Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LaBGen-P: A pixel-level stationary background generation method based on LaBGen

Estimating the stationary background of a video sequence is useful in many applications like surveillance, segmentation, compression, inpainting, privacy protection, and computational photography. To perform this task, we introduce the LaBGen-P method based on the principles of LaBGen and the conclusions drawn in the corresponding paper. It combines a pixel-wise median filter and a pixel selection mechanism based on a motion detection performed by the frame difference algorithm. By working with pixels instead of patches, as originally done in LaBGen, it avoids some discontinuities between different spatial areas and generates better visual results. In this paper, we describe the LaBGen-P method, study its performance on the sequences of the SBMnet dataset, and compare it to that of LaBGen and other methods on the same dataset. Both algorithms emerged as the best ones during the IEEE Scene Background Modeling Contest (SBMC) organized in 2016. However, as there is not yet a good understanding of the recommended metrics, and due to the small amount of video sequences provided with the corresponding ground truth, we have performed a subjective evaluation. More precisely, 35 human experts were asked to compare background images estimated by LaBGen-P and LaBGen, and select the best one. From these experiments, it turns out that the results of LaBGen-P are preferred for about two thirds of the video sequences. Note that we provide an open-source C++ implementation at http://www.telecom. ulg.ac. be/labgen.
The Identification of a Novel Phosphodiesterase 4 Inhibitor, 1-Ethyl-5-{5-[(4-methyl-1-piperazinyl)methyl]-1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-yl}-N-(tetrahydro-2H-pyran-4-yl)-1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridin-4-amine (EPPA-1), with Improved Therapeutic Index using Pica Feeding in Rats as a Measure of Emetogenicity

Clinical utility of phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitors as anti-inflammatory agents has, to date, been limited by adverse effects including nausea and emesis, making accurate assessment of emetic versus anti-inflammatory potencies critical to the development of inhibitors with improved therapeutic indices. In the present study we determined the in vitro and in vivo anti-inflammatory potencies of the first-generation PDE4 inhibitor, rolipram, the second-generation inhibitors, roflumilast and cilomilast, and a novel third generation inhibitor, 1-ethyl-5-{5-[(4-methyl-1-piperazinyl)methyl]-1,3,4-oxadiazol-2-yl}-N-(tetrahydro-2H-pyran-4-yl)-1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridin-4-amine (EPPA-1). The rank-order potency against lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced tumor necrosis factor-α production by human peripheral blood mononuclear cells was roflumilast (IC50 = 5 nM) > EPPA-1 (38) > rolipram (269) > cilomilast (389), and against LPS-induced pulmonary neutrophilia in the rat was EPPA-1 (D50 = 0.042 mg/kg) > roflumilast (0.24) > rolipram (3.34) > cilomilast (4.54). Pica, the consumption of non-nutritive substances in response to gastrointestinal stress, was used as a surrogate measure for emesis, giving a rank-order potency of rolipram (D50 = 0.495 mg/kg) > roflumilast (1.6) > cilomilast (6.4) > EPPA-1 (24.3). The low and high emetogenic activities of EPPA-1 and rolipram, respectively, detected in the pica model were confirmed in a second surrogate model of emesis, reversal of α2-adrenoceptor-mediated anesthesia in the mouse. The rank order of therapeutic indices derived in the rat [(pica D50)/(neutrophilia D50)] was EPPA-1 (578) > roflumilast (6.4) > cilomilast (1.4) > rolipram (0.15), consistent with the rank order derived in the ferret [(emesis D50)/(neutrophilia D50)]. These data validate rat pica feeding as a surrogate for PDE4 inhibitor-induced emesis in higher species, and identify EPPA-1 as a novel PDE4 inhibitor with an improved therapeutic index.
The Role of Persian L1 and English L2 on the Acquisition of French L3 Syllable Structure

The aim of the present study is to investigate the role of two consonant coda clusters of first language Persian, second language English and third language French in the acquisition of French syllable structure when learners have achieved different levels of L2 proficiency.The following hypotheses are investigated in this study: (1) the L2 Status Factor (Rothman and Amaro, 2010) proposing that L2 impedes transfer from L1 into L3, (2) the Cumulative Enhancement Model (Flynn et al. 2004) proposing selective transfer from the previously learned languages, (3) the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (Hakansson, Pienemann and Sayheli, 2002), suggesting that the Universal Grammar (i.e. UG) is available in acquiring the succeeding languages. (4)Typological Primacy Model (Rothman, 2010) that believe in the similarities between the L3 and the previous languages determine the transfer into L3.To carry out the study, 30 Persian L3 French candidates at Tehran University who participated at Oxford Placement Test and French Placement Test were selected. In addition, two types of tasks were prepared to measure the L3 learners. The data analysis was carried out by one-way ANOVA as well as Mixed between-within subjects ANOVA. The results of the study proved ‘Full access/Full transfer’ and TPM hypotheses.
Assessment of work instability in spondyloarthritis: a cross-sectional study using the ankylosing spondylitis work instability scale.

