Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Soft Computing based Retrieval System for Medical Applications

With increasing data in medical databases, medical data retrieval is growing in popularity. Some of this analysis including inducing propositional rules from databases using many soft techniques, and then using these rules in an expert system. Diagnostic rules and information on features are extracted from clinical databases on diseases of congenital anomaly. This paper explain the latest soft computing techniques and some of the adaptive techniques encompasses an extensive group of methods that have been applied in the medical domain and that are used for the discovery of data dependencies, importance of features, patterns in sample data, and feature space dimensionality reduction. These approaches pave the way for new and interesting avenues of research in medical imaging and represent an important challenge for researchers. Keywords—CBIR, GA, Rough sets, CBMIR, SVM.
Contextual cueing of visual attention

suited to the study of the neural substrate of contextual learning. For example, amnesic patients with hippocampal damage are impaired in their learning of novel contextual information, even though learning in the contextual cueing task does not appear to rely on conscious retrieval of contextual memory traces. We argue that contextual information is important because it embodies invariant properties of the visual environment such as stable spatial layout information as well as object covariation information. Sensitivity to these statistical regularities allows us to interact more effectively with the visual world
Adaptive Leader-Following Consensus for Second-Order Time-Varying Nonlinear Multiagent Systems

The leader-following consensus problem is investigated for second-order time-varying nonlinear multiagent systems with unmodeled dynamics and unknown parameters over directed communication topology. Under the assumption that the unknown nonlinearities satisfy Lipschitz conditions with time-varying gains, a local adaptive law is introduced for the design of consensus protocol that enable all followers’ state variables to consensus with that of leader asymptotically. The proposed protocols are independent of system parameters and only require the relative state information of its neighbors, and hence they are fully distributed. Simulation examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.
An Improved Bayesian-Based RFID Indoor Location Algorithm

RFID technologies are getting more attention for its good performance in many application domains. Indoor location based on active RFID technologies provides an approach with a high performance to price ratio, which further expands the application domain. This paper proposes a new algorithm, which is based on analysis of LANDMARC algorithm and the general Bayesian-based algorithm. Our algorithm is essentially a Bayesian-based algorithm, but it makes some improvements to overcome the drawbacks of LANDMARC algorithm and the general Bayesian-based algorithm. Simulation results show that our algorithm can provide better performance than LANDMARC algorithm and the general Bayesian-based algorithm.
Shape analysis of brain ventricles using SPHARM

Enlarged ventricular size and/or asymmetry have been found markers for psychiatric illness, including schizophrenia. However, this morphometric feature is non-specific and occurs in many other brain diseases, and its variability in healthy controls is not sufficiently understood. We studied ventricular size and shape in 3D MRI (N=20) of monozygotic (N=5) and dizygotic (N=5) twin pairs. Left and right lateral, third and fourth ventricles were segmented from high-resolution T1w SPGR MRI using supervised classification and 3D connectivity. Surfaces of binary segmentations of left and right lateral ventricles were parametrized and described by a series expansion using spherical harmonics. Objects were aligned using the intrinsic coordinate system of the ellipsoid described by the first order expansion. The metric for pairwise shape similarity was the mean squared distance (MSD) between object surfaces. Without normalization for size, MZ twin pairs only showed a trend to have more similar lateral ventricles than DZ twins. After scaling by individual volumes, however, the pairwise shape difference between right lateral ventricles of MZ twins became very small with small group variance, differing significantly from DZ twin pairs. This finding suggests that there is new information in shape not represented by size, a property that might improve understanding of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative changes of brain objects and of heritability of size and shape of brain structures. The findings further suggest that alignment and normalization of objects are key issues in statistical shape analysis which need further exploration.
THE ROLE OF CELL WALL CARBOHYDRATES IN BINDING OF MICROORGANISMS TO MOUSE PERITONEAL EXUDATE MACROPHAGES

The recognition by macrophages of unopsonized bacteria was studied, employing a binding assay, performed at 4° C. Various Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria were shown to bind to glass‐adherent mouse peritoneal exudate cells under these conditions. Str. pneumoniae being the only exception. The binding could be inhibited by pretreatment of the macrophage monolayers with various monosaccharides. The role of particular components of the bacterial cell wall in binding was examined further using different strains of K. aerogenes and S. typhimurium with a known cell wall composition and mutant strains deficient in certain sugars. The ability of a particular constituent to inhibit binding was found to correlate closely with its presence in the bacterial cell wall. It is concluded, that this form of binding, mediated by cell wall carbohydrates represents a primitive recognition mechanism enabling phagocytes to bind microorganisms.
Medi, human robot interaction in pediatric health

