Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selecting best viewpoint for human-pose estimation

Estimating human poses is an important step towards developing robots that can understand human motion. Since a human is highly articulated, changing viewpoints of sensors on robots can improve the accuracy of human-pose estimation. We propose a two-phase approach that determines the best viewpoint of a depth sensor for human-pose estimation. The proposed approach measures the quality of potential viewpoints and selects one of them as the best viewpoint for each human pose. Based on the quality of viewpoints, human poses can be directly mapped to the best viewpoint without reconstructing the human body. Thus, the proposed approach provides a discriminative mapping to determine the best viewpoint for estimating different human poses. To measure the quality of a potential viewpoint, the viewpoint is first instantiated by representing the depth sensor of the viewpoint using the finite projective camera model. The quality of the viewpoint is expressed in terms of the error of human-pose estimates. A mapping is derived by minimizing the error in a human-pose estimate among different viewpoints. The proposed two-phase approach has been evaluated on a benchmark database. Experimental results showed that the best viewpoint for a human pose could be determined by evaluating the quality of potential viewpoints. The mean error and standard deviation of human-pose estimates were reduced by using the best viewpoint determined by the proposed two-phase approach.
2011 Compendium of Physical Activities: a second update of codes and MET values.

PURPOSE The Compendium of Physical Activities was developed to enhance the comparability of results across studies using self-report physical activity (PA) and is used to quantify the energy cost of a wide variety of PA. We provide the second update of the Compendium, called the 2011 Compendium. METHODS The 2011 Compendium retains the previous coding scheme to identify the major category headings and specific PA by their rate of energy expenditure in MET. Modifications in the 2011 Compendium include cataloging measured MET values and their source references, when available; addition of new codes and specific activities; an update of the Compendium tracking guide that links information in the 1993, 2000, and 2011 compendia versions; and the creation of a Web site to facilitate easy access and downloading of Compendium documents. Measured MET values were obtained from a systematic search of databases using defined key words. RESULTS The 2011 Compendium contains 821 codes for specific activities. Two hundred seventeen new codes were added, 68% (561/821) of which have measured MET values. Approximately half (317/604) of the codes from the 2000 Compendium were modified to improve the definitions and/or to consolidate specific activities and to update estimated MET values where measured values did not exist. Updated MET values accounted for 73% of all code changes. CONCLUSIONS The Compendium is used globally to quantify the energy cost of PA in adults for surveillance activities, research studies, and, in clinical settings, to write PA recommendations and to assess energy expenditure in individuals. The 2011 Compendium is an update of a system for quantifying the energy cost of adult human PA and is a living document that is moving in the direction of being 100% evidence based.
Consistency of safety profile of new oral anticoagulants in patients with renal failure

The use of new oral anticoagulants (NOACs) in patients with impaired renal function has raised major concerns, in particular the possibility of an increased risk of bleeding due to accumulation. The aims of this work were to assess the safety of NOACs in patients with renal failure and describe the relationship between clinical events and drug renal excretion magnitude.
Comparison of Ultra-Conserved Elements in Drosophilids and Vertebrates

Metazoan genomes contain many ultra-conserved elements (UCEs), long sequences identical between distant species. In this study we identified UCEs in drosophilid and vertebrate species with a similar level of phylogenetic divergence measured at protein-coding regions, and demonstrated that both the length and number of UCEs are larger in vertebrates. The proportion of non-exonic UCEs declines in distant drosophilids whilst an opposite trend was observed in vertebrates. We generated a set of 2,126 Sophophora UCEs by merging elements identified in several drosophila species and compared these to the eutherian UCEs identified in placental mammals. In contrast to vertebrates, the Sophophora UCEs are depleted around transcription start sites. Analysis of 52,954 P-element, piggyBac and Minos insertions in the D. melanogaster genome revealed depletion of the P-element and piggyBac insertions in and around the Sophophora UCEs. We examined eleven fly strains with transposon insertions into the intergenic UCEs and identified associated phenotypes in five strains. Four insertions behave as recessive lethals, and in one case we observed a suppression of the marker gene within the transgene, presumably by silenced chromatin around the integration site. To confirm the lethality is caused by integration of transposons we performed a phenotype rescue experiment for two stocks and demonstrated that the excision of the transposons from the intergenic UCEs restores viability. Sequencing of DNA after the transposon excision in one fly strain with the restored viability revealed a 47 bp insertion at the original transposon integration site suggesting that the nature of the mutation is important for the appearance of the phenotype. Our results suggest that the UCEs in flies and vertebrates have both common and distinct features, and demonstrate that a significant proportion of intergenic drosophila UCEs are sensitive to disruption.
Paying Attention to Procedural Texts: Critically Reading School Routines as Embodied Achievement

