Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fast Object Localization Using a CNN Feature Map Based Multi-Scale Search

Object localization is an important task in computer vision but requires a large amount of computational power due mainly to an exhaustive multiscale search on the input image. In this paper, we describe a near real-time multiscale search on a deep CNN feature map that does not use region proposals. The proposed approach effectively exploits local semantic information preserved in the feature map of the outermost convolutional layer. A multi-scale search is performed on the feature map by processing all the sub-regions of different sizes using separate expert units of fully connected layers. Each expert unit receives as input local semantic features only from the corresponding sub-regions of a specific geometric shape. Therefore, it contains more nearly optimal parameters tailored to the corresponding shape. This multi-scale and multi-aspect ratio scanning strategy can effectively localize a potential object of an arbitrary size. The proposed approach is fast and able to localize objects of interest with a frame rate of 4 fps while providing improved detection performance over the state-of-the art on the PASCAL VOC 12 and MSCOCO data sets.
Transit amplification in the amniote cerebellum evolved via a heterochronic shift in NeuroD1 expression

The cerebellum has evolved elaborate foliation in the amniote lineage as a consequence of extensive Atoh1-mediated transit amplification in an external germinal layer (EGL) comprising granule cell precursors. To explore the evolutionary origin of this layer, we have examined the molecular geography of cerebellar development throughout the life cycle of Xenopus laevis. At metamorphic stages Xenopus displays a superficial granule cell layer that is not proliferative and expresses both Atoh1 and NeuroD1, a marker of postmitotic cerebellar granule cells. Premature misexpression of NeuroD1 in chick partially recapitulates the amphibian condition by suppressing transit amplification. However, unlike in the amphibian, granule cells fail to enter the EGL. Furthermore, misexpression of NeuroD1 once the EGL is established both triggers radial migration and downregulates Atoh1. These results show that the evolution of transit amplification in the EGL required adaptation of NeuroD1, both in the timing of its expression and in its regulatory function, with respect to Atoh1.
Fast and quasi-natural language search for gigabytes of Chinese texts

This paper presents an efficient signature file approach for fast and intelligent retrieval of large Chinese full-text document databases. The proposed approach is an integrated and efficient text access method, which performs well both in exact match searching of Boolean queries and best match searching (ranking) of quasi-natural language queries. Using this approach, the inherent difficulties of Chinese word segmentation and proper noun identification can be effectively reduced, queries can be expressed with non-controlled vocabulary, and the ranking function can be easily implemented neither demanding extra space overhead nor affecting the retrieval efficiency. The experimental results show that the proposed approach achieves good performance in many ways, especially in the reduction of false drops and space overhead, the speedup of retrieval time, and the capability of best match searching using quasi-natural language queries. In conclusion, the proposed approach is capable of retrieving gigabytes of Chinese texts very efficiently and intelligently.
Development and usability testing of FOCUS: a smartphone system for self-management of schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE Mobile Health (mHealth) approaches can support the rehabilitation of individuals with psychiatric conditions. In the current article, we describe the development of a smartphone illness self-management system for people with schizophrenia. METHODS The research was conducted with consumers and practitioners at a community-based rehabilitation agency. Stage 1: 904 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder completed a survey reporting on their current use of mobile devices and interest in mHealth services. Eight practitioners completed a survey examining their attitudes and expectations from an mHealth intervention, and identified needs and potential obstacles. Stage 2: A multidisciplinary team incorporated consumer and practitioner input and employed design principles for the development of e-resources for people with schizophrenia to produce an mHealth intervention. Stage 3: 12 consumers participated in laboratory usability sessions. They performed tasks involved in operating the new system, and provided "think aloud" commentary and post-session usability ratings. RESULTS 570 (63%) of survey respondents reported owning a mobile device and many expressed interest in receiving mHealth services. Most practitioners believed that consumers could learn to use and would benefit from an mHealth intervention. In response, we developed a smartphone system that targets medication adherence, mood regulation, sleep, social functioning, and coping with symptoms. Usability testing revealed several design vulnerabilities, and the system was adapted to address consumer needs and preferences accordingly. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE Through a comprehensive development process, we produced an mHealth illness self-management intervention that is likely to be used successfully, and is ready for deployment and systemic evaluation in real-world conditions.
Investigation of differences on impressions of and behaviors toward real and virtual robots between elder people and university students

