Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fuzzy chamfer distance and its probabilistic formulation for visual tracking

The paper presents a fuzzy chamfer distance and its probabilistic formulation for edge-based visual tracking. First, connections of the chamfer distance and the Hausdorff distance with fuzzy objective functions for clustering are shown using a reformulation theorem. A fuzzy chamfer distance (FCD) based on fuzzy objective functions and a probabilistic formulation of the fuzzy chamfer distance (PFCD) based on data association methods are then presented for tracking, which can all be regarded as reformulated fuzzy objective functions and minimized with iterative algorithms. Results on challenging sequences demonstrate the performance of the proposed tracking method.
Automated Whole Sentence Grammar Correction Using a Noisy Channel Model

Automated grammar correction techniques have seen improvement over the years, but there is still much room for increased performance. Current correction techniques mainly focus on identifying and correcting a specific type of error, such as verb form misuse or preposition misuse, which restricts the corrections to a limited scope. We introduce a novel technique, based on a noisy channel model, which can utilize the whole sentence context to determine proper corrections. We show how to use the EM algorithm to learn the parameters of the noise model, using only a data set of erroneous sentences, given the proper language model. This frees us from the burden of acquiring a large corpora of corrected sentences. We also present a cheap and efficient way to provide automated evaluation results for grammar corrections by using BLEU and METEOR, in contrast to the commonly used manual evaluations.
SUITEDasher – A Multilingual Keyboard and Mouse Interface for Motor-Impaired Users

This paper presents the design of SUITEDasher – an open-source, multilingual speech user interface for motorimpaired users. SUITEDasher’s architecture is based on SUITEKeys – a speech user interface for manipulating a speech keyboard and mouse. SUITEDasher has three main design objectives: (a) to improve on the usability of its predecessor; (b) to provide for multilingual access; and (c) to be platform independent. To achieve these objectives, SUITEDasher employs a minimal graphical user interface, and incorporates a trigram-based probabilistic model from Dasher – a text-entry interface driven by pointing gestures. Multilingual access is achieved through a set of syntactic, lexical, and (potentially) phonetic models that may be loaded dynamically at run time. Finally, SUITEDasher is being implemented in Java as a cross-platform (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux) application. While refining the design, we have developed several prototypes, the latest of which has been implemented in Visual Basic and C++ on the Windows platform. Preliminary usability results indicate that, in terms of typing speed, SUITEDasher appears to be 30% faster than its predecessor, and as fast as Dasher.
Growth cones contain a dynamic population of neurofilament subunits.

Neurofilaments (NFs) are classically considered to transport in a primarily anterograde direction along axons, and to undergo bulk degradation within the synapse or growth cone (GC). We compared overall NF protein distribution with that of newly expressed NF subunits within NB2a/d1 cells by transfection with a construct encoding green fluorescent protein (GFP) conjugated NF-M subunits. GCs lacked phosphorylated NF epitopes, and steady-state levels of non-phosphosphorylated NF subunits within GC were markedly reduced compared to those of neurite shaft as indicated by conventional immunofluorescence. However, GCs contained significant levels of GFP-tagged subunits in the form of punctate or short filamentous structures that in some cases exceeded that visualized along the shaft itself, suggesting that GCs contained a relatively higher concentration of newly synthesized subunits. GFP-tagged NF subunits within GCs co-localized with non-phosphorylated NF immunoreactivity. GFP-tagged subunits were observed within GC filopodia in which steady-state levels of NF subunits were too low to be detected by conventional immunofluorescence. Selective localization of fluorescein versus rhodamine fluorescene was observed within GCs following expression of NF-M conjugated to DsRed1-E5, which shifts from fluorescein to rhodamine fluorescence within hours after expression; axonal shafts contained a more even distribution of fluorescein and rhodamine fluorescence, further indicating that GCs contained relatively higher levels of the most-recently expressed subunits. GFP-tagged structures were rapidly extracted from GCs under conditions that preserved axonal structures. These short filamentous and punctate structures underwent rapid bi-directional movement within GCs. Movement of GFP-tagged structures within GCs ceased following application of nocodazole, cytochalasin B, and the kinase inhibitor olomoucine, indicating that their motility was dependent upon microtubules and actin and, moreover, was due to active transport rather than simple diffusion. Treatment with the protease inhibitor calpeptin increased overall NF subunits, but increased those within the GC to a greater extent than those along the shaft, indicating that subunits in the GC undergo more rapid turnover than do those within the shaft. Some GCs contained coiled aggregates of GFP-tagged NFs that appeared to be contiguous with axonal NFs. NFs extended from these aggregates into the advancing GC as axonal neurites elongated. These data are consistent with the presence of a population of dynamic NF subunits within GCs that is apparently capable of participating in regional filament formation during axonal elongation, and support the notion that NF polymerization and transport need not necessarily occur in a uniform proximal-distal manner.
The moral & spiritual crisis in education : a curriculum for justice and compassion in education

