Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
No-reference image quality assessment based on phase congruency and spectral entropies

We develop an efficient general-purpose blind/no-reference image quality assessment (IQA) algorithm that utilizes curvelet domain features of phase congruency values and local spectral entropy values in distorted images. A 2-stage framework of distortion classification followed by quality assessment is used for mapping feature vectors to prediction scores. We utilize a support vector machine (SVM) to train an image distortion and quality prediction model. The resulting algorithm which we name Phase Congruency and Spectral Entropy based Quality (PCSEQ) index is capable of assessing the quality of distorted images across multiple distortion categories. We explain the advantages of phase congruency features and spectral entropy features. We also thoroughly test the algorithm on the LIVE IQA databse and find that PCSEQ correlates well with human judgments of quality. It is superior to the full-reference (FR) IQA algorithm SSIM and several top-performance no-reference (NR) IQA methods such as DIIVINE and SSEQ. We also tested PCSEQ on the TID2008 database to ascertain whether it has performance that is database independent.
Cerebral blood flow and blood volume measured by magnetic resonance imaging bolus tracking after acute stroke in pigs: comparison with [(15)O]H(2)O positron emission tomography.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Early and accurate assessments of cerebral ischemia allow therapy to be tailored to individual stroke patients. We examined the feasibility of using a novel method for measuring cerebral blood flow (CBF) of ischemic tissue based on MRI after middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). Moreover, the regional correlations between CBF and cerebral blood volume (CBV) were investigated in the regions with acute ischemic stroke. METHODS CBF and CBV were measured before and after MCAO or reperfusion by positron emission tomography (PET) in 13 pigs. Just after the PET scans, CBF and CBV were measured by MR bolus tracking and were compared with results obtained by PET at 6 hours after permanent MCAO or reperfusion. The infarction was verified histologically. RESULTS The MR method yielded parametric CBF and CBV maps with tissue contrast in good agreement with parametric PET images, which demonstrated hypoperfused and hyperperfused areas after MCAO or reperfusion. Both MRI and PET technology showed that CBF values below 60% of the contralateral value induced a reduction of CBV, which committed the tissue to infarction. CONCLUSIONS The novel MR method provides accurate measurement of CBF and CBV in acute stroke and hence gives useful information for planning the appropriate therapeutic intervention.
Cortical excitability and rest activity properties in patients with depression.

OBJECTIVE Results of recent studies suggest a link between neuronal excitatory or inhibitory unbalance and depression. To investigate this relation, we studied the rest activity and the cortical excitability of the cerebral areas dedicated to hand control in 12 patients with depression. METHODS Brain activity was recorded from the Rolandic region in both hemispheres of 12 depression patients and 11 control subjects by means of magnetoencephalography. We studied cortical excitability by focusing on the M20 and M30 components of the magnetic fields evoked by a stimulation of the median nerve. RESULTS Parietal rest rhythms showed greater total power in patients than in control subjects. In particular, the patient's parietal alpha was higher in the right than in the left hemisphere. Primary sensory cortex excitability, expressed by the M20, appeared significantly reduced in patients with depression, but was still higher in the right than in the left hemisphere. The M30 also appeared reduced, and this reduction was significantly correlated with both depression severity and global illness. CONCLUSIONS The patients studied were not completely drug free. For this reason, it is impossible to rule out the possibility that our results are an effect of drug assumption. Nevertheless, since all patients were well below the drugs' steady state levels when the data were recorded, the behaviour of M20 and M30 and their relation with the patients' clinical pictures suggest that an unbalance of the excitatory or inhibitory cortical activity, and especially a potentiation of the parietal afferent to the motor cortex, may be significant hallmarks of depression.
MRI volumes of amygdala and hippocampus in non–mentally retarded autistic adolescents and adults