OBJECTIVES Work status is an important outcome in SpA. The objective was to assess work instability and its determinants in a cohort of patients with SpA, using the AS-work instability scale (AS-WIS). METHODS We performed a cross-sectional monocentre study. Patients were definite SpA patients with paid work. Work instability was measured by the AS-WIS. Its determinants were assessed by correlations with SpA scores (BASDAI, BASFI and patient's global assessment) and patients with low work instability (AS-WIS score < 11) were compared with those with moderate to high instability, through backward logistic regression. RESULTS In all, 156 patients were assessed: mean (s.d.) age 41 (11) years, mean disease duration 15 (11) years; 71 (45.5%) were on TNF blockers. The mean AS-WIS score was 9.5 (5.5); 55 (35%) patients had moderate and 8 (5%) patients had high work instability. Correlations of the AS-WIS score with SpA scores were significant but moderate (BASDAI R = 0.42, BASFI R = 0.41, patient's global assessment R = 0.53; P < 0.0001). In multivariate analysis, high patient's global assessment was the only element associated with moderate to high work instability; demographic characteristics and treatments were not significant elements. CONCLUSION Work instability was found to be high and its main determinant was patient's global assessment. The predictive validity of the AS-WIS in terms of job retention should be further assessed.
Temporal OCL Meeting Specification Demands for Business Components

INTRODUCTION Compositional plug-and-play-like reuse of black box components requires sophisticated techniques to specify components, especially if we combine third-party components, which are traded on component markets, to customer-individual business application systems. As in established engineering disciplines like mechanical engineering or electrical engineering, we need a formal documentation of business components that becomes part of contractual agreements. Taking this problem as a starting point, we explain the general layered structure of software contracts for business components and show shortcomings of common specification approaches. Furthermore, we introduce a formal notation for the specification of business components that extends the Object Constraint Language (OCL) and that allows a broader use of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with respect to the layered structure of software contracts for business components. The remainder of the chapter is as follows. After providing background information in the next section, we discuss the necessity of a multi-level notation standard. Thereafter, we explain how the OCL can be used to specify business components. Taking this as a basis, we proceed to the main thrust of our chapter the temporal extension of OCL. Finally, we present our conclusions and give an outlook.
Iterative Information Retrieval Using Fast Clustering and Usage-Specific Genres

This paper describes how collection specific empirically defined stylistics based genre prediction can be brought together together with rapid topical clustering to build an interactive information retrieval interface with multi-dimensional presentation of search results. The prototype presented addresses two specific problems of information retrieval: how to enrich the information seeking dialog by encouraging and supporting iterative refinement of queries, and how to enrich the document representation past the shallow semantics allowed by term frequencies. Searching For More Than Words Today's tools for searching information in a document database are based on term occurrence in texts. The searcher enters a number of terms and a number of documents where those terms or closely related terms appear comparatively frequently are retrieved and presented by the system in list form. This method works well up to a point. It is intuitively understandable, and for competent users and well edited document bases it will give a predictably mediocre result. It also has obvious drawbacks. Term frequencies provide a representation of document content which suffers from being both shallow and sparse: shallow, in that a text has more facets and features than a list of terms will be able to represent; and sparse, in that it usually is difficult for users to pinpoint which term to search for in a multi-laced hierachy of hyponymial relations and sets of near synonyms, related terms, or other variants. We focus on two specific drawbacks of the traditional information retrieval search process. Firstly, as has been acknowledged by many recent research projects and some recent applications, searches are seldom one-shot affairs. Typically a search is improved and refined iteratively, until the retrieved set seems good enough, by some metric. Thus, the interface should support persistence and incremental refinement. Secondly, the objects of study are more complex than usually is assumed: document topic is more than term frequencies, and documents are more than the topic they are about. Information Seeking Dialog Dialog design is not one of the central fields of computational linguistics; most design principles have been made outside the field, in by researchers generally interested in humancomputer interaction. This is a pity, for two reasons. First, linguists -even computational -have a lot to offer dialog design: language has a lot to do with dialog. Second, language technology applications need dialog design as well as parsing algorithms or terminology statistics. We have put some thought in our dialog design. We want our system to transcend the typical one-shot dialogs of most fielded information systems today: ``enter your search terms'' -``browse the resulting list''. Our dialog builds on incremental specialization. The pipeline
Measuring the distance of moving objects from big trajectory data

