Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Frequency and spatial pooling of visual differences for still image quality assessment

Objective image quality assessment techniques are currently based on the properties of the human visual system (HVS) essentially using early vision model. This type of approach allows to get the differences between original and distorted images in a perceptually space, so the outputs of the early vision model are perceptual distortion maps. In order to get one mark for the overall distortion, spatial pooling and frequency pooling in case of spatial frequency decomposition should be applied on these maps. In this paper, we present various methods to do this pooling. In order to represent the distorted image in a perceptual space, we use a multi-channel early vision model including an amplitude nonlinearity, a CSF, a subband decomposition and a masking function. For the pooling, Minkowski summation with various exponents is first tested as it is the most common pooling in literature. The second type of pooling proposed achieves a summation of all the degradations weighted by a function of the probability of their occurrence. Finally we propose a summation taking into account some higher perceptual factors in order to point out the region of interest used to weight the errors. The results are compared measuring the correlation between the distortion marks and the MOS.
Loss of RMI2 Increases Genome Instability and Causes a Bloom-Like Syndrome

Bloom syndrome is a recessive human genetic disorder with features of genome instability, growth deficiency and predisposition to cancer. The only known causative gene is the BLM helicase that is a member of a protein complex along with topoisomerase III alpha, RMI1 and 2, which maintains replication fork stability and dissolves double Holliday junctions to prevent genome instability. Here we report the identification of a second gene, RMI2, that is deleted in affected siblings with Bloom-like features. Cells from homozygous individuals exhibit elevated rates of sister chromatid exchange, anaphase DNA bridges and micronuclei. Similar genome and chromosome instability phenotypes are observed in independently derived RMI2 knockout cells. In both patient and knockout cell lines reduced localisation of BLM to ultra fine DNA bridges and FANCD2 at foci linking bridges are observed. Overall, loss of RMI2 produces a partially active BLM complex with mild features of Bloom syndrome.
Fabrication and Performance of a Miniaturized and Integrated Endoscope Ultrasound Convex Array for Digestive Tract Imaging

Objective: this work presents the design, fabrication, and testing of a miniaturized and integrated ultrasound endoscope for use as an in situ digestive diagnostic device to facilitate real-time ultrasound guidance of intervention treatments. Methods: we designed an optimal structure to integrate an auto-focus 5-megapixel camera module with an 8-MHz, 64-element curvilinear ultrasonic array in one miniaturized package. A novel three-axis auto-focusing voice coil motor (VCM) was designed and manufactured for the camera module to move the lens position for auto-focusing and to adjust the lens tilt. Results: the results showed that the array had a center frequency of 8.09 MHz and a –6-dB fractional bandwidth of 83%. At the center frequency, the two-way insertion loss was 40.6 dB. Endoscopic ultrasound imaging demonstrated satisfactory performance for imaging an anthropomorphic phantom of the esophagus. By slightly adjusting the tilt angle of the optical axis of the lens, the optical image captured by the auto-focusing lens obtained improved definition regardless of changes in the view angle of the camera with respect to the objects being captured. Conclusion: the integrated convex ultrasound endoscope, possessing minimal size, improved optical imaging definition, and good ultrasound imaging performance, can become a useful tool in digestive tract imaging. Significance: the miniaturized and integrated convex ultrasound endoscope can facilitate real-time ultrasound intervention guidance, reducing risks associated with the operation.
Chromosome Inversions, Local Adaptation and Speciation

We study the evolution of inversions that capture locally-adapted alleles when two populations are exchanging migrants or hybridizing. By suppressing recombination between the loci, a new inversion can spread. Neither drift nor coadaptation between the alleles (epistasis) is needed, so this local adaptation mechanism may apply to a broader range of genetic and demographic situations than alternative hypotheses that have been widely discussed. The mechanism can explain many features observed in inversion systems. It will drive an inversion to high frequency if there is no countervailing force, which could explain fixed differences observed between populations and species. An inversion can be stabilized at an intermediate frequency if it also happens to capture one or more deleterious recessive mutations, which could explain polymorphisms that are common in some species. This polymorphism can cycle in frequency with the changing selective advantage of the locally-favored alleles. The mechanism can establish underdominant inversions that decrease heterokaryotype fitness by several percent if the cause of fitness loss is structural, while if the cause is genic there is no limit to the strength of underdominance that can result. The mechanism is expected to cause loci responsible for adaptive species-specific differences to map to inversions, as seen in recent QTL studies. We discuss data that support the hypothesis, review other mechanisms for inversion evolution, and suggest possible tests. K&B revised.nb 3
Stereo-Vision Based 3D Modeling and Localization for Unmanned Vehicles

