Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Digital camera resolution measurement using sinusoidal Siemens stars

The resolution of a digital camera is defined as its ability to reproduce fine detail in an image. To test this ability methods like the Slanted Edge SFR measurement developed by Burns and Williams1 and standardized in ISO 122332 are used. Since this method is - in terms of resolution measurements - only applicable to unsharpened and uncompressed data an additional method described in this paper had to be developed. This method is based on a Sinusoidal Siemens Star which is evaluated on a radius by radius or frequency by frequency basis. For the evaluation a freely available runtime program developed in MATLAB is used which creates the MTF of a camera system as the contrast over the frequency.
COMSP: Correlated Contact and Message Scheduling Policy in DTN

The routing algorithms of DTN (Delay- and Disruption-Tolerant Networks) have not been efficient enough until now, which is one of the hot spots for DTN research. In this paper, aiming at fully using the knowledge inside the DTN environments both locally and globally, we propose a forecast method based on time-varying graph using time series analysis theory. By processing the history contact data with ARMA(Auto Regression Moving Average) model of time series analysis theory, we can predict the start time and the duration of future contact between specified nodes, without needing to know the movement model of the nodes. Then we devise an algorithm based on correlated contact and message scheduling policy (COMSP) with the utility of messages and contacts taken into consideration. From the simulation result, the algorithm performs higher efficiency under the different transmit speed situations than most of the ones for comparing in both the cost and performance(e.g. delivery ratio, latency, hops, buffer time, overhead and so on).
Affect Analysis in Persian Text Documents

in this article we review a new approach to analysis the Persian texts. This paper is studied the emotional analysis in Persian texts. Methods and features proposed in this article are compared with English methods. Recently, analysis of texts in other languages has been studied particularly in English language and many methods are presented for the rapid analysis of English texts. The method used in this paper is similar to methods used in the English language. This analysis is done by making emotional categories. The method based on emotional categorization of the semantic similarities. For building the emotional categories in Persian, we used semantic similarity and this method has been successful to emotional analyze of the Persian texts about 80 percent of the cases.
A Prevention Program for Students with or At Risk for ED

In a recent report, positive outcomes were described for use of a prevention program serving students with behavioral and emotional disturbance and those at risk for emotional disturbance (ED) in urban elementary schools. This primarily school-based prevention program consisted of social skills activities, peer tutoring, and individual and classwide behavior management components. Improved behaviors and decreased aggression were noted for the experimental group in treatment for approximately I½ school years, compared to a control-wait group.This report is a further analysis of the prevention program investigation, including (a) findings from implementation across multiple school years with longitudinal student outcome data; (b) replication effects for the prevention program for the second cohort; (c) effects of variations in program implementation; specifically, strength of treatment and classroom structure; and (d) individual cases of treatment successes and failures. Results for two cohorts indicated that inappropriate behaviors decreased (i.e., aggression, out of seat, negative verbal behaviors) and positive behaviors increased (academic engagement, behavioral compliance) under conditions of strong implementation of program components and in the context of high classroom structure. Individual case studies further confirmed that students exposed to more treatment in each year of the program and in classrooms with more structure had better outcomes. Implications of these findings supporting early, multiyear, high-quality prevention and the adverse effects of weak treatment efforts and low structure are discussed in the context of current practice and the need for additional research.
On the Validity of a Single (Boldness) Assay in Personality Research

A common method to assess behavioral types in personality research involves the use of a single emergence test (employed by researchers working on fish, avian, mammal, amphibian, and invertebrate taxa), whereby a shorter latency to emerge from a holding container into a novel environment is inferred to represent greater ‘boldness’. Although any behavior might be context specific, studies using this single assay type must assume it reflects boldness in other similar contexts, otherwise it cannot reflect personality (defined as consistency across time and/or contexts). We attempted to validate whether a single assay of this type is correlated with other similar assays of boldness under more familiar, and less stressful, situations. We compared single emergence test scores of two species of damselfish (Pomacentrus wardi; P. amboinensis) in a novel environment, with two different behavioral assays of the same fish in subsequent repeated trials in home tanks. Although behavior was highly repeatable in home tanks, we found no correlation between emergence test scores in the novel environment and measures of latency to emerge from shelter following disturbance, or activity levels, on the first, second, or third observations in home tanks; there was also no correlation when we used average home tank scores from mixed models that accounted for individual differences (i.e., plasticity) in the rate of habituation (latency) and acclimation (activity). Our results therefore lead us to question the validity of using this single emergence test assay as a predictor of general boldness and to question the use of any single assay of behavior in personality research.
Variability of Organophosphorous Pesticide Metabolite Levels in Spot and 24-hr Urine Samples Collected from Young Children during 1 Week

