Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mesh-growing surface reconstruction from sparse data based on the complex propagation scheme

In this work a mesh-growing surface reconstruction method adapted for noisy and sparse data is presented. The method realizes an interpolating growing model and introduces the Complex Propagation scheme that integrates both inertial and tangential propagation terms. The features and basic functionality of the method are described. A number of experiments are carried out on 3D ultrasound data received from 2D tracked free-hand ultrasound and sequential triggered scanning systems.
A new endogean, anophthalmous species of Parazuphium Jeannel from Northern Morocco (Coleoptera, Carabidae), with new molecular data for the tribe Zuphiini

Abstract A new species of the genus Parazuphium (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Zuphiini), Parazuphium aguilerai sp. n. , is described from the Tingitan peninsula in North Morocco. The only known specimen was found under a large deeply buried boulder, and belongs to an anophthalmous, depigmented and flattened species. This is the second species of blind Parazuphium known so far, the other being Parazuphium feloi Machado 1998 from a lava tube in the Canary Islands. Molecular data of the only known Parazuphium aguilerai sp. n. specimen are provided, and a reconstructed phylogeny based on these molecular data confirms its inclusion inside Zuphiini within Harpalinae. Identification keys to the Mediterranean and Macaronesian species of Parazuphium are provided.
Mécanisme d'auto-organisation corticale : un modèle basé sur la règle de plasticité synaptique BCM

L'auto-organisation est un principe de traitement et de representation de l'information important dans le cortex cerebral. Kohonen a popularise ce principe dans son celebre modele de carte auto-organisatrice. Cependant la regle d'apprentissage associee a ce modele et portant sur les connexions corticales montantes souffre d'un certain nombre de faiblesses qui limitent sa plausibilite biologique et son domaine d'utilisation. Nous avons repris la regle d'apprentissage BCM (Bienenstock-Cooper-Munro) etudiee theoriquement en profondeur pour ses proprietes de stabilite et pour sa compatibilite avec les connaissances actuelles sur l'apprentissage cortical et nous l'avons adaptee pour une utilisation numerique intensive dans de larges cartes corticales soumises a des flux d'information continus. Nous reportons dans ce papier les resultats d'une premiere serie d'experimentations qui montrent que ce modele peut etre utilise pour retrouver ces principes d'auto-organisation tels qu'ils peuvent emerger de l'apprentissage des connexions montantes. Nous pensons egalement que cette meme regle pourrait etre utilisee, de facon conjointe, pour l'apprentissage des connexions corticales laterales, comme nous commencons a le mettre en ? uvre dans une seconde serie d'experimentations.
Predictive value of elevated D-dimer in patients undergoing primary angioplasty for ST elevation myocardial infarction

The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of D-dimer in patients with STEMI undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The prognostic value of D-dimer has been documented in patients with acute coronary syndrome without ST-segment elevation. However, its value in acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) remains unclear. We prospectively enrolled 453 consecutive STEMI patients (mean age 55.6 ± 12.4 years, 364 male, 89 female) undergoing primary PCI. The study population was divided into tertiles based on admission D-dimer values. The high D-dimer group (n = 151) was defined as a value in the third tertile [>0.72 ug/ml fibrinogen equivalent units (FEU)], and the low D-dimer group (n = 302) included those patients with a value in the lower two tertiles (⩽0.72 ug/ml FEU). Clinical characteristics, in-hospital and 6-month outcomes of primary PCI were analyzed. The patients of the high D-dimer group were older (mean age 60.1 ± 13.5 versus 52.4 ± 10.6, P < 0.001). Higher in-hospital cardiovascular mortality and 6-month all-cause mortality rates were observed in the high D-dimer group (7.2 versus 0.6%, P < 0.001 and 13.9 versus 2%, P < 0.001, respectively). In Cox multivariate analysis; a high admission D-dimer value (>0.72 ug/ml FEU) was found to be a powerful independent predictor of 6-month all-cause mortality (odds ratio: 10.1, 95% confidence interval: 1.24–42.73, P = 0.03). These results suggest that a high admission D-dimer, level was associated with increased in-hospital cardiovascular mortality and 6-month all-cause mortality in patients with STEMI undergoing primary PCI.
Cyclic AMP Inhibits the Activity and Promotes the Acetylation of Acetyl-CoA Synthetase through Competitive Binding to the ATP/AMP Pocket*

