Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cardiac C-arm CT: Efficient Motion Correction for 4D-FBP

Cardiac C-arm CT is a promising technique that enables 3D cardiac image acquisition and real-time fluoroscopy on the same system. The goal is to bring 3D imaging to the interventional suite for improved therapy planning, guidance, and monitoring. For the reconstruction of 3D cardiac image data, a complete set of projections from a specific heart phase is required. One approach to reduce motion blurring caused by the beating heart is to acquire multiple sweeps using the C-arm and retrospectively select the projections that are closest to the desired cardiac phase. In order to further improve the temporal resolution, novel image processing algorithms that utilize retrospective motion correction were investigated in this study. The main focus of this work is to extend the well established FDK algorithm to incorporate motion correction during the back-projection step using a subject specific computed motion field. In a simulation study we show that motion blurring can be decreased significantly using the subjects' individual estimated heart motion based on a time series of retrospectively gated FDK reconstructions. In our experiments using an animal model we investigated the following two scenarios: (I) Can the image quality from a single sweep be improved given a subjects' individual prior computed motion field? (II) Can improved image quality be achieved using the full temporal resolution of a multi-sweep scan for motion estimation in combination with motion correction? Our results show that increasing temporal resolution using an first order estimated 4D motion vector field of the subjects' individual heart motion in the FDK-4D algorithm can decrease motion blurring substantially for both investigated scenarios.
Pharmacological management of treatment-resistant depression

The management of patients with depression who have failed to respond to antidepressant medication is a common problem in general and old age psychiatry. It has been estimated that about 20-30% of patients with major depression fail to respond to treatment with a single antidepressant drug given in adequate dosage for an appropriate period of rime. At the current time there are many possible ways to pursue pharmacological treatment, but few controlled trials to help us choose between the various options. In addition there are few clinical predictors to help match patients to an appropriate treatment.
Human laboratory paradigms in alcohol research.

BACKGROUND Human laboratory studies have a long and rich history in the field of alcoholism. Human laboratory studies have allowed for advances in alcohol research in a variety of ways, including elucidating neurobehavioral mechanisms of risk, identifying phenotypically distinct subtypes of alcohol users, investigating the candidate genes underlying experimental phenotypes for alcoholism, and testing mechanisms of action of alcoholism pharmacotherapies on clinically relevant translational phenotypes, such as persons exhibiting positive-like alcohol effects or alcohol craving. Importantly, the field of human laboratory studies in addiction has progressed rapidly over the past decade and has built upon earlier findings of alcohol's neuropharmacological effects to advancing translational research on alcoholism etiology and treatment. METHODS AND RESULTS To that end, the new generation of human laboratory studies has focused on applying new methodologies, further refining alcoholism phenotypes, and translating these findings to studies of alcoholism genetics, medication development, and pharmacogenetics. The combination of experimental laboratory approaches with the recent developments in neuroscience and pharmacology has been particularly fruitful in furthering our understanding of the impact of individual differences in alcoholism risk and in treatment response. CONCLUSIONS This review of the literature focuses on human laboratory studies of subjective intoxication, alcohol craving, anxiety, and behavioral economics. Each section discusses opportunities for phenotype refinement under laboratory conditions, as well as its application to translational science of alcoholism. A summary and recommendations for future research are also provided.
Surgical Outcomes of Balanced Deep Lateral and Medial Orbital Wall Decompression in Korean Population: Clinical and Computed Tomography-based Analysis

Purpose To evaluate the clinical outcomes of balanced deep lateral and medial orbital wall decompression and to estimate surgical effects using computed tomography (CT) images in Korean patients with thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO). Methods Retrospective chart review was conducted in TAO patients with exophthalmos who underwent balanced deep lateral and medial orbital wall decompression. Exophthalmos was measured preoperatively and postoperatively at 1 and 3 months. Postoperative complications were evaluated in all study periods. In addition, decompressed bone volume was estimated using CT images. Thereafter, decompression volume in each decompressed orbital wall was analyzed to evaluate the surgical effect and predictability. Results Twenty-four patients (48 orbits) with an average age of 34.08 ± 7.03 years were evaluated. The mean preoperative and postoperative exophthalmos at 1 and 3 months was 18.91 ± 1.43, 15.10 ± 1.53, and 14.91 ± 1.49 mm, respectively. Bony decompression volume was 0.80 ± 0.29 cm3 at the medial wall and 0.68 ± 0.23 cm3 at the deep lateral wall. Postoperative complications included strabismus (one patient, 2.08%), upper eyelid fold change (four patients, 8.33%), and dysesthesia (four patients, 8.33%). Postsurgical exophthalmos reduction was more highly correlated with the deep lateral wall than the medial wall. Conclusions In TAO patients with exophthalmos, balanced deep lateral and medial orbital wall decompression is a good surgical method with a low-risk of complications. In addition, deep lateral wall decompression has higher surgical predictability than medial wall decompression, as seen with CT analysis.
Morchella tomentosa: a unique belowground structure and a new clade of morels

