Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kalman filtering-based modified Cam-Shift vehicle tracking algorithm for highway traffic conditions

A new Kalman filtering-based Cam-Shift vehicle tracking algorithm is proposed for video monitoring of highway traffic conditions in this paper. First, the approximate location and size of the initial search windows are determined by Kalman filtering. Then, taking the predictive values as initial values, the Cam-Shift algorithm can give information on target vehicles in real time and with a high accuracy, and improve its anti-interference ability and tracking speed. Our results show that this algorithm is capable of vehicle tracking and can detect highway traffic conditions accurately.
The impact of grape seed extract treatment on blood pressure changes

Backgrounds and Objective: Several clinical trials have shown that grape seed extract can reduce blood pressure, but the results are often irreproducible. We therefore sought to systematically evaluate the impact of grape seed extract treatment on the changes of systolic/diastolic blood pressure (SBP/DBP) by meta-analyzing available randomized controlled trials. Methods: Trial selection and data extraction were completed independently by 2 investigators. Effect-size estimates were expressed as weighted mean difference (WMD) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: Twelve articles involving 16 clinical trials and 810 study subjects were analyzed. Overall analyses found significant reductions for SBP (WMD = −6.077; 95% CI: −10.736 to −1.419; P = 0.011) and DBP (WMD = −2.803; 95% CI: −4.417 to −1.189; P = 0.001) after grape seed extract treatment. In subgroup analyses, there were significant reductions in younger subjects (mean age < 50 years) for SBP (WMD = −6.049; 95% CI: −10.223 to −1.875; P = 0.005) and DBP (WMD = −3.116; 95% CI: −4.773 to −1.459; P < 0.001), in obese subjects (mean body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m2) for SBP (WMD = −4.469; 95% CI: −6.628 to −2.310; P < 0.001), and in patients with metabolic syndrome for SBP (WMD = −8.487; 95% CI: −11.869 to −5.106; P < 0.001). Further meta-regression analyses showed that age, body mass index, and baseline blood pressure were negatively associated with the significant reductions of SBP and DBP after treatment. There was no indication of publication bias. Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that grape seed extract exerted a beneficial impact on blood pressure, and this impact was more obvious in younger or obese subjects, as well as in patients with metabolic disorders. In view of the small sample size involved, we agree that confirmation of our findings in a large-scale, long-term, multiple-dose randomized controlled trial, especially among hypertensive patients is warranted.
Damping and frequency reduction of the f-mode due to turbulent motion in the solar convection zone

Solar f-mode properties were observed recently with high accuracy using high-resolution Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) data from SOHO (Duvall et al. 1998). According to these observations, linewidths increase with wavenumber k and the f-mode frequency ! is significantly lower than the frequency ! 0 given by the simple dispersion relation ! 2 = gk. This pa- per provides a possible explanation of these observations on the basis of the turbulent flow that is in the convection zone. The f-mode spends more time propagating against the flow than with the flow. As a result, its effective speed and consequently fre- quency are reduced. This reduction is revealed by the real part of ! A negative imaginary part of the frequency ! represents the damping of the coherent f-mode field due to scattering by the turbulent flow. The f-mode damping is a result of the generation of the turbulent field at the expense of the coherent field.
Connectionist-Symbolic Machine Intelligence using Cellular Automata based Reservoir-Hyperdimensional Computing

We introduce a novel framework of reservoir computing, that is capable of both connectionist machine intelligence and symbolic computation. Cellular automaton is used as the reservoir of dynamical systems. Input is randomly projected onto the initial conditions of automaton cells and nonlinear computation is performed on the input via application of a rule in the automaton for a period of time. The evolution of the automaton creates a space-time volume of the automaton state space, and it is used as the reservoir. The proposed framework is capable of long short-term memory and it requires orders of magnitude less computation compared to Echo State Networks. We prove that cellular automaton reservoir holds a distributed representation of attribute statistics, which provides a more effective computation than local representation. It is possible to estimate the kernel for linear cellular automata via metric learning, that enables a much more efficient distance computation in support vector machine framework. Also, binary reservoir feature vectors can be combined using Boolean operations as in hyperdimensional computing, paving a direct way for concept building and symbolic processing.
Context-Based Adaptive Filtering of Interest Points in Image Retrieval

Interest points have been used as local features with success in many computer vision applications such as image/video retrieval and object recognition. However, a major issue when using this approach is a large number of interest points detected from each image and created a dense feature space. This influences the processing speed in any runtime application. Selecting the most important features to reduce the size of the feature space will solve this problem. Thereby this raises a question of what makes a feature more important than the others? In this paper, we present a new technique to choose a subset of features. Our approach differs from others in a fact that selected feature is based on the context of the given image. Our experimental results show a significant reduction rate of features while preserving the retrieval performance.
Practical physically-based shading in film and game production