"Purpel . ably complements the economic and political focus of critical pedagogy by shedding new light on spiritual and moral dimensions of public discourse. His book is a welcome addition to the literature in that it articulately scrutinizes the interface of culture and education and attendant trivialization of school reform. While his marvelous book offers only several examples of just schools, it enormously enriches a still unfinished dialectic. " Choice "Purpel's research is exhaustive, his writing elegant, and his suggestions for students and teachers impressive. " The Book Reader
Preventing Burnout and Building Engagement: Team Member's Workbook

This survey is part of the comprehensive "Preventing Burnout and Building Engagement" package containing the same winning strategies and techniques that internationally renowned burnout experts Michael P. Leiter and Christina Maslach have used so successfully to transform organizations suffering from wide-spread employee burnout. In an easy-to-follow format, Leiter and Maslach show you and your team members how to conduct an effective Organizational Checkup from start to finish.
Image-driven simplification with single viewpoint

Image-driven simplification was proposed as a simplification method which generates models with high fidelity and intrinsically factors in the error from mesh appearance properties. This approach is very time consuming since it requires repeated render and image captures during simplification. Compared to the twenty viewpoints used in the original method, we propose a method which uses only a single viewpoint. The proposed single viewpoint simplification runs an estimated twenty-five times faster than the original method at comparable to better quality.
The influence of working memory on the anger superiority effect

The anger superiority effect shows that an angry face is detected more efficiently than a happy face. However, it is still controversial whether attentional allocation to angry faces is a bottom-up process or not. We investigated whether the anger superiority effect is influenced by top-down control, especially working memory (WM). Participants remembered a colour and then searched for differently coloured facial expressions. Just holding the colour information in WM did not modulate the anger superiority effect. However, when increasing the probabilities of trials in which the colour of a target face matched the colour held in WM, participants were inclined to direct attention to the target face regardless of the facial expression. Moreover, the knowledge of high probability of valid trials eliminated the anger superiority effect. These results suggest that the anger superiority effect is modulated by top-down effects of WM, the probability of events and expectancy about these probabilities.
RNA Sequencing Reveals Differences between the Global Transcriptomes of Salmonella enterica Serovar Enteritidis Strains with High and Low Pathogenicities

