Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time-Domain Optimized Near-Field Estimator for Ultrasound Imaging: Initial Development and Results

For nearly four decades, adaptive beamforming (ABF) algorithms have been applied in RADAR and SONAR signal processing. These algorithms reduce the contribution of undesired off-axis signals while maintaining a desired response along a specific look direction. Typically, higher resolution and contrast is attainable using adaptive beamforming at the price of an increased computational load. In this paper, we describe a novel ABF designed for medical ultrasound, named the time-domain optimized near-field estimator (TONE). We performed a series of simulations using synthetic ultrasound data to test the performance of this algorithm and compared it to conventional, data independent, delay and sum beamforming (CBF) method. We also performed experiments using a Philips SONOS 5500 phased array imaging system. CBF was applied using the default parameters of the Philips scanner, whereas TONE was applied on per channel, unfocused data using an unfocused transmit beam. TONE images were reconstructed at a sampling of 67 m laterally and 19 m axially. The results obtained for a series of five 20-m wires in a water tank show a significant improvement in spatial resolution when compared to CBF. We also analyzed the performance of TONE as a function of speed of sound errors and array sparsity, finding it robust to both.
Visual analysis of route diversity

Route suggestion is an important feature of GPS navigation systems. Recently, Microsoft T-drive has been enabled to suggest routes chosen by experienced taxi drivers for given source/destination pairs in given time periods, which often take less time than the routes calculated according to distance. However, in real environments, taxi drivers may use different routes to reach the same destination, which we call route diversity. In this paper we first propose a trajectory visualization method that examines the regions where the diversity exists and then develop several novel visualization techniques to display the high dimensional attributes and statistics associated with different routes to help users analyze diversity patterns. Our techniques have been applied to the real trajectory data of thousands of taxis and some interesting findings about route diversity have been obtained. We further demonstrate that our system can be used not only to suggest better routes for drivers but also to analyze traffic bottlenecks for transportation management.
Thermal-Aware Global Real-Time Scheduling on Multicore Systems

As the power density of modern electronic circuits increases dramatically, systems are prone to overheating. Thermal management has become a prominent issue in system design. This paper explores thermal-aware scheduling for sporadic real-time tasks to minimize the peak temperature in a homogeneous multicore system, in which heat might transfer among some cores. By deriving an ideally preferred speed for each core, we propose global scheduling algorithms which can exploit the flexibility of multicore platforms at low temperature. Compared with load-balancing strategies, the proposed algorithms can significantly reduce the peak temperature by up to $30$ $^\circ$C to $70$ $^\circ$C for simulated platforms.
Quantifying Type-Specific Reproduction Numbers for Nosocomial Pathogens: Evidence for Heightened Transmission of an Asian Sequence Type 239 MRSA Clone

An important determinant of a pathogen's success is the rate at which it is transmitted from infected to susceptible hosts. Although there are anecdotal reports that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) clones vary in their transmissibility in hospital settings, attempts to quantify such variation are lacking for common subtypes, as are methods for addressing this question using routinely-collected MRSA screening data in endemic settings. Here we present a method to quantify the time-varying transmissibility of different subtypes of common bacterial nosocomial pathogens using routine surveillance data. The method adapts approaches for estimating reproduction numbers based on the probabilistic reconstruction of epidemic trees, but uses relative hazards rather than serial intervals to assign probabilities to different sources for observed transmission events. The method is applied to data collected as part of a retrospective observational study of a concurrent MRSA outbreak in the United Kingdom with dominant endemic MRSA clones (ST22 and ST36) and an Asian ST239 MRSA strain (ST239-TW) in two linked adult intensive care units, and compared with an approach based on a fully parametric transmission model. The results provide support for the hypothesis that the clones responded differently to an infection control measure based on the use of topical antiseptics, which was more effective at reducing transmission of endemic clones. They also suggest that in one of the two ICUs patients colonized or infected with the ST239-TW MRSA clone had consistently higher risks of transmitting MRSA to patients free of MRSA. These findings represent some of the first quantitative evidence of enhanced transmissibility of a pandemic MRSA lineage, and highlight the potential value of tailoring hospital infection control measures to specific pathogen subtypes.
BML-111, a lipoxin receptor agonist, ameliorates ‘two-hit’-induced acute pancreatitis-associated lung injury in mice by the upregulation of heme oxygenase-1

