Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blind Source Separation Using Modified Gaussian FastICA

This paper addresses the problem of source separation in images. We propose a FastICA algorithm employing a modified Gaussian contrast function for the Blind Source Separation. Experimental result shows that the proposed Modified Gaussian FastICA is effectively used for Blind Source Separation to obtain better quality images. In this paper, a comparative study has been made with other popular existing algorithms. The peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and improved signal to noise ratio (ISNR) are used as metrics for evaluating the quality of images. The ICA metric Amari error is also used to measure the quality of separation. Keywords—Amari error, Blind Source Separation, Contrast function, Gaussian function, Independent Component Analysis.
Brushlet Features for Texture Image Retrieval

In this paper, we employ a new adaptive basis of functions — brushlets for extracting texture properties. Brushlets are functions which are well localized with only one peak in the frequency domain. Hence, a representation of texture in terms of spatial frequency distributions can be constructed. The Brushlet features are used in texture image retrieval experiments to assess its effectiveness by comparing with retrieval results obtained using other commonly used wavelet and Gabor based representations. Experiments using the Brodatz texture database indicates that the brushlet features achieve a very good retrieval comparable to and slightly better than that using Gabor features and better than the wavelet features. The advantage of the brushlet features is that they require far less computation to extract than the Gabor features for achieving comparable performance.
Geospatial Relationships between Awareness and Utilization of Community Exercise Resources and Physical Activity Levels in Older Adults

Introduction. It is unclear if community-based fitness resources (CBFR) translate to heightened activity levels within neighboring areas. The purpose of this study was to determine whether awareness and utilization of fitness resources and physical activity differed depending on residential distance from CBFR. Methods. Four hundred and seventeen older adults (72.9 ± 7.7 years) were randomly recruited from three spatial tiers (≤1.6, >1.6 to ≤3.2, and >3.2 to 8.0 km) surrounding seven senior centers, which housed CBFR. Participants completed questionnaires on health history, CBFR, and physical activity, gathering data on CBFR awareness, utilization, and barriers, overall levels, and predictors to engagement in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Results. Across spatial tiers, there were no differences in positive awareness rates of CBFR or CBFR utilization. Engagement in MVPA differed across spatial tiers (P < 0.001), with the >3.2 to 8.0 km radius having the highest mean energy expenditure. Across all sites, age and income level (P < 0.05) were significant predictors of low and high amounts of MVPA, respectively, and current health status and lack of interest represented barriers to CBFR utilization (P < 0.05). Conclusion. Closer proximity to CBFR did not impact awareness or utilization rates and had an inverse relationship with physical activity.
Convergent Bounds on the Euclidean Distance

Given a set V of n vectors in d-dimensional space, we provide an efficient method for computing quality upper and lower bounds of the Euclidean distances between a pair of vectors in V. For this purpose, we define a distance measure, called the MS-distance, by using the mean and the standard deviation values of vectors in V. Once we compute the mean and the standard deviation values of vectors in V in O(dn) time, the MS-distance provides upper and lower bounds of Euclidean distance between any pair of vectors in V in constant time. Furthermore, these bounds can be refined further in such a way to converge monotonically to the exact Euclidean distance within d refinement steps. An analysis on a random sequence of refinement steps shows that the MS-distance provides very tight bounds in only a few refinement steps. The MS-distance can be used to various applications where the Euclidean distance is used to measure the proximity or similarity between objects. We provide experimental results on the nearest and the farthest neighbor searches.
Neuronal Nicotinic Synapse Assembly Requires the Adenomatous Polyposis Coli Tumor Suppressor Protein

Normal cognitive and autonomic functions require nicotinic synaptic signaling. Despite the physiological importance of these synapses, little is known about molecular mechanisms that direct their assembly during development. We show here that the tumor-suppressor protein adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) functions in localizing α3-nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) to neuronal postsynaptic sites. Our quantitative confocal microscopy studies indicate that APC is selectively enriched at cholinergic synapses; APC surface clusters are juxtaposed to synaptic vesicle clusters and colocalize with α3-nAChRs but not with the neighboring synaptic glycine receptors or perisynaptic α7-nAChRs on chick ciliary ganglion (CG) neurons. We identify PSD (postsynaptic density)-93, β-catenin, and microtubule end binding protein EB1 as APC binding partners. PSD-93 and β-catenin are also enriched at α3-nAChR postsynaptic sites. EB1 shows close proximity to and partial overlap with α3-nAChR and APC surface clusters. We tested the role of APC in neuronal nicotinic synapse assembly by using retroviral-mediated in vivo overexpression of an APC dominant-negative (APC-dn) peptide to block the interaction of endogenous APC with both EB1 and PSD-93 during synapse formation in CG neurons. The overexpressed APC-dn led to dramatic decreases in α3-nAChR surface levels and clusters. Effects were specific to α3-nAChR postsynaptic sites; synaptic glycine receptor and perisynaptic α7-nAChR clusters were not altered. In addition, APC-dn also reduced surface membrane-associated clusters of PSD-93 and EB1. The results show that APC plays a key role in organizing excitatory cholinergic postsynaptic specializations in CG neurons. We identify APC as the first nonreceptor protein to function in localizing nAChRs to neuronal synapses in vivo.
Contemporary Mathematics

