Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic Segmentation of Glottal Space from Video Images Based on Mathematical Morphology and the Hough Transform

Vocal disorders directly arise from the physical shape of the vocal cords. Videostroboscopic imaging provides doctors with valuable information about the physical shape of the vocal cords and about the way these cords move. Segmentation of the glottal space is necessary in order to characterize morphological disorders of vocal folds. One of the main problems with the methods presented is their low level of accuracy. To solve this problem, an automatic method based on Mathematical Morphology edge detection and the Hough transformation is presented in this article to extract the glottal space from the videostroboscopic images presented. This method and two other popular algorithms, histogram and active contour, are performed on 10 sets of videostroboscopy data from excised larynx experiments to compare their performances in analyzing videostroboscopy images. The accuracy in computing glottal area of these methods are investigated. The results show that our proposed method provides the most accurate and efficient detection, and is applicable when processing low-resolution images. In this paper we used edge detection based on geometric morphology to detecting the edges of vocal cords. Then in the next step the edges that were extracted, using Hough transform change to some lines. After that through using proposed algorithm, we omit the extra lines and extract the glottis. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.11591/ijece.v2i4. 324
Automatic Segmentation of the Knee Bones using 3D Active Shape Models

This paper presents an automated segmentation approach for MR images of the knee bones. The bones are the first stage of a segmentation system for the knee, primarily aimed at the automated segmentation of the cartilages. The segmentation is performed using 3D active shape models (ASM), which are initialized using an affine registration to an atlas. The 3D ASMs of the bones are created automatically using a point distribution model optimization scheme. The accuracy and robustness of the segmentation approach was experimentally validated using an MR database of fat suppressed spoiled gradient recall images.
Survival Analysis, Recidivism, and Booking Data from the Stearns County Jail

This Master’s thesis examines booking data from the Stearns County Jail covering the period of January 1, 2003, to January 31, 2015. The examination of the data will make use of Microsoft Excel, JMP, and SAS. The analysis will focus on recidivism, where recidivism is defined as being re-booked into the Stearns County Jail. The analysis will show a lognormal distribution best approximates the process at work behind the recidivism of those individuals going through multiple bookings in the Stearns County Jail. Differing recidivism for males and females are also revealed by the application of survival analysis, and gender is used as an explanatory variable in the lognormal distribution used as a model.
Ultrawideband propagation channels-theory, measurement, and modeling

This paper presents an overview of ultrawideband (UWB) propagation channels. It first demonstrates how the frequency selectivity of propagation processes causes fundamental differences between UWB channels and "conventional" (narrowband) channels. The concept of pathloss has to be modified, and the well-known WSSUS model is not applicable anymore. The paper also describes deterministic and stochastic models for UWB channels, identifies the key parameters for the description of delay dispersion, attenuation, and directional characterization, and surveys the typical parameter values that have been measured. Measurement techniques and methods for extracting model parameters are also different in UWB channels; for example, the concepts of narrowband channel parameter estimation (e.g., maximum-likelihood estimation) have to be modified. Finally, channel models also have an important impact on the performance evaluation of various UWB systems.
Self-organising object networks using context zones for distributed activity recognition

Activity recognition has a high applicability scope in patient monitoring since it has the potential to observe patients' actions and recognise erratic behaviour. Our activity recognition architecture described in this paper is particularly suited for this task due to the fact that collaboration of constituent components, namely Object Networks, Activity Map and Activity Inference Engine create a flexible and scalable platform taking into consideration needs of individual users. We utilise information generated from sensors that observe user interaction with the objects in the environment and also information from body-worn sensors. This information is processed in a distributed manner through the object network hierarchy which we formally define. The object network has the effect of increasing the level of abstraction of information such that this high-level information is utilised by the Activity Inference Engine. This engine also takes into consideration information from the user's profiles in order to deduce the most probable activity and at the same time observe any erratic or potentially unsafe behaviour. We also present a scenario and show the results of our study.
Maximizing Phoneme Recognition Accuracy for Enhanced Speech Intelligibility in Noise

