Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gait Recognition via Fused Hidden Markov Models

This paper presented a novel gait recognition approach based on Haar wavelet and fused Hidden Markov Models. It solves the problem that key points in each region represent gait feature insufficiently. Firstly, images from video sequences are converted into binary silhouette. Haar wavelet transform is employed to obtain key points for distinct features, and the key points are analyzed. Two sub images are utilized to represent gait features in each silhouette, and employ Principal Component Analysis to reduce its dimensionalities. Finally, fused Hidden Markov Models are employed to train and test, and it is helpful in analyzing features. Consequently, we can not only simplify the process, but also improve the recognition accuracy.
The Molecular Evolution of Animal Reproductive Tract Proteins: What Have We Learned from Mating-System Comparisons?

Postcopulatory sexual selection is thought to drive the rapid evolution of reproductive tract genes in many animals. Recently, a number of studies have sought to test this hypothesis by examining the effects of mating system variation on the evolutionary rates of reproductive tract genes. Perhaps surprisingly, there is relatively little evidence that reproductive proteins evolve more rapidly in species subject to strong postcopulatory sexual selection. This emerging trend may suggest that other processes, such as host-pathogen interactions, are the main engines of rapid reproductive gene evolution. I suggest that such a conclusion is as yet unwarranted; instead, I propose that more rigorous analytical techniques, as well as multigene and population-based approaches, are required for a full understanding of the consequences of mating system variation for the evolution of reproductive tract genes.
Adrenergic System Activation Mediates Changes in Cardiovascular and Psychomotoric Reactions in Young Individuals after Red Bull© Energy Drink Consumption

Objectives. To assess the effect of Red Bull© on (1) blood glucose and catecholamine levels, (2) cardiovascular and respiratory function changes before, during, and after exercise, (3) reaction time, (4) cognitive functions, and (5) response to mental stress test and emotions in young healthy individuals (N=38). Methods. Heart rate (HR) and arterial blood pressure (ABP), blood glucose, adrenaline, and noradrenalin plasma levels were measured before and after Red Bull© intake. Participants were subjected to 4 different study protocols by randomized order, before and 30 minutes after consumption of 500 mL of Red Bull©. Results. Mean ABP and HR were significantly increased at rest after Red Bull© intake. Blood glucose level and plasma catecholamine levels significantly increased after Red Bull© consumption. Heart rate, respiration rate, and respiratory flow rate were significantly increased during exercise after Red Bull© consumption compared to control condition. Intake of Red Bull© significantly improved reaction time, performance in immediate memory test, verbal fluency, and subject's attention as well as performance in mental stress test. Conclusion. This study demonstrated that Red Bull© has beneficial effect on some cognitive functions and effect on cardiovascular and respiratory system at rest and during exercise by increasing activity of the sympathetic nervous system.
Asthma and Pneumonia among Children Less Than Five Years with Acute Respiratory Symptoms in Mulago Hospital, Uganda: Evidence of Under-Diagnosis of Asthma

Background Pneumonia is considered the major cause of mortality among children with acute respiratory disease in low-income countries but may be over-diagnosed at the cost of under-diagnosing asthma. We report the magnitude of asthma and pneumonia among “under-fives” with cough and difficulty breathing, based on stringent clinical criteria. We also describe the treatment for children with acute respiratory symptoms in Mulago Hospital. Methods We enrolled 614 children aged 2–59 months with cough and difficulty breathing. Interviews, physical examination, blood and radiological investigations were done. We defined asthma according to Global Initiative for Asthma guidelines. Pneumonia was defined according to World Health Organization guidelines, which were modified by including fever and white cell count, C-reactive protein, blood culture and chest x-ray. Children with asthma or bronchiolitis were collectively referred to as “asthma syndrome” due to challenges of differentiating the two conditions in young children. Three pediatricians reviewed each participant’s case report post hoc and made a diagnosis according to the study criteria. Results Of the 614 children, 41.2% (95% CI: 37.3–45.2) had asthma syndrome, 27.2% (95% CI: 23.7–30.9) had bacterial pneumonia, 26.5% (95% CI: 23.1–30.2) had viral pneumonia, while 5.1% (95% CI: 3.5–7.1) had other diagnoses including tuberculosis. Only 9.5% of the children with asthma syndrome had been previously diagnosed as asthma. Of the 253 children with asthma syndrome, 95.3% (95% CI: 91.9–97.5) had a prescription for antibiotics, 87.7% (95% CI: 83.1–91.5) for bronchodilators and 43.1% (95% CI: 36.9–49.4) for steroids. Conclusion Although reports indicate that acute respiratory symptoms in children are predominantly due to pneumonia, asthma syndrome contributes a significant proportion. Antibiotics are used irrationally due to misdiagnosis of asthma as pneumonia. There is need for better diagnostic tools for childhood asthma and pneumonia in Uganda.
Sigmoid surface control for mini underwater vehicles by improved particle swarm optimization