The category of graded, bicommutative Hopf algebras over the prime eld with p elements is an abelian category which is equivalent, by work of Schoeller, to a category of graded modules, known as Dieudonn e modules. Graded ring objects in Hopf algebras are called Hopf rings, and they arise in the study of unstable cohomology operations for extraordinary cohomology theories. The central point of this paper is that Hopf rings can be studied by looking at the associated ring object in Dieudonn e modules. They can also be computed there, and because of the relationship between Brown-Gitler spectra and Dieudonn e modules, calculating the Hopf ring for a homology theory E comes down to computing E 2 S 3 { which Ravenel has done for E = BP. From this one recovers the work of Hopkins, Hunton, and Turner on the Hopf rings of Landweber exact cohomology theories. The are two major algebraic diiculties encountered in this approach. The rst is to decide what a ring object is in the category of Dieudonn e modules, as there is no obvious symmetric monoidal pairing associated to a tensor product of modules. The second is to show that Hopf rings pass to rings in Dieudonn e modules. This involves studying universal examples, and here we pick up an idea suggested by Bousseld: torsion-free Hopf algebras over the p-adic integers with some additional structure, such as a self-Hopf-algebra map that reduces to the Verschiebung, can be easily classiied. An abelian category A with a set of small projective generators is equivalent to a category M of modules over some ring R. In addition, if A and M are symmetric monoidal categories and the equivalence of categories A ! M respects the monoidal structure, one can study the ring objects in A by studying the ring objects in M. The purpose of this paper is to develop this observation in the case where A is the category HA + of graded, bicommutative Hopf algebras over the prime eld F p. The graded ring objects in HA + are called Hopf rings and they arise naturally when studying unstable cohomology operations for some cohomology theory E (see 2, 11, 21]). To state some results, x a prime p > 2. (A slight rewording gives the results at p = 2). We will restrict attention to the sort of Hopf algebra that arises in algebraic topology; …
A multiresolutionally oriented approach for determination of cepstral features in speech recognition

This paper presents an effort to provide a more efﬁcient speech signal representation, which aims to be incorporated into an automatic speech recognition system. Mo-diﬁed cepstral coefﬁcients, derived from a multiresolution auditory spectrum are proposed. The multiresolution spectrum was obtained using sliding single point discrete Fourier transformations. It is shown that the obtained spectrum values are similar to the results of a nonuniform ﬁltering operation. The presented cepstral features are evaluated by introducing them into a simple phone recognition system.
No association between asthma or allergy and the CCR5Δ 32 mutation

Aims: To investigate whether the presence of the CCR5Δ32 allele was associated with atopy or asthma. Methods: A total of 118 children with asthma, 145 children with non-asthmatic, but allergic phenotype, and 303 children without allergic or asthmatic disorders were studied. Results: There were no significant differences in the frequency of CCR5Δ32, or in the distributions of genotypes between the groups. The relative eosinophil blood count was slightly lower in patients with heterozygous genotype, than in patients with wild type genotype. Conclusion: No association was found between the susceptibility of allergy or asthma and the functional deficient CCR5Δ32 allele.
Making good choices of non-redundant n-gramwords

A new complete proposal to solve the problem of automatically selecting good and non redundant n-gram words as attributes for textual data is proposed. Generally, the use of n-gram words is required to improve the subjective interpretability of a text mining task, with n ges 2. In these cases, the n-gram words are statistically generated and selected, which always implies in redundancy. The proposed method eliminates only the redundancies. This can be observed by the results of classifiers over the original and the non redundant data sets, because, there is not a decrease in the categorization effectiveness. Additionally, the method is useful for any kind of machine learning process applied to a text mining task.
Incorporating Latent Semantic Indexing into Spectral Graph Transducer for Text Classification

Spectral Graph Transducer(SGT) is one of the superior graph-based transductive learning methods for classification. As for the Spectral Graph Transducer algorithm, a good graph representation for data to be processed is very important. In this paper, we try to incorporate Latent Semantic Indexing(LSI) into SGT for text classification. Firstly, we exploit LSI to represent documents as vectors in a latent semantic space since we propose that the documents and their semantic relationships can be reflected more pertinently in this latent semantic space. Then, a graph needed by SGT is constructed. In the graph, a node corresponds to a vector from LSI. Finally, we apply the graph to Spectral Graph Transducer for text classification. The experiments gave us excellent results on both English and Chinese text classification datasets and demonstrated the validation of our assumption.
Among Students' Internal Factors, Should Motivation be Used as One of Recruitmen for Admission of Medical Students in Indonesia?

