Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fully automated segmentation of cartilage from the MR images of knee using a multi-atlas and local structural analysis method.

PURPOSE To develop a fully automated method to segment cartilage from the magnetic resonance (MR) images of knee and to evaluate the performance of the method on a public, open dataset. METHODS The segmentation scheme consisted of three procedures: multiple-atlas building, applying a locally weighted vote (LWV), and region adjustment. In the atlas building procedure, all training cases were registered to a target image by a nonrigid registration scheme and the best matched atlases selected. A LWV algorithm was applied to merge the information from these atlases and generate the initial segmentation result. Subsequently, for the region adjustment procedure, the statistical information of bone, cartilage, and surrounding regions was computed from the initial segmentation result. The statistical information directed the automated determination of the seed points inside and outside bone regions for the graph-cut based method. Finally, the region adjustment was conducted by the revision of outliers and the inclusion of abnormal bone regions. RESULTS A total of 150 knee MR images from a public, open dataset (available atwww.ski10.org) were used for the development and evaluation of this approach. The 150 cases were divided into the training set (100 cases) and the test set (50 cases). The cartilages were segmented successfully in all test cases in an average of 40 min computation time. The average dice similarity coefficient was 71.7%±8.0% for femoral and 72.4%±6.9% for tibial cartilage. CONCLUSIONS The authors have developed a fully automated segmentation program for knee cartilage from MR images. The performance of the program based on 50 test cases was highly promising.
Online Advertising under Internet Censorship

Online advertising plays a critical role in enabling the free Web by allowing publishers to monetize their services. However, the rise in internet censorship events globally poses an economic threat to the advertising ecosystem. This paper studies this interplay and presents Advention, a system that provides censorship circumvention while serving relevant ads. Advention leverages the observation that ad systems are usually hosted on domains that are different from the publisher domains and are almost always uncensored. Taking cue from this, Advention fetches ads via the direct, uncensored, channel between users and the ad system. Preliminary results show that Advention not only offers high ad relevance compared to other popular relay-based circumvention tools, it also offers smaller page load times.
Antoine Berman's way-making to translation as a creative and critical act

Despite increased research in translation studies, the important contribution of the French translator and writer Antoine Berman has yet to receive sufficient attention. This article presents key aspects of Berman's work and reconstructs his “archeology” of translation knowledge. Using a wide range of Berman's works, it examines his thinking about translation and modern philosophy, in particular the philosophy of Heidegger and Gadamer. After discussing Berman's early interest in German Romantic conceptions of language and poetry and the ways in which this tradition contributed to his conception of translation, the article turns to the relation between Walter Benjamin's notions of language and translation and Berman's own by examining his commentary on “The Task of the Translator”, a commentary crucial for our understanding of translation as a creative act. The article then analyzes Berman's use of hermeneutic interpretation to ground translation criticism as a productive criticism and to reconceptualize the translator as subject.
The Political Culture of Arab-Israeli Conflict

Listen to the language of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Yom Kippur War. The War of Ramadan. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Zionism is racism. The administered territories. The occupied territories. The West Bank. Southern Syria. Judea and Samaria. Sometimes it is said of a conflict that i t is merely symbolic. As if symbols were not central to most conflicts and fundamentally inseparable from the material aspects. Every conflict takes place in a particular symbolic environment. Political discourse surrounding Arab-Israeli conflict draws on a catalogue of available idea elements and makes use of a variety of symbolic devices to express these ideas. This set of idea elements, organized and clustered in various ways, comprises the political culture of the conflict. This culture is rooted in time and space. The political culture of Arab-Israeli conflict is not the same today as it was in 1948. There is one political culture in Israel, a different one in Arab countries, and still another in the United States. The catalogue from which the Gush Emunim in Israel draw their symbolism has no counterpart in the United States. The idea of jihad or holy war in Arab culture has no counterpart in American culture. Events, such as the Sadat visit to Jerusalem, or the onset of a war, provide an occasion for display of the political culture. Spokesmen for various parties in the conflict display it in their pronouncements on these events. Journalists display it in their commentary on the events. Major events affecting the conflict make the culture visible and provide us with an opportunity to analyze it.
Investigating the Impact of Language Style and Vocal Expression on Social Roles of Participants in Professional Meetings

This paper investigates the influence of social roles on the language style and vocal expression patterns of participants in professional meeting recordings. Language style features are extracted from automatically generated speech transcripts and characterize word usage in terms of psychologically meaningful categories. Vocal expression patterns are generated by applying statistical functionals to low level prosodic and spectral features. The proposed recognition system combines information from both these feature streams to predict participant's social role. Experiments conducted on almost 12.5 hours of meeting data reveal that recognition system trained using language style features and acoustic features can reach a recognition accuracy of 64% and 68% respectively, in classifying four social roles. Moreover, recognition accuracy increases to 69% when information from both feature streams is taken into consideration.
Composition and Disclosure of Unlinkable Distributed Databases

