Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extended Source Effects in Substructure Lensing

We investigate the extended source size effects on gravitational lensing in which a lens consists of a smooth potential and small mass clumps ("substructure lensing"). We first consider a lens model that consists of a clump modeled as a singular isothermal sphere (SIS) and a primary lens modeled as an external background shear and convergence. For this simple model, we derive analytic formulae for (de)magnification of circularly symmetric top-hat sources with three types of parity for their lensed images, namely, positive, negative, and doubly negative parities. Provided that the source size is sufficiently larger than the Einstein radius of the SIS, we find that in the positive (doubly negative) parity case, an extended source is always magnified (demagnified) in comparison with the unperturbed macrolens system, whereas in the negative parity case, the (de)magnification effect, which depends on the sign of convergence minus unity, is weaker than those in other parities. It is shown that a measurement of the distortion pattern in a multiply lensed image enables us to break the degeneracy between the lensing effects of clump mass and those of clump distance if the lensing parameters of the relevant macrolens model are determined from the position and flux of multiple images. We also show that an actual density profile of a clump can be directly measured by analyzing the "fine structure" in a multiply lensed image within the Einstein radius of the clump.
Effect of PM10 on Human Spermatozoa: An In Vitro Study

This study was aimed at evaluating the in vitro effects of particulate matter (ranging from 2.5-10 � m in an aerodynamic diameter, PM10) from an urban area on the motility of human spermatozoa. Samples of swim up selected human spermatozoa from three healthy men with normal semen parameters, according to WHO guidelines, were incubated for 4 hours with 10, 50 and 75 μg/ml of PM10. Kinetic parameters were evaluated with Computer-Assisted Sperm Analysis (CASA) and the presence of apoptosis and necrosis was assessed by AnnexinV/Propidium iodide assay. Data was statistically elaborated. Incubation of sperm with 10 � g/ml PM10 for 4 hours did not affect sperm motility. On the contrary, a decrease in progressive motility was evident at 50 � g/ml and 75 � g/ml PM10. Among the kinetic parameters assessed with CASA system, the linearity variable was significantly lower in sperm treated with 50 � g/ml and 75 � g/ml PM10 vs controls (P<0.0001) and the amplitude of the lateral head displacement variable was significantly higher in sperm treated with 50 � g/ml vs controls (P=0.0211). A substantial increase in necrosis, in up to 30% of sperm, was evident only in samples treated with 75 � g/ml PM10. In conclusion, this preliminary study could indicate that PM10 is not potentially harmful to spermatozoa in vitro, except above a very high threshold (50-75 μg/ml) that is difficult to reach in vivo and that motility and viability are only partially affected.
Integration of evidence-based practice in bedside teaching paediatrics supported by e-learning.

BACKGROUND Bedside teaching with evidence-based practice elements, supported by e-learning activities, can play an important role in modern medical education. Teachers have to incorporate evidence from the medical literature to increase student motivation and interactivity. MATERIALS AND METHODS An integral part of the medical curricula at Palacky University Olomouc (Czech Republic) are real paediatric scenarios supplemented with a review of current literature to enhance evidence-based bedside teaching & learning. Searching for evidence is taught through librarian-guided interactive hands-on sessions and/or web-based tutorials followed by clinical case presentations and feedback. RESULTS Innovated EBM paediatric clerkship demonstrated students' preferences towards web-based interactive bedside teaching & learning. In two academic years (2007/2008, 2008/2009), learning-focused feedback from 106 and 131 students, resp. was obtained about their attitudes towards evidence-based bedside teaching. The assessment included among others the overall level of instruction, quality of practical evidence-based training, teacher willingness and impact of instruction on increased interest in the specialty. There was some criticism about excessive workload. A parallel survey was carried out on the perceived values of different forms of information skills training (i.e. demonstration, online tutorials, and librarian-guided interactive search sessions) and post-training self-reported level of search skills. CONCLUSION The new teaching/learning paediatric portfolio is a challenge for further activities, including effective knowledge translation, continuing medical & professional development of teachers, and didactic, clinically integrated teaching approaches.
People’s Naiveté About How Extrinsic Rewards Influence Intrinsic Motivation.

