Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparison Of Posture Recognition Using Supervised And Unsupervised Learning Algorithms

Recognition of human posture is one step in the process of analyzing human behaviour. However, it is an ill-defined problem due to the high degree of freedom exhibited by the human body. In this paper, we study both supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms to recognise human posture in image sequences. In particular, we are interested in a specific set of postures which are representative of typical applications found in video analytics. The algorithms chosen for this paper are Kmeans, artificial neural network, self organizing maps and particle swarm optimization. Experimental results have shown that the supervised learning algorithms outperform the unsupervised learning algorithms in terms of the number of correctly classified postures. Our future work will focus on detecting abnormal behaviour based on these recognised static postures.
Disturbance attenuation observer design for fuzzy time-delay system with fault

The T-S fuzzy system with disturbance and fault is considered in the paper, and an observer with disturbance attenuation and fault detection is designed. With the linear matrix inequalities method, a sufficient condition on the existence of the observer with disturbance attenuation is provided, and a sufficient condition on the existence of the observer with fault detection is given, the two performance indices are then combined, and an optimization problem is formulated to solve the two problems simultaneously. A numerical example is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Search for More Effective Microsatellite Markers for Forensics With Next-Generation Sequencing

Published by the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1997, the 13 core short tandem repeat (STR) loci are widely adopted as genetic markers in forensic applications, e.g., identity testing and paternity testing. However, these loci may be biased and suffer from reduced sensitivities toward specific population groups. In addition, the rapid growth of entries in forensic databases raises the chance of random hits, which can cause false recognitions of criminal suspects. A solution to these problems is to introduce more effective STR markers. The availability of whole genome sequencing enables us to identify more reliable STRmarkers for forensic applicationscomputationally. In this paper, we proposed an algorithm to identify STR markers with high discriminative abilities from the next-generation sequencing data. Our algorithm could select a customized set of loci for a given population with pre-specified discriminative thresholds. We have applied the method to 320 Chinese individuals from the 1000 Genomes Project and obtained various numbers of loci, which were able to statistically identify an individualworldwide and had higher combined powers of discrimination and combined probabilities of exclusion than the existing CODIS 13 loci. For identity testing, themean frequencyofDNAprofile (FDP) with the selected 11 STRs was smaller than that with CODIS 13 STRs by student’s t-test. With more loci, much smaller FDPs were obtained. The databasematching probabilities for selected loci were also lower than that for CODIS 13 STRs in a database with 10 billion entries. Moreover, the selected loci were able to provide considerably low chance of random profile matches so that statistically no false positives could occur. The selected loci also reduced the risk of random allele matches when doing the familial search, with lower random allele matching probabilities. In addition, the selected STRs were statistically better than CODIS STRs for paternity testing in our simulated data, with lower probabilities of false inclusions and exclusions.
On botnet detection with genetic programming under streaming data, label budgets and class imbalance

Botnets represent a widely deployed framework for remotely infecting and controlling hundreds of networked computing devices for malicious ends. Traditionally detection of Botnets from network data using machine learning approaches is framed as an offline, supervised learning activity. However, in practice both normal behaviours and Botnet behaviours represent non-stationary processes in which there are continuous developments to both as new services/applications and malicious behaviours appear. This work formulates the task of Botnet detection as a streaming data task in which finite label budgets, class imbalance and incremental/online learning predominate. We demonstrate that effective Botnet detection is possible for label budgets as low as 0.5% when an active learning approach is adopted for genetic programming (GP) streaming data analysis. The full article appears as S. Khanchi et al., (2018) "On Botnet Detection with Genetic Programming under Streaming Data, Label Budgets and Class Imbalance" in Swarm and Evolutionary Computation, 39:139--140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.swevo. 2017.09. 008
Periodontitis and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease: consensus report of the Joint EFP/AAP Workshop on Periodontitis and Systemic Diseases.