Background: Indonesia medical education recruitment system recruits students directly from high school who had been influenced by mostly teacher centered learning. As part of pedagogical approach in higher education, those students will be obligatory to learn independently and effectively. Self-directed learning (SDL) is an important aspect in latest medical educational evidence which would determine students’ successfulness in learning. Self-directed learning readiness (SDLRS) is influenced by several factors including motivation, age, culture, and previous education experience. Today, the admission process in Indonesia is based on knowledge-test based only. This study aims to reveal correlation between several factors which influence students’ Self Directed Learning Readiness (SDLRS). Methods: This study used SDLRS questionnaire as a valid and reliable toll to measure the students’ self directed learning readiness and correlate with those several factors. Result: From 540 distributed questionnaires, 412 questionnaires returned back. The Spearman correlation showed significant ratio between students SDLRS score and students’ motivation. While, the analysis on age showed that age of 20 has significant ratio with students’ SDLRS score. Conclusion: among age, previous education experience, and culture; students’ internal motivation should be considered as important factor for students’ SDLRS which will determine their successfulness in learning in medical education. These factors should be regarded as one requirement of students’ admission in medical education.
On the Global Linear Convergence of Frank-Wolfe Optimization Variants

The Frank-Wolfe (FW) optimization algorithm has lately re-gained popularity thanks in particular to its ability to nicely handle the structured constraints appearing in machine learning applications. However, its convergence rate is known to be slow (sublinear) when the solution lies at the boundary. A simple less-known fix is to add the possibility to take 'away steps' during optimization, an operation that importantly does not require a feasibility oracle. In this paper, we highlight and clarify several variants of the Frank-Wolfe optimization algorithm that have been successfully applied in practice: away-steps FW, pairwise FW, fully-corrective FW and Wolfe's minimum norm point algorithm, and prove for the first time that they all enjoy global linear convergence, under a weaker condition than strong convexity of the objective. The constant in the convergence rate has an elegant interpretation as the product of the (classical) condition number of the function with a novel geometric quantity that plays the role of a 'condition number' of the constraint set. We provide pointers to where these algorithms have made a difference in practice, in particular with the flow polytope, the marginal polytope and the base polytope for submodular optimization.
Optimizing rules placement in OpenFlow networks: trading routing for better efficiency

The idea behind Software Defined Networking (SDN) is to conceive the network as one programmable entity rather than a set of devices to manually configure, and OpenFlow meets this objective. In OpenFlow, a centralized programmable controller installs rules onto switches to implement policies. However, this flexibility comes at the expense of extra overhead as the number of rules might exceed the memory capacity of switches, which raises the question of how to place most profitable rules on board. Solutions proposed so far strictly impose paths to be followed inside the network. We advocate instead that we can trade routing requirements within the network to concentrate on where to forward traffic, not how to do it. As an illustration of the concept, we propose an optimization problem that gets the maximum amount of traffic delivered according to policies and the actual dimensioning of the network. The traffic that cannot be accommodated is forwarded to the controller that has the capacity to process it further. We also demonstrate that our approach permits a better utilization of scarce resources in the network.
Interactional Modifications for Comprehensible Input: A Case Study of Two EFL Teachers

This study aims to investigate the use of interactional modifications proposed by Long (1982) by two English teachers and language learning opportunities obtained. The study found out the distribution and the form of interactional modification in two different levels of English proficiency, elementary and pre-intermediate. To answer the research questions, case study was adopted. The main data were six transcribed classroom interactions of six sessions with audio-video recording. From the analysis, it was found that elementary teacher modified more interactions compared to pre-intermediate teacher due to less capability of lower student to comprehend the information delivered. The form of interactional modification used was other-repetition strategy, where both of the teachers repeated student`s utterances frequently in order to clarify, confirm, or emphasize the initial utterances. Besides, the occurrences of interactional modifications were considered to be determined by several factors, such as student`s level of proficiency, material delivered, and teacher`s knowledge. As for the question of language learning opportunities, the findings revealed by modifying the interactions there were gap noticing where the teacher noticed the mistakes of student`s language used by bringing that gap into awareness. Besides, modified interactions also gave the student the chance for meaning negotiation where the understanding of information was obtained through resolving the communication breakdown in the classroom. Therefore, it is paramount for teachers to acknowledge, believe, and aware that modified interaction is important not only to provide comprehensible input but also to make student comprehend the information and are triggered to be able to participate in the conversations.
Peripheral Developer Participation in Open Source Projects