Background: Dialkyl phosphate (DAP) metabolites in spot urine samples are frequently used to characterize children’s exposures to organophosphorous (OP) pesticides. However, variable exposure and short biological half-lives of OP pesticides could result in highly variable measurements, leading to exposure misclassification. Objective: We examined within- and between-child variability in DAP metabolites in urine samples collected during 1 week. Methods: We collected spot urine samples over 7 consecutive days from 25 children (3–6 years of age). On two of the days, we collected 24-hr voids. We assessed the reproducibility of urinary DAP metabolite concentrations and evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of spot urine samples as predictors of high (top 20%) or elevated (top 40%) weekly average DAP metabolite concentrations. Results: Within-child variance exceeded between-child variance by a factor of two to eight, depending on metabolite grouping. Although total DAP concentrations in single spot urine samples were moderately to strongly associated with concentrations in same-day 24-hr samples (r ≈ 0.6–0.8, p < 0.01), concentrations in spot samples collected > 1 day apart and in 24-hr samples collected 3 days apart were weakly correlated (r ≈ –0.21 to 0.38). Single spot samples predicted high (top 20%) and elevated (top 40%) full-week average total DAP excretion with only moderate sensitivity (≈ 0.52 and ≈ 0.67, respectively) but relatively high specificity (≈ 0.88 and ≈ 0.78, respectively). Conclusions: The high variability we observed in children’s DAP metabolite concentrations suggests that single-day urine samples provide only a brief snapshot of exposure. Sensitivity analyses suggest that classification of cumulative OP exposure based on spot samples is prone to type 2 classification errors.
Global-Local Face Upsampling Network

Face hallucination, which is the task of generating a high-resolution face image from a low-resolution input image, is a well-studied problem that is useful in widespread application areas. Face hallucination is particularly challenging when the input face resolution is very low (e.g., 10 x 12 pixels) and/or the image is captured in an uncontrolled setting with large pose and illumination variations. In this paper, we revisit the algorithm introduced in [1] and present a deep interpretation of this framework that achieves state-of-the-art under such challenging scenarios. In our deep network architecture the global and local constraints that define a face can be efficiently modeled and learned end-to-end using training data. Conceptually our network design can be partitioned into two sub-networks: the first one implements the holistic face reconstruction according to global constraints, and the second one enhances face-specific details and enforces local patch statistics. We optimize the deep network using a new loss function for super-resolution that combines reconstruction error with a learned face quality measure in adversarial setting, producing improved visual results. We conduct extensive experiments in both controlled and uncontrolled setups and show that our algorithm improves the state of the art both numerically and visually.
Characteristics of Recent Suicide Attempts by Inmates in Maximum Security Correctional Centers

The research examined inmates' subjective perceptions of the reasons for suicide attempts and the psychological, sociological and criminological factors associated with such attempts. The sample comprised 60 male inmates who had made a recent suicide attempt. The methods of examination were semi-structured interviews with the inmates and analysis of their psychological and criminological files. The results showed that the examined group was not totally homogeneous. Methods of suicidal attempts divided the sample into two groups: those who had made a non-life-threatening (NLT) suicide attempt (58%) and those who made a life-threatening (LT) attempt (42%). Several factors significantly differentiated NLT and LT groups. Four of these factors were combined in regression models to clarify the relationships between the variables and to predict, in retrospect, whether an inmate had made a NLT or LT suicide attempt. The results are discussed in relation to previous findings on suicidology and to practical implications in correctional settings.
Creativity Training in Elementary Schools in Brazil

AbstractThe effects of the Purdue Creative Thinking Program (PCTP) on the creative abilities of elementary school children in an underdeveloped country were evaluated in an experiment with 578 Brazilian fourth- and fifth-graders. At each grade level, twelve classes were assigned to each of two treatment conditions (PCTP with reinforcement and PCTP without reinforcement) and a control group which had no exposure to PCTP. Pre- and post-testing with the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) yielded twelve creativity measures. Using a 3 X 2 X 2 (treatment by sex by grade level) analysis of covariance, the creativity training was found to be effective, but reinforcement of pupil performance appeared to have a decremental effect.
A novel method for simultaneous analysis of specific platelet antibodies: SASPA

