Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Motion sketch based crowd video retrieval via motion structure coding

Crowd video retrieval is an important problem in surveillance video management in the era of big data, e.g., video indexing and browsing. In this paper, we address this issue from the motion-level perspective by using hand-drawn sketches as queries. Motion sketch based crowd video retrieval naturally suffers from challenges in motion-level video indexing and sketch representation. We tackle them by leveraging the motion structure coding algorithm to extract robust structure-preserved motion descriptors. For video indexing, we use motion decomposition to separate the sub-motion vector fields with typical patterns from a set of optical flows. Then, the motion-level descriptors of the vector fields are computed and stored in the index database. To represent sketch queries, we propose a sketch vectorization algorithm followed by motion structure coding. In the retrieval stage, given a new query, the retrieval function learned by the Ranking SVM algorithm predicts the ranking score of each motion pattern in the index database. Extensive experiments are conducted on the publicly available crowd datasets, which demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed sketch based crowd video retrieval system.
Should We Routinely Screen for Cytomegalovirus Antibody during Pregnancy?

In order to evaluate the usefulness of cytomegalovirus (CMV) antibody screening during pregnancy, women attending for antenatal care at the Antoine Béclère Hospital (Clamart, France) were prospectively studied during 22 months (1995–1996). Forty-five percent of these women were CMV-seropositive. Twenty suspected or confirmed CMV primary infections were detected. Nine infected infants were born to these women. All infected infants are now between 10 months and 2.5 years old. They all are asymptomatic even those who initially presented abnormal biological parameters or slightly abnormal ultrasound scans during fetal life. Presently, screening for CMV antibody cannot be recommended because it induces economic, psychological and ethical problems. Furthermore, there is no efficient and safe treatment available so far. However, we do think that large studies must be performed to increase our knowledge about the natural history of intrauterine CMV infection. This is also important for an improved assessment of the value of ultrasound examination results as well as the biological parameters measured in fetal blood samples.
Virtual path bandwidth allocation in multiuser networks

We consider a multiuser network that is shared by noncooperative users. Each user sets up virtual paths that optimize its own selfish performance measure. This measure accounts for the guaranteed call level quality of service, as well as for the cost incurred for reserving the resource. The interaction among the user strategies is formalized as a noncooperative game. We show that the game has a unique Nash equilibrium and that it possesses a certain fairness property. We investigate the dynamics of this game and prove convergence to the Nash equilibrium of both a Gauss-Seidel scheme and a Jacobi scheme. We extend our study to various general network topologies. Finally, the formal results and some extensions thereof are tested by emulating the schemes on an experimental network.
“In Kindy You Don’t Get Taught”: Continuity and Change as Children Start School

Over the last decade, there has been increasing awareness of the importance of engaging young children in research about their experiences and considering ways in which children’s experiences, expectations and perceptions influence both their interactions and those of others. This has resulted from recognition of young children as active citizens, with rights to be consulted about matters that affect them and from the principles underpinning the sociology of childhood, which emphasizes children’s capabilities and agency. This paper explores young Australian children’s perceptions of school and learning, as expressed through drawings and conversations about school. Data from children in preschools and the early years of school highlight children’s expectations and experiences of school, including the importance of play, friendships, children’s dispositions, and academic expectations of school and teachers. Drawing on previous research that notes the long term importance of children’s attitudes and approaches, as well as their sense of belonging and identity, at the start of school, this paper has implications for adults engaging with children as they make the transition to school.
Sibling Connections and Reasonable Efforts in Public Child Welfare

On October 7, 2008, President George W. Bush signed Pub. L.110-351 into law. This major legislation changed child welfare practice. Of particular interest are the provisions concerning sibling placement and reasonable efforts. Both research and advocacy groups have pointed to the important role of siblings, and hence the need to place siblings together or to at least facilitate sibling contact while separated. We briefly review the research on the important role of siblings, examine sibling placements in foster care and kinship care in relation to placement disruption and permanency outcomes, and suggest policies and practices (e.g., family group decision making) to support the sibling bond over time.
Evidence for the action of bovine follicular fluid factor(s) other than inhibin in suppressing follicular development and delaying oestrus in heifers.

