Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Duality Of Multiple Target Tracking and Segmentation

Traditionally, object tracking and segmentation are treated as two separate problems and solved independently. However, in this paper, we argue that tracking and segmentation are actually closely related and solving one should help the other. On one hand, the object track, which is a set of bounding boxes with one bounding box in every frame, would provide strong high-level guidance for the target/background segmentation task. On the other hand, the object segmentation would separate object from other objects and background, which will be useful for determining track locations in every frame. We propose a novel framework which combines online multiple target tracking and segmentation in a video. In our approach, the tracking and segmentation problems are coupled by Lagrange dual decomposition, which leads to more accurate segmentation results and also \emph{helps resolve typical difficulties in multiple target tracking, such as occlusion handling, ID-switch and track drifting}. To track targets, an individual appearance model is learned for each target via structured learning and network flow is employed to generate tracks from densely sampled candidates. For segmentation, multi-label Conditional Random Field (CRF) is applied to a superpixel based spatio-temporal graph in a segment of video to assign background or target labels to every superpixel. The experiments on diverse sequences show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches for multiple target tracking as well as segmentation.
From tag to task: Coming to grips with bilingual control issues

The recent trend in psycholinguistics from autonomous, rule-oriented models with symbolic representations towards more interactive, regularity oriented, and subsymbolic models reflects an increasing awareness that the finer aspects of cognitive processing may be sensitive to “contextual factors. ” Apparently, there is systematic variability in the data that depends on task demands and stimulus list composition, and their effect on the strategies and decision criteria maintained by the experimental subject. However, most current (computational) models at best embody a task-independent stimulus identification process with a simple decision process operating in the same rigid manner across different tasks (Dijkstra & de Smedt, 1996).
The sexually dimorphic on the Y-chromosome gene (sdY) is a conserved male-specific Y-chromosome sequence in many salmonids

All salmonid species investigated to date have been characterized with a male heterogametic sex‐determination system. However, as these species do not share any Y‐chromosome conserved synteny, there remains a debate on whether they share a common master sex‐determining gene. In this study, we investigated the extent of conservation and evolution of the rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) master sex‐determining gene, sdY (sexually dimorphic on the Y‐chromosome), in 15 different species of salmonids. We found that the sdY sequence is highly conserved in all salmonids and that sdY is a male‐specific Y‐chromosome gene in the majority of these species. These findings demonstrate that most salmonids share a conserved sex‐determining locus and also strongly suggest that sdY may be this conserved master sex‐determining gene. However, in two whitefish species (subfamily Coregoninae), sdY was found both in males and females, suggesting that alternative sex‐determination systems may have also evolved in this family. Based on the wide conservation of sdY as a male‐specific Y‐chromosome gene, efficient and easy molecular sexing techniques can now be developed that will be of great interest for studying these economically and environmentally important species.
Cerebellar gene expression profiling and eQTL analysis in inbred mouse strains selected for ethanol sensitivity.

BACKGROUND Inbred Long-Sleep (ILS) and Inbred Short-Sleep (ISS) mice exhibit striking differences in a number of alcohol and drug related behaviors. This study examined the expression levels of more than 39,000 transcripts in these strains in the cerebellum, a major target of ethanol's actions in the CNS, to find differentially expressed (DE) candidate genes for these phenotypes. METHODS Genes that were differentially expressed between the strains were identified using oligonucleotide arrays as well as complimentary DNA arrays. Sequence alignment was used to locate DE genes in the mouse genome assembly. In silico expression QTL (eQTL) mapping was used to identify chromosomal regions likely to control the transcription level of DE genes, and the EASE program identified overrepresented functional themes. The genomic region immediately upstream of the cyclase associated protein homolog 1 (Cap1) gene was directly sequenced from PCR products. RESULTS Nearly 300 genes were identified as differentially expressed between the cerebella of ILS and ISS. These genes and their corresponding eQTLs map to genomic regions linked to several phenotypes that differ between the ILS and ISS strains, including ethanol preference and cocaine-induced locomotor activation on Chromosomes 4 and 7 respectively. Eight genes were cross-platform validated, four of which are more highly expressed in ILS cerebellum. Three SNPs, one of which disrupts a predicted Sp1 binding site, were found in the upstream region of Cap1, a strong candidate for influencing ethanol phenotypes. CONCLUSIONS Many of these DE genes are candidates to influence ethanol and drug regulated phenotypes because they either map to ethanol related QTLs in the genome or are linked to them through eQTL mapping. Genes involved in calcium ion binding and transcriptional regulation are overrepresented and therefore these gene classes may influence ethanol behaviors in mice and humans.
Nanoengineered Particles for Enhanced Intra‐Articular Retention and Delivery of Proteins

