Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discovering images : features, similarities and subspaces

This thesis investigates three of the core components of content-based image retrieval: visual features, similarity functions and indexing methods. In the content-based paradigm images are searched in a purely visual domain, where they are represented by high-dimensional features. Exhaustively searching this feature space can take a prohibitively long time. I argue that by the use of judicious approximations we can search large collections interactively, while keeping a good level of retrieval performance. I first carry out a thorough investigation of texture features. This results in novel feature modifications which give significant improvement in retrieval performance. The adaptations are based on considering the representation of texture within whole, real images. Secondly, I present the first application of fractional dissimilarity functions to image retrieval. These functions emphasise points close to the query in each dimension, while reducing the noise from others. Through a thorough evaluation we show that these functions give a consistent improvement in retrieval performance across a wide range of collections and features. Following this theme, I generalise a class of local similarity functions that exhibit similar behaviour. These functions decompose features into dimensions and index these independently. By selecting only the points local to the query in each dimension, we can ignore a large proportion of data and maintain retrieval performance. Experiments with five different image collections show that the optimal proportion of each dimension, to maximise retrieval performance, decreases from 10% to 0.1% — with a corresponding collapse of computing cycles — as the collection size increases from ten thousand to one million images. The culmination of this work brings together the separate strands of research to implement an image search system. We demonstrate that, using normal hardware, this system was able to search four million images in just over one second, thus satisfying the goal of effective real-time searching of large image collections.
Sepsis : an update Sepse : atualidades e perspectivas

Sepsis is a condition where the systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) is triggered by either a suspected or confirmed infection. (1-3) From a clinical point of view, the presentation of sepsis is related to multiple possible interactions between the human being and the microorganisms,(4) manifesting with conditions such as infection, SIRS, sepsis, severe sepsis, septic shock and multiple organ system dysfunction (Table 1). (5-7) These concepts were proposed in a 1991 consensus conference sponsored by the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) and the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM)(5) in Chicago, United States of America (USA). Ten years later, these concepts were reviewed in a new conference, as shown in chart 1. From a public health point of view, sepsis is highly relevant. Angus et al. (2001) studied 192,980 cases of severe sepsis in a cohort of more than 6.5 million patients admitted to 847 hospitals in seven American states, estimating its incidence, economic burden and prognosis. The incidence of severe sepsis was 3 cases out of 1,000 inhabitants (751,000 cases/ year for the US population), surpassing the incidence of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the predominant types of cancer, resulting in 215,000 deaths per year (28.6% of the cases). (8) The figures from the European Union member states are not very different, with an estimated 150,000 deaths per year from sepsis. (9) In Brazil, the epidemiological aspects of sepsis have been investigated, deserving particular emphasis the BASES Rodrigo Siqueira-Batista1, Andréia Patrícia Gomes1, Larissa CalixtoLima2, Rodrigo Roger Vitorino3, Mario Castro Alvarez Perez4, Eduardo Gomes de Mendonça5, Maria Goreti de Almeida Oliveira5, Mauro Geller3
Twelve-Month Effectiveness of a Parent-led, Family-Focused Weight-Management Program for Prepubertal Children: A Randomized, Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND. Parenting-skills training may be an effective age-appropriate child behavior-modification strategy to assist parents in addressing childhood overweight. OBJECTIVE. Our goal was to evaluate the relative effectiveness of parenting-skills training as a key strategy for the treatment of overweight children. DESIGN. The design consisted of an assessor-blinded, randomized, controlled trial involving 111 (64% female) overweight, prepubertal children 6 to 9 years of age randomly assigned to parenting-skills training plus intensive lifestyle education, parenting-skills training alone, or a 12-month wait-listed control. Height, BMI, and waist-circumference z score and metabolic profile were assessed at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months (intention to treat). RESULTS. After 12 months, the BMI z score was reduced by ∼10% with parenting-skills training plus intensive lifestyle education versus ∼5% with parenting-skills training alone or wait-listing for intervention. Waist-circumference z score fell over 12 months in both intervention groups but not in the control group. There was a significant gender effect, with greater reduction in BMI and waist-circumference z scores in boys compared with girls. CONCLUSION. Parenting-skills training combined with promoting a healthy family lifestyle may be an effective approach to weight management in prepubertal children, particularly boys. Future studies should be powered to allow gender subanalysis.
Saving Critical Nodes with Firefighters is FPT

