Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ensuring Privacy When Integrating Patient-Based Datasets: New Methods and Developments in Record Linkage

In an era where the volume of structured and unstructured digital data has exploded, there has been an enormous growth in the creation of data about individuals that can be used for understanding and treating disease. Joining these records together at an individual level provides a complete picture of a patient’s interaction with health services and allows better assessment of patient outcomes and effectiveness of treatment and services. Record linkage techniques provide an efficient and cost-effective method to bring individual records together as patient profiles. These linkage procedures bring their own challenges, especially relating to the protection of privacy. The development and implementation of record linkage systems that do not require the release of personal information can reduce the risks associated with record linkage and overcome legal barriers to data sharing. Current conceptual and experimental privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL) models show promise in addressing data integration challenges. Enhancing and operationalizing PPRL protocols can help address the dilemma faced by some custodians between using data to improve quality of life and dealing with the ethical, legal, and administrative issues associated with protecting an individual’s privacy. These methods can reduce the risk to privacy, as they do not require personally identifying information to be shared. PPRL methods can improve the delivery of record linkage services to the health and broader research community.
Design and measurement technique of surface-enhanced Raman scattering for detection of bisphenol A

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a highly sensitive measurement technique that provides Raman peaks at different Raman shift for different molecule structures. The SERS sensor is potentially used to detect food contamination and monitor environmental pollutants. A self-developed SERS system for specific analysis with low development cost is a challenging issue. This study attempts to develop a simple SERS sensor system for detection of bisphenol A (BPA) molecule using SERS substrate of silver nanoplate film. A SERS sensor system was developed, consisting of a light source to excite analyte molecules, Inphotonic Raman probe, sensor chamber and spectrophotometer as an analyser system. A duplex fibre optic is used to transmit light from the source to the probe and from the probe to the spectrophotometer. For SERS measurement, BPA detection was done by comparing the Raman signal spectra of the BPA on the quartz substrate and BPA on the silver nanoplate film. This SERS sensor successfully sensed BPA with SERS enhancement factor (EF) 5.55 × 103 and a detection limit of BPA concentration at 1 mM.
NeutrophilsPhagocytosis in Gelsolin-Deficient Murine Selective Inhibition of IgG-Mediated

Phagocytosis and the microbicidal functions of neutrophils require dynamic changes of the actin cytoskeleton. We have investigated the role of gelsolin, a calcium-dependent actin severing and capping protein, in peripheral blood neutrophils from gelsolin-null ( Gsn 2 ) mice. The phagocytosis of complement opsonized yeast was only minimally affected. In contrast, phagocytosis of IgG-opsonized yeast was reduced close to background level in Gsn 2 neutrophils. Thus, gelsolin is essential for efﬁcient IgG- but not complement-mediated phagocytosis. Furthermore, attachment of IgG-opsonized yeast to Gsn 2 neutrophils was reduced ( ; 50%) but not to the same extent as ingestion ( ; 73%). This was not due to reduced surface expression of the Fc g -receptor or its lateral mobility. This suggests that attachment and ingestion of IgG-opsonized yeast by murine neutrophils are actin-dependent and gelsolin is important for both steps in phagocytosis. We also investigated granule exocytosis and several steps in phagosome processing, namely the formation of actin around the phagosome, translocation of granules, and activation of the NADPH-oxidase. All these functions were normal in Gsn 2 neutrophils. Thus, the role of gelsolin is speciﬁc for IgG-mediated phagocytosis. Our data suggest that gelsolin is part of the molecular machinery that distinguishes complement and IgG-mediated phagocytosis. The latter requires a more dynamic reorganization of the cytoskeleton. The Journal of Immunology, 2000, 165: 2451–2457. depolymerization secretion in some and that can stimulate secretion neutrophils from Gsn 2 mice to study the role of gelsolin in neutrophil functions. Our results show the fea-sibility of using transgenic mice to study the speciﬁc role of a protein in peripheral blood neutrophils. Gelsolin is the prototype of actin severing and capping proteins. It is thought to play a central role in the actin dynamics of phagocytes. We show here that gelsolin plays an important role in Fc g R-mediated phagocytosis, but not in several other phagocyte functions.
MOUNA: mining opinions to unveil neglected arguments

A query topic can be subjective involving a variety of opinions, judgments, arguments, and many other debatable aspects. Typically, search engines process queries independently from the nature of their topics using a relevance-based retrieval strategy. Hence, search results about subjective topics are often biased towards a specific view point or version. In this demo, we shall present MOUNA, a novel approach for opinion diversification. Given a query on a subjective topic, MOUNA ranks search results based on three scores: (1) relevance of documents, (2) semantic diversity to avoid redundancy and capture the different arguments used to discuss the query topic, and (3) sentiment diversity to cover a balanced set of documents having positive, negative, and neutral sentiments about the query topic. Moreover, MOUNA enhances the representation of search results with a summary of the different arguments and sentiments related to the query topic. Thus, the user can navigate through the results and explore the links between them. We provide an example scenario in this demonstration to illustrate the inadequacy of relevance-based techniques for searching subjective topics and highlight the innovative aspects of MOUNA. A video showing the demo can be found in http://www.youtube. com/user/mounakacimi/videos .
E pluribus unum: Harmonization of physical functioning across intervention studies of middle-aged and older adults