Mechanisms involved in post-fire morel fructification remain unclear. A new undescribed belowground vegetative structure of Morchella tomentosa in a burned boreal forest was investigated north of Fairbanks, Alaska. The name “radiscisclerotium” is proposed to define this peculiar and elaborate below-ground vegetative structure of M. tomentosa. Bayesian and maximum parsimony analyses based on ITS rRNA regions and nLSU gene strongly supported a new clade composed of M. tomentosa within the genus Morchella.
Short-term effect of simulated salt marsh restoration by sand-amendment on sediment bacterial communities

Coastal climate adaptation strategies are needed to build salt marsh resiliency and maintain critical ecosystem services in response to impacts caused by climate change. Although resident microbial communities perform crucial biogeochemical cycles for salt marsh functioning, their response to restoration practices is still understudied. One promising restoration strategy is the placement of sand or sediment onto the marsh platform to increase marsh resiliency. A previous study examined the above- and below-ground structure, soil carbon dioxide emissions, and pore water constituents in Spartina alterniflora-vegetated natural marsh sediments and sand-amended sediments at varying inundation regimes. Here, we analyzed samples from the same experiment to test the effect of sand-amendments on the microbial communities after 5 months. Along with the previously observed changes in biogeochemistry, sand amendments drastically modified the bacterial communities, decreasing richness and diversity. The dominant sulfur-cycling bacterial community found in natural sediments was replaced by one dominated by iron oxidizers and aerobic heterotrophs, the abundance of which correlated with higher CO2-flux. In particular, the relative abundance of iron-oxidizing Zetaproteobacteria increased in the sand-amended sediments, possibly contributing to acidification by the formation of iron oxyhydroxides. Our data suggest that the bacterial community structure can equilibrate if the inundation regime is maintained within the optimal range for S. alterniflora. While long-term effects of changes in bacterial community on the growth of S. alterniflora are not clear, our results suggest that analyzing the microbial community composition could be a useful tool to monitor climate adaptation and restoration efforts.
BBeep: A Sonic Collision Avoidance System for Blind Travellers and Nearby Pedestrians

We present an assistive suitcase system, BBeep, for supporting blind people when walking through crowded environments. BBeep uses pre-emptive sound notifications to help clear a path by alerting both the user and nearby pedestrians about the potential risk of collision. BBeep triggers notifications by tracking pedestrians, predicting their future position in real-time, and provides sound notifications only when it anticipates a future collision. We investigate how different types and timings of sound affect nearby pedestrian behavior. In our experiments, we found that sound emission timing has a significant impact on nearby pedestrian trajectories when compared to different sound types. Based on these findings, we performed a real-world user study at an international airport, where blind participants navigated with the suitcase in crowded areas. We observed that the proposed system significantly reduces the number of imminent collisions.
Aging of orbicularis muscle in virtual human faces

Given a facial image of a particular person, aging is to construct the facial image of the same person but at a different age. This assumption becomes an important limitation when modelling human aging from real data, especially in order to be used by plastic surgeons. We present a new approach to robustly analyze parts of face aging. Our analysis-synthesis cooperation, possible thanks to a highly realistic 3D head model and in comparison with a youthful age face of the same person. A prototype of aging a specific region of someone's face, which utilizes a framework for facial feature is presented. Via a number of experiments the validity of the rules that have been employed are demonstrated. The evaluation of the overall performance of the fully automated system indicates that facial aging is performed quite accurately by the system.
The time for sex: A biennial life cycle in a marine planktonic diatom

Whereas it is accepted that the population dynamics of higher organisms is strongly grounded in life history processes, such as the time taken to mature and reproduce, regulation in the abundance of aquatic protists is generally attributed to proximate properties of the environment in which they grow. We used 10 yr of data from the Gulf of Naples to determine the life history of a planktonic diatom, Pseudo‐nitzschia multistriata, through the analysis of cell abundances and cell size patterns. Asexual and sexual phases recurred with remarkable regularity. Maximum abundance occurred annually, between the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, but cohorts of large cells, derived from sexual events, were found only every second year. We developed a model of population growth, based on parameters determined from laboratory cultures, with further tuning using information from natural populations. The model simulated the birth, maturation, and disappearance of age classes like those in natural populations, but only when we imposed seasonal variation in the rate of cell division and timed sexual reproduction during the stationary phase of a bloom. The model predicts that P. multistriata will become locally extinct if sexual reproduction does not occur within 4 yr. Our data and model show that coherent life cycle properties can emerge in natural populations of unicellular organisms, analogous to those in multicellular organisms, as a result of finely tuned regulation of cell division and sexual competence.
Efficient array & pointer bound checking against buffer overflow attacks via hardware/software