Localized intra-articular delivery of anti-inflammatory proteins can reduce inflammation in osteoarthritis but poses a challenge because of raid clearance within few hours of injection. A new class of polymer is developed that forms self-assembled nanoparticles ranging from 300 to 900 nm and demonstrates particle size dependent prolonged retention in intra-articular joint spaces compared to bolus protein over a period of 14 d.
Robust repetitive control by Sampled-data H∞ filters

In this article, we study digital repetitive control to track continuous-time periodic references. Sampled-data control gives a very natural platform for studying digital repetitive control, and in particular, sampled-data H∞ filtering is particularly suitable for this. The link is provided by introducing internal model control. This leads to a close connection between robust repetitive control and sampled-data H∞ noise reduction, or regularization. With this connection, it becomes possible to employ a variety of filtering techniques, such as multirate filtering, for robust digital repetitive control. Design examples show the effectiveness of our method in robustness in digital repetitive control.
The topological approach to perceptual organization

To address the fundamental question of “what are the primitives of visual perception”, a theory of topological structure and functional hierarchy in visual perception has been proposed. This holds that the global nature of perceptual organization can be described in terms of topological invariants, global topological perception is prior to the perception of other featural properties, and the primitives of visual form perception are geometric invariants at different levels of structural stability. In Part I of this paper, I will illustrate why and how the topological approach to perceptual organization has been advanced. In Part II, I will provide empirical evidence supporting the early topological perception, while answering some commonly considered counteraccounts. In Part III, to complete the theory, I will apply the mathematics of tolerance spaces to describe global properties in discrete sets. In Part IV, I will further present experimental data to demonstrate the global-to-local functional hierarchy in form perception, which is stratified with respect to structural stability defined by Klein's Erlangen Program. Finally, in Part V, I will discuss relations of the global-to-local topological model to other theories: The topological approach reformulates both classical Gestalt holism and Gibson's direct perception of invariance, while providing a challenge to computational approaches to vision based on the local-to-global assumption.
Nephronectin regulates atrioventricular canal differentiation via Bmp4-Has2 signaling in zebrafish

The extracellular matrix is crucial for organogenesis. It is a complex and dynamic component that regulates cell behavior by modulating the activity, bioavailability and presentation of growth factors to cell surface receptors. Here, we determined the role of the extracellular matrix protein Nephronectin (Npnt) in heart development using the zebrafish model system. The vertebrate heart is formed as a linear tube in which myocardium and endocardium are separated by a layer of extracellular matrix termed the cardiac jelly. During heart development, the cardiac jelly swells at the atrioventricular (AV) canal, which precedes valve formation. Here, we show that Npnt expression correlates with this process. Morpholino-mediated knockdown of Npnt prevents proper valve leaflet formation and trabeculation and results in greater than 85% lethality at 7 days post-fertilization. The earliest observed phenotype is an extended tube-like structure at the AV boundary. In addition, the expression of myocardial genes involved in cardiac valve formation (cspg2, fibulin 1, tbx2b, bmp4) is expanded and endocardial cells along the extended tube-like structure exhibit characteristics of AV cells (has2, notch1b and Alcam expression, cuboidal cell shape). Inhibition of has2 in npnt morphants rescues the endocardial, but not the myocardial, expansion. By contrast, reduction of BMP signaling in npnt morphants reduces the ectopic expression of myocardial and endocardial AV markers. Taken together, our results identify Npnt as a novel upstream regulator of Bmp4-Has2 signaling that plays a crucial role in AV canal differentiation.
Exploring Experiences of Running an Ultramarathon

The overall purpose of this study was to examine individuals’ experiences of running an ultramarathon. Following pilot work data were collected with six people who entered the 2012 Canadian Death Race. Participants were interviewed before the race, took photographs and made video recordings during the race, wrote a summary of their experience, and attended a focus group after the race. The research team also interviewed participants during the race. Before the race participants had mixed emotions. During the race they experienced numerous stressors (i.e., cramping and injuries, gastrointestinal problems, and thoughts about quitting). They used coping strategies such as making small goals, engaging in a mental/physical battle, monitoring pace, nutrition, and hydration, and social support. After the race, nonfinishers experienced dejection or acceptance whereas finishers commented on the race as a major life experience. These findings provide some insights into factors involved in attempting to complete ult.
Artificial Scientists & Artists Based on the Formal Theory of Creativity

I have argued that a simple but general formal theory of creativity explains many essential aspects of intelligence including science, art, music, humor. It is based on the concept of maximizing reward for the creation or discovery of novel patterns allowing for improved data compression or prediction. Here I discuss what kind of general bias towards algorithmic regularities we insert into our robots by implementing the principle, why that bias is good, and how the approach greatly generalizes the field of active learning. I emphasize the importance of limited computational resources for online prediction and compression, and provide discrete and continuous time formulations for ongoing work on building an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) based on variants of the artificial creativity framework.
Trust and Security on Semantic HIM (Health Information Management)

