Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An association-based multi-target tracking method

Multi-target tracking is widely studied, but it is still a difficult problem due to occlusion or split/merge of target images in reality. Solving such problems is the key in multi-target tracking. In this paper, we propose a modified particle filter method to track multiple targets, based on improved target detection and data association. While applying a common particle filter method as the main tracker, another tracker tries to guide and recover it when it fails after long or severe occlusion. This 2nd tracker tries to find candidate targets as accurately as possible by using background subtraction and an AdaBoost classifier detector. Then an ID is assigned to each candidate target by association using the Hungarian method. At last a small number of particles of the main tracker are sampled at the position suggested by the 2nd tracker, which lead the other particles of the main tracker to the correct position quickly. Experiments show a good performance of our method in solving multi-target occlusion problems, and it is proven to be fast enough for real time applications.
Comprehensive analysis of microRNA/mRNA signature in colon adenocarcinoma.

OBJECTIVE The goal of our study was to identify the regulatory mechanisms of gene expression mediated by miRNAs and DNA methylation in colon adenocarcinoma (COAD). MATERIALS AND METHODS The miRNAs and mRNAs expression and DNA methylation data of COAD and adjacent normal tissues were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Based on the differentially expressed miRNAs and mRNAs, miRNA-mRNA pairs were obtained by correlation analysis and prediction algorithms. Finally, COAD-specific miRNA-mRNA regulatory network was generated. Additionally, the biological functions of miRNA targets were further revealed by GO and KEGG enrichment analysis. Besides, the correlation analysis between gene expression and DNA methylation was also performed after differential analysis. RESULTS We identified 55 differentially expressed miRNAs and 1291 differentially expressed mRNAs in COAD compared with adjacent normal tissues. We observed a global miRNA up-regulation in tumors. A total of 58 miRNA-mRNA pairs were not only predicted by algorithms but also negatively correlated. The increased expression of has-mir-141, -19a, -20a 19b-1, 19b-2, 16, 590 and -335 were closely associated with the carcinogenesis of COAD. Functional enrichment analysis showed that the miRNA targets were significantly enriched in pancreatic secretion, salivary secretion, gastric acid secretion and bile secretion. Regarding the regulatory role of DNA methylation, we identified 11 genes whose expressions were negatively correlated with DNA methylation level. Among those genes, MSX1 and KRT7 were down-regulated and hypermethylated in COAD compared with adjacent normal tissues. CONCLUSIONS These eight miRNAs (has-mir-141, -19a, -20a 19b-1, 19b-2, 16, 590 and -335) and two genes (MSX1 and KRT7) may play a role in the process of COAD. These findings highlighted the potential regulatory mechanisms of miRNA and DNA methylation on mRNA expression in COAD carcinogenesis.
Four-Terminal FinFETs Fabricated Using an Etch-Back Gate Separation

A novel resist etch-back process for fabrication of separated-gate four-terminal FinFETs has been investigates. This process enabled co-fabrication of three-terminal (3T) and four-terminal (4T) FinFETs on a same chip. The fabricated 3T-FinFET shows excellent sub-threshold characteristics and drain induced barrier lowering (DIBL) value whereas the 4T-FinFET provides efficient Vth controllability. The effective Vth controllability with keeping a small sub-threshold slope has been confirmed in the synchronized double gate (DD) operation mode
Model Uncertainty and Option Markets in Heterogeneous Economies

This paper provides option pricing and volume implications for an incomplete market economy with heterogenous agents who face model uncertainty and disagree on the dividend growth rate. Market incompleteness makes options non-redundant while heterogeneity creates a link between differences in beliefs and option volumes. We solve for both option prices and volumes and test the joint empirical implications using SP500 index option data. We use survey data to build an Index of Dispersion in Beliefs and find that a model which takes into account information heterogeneity can explain the dynamics of option volume better than reduced-form models with stochastic volatility. Moreover, its hedging performance is superior. Finally, we find that the Index of Dispersion in Beliefs is correlated with changes in the shape of the smile and it forecasts future realized volatility even after controlling for the current implied volatility.
Positron Emission Mammography: High-Resolution Biochemical Breast Imaging