Buffer overflow attacks cause serious security problems. Array & pointer bound checking is one of the most effective approaches for defending against buffer overflow attacks when source code is available. However; original array & pointer bound checking causes too much overhead since it is designed to catch memory errors and it puts too many checks. In this paper, we propose an efficient array & pointer bound checking strategy to defend against buffer overflow attacks. In our strategy, only the bounds of write operations are checked. We discuss the optimization strategy via hardware/software and conduct experiments. The experimental results show that our strategy can greatly reduce the overhead of array & pointer bound checking. Our conclusion is that based on our strategy, array & pointer bound checking can be a practical solution for defending systems against buffer overflow attacks with tolerable overhead.
Acerca de los condicionamientos cognitivos y lingüísticos de la sustitución de "aver" por "tener"

Beginning with the first manuscripts written in Spanish, there is a notable tendency to use tener (originally, to hold') as a verb of possession. Given such a broadening of functions, tener eventually displaced aver from the semantic domain of possession, a fact that was culminated for the most part by the middle of the 16th century. This paper aims at provoding an explanation for the disappearance of aver as a verb of possession, as well as its substitution by tener. Specifically analyzed are those factors that play a central role in both processes : (a) the original semantic value of tener ; (b) the gradual semantic generalization of aver (which shifted to the territory of the auxiliary verbs) ; and (c) the cognitive structuring of the concept of possession
One solution for rendering translucent 2D UI elements in 3D space

This paper describes a rendering system designed to render translucent 2D UI elements (e.g. images and text) in 3D space. Significant part of the implemented system and algorithm is dedicated to rendering of composite 2D elements consisting of multiple simple elements in the same plane in 3D space. The described approach was incorporated in a UI development framework which is used by several real world applications developed for consumer electronics devices.
Visual cortex and the Retinex algorithm

Optical imaging has revealed that the visual cortex is the site of numerous functional maps associated with visual objects such as their position in the visual field, the local orientation of their contours, their texture and surface properties, and some aspects of their color. We show how such functional or feature maps may be used to analyze how visual objects may be represented by integrated neural population activity, and how such activity may embody algorithms similar to the Retinex algorithm.
Learning in a state of confusion : employing active perception and reinforcement learning in partially observable worlds

In applying reinforcement learning to agents acting in the real world we are often faced with tasks that are non-Markovian in nature. Much work has been done using state estimation algorithms to try to uncover Markovian models of tasks in order to allow the learning of optimal solutions using reinforcement learning. Unfortunately these algorithms which attempt to simultaneously learn a Markov model of the world and how to act have proved very brittle. Our focus differs. In considering embodied, embedded and situated agents we have a preference for simple learning algorithms which reliably learn satisficing policies. The learning algorithms we consider do not try to uncover the underlying Markovian states, instead they aim to learn successful deterministic reactive policies such that agents actions are based directly upon the observations provided by their sensors. Existing results have shown that such reactive policies can be arbitrarily worse than a policy that has access to the underlying Markov process and in some cases no satisficing reactive policy can exist. Our first contribution is to show that providing agents with alternative actions and viewpoints on the task through the addition of active perception can provide a practical solution in such circumstances. We demonstrate empirically that: (i) adding arbitrary active perception actions to agents which can only learn deterministic reactive policies can allow the learning of satisficing policies where none were originally possible; (ii) active perception actions allow the learning of better satisficing policies than those that existed previously and (iii) our approach converges more reliably to satisficing solutions than existing state estimation algorithms such as U-Tree and the Lion Algorithm. Our other contributions focus on issues which affect the reliability with which deterministic reactive satisficing policies can be learnt in non-Markovian environments. We show that that greedy action selection may be a necessary condition for the existence of stable deterministic reactive policies on partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). We also set out the concept of Consistent Exploration. This is the idea of estimating state-action values by acting as though the policy has been changed to incorporate the action being explored. We demonstrate that this concept can be used to develop better algorithms for learning reactive policies to POMDPs by presenting a new reinforcement learning algorithm; the Consistent Exploration Q(λ) algorithm (CEQ(λ)). We demonstrate on a significant number of problems that CEQ(λ) is more reliable at learning satisficing solutions than the algorithm currently regarded as the best for learning deterministic reactive policies, that of SARSA(λ).
Cell Culture Assay for Human Noroviruses