ABSTRACT Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis is one of the important causes of bacterial food-borne gastroenteritis worldwide. Field strains of S. Enteritidis are relatively genetically homogeneous; however, they show extensive phenotypic diversity and differences in virulence potential. RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) was used to characterize differences in the global transcriptome between several genetically similar but phenotypically diverse poultry-associated field strains of S. Enteritidis grown in laboratory medium at avian body temperature (42°C). These S. Enteritidis strains were previously characterized as high-pathogenicity (HP; n = 3) and low-pathogenicity (LP; n = 3) strains based on both in vitro and in vivo virulence assays. Using the negative binomial distribution-based statistical tools edgeR and DESeq, 252 genes were identified as differentially expressed in LP strains compared with their expression in the HP strains (P < 0.05). A majority of genes (235, or 93.2%) showed significantly reduced expression, whereas a few genes (17, or 6.8%) showed increased expression in all LP strains compared with HP strains. LP strains showed a unique transcriptional profile that is characterized by significantly reduced expression of several transcriptional regulators and reduced expression of genes involved in virulence (e.g., Salmonella pathogenicity island 1 [SPI-1], SPI-5, and fimbrial and motility genes) and protection against osmotic, oxidative, and other stresses, such as iron-limiting conditions commonly encountered within the host. Several functionally uncharacterized genes also showed reduced expression. This study provides a first concise view of the global transcriptional differences between field strains of S. Enteritidis with various levels of pathogenicity, providing the basis for future functional characterization of several genes with potential roles in virulence or stress regulation of S. Enteritidis.
Functional and neural organization underlying face and facial expression perception

Users of American Sign Language (ASL) must recognize certain non-affective facial expressions as linguistic markers that signal distinct lexical and syntactic structures. When perceiving visual linguistic input, ASL signers must be able to quickly identify and discriminate between different linguistic and affective facial expressions in order to process and interpret signed sentences. Thus, signers have a very different perceptual and cognitive experience with the human face compared to nonsigners. This dissertation examines, in three separate studies, how experience with American Sign Language leads to changes in the processing and neural organization for the perception of faces and facial expressions. Study 1 examines face processing in Deaf signers and hearing nonsigners and revealed that these groups do not differ in face recognition or gestalt face processing ability; however, ASL signers exhibit a superior ability to detect subtle differences in local facial features. Study 2 examines whether affective facial expression categorical perception (CP) also extends to ASL facial expressions, and whether lifelong experience with ASL affects CP for affective facial expressions. Deaf signers and hearing nonsigners performed ABX discrimination and identification tasks on morphed affective and linguistic facial expression continua. Significant CP effects were observed in hearing nonsigners for both affective and linguistic facial expressions. Deaf signers, however, showed a significant CP effect only for linguistic facial expressions. Study 3 examines facial expression perception using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and found that activation within the superior temporal sulcus (STS) for emotional expressions was right lateralized for hearing nonsigners and bilateral for deaf signers. In contrast, activation within STS for linguistic facial expressions was left lateralized only for signers and only when linguistic facial expressions co-occurred with verbs. Within the fusiform gyrus (FG), activation was left lateralized for ASL signers for both expression types, whereas activation was bilateral for both expression types for nonsigners. Taken together, the results demonstrate that linguistic processing of facial expressions leads to specific changes in the processing of and neural organization for human faces and facial expressions
Molecular Systems Biology Peer Review Process File Annotation of Genomics Data Using Bidirectional Hidden Markov Models Unveils Variations in Pol Ii Transcription Cycle Transaction Report

(Note: With the exception of the correction of typographical or spelling errors that could be a source of ambiguity, letters and reports are not edited. The original formatting of letters and referee reports may not be reflected in this compilation.) Thank you again for submitting your work to Molecular Systems Biology. We have now heard back from two of the three referees who agreed to evaluate your manuscript. Unfortunately, after several reminders we have still not received a report from reviewer #2. Since the recommendations of reviewers #1 and #3 are similar, I prefer to make a decision now, rather than further delaying the process. As you will see from the reports below, the referees acknowledge that the presented approach is potentially interesting. However, they raise a series of concerns and make suggestions for modifications which we would ask you to carefully address in a revision of the manuscript. The referees' recommendations are clear in this regard. On a more editorial level, we would like to mention that while we generally encourage the submission of individual Supplementary Figure/Table files, in exceptional cases (and depending on the nature of information provided) we allow the use of a single PDF file including a Table of Contents. We think that in this case, it would be better to present the Supplementary Information in the single PDF file format.
BIOCHEMICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL STUDIES OF THE PURIFIED TOXIN OF WALTERINNESIA AEGYPTEA ' THE EGYPTIAN BLACK SNAKE ' BY