Despite the voluminous empirical research on the harmful effects of extrinsic incentives (e.g., money, competition prizes, etc.) on people’s intrinsic motivation (“undermining effect”), our society is still reliant upon the use of extrinsic incentives to motivate people. To better understand the reason underlying this theory-practice gap, the current study examined people’s beliefs about how extrinsic incentives influence recipients’ intrinsic motivation. Participants were presented with a description of a previous experiment which demonstrated the undermining effect, and were asked to make a prediction about the results of the experiment. The findings showed that the majority of participants firmly, but wrongly believed in the beneficial effects of reward on intrinsic motivation and did so with greater confidence. This inaccurate belief about motivation may play a role in the current, frequent use of extrinsic incentives in our society, and the current study suggests the importance of targeting stakeholders’ beliefs in intervention research.
Glycolytic enzyme binding and metabolic control in estivation and anoxia in the land snail Otala lactea

Summary The mechanisms controlling glycolytic rate were examined in foot muscle of the terrestrial snail Otala lactea (Miiller) (Pulmonata, Helicidae), during short and long periods of estivation and anoxia. Binding associations between glycolytic enzymes and the particulate fraction of the cell were assessed in both states. The percentage of enzyme activity bound to particulate matter decreased significantly over the short term (4 days estivation and 14.5 h anoxia); significant changes were seen for hexokinase (HK), phosphofructokinase (PFK), aldolase and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in estivation and, for these enzymes plus triosephosphate isomerase and pyruvate kinase (PK), in anoxia. Over the longer term in estivation (22 days) and anoxia (45 h), enzyme binding returned to control values. Tissue content of fructose-2,6-bisphosphate, a potent phosphofructokinase activator, decreased under all experimental conditions. Total glycogen phosphorylase activity decreased during short-term anoxia (14.5 h) and during long-term estivation (22 days), but the percentage of the active a form decreased significantly during anoxia only. Significant changes in the maximal activities of several enzymes were observed during both estivation and anoxia. Decreases in the maximal activity of HK, PFK, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) and LDH were observed during long-term estivation. Increases in PGK and PK maximal activity in short-term anoxia and aldolase and PGK in long-term anoxia were also observed. These results suggest that changes in glycolytic enzyme binding may be part of an immediate mechanism used to cause a rapid decrease in glycolytic flux and initiate glycolytic rate depression, which also includes a reduction of fructose-2,6-bisphosphate content and decreased glycogen phosphorylase activity. In the long term, however, control of snail glycolytic rate is reorganized, so that enzyme binding associations revert to the control values. In the long term, then, control is mediated by lower fructose2,6-bisphosphate concentrations and, during estivation, also by a decrease in maximal enzyme activities.
Suitability of Pharmacokinetic Models for Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MRI of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Vessel Wall: A Comparison

Purpose Increased microvascularization of the abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) vessel wall has been related to AAA progression and rupture. The aim of this study was to compare the suitability of three pharmacokinetic models to describe AAA vessel wall enhancement using dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). Materials and Methods Patients with AAA underwent DCE-MRI at 1.5 Tesla. The volume transfer constant (Ktrans), which reflects microvascular flow, permeability and surface area, was calculated by fitting the blood and aneurysm vessel wall gadolinium concentration curves. The relative fit errors, parameter uncertainties and parameter reproducibilities for the Patlak, Tofts and Extended Tofts model were compared to find the most suitable model. Scan-rescan reproducibility was assessed using the interclass correlation coefficient and coefficient of variation (CV). Further, the relationship between Ktrans and AAA size was investigated. Results DCE-MRI examinations from thirty-nine patients (mean age±SD: 72±6 years; M/F: 35/4) with an mean AAA maximal diameter of 49±6 mm could be included for pharmacokinetic analysis. Relative fit uncertainties for Ktrans based on the Patlak model (17%) were significantly lower compared to the Tofts (37%) and Extended Tofts model (42%) (p<0.001). Ktrans scan-rescan reproducibility for the Patlak model (ICC = 0.61 and CV = 22%) was comparable with the Tofts (ICC = 0.61, CV = 23%) and Extended Tofts model (ICC = 0.76, CV = 22%). Ktrans was positively correlated with maximal AAA diameter (Spearman’s ρ = 0.38, p = 0.02) using the Patlak model. Conclusion Using the presented imaging protocol, the Patlak model is most suited to describe DCE-MRI data of the AAA vessel wall with good Ktrans scan-rescan reproducibility.
Measuring of Flickering Artifacts in Predictive Coded Video Sequences

Flickering is one of the most annoying temporal artifacts in predictive video coding. It will frequently appear in particular within slow moving low textured objects when the encoder is forced to skip macroblocks in order to save data rate. A very simple no-reference metric is derived for automatic detection of temporal flickering artifacts resulting from such macroblock skipping. Tests are performed for different H.264 encoded video sequences.
MMDB: 3D structures and macromolecular interactions