In this article, we look closely at the way power circulates through school routines with ordinary texts in everyday moments. We address texts that support different types of achievement and how critical literacy helps us redefine achievement and examine what we’re doing with texts and students in classrooms. We interrogate the notion of achievement outside the realm of traditional markers of school success (i.e. tests, academic content knowledge, etc.). We argue that more inclusive interpretations of achievement requires critical reading of texts all around us, in the language that constructs our worlds, from the products we buy to the most mundane routines. Using three elementary teaching vignettes: a teacher shopping for pencil boxes and back-to-school supplies, a first grader posting a complaint to call a class meeting, and a fifth grade class responding to a memo about a new school policy, we examine power relations in texts and routines that highlight achievement. The article includes critical routines with potential for empowering and diversifying opportunities for success.
SEVERAL PRODUCTS OF DISTRIBUTIONS ON MANIFOLDS

The problem of defining products of distributions on manifolds, particularly un the ones of lower dimension, has been a serious challenge since Gel’fand introduced special types of generalized functions, which are needed in quantum field. In this paper, we start with Pizetti’s formula and an introduction on differential forms and distributions defined on manifolds, and then apply Pizetti’s formula and a recursive structure of 4(Xφ(x)) to compute the asymptotic product Xδ(r−1). Furthermore, we study the product f(P1, · · · , Pk) |α|δ(P1, · · · , Pk) ∂P α1 1 · · · ∂P αk k on smooth manifolds of lower dimension, which extends a few results obtained earlier. Several generalized functions, such as δ(QP1, · · · , QPk) and δ(Q1P1, · · · , QkPk), are derived based on the transformation of differential form ω. AMS Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 46F10
Analytical Construction and Fast Computation of Frequency Warping Operators and Dual Frame

Frequency warping has been introduced as a unitary operator over a nonfinite domain. In practical applications, the need of a feasible implementation forces to redefine frequency warping over finite domains in the framework of redundant transformations called frames, where the unitary property is replaced by the tight frame property, i.e., the adjoint operator behaves as pseudo-inverse. In case a tight frame cannot be designed, inversion can be achieved by finding the dual frame. In this work, with reference to nonsmooth warping functions, we present a new approach to the construction and fast computation of the dual frame operator based on an operator power series. With respect to previous approaches, many limitations are overcome while maintaining important properties of frequency warping.
On the Capacity Region of the Two-User Interference Channel With a Cognitive Relay

This paper considers a variation of the classical two-user interference channel where the communication of two interfering source-destination pairs is aided by an additional node that has a priori knowledge of the messages to be transmitted, which is referred to as the cognitive relay. For this interference channel with a cognitive relay (ICCR), novel outer bounds and capacity region characterizations are derived. In particular, for the class of injective semi-deterministic ICCRs, a sum-rate upper bound is derived for the general memoryless ICCR and further tightened for the linear deterministic approximation (LDA) of the Gaussian noise channel at high SNR, which disregards the noise and focuses on the interaction among the users' signals. The capacity region of the symmetric LDA is completely characterized except for the regime of moderately weak interference and weak links from the CR to the destinations. The insights gained from the analysis of the LDA are then translated back to the symmetric Gaussian noise channel (GICCR). For the symmetric GICCR, an approximate characterization (to within a constant gap) of the capacity region is provided for a parameter regime where capacity was previously unknown. The approximately optimal scheme suggests that message cognition at a relay is beneficial for interference management as it enables simultaneous over the air neutralization of the interference at both destinations.
A novel role for myelin-associated inhibitors in modulating microglial motility