The high-affinity biosynthetic pathway for converting acetate to acetyl-coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) is catalyzed by the central metabolic enzyme acetyl-coenzyme A synthetase (Acs), which is finely regulated both at the transcriptional level via cyclic AMP (cAMP)-driven trans-activation and at the post-translational level via acetylation inhibition. In this study, we discovered that cAMP directly binds to Salmonella enterica Acs (SeAcs) and inhibits its activity in a substrate-competitive manner. In addition, cAMP binding increases SeAcs acetylation by simultaneously promoting Pat-dependent acetylation and inhibiting CobB-dependent deacetylation, resulting in enhanced SeAcs inhibition. A crystal structure study and site-directed mutagenesis analyses confirmed that cAMP binds to the ATP/AMP pocket of SeAcs, and restrains SeAcs in an open conformation. The cAMP contact residues are well conserved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, suggesting a general regulatory mechanism of cAMP on Acs.
xCache: Rethinking Edge Caching for Developing Regions

End-users in emerging markets experience poor web performance due to a combination of three factors: high server response time, limited edge bandwidth and the complexity of web pages. The absence of cloud infrastructure in developing regions and the limited bandwidth experienced by edge nodes constrain the effectiveness of conventional caching solutions for these contexts. This paper describes the design, implementation and deployment of xCache, a cloud-managed Internet caching architecture that aims to proactively profile popular web pages and maintain the liveness of popular content at software defined edge caches to enhance the cache hit rate with minimal bandwidth overhead. xCache uses a Cloud Controller that continuously analyzes active cloud-managed web pages and derives an object-group representation of web pages based on the objects of a page. Using this object-group representation, xCache computes a bandwidth-aware utility measure to derive the most valuable configuration for each edge cache. Our preliminary real-world deployment across university campuses in three developing regions demonstrates its potential compared to conventional caching by improving cache hit rates by about 15%. Our evaluations of xCache have also shown that it can be applied in conjunction with other web optimizations solutions like Shandian, and can improve page load times by more than 50%.
UNICEF's child injury league table. An analysis of legislation: more mixed messages

This paper presents a summary table and discussion of legislation related to child injury prevention in member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The table is an expanded version of the one which appeared in the UNICEF Report Card “Child Deaths by Injury in Rich Countries” (2001). A commentary is provided on the variations in legislation between countries in terms of range and form of measures and an estimate of degree of enforcement. As legislation is generally considered a powerful tool in injury prevention, the paper examines whether those countries with the widest range of legislation and the strongest enforcement have made the most progress in reducing child injury deaths since the 1970s. It also considers whether a commitment to extensive legislation is reflected in a country's position in the UNICEF league table of injury death. The initial conclusion to these two basic issues is that no clear picture can be seen and we thus need to know far more about the relationship between legislation and societies and cultures as they vary from place to place. This paper hopes to stimulate more widespread debate about the role of legislation in different countries.
Pedagogical Reflections on Values