Safety and operational demands require that operators of unmanned security and defense vehicles be located at safe distances. The capability of creating photo-realistic 3D models using on-board sensors on unmanned vehicles will improve the operators' situational awareness. Instant Scene Modeler (iSM) is a vision system for generating calibrated photo-realistic 3D models of unknown environments quickly using stereo image sequences. Equipped with iSM, unmanned military vehicles can capture stereo images and create 3D models to be sent back to the base station, while they explore unknown environments. Rapid access to 3D models will increase the operator situational awareness and allow better mission planning and execution, as the models can be visualized from different views and used for relative measurements. Moreover, iSM also recovers the camera motion, also known as the visual odometry. As wheel odometry error grows over time, this can help improve the wheel odometry for better localization. Apart from unmanned vehicles, iSM has also been used in forensics and mining applications, for creating 3D models of crime scenes and of the mine tunnels respectively.
Joint Achievement of Services' Personal Goals

Web service specifications can be quite complex, including various operations and message exchange patterns. In this work, we give a rule-based declarative representation of services, and in particular of WSDL operations, that enables the application of techniques for reasoning about actions and change, that are typical of agent systems. This makes it possible to reason on a rule-based specification of choreography roles and about the selection of possible role players on a goal-driven basis, and allows us to attack the problem of the joint achievement of individual goals for a set of services which animate a choreography.
Distinct Viral Populations Differentiate and Evolve Independently in a Single Perennial Host Plant

ABSTRACT The complex structure of virus populations has been the object of intensive study in bacteria, animals, and plants for over a decade. While it is clear that tremendous genetic diversity is rapidly generated during viral replication, the distribution of this diversity within a single host remains an obscure area in this field of science. Among animal viruses, only Human immunodeficiency virus and Hepatitis C virus populations have recently been thoroughly investigated at an intrahost level, where they are structured as metapopulations, demonstrating that the host cannot be considered simply as a “bag” containing a homogeneous or unstructured swarm of mutant viral genomes. In plants, a few reports suggested a possible heterogeneous distribution of virus variants at different locations within the host but provided no clues as to how this heterogeneity is structured. Here, we report the most exhaustive study of the structure and evolution of a virus population ever reported at the intrahost level through the analysis of a Prunus tree infected by Plum pox virus for over 13 years following a single inoculation event and by using analysis of molecular variance at different hierarchical levels combined with nested clade analysis. We demonstrate that, following systemic invasion of the host, the virus population differentiates into several distinct populations that are isolated in different branches, where they evolve independently through contiguous range expansion while colonizing newly formed organs. Moreover, we present and discuss evidence that the tree harbors a huge “bank” of viral clones, each isolated in one of the myriad leaves.
Carotid Bruits and Cerebrovascular Disease Risk: A Meta-Analysis

Background and Purpose— Current guidelines recommend against routine auscultation of carotid arteries, believing that carotid bruits are poor predictors of either underlying carotid stenosis or stroke risk in asymptomatic patients. We investigated whether the presence of a carotid bruit is associated with increased risk for transient ischemic attack, stroke, or death by stroke (stroke death). Methods— We searched Medline (1966 to December 2009) and EMBASE (1974 to December 2009) with the terms “carotid” and “bruit. ” Bibliographies of all retrieved articles were also searched. Articles were included if they prospectively reported the incidence of transient ischemic attack, stroke, or stroke death in asymptomatic adults. Two authors independently reviewed and extracted data. Results— We included 28 prospective cohort articles that followed a total of 17 913 patients for 67 708 patient-years. Among studies that directly compared patients with and without bruits, the rate ratio for transient ischemic attack was 4.00 (95% CI, 1.8 to 9.0, P<0.0005, n=5 studies), stroke was 2.5 (95% CI, 1.8 to 3.5, P<0.0005, n=6 studies), and stroke death was 2.7 (95% CI, 1.33 to 5.53, P=0.002, n=3 studies). Among the larger pool of studies that provided data on rates, transient ischemic attack rates were 2.6 per 100 patient-years (95% CI, 2.0 to 3.2, P<0.0005, n=24 studies) for those with bruits compared with 0.9 per 100 patient-years (95% CI, 0.2 to 1.6, P=0.02, n=5 studies) for those without carotid bruits. Stroke rates were 1.6 per 100 patient-years (95% CI, 1.3 to 1.9, P<0.0005, n=26 studies) for those with bruits compared with 1.3 per 100 patient-years (95% CI, 0.8 to 1.7, P<0.0005, n=6) without carotid bruits, and death rates were 0.32 (95% CI, 0.20 to 0.44, P<0.005, n=13 studies) for those with bruits compared with 0.35 (95% CI, 0.00 to 0.81, P=0.17, n=3 studies) for those without carotid bruits. Conclusion— The presence of a carotid bruit may increase the risk of cerebrovascular disease.
Viral protein U counteracts a human host cell restriction that inhibits HIV-1 particle production