1. Abstract In the central nervous system of mammals, the regeneration of axons after injury is limited. The reduced ability of neurite outgrowth can be attributed, in part, to the presence of inhibitor proteins enriched in myelin. The three major axon growth-inhibitory molecules include Nogo, the myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG) and the oligodendrocyte-myelin glycoprotein (OMgp). Over the last three decades, a considerable amount of research has been devoted to investigating the signalling cascades involved in myelin-associated inhibition as well as the strategies to overcome this inhibition. Nevertheless, little is known about the physiological function of these inhibitors. In evolution, the myelin-associated inhibition of regenerating axons coincides with the refinement of the innate and adaptive immune system of higher vertebrates. We hypothesized that also the motile processes of microglia and astrocytes in the CNS white matter might be responsive to myelin inhibitors that are well positioned to provide a protective shield for the critical axon-glia junctions. In this study, it was shown that microglia and astrocytes purified from post-natal mouse brains express the receptor NgR1 and its co-receptors known to bind the myelinassociated inhibitors. Furthermore, MAG, when presented by heterologous cells, led to microglial and astrocytic process outgrowth inhibition, while microglial processes also avoided recombinant MAG in stripe assays. The repelling effect of MAG was observed in the absence of the MAG Ig domains 4/5, was partially reversed in microglial cells lacking NgR1, and was fully reversed in the presence of the Rho-associated kinase inhibitor Y27632. By using in vivo two-photon confocal microscopy to image the spinal cord of anaesthetized mice, the motility and roaming behaviour of fluorescently labelled microglia at the paranodes and their processes was modulated by the presence of MAG. In the Plp1 null mouse, a model of Wallerian degeneration, the absence of MAG led to the formation of foamy microglial cells, indicating abnormal myelin phagocytosis. In two models of neuroinflammation (the experimental allergic encephalomyelitis and the response of lipopolysaccharide injection), the absence of MAG resulted in altered microglial behaviour. Surprisingly, soluble MAG, which is physiologically associated with myelin breakdown, induces a strong inflammatory microglial response in culture. These findings support a model in which MAG protects intact paranodal junctions from perturbation by motile glial processes, and directly or indirectly modulates the microglial response under pathological conditions.
Joint POS Tagging and Dependence Parsing With Transition-Based Neural Networks

While part-of-speech (POS) tagging and dependency parsing are observed to be closely related, existing work on joint modeling with manually crafted feature templates suffers from the feature sparsity and incompleteness problems. In this paper, we propose an approach to joint POS tagging and dependency parsing using transition-based neural networks. Three neural network based classifiers are designed to resolve shift/reduce, tagging, and labeling conflicts. Experiments show that our approach significantly outperforms previous methods for joint POS tagging and dependency parsing across a variety of natural languages.
Beautiful Politicians

Are beautiful politicians more likely to be elected? To test this, we use evidence from Australia, a country in which voting is compulsory, and in which voters are given ‘How-to-Vote’ cards, depicting photos of the major party candidates, as they arrive to vote. Using raters chosen to be representative of the electorate, we assess the beauty of political candidates from major political parties, and then estimate the effect of beauty on voteshare for candidates in the 2004 federal election. Beautiful candidates are indeed more likely to be elected, with a one standard deviation increase in beauty associated with a 1 ½– 2 percentage point increase in voteshare. Our results are robust to several specification checks: adding party fixed effects, dropping well-known politicians, using non-Australian beauty raters, omitting candidates of non-Anglo appearance, controlling for age, and analyzing the ‘beauty gap’ between candidates running in the same electorate. The marginal effect of beauty is larger for male candidates than for female candidates, and appears to be approximately linear. Consistent with the theory that returns to beauty reflect discrimination, we find suggestive evidence that beauty matters more in electorates with a higher share of apathetic voters.
Fine Resolution Simulation of TV White Space Availability and Model Validation

