Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automated Tracking of Muscle Fascicle Orientation in B-mode Ultrasound Images

B-mode ultrasound can be used to non-invasively image muscle fascicles during both static and dynamic contractions. Digitizing these muscle fascicles can be a timely and subjective process, and usually studies have used the images to determine the linear fascicle lengths. However, fascicle orientations can vary along each fascicle (curvature) and between fascicles. The purpose of this study was to develop and test two methods for automatically tracking fascicle orientation. Images were initially filtered using a multiscale vessel enhancement (a technique used to enhance tube-like structures), and then fascicle orientations quantified using either the Radon transform or wavelet analysis. Tests on synthetic images showed that these methods could identify fascicular orientation with errors of less than 0.061. Manual digitization of muscle fascicles during a dynamic contraction resulted in a standard deviation of angle estimates of 1.411 across ten researchers. The Radon transform predicted fascicle orientations that were not significantly different from the manually digitized values, whilst the wavelet analysis resulted in angles that were 1.351 less, and reasons for these differences are discussed. The Radon transform can be used to identify the dominant fascicular orientation within an image, and thus used to estimate muscle fascicle lengths. The wavelet analysis additionally provides information on the local fascicle orientations and can be used to quantify fascicle curvatures and regional differences with fascicle orientation across an image. Muscle architecture, or pennation angle, can be defined as the arrangement of muscle fibers within a muscle relative to the axis of force generation and is one of the main factors that determine the function of a muscle (Lieber and Frid en, 2000). For a given shortening strain of the whole muscle belly, more pennate muscles will tend to undergo smaller strains and strain rates than less pennate fibers. Also, for a given muscle volume, more fibers can be arranged in parallel by increasing the pennation angle; this leads to a greater force production. However, this force is more oblique to the line of action of the muscle belly. Muscles in humans range from nearly parallel fibered, such as the sartorius to highly pennate muscles such as the short head of the biceps femoris with a pennation angle of 231. The pennation angle changes during muscle contractions with the fibers rotating to greater pennation angles as the contraction intensity increases. Differences of up to 120–170% in pennation angle between resting and maximally contracted human muscles have been …
Social Capital and Economic Growth

It is argued in order to explain large differences in the level of the development and the growth of economies cannot be adequately explained only by looking the traditional inputs of labour, capital and natural resources. The hypothesis is that also the role of social capital needs to be taken into account. First the concept of social capital is defined and discussed. Then the role of social capital in the development process is explained. Empirical test based on the cross-country data of 27 countries indicates that trust as a component of social capital is an important factor in explaining the differences in the rate of economic growth in this set of countries. This supports the idea that the role of the trust to rules of the economic behaviour has indeed an important role to play in good economic performance. On the contrary the participation index is not statistically significant. This is in contrast with some other, usually micro-based studies where participation has proved to be important in improving the performance of the development projects. The report is part of a VATT research project "Human Capital and Entrepreunership".
Cryptanalysis of Chosen Symmetric Homomorphic Schemes

Since Gentry’s breakthrough result was introduced in the year 2009, the homomorphic encryption has become a very popular topic. The main contribution of Gentry’s thesis was, that it has proven, that it actually is possible to design a fully homomorphic encryption scheme. However ground-breaking Gentry’s result was, the designs, that employ the bootstrapping technique suffer from terrible performance both in key generation and homomorphic evaluation of circuits. Some authors tried to design schemes, that could evaluate homomorphic circuits of arbitrarily many inputs without need of bootstrapping. This paper introduces notion of symmetric homomorphic encryption, analyses the security of four such proposals, published in three different papers. Our result is a known plaintext key-recovery attack on every one of these schemes.
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems ( PACIS ) 2010 Mapping Improvements Achievable through the Adoption of IT Governance

Various companies have implemented IT governance frameworks to improve their management and governance of IT. The benefits and areas of focus of IT governance have been only explored in theory. In this research an international survey of 113 firms using CobiT was conducted to understand the impact on the IT governance focus areas as companies increase their adoption of CobiT. Results indicate that companies which have achieved higher implementation levels experienced high positive impacts on all of the areas of IT governance, particularly in the later stages of implementation. Furthermore, the research maps out the IT governance areas which are most likely to display improvements at different levels of maturity.
The Interaction Between Respiratory Viruses and Pathogenic Bacteria in the Upper Respiratory Tract of Asymptomatic Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Children