Human cells resist viral infections by a variety of mechanisms. Viruses must overcome host cell restrictions to successfully reproduce their genetic material. Here, we identify a host restriction to viral replication that acts at the stage of particle assembly. Viral protein U (Vpu) is an HIV-1 accessory protein that enhances particle assembly and release in most human cells, but not in simian cells. By using human-simian cell heterokaryons, we show that the inhibition of assembly in human cells is dominant. Vpu overcomes the block to assembly in human cells and in human-simian heterokaryons. The HIV-1 vpu gene may have evolved to counteract an assembly restriction that is present in human cells.
Unsupervised summarisation of capsule endoscopy video

Capsule endoscopy is a non-invasive imaging technique commonly used for screening of the entire small intestine. It is performed by a wireless swallowable endoscopic capsule capable of transmitting thousands of video frames per examination. The visual inspection of the vast amount of images acquired during such an examination is a subjective and highly time consuming task even for experienced gastroenterologists. In this paper we propose a novel approach to the reduction of the number of the video frames to be inspected so as to enable faster inspection of the endoscopic video. It is based on symmetric non-negative matrix factorisation initialised by the fuzzy c-means algorithm and it is supported by non-negative Lagrangian relaxation to extract a subset of video frames containing the most representative scenes from a whole endoscopic examination. The experimental evaluation of the proposed approach was tested on annotated endoscopic videos with frames displaying ulcers, bleedings and normal tissues from various sites in the small intestine. The results demonstrate that the video summary produced consists of representative frames from all the abnormal findings and the normal tissues of the input video.
Improvement Techniques for Automatic Speech Recognition

To perform Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) there are different techniques such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), Support Vector Machines (SVMs), Weighted Finite State Transducers (WFSTs), and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). In the case of HMMs there are algorithms such as Viterbi, Baum Welch / Forward Backward, that adjust their parameters and the decoding/recognition process itself. However these algorithms do not guarantee optimization of these parameters as the recognition process is stochastic.
Industrial Fatigue and Group Morale

Studies in the nature of fatigue led to similar inquiry in regard to monotony and to the question of morale, more specifically industrial morale. What is needed to sustain morale is a body of industrial folkways. The modern factory is not a society. Industrial fatigue and lack of morale are due to some interference or failure to preserve the organic and social balance. What is true with regard to industry applies also to industrial civilization generally. Increasing mobility and industrial expansion have broken up the traditional order and have not permitted the establishing of a new one. The ills of modern industrial civilization are cultural, not political, and are incident to the existing industrial regime.
Quantum McEliece public-key cryptosystem

The McEliece cryptosystem is one of the best-known (classical) public-key cryptosystems, which is based on algebraic coding theory. In this paper, we present a quantum analogue of the classical McEliece cryptosystem. Our quantumMcEliece public-key cryptosystem is based on the theory of stabilizer codes and has the key generation, encryption and decryption algorithms similar to those in the classical McEliece cryptosystem. We present an explicit construction of the quantum McEliece public-key cryptosystem using Calderbank-Shor-Steane codes based on generalized Reed-Solomon codes. We examine the security of our quantum McEliece cryptosystem and compare it with alternative systems.
Robustness of Case-Initialized Genetic Algorithms

We investigate the robustness of Case Initialized Genetic AlgoRithm (CIGAR) systems with respect problem indexing. When confronted with a series of similar problems CIGAR stores potential solutions in a case-base or an associative memory and retrieves and uses these solutions to help improve a genetic algorithm’s performance over time. Defining similarity among the problems, or indexing, is key to performance improvement. We study four indexing schemes on a class of simple problems and provide empirical evidence of CIGAR’s robustness to imperfect indexing.
Television and the Process of Cultural Change*

for example, when the identification is at the end of the message, the reader may select to look at it before he starts decoding the message proper. The reverse, of course, is equally true-i.e., the reader may glance through the entire message and then look to the top for the byline. Several intriguing questions remain for further research. Is there a systematic and consistent relationship between order of source perception and its effect on attitude change? Similarly, is there a significant interaction between order of source identification and attitude toward that source? A reasonable hypothesis here is that when the source is a negative one, its influenceagain in terms of inducing change in the intended direction-may be enhanced if it is perceived at the message’s termination rather than at its initiation. BRADLEY S . GREENBERG Znstitute for Communication Research Stanford University
Does immunohistochemistry provide additional prognostic data in gastrointestinal stromal tumors?