An effective measure of speech intelligibility is the probability of correct recognition of the transmitted message. We propose a speech pre-enhancement method based on matching the recognized text to the text of the original message. The selected criterion is accurately approximated by the probability of the correct transcription given an estimate of the noisy speech features. In the presence of environment noise, and with a decrease in the signal-to-noise ratio, speech intelligibility declines. We implement a speech pre-enhancement system that optimizes the proposed criterion for the parameters of two distinct speech modification strategies under an energy-preservation constraint. The proposed method requires prior knowledge in the form of a transcription of the transmitted message and acoustic speech models from an automatic speech recognition system. Performance results from an open-set subjective intelligibility test indicate a significant improvement over natural speech and a reference system that optimizes a perceptual-distortion-based objective intelligibility measure. The computational complexity of the approach permits use in on-line applications.
Remaking “Nature”: The Ecological Turn in Dutch Water Management

The ecological turn in water management has usually been interpreted as a political and cultural rather than technical and professional accomplishment. The dynamics of the uptake of ecological expertise into hydraulic engineering bureaucracies have not been well described. Focusing on the controversy around the damming of the Oosterschelde estuary in the Netherlands in the 1970s, this article shows how public environmental politics transformed the politics of interprofessional competition. Andrew Abbott’s concept of “jurisdictional vacancies” is mobilized to illuminate how ecologists took advantage of the political bankruptcy of the Dutch coastal engineering agency to extend their professional jurisdiction. The subsequent “ecologization” of Dutch coastal engineering was successful, however, only because the ecologists were able and willing to adapt their practices to the professional culture of the hegemonic civil engineers.
Supporting OO Design Heuristics

Heuristics have long been recognised as a way to tackle problems which are intractable because of their size or complexity. They have been used in software engineering for purposes such as identification of favourable regions of design space. Some heuristics in software engineering can be expressed in high-level abstract terms while others are more specific. Heuristics tend to be couched in terms which make them hard to automate. In our previous work we have developed robust semantic models of software in order to support the computation of metrics and the construction of visualisations which allow their interpretation by developers. In this paper, we show how software engineering heuristics can be supported by a semantic model infrastructure. Examples from our current work illustrate the value of combining the rigour of a semantic model with the human mental models associated with heuristics.
Measuring and Optimizing CORBA Latency and Scalability Over High-Speed Networks

There is increasing demand to extend object-oriented middleware, such as OMG CORBA, to support applications with stringent quality of service (QoS) requirements. However, conventional CORBA Object Request Broker (ORE) implementations incur high latency and low scalability when used for performance-sensitive applications. These inefficiencies discourage developers from using CORBA for mission/life-critical applications such as real-time avionics, telecom call processing, and medical imaging. This paper provides two contributions to the research on CORBA performance. First, we systematically analyze the latency and scalability of two widely used CORBA ORBs, VisiBroker and Orbix. These results reveal key sources of overhead in conventional ORBs. Second, we describe techniques used to improve latency and scalability in TAO, which is a high-performance, real-time implementation of CORBA. Although conventional ORBs do not yet provide adequate QoS guarantees to applications, our research results indicate it is possible to implement ORBs that can support high-performance, real-time applications.
Parents’ gendered influences on child development in middle childhood and early adolescence

This thesis examined the influence of parents' gendered attitudes and behaviours on three different aspects of development in middle childhood and early adolescence through three papers. The first paper explored the longitudinal influence of parents' gender-role attitudes and division of household responsibilities on children's gender development. Results showed that parents' gender-role attitudes and division of household responsibilities were predictive of children's gendered personality traits, gender-role attitudes and feminine preferences for activities, but not their masculine preferences for activities. The second paper investigated the influence of parents' gender-role attitudes and division of household responsibilities on children's ability self-concepts. Parents' gendered attitudes and behaviours were not predictive of children's ability self-concepts. However, children's own gendered attitudes and behaviours were associated with these self-concepts. Children's higher feminine preferences predicted lower maths and sports self-concepts and higher English self-concepts. In addition, higher masculine preferences and personality traits predicted higher sports self-concepts. Finally, the third paper explored the influences of parents' gender-role attitudes and division of household responsibilities on sibling relationship quality, and marriage and parenting as mediators of this association, which is unique to the literature. Families with more egalitarian division of household responsibilities had more positive and less negative sibling relationships than traditional families. Using structural equation modelling, parenting, but not marriage was found to act as a mediator. Papers 1 and 2 used a longitudinal sample of 106 families with two siblings and their parents from the South East of England. Paper 3 used just the first wave of data from this study which included 124 families. This research highlights the importance of taking a family systems approach to examining child development, and emphasises the need to explore the father-child and sibling relationships in addition to the prevalent focus on mother-child relationships. In addition, multiple dimensions of gender were explored for parents and children rather than just examining sex differences. This added extra depth to the analysis and aided in understanding the complexity of these associations. The diverse nature of influences of parents' gendered attitudes and behaviours on these three areas allows comparisons to be made that contribute to the literature on parental influences and our understanding of child development in middle childhood and early adolescence.
Identifying key intermediates generated in situ from Cu(II) salt–catalyzed C–H functionalization of aromatic amines under illumination

