Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Efficient Visual Tracking Method for Multiple Moving Targets

An efficient algorithm of the edge detection according to integrating the edge gradient with the average filter is proposed, which can significantly reduce sensitivity of the background subtraction method to noise and illumination. Taking into account the features of the target such as colour, size, etc., a new modified nearest neighbour (NN) algorithm for data association using the target features is designed. A designed interacting multiple model (IMM) filter is utilized to track the maneuvering target motion, i.e. the feature point (called the centroid of the target) motion of the target. The algorithms are validated via an example with natural video sequences. The results show the algorithms are performances and validity for visual tracking. In complex environment, the algorithm can still work well.
Psychometric Tests and Client-Centered Counseling

ONE hears various superficial and distorted statements as to the viewpoint of client-centered or ‘nondirective counseling regarding the use of psychometric tests. Such statements often include the notion that the client-centered counselor is “against all tests” or “has no use for testing. ” These statements have their bases in the fact that the client-centered counselor makes less use of tests than the counselor of the traditional diagnostic-prescriptive viewpoint, and uses them in very different fashion. What are the reasons for these differences?
Analysis of the RNA content of the exosomes derived from blood serum and urine and its potential as biomarkers

Exosomes are tiny vesicles (30–150 nm) constantly secreted by all healthy and abnormal cells, and found in abundance in all body fluids. These vesicles, loaded with unique RNA and protein cargo, have a wide range of biological functions, including cell-to-cell communication and signalling. As such, exosomes hold tremendous potential as biomarkers and could lead to the development of minimally invasive diagnostics and next generation therapies within the next few years. Here, we describe the strategies for isolation of exosomes from human blood serum and urine, characterization of their RNA cargo by sequencing, and present the initial data on exosome labelling and uptake tracing in a cell culture model. The value of exosomes for clinical applications is discussed with an emphasis on their potential for diagnosing and treating neurodegenerative diseases and brain cancer.
Turkey poult tolerance to diets containing deoxynivalenol (vomitoxin) and salinomycin.

Feed taken from a commercial turkey farm where poults had refused to eat the feed and high mortality had occurred was analyzed and found to contain . 81 mg/kg vomitoxin and 2.2 mg/kg salinomycin. The present four experiments investigated the effects of diets containing salinomycin at 0, 2.2, 5.5, 11, and 22 mg/kg and vomitoxin at 0, 2.2, and 4.4 mg/kg. A factorial design with vomitoxin at 0 and 4.4 mg/kg and salinomycin at 0 and 22 mg/kg was used in Experiment 4. Poults fed the suspect commercial diet had significantly lower feed consumption and higher motality than poults fed a control diet (P less than .05). Poults (0 to 3 wk of age) fed diets containing vomitoxin (4.4 mg/kg), salinomycin (22 mg/kg), or both showed no significant decrease in feed consumption, body weight gain, or viability.
Performans Görevinin Akran Gruplar ve Öğretmen Yaklaşımları Doğrultusunda Çok-Yüzeyli Rasch Ölçme Modeli İle Analizi

Bu arastirmanin amaci Genetik ve Biyoteknoloji konulu performans gorevinin (poster) akran gruplari ve ogretmen tarafindan cok-yuzeyli Rasch olcme modeliyle degerlendirmektir. Arastirmada tarama modeli kullanilmistir. Arastirma 2013-2014 egitim yili guz doneminde Bartin ilinde calisan bir ogretmen ve 7. sinifta ogrenim goren 50 ogrenci ile yurutulmustur. Degerlendirme icin beser kisilik 10 ogrenci grubu olusturulmustur.Her grup kendi icerisinde birer materyal hazirlamistir. Arastirmada veri toplama araci olarak ogretmen tarafindan revize edilen form kullanilmistir. Verilerin analizi icin FACETS programi kullanilmistir. Olcutler cercevesinde elde edilen analiz sonuclarina gore Grup 74’un en comert puanlayici grup oldugu, ogretmenin ise en kati puanlayici oldugu; P4’un olcutleri en iyi saglayan gorev oldugu, P6’nin ise olcutleri daha iyi saglamayan gorev oldugu; Bilgi-dogruluk kodlu olcutun en kolay karsilandigi, Kaynakca kodlu olcutun ise en zor karsilandigi ifade edilebilir. Cok-yuzeyli Rasch olcme modelinin fen egitiminde performans ve akran grup degerlendirmeleri icin etkili bir sekilde kullanilabilecegi sonucuna ulasilmistir.
Advancing Bioluminescence Imaging Technology for the Evaluation of Anticancer Agents in the MDA-MB-435-HAL-Luc Mammary Fat Pad and Subrenal Capsule Tumor Models