We consider the problem of firefighting to save a critical subset of nodes. The firefighting game is a turn-based game played on a graph, where the fire spreads to vertices in a breadth-first manner from a source, and firefighters can be placed on yet unburnt vertices on alternate rounds to block the fire. In this work, we consider the problem of saving a critical subset of nodes from catching fire, given a total budget on the number of firefighters. We show that the problem is para-NP-hard when parameterized by the size of the critical set. We also show that it is fixed-parameter tractable on general graphs when parameterized by the number of firefighters. We also demonstrate improved running times on trees and establish that the problem is unlikely to admit a polynomial kernelization (even when restricted to trees). Our work is the first to exploit the connection between the firefighting problem and the notions of important separators and tight separator sequences. Finally, we consider the spreading model of the firefighting game, a closely related problem, and show that the problem of saving a critical set parameterized by the number of firefighters is W[2]-hard, which contrasts our FPT result for the non-spreading model.
Maternal control of offspring sex and male morphology in the Otitesella fig wasps

Abstract Models concerning the evolution of alternative mating tactics commonly assume that individuals determine their own strategies. Here we develop a computer‐based ESS model that allows mothers, ovipositing in discrete patches, to choose both the sex and the male mating tactics (natal‐patch mating or dispersing) of their offspring based only on how many other mothers have used the specific patch before them. Data for three species of nonpollinating fig wasps from the Otitesella genus agree quantitatively with the model's assumptions and predictions. This suggests that females respond to population densities at the level of individual figs. The alternative male tactics in the species we studied are probably a result of a conditional strategy exercised by the mother that laid them. In addition, as females were only allowed to lay one egg per patch, our results suggest a new mechanism that can skew population sex ratios towards a female bias.
Learning-Based Method with Valence Shifters for Sentiment Analysis

Automatic sentiment classification is becoming a popular and effective way to help online users or companies process and make sense of customer reviews. In this article, a learning-based method for classification of online reviews that achieves better classification accuracy is obtained by (a) combining valence shifters and opinion words into bigrams for use as features in an ordinal margin classifier and (b) using relational information between unigrams/bigrams in the form of a graph to constrain the parameters of the classifier. By using these two components, it is possible to extract more information present in the unstructured data than other methods such as support vector machines and random forest, hence gaining the potential of better classification performance. Indeed, our simulation results show a higher classification accuracy on empirical real data with ground truth and on simulated data.
What is Seen as the Best Practice of Site Management

The effect of management on site performance and productivity is presented by a number of researchers (Chormokos & McKee 1981, Arditi 1985, Banik 1999, Salminen 2005). Site managers play one of the key roles in the overall project success (Djerbani 1996, Styhre & Josephson 2006). As superior managers are said to be almost twice as productive as their underperforming colleagues (Schmidt & Hunter 1998), the way we manage and lead our sites makes a big difference. The objective of this paper is to evaluate what kind of site management is considered to be “good”, what do construction companies in Finland see as the best practice and how does this “best” differ from others. To achieve the objective both a literature review and a set of interviews were conducted. Eleven top foremen were chosen by their employers mainly due to their ability to achieve the targets concerning time, schedule and quality. These top site managers shared their “best practice” views on managing factors affecting work site and construction productivity in a series of interviews in spring 2011. Based on these interviews, the main factors affecting productivity on the sites are scheduling and the temporal management of the work site. The quality of design, the scheduling of the design process and the quality of resources were also viewed as strong factors affecting the opportunities of advance planning and site performance.
When They Do It: Institutional Entrepreneurship in Two Québécois Organizations

This article analyses from an institutional perspective efforts by two entrepreneurs in governmental organizations to promote new practices and programmes and the nature of the challenges they encounter as they deviate from, and attempt to disrupt, institutionalized practices. These two case studies are used to gain knowledge on why and how individuals become institutional entrepreneurs. The article provides insights into the processes an institutional entrepreneur goes through in an institution that does not provide support. The authors finally suggest potential avenues for cross-fertilization between the corporate entrepreneurship and institutional entrepreneurship literatures.
Social Media Adoption in Business-to-Business: IT and Industrial Companies Compared

This article investigates Belgian business-to-business (B2B) companies’ perceptions of and attitudes toward social media, matching the findings with existing U.S., U.K., and Dutch research. Using survey data from a nonrepresentative judgment sample of 92 Belgian B2B companies, we show that 85.9% of Belgian B2B companies that participated in our research use social media to ensure their influence on target groups. The survey also reveals that 40.8% of IT companies implement a social media strategy against only 26.7% of industrial B2B companies. Relying on the technology acceptance model, we argue that IT companies are more inclined to adopt social media because they evaluate social media’s usefulness higher than industrial enterprises. Qualitative follow-up research (in-depth interviews with 11 B2B enterprises) further explains the observed differences and similarities between both sectors, analyzing perceived benefits and risks, social media knowledge, and strategies. We conclude the article by listing various suggested actions that can help B2B companies effectively leverage social media.
Insights into mechanisms of corticotropin‐releasing hormone receptor signal transduction