Objective: To determine whether volumes of hippocampus and amygdala are abnormal in people with autism. Background: Neuropathologic studies of the limbic system in autism have found decreased neuronal size, increased neuronal packing density, and decreased complexity of dendritic arbors in hippocampus, amygdala, and other limbic structures. These findings are suggestive of a developmental curtailment in the maturation of the neurons and neuropil. Methods: Measurement of hippocampus, amygdala, and total brain volumes from 1.5-mm coronal, spoiled gradient-recalled echo MRI scans in 14 non–mentally retarded autistic male adolescents and young adults and 14 individually matched, healthy community volunteers. Results: Amygdala volume was significantly smaller in the autistic subjects, both with (p = 0.006) and without (p = 0.01) correcting for total brain volume. Total brain volume and absolute hippocampal volume did not differ significantly between groups, but hippocampal volume, when corrected for total brain volume, was significantly reduced (p = 0.04) in the autistic subjects. Conclusions: There is a reduction in the volume of amygdala and hippocampus in people with autism, particularly in relation to total brain volume. The histopathology of autism suggests that these volume reductions are related to a reduction in dendritic tree and neuropil development, and likely reflect the underdevelopment of the neural connections of limbic structures with other parts of the brain, particularly cerebral cortex.
Malware Normalization

Malware is code designed for a malicious purpose, such as obtaining root privilege on a host. A malware detector identiﬁes malware and thus prevents it from adversely affecting a host. In order to evade detection by malware detectors, malware writers use various obfuscation techniques to transform their malware. There is strong evidence that commercial malware detectors are susceptible to these evasion tactics. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a malware normalizer that undoes the obfuscations performed by a malware writer. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates that a malware normalizer can drastically improve detection rates of commercial malware detectors. Moreover, a malware normalizer can also ease the task of forensic analysis of malware.
The Various Approaches for Sentiment Analysis: A Survey

: Sentiment analysis or Opinion mining is a machine learning approach in which machines analyze and classify the human’s sentiments which are expressed in the form of either text or speech. The textual reviews available in the web are increasing day by day. Manual analysis of such large number of reviews is practically impossible. Therefore, sentiment analysis can be used to mine the overall sentiment or opinion polarity from the texts. The sentiment analysis finds its application in movie reviews, blogs, customer feedback, twitter etc. This literature survey is the study of various approaches/methods that can be used to classify the reviews.
Indoor Location Retrieval using Shape Matching of KinectFusion Scans to Large-Scale Indoor Point Clouds

In this paper we show that indoor location retrieval can be posed as a part-in-whole matching problem of KinectFusion (KinFu) query scans in large-scale target indoor point clouds. We tackle the problem with a local shape feature-based 3D Object Retrieval (3DOR) system. We specifically show that the KinFu queries suffer from artifacts stemming from the non-linear depth distortion and noise characteristics of Kinect-like sensors that are accentuated by the relative largeness of the queries. We furthermore show that proper calibration of the Kinect sensor using the CLAMS technique (Calibrating, Localizing, and Mapping, Simultaneously) proposed by Teichman et al. effectively reduces the artifacts in the generated KinFu scan and leads to a substantial retrieval performance boost. Throughout the paper we use queries and target point clouds obtained at the world's largest technical museum. The target point clouds cover floor spaces of up to 3500m2. We achieve an average localization accuracy of 6cm although the KinFu query scans make up only a tiny fraction of the target point clouds.
Modern Trends in Scientific Terminology: Morphology and Metaphor