Information technology have changed information media by networking and internet using technology in health as same as another part improve efficiency and effectiveness. Currently, the medical document is reality-based medicine, so that is the most important, richest and the most realistic source of medical and health information. Health information management systems that require systems to the storage, retrieval, storage and elimination of health records (by law), and adjust to the rules of professional. These processes are difficult and time consuming for human. In the meantime semantic HIM seem best solution.
Severe diffuse lamellar keratitis after femtosecond lamellar keratectomy

Retinitis pigmentosa is a genetically heterogeneous group of progressive retinal degenerations.1 Autosomal recessive retinitis pigmentosa caused by mutations in the gene encoding the β-subunit of rod photoreceptor cyclic guanosine monophosphate-phosphodiesterase (PDE6B) was one of the first forms to be identified, and there are well-studied murine and canine animal models as well as proof-of-concept success of somatic gene therapy.1–4 Rapid rod photoreceptor degeneration in the animal models is complicated by morphological changes involving the inner retina.5,6 It is unknown, however, whether the human form of retinitis pigmentosa is also complicated by retinal remodelling; the answer could have implications for treatment potential. We used optical coherence tomography (OCT) to study the retina of a patient with retinitis pigmentosa with a known PDE6B null mutation,7 and found there was abnormal laminar architecture suggesting retinal remodelling. A 25-year-old woman with retinitis pigmentosa was homozygous for the Cys270X mutation in PDE6B . There was no rod function and only severely impaired cone function.7 At 34 years of age, …
HR in the Crossfire: An Exploration into the Role of Human Resources and Workplace Bullying

The aim of this study was to examine the prevalence of workplace bullying among Human Resource (HR) professionals and to explore whether such abuse may be related to their role at work. The study was a mixed-method project consisting of a quantitative survey extended to 1,845 members of the Kentucky Society for Human Resource Management (Kentucky SHRM) professional group and 28 follow up interviews typically lasting between 45 to 60 minutes. Of the 102 Kentucky SHRM professionals completing the study, 31.4% reported that they had been bullied at work. The bullying behaviors included verbal abuse (33.3%), offensive conduct (24.2%), and work interference or sabotage (42.4%). The negative acts occurred frequently, with more than 60% indicating that these bullying behaviors were directed toward them on a daily (24.4%) or weekly (39.4%) basis. Although the prevalence rate was within the ranges reported by other surveys of employees atlarge, an important finding is that a majority of the bullied participants (54.1%) felt that the abuse was in some way related to their role as an HR practitioner. As a result, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 HR professionals to further explore this issue.
OpenMP extensions for FPGA accelerators

Reconfigurable computing is one of the paths to explore towards low-power supercomputing. However, programming these reconfigurable devices is not an easy task and still requires significant research and development efforts to make it really productive. In addition, the use of these devices as accelerators in multicore, SMPs and ccNUMA architectures adds an additional level of programming complexity in order to specify the offloading of tasks to reconfigurable devices and the interoperability with current shared-memory programming paradigms such as OpenMP. This paper presents extensions to OpenMP 3.0 that try to address this second challenge and an implementation in a prototype runtime system. With these extensions the programmer can easily express the offloading of an already existing reconfigurable binary code (bitstream) hiding all the complexities related with device configuration, bitstream loading, data arrangement and movement to the device memory. Our current prototype implementation targets the SGI Altix systems with RASC blades (based on the Virtex 4 FPGA). We analyze the overheads introduced in this implementation and propose a hybrid host/device operational mode to hide some of these overheads, significantly improving the performance of the applications. A complete evaluation of the system is done with a matrix multiplication kernel, including an estimation considering different FPGA frequencies.
Short-term and long-term effects of serial bronchoalveolar lavages in a nonhuman primate model.

Bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) has gained widespread use as a tool for investigating human lung diseases. In certain cases, it can be useful to obtain BAL material in a serial manner. There is convincing evidence from experimental and clinical studies that BAL can cause influx of neutrophils into the bronchoalveolar space. However, conflicting data have been reported on whether this side effect of BAL also affects previously nonlavaged lung areas. In addition, there is little information available on whether multiple repetitive BAL procedures cause damage to lung tissue. To reexamine the short-term effects of serial BAL procedures, the left lung of 10 cynomolgus monkeys was lavaged with five 20-ml aliquots of saline four times at 24-h intervals (Group A). 72 h after the initial BAL, the right lung was lavaged as a control. The percentage of neutrophils increased significantly (p < 0.05), with the greatest effect seen at 48 h (30.7 +/- 5.8 versus 0.8 +/- 0.3%, mean +/- SEM). No significant changes were observed in the control BAL of the right lung at 72 h. A multidisciplinary approach was used to assess the long-term effects of multiple BAL procedures. BAL was performed 14 times over 26 mo at 2-mo intervals (Group B, n = 5). The right lung was lavaged as a control 25 mo after the initial BAL. In addition to standard cellular BAL parameters, the concentrations of fibronectin, procollagen III amino-terminal peptide-related antigen, total phospholipids, and lactate dehydrogenase activity were measured. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Real-Time Scheduling for Parallel Task Models on Multi-core Processors - A critical review"