Autorica u prvom dijelu knjige predstavlja definicije pojma „vrijednosti“ nekih od znanstvenika koji se bave pitanjem vrijednosti, te klasifikacije i hijerarhije vrijednosti koje su predložili. U drugom dijelu obrađuje pitanje moralnog odgoja te predstavlja odgovore nekolicine antickih i suvremenih filozofa i znanstvenika na pitanje kako se djeci prenose vrijednosti, koje vrijednosti, da li je to uopce moguce i ako da na koji nacin, kada, i koliko dugo traje taj proces. U poglavlju „Odgoj za vrijednosti u Hrvatskoj“ autorica govori o vrijednostima u Republici Hrvatskoj – onima formalno i zakonski dogovorenima, propisanima programima i službenim dokumentima te projektima kojima se u praksi prenose i razvijaju kod djece i mladih. Također se u ovom poglavlju govori o etickim kodeksima obrazovnih institucija u Hrvatskoj kao prenositeljima vrijednosti i jamcima moralnosti. U drugom dijelu knjige, naslovljenom „Studenti – vrijednosti – institucije. Buducnost kakvu zaslužujemo“, predstavljeni su rezultati empirijskih istraživanja „Studenti i vrijednosti“ i „Institucije i vrijednosti“. Istraživanje „Studenti i vijednosti“ provedeno je u obliku upitnika (s otvorenim i zatvorenim pitanjima) među studentima Sveucilista u Rijeci i među studentima Sveucilista Alpe-Adria u Klagenfurtu u Austriji (N = 1614) s ciljem ispitivanja vrijednosnih sustava studenata. Istraživanje „Institucije i vrijednosti“ provedeno je u obliku intervjua (s otvorenim pitanjima) s predstavnicima najvažnijih institucija (skola, crkva, država, gospodarstvo, mediji) u Hrvatskoj. U istraživanju je sudjelovalo osam osoba, cijenjenih akademskih građana i predstavnika institucija u Hrvatskoj, koji temi vrijednosti pridaju veliku važnost u svojem radu, a neki temu vrijednosti i znanstveno obrađuju.
Quality of Experience in Telepresence and Remote Collaboration Cloud Services

Cloud-based systems are gaining enormous popularity due to a number of promised beneﬁts, including ease of use in terms of deployment, administration and maintenance, high scalability and ﬂexibility to create new services, and others. However, as more personal and business applications migrate to the Cloud, the quality of the service becomes an important differentiator between providers. This paper addresses the problem of Quality of Experience in Telepresence and Remote Collaboration (TRC) services provided by Microsoft Lync Online (MLO). MLO is a Cloud-based service providing online meeting capabilities including videoconferencing, audio calls, and desktop sharing, and has become the default system for TRC in enterprise scenarios. We present a complete study of the QoE undergone by 44 MLO users (22 pairs, interactive sessions) in controlled subjective lab tests. The study is performed on three different interactive scenarios running on top of the real MLO Cloud service, additionally shaping the Lync ﬂows at the access network to inﬂuence the participants’ experience. The scenarios include audio conferencing, videoconfer-encing, and remote collaboration though desktop sharing. By passively monitoring the end-to-end QoS achieved by the Lync ﬂows, and correlating it with the QoE feedbacks provided by the participants, this study enables better understanding of the interplays between network performance and QoE in TRC Cloud services.
SUGILITE: Creating Multimodal Smartphone Automation by Demonstration

SUGILITE is a new programming-by-demonstration (PBD) system that enables users to create automation on smartphones. SUGILITE uses Android's accessibility API to support automating arbitrary tasks in any Android app (or even across multiple apps). When the user gives verbal commands that SUGILITE does not know how to execute, the user can demonstrate by directly manipulating the regular apps' user interface. By leveraging the verbal instructions, the demonstrated procedures, and the apps? UI hierarchy structures, SUGILITE can automatically generalize the script from the recorded actions, so SUGILITE learns how to perform tasks with different variations and parameters from a single demonstration. Extensive error handling and context checking support forking the script when new situations are encountered, and provide robustness if the apps change their user interface. Our lab study suggests that users with little or no programming knowledge can successfully automate smartphone tasks using SUGILITE.
Graphical and statistical analysis of the software evolution using coupling and cohesion metrics — An exploratory study