BACKGROUND This consensus report is concerned with the association between periodontitis and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ACVD). Periodontitis is a chronic multifactorial inflammatory disease caused by microorganisms and characterized by progressive destruction of the tooth supporting apparatus leading to tooth loss; as such, it is a major public health issue. AIMS This report examined biological plausibility, epidemiology and early results from intervention trials. PLAUSIBILITY: Periodontitis leads to entry of bacteria in the blood stream. The bacteria activate the host inflammatory response by multiple mechanisms. The host immune response favors atheroma formation, maturation and exacerbation. EPIDEMIOLOGY In longitudinal studies assessing incident cardiovascular events, statistically significant excess risk for ACVD was reported in individuals with periodontitis. This was independent of established cardiovascular risk factors. The amount of the adjusted excess risk varies by type of cardiovascular outcome and across populations by age and gender. Given the high prevalence of periodontitis, even low to moderate excess risk is important from a public health perspective. INTERVENTION There is moderate evidence that periodontal treatment: (i) reduces systemic inflammation as evidenced by reduction in C-reactive protein (CRP) and improvement of both clinical and surrogate measures of endothelial function; but (ii) there is no effect on lipid profiles--supporting specificity. Limited evidence shows improvements in coagulation, biomarkers of endothelial cell activation, arterial blood pressure and subclinical atherosclerosis after periodontal therapy. The available evidence is consistent and speaks for a contributory role of periodontitis to ACVD. There are no periodontal intervention studies on primary ACVD prevention and there is only one feasibility study on secondary ACVD prevention. CONCLUSIONS It was concluded that: (i) there is consistent and strong epidemiologic evidence that periodontitis imparts increased risk for future cardiovascular disease; and (ii) while in vitro, animal and clinical studies do support the interaction and biological mechanism, intervention trials to date are not adequate to draw further conclusions. Well-designed intervention trials on the impact of periodontal treatment on prevention of ACVD hard clinical outcomes are needed.
A Secure Cloud Computing Based Framework for Big Data Information Management of Smart Grid

Smart grid is a technological innovation that improves efficiency, reliability, economics, and sustainability of electricity services. It plays a crucial role in modern energy infrastructure. The main challenges of smart grids, however, are how to manage different types of front-end intelligent devices such as power assets and smart meters efficiently; and how to process a huge amount of data received from these devices. Cloud computing, a technology that provides computational resources on demands, is a good candidate to address these challenges since it has several good properties such as energy saving, cost saving, agility, scalability, and flexibility. In this paper, we propose a secure cloud computing based framework for big data information management in smart grids, which we call “Smart-Frame. ” The main idea of our framework is to build a hierarchical structure of cloud computing centers to provide different types of computing services for information management and big data analysis. In addition to this structural framework, we present a security solution based on identity-based encryption, signature and proxy re-encryption to address critical security issues of the proposed framework.
Chinese Word Segmentation based on Mixing Multiple Preprocessor and CRF

This paper describes the Chinese Word Segmenter for our participation in CIPS-SIGHAN-2010 bake-off task of Chinese word segmentation . We formalize the tasks as sequence tagging problems, and implemented them using conditional random fields (CRFs) model. The system contains two modules: multiple preprocessor and basic segmenter. The basic segmenter is designed as a problem of character-based tagging, and using named entity recognition and chunk recognition based on boundary to preprocess. We participated in the open training on Simplified Chinese Text and Traditional Chinese Text, and our system achieved one Rank#5 and four Rank#2 best in all four domain corpus.
An Observational Study of the Effect of Hemoglobinopathy, Alpha Thalassemia and Hemoglobin E on P. Vivax Parasitemia

Background The protective effect of α-thalassemia, a common hematological disorder in Southeast Asia, against Plasmodium falciparum malaria has been well established. However, there is much less understanding of the effect of α-thalassemia against P. vivax. Here, we aimed to investigate the proportion of α-thalassemia including the impact of α-thalassemia and HbE on the parasitemia of P. vivax in Southeast Asian malaria patients in Thailand. Methods A total of 210 malaria patients, admitted to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Thailand during 2011–2012, consisting of 159 Myanmeses, 13 Karens, 26 Thais, 3 Mons, 3 Laotians, and 6 Cambodians were recruited. Plasmodium spp. and parasite densities were determined. Group of deletion mutation (--SEA, −α3.7, −α4.2deletion) and substitution mutation (HbCS and HbE) were genotyped using multiplex gap-PCR and PCR-RFLP, respectively. Results In our malaria patients, 17/210 homozygous and 74/210 heterozygous −α3. 7 deletion were found. Only 3/210 heterozygous −α4. 2 and 2/210 heterozygous--SEA deletion were detected. HbE is frequently found with 6/210 homozygotes and 35/210 heterozygotes. The most common thalassemia allele frequencies in Myanmar population were −α3. 7 deletion (0.282), followed by HbE (0.101), HbCS (0.013), −α4. 2 deletion (0.009), and --SEA deletion (0.003). Only density of P. vivax in α-thalassemia trait patients (−α3.7/−α3.7, --SEA/αα, −α3.7/−α4.2) but not in silent α-thalassemia (−α3.7/αα, −α4.2/αα, ααCS/αα) were significantly higher compared with non-α-thalassemia patients (p=0.027). HbE did not affect P. vivax parasitemia. The density of P. falciparum significantly increased in heterozygous HbE patients (p=0.046). Conclusions Alpha-thalassemia trait is associated with high levels of P. vivax parasitemia in malaria patients in Southeast Asia.
Why is English so easy to segment?