Positron emission mammography (PEM) provides images of biochemical activity in the breast with spatial resolution matching individual ducts (1.5 mm full-width at half-maximum). This spatial resolution, supported by count efficiency that results in high signal-to-noise ratio, allows confident visualization of intraductal as well as invasive breast cancers. Clinical trials with a full-breast PEM device have shown high clinical accuracy in characterizing lesions identified as suspicious on the basis of conventional imaging or physical examination (sensitivity 93%, specificity 83%, area under the ROC curve of 0.93), with high sensitivity preserved (91%) for intraductal cancers. Increased sensitivity did not come at a cost of reduced specificity. Considering that intraductal cancer represents more than 30% of reported cancers, and is the form of cancer with the highest probability of achieving surgical cure, it is likely that the use of PEM will complement anatomic imaging modalities in the areas of surgical planning, high-risk monitoring, and minimally invasive therapy. The quantitative nature of PET promises to assist researchers interested studying the response of putative cancer precursors (e.g., atypical ductal hyperplasia) to candidate prevention agents.
Optimum threshold of group formation in multiagents

This paper presents a simple multi-agent model of group formation, while the behaviour is complicated. The statistical characteristics of the formation are suddenly changed at some states. Their agents are carrying characteristic vectors, meet each other in nondimensional free spaces without any restrictions randomly, and the agents make groups in the spaces if their characteristics are similar, that is, they have high similarities. Actually, for a given threshold on similarities, when the characteristic vectors between two agents are similar in the threshold, the agents join into one. They are not only for agents but also for groups, i.e. two groups can become into one if they are similar, and we repeat it. On the other hand, making groups decrease a satisfaction on groups. In this paper, we show, for a given threshold, there is not only an optimal threshold to maximize the satisfactions among groups which satisfy the threshold, but also the other one to minimize the satisfactions. The thresholds to maximize satisfactions are experimentally approximated by some function on the size of characteristic vectors rather than the number of agents.
Identification of multiple repressor recognition sites in the hut system of Pseudomonas putida

The hutC gene in Pseudomonas putida encodes a repressor protein that negatively regulates the expression of all hut genes. We have overexpressed this cloned hutC gene in Escherichia coli to identify P. putida hut regions that could specifically bind the repressor. Ten restriction fragments, some of which were partially overlapping and spanned the coding portions of the P. putida hut region, were labeled and tested for their ability to recognize repressor in a filter binding assay. This procedure identified three binding sites, thus supporting previous indications that there were multiple operons. A 1.0-kilobase-pair SalI restriction fragment contained the operator region for the hutUHIG operon, whereas a 1.9-kilobase-pair SmaI fragment contained the hutF operator. A 2.9-kilobase-pair XhoI segment appeared to contain the third operator, corresponding to a separate and perhaps little used control region for hutG expression only. The addition of urocanate, the normal inducer, caused dissociation of all operator-repressor complexes, whereas N-formylglutamate, capable of specifically inducing expression of the hutG gene, inhibited binding only of repressor to fragments containing that gene. Formylglutamate did not affect the action of urocanate on the repressor-hutUHIG operator complex, indicating that it binds to a site separate from urocanate on the repressor. DNA footprinting and gel retardation analyses were used to locate more precisely the operator for the hutUHIG operon. A roughly 40-base-pair portion was identified which contained a 16-base-pair region of dyad symmetry located near the transcription initiation site for this operon.
A New Approach for Transmission Expansion Planning in Competitive Electricity Markets

Expansion planning strategies in power systems have been seriously influenced by disintegration of these systems during the past decade. Transmission Expansion Planning (TEP) is one of the most important parts of expansion planning of power systems. In this paper, a new algorithm for TEP in these environments is presented. The method is based on probabilistic Locational Marginal Price (LMP) considering electrical losses, transmission tariffs and transmission congestion costs. Incorporating modeling of reactive power and uncertainty of generation and load are other important features of the proposed algorithm.
Protein aggregate formation in oligodendrocytes: tau and the cytoskeleton at the intersection of neuroprotection and neurodegeneration