To investigate differences on impressions of and behaviors toward anthropomorphized artifacts between different generations, a psychological experiment was conducted with between-subjects design of the elderly vs. university students and a small-sized real humanoid robot vs. a virtual CG robot on a computer display. The results showed that 1) more elderly subjects complied with the real robot than the student subjects, 2) the elderly subjects felt more positive impressions of both the robots than the student subjects, 3) the student subjects felt less attachment to the virtual robot than the real robot, and 4) the student subjects felt less attachment to the virtual robot in comparison with the elderly subjects. Then, the paper discusses implications on assistive robots for the elderly in domestic fields.
How Media Portrayals of Suffering Influence Willingness to Help: The Role of Solvability Frames

When we hear stories of distant humanitarian crises, we often feel sympathy for victims, but may stop short of taking action to help. Past research indicates that media portrayals of distant suffering can promote helping behavior by eliciting sympathy, while those that prompt a more rational response tend to decrease helping behavior by undermining sympathy. The authors used an online experiment to test whether certain media frames could promote helping behavior through a more rational, rather than emotional, pathway. The study tested whether framing distant suffering as either solvable or unsolvable might promote helping behavior if a rational evaluation of a crisis leads one to determine that help is efficacious in solving the problem. Survey respondents were randomly assigned to read one of three messages: a high solvability message, a low solvability message, or a control message. Contrary to expectations, both low solvability and high solvability conditions increased participants’ intentions to help. The results suggest that this is because framing problems as unsolvable drives up sympathy, thus promoting willingness to help, while framing problems as solvable drives up perceived efficacy, also promoting willingness to help. The authors conclude that, in contrast to earlier studies, and to the assumptions of many of those working in media, emphasizing rationality can promote helping behavior if audiences rationally interpret the problem as solvable. Implications of the findings for ethically portraying distant suffering in the media are discussed.
Estimation of the noise contributions from blank, transmission and emission scans in PET

This work determines the relative importance of noise from blank (B), transmission (T) and emission (E) scans in PET using a GE Advance scanner on a 20 cm cylinder, a brain phantom, and a torso-like ellipse (18/35 cm) with examples of human scans (brain O-15 water and F-18 FDG, heart FDG). Phantom E scans were acquired in both 2D and 3D modes as decay series with C-11 or F-18 over 3-6 decades of noise equivalent counts (NEC). B and T scans were made using two pin sources (389+134 MBq) with times 16-32,768 sec. In humans only a limited subset was available. In homogeneous phantoms normalized variance (var) was estimated from pixel distributions in single images. In other objects, including the human studies, calculations were performed on differences of paired images. In all cases a fit was made to a simple noise model. The cylinder data shows expected relations of T to B noise proving the adequacy of B scan times <30 min for most purposes. For cylinder and brain phantom, contour plots are provided for var(E,T). In a typical 3D O-15 water study with 0.5 M counts per central slice, a 10 min T-scan ensures that var(T)<0.1*var(E). Using 10 min T scan for a static 3D FDG brain study of 10 min having 5 M counts yields equal E and T variance contributions. In human body scans T noise has a relative larger importance and is often dominated by effects of line artefacts from (clusters of) zeros in the T-scan, not included in the simple model.
Cold exposure impairs dark‐pulse capacity to induce REM sleep in the albino rat

In the albino rat, a REM sleep (REMS) onset can be induced with a high probability and a short latency when the light is suddenly turned off (dark pulse, DP) during non‐REM sleep (NREMS). The aim of this study was to investigate to what extent DP delivery could overcome the integrative thermoregulatory mechanisms that depress REMS occurrence during exposure to low ambient temperature (Ta). To this aim, the efficiency of a non‐rhythmical repetitive DP (3 min each) delivery during the first 6‐h light period of a 12 h : 12 h light–dark cycle in inducing REMS was studied in the rat, through the analysis of electroencephalogram, electrocardiogram, hypothalamic temperature and motor activity at different Tas. The results showed that DP delivery triggers a transition from NREMS to REMS comparable to that which occurs spontaneously. However, the efficiency of DP delivery in inducing REMS was reduced during cold exposure to an extent comparable with that observed in spontaneous REMS occurrence. Such impairment was associated with low Delta activity and high sympathetic tone when DPs were delivered. Repetitive DP administration increased REMS amount during the delivery period and a subsequent negative REMS rebound was observed. In conclusion, DP delivery did not overcome the integrative thermoregulatory mechanisms that depress REMS in the cold. These results underline the crucial physiological meaning of the mutual exclusion of thermoregulatory activation and REMS occurrence, and support the hypothesis that the suspension of the central control of body temperature is a prerequisite for REMS occurrence.
Varying Metacognition Through Public Opinion Questions: How Language Can Affect Political Engagement