Sigmoid surface control (SSC) has been proved to be effective in motion control of underwater vehicles, but it is hard to adjust its control parameters. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) of SSC was proposed, and improved aiming at the problems that PSO may be trapped in local optimum and fails to converge to global optimum. Moreover, intelligent integral of SSC was introduced to eliminate steady-state errors and increase the stability. Finally, simulation experiments are carried out on "WEILONG" mini underwater vehicle. The results show that improved PSO converges faster and the optimized SSC parameters are more approximate to global optimum, so it makes great improvements to SSC in response speed and overshoot.
Direct Identification of Staphylococcus aureus and Determination of Methicillin Susceptibility From Positive Blood-Culture Bottles in a Bact/ALERT System Using Binax Now S. aureus and PBP2a Tests

Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia is associated with high mortality and morbidity, requiring prompt and appropriate antimicrobial treatment. Therefore, it is important to detect methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) rapidly from blood cultures. Two immunochromatographic tests, BinaxNow S. aureus and BinaxNow PBP2a, were directly applied to 79 Bact/Alert bottles that were positive for Gram positive cocci in cluster aggregations. Sensitivity and specificity for the identification of S. aureus and determination of methicillin resistance were 94% and 87%, and 100% and 100%, respectively, with less than 30 min of performance time. These tests are efficient and rapid; these tests are valuable alternatives to more sophisticated and expensive methods used in the diagnosis of MRSA bacteremia.
A proposal of smart means to retrieve impressively-referred document-page

Recently, it is not difficult to search preferred pages by user-specific keywords from a volume of document pages or many material sheets because search engines such as Google can be used easily and instantly through Internet. However, the keyword search method is not always applicable to all retrieval requests: it is certain that various kinds of image retrieval means have been developed. In this paper, we investigate a retrieval means based on users' impression, memorized visually for some document pages. What to do? or how to do? , in case that users can neither specify the appropriate keywords nor use the keywords themselves though they want to search again a document-page which they had already referred to at once. One is that all the pages are not attended with any keywords; another is that users cannot use the technical-terms or the particular keywords because they are foreigners or small children who have not any knowledge about page-written language. In order to attain this objective, we propose how to interpret the layout structure of document page and also consider how to deal with impressive page layouts without any terms/words.
Fast pre-authentication with minimized overhead and high security for WLAN handoff

User mobility in WLANs becomes more and more popular because of wide deployment of WLANs and numerous applications on it. Some of these applications, for example multimedia applications, require fast handoffs among access points to maintain the quality of service. In order to support multimedia applications for roaming users, IEEE 802.11i defines pre-authentication to reduce the re-authentication delay. The primary drawback of IEEE 802.11i pre-authentication is that the full 802.1x/EAP authentication consumes too much overhead. In this paper, we propose a new fast pre-authentication scheme that greatly improves the efficiency and achieves high security level.
Sexually transmitted diseases and hepatitis in a national sample of men who have sex with men in New Zealand.

AIMS To investigate the lifetime self-reported incidence of sexually transmitted diseases and hepatitis A, B and C in a national sample of men who have sex with men (MSM) in New Zealand. METHODS A national telephone survey of MSM was conducted in 1996 with the aim of collecting baseline information on the sexual behaviour, safe sex practices, socio-sexual milieu and HIV knowledge of a broad range of MSM. RESULTS Of the 1852 respondents, 37.1% reported a lifetime history of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), 7.0% reported hepatitis A, 8.0% hepatitis B and 1.8% hepatitis C. A quarter (26.2%) had been for a sexual health check-up or treatment in the year prior to survey. Logistic regression analysis revealed independent associations with STD history (older age, higher number of lifetime partners, seeking partners in public venues, tested HIV positive), HAV (older age, higher number of lifetime partners, use of sex venues, tested HIV positive), HBV (older age, seeking partners in public venues, tested HIV positive), HCV (lower income, recent injecting drug use, tested HIV positive). CONCLUSIONS This is the first time that information on STDs and hepatitis among a large national sample of MSM has been collected in New Zealand. The findings corroborate previous evidence that MSM are disproportionately affected by sexually transmitted infections other than HIV.
Generic Programming: Controlling Static Specialization with Concepts in C++

