Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual tracking based on compressive sensing and particle filter

A robust appearance model is usually required in visual tracking, which can handle pose variation, illumination variation, occlusion and many other interferences occurring in video. So far, a number of tracking algorithms make use of image samples in previous frames to update appearance models. There are many limitations of that approach: 1) At the beginning of tracking, there exists no sufficient amount of data for online update because these adaptive models are data-dependent and 2) in many challenging situations, robustly updating the appearance models is difficult, which often results in drift problems. In this paper, we proposed a tracking algorithm based on compressive sensing theory and particle filter framework. Features are extracted by random projection with data-independent basis. Particle filter is employed to make a more accurate estimation of the target location and make much of the updated classifier. The robustness and the effectiveness of our tracker have been demonstrated in several experiments.
Recognition and Specificity Determinants of the Human Cbx Chromodomains*

The eight mammalian Cbx proteins are chromodomain-containing proteins involved in regulation of heterochromatin, gene expression, and developmental programs. They are evolutionarily related to the Drosophila HP1 (dHP1) and Pc (dPc) proteins that are key components of chromatin-associated complexes capable of recognizing repressive marks such as trimethylated Lys-9 and Lys-27, respectively, on histone H3. However, the binding specificity and function of the human homologs, Cbx1–8, remain unclear. To this end we employed structural, biophysical, and mutagenic approaches to characterize the molecular determinants of sequence contextual methyllysine binding to human Cbx1–8 proteins. Although all three human HP1 homologs (Cbx1, -3, -5) replicate the structural and binding features of their dHP counterparts, the five Pc homologs (Cbx2, -4, -6, -7, -8) bind with lower affinity to H3K9me3 or H3K27me3 peptides and are unable to distinguish between these two marks. Additionally, peptide permutation arrays revealed a greater sequence tolerance within the Pc family and suggest alternative nonhistone sequences as potential binding targets for this class of chromodomains. Our structures explain the divergence of peptide binding selectivity in the Pc subfamily and highlight previously unrecognized features of the chromodomain that influence binding and specificity.
Streaming signal recovery using sparse Bayesian learning

We consider the progressive reconstruction of a streaming signal from compressive measurements. We reconstruct the streaming signal over shifting intervals using an algorithm based on sparse Bayesian learning (SBL). Although computationally expensive, compared to other recovery algorithms, SBL provide the full posterior distribution of the sparse coefficients rather than computing only a point estimate. We propose a modified SBL algorithm, which utilizes the previous estimates as well as their reconstruction errors to improve the performance of the algorithm. A warm-start procedure and fast update equations are proposed to reduce the computational cost and improve the speed of the SBL algorithm.
Activation of Toll-Like Receptor 3 Impairs the Dengue Virus Serotype 2 Replication through Induction of IFN-β in Cultured Hepatoma Cells

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) play an important role in innate immunity against invading pathogens. Although TLR signaling has been indicated to protect cells from infection of several viruses, the role of TLRs in Dengue virus (DENV) replication is still unclear. In the present study, we examined the replication of DENV serotype 2 (DENV2) by challenging hepatoma cells HepG2 with different TLR ligands. Activation of TLR3 showed an antiviral effect, while pretreatment of other TLR ligands (including TLR1/2, TLR2/6, TLR4, TLR5 or TLR7/8) did not show a significant effect. TLR3 ligand poly(I∶C) treatment prior to viral infection or simultaneously, but not post-treatment, significantly down-regulated virus replication. Pretreatment with poly(I∶C) reduced viral mRNA expression and viral staining positive cells, accompanying an induction of the type I interferon (IFN-β) and type III IFN (IL-28A/B). Intriguingly, neutralization of IFN-β alone successfully restored the poly(I∶C)-inhibited replication of DENV2. The poly(I∶C)-mediated effects, including IFN induction and DENV2 suppression, were significantly reversed by IKK inhibitor, further suggesting that IFN-β is the dominant factor involved in the poly(I∶C) mediated antiviral effect. Our study presented the first evidence to show that activation of TLR3 is effective in blocking DENV2 replication via IFN-β, providing an experimental clue that poly(I∶C) may be a promising immunomodulatory agent against DENV infection and might be applicable for clinical prevention.
The Types II and III Transforming Growth Factor-Receptors Form Homo-Oligomers