Purpose: Tumors grafted s.c. or under the mammary fat pad (MFP) rarely develop efficient metastasis. By applying bioluminescence imaging (BLI) technology, the MDA-MB-435-HAL-Luc subrenal capsule (SRC) model was compared with the MFP model for disease progression, metastatic potential, and response to therapy. Experimental Design: The luciferase-expressing MDA-MB-435-HAL-Luc cell line was used in both MFP and SRC models. BLI technology allowed longitudinal assessment of disease progression and the therapeutic response to PD-0332991, Avastin, and docetaxel. Immunohistochemical analysis of Ki67 and CD31 staining in the primary tumors was compared in these models. Caliper measurement was used in the MFP model to validate the BLI quantification of primary tumors. Results: The primary tumors in MDA-MB-435-HAL-Luc MFP and SRC models displayed comparable growth rates and vascularity. However, tumor-bearing mice in the SRC model developed lung metastases much earlier (4 weeks) than in the MFP model (>7 weeks), and the metastatic progression contributed significantly to the survival time. In the MFP model, BLI and caliper measurements were comparable for quantifying palpable tumors, but BLI offered an advantage for detecting the primary tumors that fell below a palpable threshold and for visualizing metastases. In the SRC model, BLI allowed longitudinal assessment of the antitumor and antimetastatic effects of PD-0332991, Avastin, and docetaxel, and the results correlated with the survival benefits of these agents. Conclusions: The MDA-MB-435-HAL-Luc SRC model and the MFP model displayed differences in disease progression. BLI is an innovative approach for developing animal models and creates opportunities for improving preclinical evaluations of anticancer agents.
Practical Compressed Suffix Trees

The suffix tree is an extremely important data structure in bioinformatics. Classical implementations require much space, which renders them useless to handle large sequence collections. Recent research has obtained various compressed representations for suffix trees, with widely different space-time tradeoffs. In this paper we show how the use of range min-max trees yields novel representations achieving practical space/time tradeoffs. In addition, we show how those trees can be modified to index highly repetitive collections, obtaining the first compressed suffix tree representation that effectively adapts to that scenario.
MarA-mediated overexpression of the AcrAB efflux pump results in decreased susceptibility to tigecycline in Escherichia coli.

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to characterize decreased susceptibility to tigecycline in clinical isolates of Escherichia coli obtained during Phase 3 clinical trials. METHODS Gene expression was analysed by transcriptional profile analysis and RT-PCR. Transposon mutagenesis with IS903kan was used for selection of transposon mutants. Transposon insertions were mapped by DNA sequencing and PCR analyses. The MICs were determined by broth microdilution. RESULTS Both transcriptional profile analysis and Taqman RT-PCR demonstrated increased expression levels of MarA, a transcriptional activator, and AcrAB, an RND-type efflux pump, in the strains with elevated tigecycline MICs. Transposon mutagenesis generated nine mutants, the majority of which had either marA or acrB inactivated. Sequence analysis revealed a single nucleotide insertion in the open reading frame of the marR gene in less-susceptible strains of E. coli. CONCLUSIONS This study suggested that a loss of MarR functionality due to a frameshift mutation resulted in constitutive overproduction of MarA and AcrAB and, consequently, in decreased susceptibility to tigecycline in clinical isolates of E. coli.
Psychology in the Schools