Cu(II) salts can activate C–H bonds of aromatic amines or imines to construct C–C bonds in air without external photosensitizer. Copper compounds involved in photocatalysis have recently spurred considerable interest for their novel transformations. However, mechanistic investigations are still in infancy. We find a new type of reaction, that is, Cu(II) salt–catalyzed C–H functionalization of aromatic amines triggered by visible light irradiation. An array of mechanistic observations, including high-resolution mass spectrometry, ultraviolet-visible absorption spectrum, electron spin resonance, x-ray absorption near-edge structure, and density functional theory calculation, have identified the key intermediates generated in situ in the transformation. Integration of single-electron transfer, singlet oxygen (1O2), and new absorption species, intermediate I and intermediate II formed in situ from Cu(II) salts and substrate amines or imines, respectively, is responsible for the N–H and C–H bond activation of secondary amines to couple with nucleophiles in air, thereby leading to the formation of quinoline, indolo[3,2-c]quinoline, β-amino acid, and 1,4-dihydropyridine derivatives in moderate to good yields under visible light irradiation at room temperature.
Gender Issues About Negotiation: A different perception of the most important driving forces?

Negotiation is a specific form of interaction based on communication in which the parties enter into deliberately, each with clear but different interests or goals and a mutual dependency towards a decision due to be taken at the end of the confrontation. Consequently, negotiation is a complex activity involving many different disciplines from the strategic aspects and the decision making process to the evaluation of alternatives or outcomes and the exchange of information. While gender differences can be considered as one of the most researched topic within negotiation studies, empirical works and theory present many conflicting evidences and results about the role of gender in the process or the outcome. Furthermore, little interest has been shown over gender differences in the definition of what is negotiation, its essence or fundamental elements. Or, as differences exist in practices, it might be essential to study if the starting point of these discrepancies does not come from different considerations about what is negotiation and what will encourage the participants in their strategic decisions. Some recent and promising experiments made with diverse groups show that male and female participants in a common and shared situation barely consider the same way the concepts of power, trust or stakes which are largely considered as the usual driving forces of any negotiation. Furthermore, results from Human Resource self-assessment tests display and confirm considerable differences between individuals regarding essential behavioral dimensions like capacity to improvise and to achieve, aptitude to conciliate or to compete and orientation towards power and group domination which are also part of negotiation skills. Our intention in this paper is to confront these dimensions with negotiation’s usual driving forces in order to build up new paths for further research.
Prevalence of Oral Complications occurring in a Population of Pediatric Cancer Patients receiving Chemotherapy

Multiagent chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or a combination of both are the contemporary methods of cancer treatment. With medical advancements, though cure rates have increased considerably, focus is now shifted to the potential early and late complications of the same. The aim of this study was to assess the early oral complications in pediatric patients receiving chemotherapy. Sixty-two children with cancer undergoing chemotherapy with the mean age of 7.42 ± 3.6 years were included in the study. The various types of malignancies and oral problems during chemotherapy were recorded in the subjects. The most commonly encountered malignancy was acute lymphoblastic leukemia at 35.5%. Various oral and associated complications like mucosal inflammation with ulcerations, oral pain, xerostomia, and secondary infections were commonly seen, with mucositis being the most commonly observed complication in 58.1% of the subjects undergoing chemotherapy. Clinical importance of timely medical and dental interventions by a multidisciplinary team involving a pediatric dentist at different stages of anticancer treatment is also emphasized to minimize discomfort, increase treatment compliance, and improve the quality of life of pediatric patients. How to cite this article Gandhi K, Datta G, Ahuja S, Saxena T, Datta AG. Prevalence of Oral Complications occurring in a Population of Pediatric Cancer Patients receiving Chemotherapy. Int Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2017;10(2):166-171.
Wavelength Bistability and Switching in Two-Section Quantum-Dot Diode Lasers