Physically based shading is increasingly important in both film and game production. By adhering to physically based, energy-conserving shading models, one can easily create high-quality, realistic materials that maintain that quality under a variety of lighting environments. Traditional "ad-hoc" models require extensive tweaking to achieve the same result, so it is no surprise that physically based models have increased in popularity in film and game production, particularly because they are often no more difficult to implement or evaluate. This course was last presented at SIGGRAPH 2010. With extensive updates, the SIGGRAPH 2012 course presents two years of advances in physically based shading. It includes new research in the area and more production examples from film and game. The course begins with a brief introduction to the physics and mathematics of shading before instructors share examples of how physically based shading models are being used in production. Real-world examples are a particular focus of this year's course, which is designed to give attendees a practical grounding in the subject.
Multiview clustering: a late fusion approach using latent models

Multi-view clustering is an important problem in information retrieval due to the abundance of data offering many perspectives and generating multi-view representations. We investigate in this short note a late fusion approach for multi-view clustering based on the latent modeling of cluster-cluster relationships. We derive a probabilistic multi-view clustering model outperforming an early-fusion approach based on multi-view feature correlation analysis.
Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Seeking Justice After Genocide

hunt down reluctant tax payers and in 1940 one authority outrageously decided to impose a “special” tax to pay for the erection of statue in honour of Henry the Navigator. The system was rife with violence and corruption but it was not wholly dissimilar to labour practices in French or British Africa. Anyone caught evading taxation was accused of “vagrancy” and packed off to a remote labour camp. The second half of the book elaborates on these themes in case studies covering Angola in the inter-war period, northern Mozambique in the 1930s and Guinea from 1900 to 1945. In Angola the old trading networks radiating out of the two harbour cities had based their revenues on indirect customs taxation but over the course of the first 25 years of the twentieth century military action created a modern colony partially dependent on direct taxation and also on diamond-mining and cotton-growing policies borrowed from the neighbouring Belgians. For some years Angolans escaped to the Belgian Congo where impositions were deemed lighter but by the middle of the Second World War such benefit had been eroded. Meanwhile Mozambique was deemed to be the most heavily exploited of all Africa’s colonies, with pressure from unregulated chartered companies and with government-driven recruitment of male labour for the mines of South Africa. Portugal adopted a policy of compulsory crop-growing which used female labour with particular intensity. The question of crops and taxation occurs again in the final chapter on Guinea, where local policies are examined in fine detail. Such detail is supported throughout the book by an amazing bibliography which cites much recent analysis in the form of journal articles.
Marriage formation as a process intermediary between migration and childbearing

In studies of differences in fertility between migrants and non-migrants, marriage interferes because migration can be motivated by an impending marriage or can entail entry into a marriage market with new opportunities. One would therefore expect elevated fertility after migration, although a competing theory states that on the contrary fertility ought to be reduced in the time around the move because migration temporarily disturbs the life of the migrant. In any case marriage appears as a process that is intermediary between migration and childbearing. To handle such issues it pays to have a technique that allows the analyst to separate any disruptive effects of migration from any boosting effects of marriage in studies of childbearing. The purposes of the present paper are (i) to remind us that such a technique is available, in fact is straightforward, and (ii) to apply the technique to further analyze a set of data on migration and first-time parenthood in Kyrgyzstan recently used by the second author and Gunnar Andersson. The technique has the neat feature that it allows us to operate with several “clocks” at the same time. In the analysis of first births we keep track of time since migration (for migrants) and time since marriage formation (for the married) beside the respondent’s age (for women at childbearing ages); in other connections there may be more clocks. For such analyses we make use of a flexible graphical housekeeping device that allows the analyst to keep track of a feature like whether migration occurs before or after marriage, or at the same time. This is a half-century-old flow chart of statuses and transitions and is not much more complex than the famous Lexis diagram, which originated with Gustav Zeuner, as we now know. These reflexions were first presented at a symposium dedicated to Professor Zeuner.
Distinguished Scholars Invited Essay: Becoming a Good Sport and a Better Performer: A Social Information Processing View of Authentic Leadership

Drawing on social information processing theory, this study investigates the mechanisms by which authentic leadership affects subordinate task performance through subordinate attitudes and behavior. Sportsmanship, conceptualized as a behavioral indicator of employee positivity and persistence in pursuing high performance, is argued to be a potentially important outcome for authentic leadership. Data collected from 203 matched subordinate–supervisor dyads in six organizations from six diverse industries were subjected to contrast analysis with bootstrapping. The results suggest that the indirect effect of authentic leadership on subordinate sportsmanship is mainly via a cognitive process, as opposed to an affective one. Furthermore, it is the employee’s sportsmanship that transmits the effects of authentic leadership on employee task performance. Implications and future directions are discussed.
The speculative and the mundane in practices of future-making – Exploring relations between design anthropology and critical design