Waltermnesia aegyptea or "The Black Snake' which lives in the Sinai Desert near Suez is extremely poisonous. The snake was named after Walter Innes (1923), who was the first to discover the presence of the snake in the Eastern Egyptian Desert. Many fatal attacks of this snake upon camping soldiers and local inhabitants have been reported. Anderson (1925) made a valuable zoological study of the snake. Curckill (1929) described two cases of death occurring as a result of the bite of this snake. Death occurred from 6 to 24 hr. after the bite. Biochemical and physiological studies of venoms from different poisonous animals living in Egypt have been reported by many investigators, e.g. Wilson (1921), Shousha (1928), Hassan and Mohammed (1940) and Karimi (1955). Physiological effects of the different snake venoms were reviewed by Essex, (1945). In this work a technique for preparing the toxin of W. aegyptea in a crystalline form is described. The minimum lethal dose of the toxin has been determined. Biochemical and physiological studies are reported.
Mechanisms of Regulation of Olfactory Transduction and Adaptation in the Olfactory Cilium

Olfactory adaptation is a fundamental process for the functioning of the olfactory system, but the underlying mechanisms regulating its occurrence in intact olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) are not fully understood. In this work, we have combined stochastic computational modeling and a systematic pharmacological study of different signaling pathways to investigate their impact during short-term adaptation (STA). We used odorant stimulation and electroolfactogram (EOG) recordings of the olfactory epithelium treated with pharmacological blockers to study the molecular mechanisms regulating the occurrence of adaptation in OSNs. EOG responses to paired-pulses of odorants showed that inhibition of phosphodiesterases (PDEs) and phosphatases enhanced the levels of STA in the olfactory epithelium, and this effect was mimicked by blocking vesicle exocytosis and reduced by blocking cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP)-dependent protein kinase (PKA) and vesicle endocytosis. These results suggest that G-coupled receptors (GPCRs) cycling is involved with the occurrence of STA. To gain insights on the dynamical aspects of this process, we developed a stochastic computational model. The model consists of the olfactory transduction currents mediated by the cyclic nucleotide gated (CNG) channels and calcium ion (Ca2+)-activated chloride (CAC) channels, and the dynamics of their respective ligands, cAMP and Ca2+, and it simulates the EOG results obtained under different experimental conditions through changes in the amplitude and duration of cAMP and Ca2+ response, two second messengers implicated with STA occurrence. The model reproduced the experimental data for each pharmacological treatment and provided a mechanistic explanation for the action of GPCR cycling in the levels of second messengers modulating the levels of STA. All together, these experimental and theoretical results indicate the existence of a mechanism of regulation of STA by signaling pathways that control GPCR cycling and tune the levels of second messengers in OSNs, and not only by CNG channel desensitization as previously thought.
Low Cost INS/GPS Integration: Concepts and Testing