We report lasing wavelength bistability with respect to applied bias on the saturable absorbers in two-section mode-locked quantum dot lasers. We show data from three different devices exhibiting wavelength bistability. All lasers display wavelength bistability. Only one lasing wavelength is present at a time, with all other wavelengths totally quenched. The switchable ranges (the wavelength difference between two bistable lasing branches) are different for all three lasers and in one device can be manipulated by changing the current injection. All lasers show the remarkable property of switching only in integer multiples of about 8 nm. The bistable operation can be explained by the interplay of the cross-saturation and self-saturation properties in gain and absorber, and the quantum-confined Stark effect in absorber. The measured switching time between bistable wavelengths is 150 ps.
Semantic Linking and Querying of Natural Food, Chemicals and Diseases

The biological community requires more sophisticated methods to store, integrate and query their knowledge. The semantic Web technology enables to represent, share and discover heterogeneous data through formal ontologies. Semantic Web technologies also allow to link information thus moving from document centric idea of current Web to more fine grained semantic structures. The study is made on Ontology construction of Natural Food Resources, Chemicals and Diseases. These knowledge items are linked to commonly agreed relationships. This enables the retrieval of user-specific semantic querying for topics of interest. This paper describes the works carried out on ontology-driven knowledge base and semantic querying of nutritional factors of Natural Food sources.
The Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1 (MRN) complex has a specific role in the activation of Chk1 in response to stalled replication forks

The activation of Chk1 in response to stalled replication forks involves a pathway containing ATR, TopBP1, Rad17, and Claspin. We show that the Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1 (MRN) complex also has an important role in this pathway that is distinct from its role in response to double-stranded DNA breaks. These studies reveal a novel insight into the functions of the MRN complex.
Healing and Transformation in Sandplay: Creative Processes Become Visible

Sandplay is a powerful method of psychotherapy, based on practical, creative modelling - literally a "hands-on" approach to healing the whole person. Sandplay has both diagnostic and therapeutic value, and is efficacious for adults and children. Since there are no preconceived ideas about "art" in sand, there is a wonderful freedom and flow in using sand creatively. This book focuses on the process of sandplay and how it works. Ammann's account draws upon her wide knowledge of myth and folk tale, but remains a practical work, dealing systematically with the "how-to" details, the necessary role of sand pictures in enhancing the self-regulation of the psyche, the two routes from psyche to sand pictures, and the symbolic interpretation of spatial phenomena. Ammann illustrates these principles in several case histories. "Healing and Transformation in Sandplay" contains a plea to therapists to make greater use of sandplay, alongside classical dream analysis. As a means to liberate the forces of the brain's right hemisphere - the intuitive and bodily rather than logical or rational - sandplay activates deep layers of the unconscious in the service of healing and development, layers hard to reach with more verbal methods of therapy.
A Practical Approach for Reconciling High and Predictable Performance in Non-Regular Parallel Programs

Increasingly complex consumer electronics applications call for embedded processors with higher performance. Multi-cores are capable of delivering the required performance. However, many of these embedded applications must meet some form of soft real-time constraints, and program behavior on multi-cores is even harder to predict than on single-cores. In this article, we highlight the greater performance variability of irregular applications (non-regular control flow and/or data structures) across data sets when parallelized and run on a multi-core. We then show that a proper parallelization approach coupled with a lightweight run-time system can drastically reduce this performance variability without sacrificing their performance. This approach requires no complex program or architecture analysis or modeling. Moreover, we show that parallel program performance becomes stable enough that it is possible to reasonably and accurately predict it by sampling a few training runs.
Analyzing Discontinuities in Physical System

Physical systems are by nature continuous. Perceived discontinuities in system models are in reality nonlinear behaviors that are linearized to reduce computational complexity and prevent stiffness in system analysis and behavior generation. Discontinuities arise primarily from component parameter simplification and time-scale abstraction. Discontinuities in models are handled by introducing idealized switching elements controlled by finite state automata to bond graph models. In this paper, we make a systematic study of the nature and effects of discontinuities in physical system models, and present an algorithm that generates consistent and correct behaviors from hybrid models. A primary contribution of this paper is the characterization of discontinuous changes, and a systematic method for validating system models and behavior generation algorithms.