Guided by feelings-as-information theory, this experiment examined whether the difficulty of language in public opinion questions would influence reports of political interest and political efficacy. Results (N = 235) found that exposure to the easy language condition led to higher reports of political interest and efficacy than in the difficult language condition and that this effect was mediated by processing fluency. These findings proffer implications for the strategic use of language in political engagement and civic education initiatives.
ABCA1 Polymorphism, a Genetic Risk Factor of Harm Avoidance

Even though cholesterol homeostasis and self-harm behaviors have shown to be associated, gene polymorphisms of the cholesterol system have not been studied yet in the context of self-harm related personality traits. Here we present an association study between six ABCA1 polymorphisms and temperament scales measured by Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory on 253 young adults. An association between ABCA1 rs4149264 and harm avoidance has been observed. This association remained significant after Bonferroni correction. Haplotype analysis confirmed an independent association between rs4149264 and harm avoidance. ABCA1, a cholesterol homeostasis gene, is a candidate gene for harm related personality traits.
QTrade: a quality of experience based peercasting trading scheme

Video streaming constitutes the dominant portion of today's traffic on the Internet and will grow in the coming years. In order to provide for a low cost distribution of bulky video content, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) approaches are a viable way to cut down server bandwidth cost by utilizing user's upstream bandwidth to redistribute data. However, users need an incentive to participate in such a system. The related work on incentive schemes has focused on using bandwidth contribution as a measure for contribution to the system's performance, ignoring that user perceived Quality of Experience (QoE) is not necessarily maximized by maximizing bandwidth, but by delivering the right data in the right order. Consequently, this work presents QTrade, a topology agnostic incentive scheme for adaptive P2P video streaming systems based on user-validated video quality metrics. QTrade is evaluated on top of an existing adaptive streaming overlay. The results show that QTrade utilizes bandwidth more efficiently by providing incentive to distribute parts of the video with a high QoE. Moreover, up to 70% less and shorter rebuffering events are observed for cooperative peers while maintaining a 10 to 11 times worse performance in terms of rebuffering events for non-cooperative peers.
Fast block-based true motion estimation using distance dependent thresholds (DTS)

A new fast motion estimation algorithm, called distance dependent thresholding search (DTS), is presented for block-based true motion estimation applications, and introduces the novel concept of variable distance dependent thresholds. The performance of the DTS algorithm is analyzed and quantitatively compared with both the traditional and exhaustive full-search (FS) technique, and the computationally faster, nonexhaustive three-step-search (TSS) algorithm. Experimental results show that by applying an appropriate threshold function, the DTS algorithm not only matches the speed of the TSS algorithm, but both retains a block distortion error comparable to the global minimum produced by the FS algorithm, and avoids the problem of identifying a large number of spurious motion vectors in the search process.
Fast Block Direction Prediction for Directional Transforms

DCT-based transforms are widely adopted for video compression. Recently, many authors have highlighted that prediction residuals usually have directional structures that cannot be efficiently represented by conventional Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). Although directional transforms have superior performance over the conventional DCT, for application in video compression it is necessary to evaluate increase in coding time and complexity for its implementation. This paper proposes a fast algorithm for estimating blocks directions before applying directional transforms. The encoder identifies predominant directions in each block, and only applies the transform referent to that direction. The algorithm can be used in conjunction with any proposed algorithm for directional transforms that uses the RDO process for selection of the direction to be explored, reducing implementation complexity to similar levels when only conventional DCT is used. For the tested proposal, estimated reduction in total coding time would be 37.5% (4 × 4 blocks with 8 possible directions) and 47.4% (8× 8 blocks with 16 possible directions).
Design and Analysis Considerations of 4-GHz Integrated Antenna with Negative Resistance Oscillator

The purpose of this paper is to present a complete design and analysis of a new integrated balanced transmitter operated at 4 GHz using microstrip technology. It comprises a 4 GHz two-port negative resistance oscillator and a microstrip-patch antenna resonated at 4 GHz. Three different modules are designed and analyzed. The first one used a Lange coupler as a power splitter while the second and third used a one (two)-section branch coupler. The components of the three modules are designed using full-scale computer simulation program named with MSDES, performed by the author, which fully takes into account all the discontinuities included in the microstrip lines, while the modules are analyzed and optimized using APLAC V7.61 software. The design methodologies of the two-port negative resistance oscillator and microstrip patch antenna are introduced and explained. The analyses of the designed modules show a better efficiency and good performance. The modules give a transmit-antenna gain of 15.7 dB with antenna beam widths 91.7◦ and 18.2◦ in Eand H-planes, respectively. The complete schematic diagrams of the transmitter modules are drawn. These modules can be used in satellite communications, Doppler and other radars, active and semi-active seekers, radio altimeters, missile technology, weapon fuzing, manpack equipments, remote sensing, feed elements in complex antennas, satellite navigation receivers, and biomedical radiators. Corresponding author: S. H. Ibrahim (saidhassan1@yahoo.com).
Application For Complex Querying Of The Databases Obtained By Extracting Data From DICOM Files

