Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A perceptually motivated no-reference video quality assessment algorithm for packet loss artifacts

Packet loss artifacts are perhaps the most commonly occurring distortion type in video streaming applications. We present a perceptually motivated no-reference video quality assessment (NR-VQA) algorithm for assessing the quality of videos subject to IP and wireless distortions. The proposed algorithm is composed of a spatial quality assessment stage, a temporal quality assessment stage, followed by a spatio-temporal pooling stage. Each of these stages are perceptually motivated - the spatial stage is inspired by the sparse representation of natural scenes in the human visual system, the temporal stage is motivated by optical flow statistics, and the pooling stage by the sensitivity of the human visual system of spatio-temporal stimulus. We show that the spatio-temporal pooling results in significantly higher performance relative to the stand-alone performance of the spatial and temporal assessment stages. The performance of the algorithm is shown to be promising on a subset of the LIVE dataset.
Dutch Parallel Corpus: A Balanced Copyright-Cleared Parallel Corpus

This paper presents the Dutch Parallel Corpus, a high-quality parallel corpus for Dutch, French and English consisting of more than ten million words. The corpus contains five different text types and is balanced with respect to text type and translation direction. All texts included in the corpus have been cleared from copyright. We discuss the importance of parallel corpora in various research domains and contrast the Dutch Parallel Corpus with existing parallel corpora. The Dutch Parallel Corpus distinguishes itself from other parallel corpora by having a balanced composition and by its availability to the wide research community, thanks to its copyright clearance. All texts in the corpus are sentence-aligned and further enriched with basic linguistic annotations (lemmas and word class information). Approximately 25,000 words of the Dutch-English part have been manually aligned at the sub-sentential level. Rich metadata facilitates the navigability of the corpus and enables users to select the texts that satisfy their needs. The entire corpus is released as full texts in XML format and is also available via a web interface, which supports basic and complex search queries and presents the results as parallel concordances. The corpus will be distributed by the Flemish-Dutch Human Language Technology Agency (TST-Centrale).
Strategy in Optimization of Silicone Oil Emulsion by D-Optimal Mixture Design

Silicon oil emulsion was prepared by mixing silicon oil with emulsifiers and water. To optimize the emulsifiers formulation, the D-optimal mixture design (DMD) in Design-Expert software was used to design the emulsifiers formulation. E-1304, AEO-3, SG-6and OP-10 were used as emulsifiers. According to the mixture design matrix given by Design Expert 8.0. 5, 20 samples of silicon oil emulsion were prepared, and their stabilities were investigated. Through the establishment of the regression model, the analysis of the interaction among the variables and operating the optimization functions of the mixture design software, an optimized emulsifier formulation was given, and with which a silicon oil emulsion with high solid content (56%) and good stability was prepared.
Targeting Feeding and Eating Behaviors: Development of the Feeding Dynamic Intervention for Caregivers of 2- to 5-Year-Old Children

Targeting feeding dynamics, a concept centered on the roles and interaction of the caregiver and child in a feeding relationship, may have significant potential for obesity intervention. The aim of this paper is to describe the 3-phase development of the Feeding Dynamics Intervention (FDI), an acceptability and feasibility study on implementing the feeding dynamic roles (Study 1), development of the FDI content (Study 2), and a pilot study on use of the 6-lesson FDI to promote behaviors consistent with a feeding dynamic approach (Study 3). Sample population was mothers with young children, 2–5 years old. An effect size (Hedges' g) greater than 0.20 was seen in more than half (57%) of maternal feeding behaviors, with the largest effect sizes (Hedges' g ≥ 0.8) occurring with behaviors that represent the mother adopting her roles of determining what food is served, not using food as a reward, and not controlling her child's intake. There was a significant decline in Pressure to Eat behaviors (2.9 versus 2.2, p < 0.01) and Monitoring (4.1 versus 3.5, p < 0.001). The FDI emerged as an acceptable and implementable intervention. Future studies need to investigate effects of the FDI on the child's eating behaviors, self-regulation of energy intake, and anthropometrics.
The Development of White-Asian Categorization: Contributions from Skin Color and Other Physiognomic Cues