COURSE OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the field of school psychology and the many different roles school psychologists can assume. At the end of this course students will: 1. be familiar with the organization of schools and the multi-cultural nature of school populations, 2. be aware of the contributions of school psychologists to schools, 3. be familiar with the knowledge base and skills needed to become competent psychologists, 4. understand basic concepts of program evaluation, 5. understand the psycho-educational assessment process and critical considerations in assessment.
A Development Framework for Adaptive Pervasive Applications

Pervasive computing applications need to cope with the dynamics of their environment: For example, applications may want to adapt when connectivity changes, new services appear, user requirements and preferences change, or some application-specific sensor value exceeds a predefined threshold. Pervasive applications are context-aware and react during runtime to changes in their environment in order to maintain their usefulness and quality of service. While context-awareness as such has been the subject of intensive studies for more than a decade, the development of adaptive applications that are able to adjust themselves to context changes still is a complex and not well understood task. Software engineering techniques are needed in order to design and implement adaptivity and variability into the application software.
GraphMat: High performance graph analytics made productive

Given the growing importance of large-scale graph analytics, there is a need to improve the performance of graph analysis frameworks without compromising on productivity. GraphMat is our solution to bridge this gap between a user-friendly graph analytics framework and native, hand-optimized code. GraphMat functions by taking vertex programs and mapping them to high performance sparse matrix operations in the backend. We thus get the productivity benefits of a vertex programming framework without sacrificing performance. GraphMat is a single-node multicore graph framework written in C++ which has enabled us to write a diverse set of graph algorithms with the same effort compared to other vertex programming frameworks. GraphMat performs 1.1-7X faster than high performance frameworks such as GraphLab, CombBLAS and Galois. GraphMat also matches the performance of MapGraph, a GPU-based graph framework, despite running on a CPU platform with significantly lower compute and bandwidth resources. It achieves better multicore scalability (13-15X on 24 cores) than other frameworks and is 1.2X off native, hand-optimized code on a variety of graph algorithms. Since GraphMat performance depends mainly on a few scalable and well-understood sparse matrix operations, GraphMat can naturally benefit from the trend of increasing parallelism in future hardware.
HAT1 and HAT2 Proteins Are Components of a Yeast Nuclear Histone Acetyltransferase Enzyme Specific for Free Histone H4*

We have analyzed the histone acetyltransferase enzymes obtained from a series of yeast hat1,hat2, and gcn5 single mutants andhat1,hat2 and hat1,gcn5 double mutants. Extracts prepared from both hat1 and hat2mutant strains specifically lack the following two histone acetyltransferase activities: the well known cytoplasmic type B enzyme and a free histone H4-specific histone acetyltransferase located in the nucleus. The catalytic subunits of both cytoplasmic and nuclear enzymes have identical molecular masses (42 kDa), the same as that of HAT1. However, the cytoplasmic complex has a molecular mass (150 kDa) greater than that of the nuclear complex (110 kDa). The possible functions of HAT1 and HAT2 in the yeast nucleus are discussed. In addition, we have detected a yeast histone acetyltransferase not previously described, designated HAT-A4. This enzyme is located in the nucleus and is able to acetylate free and nucleosome-bound histones H3 and H4. Finally, we show that the hat1,gcn5 double mutant is viable and does not exhibit a new phenotype, thus suggesting the existence of several histone acetyltransferases with overlapping functions.
Adult female and male zebra finches show distinct patterns of spine deficits in an auditory area and in the song system when reared without exposure to normal adult song