When children go through a medical procedure (e.g. a blood draw), they often experience increased levels of anxiety and stress. We believe that having an empathetic robot companion during the procedure can help children cope with pain and improve their overall experience. The robot makes use of a set of behaviors derived from pain management literature and modeled on human behaviors and cognitive behavioral therapy. In order to investigate the role of the robot as social companion, we are currently performing a Wizard of Oz study at a children's hospital. Our results are preliminary, but so far we have observed - as illustrated in the video - that the robot can improve the experience for children as long as they are not highly agitated.
Mixture language models for call routing

Our goal is to extract information from a telephone call in order to route the call to one of a number of destinations. We assume that we do not know "a priori" the vocabulary used in the application and so we use phonetic recognition followed by identification of salient phone sequences. In previous work, we showed that using a separate language model during recognition for each route gave improved performance over using a single model. However, this technique decodes each utterance in terms of the salient sequences of each call route, which leads to insertion and substitution errors that degrade performance. In this paper, we introduce the use of mixture language models for speech recognition in the context of call route classification. The benefit of technique can has the efficiency of multiple language models to get accurate recognition on salient phoneme sequences; on the other hand, it can give help in classification, even if the size of some call routes have just 50~60 utterances. It avoids building HMMs for some salient phoneme sequences to decide whether it is correct of occurring in the utterance.
Quality assessment and improvement of temporally composited products of remotely sensed imagery by combination of VEGETATION 1 and 2 images

Global temporal composites of surface reflectances are among the most commonly used products of wide field-of-view satellite-borne instruments such as the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and VEGETATION. The multi-temporal and spatial consistencies of these composites are key elements for their usefulness. In this paper, we use two different criteria to evaluate the quality of existing and new temporal composite products in SPOT–VEGETATION imagery. The first criterion, based on variograms, analyses the spatial characteristics of composite images, and the second one evaluates the quality of the time series based on the analysis of simultaneous imagery from VEGETATION 1 and VEGETATION 2. Thanks to these criteria, we show that the standard deviation of the errors that affect the surface reflectances of current composite products can be reduced by a factor greater than 2 using improved algorithms detailed in this paper. Finally, we produce multi-instrument composites by integrating images from both VEGETATION instruments to further improve the composite products. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Sensitivity/resistance profile of a simian immunodeficiency virus containing the reverse transcriptase gene of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) toward the HIV-1-specific non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors.

To develop an animal model for the therapy of AIDS with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-specific reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors, we recently constructed a hybrid simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)/HIV-1 in which the RT gene of SIV was replaced by the RT gene of HIV-1. This chimaeric virus, designated RT-SHIV, was found to be markedly sensitive to the inhibitory effects of both nucleoside (ddN) and non-nucleoside RT inhibitors (NNRTIs). In contrast, SIV was inhibited only by ddNs (i.e., 3TC and AZT), but not NNRTIs. When RT-SHIV was grown in the presence of 3TC, nevirapine, TSAO-m3T or the thiocarboxanilide UC-42 drug-resistant mutant virus strains emerged in cell culture as rapid as for HIV-1(IIIB). The antiviral sensitivity/resistance spectrum of the mutant RT-SHIV strains against NNRTIs and ddNs, and the nature of the mutations that appeared in their RT were similar to those of the mutant HIV-1 strains that were selected under identical experimental conditions. Infection of macaques with RT-SHIV may be a useful tool for studying the mechanism of NNRTI-resistance development and the therapy of NNRTI-resistant viruses in an animal model.
Incorporation of exogenous uracil by Cryptosporidium parvum in vitro

Oocysts of Cryptosporidium parvum were used to infect Madin-Darby bovine kidney cells. Cultures were incubated in a reduced-oxygen atmosphere in candle jars or in a 5% CO2-95% air atmosphere. At 72 h, parasites were quantitated microscopically and found to be enhanced 5.5-fold in the reduced-oxygen atmosphere. Using candle jars, we then determined that C. parvum was amenable to [3H]uracil incorporation assays and easily quantitated with this method.
Molecular epidemiology of gonorrhea

Gonorrhea is a sexually transmitted disease; it is the most frequently reported infectious disease in the United States (12). Humans are the natural host of the etiological agent, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which usually causes uncomplicated infections of mucous membranes of the urethra, cervix, rectum, or pharynx (24). Under certain conditions, the organism may disseminate and cause complicated infections such as pelvic inflammatory disease or disseminated gonococcal infection (DGI) (24). Although the incidence of reported gonococcal infections in the United States has decreased over the past 10 years to approximately 375 cases per 100,000 population, the incidence of infections caused by antimicrobial resistant strains has increased (13). With the recent development of typing techniques, it has been possible to characterize strains of N. gonorrhoeae phenotypically, determine epidemiological correlates of their pathogenicity and antimicrobial susceptibilities, and devise and evaluate strategies to control outbreaks of gonorrhea caused by specific strains. Previously, we have reviewed the applications of phenotypic characterization of N. gonorrhoeae strains to studies of reinfection versus treatment failure, coinfection, and forensic investigations; These will not be covered below (34). This review will discuss the methods used to characterize gonococcal isolates and their application to describe strain populations and determine epidemiological correlates of gonococcal infections. The bibliography for this review is extensive but selective and provides key references that will guide the reader to additional readings in this subject.
Parabolic equation method approximation for high-frequency diffraction by an elongated body