An individual’s location-visit pattern, or trail, can be leveraged to link sensitive data back to identity. We propose a secure multiparty computation protocol that enables locations to provably prevent such linkages. The protocol incorporates a controllable parameter specifying the minimum number of identities a sensitive piece of data must be linkable to via its trail.
Neuroprotective Effect of Ulinastatin on Spinal Cord Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury in Rabbits

Ulinastatin (UTI), a trypsin inhibitor, is isolated and purified from human urine and has been shown to exert protective effect on myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury in patients. The present study was aimed at investigating the effect of ulinastatin on neurologic functions after spinal cord ischemia reperfusion injury and the underlying mechanism. The spinal cord IR model was achieved by occluding the aorta just caudal to the left renal artery with a bulldog clamp. The drugs were administered immediately after the clamp was removed. The animals were terminated 48 hours after reperfusion. Neuronal function was evaluated with the Tarlov Scoring System. Spinal cord segments between L2 and L5 were harvested for pathological and biochemical analysis. Ulinastatin administration significantly improved postischemic neurologic function with concomitant reduction of apoptotic cell death. In addition, ulinastatin treatment increased SOD activity and decreased MDA content in the spinal cord tissue. Also, ulinastatin treatment suppressed the protein expressions of Bax and caspase-3 but enhanced Bcl-2 protein expression. These results suggest that ulinastatin significantly attenuates spinal cord ischemia-reperfusion injury and improves postischemic neuronal function and that this protection might be attributable to its antioxidant and antiapoptotic properties.
Immobilization of laccase on polyacrylamide and polyacrylamide – κ – carragennan-based semi-interpenetrating polymer networks

Abstract In this study, laccase enzyme (L) from Agaricus bisporus was immobilized by entrapment into polyacrylamide (PAAm) and semi-interpenetrating polymer networks (semi-IPNs) prepared with either polyacrylamide/κ-carragennan (0.05g) [PAAm/ κ-car (0.05)] or polyacrylamide/κ-carragennan (0.1 g) [PAAm/ κ-car (0.1)]. The optimum pH was 6.0 for free L, 8.0 for PAAm-L, 8.5 for PAAm/κ-car (0.05)-L, and 9.0 for PAAm/κ-car (0.1)-L. The optimum temperature was determined as 45°C for free L and 60°C for all immobilized laccases. After 27 days of storage at 4°C, free enzyme lost its initial activity whereas immobilized enzymes retained 56 % −80% of their initial activities. The immobilized samples were used repeatedly 35 times by retaining 28 %–58 % of their initial activity. Km(app) values were calculated as 0.088, 0.139, 0.133, and 0.131 mM and Vmax values were found to be 2.83 x 10−3, 4.51×10−3, 4.76×10−3, and 4.97×10−3 mM min−1 for free L and PAAm-L, PAAm/κ-car (0.05)-L, and PAAm/κ-car (0.1)-L, respectively.
Open-structure resonant technique for measuring the dielectric properties of materials

A newly developed resonant measurement technique is extended to include rotationally symmetric materials in general. The technique involves a full wave analysis of the fixture containing the material under test. Therefore, the measurement technique is not restricted by the dimensions of the material or its electrical properties. This work describes the measurement technique and provides a characterization of the TE/sub 011/ resonant mode. Also, a method to account for conduction loss due to the surface resistance of the metal walls of the fixture is presented. Experimental results are compared to previously reported values and are in excellent agreement.
Evolution of the Mating Type Locus: Insights Gained from the Dimorphic Primary Fungal Pathogens Histoplasma capsulatum, Coccidioides immitis, and Coccidioides posadasii

ABSTRACT Sexual reproduction of fungi is governed by the mating type (MAT) locus, a specialized region of the genome encoding key transcriptional regulators that direct regulatory networks to specify cell identity and fate. Knowledge of MAT locus structure and evolution has been considerably advanced in recent years as a result of genomic analyses that enable the definition of MAT locus sequences in many species as well as provide an understanding of the evolutionary plasticity of this unique region of the genome. Here, we extend this analysis to define the mating type locus of three dimorphic primary human fungal pathogens, Histoplasma capsulatum, Coccidioides immitis, and Coccidioides posadasii, using genomic analysis, direct sequencing, and bioinformatics. These studies provide evidence that all three species possess heterothallic bipolar mating type systems, with isolates encoding either a high-mobility-group (HMG) domain or an α-box transcriptional regulator. These genes are intact in all loci examined and have not been subject to loss or decay, providing evidence that the loss of fertility upon passage in H. capsulatum is not attributable to mutations at the MAT locus. These findings also suggest that an extant sexual cycle remains to be defined in both Coccidioides species, in accord with population genetic evidence. Based on these MAT sequences, a facile PCR test was developed that allows the mating type to be rapidly ascertained. Finally, these studies highlight the evolutionary forces shaping the MAT locus, revealing examples in which flanking genes have been inverted or subsumed and incorporated into an expanding MAT locus, allowing us to propose an expanded model for the evolution of the MAT locus in the phylum Ascomycota.
Brunei Teachers' Perspectives on Questioning: Investigating the Opportunities to "Talk" in Mathematics Lessons.