In the autumn of 2014 the authors of this paper organized an interdisciplinary master course called Future Spaces for design students at The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and The Danish School of design Kolding (DSDK). The course was an experiment in bringing together different approaches to the understanding, exploring and making of futures – drawing on design anthropology, critical design and design fiction. Our overall attempt over the 8-week period of the course was to explore how design anthropological studies of future-making and speculative design approaches might be combined to understand and critically engage with current and potential future-making practices. This was a rather abstract and ambitious agenda for a design course that lasted only 8 weeks and included more than 20 students with different disciplinary backgrounds. Besides the required theoretical treatment of the respective fields, the course included practical design engagements in ’the field’. At the time of writing we are still struggling to make sense of the various outcomes of these engagements. This paper is one attempt at outlining some of the issues, challenges and potentials they raise for design anthropology, critical design and the possible relations between them. Based on our experiment we see potentials for developing a more speculative and critical form of design anthropology in parallel with a more engaged and situated approach to critical design – an approach based on situated critical material engagements that brings together speculative and mundane practices of future-making in the field as well as in the design studio.
Crumpled Molecules and Edible Plastic: Science Learning Activation in Out-of-School Time.

The Coalition for Science After School highlights the dual nature of outcomes for science learning during outof-school time (OST): Learning experiences should not only be positive in the moment, but also position youth for future success. Several frameworks speak to the first set of immediate outcomes—what youth learn, think, and feel as the result of informal learning experiences (Afterschool Alliance, 2013; Friedman, 2008; Hussar, Schwartz, Boiselle, & Noam, 2008; National Research Council [NRC], 2009, 2011). Much less research has been conducted on longerterm outcomes—how OST experiences affect engagement over time, prepare youth for future learning, or even influence career trajectories. There are hints: By eighth grade, for example, career expectation is a better predictor of future success than math achievement (Cannady, Greenwald, & Harris, 2014; Tai, Lui, Maltese, Rena Dorph, Christian D. Schunn, and Kevin Crowley Crumpled Molecules and Edible Plastic:
Efficient estimation of complex network reliability

Complex technological networks designed for distribution of some resource or commodity are a pervasive feature of modern society. Moreover, the dependence of our society on modern technological networks constantly grows. As a result, there is an increasing demand for these networks to be highly reliable. The degree to which a network is able to provide the required service needs to be quantitatively estimated. This quantitative assessment of network reliability is a very important aspect of network design, optimization, and operation. In this paper, we propose a framework for quantitative assessment of network reliability, formulate a general network reliability problem within this framework, and propose an efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo method for solving this problem, which is based on Subset Simulation, a very efficient stochastic simulation method originally developed for estimation of small failure probabilities of complex civil engineering structures such as tall buildings and bridges at risk from earthquakes. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated with an illustrative example where two small-world network models are compared in terms of reliability of networks they produce.
Skeletal growth estimation using radiographic image processing and analysis

An automated knowledge-based vision system for skeletal growth estimation in children is reported in this paper. Images were obtained from hand radiographs of 32 male and 25 female children of age 1-16 yr. Phalanx bones were automatically localized and segmented using hierarchical inferences and active shape models, respectively. A number of shape descriptors were obtained from the segmented bone contour to quantify skeletal growth. From these descriptors, a feature vector was selected for a regression model and a Bayesian estimator. The estimation accuracy was 84% for females and 82% for males. This level of accuracy is comparable to that of expert pediatric radiologists, which suggests that the proposed approach has a potential application in pediatric medicine.
SymPan: 3D Model Pose Normalization via Panoramic Views and Reflective Symmetry

A novel pose normalization method, based on panoramic views and reflective symmetry, is presented. Initially, the surface of a 3D model is projected onto the lateral surface of a circumscribed cylinder, aligned with the primary principal axis of space. Based on this cylindrical projection, a normals' deviation map is extracted and using an octree-based search strategy, the rotation which optimally aligns the primary principal axis of the 3D model and the cylinder's axis is computed. The 3D model's secondary principal axis is then aligned with the secondary principal axis of space in a similar manner. The proposed method is incorporated in a hybrid scheme, that serves as the pose normalization method in a state-of-the-art 3D model retrieval system. The effectiveness of this system, using the hybrid pose normalization scheme, is evaluated in terms of retrieval accuracy and the results clearly show improved performance against current approaches.
Tag suggestion and localization for web videos by bipartite graph matching