Multi-core processor technology has been enhanced spectacularly and it is reasonably good in performance than single core processors thereby having the potential to enable computation-intensive real-time applications with precise timing constraints. Mostly traditional multiprocessor real-time scheduling is stick to Sequential models which ignore intra-task parallelism while Parallel models such as OpenMP have the capability to parallelize specific segments of tasks, thereby leading to shorter response times when possible. In this paper various research papers have been reviewed and are categorized as Sequential Real-Time Task based Research and Parallel Real-Time Task based Research. Also various approaches such as task splitting techniques, scheduling policies and techniques used are considered for comparing real time task scheduling in multi-core processors .
Roads Impact on Poverty Reduction A Cameroon Case Study

Many investments in infrastructure are built on the belief that they will ineluctably lead to poverty reduction and income generation. This entai led massive aid-financed projects, especially for the transport sector in developing c ountries. However the lack of robust evaluations raises the issue of a "one-size-fit-all " approach: Investing uniformly in Africa is likely to have a lower impact on poverty than expec ted. We use the second Cameroonian national household survey (Enquête Camerounaise Aup rès des Ménages II, 2001) to address this question. Isolation from a tarred road is foun d to have no direct impact on consumption expenditures but a significant indirect one lies in the access to labor activities. Considering that diversification outside the agricultural secto r is the main driver for poverty reduction in rural Africa, our results contribute to the idea th t emphasis on roads investment should be given to locations where non-farming activities cou ld be developed.
A Power Variance Test for Nonstationarity in Complex-Valued Signals

We propose a novel algorithm for testing the hypothesis of nonstationarity in complex-valued signals. The implementation uses both the bootstrap and the Fast Fourier Transform such that the algorithm can be efficiently implemented in O(NlogN) time, where N is the length of the observed signal. The test procedure examines the second-order structure and contrasts the observed power variance -- i.e. the variability of the instantaneous variance over time -- with the expected characteristics of stationary signals generated via the bootstrap method. Our algorithmic procedure is capable of learning different types of nonstationarity, such as jumps or strong sinusoidal components. We illustrate the utility of our test and algorithm through application to turbulent flow data from fluid dynamics.
Parasites infecting the cultured oyster Crassostrea gasar (Adanson, 1757) in Northeast Brazil

SUMMARY The oyster Crassostrea gasar is a species widely used as food and a source of income for the local population of the estuaries of Northeast Brazil. Perkinsus marinus and Perkinsus olseni are deleterious parasites for oyster farming and were recently detected in Brazil. In this study, a histopathologic survey of the oyster C. gasar cultured in the estuary of the River Mamanguape (Paraíba State) was performed. Adult oysters were collected in December 2011 and March, May, August and October 2012 and processed for histology and Perkinsus sp. identification by molecular analyses. Histopathological analysis revealed the presence of parasitic organisms including viral gametocytic hypertrophy, prokaryote-like colonies, protozoans (Perkinsus sp. and Nematopsis sp.) and metazoans (Tylocephalum sp. and cestodes). Other commensal organisms were also detected (the protozoan Ancistrocoma sp. and the turbellarian Urastoma sp.). The protozoan parasite Perkinsus sp. had the highest overall prevalence among the symbiotic organisms studied (48·9%), followed by Nematopsis sp. (36·3%). The other organisms were only sporadically observed. Only the protozoan Perkinsus sp. caused alterations in the oysters’ infected organs. Molecular analyses confirmed the presence of P. marinus, P. olseni and Perkinsus beihaiensis infecting the oyster C. gasar. This is the first report of P. beihaiensis in this oyster species.
VALIDATING A COMPREHENSIVE MODEL FOR ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKING USE:INITIAL RESULTS

While there are a number of studies that investigate the impetus for and impact of online social networking, there are fewer studies that attempt to formulate and test a truly comprehensive model of what influences people to use social networking sites. This study builds on a previous study of Midwestern U.S. college-aged individuals, through significant expansion of the number of variables investigated, as well as a re- conceptualization of their interrelationships. This paper describes the conceptual model and gives results from a new survey, repeated from the same general population. These results suggest that individuals' desire to get information, and their enjoyment of social networking sites significantly influence both their decision to use such sites, and the intensity with which the sites are utilized. Web experience and social norms are also identified as significant influences on usage. Privacy and trust concerns appear to be eclipsed by the enjoyment and desire to get information from social networking. This research should add to our understanding of who uses social networking and why, as well as identify areas for further research.