Affinity-labeling experiments have detected hetero-oligomers of the types I, II, and UI transforming growth factor/3 (TGF-/3) receptors which mediate intracellular signaling by TGF-/3, but the oligomeric state of the individual receptor types remains unknown. Here we use two types of experiments to show that a major portion of the receptor types II and HI forms homo-oligomers both in the absence and presence of TGF-/3. Both experiments used COS-7 cells co-transfected with combinations of these receptors carrying different epitope tags at their extracellular termini. In immunoprecipitation experiments, radiolabeled TGF-13 was bound and cross-linked to cells coexpressing two differently tagged type II receptors. Sequential immunoprecipitations using anti-epitope monoclonal antibodies showed that type II TGF-/3 receptors form homo-oligomers. In cells co-expressing epitope-tagged types II and III receptors, a low level of co-precipitation of the ligand-labeled receptors was observed, indicating that some hetero-oligomers of the types II and III receptors exist in the presence of ligand. Antibody-mediated cross-linking studies based on double-labeling immunofluorescence explored copatching of the receptors at the cell surface on live cells. In cells co-expressing two differently tagged type II receptors or two differently tagged type III receptors, forcing one receptor into micropatches by IgG induced co-patching of the receptor carrying the other tag, labeled by noncross-linking monovalent Fab'. These studies showed that homo-oligomers of the types II and ~I receptors exist on the cell surface in the absence or presence of TGF-/31 or -/32. In cells co-expressing types II and 1]/receptors, the amount of heterocomplexes at the cell surface was too low to be detected in the immunofluorescence co-patching experiments, confirming that hetero-oligomers of the types II and III receptors are minor and probably tran-
Parallel MCMC algorithm for bayesian system identification

A generalised framework for Metropolis-Hastings admits many algorithms as specialisations and allows for synthesis of multiple methods to create a parallel algorithm, with no tuning required, to efficiently draw uncorrelated samples, from the posterior density in Bayesian systems identification, at lower computational cost in comparison with conventional samplers. Two automatic annealing schemes demonstrate complementary robustness in detecting multi-modal distribution.
Indices of insulin action, disposal, and secretion derived from fasting samples and clamps in normal glucose-tolerant black and white children.

OBJECTIVE To validate fasting indices of insulin sensitivity and secretion in a diverse pediatric population against gold standard estimates from euglycemic and hyperglycemic clamps. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 31 children (mean BMI 25.1 +/- 4.9 kg/m(2), mean age 8.7 +/- 1.4 years, 15 girls and 16 boys, 12 black and 19 white) underwent euglycemic and hyperglycemic clamps 2-6 weeks apart to derive insulin sensitivity indices (SI (Eug clamp) and SI (Hyper clamp)). Fasting samples were used to derive the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance index (HOMA-IR), HOMA of percent beta-cell function (HOMA-B%), quantitative insulin sensitivity check index (QUICKI), insulinogenic index, antilipolytic insulin sensitivity index (ISI-FFA), and C-peptide-to-insulin ratio. RESULTS The QUICKI correlated best with SI (Eug clamp) (r = 0.69, P < 0.05) and had greater correlations to SI (Eug clamp) than did either SI (Hyper clamp) (r = 0.45, P < 0.05) or the HOMA-IR (r = -0.51, P < 0.05). Both fasting insulin and the insulinogenic index correlated well with first- and steady-phase insulin secretion (r's from 0.79 to 0.86, P < 0.05). HOMA-B% was not as highly correlated (r = 0.69-0.72, P < 0.05). Fasting C-peptide-to-insulin ratio was not significantly correlated with clamp-derived metabolic clearance rate of insulin. ISI-FFA was not correlated with the degree of free fatty acid suppression obtained from the clamps. CONCLUSIONS The QUICKI, fasting insulin, and the insulinogenic index all closely correlate with corresponding clamp-derived indices of insulin sensitivity and secretion in this diverse pediatric cohort. These results, if replicated in similarly diverse populations, suggest that estimates based on fasting samples can be used to rank order insulin secretion and sensitivity in pediatric cohorts.
Socially aware, computation and communication