During evolution, mammals have developed remarkably similar molecular mechanisms to respond to external challenges and maintain survival. Critical regulators of these mechanisms are the family of ‘stress’‐peptides that consists of the corticotropin‐releasing hormone (CRH) and urocortins (Ucns). These neuropeptides ‘fine‐tune’ integration of an intricate series of physiological responses involving the autonomic, endocrine, immune, cardiovascular and reproductive systems, which induce a spectrum of behavioural and homeostatic changes. CRH and Ucns exert their actions by activating two types of CRH receptors (CRH‐R), CRH‐R1 and CRH‐R2, which belong to the class‐B1 family of GPCRs. The CRH‐Rs exhibit signalling promiscuity facilitated by their ability to couple to multiple G‐proteins and regulate diverse intracellular networks that involve intracellular effectors such as cAMP and an array of PKs in an agonist and tissue‐specific manner, a property that allows them to exert unique roles in the integration of homeostatic mechanisms. We only now begin to unravel the plethora of CRH‐R biological actions and the transcriptional and post‐translational mechanisms such as alternative mRNA splicing or phosphorylation‐mediated desensitization developed to tightly control CRH‐Rs biological activity and regulate their physiological actions. This review summarizes the current understanding of CRH‐R signalling complexity and regulatory mechanisms that underpin cellular responses to CRH and Ucns.
Efficient Soft MIMO Detection Algorithms Based on Differential Metrics

The multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology can make full use of spectrum and increase the communication throughput. In the coded MIMO system, the main challenge of soft detection is to efficiently generate the loglikelihood ratios (LLR) values for channel decoder. The exact maximum a posteriori (MAP) probability detection can guarantee the optimal performance, but its realization is difficult due to its enormous complexity. In this paper, we propose efficient soft detection algorithms based on differential metrics. We apply the differential metrics for the list sphere decoding, and propose the list gradient algorithm. We further propose a novel algorithm that can generate the values of LLR and provide a trade-off between performance and complexity. The proposed algorithms do not need the QR decomposition and matrix inversion. The proposed algorithms have fixed complexity, and are appropriate for pipelined hardware implementation. The numerical results verify the efficiency of our algorithms.
When Humanizing Brands Goes Wrong: The Detrimental Effect of Brand Anthropomorphization amid Product Wrongdoings

The brand relationship literature shows that the humanizing of brands and products generates more favorable consumer attitudes and thus enhances brand performance. However, the authors propose negative downstream consequences of brand humanization; that is, the anthropomorphization of a brand can negatively affect consumers’ brand evaluations when the brand faces negative publicity caused by product wrongdoings. They find that consumers who believe in personality stability (i.e., entity theorists) view anthropomorphized brands that undergo negative publicity less favorably than nonanthropomorphized brands. In contrast, consumers who advocate personality malleability (i.e., incremental theorists) are less likely to devalue an anthropomorphized brand from a single instance of negative publicity. Finally, the authors explore three firm response strategies (i.e., denial, apology, and compensation) that can affect the evaluations of anthropomorphized brands for consumers with different implicit theory perspectives. They find that entity theorists have more difficulty in combating the adverse effects of brand anthropomorphization than incremental theorists. Furthermore, they demonstrate that compensation (vs. denial or apology) is the only effective response among entity theorists.
Employer perspectives of the current and future value of STEM graduate skills and attributes: An Australian study

Graduate employability has become increasingly contentious as employers call for greater development, evaluation and benchmarking of student skills and capabilities in university courses. However, the increasing range of graduate attributes and competencies demanded by industry is further pressuring an Australian higher education sector already stretched by greater student numbers and declines in government funding. Given these circumstances, there is a need to better understand employer perspectives of the current and future value of vocational, interpersonal and generic attributes of STEM graduates. A survey of STEM graduate employers showed that vocational skills, such as graduates' abilities to contextually apply and develop knowledge, together with generic skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, were valued most highly. Conversely, self-confidence and independence, along with numeracy and related skills, were valued least by the employers. However, attributes such as flexibility / adaptability, self-confidence, personal planning and organisation and developing knowledge relevant to the position were all predicted to become significantly more valuable in a decade's time. The results of this study suggest that Australian undergraduate STEM curricula, which commonly focus on knowledge acquisition, be redesigned and restructured to provide students with opportunities to apply such knowledge more often, and in real life, industry-based contexts, such as WIL and IBL programs. Through such initiatives, together with greater dialogue and collaboration between academics and employers, employability skills and attributes can be better inculcated in undergraduates, to the benefit of graduates and society as a whole.
Long‐term Channel Member Relationships