Abstract Oligodendrocytes are dependent on an intact, dynamic microtubule (MT) network, which participates in the elaboration and stabilization of myelin forming extensions, and is essential for cellular sorting processes. The microtubule-associated protein tau is constituent of oligodendrocytes. During culture maturation it is developmentally regulated and important for MT stability, MT formation and intracellular trafficking. Downregulation of tau impairs process outgrowth and the transport of myelin basic protein (MBP) mRNA to the cell periphery. Cells fail to differentiate into MBP-expressing, sheet-forming oligodendrocytes. Tau-positive inclusions originating in oligodendrocytes and white matter pathology are prominent in frontotemporal dementias, such as Pick’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy and corticobasal degeneration. An impairment or overload of the proteolytic degradation systems, i.e. the ubiquitin proteasomal system and the lysosomal degradation pathway, has been connected to the formation of protein aggregates. Large protein aggregates are excluded from the proteasome and degraded by autophagy, which is a highly selective process and requires receptor proteins for ubiquitinated proteins, including histone deacetylase 6 (HDAC6). HDAC6 is present in oligodendrocytes, and α-tubulin and tau are substrates of HDAC6. In this review our current knowledge of the role of tau and protein aggregate formation in oligodendrocyte cell culture systems is summarized.
Modeling Interest-Driven Data Dissemination in Online Social Networks

In this paper, we aim to model the formation of interest-driven data dissemination in online social networks (OSNs). We focus on a usual type of interest-driven social sessions in OSNs, called Social-InterestCast, under which a user will autonomously determine whether to view the content from his followees depending on his interest. To figure out the formation mechanism of such a Social-InterestCast, we propose a four-layered system model, consisting of physical layer, social layer, content layer, and session layer to model this interestdriven sessions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to model data dissemination in OSNs with the interestdriven characteristics.
Different word representations and their combination for proper name retrieval from diachronic documents

This paper deals with the problem of high-quality transcription systems for very large vocabulary automatic speech recognition (ASR). We investigate the problem of automatic retrieval of out-of-vocabulary (OOV) proper names (PNs). We want to take into account the temporal, syntactic and semantic context of words. Nowadays, Artificial Neural Networks (NN) are widely used in natural language processing: continuous space representations of words is learned automatically from unstructured text data. To model the latent topics at document level, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) has been successful. In this paper, we propose OOV PN retrieval using (1) temporal versus topic context modeling; (2) different word representation spaces for word-level and document-level context modeling; (3) combinations of retrieval results. Experimental evaluation on broadcast news data shows that the proposed method combinations lead to better results. This confirms the complementarity of methods.
A comprehensive analysis of phase I and phase II metabolism gene polymorphisms and risk of colorectal cancer

Objectives Sporadic colorectal cancer (CRC) is considered a multifactorial disease where multiple exposures interact with the individual genetic background resulting in risk modulation. We performed an association study aimed to investigate the role of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within genes of phase I (CYP1A1, CYP1A2, CYP1B1, CYP2A6, CYP2D6, CYP2E1, CYP2C9, CYP2C19, CYP3A4, ADH2, EPHX1) and phase II of the xenobiotic metabolism (ALDH2, COMT, GSTA2, GSTA4, GSTM1, GSTM3, GSTP1, GSTT2, MTHFR, NAT1, NAT2, NQO1, MnSOD2, SULT1A1, TPMT). Methods We genotyped 377 cases and 326 controls, by use of an oligonucleotide micro-array and the arrayed primer extension technique (APEX). Results N-acetyl-transferase 1 ‘rapid’ phenotype and CYP1A2 −164C>A carriers were associated with increased risk of CRC, confirming data reported in previous studies. Interestingly, homozygotes for allele 48G within CYP1B1, a variant with an increased activity towards several substrates including sex hormones, were at increased risk (OR=2.81, 95% CI 1.32–5.99). Moreover, CYP1A1 SNPs T461N and −1738A>C were associated with a reduced risk of cancer (OR=0.52; 95% CI 0.31–0.88 and OR=0.69, 95% CI 0.50–0.94 for carriers, respectively). Conclusions The present data suggest a role for CYP1B1 and CYP1A1 as new candidate genes in the etiology of CRC and confirm the carcinogenic role of aromatic amines metabolism for colorectum.
Interconnections between Eurozone and US Booms and Busts Using a Bayesian Panel Markov-Switching VAR Mode