Common scales for physical functioning are not directly comparable without harmonization techniques, complicating attempts to pool data across studies. Our aim was to provide a standardized metric for physical functioning in adults based on basic and instrumental activities of daily living scaled to NIH PROMIS norms. We provide an item bank to compare the difficulty of various physical functioning activities. We used item response theory methods to place 232 basic and instrumental activities of daily living questions, administered across eight intervention studies of middle-aged and older adults (N = 2,556), on a common metric. We compared the scale’s precision to an average z-score of items and evaluated criterion validity based on objective measures of physical functioning and Fried’s frailty criteria. Model-estimated item thresholds were widely distributed across the range of physical functioning. From test information plots, the lowest precision in each dataset was 0.80. Using power calculations, the sample size needed to detect 25% physical functional decline with 80% power based on the physical functioning factor was less than half of what would be needed using an average z-score. The physical functioning factor correlated in expected directions with objective measurements from the Timed Up and Go task, tandem balance, gait speed, chair stands, grip strength, and frailty status. Item-level harmonization enables direct comparison of physical functioning measures across existing and potentially future studies and across levels of function using a nationally representative metric. We identified key thresholds of physical functioning items in an item bank to facilitate clinical and epidemiologic decision-making.
High Performance Human Face Recognition using Gabor based Pseudo Hidden Markov Model

This paper introduces a novel methodology that combines the multi-resolution feature of the Gabor wavelet transformation (GWT) with the local interactions of the facial structures expressed through the Pseudo Hidden Markov model (PHMM). Unlike the traditional zigzag scanning method for feature extraction a continuous scanning method from top-left corner to right then top-down and right to left and so on until right-bottom of the image i.e. a spiral scanning technique has been proposed for better feature selection. Unlike traditional HMMs, the proposed PHMM does not perform the state conditional independence of the visible observation sequence assumption. This is achieved via the concept of local structures introduced by the PHMM used to extract facial bands and automatically select the most informative features of a face image. Thus, the long-range dependency problem inherent to traditional HMMs has been drastically reduced. Again with the use of most informative pixels rather than the whole image makes the proposed method reasonably faster for face recognition. This method has been successfully tested on frontal face images from the ORL, FRAV2D and FERET face databases where the images vary in pose, illumination, expression, and scale. The FERET data set contains 2200 frontal face images of 200 subjects, while the FRAV2D data set consists of 1100 images of 100 subjects and the full ORL database is considered. The results reported in this application are far better than the recent and most referred systems.
Intramodal and intermodal fusion for audio-visual biometric authentication

The paper proposes a multiple-source, multiple-sample fusion approach to identity verification. Fusion is performed at two levels, intramodal and intermodal. In intramodal fusion, the scores of multiple samples (e.g., utterances or video shots) obtained from the same modality are linearly combined, where the combination weights are dependent on the difference between the score values and a user-dependent reference score obtained during enrollment. This is followed by intermodal fusion in which the means of intramodal fused scores obtained from different modalities are fused. The final fused score is then used for decision making. This two-level fusion approach was applied to audio-visual biometric authentication; experimental results based on the XM2VTSDB corpus show that the proposed fusion approach can achieve an error rate reduction of up to 83%.
Absolute configuration of micromelin

The title compound {systematic name: 7-methoxy-6-[(1R,2R,5R)-5-methyl-4-oxo-3,6-dioxabicyclo[3.1. 0]hexan-2-yl]-2H-chromen-2-one}, C15H12O6, is a coumarin, which was isolated from the roots of Micromelum glanduliferum. There are two molecules in the asymmetric unit with slight differences in bond angles. In both molecules, the furan ring adopts a flattened envelope conformation. In the crystal, molecules are linked by weak C—H⋯O interactions into chains along the a axis. Aromatic π–π stacking interactions with centroid–centroid distances in the range 3.6995 (11)–3.8069 (11) Å and C⋯O short contacts [3.030 (2)–3.171 (3) Å] also occur.
A Computer Built with Relays and a Mechanical Memory, and ALGOL