Close to 60% of protein sequences tracked in comprehensive databases can be mapped to a known three-dimensional (3D) structure by standard sequence similarity searches. Potentially, a great deal can be learned about proteins or protein families of interest from considering 3D structure, and to this day 3D structure data may remain an underutilized resource. Here we present enhancements in the Molecular Modeling Database (MMDB) and its data presentation, specifically pertaining to biologically relevant complexes and molecular interactions. MMDB is tightly integrated with NCBI's Entrez search and retrieval system, and mirrors the contents of the Protein Data Bank. It links protein 3D structure data with sequence data, sequence classification resources and PubChem, a repository of small-molecule chemical structures and their biological activities, facilitating access to 3D structure data not only for structural biologists, but also for molecular biologists and chemists. MMDB provides a complete set of detailed and pre-computed structural alignments obtained with the VAST algorithm, and provides visualization tools for 3D structure and structure/sequence alignment via the molecular graphics viewer Cn3D. MMDB can be accessed at http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih. gov/structure.
Direct Obstacle Detection and Motion from Spatio-temporal Derivatives

Autonomous vehicles need a means of detecting obstructions on its path, to avoid collision. In this paper, a novel approach to obstacle detection is presented. A camera moves on a visible ground plane with the optical axis parallel to the ground. Camera motion parameters are linearly related to rst order spatio-temporal derivatives of the taken image sequence; image ow is not needed. Motion is robustly estimated using RANSAC. An error measure for each image point corresponds to the likelihood of an obstacle in that point.
Heterogeneity in catchment properties: a case study of Grey and Buller catchments, New Zealand

Abstract. The scaling behaviour of landscape properties, including both morphological and landscape patchiness, is examined using monofractal and multifractal analysis. The study is confined to two neighbouring meso-scale catchments on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. The catchments offer a diverse but largely undisturbed landscape with population and development impacts being extremely low. Bulk landscape properties of the catchments (and their sub-basins) are examined and show that scaling of stream networks follow Hack’s empirical rule, with exponents ∼0.6. It is also found that the longitudinal and transverse scaling exponents of stream networks equate to νl ≈0.6 and νw≈ 0.4, indicative of self-affine scaling. Catchment shapes also show self-affine behaviour. Further, scaling of landscape patches show multifractal behaviour and the analysis of these variables yields the characteristic parabolic curves known as multifractal spectra. A novel analytical approach is adopted by using catchments as hydrological cells at various sizes, ranging from first to sixth order, as the unit of measure. This approach is presented as an alternative to the box-counting method as it may be much more representative of hydro-ecological processes at catchment scales. Multifractal spectra are generated for each landscape property and spectral parameters such as the range in α (Holder exponent) values and maximum dimension at α0, (also known as the capacity dimension Dcap), are obtained. Other fractal dimensions (information Dinf and correlation Dcor) are also calculated and compared. The dimensions are connected by the inequality Dcap≥Dinf≥Dcor. Such a relationship strongly suggests that the landscape patches are heterogeneous in nature and that their scaling behaviour can be described as multifractal. The quantitative parameters obtained from the spectra may provide the basis for improved parameterisation of ecological and hydrological models. Keywords: fractal, multifractal, scaling, landscape, patchiness
Improving approximation of jitter probability in the breakpoints of simulated copy number alterations

We analyze and approximate the jitter distribution function in the breakpoints of the measured genome copy number alterations (CNAs). The CNAs measured using the high resolution technologies of hybridization are contaminated with an intensive noise that may cause uncertainty in the detected breakpoints and segments. We show that jitter is fundamentally inherent to the simulate CNAs and that the jitter probability represented with the discrete skew Laplace distribution is not accurate when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is small. To approximate the jitter distribution with highest accuracy, we modify the skew Laplace distribution to have the SNR function dependent on the discrete departure from the breakpoint. We propose several approximating functions and test them by experimental data.
Distributed Amplify-and-Forward Cooperation Through Message Partitioning

This paper proposes a message partitioning-based distributed amplify-and-forward (MPDAF) cooperative scheme. In this scheme, the message transmitted by a user is partitioned into several equal parts, each of which will be relayed by a different user. It enables the cooperative users to share the relaying burden in a distributed network. As a result, each cooperative user deploys half of its transmission for broadcasting and the other half for relaying, maintaining both the degree of its broadcasting transmission and the spectral efficiency. Since cooperation does not require decoding and encoding processes at the relays, the system complexity of the MPDAF scheme is less than that of the space-time-coded (STC) distributed cooperative scheme, but some additional effort is required to achieve signal timing synchronization. Information theoretic analysis of the proposed scheme shows that it can achieve the same diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) performance bound as the STC scheme, achieving extra diversity gain without affecting its multiplexing gain. It is superior to the existing repetition-based distributed cooperative scheme. The scheme's outage performance substantiates this claim by showing that a significant diversity gain can be achieved. The impact of the MPDAF scheme when used in a practical coded system is analyzed, and it is shown that a diversity gain on the order of the number of relays can be achieved. We present simulation results for an MPDAF scheme employing the spectrally efficient bit-interleaved coded modulation and show that a significant diversity gain can be also achieved in a practical coded system.
Changes in the Subsurface Stratification of the Sun with the 11-Year Activity Cycle