Location-based services have become important in social networking, mobile applications, advertising, traffic monitoring, and many other domains. The growth of location sensing devices has led to the vast generation of dynamic spatial-temporal data in the form of moving object trajectories which can be characterized as big trajectory data. Big trajectory data enables the opportunities such as analyzing the groups of moving objects. To obtain such facilities, the issue of this work is to find a distance measurement method that respects the geographic distance and the semantic similarity for each trajectories. Measurement of similarity between moving objects is a difficult task because not only their position changes but also their semantic features vary. In this research, a method to measure trajectory similarity based on both geographical features and semantic features of motion is proposed. Finally, the proposed methods are practically evaluated by using real trajectory dataset.
Learning to Teach Graduate Students

This study examined our perceptions as a music education professor and three PhD students as we conducted a self-study of our individual and collective experiences teaching graduate students. We framed our work around the key question: How do PhD students describe experiences specifically in relation to perceived potential as teachers of graduate students in higher education? Findings concerning graduate teaching included (a) views of graduate teaching changed with increased experience, and (b) confidence increased with more experience teaching graduate classes and more time to process the content. The use of self-study as an approach to inquiry is discussed along with these findings.
Noise-Induced Tinnitus Using Individualized Gap Detection Analysis and Its Relationship with Hyperacusis, Anxiety, and Spatial Cognition

Tinnitus has a complex etiology that involves auditory and non-auditory factors and may be accompanied by hyperacusis, anxiety and cognitive changes. Thus far, investigations of the interrelationship between tinnitus and auditory and non-auditory impairment have yielded conflicting results. To further address this issue, we noise exposed rats and assessed them for tinnitus using a gap detection behavioral paradigm combined with statistically-driven analysis to diagnose tinnitus in individual rats. We also tested rats for hearing detection, responsivity, and loss using prepulse inhibition and auditory brainstem response, and for spatial cognition and anxiety using Morris water maze and elevated plus maze. We found that our tinnitus diagnosis method reliably separated noise-exposed rats into tinnitus(+) and tinnitus(−) groups and detected no evidence of tinnitus in tinnitus(−) and control rats. In addition, the tinnitus(+) group demonstrated enhanced startle amplitude, indicating hyperacusis-like behavior. Despite these results, neither tinnitus, hyperacusis nor hearing loss yielded any significant effects on spatial learning and memory or anxiety, though a majority of rats with the highest anxiety levels had tinnitus. These findings showed that we were able to develop a clinically relevant tinnitus(+) group and that our diagnosis method is sound. At the same time, like clinical studies, we found that tinnitus does not always result in cognitive-emotional dysfunction, although tinnitus may predispose subjects to certain impairment like anxiety. Other behavioral assessments may be needed to further define the relationship between tinnitus and anxiety, cognitive deficits, and other impairments.
Being for the Other-to-the-Other: Justice and Communication in Levinasian Ethics

This essay provides an explanation of how Levinas's unique philosophy of ethics, his separation of justice from ethics, and his views of language and communication come together to articulate not a system or code of ethics, but the impossibility of any systematization or codification of one's obligations. Only by understanding the tensions between ethics and justice in Levinas's writing and by relating those to his philosophy of communication can we understand the significance of a Levinasian communication ethic.
Language Policy in a Korean-English Two-Way Immersion Setting

The purpose of this paper is to examine a language policy in a two-way immersion programme and to explicate the dimensions as well as dynamics involved in the teacher's interpretation and implementation of the policy. The Korean-English two-way immersion kindergarten classroom where this research was conducted, adopted a 70: 30 language distribution policy: Korean was used as the language of instruction during 70% of class time and English was employed as the language of instruction during the remaining 30% of time. However, despite the teacher's strict implementation of the policy, both the ethnically Korean children and ethnically non-Korean children chose to maintain most of their communication in English, reluctant to use Korean in both official and unofficial school settings. Within this setting, I ask questions related to the principles that affected the implementation of the policy by the teacher, specifically, the process by which certain interests became prioritised and the other became marginalised. I provide description of the teacher's value systems and experiences that affected this process.
A NEW COMPUTATIONAL METHOD FOR OPTIMAL CONTROL OF A CLASS OF CONSTRAINED SYSTEMS GOVERNED BY PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

Abstract A computationally efficient technique for the numerical solution of constrained optimal control problems governed by one-dimensional partial differential equations is considered in this paper. This technique utilizes inversion to map the optimal control problem to a lower dimensional space. Results are presented using the Nonlinear Trajectory Generation software package (NTG) showing that real-time implementation may be possible.
Rapid evidence-based development of mobile medical IoT apps

Mobile medical apps (MMAs) work in close loop with human physiology through sensing and control. As such it is essential for them to achieve intended functionality, without having harmful effects on human physiology, affecting the availability of the service and compromising the privacy of health data. However for a mobile app manufacturer, generating evidences regarding safety, sustainability and security (S3) of MMAs can be time consuming. To accelerate the development of S3 assured MMAs, we propose Health-Dev β tool that takes high level description of MMAs and automatically generates validated code and evidences of safety, security, and sustainability. Using the mobile artificial pancreas medical control application we show that Health-Dev β tool can generate code that satisfies requirements and reduce development time by a factor of 1.8.
Nine Structures and Leadership Practices Essential for a Magnetic (Healthy) Work Environment