In this paper, we formulate video tagging as a bipartite graph matching problem. Starting from existing tags that were originally provided by video owners, we conduct keyword-based image search on Flickr. Tags associated with the retrieved images are collected as candidate tags for tag suggestion. Relationships between keyframes extracted from the same video shot and candidate tags are then described as a bipartite graph, and best matching between two disjoint sets is accordingly determined to suggest new tags to this video shot. In constructing the bipartite graph, visual characteristics in terms of the bag of word model and tagging behaviors are jointly considered. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed features and methodology achieves superior performance over previous approaches.
Parallel Megabase DNA Sequence Comparison with OpenCL

Biological sequence comparison is a very common task in Bioinformatics applications. Many parallel solutions have been proposed for this problem, using different HPC platforms, programmed usually with platform-specific languages and frameworks. With this approach, it is difficult to port solutions among different platforms such as CPUs and GPUs, for instance. To tackle this problem, this paper proposes and evaluates an OpenCL parallel solution for Biological Sequence Comparison, which was integrated to the CUDAlign Megabase Sequence Comparison tool. The evaluation of our solution shows we were able to obtain a program for CPUs and GPUs (NVidia and AMD) with basically the same OpenCL code. In addition, in the comparison with SW# and CUDAlign optimized CUDA codes, we show that the performance of our OpenCL version has comparable and, many times, superior performance.
Lipase 8 Affects the Pathogenesis of Candida albicans

ABSTRACT The production of lipases can affect microbial fitness and virulence. We examined the role of the lipase 8 (LIP8) gene in the virulence of Candida albicans by constructing Δlip8 strains by the URA-blaster disruption method. Reverse transcription-PCR experiments demonstrated the absence of LIP8 expression in the homozygous knockout mutants. Reconstituted strains and overexpression mutants were generated by introducing a LIP8 open reading frame under control of a constitutive actin promoter. Knockout mutants produced more mycelium, particularly at higher temperatures and pH ≥7. Diminished LIP8 expression resulted in reduced growth in lipid-containing media. Mutants deficient in the LIP8 gene were significantly less virulent in a murine intravenous infection model. The results clearly indicate that Lip8p is an important virulence factor of C. albicans.
Semi-asymptotic analysis of Bragg coupling on quasiperiodic impedance rod

Phenomena of coupling of wave beam and surface wave at impedance rod with spatially oscillating parameters are theoretically considered. Used method is asymptotic with respect to smoothness parameter and is numerical with respect to perturbation amplitudes. It combines advantages of the asymptotic and numeric methods in cases of quasiperiodic structures with large number of “periods”. Obtained coupling coefficients are compared with known asymptotic expressions.
A Sliding Window Method for Finding Recently Frequent Itemsets over Online Data Streams

A data stream is a massive unbounded sequence of data elements continuously generated at a rapid rate. Consequently, the knowledge embedded in a data stream is likely to be changed as time goes by. However, most of miming algorithms or frequency approximation algorithms for a data stream do not able to extract the recent change of information in a data stream adaptively. This paper proposes a sliding window method of finding recently frequent itemsets over an online data stream. The size of a window defines a desired life-time of the information of a transaction in a data stream.
Assessment of The Lymphatic System of the Genitalia Using Magnetic Resonance Lymphography Before and After Treatment of Male Genital Lymphedema

AbstractTreatment for chronic male genital lymphedema (GL) is limited. No standard treatment or validated instrument to assess GL is available. The aim of this study was to explore whether magnetic resonance lymphography (MRL) could be used to assess GL, select proper treatment for patients, and monitor postoperative progress.This is a retrospective analysis of a prospectively acquired cohort of men with GL presenting for MRL over a 7-year period. Thirty-six of 47 eligible men were included. All men were offered preoperative and postoperative MRL and assigned a morphology and function classification. Men with mild, moderate, and severe nodal dysfunction underwent complex decongestive physiotherapy (CDP), lymphoveneous microsurgery, and surgical excision, respectively. The volume reductions in the genitalia of patients with mild and moderate nodal dysfunction were recorded and compared using Student t test.The abnormal superficial and deep lymphatic vessels in the lymphedematous genitalia were detected by MRL, and inguinal lymph node dysfunction was classified by MRL. Seven patients with mild dysfunction who underwent CDP showed a more significant mean volume reduction in the genitalia than did 9 patients with moderate dysfunction. Three patients with hyperplasia and moderate dysfunction who underwent microsurgical operations and 17 patients with hypoplasia and moderate or severe nodal dysfunction who underwent surgical excision had excellent cosmetic results with no lymphedema at the 3- to 5-year follow-up.MRL can be used to assess morphological and functional lymphatic abnormalities in GL, preoperatively select appropriate treatment, and postoperatively evaluate treatment outcomes.