Male songbirds typically require exposure to normal adult conspecific song during development in order to learn a normal song of their own. Females require exposure to conspecific song during development in order to select high‐quality, learned song over the incomplete song produced by males reared in isolation. Altering males' opportunity for song learning during development affects the neuroanatomy of brain regions involved in song production (the song system), but in females the neural effects of song learning are unknown. We raised male and female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) with differing amounts of exposure to singing males during development. At 120 days, we Golgi‐stained their brains and measured the frequency of dendritic spines in brain areas used in song perception or production. We found that females reared with little or no exposure to song have 31% fewer dendritic spines per unit length of dendrite in caudomedial nidopallium (NCM), a brain area activated by song perception, compared to control females. The deprived females had small deficits in the frequency of spines in HVC, a region activated by song production in males. Males with limited exposure to song had a 24% lower spine density in HVC than controls but only a 10% lower density in NCM. These data support the hypothesis that NCM is important in auditory learning, while HVC is involved in sensorimotor learning, and that these capacities are differentially emphasized in the two sexes. J. Comp. Neurol. 487:119–126, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A charge approach for a compact model of Dual Gate CNTFET

We present a physical approach to model the dual gate CNTFET. In this transistor, whose type (N or P) depends on the back gate bias, the charge of each region (source and drain accesses and inner part) remains an essential quantity to evaluate the channel potential and thus the drain current. The charges are calculated (i) considering 0 or 1 carrier transmission probability and (ii) assuming that the carrier energy is not affected by back-scattering mechanisms to obtain a physical compact description. Using this compact model, typical electrical characteristics of such transistor are presented.
Inhibition of bacteriochlorophyll synthesis in Rhodobacter sphaeroides subsp. denitrificans grown in light under denitrifying conditions

The inclusion of nitrate or nitrite in cultures of Rhodobacter spaeroides subsp. denitrificans grown heterotrophically in light depressed the formation of bacteriochlorophyll a. The pigment biosynthesis was inhibited at the stage of the reduction of chlorophyllide (chlorin) to bacteriochlorophyllide (tetrahydroporphyrin) since 3-hydroxyethylchlorophyllide a accumulated in the culture medium. The addition of exogenous 5-aminolevulinic acid to these cultures resulted in a complete restoration of bacteriochlorophyll synthesis accompanied by the accumulation of 3-vinylbacteriopheophorbide. This indicates that under these conditions bacteriochlorophyll was formed via an alternative route, in which the reduction of chlorins to tetrahydroporphyrins precedes modifications of the C-3 side chain. The multiple forms of 5-aminolevulinic acid synthase were purified from cells grown with and without nitrate. Antibodies against these proteins were raised in rabbits and used in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for various forms of 5-aminolevulinic acid synthase. In denitrifying cells, the amount and activity of fraction I of the enzyme was reduced by approximately 40 and 30%, respectively. Partly active enzymes from both types of cells were activated by cystine trisulfide.
Thromboxane A2 Limits Differentiation and Enhances Apoptosis of Cultured Human Trophoblasts

Prostanoids influence differentiation in diverse cell types. Altered expression of cyclooxygenase and prostaglandins has been implicated in the pathophysiology of placental dysfunction, which results in preeclampsia and fetal growth restriction. We hypothesized that prostanoids modulate differentiation and apoptosis in cultured human trophoblasts. Villous cytotrophoblasts were isolated from term human placentas and cultured in serum-free medium. The level of human chorionic gonadotropin was used as a marker of biochemical differentiation of primary trophoblasts, and syncytia formation was used as a marker of morphologic differentiation. Of the prostanoids tested, we found exposure to thromboxane A2 hindered both biochemical and morphologic differentiation of cultured trophoblasts. As expected, human chorionic gonadotropin levels in the media were elevated in a concentration-dependent manner in the presence of the thromboxane synthase inhibitor, sodium furegrelate, or the thromboxane A2 receptor blocker SQ 29,548. Furthermore, thromboxane A2 enhanced trophoblast apoptosis, determined using terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick-end labeling staining, cell morphology, and a concentration-dependent increase in p53 expression. We conclude that thromboxane A2 hinders differentiation and enhances apoptosis in cultured trophoblasts from term human placenta. We speculate that thromboxane may contribute to placental dysfunction by restricting differentiation and enhancing apoptosis in human trophoblasts.
Binary Spiking in Auditory Cortex