We examined the development of racial categorizations of faces spanning the European–East Asian (“White–Asian”) categorical continuum in children between the ages of four and nine as well as adults. We employed a stimulus set that independently varied skin color and other aspects of facial physiognomy, allowing the contribution of each to be assessed independently and in interaction with each other. Results demonstrated substantial development across this age range in children’s ability to draw on both sorts of cue, with over twice as much variance explained by stimulus variation in adults than children. Nonetheless, children were clearly sensitive to both skin color and other aspects of facial physiognomy, suggesting that understanding of the White-Asian category boundary develops in a somewhat different way than understanding of the White-Black category boundary, in which attention to features other than skin color appear only somewhat later. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for theories of social categorization.
Public Shelter Admission among Young Adults with Child Welfare Histories by Type of Service and Type of Exit

This study examines the prevalence and associated factors of New York City public shelter use among young adults with histories of out‐of‐home care or nonplacement preventive services as teenagers. The study finds that 19 percent of former child welfare service users entered public shelters within 10 years of exit from child welfare. Persons with out‐of‐home placement histories are twice as likely to enter public shelters (22 percent) as those who received nonplacement preventive services only (11 percent). Persons exiting child welfare through absconding from child welfare have the highest rate of shelter use, followed by those discharged to independent living.
A local analysis method of marine gravity aided navigation area

Because gravity matching accuracy is associated with local navigation area characteristics and carrier's heading, so we firstly calculate the local characteristic of gravity field and select navigation areas, then extract the skeleton of them with fast Euclidean distance field algorithm and skeleton simplified algorithm. So the carrier can select heading according to the statistical characteristics of local areas formed by the skeleton points and their Euclidean distance. The simulation result verifies the validity of the analysis method.
Gastrointestinal Function Regulation by Nitrergic Efferent Nerves

Gastrointestinal (GI) smooth muscle responses to stimulation of the nonadrenergic noncholinergic inhibitory nerves have been suggested to be mediated by polypeptides, ATP, or another unidentified neurotransmitter. The discovery of nitric-oxide (NO) synthase inhibitors greatly contributed to our understanding of mechanisms involved in these responses, leading to the novel hypothesis that NO, an inorganic, gaseous molecule, acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter. The nerves whose transmitter function depends on the NO release are called “nitrergic”, and such nerves are recognized to play major roles in the control of smooth muscle tone and motility and of fluid secretion in the GI tract. Endothelium-derived relaxing factor, discovered by Furchgott and Zawadzki, has been identified to be NO that is biosynthesized from l-arginine by the constitutive NO synthase in endothelial cells and neurons. NO as a mediator or transmitter activates soluble guanylyl cyclase and produces cyclic GMP in smooth muscle cells, resulting in relaxation of the vasculature. On the other hand, NO-induced GI smooth muscle relaxation is mediated, not only by cyclic GMP directly or indirectly via hyperpolarization, but also by cyclic GMP-independent mechanisms. Numerous cotransmitters and cross talk of autonomic efferent nerves make the neural control of GI functions complicated. However, the findingsrelated to the nitrergic innervation may provide us a new way of understanding GI tract physiology and pathophysiology and might result in the development of new therapies of GI diseases. This review article covers the discovery of nitrergic nerves, their functional roles, and pathological implications in the GI tract.
Biogeography and evolution of Thermococcus isolates from hydrothermal vent systems of the Pacific