Availability of television white space is of interest for developing new data networks which operate between licensed users. The practical sensing and computational modelling of this band has been the focus of study in this and a preceding paper. In this paper a high spatial resolution was used to look at the areas that a single channel was available in moderately rough terrain in the UK. The size of areas which shared available frequencies was found to be small and potential problems with spot measurements were highlighted. The practical validation of the software model with a measurement campaign has been started, the early results of this show the model to be reasonably accurate in exposed areas with little building but at portable equipment heights in streets the model shows significant variation from measured results.
An Open Source Distributed Platform for the Control of the PUMA 560 Manipulator

In this paper, an RTAI-Linux based distributed platform for the control of the PUMA 560 robotic manipulator is presented. From the mechanical point of view, the PUMA 560, besides being one of the first and most popular 6-DOF anthropomorphic manipulator, is still a very good example of implementation of small size robotic arms. On the other hand, its original control system, if compared to modern controllers, is an old piece of computer science history. Our goal is to preserve the mechanics and the power electronics of the PUMA 560 and replace the original control system with a modern and flexible platform based on RTAI-Linux. A PC/104 embedded system equipped with two DAQ boards is used to manage the I/O signals of the robot and to control the low level security functions, bypassing the original Mark III controller, while the high-level controller and the user interface run on a standard PC. With the aim of comparing the behaviour of the robotic device with a simulation of the system, useful for task planning and fault detection, the controller of the robot communicates also with a real-time simulation of the PUMA 560 that runs on a third PC. These three real-time systems are based on RTAI-Linux, and RTNet is used for the implementation of low-latency deterministic network communications needed in distributed control applications. In the paper, after the description of the architecture of the proposed control platform, the performances of the system are analyzed with particular attention to the execution time of the various tasks, communication delays due to network communication and comparison between the response of the real and the simulated robot.
Design, Optimization, and Evaluation of Lurasidone Hydrochloride Nanocrystals

The present investigation was carried out to design, optimize, and evaluate lurasidone hydrochloride nanocrystals for improving its solubility and dissolution characteristics. Nanocrystals were prepared by media milling technique using zirconium oxide beads with 0.1 mm diameter. Various stabilizers, viz. poloxamer 188, PVP K30, SLS, HPMC E15, and PVP S 630 D, were evaluated to stabilize the nanocrystals. The Pareto chart obtained through Plackett-Burman screening design revealed that HPMC E 15 showed the highest standardized effect (p value <0.05) on percent dissolution efficiency at 2 min. In subsequent studies, a 32 factorial design was employed to quantify the effect of two independent variables, namely amount of stabilizer and milling time on predetermined response variables mean particle size, saturation solubility, and percent dissolution efficiency at 2 min. Statistical analysis of the factorial design revealed that all predetermined response variables were significantly dependent (p value <0.05) on the independent variables. The observed response of the optimized batch prepared as per the desirability function was in close agreement with predicted response, and mathematical model generated was validated. The optimized batch was lyophilized, and X-ray powder diffraction studies indicated that there was no substantial change in crystallinity of the drug. The optimized formulation showed mean particle size of 228 nm and released almost all the drug within first 5 min. Since the crystallinity of the drug is maintained, improvement in saturation solubility and dissolution efficiency could be attributed to decrease in mean particle size of the drug.
A Case of Pulmonary Carcinoid Tumor with a Superimposed Aspergilloma Presenting As a Covert Ectopic Adrenocorticotropic Hormone Syndrome