A teachers’ practice cannot be characterised by a single lesson, hence comparison is best made with lesson sequences that better sample the diversity of a teacher’s practice. In this study, we video recorded lesson sequences in four Year 8 mathematics classrooms, as well as interviewed each of the four teachers in Brunei Darussalam. Because of our methodology and based on the findings from the richness in the data that was collected, there were some features in the video and interview data that emerged. One of the features is the significant short utterances made by the students as well as their respective teachers, and the extent of the teachers’ own and their students’ questioning behaviours in the lessons as perceived by the teachers themselves during the video-stimulated recall interviews. In the four Brunei classrooms that we studied, most of the lessons were so rushed, the teachers did most of the talking and when teachers and students do interact, it almost always involved faster-paced exchanges between them. Thus, restricting students to single words (“yes” or “no”) or short choral responses. Overall, the findings appear to indicate that short utterances implied that there were less (or even no) opportunities for fuller student participation in classroom discussions.
Tackling noise, artifacts and nonstationarity in BCI with robust divergences

Although the field of Brain-Computer Interfacing (BCI) has made incredible advances in the last decade, current BCIs are still scarcely used outside laboratories. One reason is the lack of robustness to noise, artifacts and nonstationarity which are intrinsic parts of the recorded brain signal. Furthermore out-of-lab environments imply the presence of external variables that are largely beyond the control of the user, but can severely corrupt signal quality. This paper presents a new generation of robust EEG signal processing approaches based on the information geometric notion of divergence. We show that these divergence-based methods can be used for robust spatial filtering and thus increase the systems' reliability when confronted to, e.g., environmental noise, users' motions or electrode artifacts. Furthermore we extend the divergence-based framework to heavy-tail distributions and investigate the advantages of a joint optimization for robustness and stationarity.
Organisation and employee congruence: a framework for assessing the success of organisational blogs

Blogs represent one of the most explosive outbreaks in the information world since the internet itself. Even though blogs have been around for more than a decade and have been regarded as something which will shake up just about every business, their benefits and therefore usage by organisations are yet to be fully explored. Blogs' usage by organisations depends not only on their benefits for the organisations themselves but also on employees' willingness and perceived benefit of blog usage. Congruence between the two, the organisation's and users' benefits of blogs, is important for the acceptance of blog technology and worthy for study. By analysing these benefits and the concept of congruence, this study proposes a research framework that can be used by future empirical studies.
Validity and reliability of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the BACS (Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia)

OBJECTIVE: To assess the validity and reliability of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia by examining its temporal stability, internal consistency, and discriminant and convergent validity. METHODS: The Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia was administered to 116 stable patients with schizophrenia and 58 matched control subjects. To assess concurrent validity, a subset of patients underwent a traditional neuropsychological assessment. RESULTS: The patients with schizophrenia performed significantly worse than the controls (p<0.001) on all subtests of the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia and on the total score, which attests to the discriminant validity of the test. The global score of the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia was significantly correlated with all of the subtests and with the global score for the standard battery. The Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia also had good test-retest reliability (rho>0.8). The internal consistency of the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia was high (Cronbach's α ϝ 0.874). CONCLUSION: The Brazilian Portuguese version of the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia exhibits good reliability and discriminant and concurrent validity and is a promising tool for easily assessing cognitive impairment in schizophrenia and for comparing the performance of Brazilian patients with that of patients from other countries.
Special quasirandom structures.

