Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MediaEval 2013 Visual Privacy Task: Holistic Evaluation Framework for Privacy by Co-Design Impact Assessment

In this paper, we describe a privacy filter proposed for the Visual Privacy T ask (VPT ) 2013, as a case study to validate the efficacy of the User-Intimate Requirements and Evaluation Methodology (UI-REF). T his comprises an automated objective evaluation phase supported by a subjective user study to crossvalidate and complement the results of the objective assessment. T he performance of the proposed filter, as well as the overall performance trends and tradeoffs of the alternative filtering techniques are highlighted. T he results demonstrated the consistency and high resolution evaluation capabilities of the Holistic Evaluation Framework for Privacy by Co-Design and Impact Assessment for benchmarking privacy filtering solutions.
Can You Tag the Modal? You Should.

Computational linguistics methods are typically first developed and tested in English. When applied to other languages, assumptions from English data are often applied to the target language. One of the most common such assumptions is that a "standard" part-of-speech (POS) tagset can be used across languages with only slight variations. We discuss in this paper a specific issue related to the definition of a POS tagset for Modern Hebrew, as an example to clarify the method through which such variations can be defined. It is widely assumed that Hebrew has no syntactic category of modals. There is, however, an identified class of words which are modal-like in their semantics, and can be characterized through distinct syntactic and morphologic criteria. We have found wide disagreement among traditional dictionaries on the POS tag attributed to such words. We describe three main approaches when deciding how to tag such words in Hebrew. We illustrate the impact of selecting each of these approaches on agreement among human taggers, and on the accuracy of automatic POS taggers induced for each method. We finally recommend the use of a "modal" tag in Hebrew and provide detailed guidelines for this tag. Our overall conclusion is that tagset definition is a complex task which deserves appropriate methodology.
Structure and function of rat testis through pubescence.

The histology, histochemistry, testosterone content and secretion of the rat testis were studied from 20 to 90 days of age. Histologic maturation of Leydig cells preceded the phase of rapidly increasing testosterone secretion. The disappearance of Leydig cell perinuclear basophilia was correlated with increasing Leydig cell function. The testosterone content per Leydig cell increased linearly from 20 to 90 days although total testis content of testosterone decreased due to decreasing Leydig cell number. (Endocrinology 86: 1298, 1970)
Targeted Hsp70 expression combined with CIK-activated immune reconstruction synergistically exerts antitumor efficacy in patient-derived hepatocellular carcinoma xenograft mouse models

The patient-derived tumor xenograft (PDTX) models can reproduce a similar natural genetic background and similar biological behaviors to tumor cells in patients, which is conducive to the assessment of personalized cancer treatment. In this study, to verify the targeting and effectiveness of the therapeutic strategy using a Survivin promoter-regulated oncolytic adenovirus expressing Hsp70, the PDTX models of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were established in nude mice and the cytokine-induced killer (CIK) cells were intravenously infused into mice to partially reconstruct the mouse immune function. The results demonstrated that, either the immune anti-tumor effect caused by CIK cell infusion or the oncolytic effect generated by oncolytic adenovirus replication was very limited. However, the synergistic tumor inhibitory effect was significantly enhanced after treatments with oncolytic adenovirus expressing Hsp70 combined with CIK cells. Oncolytic adenovirus mediated the specific expression of Hsp70 in cancer tissues allowed the CIK chemotaxis, and induce the infiltration of CD3+ T cells in tumor stroma, thereby exhibiting anti-tumor activity. The anti-tumor effect was more effective for the highly malignant tumor xenografts with highly Survivin expression. This strategy can synergistically activate multiple anti-tumor mechanisms and exert effective anti-tumor activities that have a significant inhibitory effect against the growth of HCC xenografts.
EMOTION RECOGNITION VIA ACOUSTIC FEATURES AND SEMANTIC CONTENTS IN SPEECH

Recent researches into human-machine communication make more emphasis on the recognition of nonverbal information, especially on the topic of emotional reaction. Many kinds of physiological characteristics are used to extract emotions, such as voice, facial expression, hand gesture, body movement, even heartbeat and blood pressure. In this paper, based on the idea that humans are capable of detecting human emotions through speech input without other visual or physiological information, an emotion recognition system that can detect the emotion from acoustic features and semantic contents in speech is proposed. In this approach, the acoustic features are extracted for feature-based emotion extraction. On the other hand, the speech signal is also fed to a speech recognizer and the recognized contents are then used for content-based emotion extraction. Finally, the integration of the results from acoustic features and semantic contents is used to determine the final emotion.
Nominal Group Technique consultation of a Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programme