ALGOL was formulated in Zurich in 1958, and this paper explores some of the reasons why this happened in Zurich and not in the USA. One factor may have been that the first computer on the continent, the Z4, was installed in Zurich in 1950. This computer was built by Zuse during the Second World War. It used relays for its arithmetic and control units, but it had a mechanical memory. Though the machine had limited capabilities, it provided valuable programming experience to a number of researchers, in particular to Stiefel, Rutishauser and Speiser at the ETH Zurich. Already in 1952, Rutishauser formulated a higher programming construct, a counted loop, and he also indicated how to convert mathematical expressions into machine language. We also should mention that Bauer, who was influenced by Rutishauser, also developed a method to implement mathematical expressions, but he used computer hardware for the task. The two started to collaborate, and they formulated a preliminary language in 1957. This language was then formalized at a ACM/GAMM meeting in Zurich under the name International Algebraic Language, or IAL, a language later renamed ALGOL 58.
Precaution: Principles and Practice in Australian Environmental and Natural Resource Management

Since the late 1980s, the concept of precaution has been incorporated into numerous international agreements and laws, as well as in domestic statutes and policies in many countries. This paper examines the international emergence of the concept and its application in Australia. Despite rapid growth in adoption of the so-called ‘precautionary principle’, the concept remains highly controversial, and its success in terms of improving environmental and natural resource management has been questioned. A common misconception is that the principle prescribes action. In fact, internationally accepted definitions are about decision-making processes. This paper argues that implementation guidelines are essential to ensure that precautionary decision-making is consistent with good decision-making principles, and to avoid unnecessary costs and perverse outcomes.
No Reference Quality Assessment for Screen Content Images With Both Local and Global Feature Representation

In this paper, we propose a novel no reference quality assessment method by incorporating statistical luminance and texture features (NRLT) for screen content images (SCIs) with both local and global feature representation. The proposed method is designed inspired by the perceptual property of the human visual system (HVS) that the HVS is sensitive to luminance change and texture information for image perception. In the proposed method, we first calculate the luminance map through the local normalization, which is further used to extract the statistical luminance features in global scope. Second, inspired by existing studies from neuroscience that high-order derivatives can capture image texture, we adopt four filters with different directions to compute gradient maps from the luminance map. These gradient maps are then used to extract the second-order derivatives by local binary pattern. We further extract the texture feature by the histogram of high-order derivatives in global scope. Finally, support vector regression is applied to train the mapping function from quality-aware features to subjective ratings. Experimental results on the public large-scale SCI database show that the proposed NRLT can achieve better performance in predicting the visual quality of SCIs than relevant existing methods, even including some full reference visual quality assessment methods.
Modulation of eDNA Release and Degradation Affects Staphylococcus aureus Biofilm Maturation

Recent studies have demonstrated a role for Staphylococcus aureus cidA-mediated cell lysis and genomic DNA release in biofilm adherence. The current study extends these findings by examining both temporal and additional genetic factors involved in the control of genomic DNA release and degradation during biofilm maturation. Cell lysis and DNA release were found to be critical for biofilm attachment during the initial stages of development and the released DNA (eDNA) remained an important matrix component during biofilm maturation. This study also revealed that an lrgAB mutant exhibits increased biofilm adherence and matrix-associated eDNA consistent with its proposed role as an inhibitor of cidA-mediated lysis. In flow-cell assays, both cid and lrg mutations had dramatic effects on biofilm maturation and tower formation. Finally, staphylococcal thermonuclease was shown to be involved in biofilm development as a nuc mutant formed a thicker biofilm containing increased levels of matrix-associated eDNA. Together, these findings suggest a model in which the opposing activities of the cid and lrg gene products control cell lysis and genomic DNA release during biofilm development, while staphylococcal thermonuclease functions to degrade the eDNA, possibly as a means to promote biofilm dispersal.
Determination of the linear attenuation coefficients and buildup factors of MCP-96 alloy for use in tissue compensation and radiation protection

THESIS: Determination of the Linear Attenuation Coefficients and Buildup Factors of MCP-96 Alloy for Use in Tissue Compensation and Radiation Protection STUDENT: Deidre Nicole Hopkins DEGREE: Master of Arts COLLEGE: Sciences and Humanities DATE: July 2010 PAGES: 46 The linear attenuation coefficient and buildup factor are a few of the important characteristics that need to be studied and determined prior to using a material clinically in radiation treatment and protection. The linear attenuation coefficient and buildup factor, as well as several other properties, will be determined for MCP-96 alloy to assess its use in radiation therapy. A narrow collimated beam of γ-rays from sources with varying energies will pass through various thicknesses of MCP-96 alloy. The attenuation in the intensity of the beam will be determined for each varying thickness of the alloy. Plotting the thickness of the alloy versus the corresponding logarithmic intensity of the beam will allow calculation of the linear attenuation coefficient. The narrow beam geometry will then be replaced by the broad beam geometry to determine the buildup factor. Additional radiation is obtained through the broad beam geometry as a result of scattering and secondary radiation. Comparing the broad beam geometry to the narrow beam geometry allows determination of the buildup factor. Since the buildup factor depends upon the thickness of the MCP-96 attenuator, the energy of the beam, and the source-toattenuator (STA) distance, it will be calculated using three parameters. It will be calculated as a function of thickness of MCP-96 alloy by using various thicknesses of the alloy; as a function of the energy of the incident radiation beam by using several sources with different beam energies; and finally, as a function of the source-to-attenuator distance by changing the position of the MCP-96 attenuators.
Automatic Car License Plate Detection System for Odd and Even Series