The aim of this study was to investigate the importance of inhibin in the delay in return to oestrus in heifers induced by steroid-stripped bovine follicular fluid (bFF). Oestrous activity was synchronized in 18 Hereford x Friesian heifers with two injections of prostaglandin (PG) 12 days apart. At the time of the second PG injection (time 0), the animals were assigned at random to one of three experimental groups and received i.v. injections of 20 ml saline (controls, n = 6), whole bFF (FF group, n = 6) or bFF in which the bioactive inhibin content had been reduced by > 95% by immunoaffinity chromatography (-INH group, n = 6; inhibin content approximately 0.8 ml whole bFF) every 8 h for 2 days. In a dose-response study, 2.5 ml whole bFF was insufficient to delay oestrus consistently following a similar synchronization regimen. Blood samples were taken every 8 h, initially before each injection and then subsequently for a further 9 days for hormone analysis. Animals were observed every 8 h throughout the experiment for signs of behavioural oestrus. The ovaries of all animals were examined using real-time ultrasonography about 30 h after the second PG injection. Treatment failed to suppress peripheral follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) concentrations, although a significant increase was observed in both treatment groups after cessation of injections. Progesterone concentrations fell immediately after the second PG injection in all animals and remained below minimum detectable concentrations in all treated animals for the remainder of the experiment. In control animals, progesterone rose above minimum detectable concentrations by day 6 and continued to rise until the end of the experiment. Analysis of samples taken from treated animals several days after observed oestrus revealed that all had apparently ovulated. Mean daily luteinizing hormone (LH) concentrations did not differ between treatment groups before ovulation, but after ovulation, mean daily LH was significantly reduced in control animals as progesterone concentrations rose. Follicular development, as assessed by the mean antral diameter of the largest follicle on a pair of ovaries at ultrasound examination, was significantly suppressed in treated animals compared with controls (P < 0.01) and there was no significant difference (P = 0.397) between the two treatment groups. Control animals displayed oestrus 68 h (+/- 8 SEM) after the second PG injection, but oestrus was delayed in treated animals to 186h +/- 5 (FF group) and 191 h +/- 6 (-INH group).
Clustering Predicted by an Electrophysiological Model of the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus

Despite the wealth of experimental data on the electrophysiology of individual neurons in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN), the neural code of the SCN remains largely unknown. To predict the electrical activity of the SCN, the authors simulated networks of 10,000 GABAergic SCN neurons using a detailed model of the ionic currents within SCN neurons. Their goal was to understand how neuronal firing, which occurs on a time scale faster than a second, can encode a set phase of the circadian (24-h) cycle. The authors studied the effects of key network properties including: 1) the synaptic density within the SCN, 2) the magnitude of postsynaptic currents, 3) the heterogeneity of circadian phase in the neuronal population, 4) the degree of synaptic noise, and 5) the balance between excitation and inhibition. Their main result was that under a wide variety of conditions, the SCN network spontaneously organized into (typically 3) groups of synchronously firing neurons. They showed that this type of clustering can lead to the silencing of neurons whose intracellular clocks are out of circadian phase with the rest of the population. Their results provide clues to how the SCN may generate a coherent electrical output signal at the tissue level to time rhythms throughout the body.
Complexity and Life

During the last two decades, a new understanding of life emerged at the forefront of science.The development of complexity theory, technically known as nonlinear dynamics, has allowed scientists and mathematicians to model the complexities of living systems in new ways that have yielded many important discoveries. In this article, the author reviews the basic concepts, current achievements and status of complexity theory from the perspective of the new understanding of biological life. Models and theories discussed include the theory of dissipative structures for nonlinear chemical systems, the application of bifurcation theory to genetic networks and cell differentiation, the study of the origin of biological form (morphology), a new approach to the understanding of developmental stability in embryology, and a model of the ‘origin of life’ and prebiotic evolution in tiny, membrane-bounded vesicles in the primeval oceans.
Person Identification Using Fingerprint by Hybridizing Core Point and Minutiae Features

-Fingerprint recognition refers to the automated method of verifying a match between two human fingerprints. Fingerprints are one of many forms of biometrics used to identify an individual and verify their identity. The non-changeability of Fingerprints during the human life span and the uniqueness of each individual’s fingerprints are the basis for using fingerprints for identification purposes. The main objective is to provide a high secure unibiometric system using the fingerprint of individuals. The fingerprint trait is chosen because of its availability, reliability and high accuracy. Moreover the fingerprint based biometric system can be implemented easily.
Reaction time and attention after closed head injury

A. H. van Zomeren Reaction time and attention after closed head injury. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger B.V. , ISBN 90 265 0369 5, 1981, × + 166pp. Dfl. 30.00. Toronto: Hogrefe International, Inc. US 18.00
Recognition and Summarization of Chord Progressions and Their Application to Music Information Retrieval