Objective: The purpose of the study was to determine what patients, professionals and significant others regarded as the most important positive- and challenging aspects of Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programmes for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and to gain insight into how such programmes could be developed and improved. Method: A modified Nominal Group Technique method was used in three consultation workshops (one with COPD patients who had recently undertaken a Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programme; one with ‘significant others’ of the same patients; one with secondary care professionals who deliver the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programme). Results: Each of three workshops resulted in the production of approximately ten positive- and ten challenging aspects related to Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programmes. These were further developed by a process of thematisation into seven broad themes. The most important was ‘ the patient’, followed by ‘ physical health’; jointly ranked as third were: ‘ mental health’ and ‘ knowledge and education’. ‘ The programme’ and ‘ professional characteristics’ were jointly ranked as fifth, with ‘ the future’ being ranked as the least important theme. Conclusions: The modified Nominal Group Technique method allowed the development of a ranked thematic list that illustrated the important positive- and challenging aspects of Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programmes for patients with COPD. These themes should be core to planning future Pulmonary Rehabilitation Programmes, particularly if patients and carer views are to be considered.
Activation of the Nlrp1b Inflammasome by Reduction of Cytosolic ATP

ABSTRACT The efficacy of the innate immune system depends on its ability to mount an appropriate response to diverse infections and damaging agents. Key components of this system are pattern recognition receptors that detect pathogen-associated and damage-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs and DAMPs). Nlrp1b is a pattern recognition receptor that forms a caspase-1 activation platform, known as an inflammasome, upon sensing the proteolytic activity of anthrax lethal toxin. The activation of caspase-1 leads to the release of proinflammatory cytokines that aid in the clearance of the anthrax infection. Here, we demonstrate that Nlrp1b also becomes activated in cells that are subjected to energy stress caused by metabolic inhibitors or by nutrient deprivation. Glucose starvation and hypoxia were used to correlate the level of cytosolic ATP to the degree of inflammasome activation. Because lowering the ratio of cytosolic ATP to AMP activates the main cellular energy sensor, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), we assessed whether AMPK promoted inflammasome activity by using a combination of small interfering RNA (siRNA) and transfection of a dominant negative AMPK subunit. We found that AMPK promoted inflammasome activity, but activation of AMPK in the absence of ATP depletion was not sufficient for caspase-1-mediated pro-interleukin 1β (pro-IL-1β) processing. Finally, we found that mutation of the ATP-binding motif of Nlrp1b caused constitutive activation, suggesting that ATP might inhibit the Nlrp1b inflammasome instead of being required for its assembly.
A view synthesis method based on local luminance and neighborhood spreading strength information

Based on one or several views, view synthesis creates other views for the purpose of view prediction (for compression) or view rendering (for multiview-display). Luminance adjustment and hole filling are two key issues in view synthesis. In this paper, two views are used to produce an arbitrary virtual synthesized view. One view is merged into another view using a local luminance adaptive adjustment method, based on local neighborhood region for the calculation of adjustment coefficient. Moreover, a maximum neighborhood spreading strength hole filling method is presented to deal with the micro texture structure when the hole is being filled. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve high performance both subjectively and objectively.
Consideration of TLM modelling on example of cylindrical rectangular microstrip antenna

This paper deals with TLM modelling issues mostly pertaining to create the model, mesh adjustments, and simulation efficiency on an example of a cylindrical-rectangular coax-fed microstrip patch antenna. Possibilities, advantages, and limitations of the TLM solvers based on cylindrical and rectangular coordinate systems are investigated through simulations and discussed in detail.
Lessons from an Action Research Project

When an organization mindfully adopts an IT innovation there is a better chance that the innovation will meet the organization’s requirements (Swanson et al., 2004; Butler et al., 2006). Agile development principles (such as valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools, and responding to change over following a plan) and practices (such as communicating frequently with users, and developing and releasing functionalities in short iterations) have the potential to increase organizational mindfulness during the development and adoption of an IT innovation. Action research in an organizational setting was used to study 1) the application of agile development principles and practices in developing an IT innovation and 2) whether the application of agile principles and practices could enable the organization to mindfully adopt that innovation. The lessons learned from the action research project are discussed using specific examples.
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

introduce you to the group of scientists who are leading this new initiative, describe some of the exciting work we will be doing, and invite you to the launch of the clinical arm of the project to be held at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford on Friday 24th September. The OPDC is a unique interdisciplinary research centre focused on understanding the very earliest causes of Parkinson's disease (PD). It was founded by the £5m Monument Trust Discovery award from Parkinson's UK, and is the largest single research award funded by the charity. We have created an environment where internationally recognised scientists and clinicians with a combination of skills in molecular genetics, stem cells, brain structure and function, neuron biology and brain imaging will work closely together to better understand the biological pathways which lead to PD. Some of our work on stem cells and brain imaging is presented in this newsletter. We will be recruiting between 1500 to 2000 new PD patients from the Thames Valley to take part In our clinical investigation into the causes of PD. Your next chance to find out more about the project and how you can become involved is to come along to the launch of the clinical arm of the study to be held at the John Radcliffe Hospital on Friday 24th September from 11am to 3pm. Further details are on the back of the newsletter. Information on all our current research activities can be found on our website www.opdc. medsci.ox. ac.uk.
Research of circular polarisation quality by using quad ridged horn antenna

