Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hardware architecture for hierarchical segmentation in foveal images

Foveal sensors can substantially increase the performance of active vision systems because of their ability to handle wide field of view and simultaneously reduce the data/bandwidth with space variant sensing. To process the multiresolution images and associated data structures, a new hierarchical processing has been applied to minimize data communications and retrieval. In this article, we present a hardware platform that implements a level sequential segmentation algorithm in one of these hierarchical structures based on a Cartesian lattice topology. The platform operates in real time, at speeds in the range of 25 to 85 frames/s, using a digital uniform‐resolution camera as the source to generate and process the multiresolution images. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol 14, 153–166, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ima.20019
An Investigation into Relationship among Stress, Optimism and Life Satisfaction of Adolescents

The aim of the study was on exploring the relationship between stress and optimism of college students, stress and life satisfaction of college students, as well as to investigate the relationship between optimism and life satisfaction among college students. The sample comprised 100 students 50 male and 50 female students studying in four different institutes of Lahore. A demographic survey was obtained from each participant. This form included questions regarding the participant's age, sex, educational status, and institute. The Perceived Stress Scale designed by Cohen, Kamarck, and Mermelstein (1983). The revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R; Scheier, Carver, & Bridges, 1994). Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWL) developed by Diener, Emmons and Larsen et al., (1985) as a measure of global life satisfaction were used in the study. Results revealed that stress had a significant and inverse relationship with optimism and life satisfaction among college students.
Deficiency of human BRCA2 leads to impaired homologous recombination but maintains normal nonhomologous end joining

Carriers of BRCA2 germline mutations are at high risk to develop early-onset breast cancer. The underlying mechanisms of how BRCA2 inactivation predisposes to malignant transformation have not been established. Here, we provide direct functional evidence that human BRCA2 promotes homologous recombination (HR), which comprises one major pathway of DNA double-strand break repair. We found that up-regulated HR after transfection of wild-type (wt) BRCA2 into a human tumor line with mutant BRCA2 was linked to increased radioresistance. In addition, BRCA2-mediated enhancement of HR depended on the interaction with Rad51. In contrast to the tumor suppressor BRCA1, which is involved in multiple DNA repair pathways, BRCA2 status had no impact on the other principal double-strand break repair pathway, nonhomologous end joining. Thus, there exists a specific regulation of HR by BRCA2, which may function to maintain genomic integrity and suppress tumor development in proliferating cells.
Exploiting map information for driver intention estimation at road intersections

Safety applications at road intersections require algorithms that can estimate the manoeuvre intention of all the drivers in the scene. In this paper, the use of contextual information extracted from a digital map of the road network is explored. We propose a Bayesian network which combines probabilistically uncertain observations on the vehicle's behaviour and information about the geometrical and topological characteristics of the road intersection in order to infer a driver's manoeuvre intention. The approach is evaluated on trajectories recorded from real traffic, including complex scenarios where the behaviour of the vehicle is inconsistent. We define an evaluation method that accounts for the impossibility to make reliable predictions in some situations, and show that the system is able to reliably combine vehicle state information and map information to infer a driver's intended manoeuvre.
A Tale of Two TAGs

Taking recent scholarship on democratic practices in environmental decision making as a starting point, this article examines the politics of two Superfund sites. The article explores the potential of technical assistance grants to encourage citizen participation and democratic processes in regulatory implementation. The article argues that although such grants can facilitate citizen participation in technically complex decisions, the degree of democracy present depends greatly on the willingness of the legally empowered decision-making agency to allow citizen groups to influence the process. The article also suggests the counterintuitive possibility that effective citizen participation may be more likely at large, technically complex Superfund sites and stresses the need to maintain avenues of citizen influence that operate outside of the normal regulatory public participation mechanisms.
Earlier Onset and Greater Severity of Disordered Mineral Metabolism in Diabetic Patients With Chronic Kidney Disease