The problem of high-frequency diffraction by a strongly elongated body is considered. The surface is supposed to be well approximated by a spheroidal surface. The asymptotic approximation for the induced currents is constructed by means of the parabolic equation method under the assumption that the wave-size of the body in the longitudinal direction is of the order of the square of its wave-size in transverse direction. We analyze the formulas from the point of view of waves attenuation and find that the attenuation is only logarithmically large with respect to the asymptotic parameter.
Inability of Rhesus Monkey Area V1 to Discriminate Between Self‐induced and Externally Induced Retinal Image Slip

Retinal image slip can result from an eye movement across a stationary object or alternatively from motion of the object while the eyes are stationary. The ability to discriminate between these two kinds of retinal image slip is necessary for the perception of a stable visual world. In order to determine if this ability is already present in monkey visual area V1, we asked if single V1 units are able to differentiate between externally and self‐induced retinal image slip. Externally induced retinal image slip was realized in the‘object motion’condition (OMC) by moving a behaviourally irrelevant visual stimulus (‘object’: a bar or a large random dot pattern) across the receptive field while the monkey fixated a small, stationary target. Conversely, self‐induced retinal image slip of comparable size was evoked in the‘ego motion’condition (EMC) by asking the monkey to pursue the target, moving at the speed of the object in the OMC, while the object was kept stationary. We recorded 221 units from visual area V1, 51 (23%) of them directionally selective, and compared their responses to self‐induced and externally induced retinal image slip. Many of them seemed to give some preference to externally induced retinal image slip. However, on closer examination it became clear that this seeming preference could be attributed to the fact that oculomotor performance was less precise in the EMC than in the OMC, causing a larger deviation from the optimal retinal image trajectory in the EMC. We show that the impact of eye position errors can be eliminated by the use of a position‐invariant stimulus, such as large‐field random dot patterns. We then show that the impact of both eye position errors and deviation of eye velocity from target velocity in the EMC can be eliminated by moving the stimulus in a given OMC trial according to an inverted replica of the eye movement trajectory in the preceding EMC trial, guaranteeing identical retinal stimulation in the OMC and the EMC. If identical retinal stimulation was ensured, none of the V1 units tested was able to differentiate between externally and self‐induced retinal image slip. We conclude that V1 does not contribute to the perception of a world which is stable despite eye movements.
Self-help, with illustrations of conduct and perseverance by Samuel Smiles

"Samuel Smiles is alive and well and available to lead us into the next decade.The Victorian moralist's universal best-seller.is a better guide to the prevailing political and economic orthodoxy than the incomprehensible texts of that other 19th century thinker, Karl Marx. " Joe Rogaly, The Financial Times. "The message of this book, which is readable and full of stunning quotations, is: God helps those who help themselves. A century after smiles' death we have had to learn this all over again - the hard way. " Paul Johnson, The Daily Mail. "Samuel Smiles' Self-Help is one of those books whose titles is so familiar that we think we have read it. To my shame I had not actually done so until it was splendidly reprinted this year. " Peter Lilley, The Sunday Telegraph. "Self-Help is about the nobility of strengthening one's character and should provide food for thought. " Times Higher Education Supplement. "As a storyteller [Smiles] is vivid, most of all when he conjures up the industrial revolutionaries: Wedgewood, Watt, Arkwright, George Stephenson and even Jonas Hanway, who taught City men their habit of carrying umbrellas. " Christopher Fildes, The Spectator.
Automated fiducial point selection for reducing registration error in the co-localisation of left atrium electroanatomic and imaging data

Registration of electroanatomic surfaces and segmented images for the co-localisation of structural and functional data typically requires the manual selection of fiducial points, which are used to initialise automated surface registration. The identification of equivalent points on geometric features by the human eye is heavily subjective, and error in their selection may lead to distortion of the transformed surface and subsequently limit the accuracy of data co-localisation. We propose that the manual trimming of the pulmonary veins through the region of greatest geometrical curvature, coupled with an automated angle-based fiducial-point selection algorithm, significantly reduces target registration error compared with direct manual selection of fiducial points.
An adaptive cross search algorithm for block matching motion estimation