Developing software is expensive; thus keep it useful to its users is important. On the other hand, due to constant maintenance performed to meet the changing needs of users, software undergoes degradation of its internal structure, particularly in coupling and cohesion. Monitoring the development of software by using some of its versions can aid Software Engineer with relevant information to guide your maintenance activities. In this paper, we presented a view of the evolution of versions of software. For this, a study was conducted in 10 versions of FindBugs using coupling and cohesion metrics calculated from VizzMaintenance and Metric plug-ins. In this study, we applied the Pearson linear correlation analysis among measurements. The result showed that there is some correlation between these metrics, because coupling metrics directly influenced the cohesion metrics, with undesirable characteristics such as high coupling and low cohesion compromising software quality.
Analysis of New Four-Dimensional Chaotic Circuits with Experimental and numerical Methods

Dynamically qualitative properties of individual orbits in a new four-dimensional nonlinear circuit are observed on an oscilloscope. Meanwhile, they are also traced numerically with the help of some methods for finding chaos. Comparisons show that the observed results are consistent with the computed ones to a great extent. In addition, the bifurcation, Lyapunvon spectra, fast Lyapunov indicators and small alignment indexes represent almost the same rules of transitivity to chaos on a control parameter. It is found when the parameter has a threshold value from order to chaos, and the chaos gets stronger and stronger, the parameter is smoothly varied from small to large. In particular, the entire set of Lyapunov exponents can lead to another threshold value of the parameter from chaotic to hyperchaotic behaviors.
Modelling and Analysing Social Networks through Formal Methods and Heuristic Searches

: The paper presents a process algebraic approach to formal speciﬁcation and veriﬁcation of social networks. They are described using the Calculus of Communicating Systems and we reason and verify such formal systems by using directed model checking, which uses AI-inspired heuristic search strategies in order to improve model checking techniques.
PLNseq: a multivariate Poisson lognormal distribution for high‐throughput matched RNA‐sequencing read count data

High‐throughput RNA‐sequencing (RNA‐seq) technology provides an attractive platform for gene expression analysis. In many experimental settings, RNA‐seq read counts are measured from matched samples or taken from the same subject under multiple treatment conditions. The induced correlation therefore should be evaluated and taken into account in deriving tests of differential expression. We proposed a novel method ‘PLNseq’, which uses a multivariate Poisson lognormal distribution to model matched read count data. The correlation is directly modeled through Gaussian random effects, and inferences are made by likelihood methods. A three‐stage numerical algorithm is developed to estimate unknown parameters and conduct differential expression analysis. Results using simulated data demonstrate that our method performs reasonably well in terms of parameter estimation, DE analysis power, and robustness. PLNseq also has better control of FDRs than the benchmarks edgeR and DESeq2 in the situations where the correlation is different across the genes but can still be accurately estimated. Furthermore, direct evaluation of correlation through PLNseq enables us to develop a new and more powerful test for DE analysis. Application to a lung cancer study is provided to illustrate the practical utilities of our method. An R package implementing the method is also publicly available. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Lifelong Localization and Dynamic Map Estimation in Changing Environments

Robot localization systems typically assume that the environment is static, ignoring the dynamics inherent in most real world scenarios like parking lots, warehouses and even offices and households. In such environments the configuration of certain objects such as cars, goods, or furniture can change with time leading to inconsistent observations with respect to previously learned maps and thus decreasing the localization accuracy. In this paper we present a novel probabilistic approach to lifelong localization in changing environments, where the robot pose and the environment state are jointly estimated using a Rao-Blackwellized particle filter. To describe the environment, we utilize a hidden Markov model formulation. Exploiting several characteristics of this model, we can considerably speed up the estimation procedure. This makes it feasible to run our algorithm online. Experimental results obtained with a real robot in a dynamically changing environment demonstrate that our approach can reliably adapt to changes in the environment and that it significantly outperforms standard localization techniques.
Initial SARS Genome Data Analysis Using a Bioinformatics Platform