Ectopic adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) syndrome is a challenging diagnosis only responsible for approximately 10% of Cushing syndrome cases. It has been associated with a variety of benign and malignant tumors including a carcinoid tumor accompanied by aspergilloma in our case that was significantly difficult to be detected. We report a patient over 70 years old with uncontrolled hypertension and hypokalemia presenting with generalized edema. Laboratory results revealed ACTH-dependent Cushing syndrome, but imaging studies did not show any discrete lesions secreting ACTH. The petrosal to peripheral ACTH gradient resulted in no evidence of pituitary adenoma. As the only lesion suspicious for ectopic ACTH secretion was a right lower round cystic lesion that did not appear to be a carcinoid tumor on computed tomography scan of the chest, the patient underwent video-assisted thoracic surgical resection to provide a definitive diagnosis. The final diagnosis was a small ectopic ACTH-secreting carcinoid tumor with unusual superimposed aspergilloma in the periphery of the lung. Postoperatively, the abnormal endocrine levels were normalized, and all of the clinical symptoms and signs were ameliorated. This is an informative case of ectopic ACTH syndrome (EAS) that was the cause of hypokalemia, hypertension, metabolic alkalosis, and hypercortisolism despite its poorly specific cushingoid morphology and uncommon imaging findings. Therefore, we recommend that clinicians investigate any possible lesion as a potential source of EAS.
Selling a Stock at the Ultimate Maximum

Assuming that the stock price $Z=(Z_t)_{0\leq t\leq T}$ follows a geometric Brownian motion with drift $\mu\in\mathbb{R}$ and volatility $\sigma>0$, and letting $M_t=\max_{0\leq s\leq t}Z_s$ for $t\in[0,T]$, we consider the optimal prediction problems \[V_1=\inf_{0\leq\tau\leq T}\mathsf{E}\biggl(\frac{M_T}{Z_{\tau}}\biggr)\quadand\quad V_2=\sup_{0\leq\tau\leq T}\mathsf{E}\biggl(\frac{Z_{\tau}}{M_T}\biggr),\] where the infimum and supremum are taken over all stopping times $\tau$ of $Z$. We show that the following strategy is optimal in the first problem: if $\mu\leq0$ stop immediately; if $\mu\in (0,\sigma^2)$ stop as soon as $M_t/Z_t$ hits a specified function of time; and if $\mu\geq\sigma^2$ wait until the final time $T$. By contrast we show that the following strategy is optimal in the second problem: if $\mu\leq\sigma^2/2$ stop immediately, and if $\mu>\sigma^2/2$ wait until the final time $T$. Both solutions support and reinforce the widely held financial view that ``one should sell bad stocks and keep good ones. '' The method of proof makes use of parabolic free-boundary problems and local time--space calculus techniques. The resulting inequalities are unusual and interesting in their own right as they involve the future and as such have a predictive element.
Antidotal activity of Averrhoa carambola (Star fruit) on fluoride induced toxicity in rats

ABSTRACT Consumption of fluoride leads to several physiological disturbances in carbohydrate, lipid and antioxidant metabolisms. Averrhoa carambola L. fruit (Star fruit) is a commonly consumed fruit in tropical countries and is an ingredient in folklore medicines. As the fruits have high polyphenolic and antioxidant contents, the present study was undertaken to investigate the potential of star fruit as a dietary supplement in attenuating the fluoride induced hyperglycemia, hypercholesterolemia and oxidative stress in laboratory rats. A four-week exposure to fluoride caused sustained hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia and oxidative stress and, when the diet was supplemented with star fruit powder, carbohydrate, lipid and antioxidant profiles were restored significantly. It is surmised that the antihyperglycemic, antihypercholesterolemic and antioxidant activities of star fruit in fluoride exposed rats could be due to the presence of polyphenols, flavonoids, saponins, phytosterols, ascorbic acid and fibers in the fruit, which are all well known regulators of carbohydrate, lipid and antioxidant metabolisms. These findings suggest that star fruit can be used as a dietary supplement in fluoride endemic regions to contain fluoride induced hyperglycemia, hyperlipidemia and oxidative stress