The success of the Open Source model of software development depends on the voluntary participation of external developers (the peripheral developers), a group that can have distinct motivations from that of project founders (the core developers). In this study, we examine peripheral developer participation by empirically examining approximately 2,600 open source projects. In particular, we hypothesize that peripheral developer participation is higher when the potential for building reputation by gaining recognition from project stakeholders is higher. We consider recognition by internal stakeholders (such as core developers) and external stakeholders (such as end-users and peers). We find a positive association between peripheral developer participation and the potential of stakeholder recognition after controlling for bug reports, feature requests, and other key factors. Our findings provide important insights for OSS founders and corporate managers for open sourcing or OSS adoption decisions.
Cardiac β2-Adrenergic Receptor Phosphorylation at Ser355/356 Regulates Receptor Internalization and Functional Resensitization

Previous studies have demonstrated that β2-adrenergic receptors (β2ARs) can be phosphorylated by G protein-coupled receptor kinases (GRKs) and protein kinase A (PKA), affecting β2AR internalization and desensitization. However, the exact physiological function of β2ARs in cardiomyocytes is unknown. In this study, we showed that neonatal mouse cardiomyocytes had different contraction and internalization responses to sustained or repeated, transient agonist stimulation. Specifically, short-time stimulation (10 min) with epinephrine or norepinephrine increased the cardiomyocyte contraction rate, reaching a maximum at 5 min, followed by a slow decline. When the agonist was re-added after a 60-min wash-out period, the increase in the cardiomyocyte contraction rate was similar to the initial response. In contrast, when cardiomyocytes were exposed continuously to epinephrine or norepinephrine for 60 min, the second agonist stimulation did not increase the contraction response. These results indicated that continuous β2AR stimulation caused functional desensitization. Phosphorylation of β2ARs at serine (Ser)355/356 GRK phosphorylation sites, but not at Ser345/346 PKA phosphorylation sites increased with continuous epinephrine stimulation for 60 min. Accordingly, β2AR internalization increased. Interestingly, β2AR internalization was blocked by mutations at the GRK phosphorylation sites, but not by mutations at the PKA phosphorylation sites. Furthermore, inhibition of β2AR dephosphorylation by okadaic acid, a phosphatase 2A inhibitor, impaired the recovery of internalized β2ARs and reduced the cardiomyocyte contraction rate in response to epinephrine. Finally, epinephrine treatment induced the physical interaction of β-arrestin with internalized β2ARs in cardiomyocytes. Together, these data revealed the essential role of the Ser355/356 phosphorylation status of β2ARs in regulating receptor internalization and physiological resensitization in neonatal cardiomyocytes to contraction functions.
The 3D interactive visit to Piazza dei Miracoli, Italy

This paper present an innovative VR application where the users, guided through structured narrative paths, are able to explore the space and the history of Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa. The application was realized in the course of a research project whose objective was to create a complete multimedia system related to the renowned monumental complex. In order to be accessible from a wide audience, the application is hosted in a dedicated website. Several optimization techniques and a novel state-of-the-art 3D web technology were used to take in account issues related to VR real-time constraints and the limited web bandwidth.
Exploring the processes of change facilitated by musical activities on mental wellness

ABSTRACT While the benefits of music to people’s mental health have long been recognized, the process of how it works requires further investigation. This paper is based on the results of a community-based music project offered to a group of mental health service users by a Hong Kong social service centre. A six-dimensional framework, which contains emotional, psychological, social, cognitive, behavioural and spiritual dimensions, is constructed for understanding how musical activities may produce benefits for mental health service users. Through conducting 23 interview sessions with the participants (N = 47) this study examines the processes of change within musical activities. The participants suffered from mental health problems including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Feedback was solicited from them by listening to their first-hand experiences as service users of the musical activities. Recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed to generate themes that correspond to the six dimensions the researchers proposed. This study shows that the clinical effects elicited by the musical activities described fit closely with the needs of mental health service users. Its findings suggest that community-based musical activities have clear potential for supporting mental health service users in recovery, which deserve further promotion.
Race-Specific Perceptual Discrimination Improvement Following Short Individuation Training With Faces

This study explores the effect of individuation training on the acquisition of race-specific expertise. First, we investigated whether practice individuating other-race faces yields improvement in perceptual discrimination for novel faces of that race. Second, we asked whether there was similar improvement for novel faces of a different race for which participants received equal practice, but in an orthogonal task that did not require individuation. Caucasian participants were trained to individuate faces of one race (African American or Hispanic) and to make difficult eye-luminance judgments on faces of the other race. By equating these tasks we are able to rule out raw experience, visual attention, or performance/success-induced positivity as the critical factors that produce race-specific improvements. These results indicate that individuation practice is one mechanism through which cognitive, perceptual, and/or social processes promote growth of the own-race face recognition advantage.