Thermococcus is a genus of hyperthermophilic archaea that is ubiquitous in marine hydrothermal environments growing in anaerobic subsurface habitats but able to survive in cold oxygenated seawater. DNA analyses of Thermococcus isolates were applied to determine the relationship between geographic distribution and relatedness focusing primarily on isolates from the Juan de Fuca Ridge and South East Pacific Rise. Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) were used to resolve genomic differences in 90 isolates of Thermococcus, making biogeographic patterns and evolutionary relationships apparent. Isolates were differentiated into regionally endemic populations however there was also evidence in some lineages of cosmopolitan distribution. The biodiversity identified in Thermococcus isolates and presence of distinct lineages within the same vent site suggests the utilization of varying ecological niches in this genus. In addition to resolving biogeographic patterns in Thermococcus, this study has raised new questions about the closely related Pyrococcus genus. The phylogenetic placement of Pyrococcus type strains shows the close relationship between Thermococcus and Pyrococcus and the unresolved divergence of these two genera.
One sketch for all: fast algorithms for compressed sensing

Compressed Sensing is a new paradigm for acquiring the compressible signals that arise in many applications. These signals can be approximated using an amount of information much smaller than the nominal dimension of the signal. Traditional approaches acquire the entire signal and process it to extract the information. The new approach acquires a small number of nonadaptive linear measurements of the signal and uses sophisticated algorithms to determine its information content. Emerging technologies can compute these general linear measurements of a signal at unit cost per measurement. This paper exhibits a randomized measurement ensemble and a signal reconstruction algorithm that satisfy four requirements: 1. The measurement ensemble succeeds for all signals, with high probability over the random choices in its construction. 2. The number of measurements of the signal is optimal, except for a factor polylogarithmic in the signal length. 3. The running time of the algorithm is polynomial in the amount of information in the signal and polylogarithmic in the signal length. 4. The recovery algorithm offers the strongest possible type of error guarantee. Moreover, it is a fully polynomial approximation scheme with respect to this type of error bound. Emerging applications demand this level of performance. Yet no otheralgorithm in the literature simultaneously achieves all four of these desiderata.
Phosphoinositides Play Differential Roles in Regulating Phototropin1- and Phototropin2-Mediated Chloroplast Movements in Arabidopsis

Phototropins are UVA/blue-light receptors involved in controlling the light-dependent physiological responses which serve to optimize the photosynthetic activity of plants and promote growth. The phototropin-induced phosphoinositide (PI) metabolism has been shown to be essential for stomatal opening and phototropism. However, the role of PIs in phototropin-induced chloroplast movements remains poorly understood. The aim of this work is to determine which PI species are involved in the control of chloroplast movements in Arabidopsis and the nature of their involvement. We present the effects of the inactivation of phospholipase C (PLC), PI3-kinase (PI3K) and PI4-kinase (PI4K) on chloroplast relocations in Arabidopsis. The inhibition of the phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphospahte [PI(4,5)P2]-PLC pathway, using neomycin and U73122, suppressed the phot2-mediated chloroplast accumulation and avoidance responses, without affecting movement responses controlled by phot1. On the other hand, PI3K and PI4K activities are more restricted to phot1- and phot2-induced weak-light responses. The inactivation of PI3K and PI4K by wortmannin and LY294002 severely affected the weak blue-light-activated accumulation response but had little effect on the strong blue-light-activated avoidance response. The inhibitory effect observed with PI metabolism inhibitors is, at least partly, due to a disturbance in Ca2+ (c) signaling. Using the transgenic aequorin system, we show that the application of these inhibitors suppresses the blue-light-induced transient Ca2+ (c) rise. These results demonstrate the importance of PIs in chloroplast movements, with the PI(4,5)P2-PLC pathway involved in phot2 signaling while PI3K and PI4K are required for the phot1- and phot2-induced accumulation response. Our results suggest that these PIs modulate cytosolic Ca2+ signaling during movements.
Maximum reconstruction probability training of Restricted Boltzmann machines with auxiliary function approach

Restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs) are stochastic neural networks that can be used to learn features from raw data. They have attracted particular attention recently after being proposed as building blocks for deep belief network (DBN) and have been applied with notable success in a range of problems including speech recognition and object recognition. The success of these models raises the issue of how best to train them. At present, the most popular training algorithm for RBMs is the Contrastive Divergence (CD) learning algorithm. We propose deriving a new training algorithm based on an auxiliary function approach for RBMs using the reconstruction probability of observations as the optimization criterion. Through an experiment on parameter training of an RBM, we confirmed that the present algorithm outperformed the CD algorithm in terms of the convergence speed and the reconstruction error when used as an autoencoder.
Ethanol Lock Therapy (E-Lock) in the Prevention of Catheter-Related Bloodstream Infections (CR-BSI) after Major Heart Surgery (MHS): A Randomized Clinical Trial

Background Lock-therapy with antimicrobials has been used for the treatment and prevention of catheter-related bloodstream infections (CR-BSI). Experiences with Ethanol-Locks (E-locks) have included therapeutic interventions with variable results. Patients undergoing Major Heart Surgery (MHS) are a high-risk population for CR-BSI.The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy and tolerance to E-Locks in the prevention of CR-BSI of patients undergoing MHS. Methods and Findings This is an academic, prospective, randomized, non-blinded and controlled clinical trial assessing the incidence of CR-BSI of patients with E-locks (E-lock) and the tolerance to the procedure in comparison with patients receiving conventional catheter-care (CCC). Patients undergoing MHS with intravascular catheters for more than 48 hours were randomly assigned into treatment or control group by a computer-generated list of randomly assigned numbers. In the treatment group, all their catheter lumens were locked with an ethanol solution at 70% for two hours, every three days (E-Locks). The control group received conventional catheter-care (CCC). Overall, 200 patients with 323 catheters were included in the study, which was stopped after 10 months due to adverse events. Of them, 179 catheters (113 patients) had E-Locks and 144 catheters (87 patients) were CCC. Euroscore Surgical Risk in both groups was 4.04 vs 4.07 p = 0.94 respectively. The results for the E-Locks and CCC were as follows: Incidence of CR-BSI/1000 days of exposure 2.1 vs 5.2 (p = 0.33), catheter tip colonization 14 (7.8%) vs 6 (4.2%) patients (p = 0.17), median length of hospital stay, 15 vs 16 days (p = 0.77). Seven patients (6.19%), all in the ethanol branch, had to discontinue the trial due to intolerance or adverse events. Conclusions We do not recommend prophylaxis of CR-BSI with ethanol-lock on a routine basis in patients undergoing Major Heart Surgery. Trial Registration Clinical Trials.gov NCT01229592
Reliability of Noninvasive Assessment of Systolic Pulmonary Artery Pressure by Doppler Echocardiography Compared to Right Heart Catheterization: Analysis in a Large Patient Population

Background Pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) is an important marker in cardiovascular disorders, being closely associated with morbidity and mortality. Noninvasive assessment by Doppler echocardiography is recommended by current guidelines. So far, the reliability of this method has been assessed only in small studies with contradictory results. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyze the reliability of noninvasive PAP assessment by Doppler echocardiography compared to invasive measurements in a large patient population. Methods and Results We retrospectively analyzed data from a large tertiary cardiology department over 6 years in order to compare invasively measured PAP to estimated PAP from echocardiography examinations. N=15 516 patients fulfilled inclusion criteria and n=1695 patients with timely matched examinations (within 5 days) were analyzed. In n=1221 (72%) patients, pulmonary hypertension (PH) was diagnosed invasively (postcapillary PH: n=1122 [66%]; precapillary PH: n=99 [6%]). Systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP) was 45.3±15.5 mm Hg by Doppler echocardiography and 47.4±16.4 mm Hg by right heart catheterization. Pearson's correlation coefficient was r=0.87 (P<0.0001). Mean right atrial pressure (RAP) was 12.0±5.7 mm Hg by right heart catheterization and was estimated to be 12.1±6.6 mm Hg by echocardiography (r=0.82, P<0.0001). Bland–Altman analysis showed a bias of −2.0 mm Hg for sPAP (95% limits of agreement −18.1 to +14.1 mm Hg) and +1.0 mm Hg for RAP (95% limits of agreement +0.1 to +1.9 mm Hg). Noninvasive diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension with Doppler echocardiography had a good sensitivity (87%) and specificity (79%), positive and negative predictive values (91% and 70%), as well as accuracy (85%) for a sPAP cut‐off value of 36 mm Hg (AUC 0.91, P<0.001, CI 0.90 to 0.93). Conclusions In this study, Doppler echocardiography proved to be a reliable method for the assessment of sPAP, being well suited to establish the noninvasive diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension in patients with cardiac diseases.
A Mobile Robot Mapping System with an Information-Based Exploration Strategy