Background: Associations between respiratory viruses and the bacterial pathogens Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, and Moraxella catarrhalis may be important in the pathogenesis of otitis media (OM). However, data on asymptomatic identification rates of respiratory viruses are limited, particularly in Indigenous populations, who suffer a high burden of OM. Methods: We describe the identification of respiratory viruses alone and in combination with pathogenic OM bacteria in 1006 nasopharyngeal aspirates collected from asymptomatic Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in a longitudinal community-based cohort study in rural Western Australia. Results: Viruses were identified in 42% of samples from Aboriginal and 32% from non-Aboriginal children. Rhinoviruses were the most frequently identified virus with higher identification rates in Aboriginal (23.6%) than non-Aboriginal children (16.5%; P = 0.003). Rhinoviruses were associated with H. influenzae (odds ratio [OR], 2.24; 95% CI, 1.24–4.07 for Aboriginal children) and M. catarrhalis (OR, 1.94; 95% CI, 1.05–3.57 for Aboriginal children). Adenoviruses were positively associated with H. influenzae in Aboriginal children (OR, 3.30; 95% CI, 1.19–9.09) and M. catarrhalis in non-Aboriginal children (OR, 5.75; 95% CI, 1.74–19.23), but negatively associated with S. pneumoniae in Aboriginal children (OR, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.18–0.84). Conclusions: We found a high identification rate of rhinoviruses and adenoviruses in asymptomatic children. The associations between these viruses and OM bacteria have implications for preventive strategies targeted at specific pathogens.
Fuzzy Relational Spectral Clustering Method for Document Clustering

Correlation Preserving Indexing is a spectral clustering method which discovers intrinsic structures embedded in high-dimensional document space. But the problem is to predict the result of one variable based on another variable is not suitable for all the situations. So, the directed Ridge regression is used which computes the relationship among the variables based on the Eigen values to identify the similarity between the documents. But in these two methods the similarity is identified by taking terms. So, there is high computation and less clustering efficiency. Further to improve the cluster efficiency, in this manuscript an innovative technique is introduced which is called Sentence level document clustering in fuzzy relational spectral clustering (SCFSC). The spectral fuzzy can better handle clusters with a complex, nonlinear geometric structure and it does not need prior information on the number of clusters. In this method the similarity between the sentences are measured by using the standard similarity measure. By using the fuzzy relational spectral clustering the efficient clustering is achieved. An experimental results show that the proposed system achieves high clustering efficiency and less computation.
Monte-Carlo-Based Scatter Correction for Quantitative SPECT Reconstruction

Quantitative SPECT as well as simultaneous acquisition of multiple isotopes with SPECT in the clinical field, although clinically interesting, are still limited by reconstruction artifacts and computing power. As a considerable step in this direction, we have implemented an efficient reconstructor with variance reduced Monte-Carlo-simulation in the forward and/or backward projection of an OS-EM iteration. Apart from a quantitatively accurate scatter estimation the integrated MC simulation allows us to include all effects that are relevant for the multiple isotope task. The reconstruction problem is explicitly formulated as a combined maximum-likelihood estimation for all unknowns in one step and implemented efficiently on the basis of the OS-EM algorithm using the Effective Scatter Source approach. The algorithm has been evaluated on simulated as well as measured phantom data. Two isotopes (Tc99m, Tl201) were tested on the voxelized NCAT phantom and evaluated quantitatively. In addition we performed phantom measurements to evaluate the method on a Philips CardioMD with a Vantage line source for attenuation correction. A clear advantage of the proposed approach is its robustness and generalizability. It is currently being evaluated in clinical applications like simultaneous dual isotope cardiac imaging.
Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce Information Systems Success in the Context of Internet Banking: Scale Development

The Internet has revolutionized services across institutions. The Banking sector has registered significant change in the quality of service owing to the bandwidth of information flow ensuring greater customer-satisfaction. This has also brought into perspective the security environment within which information flow takes place. This paper initiates a few viable steps through scale development for Information System success with respect to Internet Banking. It attempts to fine tune the design efficiency of the measuring tool, at an individual level, for IS success. Towards this end, the study takes the empirical route for, qualitatively and quantitatively, testing and validating the outcomes for enhanced perceived security in select Indian nationalized banks. The present study examines the user satisfaction; individual impact; information, system and which impact IS success. It revisits the methods by which these variables are, hitherto, measured. It proceeds towards a scale development after examining the responses from 520 samples. The findings are based on the development of a six-factor scale. While the study has particular relevance for individual users of net-banking, it has promise for wider application at the organizational level as well.
Measuring children's search behaviour on a large scale

Children often experience problems during information-seeking using traditional search interfaces and search technologies, that are designed for adults. This is because children engage with the world in fundamentally different ways than adults. To design search technologies that support children in effective and enjoyable information-seeking, more research is needed to examine children’s specific skills and needs concerning information-seeking. Therefore, we developed an application that can monitor children’s search behaviour on a large scale. In this paper, we present the steps taken to develop this application. The basis of the application is UsaProxy, an existing system that is used to monitor the user’s usage of websites. We have increased the accuracy of UsaProxy and have developed an application that is able to extract useful information from UsaProxy’s log files.
Can the excess of liquidity affect the effectiveness of the european monetary policy