Generic programming is a powerful technique for its possibility to design software components parameterized on types (and static values for some languages), and not only on dynamic values. Like in object-oriented programming, the mechanism of specialization, deﬁned here as "static" for generic programming and "dynamic" for object-oriented programming, makes the technique particularly interesting. In C++, the way of selecting the best static specialization for a generic component is based on the type signature (or sometimes the static value) of parameters, which is not rigorous enough and can lead to ambiguities or false specializations. Another option to control static specialization might be through "concepts". A concept represents a set of requirements for a component that can refer to its interface (e.g. existence of a method), its behavior (e.g. complexity of a method) or anything else relevant to its use in a software. This paper justiﬁes using concepts to control static specialization, and proposes an implementation for the C++ language to deﬁne concepts and reﬁnements of concepts, and to use them to specify unambiguous specializations of generic components.
Transferring Experience from Software Engineering Training in Industry to Mass University Education - The Big Picture

This paper shows and critically discusses how experience gained from years of software engineering training in industry can be transferred to mass university education. The approach relies on cyclical, iterative and problem-based learning and places equal emphasis on technical skills (such as object-oriented and database programming) and soft skills (such as presentation techniques, handling personal conflicts and cooperating in a team context)
Predicting when to laugh with structured classification

Today, Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs) are emerging as natural media to interact with machines. Applications are numerous and ECAs can reduce the technological gap between people by providing user-friendly interfaces. Yet, ECAs are still unable to produce social signals appropriately during their interaction with humans, which tends to make the interaction less instinctive. Especially, very little attention has been paid to the use of laughter in human-avatar interactions despite the crucial role played by laughter in human-human interaction. In this paper, a method for predicting the most appropriate moment for laughing for an ECA is proposed. Imitation learning via a structured classification algorithm is used in this purpose and is shown to produce a behavior similar to humans’ on a practical application: the yes/no game.
A Model for Word Clustering

It is common to model the distribution of words in text by measures such as the Poisson approximation. However, these measures ignore effects such as clustering: our analysis of document collections demonstrates that the Poisson approximation can significantly overestimate the probability that a document contains a word. Based on our analysis, we propose a new model for distribution of words in text, and show how this model can be used to estimate the probability that a document contains a word and the number of distinct words in a document. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
A Hedgehop over a Max-Margin Framework Using Hedge Cues

In this paper, we describe the experimental settings we adopted in the context of the 2010 CoNLL shared task for detecting sentences containing uncertainty. The classification results reported on are obtained using discriminative learning with features essentially incorporating lexical information. Hyper-parameters are tuned for each domain: using BioScope training data for the biomedical domain and Wikipedia training data for the Wikipedia test set. By allowing an efficient handling of combinations of large-scale input features, the discriminative approach we adopted showed highly competitive empirical results for hedge detection on the Wikipedia dataset: our system is ranked as the first with an F-score of 60.17%.
Continuing in the shadows of colonialism: The educational experiences of the African Child in Ghana

In this paper, we draw on a recent ethnographic study in a rural primary school to illustrate the ways that vestiges of colonialism remain deeply imbricated in contemporary schooling in Ghana. In reference to the history of education, we use evidence from this study to argue that colonial constructions of the African child are reproduced within schooling. We highlight the significance of schooling for the production of learner subjectivities and point to the ways that the institution of schooling and its everyday life continue to echo and re-instantiate colonial constructions of the African child. Drawing on the voices and experiences of students and teachers we illustrate the ways that formal schooling continues to work to devalue indigenous knowledge, to regulate and discipline African children and produce their inferiorisation through their education. We specifically highlight the gender inflections in the institutional routines of schooling. Following a brief introduction to the historical context of education in Ghana, we outline the research study and then the theoretical position upon which our analysis is based. We develop the analysis along three major discursive themes starting with the formal institutional structures of the school, highlighting the ways its disciplinary boundaries structure age and gender relations. We then turn to the curriculum and pedagogic practices that shape student understandings of what constitutes legitimate knowledge and the processes of learning. In the final theme, we examine the language of instruction and the ways that this produces exclusions and vilifies indigenous languages and the cultures that are expressed through it. In the conclusion, we draw the key points together to reflect on the extent to which contemporary schooling in Ghana sustains the production of the African child framed in the colonial era. Finally, we suggest that the educational experience of students offers an important starting point for efforts in decolonizing the school and curriculum.
Accelerating Column Generation for a Survivable Network Design Problem

We consider a network design problem occurring in the extension of fiber optic networks on the last mile which generalizes the (Price Collecting) Steiner Tree Problem by introducing redundancy requirements on some customer nodes. In this work we present a formulation for this problem based on exponentially many variables and solve its linear relaxation by column generation. Using alternative dual-optimal solutions in the pricing problem we are able to significantly reduce the effects of typical efficiency issues of simplex based column generation. Computational results clearly show the advantages of our proposed strategy with respect to the number of pricing iterations needed as well as by means of required running times.
Establishing Correspondences between Planar Image Patches