BACKGROUND To investigate the predictive and prognostic effects of clinicopathologic and immunohistochemical (IHC) features in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GISTs). MATERIALS AND METHODS Fifty-six patients who were diagnosed with GIST between 2002 and 2012 were retrospectively evaluated. Relationships between clinicopathologic/immunohistochemical factors and prognosis were investigated. RESULTS Median overall survival (OS) of the whole study group was 74.9 months (42.8-107.1 months), while it was 95.2 months in resectable and 44.7 months in metastatic patients respectively (p=0.007). Epitheliolid tumor morphology was significantly associated with shortened OS as compared to other histologies (p=0.001). SMA(+) tumours were significantly correlated with low (<10/50HPF) mitotic activity (p=0.034). Moreover, SMA(+) patients tended to survive longer and had significantly longer disease-free survival (DFS) times than SMA (-) patients (37.7 months vs 15.9 months; p=0.002). High Ki-67 level (≥30%) was significantly associated with shorter OS (34 vs 95.2 months; 95%CI; p=0.001). CD34 (-) tumours were significantly associated with low proliferative tumours (Ki-67<%10) (p=0.026). Median PFS (progression-free survival) of the patients who received imatinib was 36 months (27.7-44.2 months). CD34 (-) patients had significantly longer PFS times than that of negative tumours; (50.8 vs 29.8 months; p=0.045). S100 and desmin expression did not play any role in predicting the prognosis of GISTs. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that ≥10/50HPF mitotic activity/HPF was the only independent factor for risk of death in GIST patients. CONCLUSIONS Despite the negative prognostic and predictive effect of high Ki-67 and CD34 expression, mitotic activity remains the strongest prognostic factor in GIST patients. SMA positivity seems to affect GIST prognosis positively. However, large-scale, multicenter studies are required to provide supportive data for these findings.
Hierarchical curvature estimation in computer vision

This thesis concerns the estimation and description of curvature for computer vision applications. Different types of multi-dimensional data are considered: images (2D); volumes (3D); time sequences of images (3D); and time sequences of volumes (4D). The methods are based on local Fourier domain models and use local operations such as filtering. A hierarchical approach is used. Firstly, the local orientation is estimated and represented with a vector field equivalent description. Secondly, the local curvature is estimated from the orientation description. The curvature algorithms are closely related to the orientation estimation algorithms and the methods as a whole give a unified approach to the estimation and description of orientation and curvature. In addition, the methodology avoids thresholding and premature decision making. Results on both synthetic and real world data are presented to illustrate the algorithms performance with respect to accuracy and noise insensitivity. Examples illustrating the use of the curvature estimates for tasks such as image enhancement are also included.
Redrawing the US Obesity Landscape: Bias-Corrected Estimates of State-Specific Adult Obesity Prevalence

Background State-level estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) underestimate the obesity epidemic because they use self-reported height and weight. We describe a novel bias-correction method and produce corrected state-level estimates of obesity and severe obesity. Methods Using non-parametric statistical matching, we adjusted self-reported data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2013 (n = 386,795) using measured data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (n = 16,924). We validated our national estimates against NHANES and estimated bias-corrected state-specific prevalence of obesity (BMI≥30) and severe obesity (BMI≥35). We compared these results with previous adjustment methods. Results Compared to NHANES, self-reported BRFSS data underestimated national prevalence of obesity by 16% (28.67% vs 34.01%), and severe obesity by 23% (11.03% vs 14.26%). Our method was not significantly different from NHANES for obesity or severe obesity, while previous methods underestimated both. Only four states had a corrected obesity prevalence below 30%, with four exceeding 40%–in contrast, most states were below 30% in CDC maps. Conclusions Twelve million adults with obesity (including 6.7 million with severe obesity) were misclassified by CDC state-level estimates. Previous bias-correction methods also resulted in underestimates. Accurate state-level estimates are necessary to plan for resources to address the obesity epidemic.
Modeling and Rendering the Growth of Speleothems in Real-time

Among the many natural phenomena already studied in computer graphics research, the interior of caves remains largely unexplored. We present in this paper a plausible approach, based on Geological studies, for modeling the genesis and growth of speleothems. Speleothems are mineral depositions formed in caves, such as stalactites, stalagmites and columns. Our approach takes advantage of the new geometry shader, present in the new generation of GPUs, and can generate in a controlled way, a large variety of cave scenes, with meaningful geological parameters.