The paper presents a Java based application that implements a series of algorithms for extracting the alphanumeric data and image(s) from the DICOM standard files produced by medical devices. They are stored in a MS SQL server database. A complex querying of this database, based on several criteria: simple text-based or content-based image query on color or texture feature, extracted from color and gray-scale image, is presented. The application can be used in the diagnosis process, in the research or educational activity, in building a complete database for patients at hospital level, or even on county or national level
Examining the ontological and epistemic assumptions of research on metacognition, self-regulation and self-regulated learning

Abstract While research on metacognition, self-regulation and self-regulated learning is quite mature, these studies have been carried out with varying methodologies and with mixed results. This paper explores the ontological and epistemological assumptions of theories, models and methods used to investigate these three constructs to examine the underlying assumptions of all three. Using oft-cited theories and models of the three constructs along with highly cited studies identified in a previous review of these constructs, this paper examined facets of two popular frameworks: Cartesian-split-mechanistic tradition (CSMT) and the relational tradition specifically looking at the role of intra-individual development, the inclusiveness of categories and notions of causality in these theories, models and methods. While the theories and methods contained elements of both traditions, methods to investigate these constructs relied almost exclusively on assumptions from CSMT. Future directions for research include incorporating more studies examining intra-individual change and multiple notions of causality. Future directions for practice include better contextualisation of research results to strengthen the link between theory and practice.
Outage capacity analysis based on joint beamforming and power allocation for cooperative cognitive SIMO system

In this paper, a cooperation based cognitive SIMO system is considered, in which the cognitive user is allowed to transmit information to the cognitive base station on the spectrum licensed to the primary system, but for compensation, it has to spend part of its transmission power to forward the information of primary user. Subject to both the instantaneous rate constraint and the average rate constraint of primary system, we study the outage capacity of cognitive SIMO fading channel based on joint beamforming and power allocation, the optimal beamforming weights vector and power allocation factor are derived. Large amount of simulations are presented to illustrate how the outage capacity changes with different system parameters.
A comparative study of the semi-elastic and fully-elastic mapreduce models

MapReduce which was initially proposed to handle big data in a cluster of computers, is becoming a popular programming model for big data processing in cloud computing. When MapReduce is used in cloud computing where everything is a service and the quality of service is important, a new issue that must be addressed is how to ensure a MapReduce computation will finish before a deadline in a dynamically changing cloud computing environment while minimizing its computation cost. The original MapReduce model cannot address the issue as it is not elastic, that is, it does not support adding resources to a MapReduce computation duration the runtime. To overcome the drawback of the original MapReduce model, a fully-elastic MapReduce is proposed in this paper. In addition, in this paper we study the performance of the fully-elastic model by comparing it with an existing model, namely, semi-elastic model, by theoretic analysis and by numerical experiments.
A novel ANC system using nonlinear error LMS algorithm

The conventional Filtered-x Least Mean Square (FxLMS) shows poor performance in the presence of non linearities present in the primary and the secondary path. The functional link artificial neural network (FLANN) has been successfully applied to tackle the nonlinearity in the primary and secondary paths. However, all these methods of active noise control use a linear model to obtain an estimate of the non linear secondary path. This paper proposes a FLANN based nonlinear model to obtain an estimate of thenon linear secondary path. In addition, a FLANN based controller is also developed to generate anti noise. A new update rule nonlinear-error least mean square (NELMS) is derived and used for updating the weights of the first FLANN model by utilizing the intermediate signals of the second FLANN model. The simulation results presented exhibit superior performance of the proposed method compared to that of FsLMS-ANC method.
Strategic assets and organizational rent

We build on an emerging strategy literature that views the firm as a bundle of resources and capabilities, and examine conditions that contribute to the realization of sustainable economic rents. Because of (1) resource-market imperfections and (2) discretionary managerial decisions about resource development and deployment, we expect firms to differ (in and out of equilibrium) in the resources and capabilities they control. This asymmetry in turn can be a source of sustainable economic rent. The paper focuses on the linkages between the industry analysis framework, the resource-based view of the firm, behavioral decision biases and organizational implementation issues. It connects the concept of Strategic Industry Factors at the market level with the notion of Strategic Assets at the firm level. Organizational rent is shown to stem from imperfect and discretionary decisions to develop and deploy selected resources and capabilities, made by boundedly rational managers facing high uncertainty, complexity, and intrafirm conflict.