testis. When their cDNAs were transfected into HEK293 cells, the cells exhibited transport activity for carnitine and/or the organic cation tetraethylammonium (TEA). Carnitine transport by OCTN1 and OCTN2 was Na+-dependent, whereas that by OCTN3 was Na+-independent. TEA was transported by OCTN1 and OCTN2 but not by OCTN3. The relative uptake activity ratios of carnitine to TEA were 1.78, 11.3, and 746 for OCTN1, -2, and -3, respectively, suggesting high specificity of OCTN3 for carnitine and significantly lower carnitine transport activity of OCTN1. Thus, OCTN3 is unique in its limited tissue distribution and Na+-independent carnitine transport, whereas OCTN1 efficiently transported TEA with minimal expression of carnitine transport activity and may have a different role from other members of the OCTN family.