OBJECTIVE Disordered mineral metabolism is a common complication of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and a novel risk factor for CKD progression, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. Although diabetes is the leading cause of CKD and is associated with worse clinical outcomes than other etiologies, few studies have evaluated mineral metabolism in CKD according to diabetes status. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Using the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort Study, we tested the hypothesis that diabetes is independently associated with lower serum calcium and higher serum phosphate, parathyroid hormone (PTH), and fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23). RESULTS Compared with participants without diabetes (n = 1,936), those with diabetes (n = 1,820) were more likely to have lower estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), lower serum albumin, and higher urinary protein excretion (all P < 0.001). Unadjusted serum phosphate, PTH, and FGF23 levels were higher and calcium was lower among those with compared with those without diabetes (all P < 0.001). After multivariate adjustment, diabetes remained a significant predictor of serum phosphate, PTH, and FGF23 but not calcium. The eGFR cut point at which 50% of participants met criteria for secondary hyperparathyroidism or elevated FGF23 was higher in participants with diabetes compared with those without (PTH: eGFR 30–39 vs. 20–29, P < 0.001; FGF23: eGFR 50–59 vs. 40–49, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Disordered mineral metabolism begins earlier in the course of CKD and is more severe among CKD patients with compared with those without diabetes. Future studies should explore mechanisms for these differences and whether they contribute to excess risks of adverse clinical outcomes among diabetic patients with CKD.
An intervention study of primary age gifted students with strong nonverbal abilities from low income and culturally diverse backgrounds

xi Half-title Page . 1 Chapter 1 : Statement of the Problem . 2 Introduction . 2 Conceptual Framework . 4 Purpose . 8 Rationale for Study . 9 Definition ofTerms . 10 Synopsis of Methodology . 12 Significance of Research . 14 Context for the Research . 15 Limitations . 15 Delimitations . 17 Chapter 2: Review of the Literature . 18 Introduction . 18 Strand 1: The Conceptual Framework: Vygotsky on Constructivist Learning as Social Interaction in the Zone of Proximal Development . 18 Strand 2: Young Gifted Learners . 23 111 Strand 3: High Quality Curriculum and Culturally Diverse Young Gifted Students . 34 Strand 4: Reasoning Strengths as Measured by Nonverbal Tests . 42 Strand 5: Responding to the Needs of Students with High Nonverbal Reasoning Skills . 52 Chapter 3: Methodology . 69 Conceptual Framework . 69 Research Design . 71 Research Questions . 74 Instrumentation . 80 Procedures for the Intervention . 83 Focus Group Interview Procedures . 84 Description of the Curriculum Unit Intervention . 86 Data Collection . 88 Data Analysis Procedures . 90 Time Frame for the Study . 94 Confidentiality and Other Considerations . 94 Chapter 4: Results . 96 Introduction . 96 Overview of Setting and Participants . 97 Research Question One . 98 Research Question Two . 102 Research Question Three . 1 09
Sleep associated gas exchange abnormalities in children and adolescents with habitual snoring

The purpose of this study was to describe the prevalence of polysomnographically diagnosed OSAS and to describe the severity of sleep associated gas exchange abnormalities (SAGEA) in habitually snoring children. We hypothesized that there would be a high prevalence of OSAS in obese children with habitual snoring and that the most overweight children would have the most significant SAGEA.
Osteosarcoma in a Marfan patient with a novel premature termination codon in the FBN1 gene