Structural models used in calculations of properties of substitutionally random {ital A}{sub 1{minus}{ital x}}B{sub {ital x}} alloys are usually constructed by randomly occupying each of the {ital N} sites of a periodic cell by {ital A} or {ital B}. We show that it is possible to design special quasirandom structures'' (SQS's) that mimic for small {ital N} (even {ital N}=8) the first few, physically most relevant radial correlation functions of a perfectly random structure far better than the standard technique does. We demonstrate the usefulness of these SQS's by calculating optical and thermodynamic properties of a number of semiconductor alloys in the local-density formalism.
Performance Analysis of Infrastructure Service Provision with GMPLS-Based Traffic Engineering

Dynamic sharing of the common physical network is envisioned as a key enabler for the emerging Internet technologies. This paper addresses challenges related to resource sharing in the physical layer and analyzes the performance of infrastructure service provision with control plane mechanisms based on generalized multi protocol label switching (GMPLS). In our approach, the provisioning of infrastructure services is supported by two novel concepts for GMPLS traffic engineering (TE): resource visibility and inter-domain exchange. Resource visibility is a new network control plane concept, which defines the usage polices for transmission, multiplexing, and switching resources in multiple GMPLS layers. In our architecture, every network resource may exhibit different visibility to different services at different layers. The inter-domain exchange, here referred to as GMPLS exchange point (GXP), is the physical layer equivalent of the Internet exchange point (IXP). Just as how the IXP manages interconnections of autonomous systems (AS) in the Internet, the GXP manages dynamic interconnections of multiple provider domains and enables them to advertise their physical resources to other domains. We model the dynamic provisioning of infrastructure services using graph theory and deploy GMPLS traffic engineering (TE) to optimize the routing and resource yields. The results obtained demonstrate that traffic engineering with resource visibility and GXP brings significant performance benefits in resource utilization and infrastructure extensibility, especially when network providers set up LSPs as a result of collaborative and carrier-neutral traffic engineering where they share information about resource capabilities and utilization
Automatic Arabic Speech Segmentation Syste

growth of information and communication technologies has influenced the research trends n speech technologies. This research explains a basic speech segmentation application for Arabic language with the aim to further develop a language tutor. The focus is on rabic as there are standards available which help in obtaining better accuracy. The roblem has been formulated in the form of a number of possible cues that could help e phoneme boundaries. These cues include zero crossing rate (ZCR), power spectral SD), formant transitions, rhythm of consonants and vowels, intonation pattern also called al frequency and vowel duration. A number of experiments were carried out involving ombinations of cues. The best results for phoneme level segmentation were observed D and ZCR whereas pitch and intensity were helpful in determining pauses. Our system strated up to 89% accuracy on continuous speech files of eight different speakers which es approximately 14300 phonemes. : Speech Segmentation, Power Spectral Density, Zero Crossing Rate, Phoneme ion.
Improved activity recognition by using enriched acceleration data

Sensors embedded in smartphones are an essential component for activity recognition. Even though the accelerometer is the most widely used sensor, the highest recognition accuracies are obtained when using data collected from multiple sensors. However, the use of multiple sensors has an adverse impact on the energy consumption of power-limited devices such as smartphones. In this paper, we present a new method to improve the recognition accuracy of physical activities by using only the accelerometer. We utilize a low-pass filter to split the acceleration data into a low- and a high-frequency component. These components provide a new set of features, which can be used as a complement to the raw acceleration to reduce the number of sensors needed to recognize physical activities. After evaluating our method for a public dataset, we found that our approach represents an average of up to 16% increase in the recognition accuracy over the raw acceleration data, outperforming even widely used combinations such as the raw acceleration plus the gyroscope. The highest accuracies are obtained when using a cut-off frequency in the interval [0:001--0:05] Hz as well as a combination of the acceleration with its low-frequency component.
Putting things in context: Challenge on Context-Aware Movie Recommendation

The Challenge on Context-Aware Movie Recommendation (CAMRa) was conducted as part of a join event on Context-Awareness in Recommender Systems at the 2010 ACM Recommender Systems conference. The challenge focused on three context-aware recommendation tasks: time-based, mood-based, and social recommendation. The participants were provided with anonymized datasets from two real world online movie recommendation communities and competed against each other for obtaining the highest recommendation accuracy for each task. The datasets contained contextual features, such as mood, plot annotation, social network, and comments, normally not available in movie recommendation datasets. Over 40 teams from 20 countries participated in the challenge. Their participation was summarized by 10 papers accepted to the CAMRa workshop.
Microwave radar sensor based on CRLH SIW leaky-wave antennas

Modern methods of active defense of military vehicles are based on detection of threat missiles and their elimination by suitable active counter-measures. For these purposes, special radar detection systems are often used. The presented solution employs the SIW based leaky wave antennas which enable detection of the threat missiles in an immediate vicinity of the protected vehicle. The missiles are detected by two tilted detection planes: one main detection plane (as described in [1]), and the other, operating ahead of the main plane. Since the missiles fly through two different planes set under two different angles, system triggering can be improved and more missile parameters can be measured. The sensor structure is relatively simple and occupies merely little space on the surface of the protected vehicle. The performed tests prove functionality of the developed solution.