This document presents the investigation of circular polarization quality by using a dual polarized broadband antenna and a hybrid coupler. The hybrid coupler shifts phase of signals between outgoing ports. By means of the phase shifted signals incoming into dual polarized antenna the circular polarization is achieved. The influence of polarization quality on the components parameters is discussed and the analysis and measurement are presented as well. The aim of this paper is to introduce the reached results of the simulated circular polarisation quality in comparison with measured parameters.
The Soft Side of Hard Controls: A Control Coding Theory

Controls can have positive or increasingly negative effects on the behavior of employees. In this article we develop a theory to explain these effects. Central to this is the way employees interpret the management intentions in applying control measures. Since control measures reduce employee autonomy, there is a risk that employees either put too much faith in the measures or grow to mistrust them. Three mechanisms are presented for excessive trust and mistrust.
Impact of genotypic drug resistance mutations on clinical and immunological outcomes in HIV-infected adults on HAART in West Africa

Objectives:To analyse the association between the presence of resistance mutations and treatment outcomes. The impact of HIV-1 drug resistance mutations in African adults on HAART has so far never been reported. Methods:In 2004 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 106 adults on HAART had plasma viral load measurements. Patients with detectable viral loads had resistance genotypic tests. Patients were followed until 2006. Main outcomes were serious morbidity and immunological failure (CD4 cell count < 200 cells/μl). Results:At study entry, the median previous time on HAART was 37 months and the median CD4 cell count was 266 cells/μl; 58% of patients had undetectable viral loads, 20% had detectable viral loads with no major resistance mutations, and 22% had detectable viral loads with one or more major mutations. The median change in CD4 cell count between study entry and study termination was +129 cells/μl in patients with undetectable viral loads, +51 cells/μl in those with detectable viral loads with no mutations and +3 cells/μl in those with detectable viral loads with resistance mutations. Compared with patients with undetectable viral loads, those with detectable viral loads with resistance mutations had adjusted hazard ratios of immunological failure of 4.32 (95%CI 1.38–13.57, P = 0.01). One patient died. The 18-month probability of remaining free of morbidity was 0.79 in patients with undetectable viral loads and 0.69 in those with resistance mutations (P = 0.19). Conclusion:In this setting with restricted access to second-line HAART, patients with major resistance mutations had higher rates of immunological failure, but most maintained stable CD4 cell counts and stayed alive for at least 20 months.
Subgraph Matching Kernels for Attributed Graphs

We propose graph kernels based on subgraph matchings, i.e. structure-preserving bijections between subgraphs. While recently proposed kernels based on common subgraphs (Wale et al., 2008; Shervashidze et al., 2009) in general can not be applied to attributed graphs, our approach allows to rate mappings of subgraphs by a exible scoring scheme comparing vertex and edge attributes by kernels. We show that subgraph matching kernels generalize several known kernels. To compute the kernel we propose a graph-theoretical algorithm inspired by a classical relation between common subgraphs of two graphs and cliques in their product graph observed by Levi (1973). Encouraging experimental results on a classification task of real-world graphs are presented.
A Concurrent Approach for Improving the Efficiency of Android CTS Testing

The Compatibility Test Suite (CTS) is provided by Google to help manufactures to ensure if their Android devices are in compliance with the Android compatibility standards. However, the CTS contains a huge number of test cases and it usually would take several hours to complete the CTS tests. This could seriously affect the development schedule of Android devices, especially when the CTS test is included in the daily system integration. To reduce the time to perform CTS tests and shorten the time-to-market of Android devices, this paper presents an approach for improving the CTS test efficiency. Particularly, the CTS test is decomposed into multiple tasks to be executed on different devices concurrently. In addition, the task scheduling and partitioning methods are considered in the approach. A cloud-based testing platform is developed to support the proposed approach. The experimental results show that the efficiency of CTS test can be much improved as the number of devices increases. Moreover, the results also indicate that the Longest Job First (LJF) scheduling and mixed partitioning methods can result in better test efficiency.
Self-report imagery questionnaire scores and subtypes of social-desirable responding