The ability to nurture marketing channel relations is essential to long‐term corporate survival. This study empirically investigates how and why relationships between manufacturers and dealers in the office systems/furniture industry develop and how and why these relationships are maintained. The results demonstrate the benefits of considering the actions and reactions of channel partners when developing tactical and strategic marketing plans. These findings emphasise the importance of mutual dependency, behaviour and financial performance in creating effective working environments.
Primitive Action Based Combined Task and Motion Planning for the Service Robot

The need for combined task and motion planning (CTAMP) in robotics is well known as robotic technologies become more mature. The goal of CTAMP is to determine a proper sequence of a robot’s actions based on symbolic and geometric reasoning. Because of the fundamental difference in symbolic and geometric reasoning, a CTAMP system often requires an interface module between the two reasoning modules. We propose a CTAMP system in which a symbolic action sequence is generated in task planning, and each action is verified geometrically in motion planning using the off-the-shelf planners and reasoners. The approach is that a set of action models is defined with PDDL in the interface module (action library) and the required information to each planner is automatically provided by the interface module. The proposed method was successfully implemented in three simulated experiments that involve manipulation tasks. According to our findings, the proposed method is effective in responding to changes in the environment and uncertainty with errors in recognition of the environment and the robot motion control.
Charge neutrality and band-gap tuning of epitaxial graphene on SiC by molecular doping

Epitaxial graphene on SiC0001 suffers from strong intrinsic n-type doping. We demonstrate that the excess negative charge can be fully compensated by noncovalently functionalizing graphene with the strong electronacceptor tetrafluorotetracyanoquinodimethane F4-TCNQ. Charge neutrality can be reached in monolayer graphene as shown in electron-dispersion spectra from angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. In bilayer graphene the band-gap that originates from the SiC/graphene interface dipole increases with increasing F4TCNQ deposition and, as a consequence of the molecular doping, the Fermi level is shifted into the band-gap. The reduction in the charge-carrier density upon molecular deposition is quantified using electronic Fermi surfaces and Raman spectroscopy. The structural and electronic characteristics of the graphene/F4-TCNQ charge-transfer complex are investigated by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy. The doping effect on graphene is preserved in air and is temperature resistant up to 200 ° C. Furthermore, graphene noncovalent functionalization with F4-TCNQ can be implemented not only via evaporation in ultrahigh vacuum but also by wet chemistry.
Stock price reaction to analysts' EPS forecast error

This paper presents a study of analysts’ earnings forecast errors impact on stock prices by observing the reaction that stock price has to forecast errors of earnings per share (EPS). Simple linear regression is used to extract the firm-specific return of Walmart stock and to test the residuals with earnings forecast errors. The results show a strong significant relationship between forecast errors and subsequent stock price movements. The conclusion is that Walmart’s stock price does react to analysts’ EPS forecast error thereby supporting the hypothesis that investors incorporate analyst estimates into stock purchase decisions and update their valuations when those forecasts contain error.
hUNG2 Is the Major Repair Enzyme for Removal of Uracil from U:A Matches, U:G Mismatches, and U in Single-stranded DNA, with hSMUG1 as a Broad Specificity Backup*

hUNG2 and hSMUG1 are the only known glycosylases that may remove uracil from both double- and single-stranded DNA in nuclear chromatin, but their relative contribution to base excision repair remains elusive. The present study demonstrates that both enzymes are strongly stimulated by physiological concentrations of Mg2+ , at which the activity of hUNG2 is 2–3 orders of magnitude higher than of hSMUG1. Moreover, Mg2+ increases the preference of hUNG2 toward uracil in ssDNA nearly 40-fold. APE1 has a strong stimulatory effect on hSMUG1 against dsU, apparently because of enhanced dissociation of hSMUG1 from AP sites in dsDNA. hSMUG1 also has a broader substrate specificity than hUNG2, including 5-hydroxymethyluracil and 3,N 4-ethenocytosine. hUNG2 is excluded from, whereas hSMUG1 accumulates in, nucleoli in living cells. In contrast, only hUNG2 accumulates in replication foci in the S-phase. hUNG2 in nuclear extracts initiates base excision repair of plasmids containing either U:A and U:G in vitro. Moreover, an additional but delayed repair of the U:G plasmid is observed that is not inhibited by neutralizing antibodies against hUNG2 or hSMUG1. We propose a model in which hUNG2 is responsible for both prereplicative removal of deaminated cytosine and postreplicative removal of misincorporated uracil at the replication fork. We also provide evidence that hUNG2 is the major enzyme for removal of deaminated cytosine outside of replication foci, with hSMUG1 acting as a broad specificity backup.