Osteosarcoma is a malignant neoplasm of mesenchymal origin that is presumed to arise from osteoblasts. Considered a rare tumor, approximately 1000 cases of osteosarcoma are diagnosed in the United States each year, and osteosarcoma of the foot is rarer still. Marfan syndrome (MFS) is a rare genetic disorder that affects 1 in 5000 individuals and is caused by mutations in the fibrillin 1 (FBN1) gene. MFS phenotype affects several body systems, including soft connective tissue and bone. Here we report, for the first time, an individual with MFS that was treated for osteosarcoma. Surgically resected tissue was used to initiate an osteosarcoma cell line (PSU-OS-M) that exhibits attachment-independent growth and loss of contact inhibition in vitro. Genomic DNA was isolated from the tumor cells, and primers that anneal to intronic regions were used to amplify and sequence all 65 coding exons of the FBN1 gene. A two base pair insertion that results in a novel premature termination codon (PTC) was found in exon 52. Protein from the normal allele is detectable in PSU-OS-M cell-conditioned medium, but protein from the mutant allele was not detectable. Immunofluorescent microscopy demonstrates that PSU-OS-M cells can assemble fibrillin 1 microfibrils in culture, and fibronectin assembly is normal. As such, the PSU-OS-M cell line is to our knowledge the first oncogenically transformed cell line with a mutant fibrillin gene and may serve as a useful tool for studying molecular mechanisms of MFS and nonsense-mediated decay.
Features and Perspectives of Emats Use for Metal Objects Testing

The methods of electro magnetic acoustic (EMA) excitation and reception of longitudinal and SH ultrasonic waves with radial and linear polarization with the use of constant or pulse magnetizing of signal inductor were researched. The settings and operation modes for pulse magnetic field were defined, the magnetizing system was chosen and specifications for the power supply unit for the electronic
The Impact of Ocean Acidification on the Functional Morphology of Foraminifera

Culturing experiments were performed on sediment samples from the Ythan Estuary, N. E. Scotland, to assess the impacts of ocean acidification on test surface ornamentation in the benthic foraminifer Haynesina germanica. Specimens were cultured for 36 weeks at either 380, 750 or 1000 ppm atmospheric CO2. Analysis of the test surface using SEM imaging reveals sensitivity of functionally important ornamentation associated with feeding to changing seawater CO2 levels. Specimens incubated at high CO2 levels displayed evidence of shell dissolution, a significant reduction and deformation of ornamentation. It is clear that these calcifying organisms are likely to be vulnerable to ocean acidification. A reduction in functionally important ornamentation could lead to a reduction in feeding efficiency with consequent impacts on this organism's survival and fitness.
Positive Unanimous Voting Algorithm for Focal Cortical Dysplasia Detection on Magnetic Resonance Image

Focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) is the main cause of epilepsy and can be automatically detected via magnetic resonance (MR) images. However, visual detection of lesions is time consuming and highly dependent on the doctor's personal knowledge and experience. In this paper, we propose a new framework for positive unanimous voting (PUV) to detect FCD lesions. Maps of gray matter thickness, gradient, relative intensity, and gray/white matter width are computed in the proposed framework to enhance the differences between lesional and non-lesional regions. Feature maps are further compared with the feature distributions of healthy controls to obtain feature difference maps. PUV driven by feature and feature difference maps is then applied to classify image voxels into lesion and non-lesion. The connected region analysis then refines the classification results by removing the tiny fragment regions consisting of falsely classified positive voxels. The proposed method correctly identified 8/10 patients with FCD lesions and 30/31 healthy people. Experimental results on the small FCD samples demonstrated that the proposed method can effectively reduce the number of false positives and guarantee correct detection of lesion regions compared with four single classifiers and two recent methods.
“Tengo que habla español. Yo no entiendo ingles!”: A qualitative case study on a bilingual child with Autism Spectrum

Language differences in children with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC) often lead professionals to believe that children with ASC cannot or should not become bilingual, thus advising parents with a child with ASC raised in a bilingual household to adhere to English only. Emerging studies, however, attest that children with ASC can become bilingual, and that there are no language differences between bilingual and monolingual children with ASC. Although these findings are promising, very few studies investigated external factors, such as cultural expectations, school practices and other pertinent factors involved in raising and educating children with ASC bilingually. Drawing from video-and audio-taped data from spontaneous interactions among family members, interviews and field notes, this qualitative case study describes one family’s cultural beliefs and practices that influenced raising their child with ASC bilingually. Implications for educators and other professionals are also described.
An efficient system for combining complementary kernels in complex visual categorization tasks