Allbutt, Ling, and Shafiullah (2006) and Allbutt, Shafiullah, and Ling (2006) found that scores on self-report measures of visual imagery experience correlate primarily with the egoistic form of social-desirable responding. Here, three studies are reported which investigated whether this pattern of findings generalized to the ratings of imagery vividness in the auditory modality, a new version of the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (Marks, 1995), and reports of visual thinking style. The measure of social-desirable responding used was the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; Paulhus, 2002). Correlational analysis replicated the pattern seen in our earlier work and of the correlations with the egoistic bias, the correlation with vividness of visual imagery was largest and significant, the correlation with visual thinking style next largest and approached significance, and the correlation with vividness of auditory imagery was the smallest and not significant. The size of these correl.
Transductive support vector machines for structured variables

We study the problem of learning kernel machines transductively for structured output variables. Transductive learning can be reduced to combinatorial optimization problems over all possible labelings of the unlabeled data. In order to scale transductive learning to structured variables, we transform the corresponding non-convex, combinatorial, constrained optimization problems into continuous, unconstrained optimization problems. The discrete optimization parameters are eliminated and the resulting differentiable problems can be optimized efficiently. We study the effectiveness of the generalized TSVM on multiclass classification and label-sequence learning problems empirically.
An improved ToA estimation in compressed sensing-based UWB systems

Since the first arrival path may not be the strongest path of UWB (Ultra Wide Band) multipath channels, this makes ToA (Time-of-Arrival) estimation becomes a challengeable issue. Furthermore, because of ultra bandwidth of received signal, CS (Compressed Sensing) theory is employed to reduce the complexity caused by very high Nyquist sampling rate in UWB receivers. In this paper, we propose a ToA estimation scheme provides precise estimation performance, while exploiting the benefits of CS-based UWB receivers. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can outperform other low complexity schemes in a wide range of signal-to-noise ratios.
Multi-Objective Service Composition in Ubiquitous Environments with Service Dependencies

Service composition is a widely used method in ubiquitous computing that enables accomplishing complex tasks required by users based on elementary (hardware and software) services available in ubiquitous environments. To ensure that users experience the best Quality of Service (QoS) with respect to their quality needs, service composition has to be QoS-aware. Establishing QoS-aware service compositions entails efficient service selection taking into account the QoS requirements of users. A challenging issue towards this purpose is to consider service selection under global QoS requirements (i.e., requirements imposed by the user on the whole task), which is of high computational cost. This challenge is even more relevant when we consider the dynamics, limited computational resources and timeliness constraints of ubiquitous environments. To cope with the above challenge, we present QASSA, an efficient service selection algorithm that provides the appropriate ground for QoS-aware service composition in ubiquitous environments. QASSA formulates service selection under global QoS requirements as a set-based optimisation problem, and solves this problem by combining local and global selection techniques. In particular, it introduces a novel way of using clustering techniques to enable fine-grained management of trade-offs between QoS objectives. QASSA further considers: (i) dependencies between services, (ii) adaptation at run-time, and (iii) both centralised and distributed design fashions. Results of experimental studies performed using real QoS data are presented to illustrate the timeliness and optimality of QASSA.
The relationship between extrapyramidal signs and cognitive function in patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease

We studied the association between extrapyramidal signs (EPS) and neuropsychological performance in 137 patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease (AD) residing in a geographically defined area of inner London, UK. The presence of EPS in AD was associated with a distinct neuropsychological profile, suggestive of the additive effect of frontostriatal degeneration. Yet, there was no significant difference in functional capacity between patients with and without EPS. These findings support the hypothesis that EPS represent a parallel independent pathology superimposed over the classical features of AD, rather than providing a marker for global AD severity.
Spatio-temporal disease tracking using news articles

Geographical Information Systems have been increasingly used to aid the prompt detection, tracking, and analysis of disease outbreaks. Web content which is full of health-related data also serves as a useful resource for disease outbreak analysis. News posts often report the initial outbreak of diseases and contain valuable information that aids in ascertaining the time and location of the disease outbreak. The locations mentioned in the news posts are specified textually rather than geometrically thereby requiring the use of geotagging methods to detect them and to map the textual specification to the corresponding actual geometric specification. The NewsStand system which aggregates news posts by topic and location while providing a map query interface to them is enhanced to enable disease tracking and analysis by geotagging disease-related web news posts. Besides the powerful functionalities of NewsStand for news exploration, enhancements of NewsStand with respect to the analysis of temporal information are described which include a well-designed time slider, a heatmap-based visualization tool for displaying disease distribution, and intuitive spatio-temporal querying methods. Future improvements to NewsStand are also discussed.