We report on changes in the Sun's subsurface stratification inferred from helioseismology data. Using data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) for the last 9 years and, more precisely, the temporal variation of f-mode frequencies, we have computed the variation in the radius of subsurface layers of the Sun by applying helioseismic inversions. We have found a variability of the "helioseismic" radius in antiphase with the solar activity, with the strongest variations of the stratification being just below the surface, around 0.995 R☉. In addition, the radius of the deeper layers of the Sun, between 0.975 and 0.99 R☉, changes in phase with the 11-year cycle.
Automatic segmentation of DNA microarray images using an improved seeded region growing method

Microarray technology has emerged as one of the robust methodology for quantitatively analyzing gene expressions of thousands of genes simultaneously. The experimental design, image processing and data analysis are the three major stages of microarray based analysis. The main goal of array image processing is, to measure the intensity of the spots and quantify the gene expression values based on these intensities. This paper describes segmentation of microarray images using an improved seeded region growing method. The seed and threshold values were selected automatically depending on the characteristics of the spot. Experimental result shows that the method is very effective for segmenting low intensity spots having irregular shape. It is robust against the common noise peaks in the microarray images. The algorithm was implemented using Matlab software. The proposed method has been tested on variety of microarray images obtained from Stanford Microarray Database (SMD).
Your neighbors are my spies: Location and other privacy concerns in GLBT-focused location-based dating applications

Trilateration is one of the well-known threat models to the user's location privacy in location-based apps; especially those contain highly sensitive information such as dating apps. The threat model mainly bases on the publicly shown distance from a targeted victim to the adversary to pinpoint the victim's location. As a countermeasure, most of location-based apps have already implemented the “hide distance” function, or added noise to the publicly shown distance in order to protect their user's location privacy. The effectiveness of such approaches however is still questionable. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate how the popular location-based dating apps are currently protecting their user's privacy by testing three popular GLBT-focused apps: Grindr, Jack'd, and Hornet. We found that Jack'd has the most privacy issues among the three apps. As one of our findings, we also show how the adversary can still figure out the location of a targeted victim even when the “show distance” function is disabled in Grindr. Without using sophisticated hacking techniques, our proposed model (called colluding-trilateration) is still very effective and efficient at locating the targeted victim, and of course in a so-called “legal” manner, because we only utilize the information that can be obtained just as same as any other ordinary user. In case of Hornet, although it has adopted location obfuscation in its system, we were not only able to discover its noise-adding pattern by conducting empirical analysis, but also able to apply the colluding trilateration used in Grindr to locate the targeted victim regardless of the location obfuscation. Our study thus raises an urgent alarm to the users of those location-based apps in general and GLBT-focused dating apps in particular about their privacy. Finally, the paper concludes by suggesting some possible solutions from the viewpoints of both the LBS provider and the user considering the implementation cost and the trade-off of utility.
Advances in face and gesture analysis

This article describes a number of new developments in face and gesture analysis which allow a more accurate, more extensive and more reliable analysis of faces, plus the ability to determine the point of interest and basic head gestures. Facial expression analysis In 2007 VicarVision and Noldus Information Technology launched FaceReader™, a system for fully automatic facial expression analysis. Although the FaceReader system opens many new possibilities for behavioural research, the scope of settings under which FaceReader can be used has its limitations. Future releases will include technological improvements that will further increase the range of use of the
Near-Lossless Compression of Hyperspectral Images

Algorithms for near-lossless compression of hyperspectral images are presented. They guarantee that the intensity of any pixel in the decompressed image(s) differs from its original value by no more than a user-specified quantity To reduce the bit rate required to code images while providing significantly more compression than lossless algorithms, linear prediction between the bands is used. Each band is predicted by a previously transmitted band. The prediction is subtracted from the original band, and the residual is compressed with a bit plane coder which uses context-based adaptive binary arithmetic coding. To find the best prediction algorithm, the impact of various band orderings and optimization techniques on the compression ratios is studied.
Battery equivalent circuits and brief summary of components value determination of lithium ion: A review

Lithium-ion batteries have gained rapid popularity as an important means for the power sector. It is essential to model the battery in order to predict its behavior under various operating conditions to avoid any wrong operation and to safely manage to increase its life time. This paper introduces the most commonly used battery modelling techniques and their respective equivalent circuit models.