Although developers of communication-support tools have certainly tried to create products that support group thinking, they usually do so without adequately accounting for social context, so that all too often these systems are jarring and even downright rude. In fact, most people would agree that today's communication technology seems to be at war with human society. Technology must account for this by recognizing that communication is always socially situated and that discussions are not just words but part of a larger social dialogue. This web of social interaction forms a sort of collective intelligence; it is the unspoken shared understanding that enforces the dominance hierarchy and passes judgment about it. We have found nonlinguistic social signals to be particularly powerful for analyzing and predicting human behavior, sometimes exceeding even expert human capabilities. Psychologists have firmly established that social signals are a powerful determinant of human behavior and speculate that they might have evolved as a way to establish hierarchy and group cohesion.
Accessing Cultural Artifacts through Digital Companions: The Effects on Children's Engagement

This paper presents a study that explores how the introduction of a digital companion agent for a museum exploration game changes children's engagement with the presented artworks. To this end, a mobile application was developed featuring a monster agent that has eaten the artworks, which the children had now to find in the museum. Results show that in comparison to the paper-based version of the exploration game, children engaged in more interactions with the actual cultural artifacts and showed a significantly higher retention rate for details of the involved artworks.
Modeling HMM state distributions with Bayesian networks

In current HMM based speech recognition systems, it is difﬁ-culttosupplementacousticspectrumfeatureswithadditionalinformationsuchaspitch,gender,articulatorpositions,etc.Ontheotherhand,BayesianNetworks(BN)allowforeasycombinationofdifferentcontinuousaswellasdiscretefea- tures by exploring conditional dependencies between them. However, the lack of efﬁcient algorithms has limited their application in continuous speech recognition. In this paper we propose new acoustic model, where HMM are used for modeling of temporal speech characteristics and state probability model is represented by BN. In our experimental system based on HMM/BN model, in addition to speech observation variable, state BN has two more (hidden) variables representing noise type and SNR value. Evaluation results on AURORA2 database showed 36.4% word error rate reduction for closed noise test without using any model adaptation or noise robust methods.
An elliptic threshold signature framework for k-security in wireless sensor networks

This paper develops an authentication framework for heterogeneous wireless sensor networks. We introduce a novel concept, called k-security, in order to thwart the impact of false alerts emanating from malicious sensor nodes. The proposed technique relies on elliptic curve cryptography and threshold signature. The major novelty of our approach is that an intermediate verification of the alert messages allows discarding spoofed messages while being forwarded. This saves important energy and processing resources and consequently extends the network lifetime.
Chick embryo xenograft model reveals a novel perineural niche for human adipose-derived stromal cells