R ECENTLY COINED SCIENTIFIC WORDS IN ENGLISH show an increased variety in the sources and processes of their formation. Such a trend seems characteristic of modern English word formation in general, noticeably in the high percentage of new compound words (Algeo 1980; Barnhart et al. 1973, 1980). 1 But in science the developments are dramatic and more immediately operative in a communicative sense. While a great deal of scientific vocabulary is still formed in the traditional method from Latin and Greek roots and affixes, more of the words of modern science manipulate common elements in ways which do not conform to the same linguistic requirements expected in the past by both the scientist and the layman. Even though sheer volume may still be in favor of classical derivation, especially in the biological sciences, where strict rules of nomenclature apply, the older morphological method is no longer what overwhelmingly typifies scientific terminology. New meanings are now more freely created by composing them from known words through the use of conjoining, abbreviating, and metaphoric strategies. This new regenerative trend is particularly prominent in the developing sciences, where terms are being produced with high frequency-such terms as in astronomy (gravity tunnel, quasar), genetics (blast cell, error), computer science (bug, wimp), nuclear technology (body burden, rad), space science (gravity assist, swingby), and particle physics (glueball, quark). At a time of tremendous expansion in scientific knowledge, terminology has come to rely on recycling the existing resources of the language by using available words to produce new ones in the form of acronyms, blends, analogies, metaphors and, most typically, compounds. A fallacy perhaps still persists that the terms of science need to be entirely unfamiliar and distinct from everyday language. Not long ago, a writer on scientific terminology argued that geological vocabulary "admits a less satisfactory treatment" than that of the other sciences. "Partly this is due to the fact that in speaking or writing of land-forms the geologist can often use the words familiar to the admirer of scenerywords such as flood, plain, fault and others which scarcely rank as words of science" (Savory 1967, 105). Thirty-five years ago, scientific vocabulary was described as "nearly one hundred percent Latin or Latinized Greek"
Head Normal Form Bisimulation for Pairs and the \lambda\mu-Calculus

Bohm tree equivalence up to possibly infinite eta expansion for the pure lambda-calculus can be characterized as a bisimulation equivalence. We call this co-inductive syntactic theory extensional head normal form bisimilarity and in this paper we extend it to the lambdaFP-calculus (the lambda-calculus with functional and surjective pairing) and to two untyped variants of Parigot's lambdamu-calculus. We relate the extensional head normal form bisimulation theories for the different calculi via Fujita's extensional CPS transform into the lambdaFP-calculus. We prove that extensional hnf bisimilarity is fully abstract for the pure lambda-calculus by a co-inductive reformulation of Barendregt's proof for Bohm tree equivalence up to possibly infinite eta expansion. The proof uses the so-called Bohm-out technique from Bohm's proof of the separation property for the lambda-calculus. Moreover, we extend the full abstraction result to extensional hnf bisimilarity for the lambdaFP-calculus. For the "standard" lambdamu-calculus, the separation property fails, as shown by David and Py, and for the same reason extensional hnf bisimilarity is not fully abstract. However, an "extended" variant of the lambdamu-calculus satisfies the separation property, as shown by Saurin, and we show that extensional hnf bisimilarity is fully abstract for this extended lambdamu-calculus
Expression and secretion of the bovine coronavirus hemagglutinin-esterase glycoprotein by insect cells infected with recombinant baculoviruses

A cDNA fragment representing the hemagglutinin-esterase (HE) gene of bovine coronavirus (BCV) was inserted into the genome of Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus. Infection of insect cells with the recombinant virus resulted in the production of a 120-kilodalton disulfide-linked dimeric form of the BCV HE polypeptide. Deletion of the carboxy-terminal hydrophobic domain from the HE polypeptide resulted in secretion of a dimeric form of the truncated HE polypeptide. The acetylesterase activity of the BCV HE was detectable in insect cells expressing the BCV hemagglutinin and was inhibited by two monoclonal antibodies which also inhibit hemagglutination.
A Unified Approach for Context-sensitive Recommendations

We propose a model capable of providing context-sensitive content based on the similarity between an analysed context and the recommended content. It relies on the underlying thematic structure of the context by means of lexical and semantic analysis. For the context, we analyse both the static characteristics and dynamic evolution. The model has a high degree of generality by considering the whole range of possible recommendations (content) which best fits the current context. Based on the model, we have implemented a system dedicated to contextual advertisements for which the content is the ad while the context is represented by a web page visited by a given user. The dynamic component refers to the changes of the user’s interest over time. From all the composite criteria the system could accept for assessing the quality of the result, we have considered relevance and diversity. The design of the model and its ensemble underlines our original view on the problem. From the conceptual point of view, the unified thematic model and its category based organization are original concepts together with the implementation.
Investigation of the role of epigenetic silencing mechanisms in neural stem cells