Recently, increasing interest has been brought to improve image categorization performances by combining multiple descriptors. However, very few approaches have been proposed for combining features based on complementary aspects, and evaluating the performances in realistic databases. In this paper, we tackle the problem of combining different feature types (edge and color), and evaluate the performance gain in the very challenging VOC 2009 benchmark. Our contribution is three-fold. First, we propose new local color descriptors, unifying edge and color feature extraction into the “Bag Of Word” model. Second, we improve the Spatial Pyramid Matching (SPM) scheme for better incorporating spatial information into the similarity measurement. Last but not least, we propose a new combination strategy based on ℓ1 Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) that simultaneously learns individual kernel parameters and the kernel combination. Experiments prove the relevance of the proposed approach, which outperforms baseline combination methods while being computationally effective.
Adaptation des techniques de Text Mining aux données conversationnelles issues de l'oral

Ce memoire aborde la problematique du traitement des donnees issues de l'oral. En effet, les entreprises regorgent de donnees concernant leurs clients, donnees issues d'enquetes de satisfaction, de forums, d'appels telephoniques. qui ne sont pas exploitables en l'etat. En premier lieu, un rappel des differents travaux existants en matiere d'analyse linguistique des donnees issues de l'oral y est effectue (voir p. 75 a 80). Les transcriptions manuelles et automatiques de ces donnees orales issues de conversations telephoniques entre agents EDF et clients y sont ensuite analysees (voir p. 75 a 80). Enfin, une solution permettant d'adapter une cartouche de connaissance a ces donnees specifiques y est proposee (voir p. 75).
Inertia-based angle measurement unit for gait assistive device

The study and estimation of various joint angles in humans has important significance in medical treatment, rehabilitation, physical training and so forth. Exoskeleton devices that can enhance human’s performance or assist disabled people have been developed in recent years. This paper describes a developed measurement system to estimate various human joint angles during a human gait using a MEMS bases low-g three-axis accelerometer (ADXL 335). A LabVIEW-based measurement system is developed to calculate the tilt angles of the accelerometer, based on the physical model of three acceleration components of the same. With the developed algorithm based on tri-axis tilt sensing, an ADXL 335 IC is used for measuring roll and pitch components, which are of numerous use in rehabilitation robotics. A combination of three sensor assembly is used per leg to calculate various joint angles viz. hip, knee and ankle. NI cDAQ-9172 with NI 9205 I/O module is used for acquiring signal from the accelerometer and the algorit.
Local Variations in Spatial Synchrony of Influenza Epidemics

Background Understanding the mechanism of influenza spread across multiple geographic scales is not complete. While the mechanism of dissemination across regions and states of the United States has been described, understanding the determinants of dissemination between counties has not been elucidated. The paucity of high resolution spatial-temporal influenza incidence data to evaluate disease structure is often not available. Methodology and Findings We report on the underlying relationship between the spread of influenza and human movement between counties of one state. Significant synchrony in the timing of epidemics exists across the entire state and decay with distance (regional correlation = 62%). Synchrony as a function of population size display evidence of hierarchical spread with more synchronized epidemics occurring among the most populated counties. A gravity model describing movement between two populations is a stronger predictor of influenza spread than adult movement to and from workplaces suggesting that non-routine and leisure travel drive local epidemics. Conclusions These findings highlight the complex nature of influenza spread across multiple geographic scales.
Distributing RF signals in an Ethernet network

In this paper, a system architecture designed to distribute radio frequency (RF) signals in an Ethernet-based network is proposed. The Ethernet is the physical layer of the White Rabbit (WR) network. The WR network aims to distribute timing signals with sub-nanosecond accuracy. It is based on the IEEE 1588 and Synchronous Ethernet standards to allow rapid deployment for a broad range of applications. The input RF signal is digitally processed to minimize the required network bandwidth necessary to transport it. Simulations are presented in this paper that show how the different system parameters affect amplitude noise and timing jitter in the distributed RF signal.
Clustering Paraphrases by Word Sense