ABSTRACT Human adipose-derived stromal cells (hADSC) are a heterogeneous cell population that contains adult multipotent stem cells. Although it is well established that hADSC have skeletal potential in vivo in adult organisms, in vitro assays suggest further differentiation capacity, such as into glia. Thus, we propose that grafting hADSC into the embryo can provide them with a much more instructive microenvironment, allowing the human cells to adopt diverse fates or niches. Here, hADSC spheroids were grafted into either the presumptive presomitic mesoderm or the first branchial arch (BA1) regions of chick embryos. Cells were identified without previous manipulations via human-specific Alu probes, which allows efficient long-term tracing of heterogeneous primary cultures. When grafted into the trunk, in contrast to previous studies, hADSC were not found in chondrogenic or osteogenic territories up to E8. Surprisingly, 82.5% of the hADSC were associated with HNK1+ tissues, such as peripheral nerves. Human skin fibroblasts showed a smaller tropism for nerves. In line with other studies, hADSC also adopted perivascular locations. When grafted into the presumptive BA1, 74.6% of the cells were in the outflow tract, the final goal of cardiac neural crest cells, and were also associated with peripheral nerves. This is the first study showing that hADSC could adopt a perineural niche in vivo and were able to recognize cues for neural crest cell migration of the host. Therefore, we propose that xenografts of human cells into chick embryos can reveal novel behaviors of heterogeneous cell populations, such as response to migration cues.
Connectivity-Enforcing Hough Transform for the Robust Extraction of Line Segments

Global voting schemes based on the Hough transform (HT) have been widely used to robustly detect lines in images. However, since the votes do not take line connectivity into account, these methods do not deal well with cluttered images. On the other hand, the so-called local methods enforce connectivity but lack robustness to deal with challenging situations that occur in many realistic scenarios, e.g., when line segments cross or when long segments are corrupted. We address the critical limitations of the HT as a line segment extractor by incorporating connectivity in the voting process. This is done by only accounting for the contributions of edge points lying in increasingly larger neighborhoods and whose position and directional information agree with potential line segments. As a result, our method, which we call segment extraction by connectivity-enforcing HT (STRAIGHT), extracts the longest connected segments in each location of the image, thus also integrating into the HT voting process the usually separate step of individual segment extraction. The usage of the Hough space mapping and a corresponding hierarchical implementation make our approach computationally feasible. We present experiments that illustrate, with synthetic and real images, how STRAIGHT succeeds in extracting complete segments in situations where current methods fail.
LOCOMOTION IN SCOMBRID FISHES : VISUALIZATION OF FLOW AROUND THE CAUDAL PEDUNCLE AND FINLETS OF THE CHUB MACKEREL SCOMBER JAPONICUS

morphology of reduced body mass (narrow-necking) at the caudal peduncle, the presence of small non-retractable fins or ‘finlets’ spanning the dorsal and ventral margins of the body between the second dorsal and anal fins and the caudal fin (anterior to and along the peduncle) and the presence of raised bony structures or caudal keels on the lateral surface of the caudal fin (Collette and Nauen, 1983). The caudal peduncle and fin function as a force transmission mechanism and propeller for the most derived members of the group, the tunas (Knower and Shadwick, 1999). The ubiquitous presence of finlets on the high-performance scombrid fishes and the proximity of these structures to the caudal fin have led to hypotheses that the finlets are accessory locomotory structures. Walters (Walters, 1962) proposed that finlets prevent roll and direct flow longitudinally along the body into the region between the caudal keels, where flow is then accelerated. Webb (Webb, 1975) and Lindsey (Lindsey, 1978) postulated that finlets deflect water across the caudal peduncle and enhance locomotory performance by preventing separation of the boundary layer and thus reducing drag. Magnuson (Magnuson, 1970) proposed that finlets direct water across the pronounced central caudal keel of tuna, thereby contributing to any lift forces produced at the keel. As a first approach to testing these hypotheses, we previously quantified finlet kinematics during gliding and steady swimming of a more basal scombrid, the chub mackerel Scomber japonicus(Nauen and Lauder, 2000; Nauen and Lauder, 2001). S. japonicushas a dorsal set and ventral set of five finlets, numbered here from 1 (rostral) to 2251 The Journal of Experimental Biology 204, 2251–2263 (2001) Printed in Great Britain © The Company of Biologists Limited 2001 JEB 3484
Microfacet Billboarding