The high cost of inertial units is the main obstacle for their inclusion in precision navigation systems to support a variety of application areas. Standard inertial navigation systems (INS) use precise gyro and accelerometer sensors; however, newer inertial devices with compact, lower precision sensors have become available in recent years. This group of instruments, called motion sensors, is six to eight times less costly than a standard INS. Given their weak stand-alone accuracy and poor run-to-run stability, such devices are not usable as sole navigation systems. Even the integration of a motion sensor into a navigation system as a supporting device requires the development of non-traditional approaches and algorithms. The objective of this paper is to assess the feasibility of using a motion sensor, specifically the MotionPak, integrated with DGPS and DGLONASS information, to provide accurate position and attitude information, and to assess its capability to bridge satellite outages for up to 20 seconds. The motion sensor has three orthogonally mounted solid-state' micromachined quartz angular rate sensors, and three high performance linear servo accelerometers mounted in a compact, rugged package. Advanced algorithms are used to integrate the GPS and motion sensor data. These include INS error damping, calculated platform corrections using DGPS (or DGPS/DGLONASS) output, velocity correction, attitude correction and error model estimation for prediction. This multi-loop algorithm structure is very robust, which guarantees a high level of software reliability. Vehicular and aircraft test trials were conducted with the system and the results are discussed. Simulated outages in GPS availability were made to assess the bridging accuracy of the system. Results show that a bridging accuracy of up to 3 m after 10 seconds in vehicular mode and a corresponding accuracy of 6 m after 20 seconds in aircraft mode can be obtained, depending on vehicle dynamics and the specific MotionPak unit used. The attitude accuracy was on the order of 22 to 25 arcmin for roll and pitch, and about 44 arcmin for heading.
Gene copy number change events at chromosome 20 and their association with recurrence in gastric cancer patients.

PURPOSE This study examined the gene copy number change events at chromosome 20 in gastric cancer, and their possible relationship with recurrence using cDNA microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Thirty pairs of gastric tumor and normal gastric tissues were used in the cDNA microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization. The cDNA microarrays containing 17,000 sequence-verified human gene probes were used in a direct comparison design, where genomic DNAs from the normal and tumor tissues were labeled with fluorescent dyes Cy3 and Cy5, respectively, and cohybridized. Genes with log(2) (Cy5/Cy3) > or = 0.58 in at least one case were selected as the amplified genes. In order to search for the association between gene copy number changes and the recurrence status, patients were grouped according to their recurrence status. Gene selection between the two groups was done, and each patient was given a score based on the sum of the selected genes' ratios. Logistic regression analysis was carried out in order to determine if the score of a group of patients was correlated with a recurrence. RESULTS A group of genes including NCOA6, CYP24A1, PTPN1, and ZNF217 was amplified in gastric cancer. Another group of 39 genes, whose sum of copy number change levels was significantly associated with a poor prognosis for recurrence, was selected (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION Ninety-six amplified genes at chromosome 20 of gastric cancer are reported. A scoring system based on gene copy changes at chromosome 20 can provide an independent patient grouping system that can distinguish patient recurrence status and survival.
Nuclear pore rearrangements and nuclear trafficking in cardiomyocytes from rat and human failing hearts

Aims During cardiac hypertrophy, cardiomyocytes (CMs) increase in the size and expression of cytoskeletal proteins while reactivating a foetal gene programme. The process is proposed to be dependent on increased nuclear export and, since nuclear pore trafficking has limited capacity, a linked decrease in import. Our objective was to investigate the role of nuclear import and export in control of hypertrophy in rat and human heart failure (HF). Methods and results In myocardial tissue and isolated CMs from patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, nuclear size was increased; Nucleoporin p62, cytoplasmic RanBP1, and nuclear translocation of importins (α and β) were decreased while Exportin-1 was increased. CM from a rat HF model 16 weeks after myocardial infarction (MI) reproduced these nuclear changes. Nuclear import, determined by the rate of uptake of nuclear localization sequence (NLS)-tagged fluorescent substrate, was also decreased and this change was observed from 4 weeks after MI, before HF has developed. Treatment of isolated rat CMs with phenylephrine (PE) for 48 h produced similar cell and nuclear size increases, nuclear import and export protein rearrangement, and NLS substrate uptake decrease through p38 MAPK and HDAC-dependent pathways. The change in NLS substrate uptake occurred within 15 min of PE exposure. Inhibition of nuclear export with leptomycin B reversed established nuclear changes in PE-treated rat CMs and decreased NLS substrate uptake and cell/nuclear size in human CMs. Conclusions Nuclear transport changes related to increased export and decreased import are an early event in hypertrophic development. Hypertrophy can be prevented, or even reversed, by targeting import/export, which may open new therapeutic opportunities.