Automatically generated databases of English paraphrases have the drawback that they return a single list of paraphrases for an input word or phrase. This means that all senses of polysemous words are grouped together, unlike WordNet which partitions different senses into separate synsets. We present a new method for clustering paraphrases by word sense, and apply it to the Paraphrase Database (PPDB). We investigate the performance of hierarchical and spectral clustering algorithms, and systematically explore different ways of deﬁning the similarity matrix that they use as input. Our method produces sense clusters that are qualitatively and quantitatively good, and that represent a substantial improvement to the PPDB resource.
Characteristics of general practices associated with emergency admission rates to hospital: a cross-sectional study

Objectives To identify characteristics of general practices associated with emergency hospital admission rates, and determine whether levels of performance and patient reports of access are associated with admission rates. Design A cross-sectional study. Setting Two primary care trusts (Leicester City and Leicestershire County and Rutland) in the East Midlands of England. Participants 145 general practices. Methods Hospital admission data were used to calculate the rate of emergency admissions from 145 practices, for two consecutive years (2006/7 and 2007/8). Practice characteristics (size, distance from principal hospital, quality and outcomes framework performance data, patient reports of access to their practices) and patient characteristics (deprivation, ethnicity, gender and age), were used as predictors in a two-level hierarchical model, developed with data for 2007/8, and evaluated against data for 2006/7. Results Practice characteristics (shorter distance from hospital, smaller list size) and patient characteristics (higher proportion of older people, white ethnicity, increasing deprivation, female gender) were associated with higher admission rates. There was no association with quality and outcomes framework domains (clinical or organisation), but there was an association between patients reporting being able to see a particular general practitioner (GP) and admission rates. As the proportion of patients able to consult a particular GP increased, emergency admission rates declined. Conclusions The patient characteristics of deprivation, age, ethnicity and gender are important predictors of admission rates. Larger practices and greater distance from a hospital have lower admission rates. Being able to consult a particular GP, an aspect of continuity, is associated with lower emergency admission rates.
On the transmission of a bivariate Gaussian source over the Gaussian broadcast channel with feedback

We study the uncoded transmission of a bivariate Gaussian source over a two-user symmetric Gaussian broadcast channel with a unit-delay noiseless feedback (GBCF), assuming that each (uncoded) source sample is transmitted using a finite number of channel uses, and that the transmission scheme is linear. We consider three transmission schemes: The scheme of Ardestanizadeh et al., which is based on linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control theory, the scheme of Ozarow and Leung (OL), and a novel scheme derived in this work designed using a dynamic programing (DP) approach. For the LQG scheme we characterize the minimal number of channel uses needed to achieve a specified mean-square error (MSE). For the OL scheme we present lower and upper bounds on the minimal number of channel uses needed to achieve a specified MSE, which become tight when the signal-to-noise ratio approaches zero. Finally, we show that for any fixed and finite number of channel uses, the proposed DP scheme achieves MSE lower than the MSE achieved by either the LQG or the OL schemes.
Assignment of Canine MSS1 Microsatellite Markers to Chromosomes by Linkage Data

Recent advances in mapping the canine genome have led to an increase in the number of linkage studies aimed at dissecting the genetic causes of many hereditary diseases that affect the domestic dog. The first step in developing molecular tools for a whole genome scan was the characterization of a set of microsatellite markers, termed minimal screening set 1 (MSS1), that provided an estimated coverage of 10 cM. A limiting factor in use of the MSS1 is not all of the 172 MSS1 markers have been localized to specific chromosomes. Seventy-five of the markers were positioned on a total of 15 chromosomes with the original publication of the MSS1. The localization based on linkage data of 14 additional MSS1 markers to chromosomes using CRIMAP v. 2.4 to build a linkage map of 113 MSS1 markers that were polymorphic in a kindred of Dalmatians is reported here.