Cross-linguistic studies on unsupervised word segmentation have consistently shown that English is easier to segment than other languages. In this paper, we propose an explanation of this finding based on the notion of segmentation ambiguity. We show that English has a very low segmentation ambiguity compared to Japanese and that this difference correlates with the segmentation performance in a unigram model. We suggest that segmentation ambiguity is linked to a trade-off between syllable structure complexity and word length distribution.
Board Incentives and Board Independence in Dynamic Agency

Efficiency of the board structure is usually perceived as linked to a higher degree of monitoring. If monitoring improves performance measurement signals, on which a manager is compensated, it can be considered desirable from the manager's point of view. As a result, having a low degree of board independence (many insiders on the board) may incentivize the board to improve its monitoring technology. However, from a dynamic perspective board monitoring is not always desirable, since it can destroy the ex ante efficient trade-off between risk and incentives under the presence of renegotiation possibility. This provides predictions for an optimal board composition seen from a dynamic perspective.
Software semantics and syntax as a tool for automated test generation

Test automation saves time and cost by digitising test generation and execution. The existing techniques fail to produce effective and compliable test scripts for not considering both syntactic and semantic information. The proposed three-layer architecture incorporates these information for generation of proper test scripts. It analyses the source code for extracting syntax and UML diagrams for obtaining semantics. Class methods and sequence of calls are extracted from UMLs, and syntax for class instantiations and method calls are accumulated from source code to generate unit and integration tests. A case study as well as experiments, conducted on sample Java projects, conform the competence of the generation process along with the generated test scripts.
Smartphone positioning in multi-floor environments without calibration or added infrastructure

Indoor positioning for smartphone users has received a lot of attention in recent years. While many solutions have been developed, most rely on a need for pre-deployment of infrastructure or collecting ground truth data to train on. In this paper we see what can be done using existing WiFi-infrastructure and Received Signal Strength from these to smartphones, not using any calibration of the signal environment or manually set WiFi positions. We expand on previous work by using a multi-floor model taking into account dampening between floors, and optimize a target function consisting of least squares residuals, to find positions for WiFis and the smartphone measurement locations simultaneously. Pressure sensors are used to do floor estimation. The method was tested inside two multi-story buildings, with 5 stories each, with median errors of smartphone positions of 12.5m and 16.4m and with WiFi median position errors of 7.16m and 19.4m respectively. Correct floor detection was achieved for 96% of all smartphone positions.
Notch sensitivity of mammalian mineralized tissues in impact

The toughness of bone is an important feature in preventing it from fracturing. We consider the notch sensitivity in impact, and the associations between brittleness, notch sensitivity and post–yield energy absorption of mammalian mineralized tissues. Specimens of bone–like tissues covering a wide range of mineralization were broken, either notched or un–notched, in impact. The greater the mineral content, the greater was the notch sensitivity. Also, the more brittle tissues dissipated the least post–yield energy and were the most notch sensitive. It is suggested that since antler bone, the least mineralized of all known mammalian mineralized tissues, seems to be notch insensitive in impact, no adaptive purpose would be served by having mineralized tissues of a lower mineralization than antler. This may explain the lower cut–off in mineralization seen in mammals.
Enhanced Insight into the Autoimmune Component of Glaucoma: IgG Autoantibody Accumulation and Pro-Inflammatory Conditions in Human Glaucomatous Retina

Background There is accumulating evidence that autoimmune components, such as autoantibodies and autoantibody depositions, play a role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimeŕs disease or Multiple Sclerosis. Due to alterations of autoantibody patterns in sera and aqueous humor, an autoimmune component is also assumed in the pathogenesis of glaucoma, a common reason for irreversible blindness worldwide. So far there has been no convincing evidence that autoantibodies are accumulated in the retina of glaucoma patients and that the local immune homeostasis might be affected. Methods and Results Six human glaucomatous donor eyes and nine samples from donors with no recorded ocular disease were included. Antibody microarrays were used to examine the patterns of pro-inflammatory proteins and complement proteins. Analysis of TNF-α and interleukin levels revealed a slight up-regulation exclusively in the glaucomatous group, while complement protein levels were not altered. IgG autoantibody accumulations and/or cellular components were determined by immunohistology (n = 4 per group). A significantly reduced number of retinal ganglion cells was found in the glaucomatous group (healthy: 104±7 nuclei/mm, glaucoma: 67±9 nuclei/mm; p = 0.0007). Cell loss was accompanied by strong retinal IgG autoantibody accumulations, which were at least twice as high as in healthy subjects (healthy: 5.0±0.5 IgG deposits/100 cells, glaucoma: 9.4±1.9 IgG deposits/100 cells; p = 0.004). CD27+ cells and CD27+/IgG+ plasma cells were observed in all glaucomatous subjects, but not in controls. Conclusion This work provides serious evidence for the occurrence of IgG antibody deposition and plasma cells in human glaucomatous retina. Moreover, the results suggest that these IgG deposits occurred in a pro-inflammatory environment which seems to be maintained locally by immune-competent cells like microglia. Thereby, glaucoma features an immunological involvement comparable to other neurodegenerative diseases, but also shows a multifactorial pathomechanism, which diverges and might be linked to the specific nature of both eye and retina.
The Making of a Monster: Postnatal Ontogenetic Changes in Craniomandibular Shape in the Great Sabercat Smilodon