Abstract The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of BML-111 on acute pancreatitis-associated lung injury (APALI) induced by cerulein with subsequent an LPS administration in mice and its possible mechanisms. One hundred and twenty-eight mice were randomly allocated to four groups, namely the APALI group, the BML-111 pretreatment group, the BM-111 control group, and the control group. The ‘two-hit’ mice APALI model was established by intraperitoneal injection of cerulein 7 times at hourly intervals and Escherichia coli lipopolysaccharide (LPS) once after the last dose of cerulein immediately. The samples were taken at 3, 6, 12, and 24 h after the last injection. Serum levels of amylase, TNF-a, IL-1β and IL-10, were determined. Histological score of the pancreas and lung, the wet/dry weight ratio, and heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) expression in the lung were also evaluated. BML-111 pretreatment significantly reduced the serum levels of amylase, TNF-α, IL-1β, the wet/dry weight ratio of lung, and the pathology injury scores of pancreas and lung, and the serum levels of IL-10 were markedly increased. The severity of pancreatic and lung histology were also significantly improved by the administration of BML-111, and the expressions of HO-1 in lung tissues also increased in the BML-111 group compared with those in the APALI group. In conclusion, BML-111 exerts protective effects on APALI induced by cerulein and LPS. In addition to its anti-inflammatory effects, the beneficial effects may also be due to the upregulation of HO-1 expression in the lung tissues.
Meeting report: 11th EMBL conference on transcription and chromatin - August 23–26, 2014 - Heidelberg, Germany

An all-star lineup of presenters and a friendly scientific atmosphere contributed to make the 11th EMBL Conference on Transcription and Chromatin (August 23–26, 2014) once again a meeting to remember. Scientist from over 30 countries met in Heidelberg, Germany to share their latest insights in transcription and chromatin research. DNA methylation, topologically associating domains, polycomb proteins, enhancers, divergent transcription, and the effect of chromatin and its modifications on gene expression were among the central topics. The overall high quality and the extent of novel material included in the presentations made summarizing this conference in a meeting report format a remarkably enjoyable challenge. I apologize in advance to those speakers whose excellent work was not to included due to space constraints.
Ultimate Accuracy for the nand Flash Program Algorithm Due to the Electron Injection Statistics

This paper investigates the ultimate accuracy of the NAND flash program algorithm that is determined by the statistical injection of electrons from the substrate to the floating gate. The granular nature of the electron flow during a constant-current Fowler-Nordheim program operation is shown to spread the programmed threshold-voltage distribution of the array cells. The electron injection statistics displays a Poissonian behavior for low amounts of transferred charge, but a sub-Poissonian character becomes clearly evident when large charge packets are stored. This effect is expected from the reduction of the tunnel oxide field that follows each electron storage event into the floating gate, establishing a correlation among such events. Finally, the impact of the electron injection statistical spread on the accuracy of the NAND flash program algorithm is investigated as a function of the technology node feature size, drawing projections on future NAND technologies.
Attachment and Parental Correlates in Late Adolescent Mexican American Women

Attachment dimensions and styles, parental caregiving styles, and acculturation were investigated among late adolescent Mexican American Hispanic and non-Hispanic White college women. Results showed no differences between groups on dimensions of attachment or distribution of attachment styles. Significant differences were found for parental gender. For both groups, mothers were rated higher on warmth, whereas fathers’ scores were higher for both ambivalent and cold caregiving styles. No maternal variables were associated with attachment security—only paternal variables—that highlights the salient role of fathers. Implications of measurement and acculturation are discussed as well as recommendations for future research into Hispanic populations.
Adaptive Fuzzy Control of Nonlinear Systems in Pure Feedback Form Based on Input-to-State Stability

Using mean value theorem and backstepping technique, a robust adaptive fuzzy control scheme is proposed for a class of pure-feedback nonlinear systems with unknown dead zone and disturbances via input-to-state stability. Takagi-Sugeno (T--S) type fuzzy logic systems are used to approximate the uncertain nonlinear functions and fewer learning parameters need to be adjusted online. Based on small gain theorem, the closed-loop control system is proven to be semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded, and the tracking error converges to a neighborhood of zero by choosing appropriate parameters. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the control scheme.
Metamorphic Virus: Analysis and Detection

Metamorphic viruses transform their code as they propagate, thus evading detection by static signature-based virus scanners, while keeping their functionality. They use code obfuscation techniques to challenge deeper static analysis and can also beat dynamic analyzers, such as emulators, by altering their behavior. To achieve this, metamorphic viruses use several metamorphic transformations, including register renaming, code permutation, code expansion, code shrinking, and garbage code insertion. In this thesis, an in-depth analysis of metamorphic viruses is presented, along with the techniques they use to transform their code to new generations. In order to give a better understanding of metamorphic viruses, a general discussion on malicious code and detection techniques is given first. Then, the description of several techniques to detect metamorphic viruses is given. A fair number of papers on metamorphic viruses exists in the literature, but no one is a complete discussion of all metamorphic techniques and detection methods. This thesis aims at a complete discussion of all metamorphic techniques used by virus writers so far, and all detection techniques implemented in antivirus products or still experimental. It accomplishes this by an in-depth research on malware and metamorphic viruses, through the existing literature. Due to space and time limitations, an exhaustive discussion was not possible in this thesis.
A new speech corpus in Spanish for speaker verification