Improving clinical nurse work environments is a major challenge faced by nurse executives today. To meet this challenge, nurse leaders must implement the “right” structures and best leadership practices so that clinical nurses can engage in the work processes and relationships that are empirically linked to quality patient outcomes. What are these “right” structures and best leadership practices? Meta-analyses of 2 sets of publications were used to identify organizational structures and best leadership practices essential to a healthy work environment, that is, a work environment that enables them to engage in the work processes and relationships needed for quality patient care outcomes. The first set was 12 publications from 7 professional organizations/regulatory bodies that advocated forces, hallmarks, and standards for a healthy work environment. The second set was 18 publications from the Essentials of Magnetism structure–identification studies, in which the aggregated results from 1300 interviews with staff nurse, manager, and physician “experts” were compared with the agency results. Broadening the categories and final aggregation yielded the 9 most important and influential structures essential to a quality work environment. Suggestions for implementing these structures are provided.
Assessment of Glial Scar, Tissue Sparing, Behavioral Recovery and Axonal Regeneration following Acute Transplantation of Genetically Modified Human Umbilical Cord Blood Cells in a Rat Model of Spinal Cord Contusion

Objective and Methods This study investigated the potential for protective effects of human umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (UCB-MCs) genetically modified with the VEGF and GNDF genes on contusion spinal cord injury (SCI) in rats. An adenoviral vector was constructed for targeted delivery of VEGF and GDNF to UCB-MCs. Using a rat contusion SCI model we examined the efficacy of the construct on tissue sparing, glial scar severity, the extent of axonal regeneration, recovery of motor function, and analyzed the expression of the recombinant genes VEGF and GNDF in vitro and in vivo. Results Transplantation of UCB-MCs transduced with adenoviral vectors expressing VEGF and GDNF at the site of SCI induced tissue sparing, behavioral recovery and axonal regeneration comparing to the other constructs tested. The adenovirus encoding VEGF and GDNF for transduction of UCB-MCs was shown to be an effective and stable vehicle for these cells in vivo following the transplantation into the contused spinal cord. Conclusion Our results show that a gene delivery using UCB-MCs-expressing VEGF and GNDF genes improved both structural and functional parameters after SCI. Further histological and behavioral studies, especially at later time points, in animals with SCI after transplantation of genetically modified UCB-MCs (overexpressing VEGF and GDNF genes) will provide additional insight into therapeutic potential of such cells.
Quench Protection Study of the Updated MQXF for the LHC Luminosity Upgrade (HiLumi LHC)

In 2023, the LHC luminosity will be increased, aiming at reaching 3000 fb-1 integrated over ten years. To obtain this target, new Nb3Sn low-β quadrupoles (MQXF) have been designed for the interaction regions. These magnets present a very large aperture (150 mm, to be compared with the 70 mm of the present NbTi quadrupoles) and a very large stored energy density (120 MJ/m3). For these reasons, quench protection is one of the most challenging aspects of the design of these magnets. In fact, protection studies of a previous design showed that the simulated hot spot temperature was very close to the maximum allowed limit of 350 K; this challenge motivated improvements in the current discharge modeling, taking into account the so-called dynamic effects on the apparent magnet inductance. Moreover, quench heaters design has been studied to be going into more details. In this paper, a protection study of the updated MQXF is presented, benefitting from the experience gained by studying the previous design. A study of the voltages between turns in the magnet is also presented during both normal operation and most important failure scenarios.
Remote measurements of snowfalls in Wakasa Bay, Japan with Airborne Millimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer and Cloud Radar

Results of concurrent airborne measurements of snowfalls with the Millimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer (MIR) and the Airborne Cloud Radar (ACR) are reported in this paper. The measurements were obtained during January-February 2003 in a field experiment in Wakasa Bay, Japan. The MIR is an imaging radiometer that measures radiation at seven channels between 89 GHz and 340 GHz. The ACR operates at 94 GHz and provides nadir-viewing radar reflectivity profiles with very good accuracy. Three days of snowfall events were observed during this field deployment. It was found that the MIR brightness temperature depressions at the frequencies of 183.3/spl plusmn/1, 183.3/spl plusmn/3, 183.3/spl plusmn/7, and 340 GHz strongly correlate with the ACR reflectivity profiles during these snow events. Radiometric signatures from the remaining less opaque channels of the MIR (89, 150 and 220 GHz) showed ambiguity in snowfall detection due to variation in surface emissivities. An attempt to retrieve the ice water path and the median mass equivalent sphere diameter of the snowfalls would be described and results discussed.