An automatic car license plate detection system is essential for today’s busy traffic as it allows for quick traffic monitoring, toll processing and law enforcements related to traffic. Over the years many researchers have successfully developed much automatic car license plate detection system. Each system has its own set of advantages and limitations. In India, the need for automatic car license plate detection system is highly essential. Currently States like Delhi have adopted an Odd-even based traffic policy to bring down the levels of traffic pollution. In such scenarios it becomes highly difficult for the traffic inspectors to manually monitor odd-even series car plates. Thus, this work is a preliminary effort in developing an automatic car license plate detection system for odd-even based systems and it also supports the classification of car license based on the color of the license plate like private vehicle, commercial vehicle, government vehicle and so on. This work makes use of integration of SURF, Multiclass SVM and OCR for car license plate detection system.The proposed system is very fast and accurate results are obtained in less time. The system on execution successfully classifies the odd and even vehicles with an accuracy of 94%.
Representing and parameterizing agent behaviors

The last few years have seen great maturation in understanding how to use computer graphics technology to portray 3D embodied characters or virtual humans. Unlike the off-line, animator-intensive methods used in the special effects industry, real-time embodied agents are expected to exist and interact with us "live. " They can be represent other people or function as autonomous helpers, teammates, or tutors enabling novel interactive educational and training applications. We should be able to interact and communicate with them through modalities we already use, such as language, facial expressions, and gesture. Various aspects and issues in real-time virtual humans will be discussed, including consistent parameterizations for gesture and facial actions using movement observation principles, and the representational basis for character believability, personality, and affect. We also describe a Parameterized Action Representation (PAR) that allows an agent to act, plan, and reason about its actions or actions of others. Besides embodying the semantics of human action, the PAR is designed for building future behaviors into autonomous agents and controlling the animation parameters that portray personality, mood, and affect in an embodied agent.
P and M Class Phasor Measurement Unit Algorithms Using Adaptive Cascaded Filters

The new standard C37.118. 1 lays down strict performance limits for phasor measurement units (PMUs) under steady-state and dynamic conditions. Reference algorithms are also presented for the performance (P) and measurement (M) class PMUs. In this paper, the performance of these algorithms is analyzed during some key signal scenarios, particularly those of offnominal frequency, frequency ramps, and harmonic contamination. While it is found that total vector error (TVE) accuracy is relatively easy to achieve, the reference algorithm is not able to achieve a useful rate of change of frequency (ROCOF) accuracy. Instead, this paper presents alternative algorithms for P and M class PMUs, which use adaptive filtering techniques in real time up to 10-kHz sample rates, allowing consistent accuracy to be maintained across a ±33% frequency range. ROCOF errors can be reduced by factors of > 40 for P class and > 100 for M class devices.
Interactive effects of approach motivational intensity and alcohol cues on the scope of perceptual attention.

AIMS Many theoretical perspectives suggest that alcohol-related stimuli bear on attentional processes. Building upon these ideas and recent advances regarding the attention-constricting impact of approach motivational states, we predicted that mere exposure to alcohol-related images would suffice to reduce the breadth of attention among individuals who possessed a strong motivation to consume alcohol. DESIGN Two studies exposed participants to alcohol and neutral cues prior to assessing attention structure. In both studies, measures of alcohol use, negative alcohol expectancies, trait approach motivation and alcohol-related approach motivation were assessed. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Study 1 comprised 102 undergraduates and study 2 comprised 161 undergraduates. Studies were conducted at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. MEASUREMENTS In both studies, participants were briefly exposed to pictures of various stimuli (alcohol versus neutral pictures). After each picture was displayed, participants completed a trial assessing attentional focus. FINDINGS After controlling for relevant covariates, both studies demonstrated that exposure to alcohol-related pictures led to a narrowing of attentional focus among individuals who possessed a strong motivation to use alcohol. Exposure to neutral pictures, however, did not interact with alcohol-related motivation to influence attentional focus. CONCLUSIONS Alcohol cues narrow attentional breadth for individuals who are motivated to consume alcohol, suggesting a non-pharmacological means in which alcohol produces a narrow mindset. Alcohol cues may contribute to cognitive and behavioral deficits, as well as drinking behaviors, in part, because they lead to the inability to process a broad range of information in the environment.