Derived sabercats had craniomandibular morphologies that in many respects were highly different from those of extant felids, and this has often been interpreted functionally as adaptations for predation at extreme gape angles with hypertrophied upper canines. It is unknown how much of this was a result of intraspecific postnatal ontogeny, since juveniles of sabercats are rare and no quantitative study has been made of craniomandibular ontogeny. Postnatal ontogenetic craniomandibular shape changes in two morphologically derived sabercats, Smilodon fatalis and S. populator, were analysed using geometric morphometrics and compared to three species of extant pantherines, the jaguar, tiger, and Sunda clouded leopard. Ontogenetic shape changes in Smilodon usually involved the same areas of the cranium and mandible as in extant pantherines, and large-scale modularization was similar, suggesting that such may have been the case for all felids, since it followed the same trends previously observed in other mammals. However, in other respects Smilodon differed from extant pantherines. Their crania underwent much greater and more localised ontogenetic shape changes than did the mandibles, whereas crania and mandibles of extant pantherines underwent smaller, fewer and less localised shape changes. Ontogenetic shape changes in the two species of Smilodon are largely similar, but differences are also present, notably those which may be tied to the presence of larger upper canines in S. populator. Several of the specialized cranial characters differentiating adult Smilodon from extant felids in a functional context, which are usually regarded as evolutionary adaptations for achieving high gape angles, are ontogenetic, and in several instances ontogeny appears to recapitulate phylogeny to some extent. No such ontogenetic evolutionary adaptive changes were found in the extant pantherines. Evolution in morphologically derived sabercats involved greater cranial ontogenetic changes than among extant felids, resulting in greatly modified adult craniomandibular morphologies.
Raptor is Phosphorylated by Cdc 2 During Mitosis

Background: The appropriate control of mitotic entry and exit is reliant on a series of interlocking signaling events that coordinately drive the biological processes required for accurate cell division. Overlaid onto these signals that promote orchestrated cell division are checkpoints that ensure appropriate mitotic spindle formation, a lack of DNA damage, kinetochore attachment, and that each daughter cell has the appropriate complement of DNA. We recently discovered that AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) modulates the G2/M phase of cell cycle progression in part through its suppression of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling. AMPK directly phosphorylates the critical mTOR binding partner raptor inhibiting mTORC1 (mTOR-raptor rapamycin sensitive mTOR kinase complex 1). As mTOR has been previously tied to mitotic control, we examined further how raptor may contribute to this process. Methodology/Principal Findings: We have discovered that raptor becomes highly phosphorylated in cells in mitosis. Utilizing tandem mass spectrometry, we identified a number of novel phosphorylation sites in raptor, and using phosphospecific antibodies demonstrated that raptor becomes phosphorylated on phospho-serine/threonine-proline sites in mitosis. A combination of site-directed mutagenesis in a tagged raptor cDNA and analysis with a series of new phosphospecific antibodies generated against different sites in raptor revealed that Serine 696 and Threonine 706 represent two key sites in raptor phosphorylated in mitosis. We demonstrate that the mitotic cyclin-dependent kinase cdc2/CDK1 is the kinase responsible for phosphorylating these sites, and its mitotic partner Cyclin B efficiently coimmunoprecipitates with raptor in mitotic cells. Conclusions/Significance: This study demonstrates that the key mTOR binding partner raptor is directly phosphorylated during mitosis by cdc2. This reinforces previous studies suggesting that mTOR activity is highly regulated and important for mitotic progression, and points to a direct modulation of the mTORC1 complex during mitosis. Citation: Gwinn DM, Asara JM, Shaw RJ (2010) Raptor is Phosphorylated by cdc2 during Mitosis. PLoS ONE 5(2): e9197. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0009197 Editor: Matt Kaeberlein, University of Washington, United States of America Received December 17, 2009; Accepted January 8, 2010; Published February 12, 2010 Copyright: 2010 Gwinn et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The work was supported in part from grants from the National Institutes of Health to R.J.S. and J.M.A. (P01 CA120964), and to R.J.S. (R01 DK080425); and from the American Cancer Society (R.J.S.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: shaw@salk.edu