We appreciate the comments provided by Chan et al., in response to our recently published article (1). The specific aim of our project was to develop an in vitro cell culture infectivity assay for human norovirus (hNoV) to enhance risk assessments when these viruses are detected in water supplies. Reverse transcription (RT) qualitative or quantitative PCR are the primary assays for waterborne hNoV monitoring. However, these assays cannot distinguish infectious from noninfectious virions. When hNoV is detected in water supplies, information provided by our infectivity assay will improve risk assessment models and protect human health, regardless of whether we are propagating hNoV. Indeed, in vitro cell culture infectivity assays for the waterborne pathogen Cryptosporidium parvum that supplement approved fluorescent microscopy assays do not result in amplification of the environmentally resistant hard-walled oocysts (2). However, identification of life cycle stages in cell culture provides evidence of infectious oocysts in a water supply. Nonetheless, Leung et al.’s assertion regarding the suitability of our method for the in vitro propagation of high titers of hNoV is valid for the medical research community. In this case, well-characterized challenge pools of virus would be useful for developing and testing diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines. As further validation of our published findings, we have now optimized RT quantitative PCR to assess the level of viral production in cell culture, where we are finding increases in viral titer. The magnitude and time course of these increases is dependent on both virus strain and multiplicity of infection. We are currently preparing a manuscript that will discuss these findings in greater detail, and the implications this may have for creating viral challenge pools.
The Structure of Signals: Causal Interdependence Models for Games of Incomplete Information

Traditional economic models typically treat private information, or signals, as generated from some underlying state. Recent work has explicated alternative models, where signals correspond to interpretations of available information. We show that the difference between these formulations can be sharply cast in terms of causal dependence structure, and employ graphical models to illustrate the distinguishing characteristics. The graphical representation supports inferences about signal patterns in the interpreted framework, and suggests how results based on the generated model can be extended to more general situations. Specific insights about bidding games in classical auction mechanisms derive from qualitative graphical models.
On the geometry of differential privacy

We consider the noise complexity of differentially private mechanisms in the setting where the user asks d linear queries f:Rn -> R non-adaptively. Here, the database is represented by a vector in R and proximity between databases is measured in the l1-metric. We show that the noise complexity is determined by two geometric parameters associated with the set of queries. We use this connection to give tight upper and lower bounds on the noise complexity for any d ≤ n. We show that for d random linear queries of sensitivity 1, it is necessary and sufficient to add l2-error Θ(min d√d/ε,d√(log (n/d))/ε) to achieve ε-differential privacy. Assuming the truth of a deep conjecture from convex geometry, known as the Hyperplane conjecture, we can extend our results to arbitrary linear queries giving nearly matching upper and lower bounds. Our bound translates to error $O(min d/ε,√(d log(n/d)/ε)) per answer. The best previous upper bound (Laplacian mechanism) gives a bound of O(min (d/ε,√n/ε)) per answer, while the best known lower bound was Ω(√d/ε). In contrast, our lower bound is strong enough to separate the concept of differential privacy from the notion of approximate differential privacy where an upper bound of O(√{d}/ε) can be achieved.
An Investigation of the Sampling-Based Alignment Method and Its Contributions

By investigating the distribution of phrase pairs in phrase translation tables, the work in this paper describes an approach to increase the number of n-gram alignments in phrase translation tables output by a sampling-based alignment method. This approach consists in enforcing the alignment of n-grams in distinct translation subtables so as to increase the number of n-grams. Standard normal distribution is used to allot alignment time among translation subtables, which results in adjustment of the distribution of ngrams. This leads to better evaluation results on statistical machine translation tasks than the original sampling-based alignment approach. Furthermore, the translation quality obtained by merging phrase translation tables computed from the sampling-based alignment method and from MGIZA++ is examined.
Schema mapping for data transformation and integration

Finding semantically correct mappings between the schemas of two data sources is a fundamental problem in many important database applications. But it cannot be fully automated, so user input is necessary. This dissertation presents SCIA, a system that assists users in creating executable mappings between a source schema and a target schema by automating simple matches and finding critical points where user input is necessary and maximally useful. SCIA handles complex mappings involving n-to-m matches with semantic functions and conditions, which often exist in practice, but are ignored in most related systems. It outputs mappings in both correspondence format and executable view format that can transform source data into target instances. Formal experiments show SCIA significantly reduces total user effort by using path contexts and combination of multiple matching algorithms to find critical points, and help users at those points by asking them specific questions with sufficient context and suggestions for adding semantic information for data transformation, such as join and grouping conditions. Moreover, SCIA has semantic models for schemas and schema mappings using algebra. This dissertation also gives principles for schema mapping user interface design, based on the ideas of minimal model for schema and schema mapping, and of optimal semiotic morphism from this model into the interface design.