In this paper we present a new database with speech recordings in Spanish. The database contains recordings of 54 native Spanish speakers. It is appropriate to be used in the development and testing of better Speaker Verification systems. The recording procedure, equipments and speech tasks are detailed. Experiments using the GMM-UBM speaker verification methodology were performed. The methodology of these experiments is described. Text-independent and text-dependent models were tested. The best results were obtained with text-independent models, EER = 3.04%. These kind of models also offer other advantages over text-independent models. According to the results this database is appropriate for speaker verification and identification research. Anyone interested in using this database for research purposes is welcome to contact the authors.
Careful Reading versus Expeditious Reading: Investigating the Construct Validity of a Multiple-choice Reading Test

The paper investigates the validity of a multiple-choice reading test using Weir and Khalifa’s (2008) model of reading. Fifty (50) multiple-choice reading items taken from the 2011 English state examination were administered to 496 Grade 12 secondary school students. A concurrent strategies questionnaire was used to elicit information on participants’ use of strategies during test writing. The results indicate that there are more items that target careful reading than those that target expeditious reading. This is to suggest that the ESE tasks appear to be inappropriate and may need some modifications to more closely reflect the actual test context.
Structure of aminopeptidase N from Escherichia coli suggests a compartmentalized, gated active site

Aminopeptidase N from Escherichia coli is a major metalloprotease that participates in the controlled hydrolysis of peptides in the proteolytic pathway. Determination of the 870-aa structure reveals that it has four domains similar to the tricorn-interacting factor F3. The thermolysin-like active site is enclosed within a large cavity with a volume of 2,200 Å3, which is inaccessible to substrates except for a small opening of approximately 8–10 Å. The substrate-based inhibitor bestatin binds to the protein with minimal changes, suggesting that this is the active form of the enzyme. The previously described structure of F3 had three distinct conformations that were described as “closed,” “intermediate,” and “open. ” The structure of aminopeptidase N from E. coli, however, is substantially more closed than any of these. Taken together, the results suggest that these proteases, which are involved in intracellular peptide degradation, prevent inadvertent hydrolysis of inappropriate substrates by enclosing the active site within a large cavity. There is also some evidence that the open form of the enzyme, which admits substrates, remains inactive until it adopts the closed form.
A image fog removal method based on human visual property

This paper proposed a image fog removal method. The method based on the disinhibition properties of retinal neurons concentric receptive field whose function is three Gaussians. Firstly, we enhance original fog image by using contrast limited global histogram equalization. Secondly, a local image enhancement method is carried out to restore the image's details and deepness information. According to comparison experiment, the results of this paper's method were compared with the results of dark channel prior based method and the results of CLAHE (Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization). The experimental results proved that the method of contrast limited global histogram equalization was able to avoid enhancing too light and to avoid adding noising. In addition, local details enhancement by three Gaussians strengthened the image's depth information. The method of this paper worked well in images fog removing and enhanced fog images' visibility.
Matching Hierarchical Structures Using Association Graphs

It is well-known that the problem of matching two relational structures can be posed as an equivalent problem of finding a maximal clique in a (derived) "association graph. " However, it is not clear how to apply this approach to computer vision problems where the graphs are hierarchically organized, i.e., are trees, since maximal cliques are not constrained to preserve the partial order. We provide a solution to the problem of matching two trees by constructing the association graph using the graph-theoretic concept of connectivity. We prove that, in the new formulation, there is a one-to-one correspondence between maximal cliques and maximal subtree isomorphisms. This allows us to cast the tree matching problem as an indefinite quadratic program using the Motzkin-Straus theorem, and we use "replicator" dynamical systems developed in theoretical biology to solve it. Such continuous solutions to discrete problems are attractive because they can motivate analog and biological implementations. The framework is also extended to the matching of attributed trees by using weighted association graphs. We illustrate the power of the approach by matching articulated and deformed shapes described by shock trees.
Literacy models and the reconstruction of history education: a comparative discourse analysis of two lesson plans