Neural stem cells (NSCs) are multipotent cells capable of differentiating into neurons, astrocytes and oligodendroctyes in response to developmental signals. Although they do not have the required gene expression patterns to identify a differentiated stage, their chromatin will be epigenetically modified to achieve distinct stages of differentiation. The most abundant epigenetic modification in vertebrate DNA is methylation, which is normally associated with transcriptional silencing. This occurs primarily through recruitment of methyl-CpG binding proteins (MeCPs) to methylated DNA, which further recruits chromatin-modifying activity, resulting in the formation of repressive chromatin. Additionally, another protein from the MeCP family, Mbd3 does not itself bind methylated DNA but acts as a scaffold protein of the Nucleosome Remodelling and Deacetylation complex, NuRD. Previous evidence has outlined a central nervous system function for the MeCPs, but MeCPs mutant mice are viable and fertile, with the exception of MeCP2 deficient mice. However, Mbd3 has a role in early cell fate decisions during development, and Mbd3 mutant mice do not survive postimplantation stage. In my thesis I have investigated the role of the two different mechanisms of epigenetic silencing: Methyl-CpG binding protein-dependent repression and chromatin remodelling activity in the neural stem cell system. I hypothesised firstly, that MeCPs may have a redundant role in neural stem cell function. Secondly, that the effect of lacking Mbd3 in neural stem cells may be different and more severe than the absence of the methyl-CpG binding proteins. The approach to investigate these hypotheses consisted of a first stage in the study of the neuroectoderm differentiation capacity of ES cells lacking one MeCP, Kaiso, followed by studying the function of neural stem cell (NS) lines derived from the cortex of mice lacking the MeCPs Kaiso, MeCP2 and 1\4bd2. I have found no defects in proliferation or self-renewal of triple null NS cells. Additionally, although triple null NS cells present a normal astrocyte differentiation, they present a delay in neuronal differentiation, a defect that is only visible at early differentiation stages. Therefore, these proteins are dispensable for viability and differentiation of NS cells ex vivo. In contrast, I have found that Mbd3 is important for differentiation of neuroectoderm in culture, as Mbd3 null ES cells differentiate into neurons at very low frequency but do not differentiate into astrocytes. Moreover, Mbd3 is essential for establishment and/or maintenance of ES óell-derived NS cell lines. Thus while there is no evidence for a role of three MeCPs in NS cell maintenance or differentiation, the activity of the NuRD co-repressor complex is important for both properties.
New Sequence Variants in HLA Class II/III Region Associated with Susceptibility to Knee Osteoarthritis Identified by Genome-Wide Association Study

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common disease that has a definite genetic component. Only a few OA susceptibility genes that have definite functional evidence and replication of association have been reported, however. Through a genome-wide association study and a replication using a total of ∼4,800 Japanese subjects, we identified two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (rs7775228 and rs10947262) associated with susceptibility to knee OA. The two SNPs were in a region containing HLA class II/III genes and their association reached genome-wide significance (combined P = 2.43×10−8 for rs7775228 and 6.73×10−8 for rs10947262). Our results suggest that immunologic mechanism is implicated in the etiology of OA.
Integration of Semantic, Metadata and Image Search Engines with a Text Search Engine for Patent Retrieval

The combination of different search techniques can improve the results given by each one. In the ongoing R&D projec t PATExpert 1 , four different search techniques are combined to perform a patent search. These techniques are: metadata search, keyword-based sear ch, semantic search and image search. In this paper we propose a general ar chitecture based on web services where each tool works in its own domain an d provides a set of basic functionalities to perform the retrieval. To be abl e to combine the results from the four search engines, these must be fuzzy (using a membership function or similarity grade). We focus on how the fuzzy result s can be obtained from each technique, and how they can then be combined. This combination must take into account the query, the similarity of the paten t to each part of the query, and the confidence on the technique
Effect of clinical condition and mycophenolate mofetil on plasma retinol, α-tocopherol and β-carotene in renal transplant recipients