Accurate and compact representation of music signals is a key component of large-scale content-based music applications such as music content management and near duplicate audio detection. This problem is not well solved yet despite many research efforts in this field. In this paper, we suggest mid-level summarization of music signals based on chord progressions. More specially, in our proposed algorithm, chord progressions are recognized from music signals based on a supervised learning model, and recognition accuracy is improved by locally probing n-best candidates. By investigating the properties of chord progressions, we further calculate a histogram from the probed chord progressions as a summary of the music signal. We show that the chord progression-based summarization is a powerful feature descriptor for representing harmonic progressions and tonal structures of music signals. The proposed algorithm is evaluated with content-based music retrieval as a typical application. The experimental results on a dataset with more than 70,000 songs confirm that our algorithm can effectively improve summarization accuracy of musical audio contents and retrieval performance, and enhance music retrieval applications on large-scale audio databases.
The link between perceptions of power and client behaviours

This article considers the influence that client perceptions of power may have on client behaviours and proposes that lawyers have much to gain from the effective management of client perceptions. The premise of the paper is that in a competitive marketplace lawyers can gain an advantage if they are able to encourage more clients to exhibit behaviours that have a positive, rather than negative, outcome for their firm. This article extends the understanding of factors that create dependency upon lawyers beyond those identified by Hilton and Migdal (2005) and confirms the importance of trust within the lawyer-client relationship. Individuals maintain relationships either because they genuinely want to or because they believe they have no other option (Johnson, 1982). However, the influence that these motives might have on client behaviours has received little attention, particularly within the professional services context. Bendapudi and Berry (1997) hypothesize that the two motives result in different client behaviours because they either create perceptions of dependence or trust. They associate the ‘want to stay’ motive with the presence of trust and link this to behaviours that have a positive impact on the organisation positing that less positive behaviours arise as a result of client perceived dependence. If some client behaviours have a greater positive impact on organisations than other behaviours then organisations able to encourage ‘good’ behaviours while minimising the ‘bad’ behaviours will gain an advantage within a competitive marketplace. If positive impact behaviours rely on the presence of trust while negative impact behaviours arise from the perception of dependence, then it becomes important to explore how legal relationships are perceived by clients, in terms of relational power. It is within this context that this paper addresses the following questions: what, if any, role does the perception of power play and is there a link between client perception of power and client behaviours within client-lawyer relationships? INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, VOL. 14, NO. 1, MARCH 2007
Preemptive Strategies to Improve Routing Performance of Native and Overlay Layers

Overlay routing is known to cause undesired instability in a network by operating in a selfish manner. The objectives of overlay routing, such as optimizing end-to-end latency, are often in conflict with the objectives of traffic engineering in the native layer, which is concerned about balancing load. In our work, we build on past research that has investigated the recurring non-cooperative interaction between overlay routing and traffic engineering, and develop strategies that improve the routing performance of a particular layer with incomplete information about the other layer. In our strategies, one layer acts as a leader that predicts the follower's reaction and undertakes countermeasures to prevent future deterioration in performance. Specifically, we propose two classes of strategies - friendly or hostile - for each layer. By simulating under different network characteristics, we show that these preemptive strategies achieve near-optimal performance for the leader and increase the overall stability of the network. Furthermore, we observe that the best performance for a particular layer is achieved only when the goals of the other layer are completely violated, thereby motivating a higher level of selfishness.
Feminising and masculinising primary teaching: a critical examination of the interpretive frameworks of male primary school principals in Hong Kong

Over the past two decades, the feminisation of primary school teaching has been identified by the media and government officials in Western countries as an important contributing factor to boys' academic problems. This panic, which has been criticised by feminists as a backlash and a form of recuperative politics, has promoted the development of research into gender and education, particularly studies related to the gendered culture of primary schools and on the masculinities of male teachers. However, male primary principals remain relatively under-researched in the literature, despite the importance of their structural position and increasing concern over the masculinisation of school leadership. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion by critically analysing the interpretive frameworks of 12 male primary school principals. The findings reveal not only the complex, contradictory and at times culturally specific gendered discourses that some male principals employ, but also their feminising and masculinising effects on the school workplace and leadership.
Variations in Functional and Morphological Characteristics of Elite Polish Field Hockey Players in a Complete Macrocycle