This article presents discourse analyses of two lesson plans designed for secondary school history classes. Although the plans focus on the same topic, they rely on different models of content area literacy: disciplinary literacy, or reading and writing like experts in a given domain, and critical literacy, or reading and writing to address injustice. The discourse analyses focus on how each plan (a) reimagines the field of secondary school history and (b) places students in reading and writing positions in the rebuilt field. Each plan, the article concludes, remakes secondary school history in relation to four other fields: the university, the professional workplace, everyday life and the public sphere. Secondary school history is reimagined as standing closer or farther away from each of these four fields. Moreover, each plan rebuilds secondary school history as a moral environment where certain kinds of moral knowledge, but not others, should be mobilized when reading, writing, speaking, thinking and listening.
A new mobile botnet classification based on permission and API calls

Currently, mobile botnet attacks have shifted from computers to smartphones due to its functionality, ease to exploit, and based on financial intention. Mostly, it attacks Android due to its popularity and high usage among end users. Every day, more and more malicious mobile applications (apps) with the botnet capability have been developed to exploit end users' smartphones. Therefore, this paper presents a new mobile botnet classification based on permission and Application Programming Interface (API) calls in the smartphone. This classification is developed using static analysis in a controlled lab environment and the Drebin dataset is used as the training dataset. 800 apps from the Google Play Store have been chosen randomly to test the proposed classification. As a result, 16 permissions and 31 API calls that are most related with mobile botnet have been extracted using feature selection and later classified and tested using machine learning algorithms. The experimental result shows that the Random Forest Algorithm has achieved the highest detection accuracy of 99.4% with the lowest false positive rate of 16.1% as compared to other machine learning algorithms. This new classification can be used as the input for mobile botnet detection for future work, especially for financial matters.
Blocked Gibbs sampling based multi-scale mixture model for speaker clustering on noisy data

A novel sampling method is proposed for estimating a continuous multi-scale mixture model. The multi-scale mixture models we assume have a hierarchical structure in which each component of the mixture is represented by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM). In speaker modeling from speech, this GMM represents intra-speaker dynamics derived from the difference in the attributes such as phoneme contexts and the existence of non-stationary noise and the mixture of GMMs (MoGMMs) represents inter-speaker dynamics derived from the difference in speakers. Gibbs sampling is a powerful technique to estimate such hierarchically structured models but can easily induce the local optima problem depending on its use especially when the elemental GMMs are complex in structure. To solve this problem, a highly accurate and robust sampling method based on the blocked Gibbs sampling and iterative conditional modes (ICM) is proposed and effectively applied for reducing a singularity solution given in the model with complex multi-modal distributions. In speaker clustering experiments under non-stationary noise, the proposed sampling-based model estimation improved the clustering performance by 17% on average compared to the conventional sampling-based methods.
Evidence for a Distinct Inhibitory Factor in the Regulation of p53 Functional Activity*

Under normal conditions, tumor suppressor protein p53 exists in the cell in its latent form and is unable to function as a transcription factor. The allosteric model of p53 regulation postulates that the extreme portion of p53 carboxyl terminus (aa 364–393) binds to the core domain of the protein, thereby abrogating specific DNA binding in that region. In this study we propose an alternative mechanism of p53 functional regulation, which involves a separate molecule acting in trans to inhibit p53 transcriptional activity. Through the use of chimeric proteins of p53, p63γ and p73β, we show that the extreme COOH-terminal domain of p53 exerts a powerful and specific inhibitory effect on the p73- and p63-driven expression of a reporter gene. Moreover, fusion of p53 extreme COOH terminus to a completely unrelated transcriptional activator Gal4-VP16 also results in significant inhibition of transactivation activity. Since p73, p63, or Gal4-VP16 cannot associate with any part of the p53 molecule, we conclude that p53(aa 364–393) represses transcriptional activity of chimeric proteins and p53 itself through the binding of external negative modulator(s) in that region and not by the allosteric mechanism of regulation. In accordance with the “distinct inhibitor” hypothesis, the activity of wild type p53 is substantially increased by overexpression of chimeric proteins bearing p53(aa 364–393), which might be due to the competitive removal of transcriptional inhibitor(s). Our findings provide the basis for the identification of such negative modulators of p53 transcriptional activity.
The Meaning of Work and Love: Career Issues and Interventions.

Examining concepts about work and love can help people increase their career success and life satisfaction. Career counselors may initiate this examination by eliciting clients' concepts about work and love. After hearing a client's ideas about work and love, counselors can compare this personal meaning to the social meaning of work and love. When this comparison reveals dysfunctional beliefs about work and love, counselors can link these beliefs to their client's career concerns. Such a linkage typically provokes a cognitive dissonance that motivates clients to modify their beliefs. Counselors can facilitate meaning modification by using client-centered and social influence techniques.