Interconnections between Eurozone and United States booms and busts and among major Eurozone economies are analyzed using a Panel Markov-Switching VAR model. The model accommodates changes in low and high data frequencies and incorporates endogenous time-varying transition matrices of country-specific Markov chains. These country-specific Markov chains depend on their own past history and the history of other chains, thus allowing for interconnections between cycles, and an endogenous common Eurozone cycle is derived by aggregating the country-specific cycles. The model is estimated using a simulation based Bayesian approach in which an efficient multi-move sampling algorithm is defined to draw time-varying Markov-switching chains. Using industrial production growth and credit spread data for all countries, several empirical results have emerged. Recession, slow gro wth and expansion are empirically identified as three regimes with slow growth becoming persistent in the Eurozone in recent years different from the US. The Eurozone and the US regimes appear not fully synchronized, with evidence of more recessions in the Eurozone. Second, turning point analysis indicates larger synchronization at the beginning of the Great Financial Crisis: this shock affects the US first, leading the Eurozone cycle, and spreads then rapidly among these economies. Third, amplification effects influence recession probabilities for Eurozone countries when shocks occur. The evidence is different for the US where this reinforcement does not exist. In recent years there are more imbalances among regimes in Eurozone countries. Fourth, a credit shock results in substantial negative industrial production growth for several months in Germany, Spain and the US.
PSO based data routing in a networked distributed Pico-satellites system

Low earth orbit satellites networks are capable of providing wireless connectivity to any part of the world while guaranteeing lower delays and better bit error rate performance. During the last years, there have been many growing interests towards the development of small satellites. Using these miniaturized systems as a cooperating network allows cost saving and a short development period. However, these systems present the drawback of energy management which is the most important problem to care about. Therefore, the optimization of the processing time and the efficient implementation of the information flow and storage on board must be discussed with respect to the quick topology changes. In this paper, we discuss the use of a network of Pico-satellites with distributed tasks instead of one big satellite to get a fault-tolerant and a robust system, this will be helpful for cost saves and development time reducing. Thus, we have to consider an intelligent system able to achieve several space missions such as attitude control, telemetry and communication. So, we present as a first step different routing algorithms used in small satellites and terrestrial networks. In addition, we present the proposed simulation system which is based on satellite position prediction, satellites tracking software and the use of a Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) as an intelligent technique for information assignment. As a result, the simulation shows the importance of the use of intelligent techniques in space application due to the complicated environment and the lack of energy sources compared to the earth networks. In deed, The PSO solution avoids the use of one satellite in a critical state and generates a good quality of service when big data traffic in the network occurs, that is because of sharing and distributing the whole traffic process. This solution allows the sustainability of the network and a better Quality of service.
Rhythm Discrimination by Rate Branch and QRS Morphology in Dual Chamber Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators

BORIANI, G. , et al.: Rhythm Discrimination by Rate Branch and QRS Morphology in Dual Chamber Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators. Morphology Discrimination is a discriminator based on QRS morphology analysis that has been recently implemented in dual chamber implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). Detected events are initially classified according to median atrial and ventricular rates (Rate Branch). Then, a series of discriminators (Morphology Discrimination, Stability, Sudden Onset) analyze the rhythm according to specific criteria and the number of discriminators required for VT diagnosis (i.e., requiring “any” or “all” of the specific discriminators to indicate VT). The discriminating accuracy of the algorithm was evaluated in 645 detections recorded during the follow‐up of 25 patients. The overall specificity for 397 supraventricular arrhythmias was 73.5% (292/397) with the tachycardia diagnosis criteria set to “any” and 90.9% (361/397) with the tachycardia diagnosis criteria set to “all. ” Sensitivity for VT was 100% and 98.7% (231/234) with the tachycardia diagnosis criteria set to “any” and “all,” respectively. With the tachycardia diagnosis criteria set to “any,” specificity for atrial fibrillation was 88.6%, for atrial flutter 40.3%, for atrial tachycardia 0%, and for sinus tachycardia 97.0%. With the tachycardia diagnosis criteria set to “all,” specificity for atrial fibrillation was 92.40%, for atrial flutter 93.5%, for atrial tachycardia 54.7%, and for sinus tachycardia 99.0%. The contribution of Morphology Discrimination was crucial to improve the specificity of the Rate Branch algorithm. The implementation of Morphology Discrimination in a dual chamber ICD with Rate Branch rhythm classification allows the attainment of high specificity and high sensitivity for ventricular tachyarrhythmias. (PACE 2003; 26[Pt. II]:466–470)
School Violence in Mexico: Exploring its Dimensions and Consequences

Schools, like other institutions, are immersed in conflictive environments. That is why it is not surprising that some forms of social violence are replicated among its members. However, schools are not only the recipients, but also producers of violence. This paper analyzes three dimensions of school violence--violence among peers, institutional violence and violence in social environs—and its effects on: 1) the subjective wellbeing of students and 2) the student’s possible decision to leave school. The analysis was made School Violence in Mexico: Exploring its Dimensions and Consequences Jose del Tronco Paganelli Abby Madrigal Ramirez If school is a sounding board which amplifies what takes place outside its walls, it makes sense to ask if the forms and levels of social violence are reproduced within schools based on the information from 1398 surveys given to students in the third year of secondary school in ten large cities in different regions of the Mexican Republic at the end of 2012.
PRESENCE AND SEASONAL PREVALENCE OF PLASMODIUM SPP. IN A RARE ENDEMIC NEW ZEALAND PASSERINE (TIEKE OR SADDLEBACK, PHILESTURNUS CARUNCULATUS)

The conservation and management of Saddlebacks (Philesturnus carunculatus) and other New Zealand birds, currently relies on the translocation of individuals to predator-free sites. Avian malaria has been identified as one of the diseases to be tested for prior to translocations in New Zealand, with the aim of translocating disease-free individuals. We describe avian malaria lineages and their seasonal prevalence in 2007–2008 in Saddlebacks from Mokoia Island, a source of birds for translocations, and investigate their pathogenicity. Three lineages of avian malaria were found at low prevalence (≥10.6%) and parasitemia (all but one infection were below 1/10,000 erythrocytes), typical of chronic infections. Two lineages clustered with previously identified lineages of Plasmodium relictum and one with a lineage of Plasmodium (Huffia) elongatum. Prevalence of malaria infection was higher in the spring with no significant difference in prevalence between juvenile and adult birds. We found no effect of stress on infections or any indication of pathogenicity.
Exercise intolerance due to a nonsense mutation in the mtDNA ND4 gene

We report the first molecular defect in an NADH‐dehydrogenase gene presenting as isolated myopathy. The proband had lifelong exercise intolerance but no weakness. A muscle biopsy showed cytochrome c oxidase (COX)–positive ragged‐red fibers (RRFs), and analysis of the mitochondrial enzymes revealed complex I deficiency. Sequence analysis of the mitochondrial genes encoding the seven NADH‐dehydrogenase subunits showed a G‐to‐A transition at nucleotide 11832 in the subunit 4 (ND4) gene, which changed an encoded tryptophan to a stop codon. The mutation was heteroplasmic (54%) in muscle DNA. Defects in mitochondrially encoded complex I subunits should be added to the differential diagnosis of mitochondrial myopathies. Ann Neurol 1999;45:820–823