Neurons are often assumed to operate in a highly unreliable manner: a neuron can signal the same stimulus with a variable number of action potentials. However, much of the experimental evidence supporting this view was obtained in the visual cortex. We have, therefore, assessed trial-to-trial variability in the auditory cortex of the rat. To ensure single-unit isolation, we used cell-attached recording. Tone-evoked responses were usually transient, often consisting of, on average, only a single spike per stimulus. Surprisingly, the majority of responses were not just transient, but were also binary, consisting of 0 or 1 action potentials, but not more, in response to each stimulus; several dramatic examples consisted of exactly one spike on 100% of trials, with no trial-to-trial variability in spike count. The variability of such binary responses differs from comparably transient responses recorded in visual cortical areas such as area MT, and represent the lowest trial-to-trial variability mathematically possible for responses of a given firing rate. Our study thus establishes for the first time that transient responses in auditory cortex can be described as a binary process, rather than as a highly variable Poisson process. These results demonstrate that cortical architecture can support a more precise control of spike number than was previously recognized, and they suggest a re-evaluation of models of cortical processing that assume noisiness to be an inevitable feature of cortical codes.
Correlation-based Feature Selection for Machine Learning

A central problem in machine learning is identifying a representative set of features from which to construct a classification model for a particular task. This thesis addresses the problem of feature selection for machine learning through a correlation based approach. The central hypothesis is that good feature sets contain features that are highly correlated with the class, yet uncorrelated with each other. A feature evaluation formula, based on ideas from test theory, provides an operational definition of this hypothesis. CFS (Correlation based Feature Selection) is an algorithm that couples this evaluation formula with an appropriate correlation measure and a heuristic search strategy. CFS was evaluated by experiments on artificial and natural datasets. Three machine learning algorithms were used: C4.5 (a decision tree learner), IB1 (an instance based learner), and naive Bayes. Experiments on artificial datasets showed that CFS quickly identifies and screens irrelevant, redundant, and noisy features, and identifies relevant features as long as their relevance does not strongly depend on other features. On natural domains, CFS typically eliminated well over half the features. In most cases, classification accuracy using the reduced feature set equaled or bettered accuracy using the complete feature set. Feature selection degraded machine learning performance in cases where some features were eliminated which were highly predictive of very small areas of the instance space. Further experiments compared CFS with a wrapper—a well known approach to feature selection that employs the target learning algorithm to evaluate feature sets. In many cases CFS gave comparable results to the wrapper, and in general, outperformed the wrapper on small datasets. CFS executes many times faster than the wrapper, which allows it to scale to larger datasets. Two methods of extending CFS to handle feature interaction are presented and experimentally evaluated. The first considers pairs of features and the second incorporates iii feature weights calculated by the RELIEF algorithm. Experiments on artificial domains showed that both methods were able to identify interacting features. On natural domains, the pairwise method gave more reliable results than using weights provided by RELIEF.
Harmonization of pan-tropical biomass maps using an R2-weighted data fusion approach — A case study for the Amazon biome

Using an R2-weighted data-fusion model two existing above-ground biomass (AGB) maps (Saatchi and Baccini) are combined to derive improved AGB estimates for the Amazon biome. Advantage of this methodology is the increased transparency to hitherto existing approaches and the fact that no AGB reference datasets are necessary for the implementation. Instead, local correlations with independent vegetation cover-related spectral data are analyzed to derive an R2-weighted combination of the input maps. This approach also accounts for vegetation cover changes between the acquisition dates of the input maps. The analysis of three major forest cover types shows a higher consistency with the Baccini map for tropical rainforest (244 t/ha) and tropical mountain forest (269 t/ha), while tropical moist deciduous forest (163 t/ha) is more consistently depicted in the Saatchi dataset. The local harmonization is expected to increase accuracy - but due to missing high-quality AGB reference maps a validation is not yet feasible.