Abstract : The abundance of liquidity in the euro area observed during the 1990s forced the European central banks to relax their monetary policy. The demand of bank corporate lending, however, has slowed down, suggesting that monetary policy has not been effective in this area. Firms decided to hold liquid assets in order to: i) protect themselves against a future scenario of growing interest rates, lower earnings and higher restrictions and costs of accessing capital markets; and ii) allow them to invest in attractive investment projects in the event of a tightening of monetary conditions. These hypotheses are shown to be valid according to the empirical results shown in this paper from a sample of Spanish firms during 1992-2000. (118 words) Key words : monetary policy transmission, liquidity, firms. JEL Codes : E51, G21, D21. ♣ Corresponding Author : Santiago Carbo Valverde. Departamento de Teoria e Historia Economica. Facultad de Ciencias Economicas and Empresariales. Universidad de Granada. Campus Universitario de Cartuja s/n. 18071. +34 958243717. E-mail: scarbo@ugr.es
Specific Synthesis of Neurostatin and Gangliosides O-Acetylated in the Outer Sialic Acids Using a Sialate Transferase

Gangliosides are sialic acid containing glycosphingolipids, commonly found on the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane. O-acetylation of sialic acid hydroxyl groups is one of the most common modifications in gangliosides. Studies on the biological activity of O-acetylated gangliosides have been limited by their scarcity in nature. This comparatively small change in ganglioside structure causes major changes in their physiological properties. When the ganglioside GD1b was O-acetylated in the outer sialic acid, it became the potent inhibitor of astroblast and astrocytoma proliferation called Neurostatin. Although various chemical and enzymatic methods to O-acetylate commercial gangliosides have been described, O-acetylation was nonspecific and produced many side-products that reduced the yield. An enzyme with O-acetyltransferase activity (SOAT) has been previously cloned from the bacteria Campylobacter jejuni. This enzyme catalyzed the acetylation of oligosaccharide-bound sialic acid, with high specificity for terminal alpha-2,8-linked residues. Using this enzyme and commercial gangliosides as starting material, we have specifically O-acetylated the gangliosides’ outer sialic acids, to produce the corresponding gangliosides specifically O-acetylated in the sialic acid bound in alpha-2,3 and alpha-2,8 residues. We demonstrate here that O-acetylation occurred specifically in the C-9 position of the sialic acid. In summary, we present a new method of specific O-acetylation of ganglioside sialic acids that permits the large scale preparation of these modified glycosphingolipids, facilitating both, the study of their mechanism of antitumoral action and their use as therapeutic drugs for treating glioblastoma multiform (GBM) patients.
EXPANDING THE PARADIGM: BRINGING DESIGNERLY PERSPECTIVES INTO CREATIVITY SCHOLARSHIP

Designerly ways of knowing have significant untapped potential to inform creativity research. In this article, I draw upon in-depth interviews with expert design scholars to examine this connection. Thematic analysis reveals how design offers potential lenses on creativity that are not often taken up in dominant psychological discourses around creativity. I situate this by framing the need for design-based knowledge within creativity literature. The findings reflect a view of creativity involving perception, intuition, and ability to re-see the world; creativity as an action-orientated phenomenon; and a focus on the ethics of creativity in an increasingly technology-empowered society. In exploring scholarly definitions of and views about creativity, there are insights on how design offers distinctive viewpoints for paradigms around creativity.
Great Expectations? Childhood, Family, and Middle-Class Social Mobility in Nineteenth-Century England

ABSTRACT Existing histories of social mobility have focused on adults and on measuring the achievement of individual upward mobility. However, children and families were central to mobility strategies. Using the papers of the Heywoods of Bolton, this article examines how the families of the industrial middle class endowed their offspring with the goods and character needed to secure their social standing, highlighting the emotional intricacy of these processes. It demonstrates that such families conceived of social mobility as a familial project and that rather than pursuing upward mobility, their chief objective was to guard against social decline.
Temporal Variation of Lowlatitude Zonal Circulations