Rendering of intricately shaped objects that are soft or cluttered is difficult because we cannot accurately acquire their complete geometry. Since their geometry varies drastically, modeling them using fixed facets can lead to severe artifacts when viewed from singular directions. In this paper, we propose a novel modeling method, "microfacet billboarding," which uses view-dependent "microfacets" with view-dependent textures. The facets discretely approximate the geometry of the object and are aligned perpendicular to the viewing direction. The texture of each facet is selected from the most suitable texture images according to the viewpoint. Microfacet billboarding can render intricate geometry from various viewpoints. We first describe the basic algorithm of microfacet billboarding. Also, we predict artifacts generated due to the use of discrete facets and we analyze the necessary sampling interval of the geometry and texture for regarding the artifacts as negligible. In addition to the modeling method, we have implemented a real-time renderer by a hardware-accelerated technique. To evaluate the efficiency of our method, we compared it with traditional texture mapping to a mesh model, and showed that our method has a great advantage over the former in rendering intricately shaped objects.
Optimizing player behavior in a real-time strategy game using evolutionary algorithms

This paper describes an Evolutionary Algorithm for evolving the decision engine of a bot designed to play the Planet Wars game. This game, which has been chosen for the Google Artificial Intelligence Challenge in 2010, requires that the artificial player is able to deal with multiple objectives, while achieving a certain degree of adaptability in order to defeat different opponents in different scenarios. The decision engine of the bot is based on a set of rules that have been defined after an empirical study. Then, an Evolutionary Algorithm is used for tuning the set of constants, weights and probabilities that define the rules, and, therefore, the global behavior of the bot. The paper describes the Evolutionary Algorithm and the results attained by the decision engine when competing with other bots. The proposed bot defeated a baseline bot in most of the playing environments and obtained a ranking position in top-20% of the Google Artificial Intelligence competition.
Characterization of a Trimeric Complex Containing Oct-1, SNAPc, and DNA*

The human small nuclear (sn) RNA promoters contain a proximal sequence element (PSE), which recruits the basal transcription factor SNAPc, and a distal sequence element characterized by an octamer sequence, which recruits the POU domain transcription factor Oct-1. The Oct-1 POU domain and SNAPc bind cooperatively to probes containing a PSE and an octamer sequence, and this effect contributes to efficient transcription in vitro. In vivo, however, Oct-1 regions outside of the POU domain can activate snRNA gene transcription. Here, we have examined whether the role of these regions is to contribute to cooperative binding with SNAPc. We find that they indeed improve cooperative binding, but most of the effect is nevertheless mediated by just the POU domain. This suggests that Oct-1 activates transcription of snRNA genes in at least two steps, recruitment of SNAPc mediated primarily by the POU domain, and a later step mediated by regions outside of the POU domain. We also show that a PSE-binding complex observed in nuclear extracts consists of Oct-1 and SNAPc. Although Oct-1 cannot bind effectively to the PSE probe on its own, in the complex it contacts DNA. Thus, in a nuclear extract, SNAPc can recruit Oct-1 to a probe to which Oct-1 cannot bind on its own.
Streamer characteristic and breakdown in synthetic and natural ester transformer liquids with pressboard interface under lightning impulse voltage

This paper presents experimental studies on streamer and breakdown of synthetic and natural ester liquids with the presence of pressboard interface in a divergent point-plane field under lightning impulse voltage. Based on the current, light signals and streamer images, characteristics of both positive and negative streamers on pressboard surface were described, which resemble the features of streamers in open liquid gaps. Introducing pressboard in parallel does not influence the streamer stopping length and thus not weaken the oil gap breakdown voltage, under both positive and negative polarities at gap distances up to 75 mm. However, presence of parallel pressboard significantly reduces the acceleration voltage in mineral oil but seems have no influence on ester liquids under positive polarity, while it tends to accelerate the streamer velocity at larger gap distance and under higher voltage in both ester liquids and mineral oil under negative polarity. Generally, streamer on ester/pressboard interface propagates further than on mineral oil/pressboard interface at the same voltage level; both breakdown voltage and acceleration voltage on ester/pressboard interface are lower than those on mineral oil/pressboard interface at the investigated gap distances up to 75 mm.