Finding correspondences between image pairs is a fundamental task in computer vision. Herein, we focus on establishing matches between images of urban scenes which are typically composed of planar surface patches with highly repetitive structures. The latter property makes traditional point-based methods unreliable. The basic idea of our approach is to formulate the correspondence problem in terms of homography estimation between planar image regions: given a planar region in one image, we are simultaneously looking for its corresponding segmentation in the other image and the planar homography acting between the two regions. We will show, that due to the overlapping views the general 8 degree of freedom (DOF) of the homography mapping can be geometrically constrained to 3 DOF and the resulting segmentation/registration problem can be efficiently solved by finding the region's occurrence in the second image using pyramid representation and normalized mutual information as the intensity similarity measure. The method has been validated on a large database of building images taken by different mobile cameras and quantitative evaluation confirms robustness against intensity variations, occlusions or the presence of non-planar parts. We also show examples of 3D planar surface reconstruction as well as 2D mosaicking.
Depression treatment preferences in older primary care patients.

PURPOSE For depressed older primary care patients, this study aimed to examine (a) characteristics associated with depression treatment preferences; (b) predictors of receiving preferred treatment; and (c) whether receiving preferred treatment predicted satisfaction and depression outcomes. DESIGN AND METHODS Data are from 1,602 depressed older primary care patients who participated in a multisite, randomized clinical trial comparing usual care to collaborative care, which offered medication and counseling for up to 12 months. Baseline assessment included demographics, depression, health information, prior depression treatment, potential barriers, and treatment preferences (medication, counseling). At 12 months, services received, satisfaction, and depression outcomes were assessed. RESULTS More patients preferred counseling (57%) than medication (43%). Previous experience with a treatment type was the strongest predictor of preference. In addition, medication preference was predicted by male gender and diagnosis of major depression (vs dysthymia). The collaborative care model greatly improved access to preferred treatment, especially for counseling (74% vs 33% in usual care). Receipt of preferred treatment did not predict satisfaction or depression outcomes; these outcomes were most strongly impacted by treatment condition. IMPLICATIONS Many depressed older primary care patients desire counseling, which is infrequently available in usual primary care. Discussion of treatment preferences should include an assessment of prior treatment experiences. A collaborative care model that increases collaboration between primary care and mental health professionals can increase access to preferred treatment. If preferred treatment is not available, collaborative care still results in good satisfaction and depression outcomes.
Stream Processing in Global Illumination

This paper presents the implementation of the stochastic radiosity algorithm on the graphics hardware. We store the radiosity function in texels of the floating point pbuffer. The radiosity function is updated in each iteration. When converged, the radiosity function is mapped onto surfaces by traditional texture mapping. Our goal is to enable interactive radiosity style rendering of scenes with moving objects and/or light sources.
Suppression of Intrinsic Delay Variation in FPGAs using Multiple Configurations

A new method for improving the timing yield offield-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices affected by intrinsicwithin-die variation is proposed. The timing variation is reducedby selecting an appropriate configuration for each chip from a setof independent configurations, the critical paths of which do notshare the same circuit resources on the FPGA. In this article, theactual method used to generate independent multiple configurationsby simply repeating the routing phase is shown, along with theresults of Monte Carlo simulation with 10,000 samples. Onesimulation result showed that the standard deviations of maximumcritical path delays are reduced by 28% and 49% for 10% and 30%Vth variations (σ/ μ), respectively,with 10 independent configurations. Therefore, the proposed methodis especially effective for larger Vth variation and isexpected to be useful for suppressing the performance variation ofFPGAs due to the future increase of parameter variation. Anothersimulation result showed that the effectiveness of the proposedtechnique was saturated at the use of 10 or more configurationsbecause of the degradation of the quality of the configurations.Therefore, the use of 10 or fewer configurations is reasonable.
Downscaling of seasonal soil moisture forecasts using satellite data

A new approach to downscaling soil moisture forecasts from the seasonal ensemble prediction forecasting system of the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) is presented in this study. Soil moisture forecasts from this system are rarely used nowadays, al- though they could provide valuable information. Weaknesses of the model soil scheme in forecasting soil water content and the low spatial resolution of the seasonal forecasts are the main reason why soil water information has hardly been used so far. The basic idea to overcome some of these prob- lems is the application of additional information provided by two satellite sensors (ASCAT and Envisat ASAR) to improve the forecast quality, mainly to reduce model bias and increase the spatial resolution. Seasonal forecasts from 2011 and 2012 have been compared to in situ measurement sites in Kenya to test this two-step approach. Results confirm that this down- scaling is adding skill to the seasonal forecasts.