The availability of efficient mapping systems to produce accurate representations of initially unknown environments is undoubtedly one of the main requirements for autonomous mobile robots. This paper presents a mapping system that has been implemented on a mobile robot equipped with a laser range scanner. The system builds geometrical maps of the environment employing an exploration strategy that takes into account both the distance travelled and the information gathered to determining the observation positions. This strategy is based on stronger mathematical foundations than the exploration strategies proposed in literature: this is the distinctive feature of our approach and constitutes the main original contribution of this paper.
Comparison of four methods for premature ventricular contraction and normal beat clustering

The learning capacity and the classification ability for normal beats and premature ventricular contractions clustering by four classification methods were compared: neural networks (NN), K-th nearest neighbour rule (Knn), discriminant analysis (DA) and fuzzy logic (FL). Twenty-six morphology feature parameters, which include information of amplitude, area, specific interval durations and measurement of the QRS vector in a VCG plane, were defined. One global and two local learning sets were used. The local classifiers achieved better accuracies because of their good adaptability to the patients, while the capacity of the global classifier to process new records without additional learning was expectedly balanced by lower accuracies. NN assure the best results (high and balanced indices for specificity and sensitivity) using one of the local learning set, while the Knn provides the best results with the other local learning set. Using the global learning set DA and the FL methods perform better than the NN and Knn
Extracellular Vesicles in Renal Pathophysiology

Extracellular vesicles are a heterogeneous population of microparticles released by virtually all living cells which have been recently widely investigated in different biological fields. They are typically composed of two primary types (exosomes and microvesicles) and are recently commanding increasing attention as mediators of cellular signaling. Indeed, these vesicles can affect recipient cells by carrying and delivering complex cargos of biomolecules (including proteins, lipids and nucleic acids), protected from enzymatic degradation in the environment. Their importance has been demonstrated in the pathophysiology of several organs, in particular in kidney, where different cell types secrete extracellular vesicles that mediate their communication with downstream urinary tract cells. Over the past few years, evidence has been shown that vesicles participate in kidney development and normal physiology. Moreover, EVs are widely demonstrated to be implicated in cellular signaling during renal regenerative and pathological processes. Although many EV mechanisms are still poorly understood, in particular in kidney, the discovery of their role could help to shed light on renal biological processes which are so far elusive. Lastly, extracellular vesicles secreted by renal cells gather in urine, thus becoming a great resource for disease or recovery markers and a promising non-invasive diagnostic instrument for renal disease. In the present review, we discuss the most recent findings on the role of extracellular vesicles in renal physiopathology and their potential implication in diagnosis and therapy.
Optical MEMS for Lightwave Communication

The intensive investment in optical microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) in the last decade has led to many successful components that satisfy the requirements of lightwave communication networks. In this paper, we review the current state of the art of MEMS devices and subsystems for lightwave communication applications. Depending on the design, these components can either be broadband (wavelength independent) or wavelength selective. Broadband devices include optical switches, crossconnects, optical attenuators, and data modulators, while wavelength-selective components encompass wavelength add/drop multiplexers, wavelength-selective switches and crossconnects, spectral equalizers, dispersion compensators, spectrometers, and tunable lasers. Integration of MEMS and planar lightwave circuits, microresonators, and photonic crystals could lead to further reduction in size and cost