Introduction Plasma antioxidant vitamins (retinol, α-tocopherol, β-carotene) were measured to establish the influence of clinical condition and mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) treatment on the nutritional status of renal transplant recipients. Material and methods In 106 adult patients plasma vitamins were measured and 24-h diet history questionnaires were conducted. The MMF influence on plasma vitamins was verified in 61 patients. Results The current dietary intakes of vitamins in daily food rations were lower than recommended. Plasma retinol was lower in patients suffering from gastrointestinal disorders (1.25 ±0.48 mg/l vs. 1.55 ±0.70 mg/l) and inversely associated with aminotransferases activity (p = 0.019) and creatinine clearance (p = 0.021). Retinol concentrations were positively associated with plasma creatinine (p = 0.027) and pharmacokinetic parameters of MMF phenyl glucuronide. β-Carotene concentrations were higher in women (0.39 ±0.46 mg/l vs. 0.28 ±0.23 mg/l; p = 0.041) and when MMF was co-administered with cyclosporine vs. tacrolimus (0.45 ±0.62 mg/l vs. 0.25 ±0.19 mg/l). Plasma α-tocopherol correlated negatively with the mycophenolic acid pre-dose concentration (p = 0.027) and was significantly lower in patients treated with calcineurin inhibitors (8.90 ±5.23 mg/l vs. 12.25 ±5.62 mg/l). A positive correlation was observed between α-tocopherol levels and aspartate aminotransferase (p = 0.006). In multivariate regression aspartate aminotransferase and MMF treatment significantly influenced retinol (p < 0.001). Conclusions The MMF treatment was associated with significantly lower retinol concentrations. The gastrointestinal disorders occurrence in MMF-treated patients may cause a decrease in retinol absorption. Diet adjustment and/or vitamin A supplementation should be considered.
Second-Generation Objects in the Universe: Radiative Cooling and Collapse of Halos with Virial Temperatures above 104 K

The first generation of stars is thought to have formed in low-mass halos with Tvir < 104 K where H2 cooling is paramount. However, the efficiency of H2 formation and cooling in these halos may have been severely limited by feedback processes. In this paper we investigate the radiative cooling and collapse of halos with virial temperatures Tvir > 104 K, i.e., those that can cool in the absence of H2 via neutral atomic lines. The evolution of these halos differs from their less massive counterparts. Efficient atomic line radiation allows rapid cooling to ~8000 K; subsequently the gas can contract nearly isothermally at this temperature. In the absence of H2 molecules, the gas would likely settle into a locally stable disk, and only disks with unusually low spin would be unstable. However, we find that the initial atomic line cooling leaves a large, out-of-equilibrium residual free electron fraction. This allows the molecular fraction to build up to a universal value of x ≈ 10-3, almost independently of initial density and temperature. We show that this is a nonequilibrium freeze-out value that can be understood in terms of timescale arguments. Unlike in less massive halos, H2 formation and cooling is largely impervious to feedback from external UV fields, due to the high initial densities achieved by atomic cooling. The newly formed molecules cool the gas further to ~100 K and allow the gas to fragment on scales of a few times 100 M☉. We investigate the importance of various feedback effects such as H2 photodissociation from internal UV fields and radiation pressure due to Lyα photon trapping, which are likely to regulate the efficiency of star formation.
Subsampling algorithms for semidefinite programming

We derive a stochastic gradient algorithm for semidefinite optimization using randomization techniques. The algorithm uses subsampling to reduce the computational cost of each iteration and the subsampling ratio explicitly controls granularity, i.e. the tradeoff between cost per iteration and total number of iterations. Furthermore, the total computational cost is directly proportional to the complexity (i.e. rank) of the solution. We study numerical performance on some large-scale problems arising in statistical learning.