The response of the tropical atmosphere to steady forcing for all four seasons is computed using a simple two-layer linear primitive-equation model allowing an arbitrary basic flow with two-dimensional shear. The character of each seasonal response is studied, and two distinct forms of behavior are found. Near the Equator, the forcing excites a slowly varying Kelvin wave of the time scale of months while, in midlatitudes, the atmo- sphere responds via the Rossby mode. Both regimes are separated by the critical latitudes existing on the poleward limits of the easterly channel of the basic flow. The long- wave scale response of the equatorial motions noted by Krishnamurti are shown to be the results of the natural filtering of the slowly varying Kelvin wave. The temporal variation of this zonal circulation is discussed. The analysis is extended to infer the behavior and loca- tion of transient disturbances in the upper tropical tropo- sphere for time scales much less than seasonal. Also shown is that the zonal mean flow plus the standing eddies are locally barotropically unstable, providing preferred geo- graphical locations for the development and maintenance of transient disturbances. Such locations are shown to vary seasonally. Variations of the tropical atmosphere of time scales much greater than seasonal also are investigated. It is shown that the correlations of Walker may be thought of as long-term variations in the seasonal standing eddies, which themselves provide a mode of communication throughout the tropical atmosphere. Also suggested is that the Walker circulation of the tropical Pacific Ocean may be thought of as the slowly varying filtered Kelvin wave response, within the easterly channel of the basic flow, weighted toward the long-wave heating distribution of low latitides.
Renormalization of concurrence: The application of the quantum renormalization group to quantum-information systems

We have combined the idea of renormalization group and quantum-information theory. We have shown how the entanglement or concurrence evolve as the size of the system becomes large, i.e., the finite size scaling is obtained. Moreover, we introduce how the renormalization-group approach can be implemented to obtain the quantum-information properties of a many-body system. We have obtained the concurrence as a measure of entanglement, its derivatives and their scaling behavior versus the size of system for the one-dimensional Ising model in transverse field. We have found that the derivative of concurrence between two blocks each containing half of the system size diverges at the critical point with the exponent, which is directly associated with the divergence of the correlation length.
Explaining the Short-and Long-Term IPO Anomalies by R & D

Financial scholars who research the initial underpricing and long-term underperformance of IPOs generally attribute these phenomena to information asymmetry and investors’ misevaluations. Here, we identify, on a sample of 2,696 US IPOs issued during 1980-1995, a widespread source of information asymmetry and valuation uncertainty—the R&D activities of issuers—and document that these activities significantly affect both the initial underpricing of IPOs (R&D is positively correlated with underpricing) and their long-term performance (R&D is positively related to long-term performance). Given the pervasiveness and constant growth of firms’ R&D activities in modern economies, our identification of R&D as a major factor affecting IPO’s performance contributes to the understanding of this important economic and capital market phenomenon.
A Two-Dimensional Functional Permutational Central Limit Theorem for Linear Rank Statistics

Some two-dimensional time-parameter stochastic processes are constructed from a sequence of linear rank statistics by considering their projections on the spaces generated by the (double) sequence of anti-ranks. Under appropriate regularity conditions, it is shown that these processes weakly converge to Brownian sheets in the Skorokhod Ji-topology on the D2[O, 1] space. This unifies and extends earlier one-dimensional invariance principles for linear rank statistics to the two-dimensional case. The case of contiguous alternatives is treated briefly.
THE TRUTH-CONDITIONAL / NON-TRUTH-CONDITIONAL AND CONCEPTUAL / PROCEDURAL DISTINCTIONS REVISITED

This paper investigates two different types of linguistic meaning, namely truthconditional/non-truth-conditional meaning and conceptual/procedural meaning. The paper has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it argues that the assumed parallelism between truth-conditional/non-truth-conditional and the conceptual/procedural meaning must be questioned due to the fact that there are some linguistic expressions the meaning of which both contributes to the truth conditions and constrains the interpretation of utterances in which they occur. Secondly, the conceptual/procedural distinction is not mutually exclusive, as claimed by Blakemore (1987). The paper will provide a set of linguistic expressions that can encode both conceptual and procedural meaning. Such expressions will be called the conceptuo-procedural expressions. The paper will be structured as follows. Section 1 discusses the relation between linguistic meaning and truth conditions and gives an analysis of some linguistic elements the meaning of which does not contribute to the truth conditions of the utterances in which they occur. Section 2 provides a criticism of two previous approaches to the analysis of non-truth conditional meaning i.e., Frege’s and Grice’s approaches. Section 3 discusses how linguistic meaning is analysed in Relevance Theory (RT) as concepts and procedures. Section 4 provides some linguistic expressions the meaning of which can be analysed in both conceptual and procedural terms. Section 5 is a conclusion. 1. Linguistic meaning and truth conditions Theorists and ordinary language users consider language as a medium of exchanging information about the world. In the fields of linguistics and the philosophy of language, this has been referred to as the relation between natural language and truth conditions. Strawson (1971) points out that the notions of truth and truth conditions can account for linguistic meaning, as he puts it: It is a truth implicitly acknowledged by communication theorists-themselves that in almost all the things we should count as sentences there is a substantial central core of meaning which is explicable either in terms of truth conditions or in terms of some related notions.