Motion estimation plays an important role in the motion compensated video coding framework. Due to the high computational complexity of the exhaustive search, many sub-optimal fast search algorithms, aiming to achieve the best trade off between distortion and search speed, are proposed. We observe that the distortion gradient of a search point on the block distortion surface (BDS) monotonously decreases with increasing distance from that point to the global minimum point. Based on this property, we propose a novel adaptive cross search (ACS) algorithm that can distribute the computation powers over the search space efficiently. Simulation shows that ACS achieves competitive reconstruction visual quality as well as reduced computational complexity.
Force control with safety constraints via Iterative Feedback Tuning

This paper presents a new design method for force control, which aims to control the interaction force between a robot and a human by satisfying certain safety requirements. In this method, an optimization-based control algorithm, called Iterative Feedback Tuning (IFT), is used to employ safety requirements as constraints of an optimization problem, which is then solved using sequential quadratic programming (SQP). Therefore, this control method is applicable for safety-critical systems such as personal service robots. These robots are developed to provide assistance to patients or disabled people in their daily life by performing human-robot contact tasks such as wiping the face with a towel, scratching, etc. In addition, in IFT, a Newton search direction to update the controller parameters at each iteration is obtained on the basis of the closed-loop experimental data. Hence, IFT does not require explicit modeling of environment, in particular, human dynamics, otherwise in model-based approach it will be hard task to obtain a useful model. In the simulation and experiment, the effectiveness of the proposed method is examined by applying it to 1-DOF contact system.
Collocation Map for Overcoming Data Sparseness

Statistical language models are useful because they can provide probabilistic information upon uncertain decision making. The most common statistic is n-grams measuring word cooccurrences in texts. The method suffers from data shortage problem, however. In this paper, we suggest Bayesian networks be used in approximating the statistics of insufficient occurrences and of those that do not occur in the sample texts with graceful degradation. Collocation map is a sigmoid belief network that can be constructed from bigrams. We compared the conditional probabilities and mutual information computed from bigrams and Collocation map. The results show that the variance of the values from Collocation map is smaller than that from frequency measure for the infrequent pairs by 48%. The predictive power of Collocation map for arbitrary associations not observed from sample texts is also demonstrated.
Analysis of sequence variation among smeDEF multi drug efflux pump genes and flanking DNA from defined 16S rRNA subgroups of clinical Stenotrophomonas maltophilia isolates.

OBJECTIVES To determine the level of variation in the smeDEF efflux pump and smeT transcriptional regulator genes among three defined 16S rRNA sequence subgroups of clinical Stenotrophomonas maltophilia isolates. METHODS smeDEF sequencing used a PCR genome walking approach. Determination of the sequence surrounding smeDEF used a flanking primer PCR method and specific primers anchored in smeD or smeF together with random primers. RESULTS smeDEF is chromosomal and located in the same position in the chromosome in all three subgroups of isolates. Flanking smeD is a gene, smeT, encoding a putative transcriptional repressor for smeDEF. Variation at these loci among the isolates is considerably lower (up to 10%) than at intrinsic beta-lactamase loci (up to 30%) in the same isolates, implying greater functional constraint. The smeD-smeT intergenic region contains a highly conserved section, which maps with previously predicted promoter/operator regions, and a hypervariable untranslated region, which can be used to subgroup clinical isolates. CONCLUSIONS These data provide further evidence that it is possible to group clinical isolates of the inherently variable species, S. maltophilia, based on genotypic properties. Isolate D457, in which most work concerning smeDEF expression has been performed, does not fall into S. maltophilia subgroup A, which is the most typical.
Model Checking a Networked System Without the Network

Current approaches to model checking distributed systems reduce the problem to that of model checking centralized systems: global states involving all nodes and communication links are systematically explored. The frequent changes in the network element of the global states lead however to a rapid state explosion and make it impossible to model check any non-trivial distributed system. We explore in this paper an alternative: a local approach where the network is ignored, a priori: only the local nodes' states are explored and in a separate manner. The set of valid system states is a subset of all combinations of the node local states and checking validity of such a combination is only performed a posteriori, in case of a possible bug. This approach drastically reduces the number of transitions executed by the model checker. It takes for example the classic global approach several minutes to explore the interleaving of messages in the celebrated Paxos distributed protocol even considering only three nodes and a single proposal. Our local approach explores the entire system state in a few seconds. Our local approach does clearly not eliminate the state exponential explosion problem. Yet, it postpones its manifestations till some deeper levels. This is already good enough for online testing tools that restart the model checker periodically from the current live state of a running system. We show for instance how this approach enables us to find two bugs in variants of Paxos.