Glycoprotein (GP)‐specific platelet antibodies can cause allo‐immune and auto‐immune thrombocytopenia. The specific detection of relevant antibodies is a prerequisite for diagnosis and treatment. Here, we describe an improved method based on simultaneous detection of various platelet‐specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgM antibodies. Bead populations with distinct fluorescence intensities, coated with monoclonal antibodies specific for mouse heavy chain isotypes, were used for the simultaneous immobilization of platelet‐GP [IIb/IIIa, Ib/IX, human leucocyte antigen (HLA) class I, or Ia/IIa, CD32, GPIV or CD109, Ib/IX, HLA class I]. In order to detect human IgG and IgM antibodies simultaneously, phycoerythrin‐ and fluorescein isotiocyanate‐conjugated goat anti‐human IgG and IgM were added. On this basis, the abundance of six distinct antibodies (three anti‐GP, each with subclasses IgG and IgM) were simultaneously analysed without cross‐reaction by flow cytometry. For evaluation, sera and platelets from 169 patients with platelet‐binding and/or platelet‐associated antibodies were investigated. The monoclonal antibody‐specific immobilization of platelet antigen (MAIPA) assay was performed in parallel as reference test. The simultaneous analysis of platelet‐specific antibodies (SASPA) assay was able to detect all platelet‐specific IgG and IgM that were also recognized by MAIPA with a comparable sensitivity. SASPA proved to be a rapid and reliable assay that required less platelets than other methods. This method has the potential to pave the way for new investigations of platelet‐specific antibodies.
Molecular characterization of blaESBL–harboring conjugative plasmids identified in multi-drug resistant Escherichia coli isolated from food-producing animals and healthy humans

Background: Extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL)-encoding genes are frequently mapped to plasmids, yet few of these structures have been characterized at the molecular level, to date. Methods: Eighty-seven ESBL-producing Escherichia coli were isolated from fecal samples of food-producing animals and healthy humans in Switzerland from 2009 to 2011. Plasmid DNA of all isolates was purified. Broth mating assays were carried out individually for 32 isolates to determine if the ESBL marker could be transferred by conjugation. The plasmid sizes were determined by S1-nuclease pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and the plasmids were typed by PCR-based replicon typing. Susceptibility tests by disk diffusion followed with a re-analysis S1-nuclease PFGE and PCRs were performed to confirm plasmid transfer. Microarray was performed to detect additional antibiotic resistance markers and multi-locus sequence typing was also performed in selected donor strains. The phylotypes were identified by triplex PCR. Results: About half (n = 46) of the 87 isolates carried small (<20-kb) plasmids. All selected 32 isolates contained large plasmids (ranging in sizes from 20- to 600-kb). Eleven plasmid replicon types were detected. Of these, IncFIA (n = 5), IncFIB (n = 9), and IncK/B (n = 4) were common. Nine isolates demonstrated the ability to transfer their cefotaxime resistance marker at high transfer rates. Plasmid profile re-analysis of these transconjugants identified 16 plasmids. IncFIB and IncI1 were the most prevalent replicon types. Phylogenetic grouping showed that five of the nine donor strains belonged to phylogroup B1. Nine different sequence types were identified in nine tested donor strains. Conclusion: Characterization of these ESBL-encoding conjugative plasmids extends our understanding on these resistance markers in multi-drug resistant E. coli cultured from healthy human and animal sources.
Molecular genetics of RH.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The two Rhesus proteins, RhD and RhCE, constitute one of the clinically most relevant blood group antigen system. In the last two years, the understanding of RH molecular genetics has increased considerably. The state of the current knowledge was briefly summarised. MATERIALS AND METHODS Recent reviews, original work since 1999 and own results were utilised. RESULTS The structure of the RH gene locus comprising RHD, RHCE and SMP1 was presented. True RHD genotyping became feasible by establishing the molecular basis of the most prevalent RH haplotype in whites harbouring the RHD gene deletion and of the RHD pseudogene RHD psi in Africans. Molecular and serologic characteristics of weak D and partial D alleles were compared. Closely related alleles for both, weak D and partial D, were collated as examples contributing to the understanding of RH phylogeny. CONCLUSION The RH gene locus is a model system for molecular polymorphism in clustered genes and suitable for studying molecular evolution in humans. It lends itself for developing molecular diagnostics because its genetics is appropriately complex and challenging; yet the expressed phenotypes have been studied for decades and are well understood. Legal and ethical issues that are rightfully of public concern would not be infringed if RH genotyping will be attempted on a massive scale.
The Impact of Climate Change on Rice Yields : Heterogeneity and Uncertainty