A dedicated anti-SARS bioinformatics web site was setup in April 2003 at the Centre of bioinformatics (CBI), Peking University (http://antisars.cbi.pku.edu.cn/). A special bioinformatics platform was constructed to analyse the sequence and structure data of SARS coronavirus and other viruses. A total file of 32 SARS coronavirus genome sequences was retrieved from GenBank and mismatches in 30 sites were revealed from the result of multiple sequence alignment. The SARS coronavirus genome sequences can be divided into three groups based on the phylogenetic analysis using the data set constructed from the sequence mismatches.
Value-Growth Investment Strategy: Evidence Based on the Residual Income Valuation Model

This paper explores whether a “value” investing strategy based upon different specifications of the residual income valuation model is riskier than a "growth" investing strategy. The paper motivates such an investigation by noting that, consistent with previous empirical work, the Ohlson (1995) model undervalues (overvalues) low (high) book-to-market stocks, whilst the Feltham-Ohlson model undervalues equities relative to stock market and that the valuation error is so high for low book-to-market stocks. However, the empirical research shows that the Choi et al. (2003) approach yields to overvaluation (undervaluation) problem for low (high) book-to-market stocks. The paper finds and concludes that the "rational school" proposed to explain the value effect is not satisfactory empirically.
Recent Advance on mean Shift Tracking: a Survey

Though there have been many applications of object tracking, ranging from surveillance and monitoring to smart rooms, object tracking is always a challenging problem in computer vision over the past decades. Mean Shift-based object tracking has received much attention because it has a great number of advantages over other object tracking algorithms, e.g. real time, robust and easy to implement. In this survey, we first introduce the basic principle of the Mean Shift algorithm and the working procedure using the Mean Shift algorithm to track the object. This paper then describes the defects and potential issues of the traditional Mean Shift algorithm. Finally, we summarize the improvements to the Mean Shift algorithm and some hybrid tracking algorithms that researchers have proposed. The main improvements include scale adaptation, kernel selection, on-line model updating, feature selection and mode optimization, etc.
Building microscopic soccer balls with evaporating colloidal fakir drops

Evaporation-driven particle self-assembly can be used to generate three-dimensional microstructures. We present a unique method to create colloidal microstructures in which we can control the amount of particles and their packing fraction. To this end, we evaporate colloidal dispersion droplets on a special type of superhydrophobic microstructured surface, on which the droplet remains in Cassie–Baxter state during the entire evaporative process. The remainders of the droplet consist of a massive spherical cluster of the microspheres, with diameters ranging from a few tens up to several hundreds of microns. We present scaling arguments to show how the final particle packing fraction of these balls depends on the dynamics of the droplet evaporation, particle size, and number of particles in the system.
Oral Dextrose Gel Reduces the Need for Intravenous Dextrose Therapy in Neonatal Hypoglycemia

Background: Newborn infants with risk factors may require intravenous (IV) dextrose for asymptomatic hypoglycemia. Administration of IV dextrose and transfer to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) may interfere with parent-infant bonding. Objective: To study the effect of implementing dextrose gel supplement with feeds in late preterm/term infants affected by asymptomatic hypoglycemia on reducing IV dextrose therapy. Method: A retrospective study was conducted before and after dextrose gel use: 05/01/2014 to 10/31/2014 and 11/01/2014 to 04/30/2015, respectively. Asymptomatic hypoglycemic (blood glucose level <45 mg/dl) infants in the newborn nursery (NBN) were given a maximum of 3 doses of dextrose gel (200 mg/kg of 40% dextrose) along with feeds. Transfer to the NICU for IV dextrose was considered treatment failure. Results: Dextrose gel with feeds increased the blood glucose level in 184/250 (74%) of asymptomatic hypoglycemic infants compared to 144/248 (58%) with feeds only (p < 0.01). Transfer from the NBN to the NICU for IV dextrose decreased from 35/1,000 to 25/1,000 live births (p < 0.01). Exclusive breastfeeding improved from 19 to 28% (p = 0.03). Conclusions: Use of dextrose gel with feeds reduced the need for IV fluids, avoided separation from the mother and promoted breastfeeding. Neonates who failed dextrose gel therapy were more likely to be large for gestational age, delivered by cesarean section and had lower baseline blood glucose levels.