The purpose was to evaluate a hypothesized model of change during a training and competition macrocycle in a sample of elite field hockey players. Subjects were 11 members of the Polish national team. Players were measured and tested four times through a complete macrocycle. Variables included body mass, %Fat (BIA), aerobic endurance, maximal running speed, speed-endurance and blood lactate concentrations after the endurance, speed and speed-endurance tests. Significant changes occurred in %Fat, aerobic endurance and blood lactate concentrations at different phases of the macrocycle. Mean changes for the total sample did not follow the hypothesized model for speed, aerobic endurance and speed-endurance between specific periods of the macrocycle. Variability among individual players was considerable and emphasized the importance of individualizing training protocols during a macrocycle. The results highlighted the need to consider specific functional capacities (speed, aerobic endurance, speed-endurance) of individual athletes in addition to technical and tactical skills.
Associations among Relational Maintenance Behaviors, Attachment-Style Categories, and Attachment Dimensions

Simon and Baxter (1993) demonstrated that secure individuals report using more assurances and romance to maintain their romantic relationships than do dismissive individuals. The present study extends Simon and Baxter's work by investigating a wider range of prosocial maintenance behaviors as well as two key dimensions underlying attachment style—anxiety and avoidance. Results from 189 couples who completed questionnaires showed that secure individuals reported using more assurances, romantic affection, and openness than did dismissive individuals. Fearful avoidant men also reported relatively low levels of prosocial maintenance behaviors, and preoccupied men and women reported relatively high levels of assurances, openness, and comfort/support. Respondents also reported using certain prosocial behaviors less when they had a preoccupied partner. In terms of attachment-style dimensions, respondents reported using less assurances when they were avoidant and their partner was anxious. One's own level of avoidance also associated negatively with romantic affection, openness, and social networking, whereas one's own level of anxiety associated negatively with task sharing, comfort/support, and social networking. Implications for future work on relational maintenance and attachment theory are discussed.
ECNU at TREC 2015: LiveQA Track

Abstract : This paper reports on East Normal China Universitys participation in the TREC 2015 LiveQA track. An overview is presented to introduce our community question answer system and discuss the technologies. This year, the Trec LiveQA track expands the traditional QA track, focusing on live question answering for the real-user questions. At this challenge, we built a real-time community question answer system. Our results are presented at the end of the paper.
Urban-Rural Differences in Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors: A Cross-Sectional Study of Schoolchildren in Wuhan, China

Background China’s rapid population growth and urban migration has developed healthcare inequity across the urban-rural divide. Past studies comparing cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor prevalence amongst urban-rural Chinese children are sparse and conflicting. We examined the association between urban-rural residence and risk of offspring CVD in Chinese children. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in Wuhan, China, during May and June 2010. CVD risk factors include; waist circumference (WC), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), fasting blood glucose (FBG), triglycerides (TG), high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, body mass index (BMI), cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), metabolic syndrome (MetS), and metabolic risk score (MRS). Analysis of covariance and multivariable logistic regression were used to estimate associations between urban-rural residence and offspring CVD risks. Findings A total of 579 Chinese children (338 boys and 241 girls) aged 9.6 (0.7) years participated in this study. Rural boys had significantly lower CRF and higher FBG, TG, and MRS, while urban boys had significantly higher LDL and DBP. Rural girls had significantly higher BMI, FBG, and TG, as well as lower CRF. Rural children were at increased risks for decreased CRF, elevated MRS, and TG, (OR:2.04, 95%CI:1.29–3.25), (OR:2.33, 95%CI:1.50–3.62), and (OR:2.40, 95%CI:1.62–3.57), respectively. Rural girls and mothers were at increased risks for overweight(OR:7.19, 95%CI:1.64–31.6)/obesity (OR:1.683, 95%CI:1.01–2.82). However, rural boys and fathers were less likely to have overweight(OR:0.62, 95%CI:0.34–1.12)/obesity (OR:0.68, 95%CI:0.48–0.97). Conclusions Rural residence was significantly associated with increased CVD risks amongst Chinese children. It is important to provide interventions aiming at China’s urban-rural healthcare inequity and community-based approaches that reduce familial CVD risk.
Generalized frequency domain imaging algorithm for arbitrary bisatic SAR

In this paper, a generalized frequency domain imaging algorithm is proposed for focusing data from the bistatic SAR (BSAR) with arbitrary geometry configurations. The proposed algorithm is derived from the ideal frequency-domain spectrum of arbitrary BSAR, which is achieved from the method of the series reversion (MSR). By implementing the 2-D linear regression, the process of the ideal frequency domain imaging reconstruction of arbitrary BSAR is fitted to be a two-dimensional non-uniform discrete Fourier transform (NUDFT). Then the Non-Uniform Fast Fourier Transform of type 3 (NUFFT-3) is used to compensate of the space-variance of BSAR data. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed algorithm.