We specify a three-stage production function for rice cultivation which incorporates the sequential nature of both production shocks, including weather, and input choices based on sequentially updated information sets of history of realized shocks and observed changes in crop growth. The production function is CES across stages, thus taking into account substantial complementarities between different phases of the biophysical crop growth process, in contrast to the substitute nature of commonly used Cobb-Douglas specification. This framework is particularly well-suited for evaluating the effect of climate change on crop cultivation practices and yields. We apply the model to 11-year panel of rice farmers in Thailand. The panel structure of our data allows us to analyze both the cross sectional effects of weather shocks and climate change on yields, and the effects on the mean levels and shape of yield distribution for individual farmers. We find substantial heterogeneity among farmers in the effect of both weather shocks and climate change on yields. We consider two alternative climate change scenarios for Southeast Asia, one with mild increases of temperature and rainfall throughout the year and the other with more extreme temperature increases and less rainfall during months of rice cultivation. While from the farmer’s perspective uncertainty of yields decreases with more extreme climate change, cross sectional heterogeneity in uncertainty increases. Our focus is on detailed partial equilibrium analysis of the effects of climate change on yields at the crop-plot level, accurate understanding of which is essential for global general equilibrium modeling of environmental changes. We integrate our economic model of rice production with soil science crop growth modeling, weather simulators, and global climate change models. Kamilya Tazhibayeva: kamilya@mit.edu Robert Townsend: rtownsen@mit.edu We thank Andrew Foster, Michael Greenstone, Samuel Kortum, and the participants of the IIES conference on Climate and the Economy (2012) and Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy at Harvard for helpful comments and suggestions; John Felkner for collaboration with DSSAT simulations and generation of climate scenarios; Jim Jones, Cheryl Porter, Gerrit Hoogenboom, and Paul Wilkens for comments and help with the DSSAT and climate modeling; and Neil Best for technical assistance. We acknowledge support from National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Science Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.
Mediated Electron Transfer at Redox Active Monolayers

A theoretical model describing the transport and kinetic processes involved in heterogeneous redox catalysis of solution phase reactants at electrode surfaces coated with redox active monolayers is presented. Although the analysis presented has quite general applicability, a specific focus of the paper is concerned with the idea that redox active monolayers can be used to model an ensemble of individual molecular nanoelectrodes. Three possible rate determining steps are considered: heterogeneous electron transfer between immobilized mediator and support electrode ; bimolecular chemical reaction between redox mediator and reactant species in the solution phase, and diffusional mass transport of reactant in solution. A general expression for the steady state reaction flux is derived which is valid for any degree of reversibility of both the heterogeneous electron transfer reaction involving immobilized mediator species and of the bimolecular cross exchange reaction between immobilized mediator and solution phase reactant. The influence of reactant transport in solution is also specifically considered. Simplified analytical expressions for the net reaction flux are derived for experimentally reasonable situations and a kinetic case diagram is constructed outlining the relationships between the various approximate solutions. The theory enables simple diagnostic plots to be constructed which can be used to analyse experimental data.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Event Fisher Vectors : Robust Encoding Visual Diversity of Visual Streams

In this paper we focus on event recognition in visual image streams. More specifically, we aim to construct a compact representation which encodes the diversity of the visual stream from just a few observations. For this purpose, we introduce the Event Fisher Vector, a Fisher Kernel based representation to describe a collection of images or the sequential frames of a video. We explore different generative models beyond the Gaussian mixture model as underlying probability distribution. First, the Student’s-t mixture model which captures the heavy tails of the small sample size of a collection of images. Second, Hidden Markov Models to explicitly capture the temporal ordering of the observations in a stream. For all our models we derive analytical approximations of the Fisher information matrix, which significantly improves recognition performance. We extensively evaluate the properties of our proposed method on three recent datasets for event recognition in photo collections and web videos, leading to an efficient compact image representation which achieves state-of-the-art performance on all these datasets.
Progress in Neurotherapeutics and Neuropsychopharmacology: Triflusal versus Aspirin for the Prevention of Stroke

ABSTRACT Antiplatelet agents represent an important part of the therapeutic armamentarium in the prevention of stroke. Triflusal is an antiplatelet agent structurally related to salicylates but not derived from acetylsalicylic acid. Like aspirin, triflusal irreversibly acetylates cyclo-oxygenase isoform 1 (COX-1) and therefore inhibits thromboxane biosynthesis. Triflusal is rapidly absorbed after oral administration, with an absorption half life of 0.44 hours. Evidence of the efficacy and safety of triflusal is derived from clinical trials performed in patients with unstable angina, acute myocardial infarction, stroke, aortocoronary by-pass, atrial fibrillation, valve replacement, and asthmatic patients intolerant to aspirin and/or non-steroidal antiinflamatory drugs (NSAID). The Triflusal versus Aspirin for the Prevention of Infarction: A Randomized Stroke Study (TAPIRSS) study was performed to explore the efficacy and safety of triflusal versus aspirin in the prevention of vascular complications in patients with a previous TIA or ischemic stroke in a Latin American population. In this pilot study differences between triflusal and aspirin in the prevention of vascular complications after TIA or ischemic stroke were not observed. Hemorrhagic risk was lower with triflusal than with aspirin. The TAPIRSS study contributed evidence on the efficacy and safety of triflusal as a valid alternative to aspirin in the prevention of vascular events in patients with ischemic stroke or TIA.