Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Continuous Edge Gradient-based Template Matching for Articulated Objects

Detection of articulated objects in images, including location and state, is an important and challenging task in many object tracking applications. Image edges have proven to be a key feature, although their quality is influenced by many factors. In this paper, we propose a novel edge gradient-based template matching method for object detection. In contrast to other methods, ours does not perform any binarization or discretization during the online matching. This is facilitated by a new continuous edge gradient similarity measure. Its main components are a novel edge gradient operator, which is applied to query and template images, and the formulation as a convolution, which can be computed very efficiently in Fourier space. Our method consists of a preprocessing stage for the template images, a simple preprocessing of the query image, and our similarity measure between template and query image, which yields a confidence map for the query image. The resulting confidence map can be used for the final object localization. We compared our method to a state-of-the-art chamfer-based matching method. The results demonstrate that our method is much more robust against weak edge response and yields much better confidence maps with fewer maxima that are also more significant. In addition, our method lends itself well to efficient implementation on GPUs: at a query image resolution of 320× 256 and a template resolution of 80× 80 we can generate about 330 confidence maps per second.
Esri International User Conference Papers

Successful conservation of rare species requires detailed knowledge of the species' distribution. Modeling spatial distribution is an efficient means of locating potential habitats. Cerulean Warbler (Dendroica cerulea, Parulidae) was listed as a Vulnerable Species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 2004. These neotropical migratory birds breed in eastern North America. The entire population migrates to the northern Andes in South America to spend the nonbreeding period. As part of a larger international conservation effort, we developed spatial hypotheses of the bird's occurrence in South America. We summarized physical, climatic, and recent land-cover data for the northern Andes using ESRI software, ArcGIS. We developed five hypothetical distributions results of the different models on the same map allowed us to design a rigorous strategy to ground-truth the map and thus to identify sites for protection of the species in South America.
Conjugation with RGD Peptides and Incorporation of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Are Equally Efficient for Biofunctionalization of Tissue-Engineered Vascular Grafts

The blend of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) and poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) has recently been considered promising for vascular tissue engineering. However, it was shown that PHBV/PCL grafts require biofunctionalization to achieve high primary patency rate. Here we compared immobilization of arginine–glycine–aspartic acid (RGD)-containing peptides and the incorporation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) as two widely established biofunctionalization approaches. Electrospun PHBV/PCL small-diameter grafts with either RGD peptides or VEGF, as well as unmodified grafts were implanted into rat abdominal aortas for 1, 3, 6, and 12 months following histological and immunofluorescence assessment. We detected CD31+/CD34+/vWF+ cells 1 and 3 months postimplantation at the luminal surface of PHBV/PCL/RGD and PHBV/PCL/VEGF, but not in unmodified grafts, with the further observation of CD31+CD34−vWF+ phenotype. These cells were considered as endothelial and produced a collagen-positive layer resembling a basement membrane. Detection of CD31+/CD34+ cells at the early stages with subsequent loss of CD34 indicated cell adhesion from the bloodstream. Therefore, either conjugation with RGD peptides or the incorporation of VEGF promoted the formation of a functional endothelial cell layer. Furthermore, both modifications increased primary patency rate three-fold. In conclusion, both of these biofunctionalization approaches can be considered as equally efficient for the modification of tissue-engineered vascular grafts.
CDQA: An ontology-based question answering system for Chinese delicacy

The problem that information stored in semantic web is hard to access is becoming more and more obvious, and the characteristics of question answering make it have a bright prospect. This paper presents an ontology-based Chinese delicacy question answering system named CDQA. We first proposed a new query triple representation to model complex questions with multiple modifications and clauses. Then a general method for transforming Chinese question into query triple representation was presented. Finally CDQA proposed a stepping searching method, which can better control the search process. Experiment results showed that CDQA can get a good performance.
The beneficial outcome of a successful mentoring relationship: the development of inclusive education

In recent years there has been very high international interest around induction programmes aiming for the smooth integration of newcomer teachers in the working environment of the school unit. In addition, educational systems in many countries lay great importance on the provision of equal opportunities to all students and the provision of a more inclusive education. In this paper, using qualitative data from one school in Cyprus, the authors present how the mentoring relationship of two teachers resulted in the provision of a more inclusive education, not only regarding the two teachers involved in the mentoring relationship, but in the school in general. The data analysis led to the following two assertions: a) the mentoring relationship helped the newcomer to improve her practice and to increase student participation, and b) the mentoring relationship assisted in the development of cooperation between the mentor and the newcomer, and assisted in the development of a team spirit which was later spread out across the school. The results of the study imply that if the mentoring relationship focuses, among other things, on issues of equal learning opportunities and new teachers shift their attention at an early stage towards meeting the diversity of their students and not only on how to survive in the school environment, then teachers and schools will set solid foundations for the acceptance of diversity and the provision of equal educational opportunities for all students.
Inhibition of COP9-signalosome (CSN) deneddylating activity and tumor growth of diffuse large B-cell lymphomas by doxycycline

In searching for small-molecule compounds that inhibit proliferation and survival of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) cells and may, therefore, be exploited as potential therapeutic agents for this disease, we identified the commonly used and well-tolerated antibiotic doxycycline as a strong candidate. Here, we demonstrate that doxycycline inhibits the growth of DLBCL cells both in vitro and in mouse xenograft models. In addition, we show that doxycycline accumulates in DLBCL cells to high concentrations and affects multiple signaling pathways that are crucial for lymphomagenesis. Our data reveal the deneddylating activity of COP-9 signalosome (CSN) as a novel target of doxycycline and suggest that doxycycline may exert its effects in DLBCL cells in part through a CSN5-HSP90 pathway. Consistently, knockdown of CSN5 exhibited similar effects as doxycycline treatment on DLBCL cell survival and HSP90 chaperone function. In addition to DLBCL cells, doxycycline inhibited growth of several other types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma cells in vitro. Together, our results suggest that doxycycline may represent a promising therapeutic agent for DLBCL and other non-Hodgkin lymphomas subtypes.
Border-ownership coding

Understanding visual scenes requires the visual system to infer the three-dimensional structure of the world from the two-dimensional projections on our retinae. This task is complicated by the fact that objects closer to the viewer will often block or occlude the view of objects farther away, as depicted in Figure 1. This produces visual borders that are owned by the closer, occluding objects. For example, the border at point A in Figure 1 is owned by the koala. Gestalt psychologists were the first to notice the importance of border ownership in perception. Since the occluding borders define the shape of the foreground, the perception of form depends on the correct assignment of these borders (e.g. Figure 2). Edgar Rubin created an intriguing figure in which borders can be perceptually assigned either way, with the effect that different shapes are perceived depending on how the borders are assigned (Figure 3, Rubin, 1915). Rubin noticed that perception becomes unstable with such figures, slowly flipping back and forth between the alternative interpretations. These compulsive alternations of perception and their specific timing made it obvious for the first time that mechanisms exist in the brain that strive for an interpretation of the image, and that there is a neural substrate that represents the interpretations.
Distinguishing Users By Pointing Performance in Laboratory and Real-World Tasks

Accurate pointing is an obstacle to computer access for individuals who experience motor impairments. One of the main barriers to assisting individuals with pointing problems is a lack of frequent and low-cost assessment of pointing ability. We are working to build technology to automatically assess pointing problems during every day (or real-world) computer use. To this end, we have gathered and studied real-world pointing use from individuals with motor impairments and older adults. We have used this data to develop novel techniques to analyze pointing performance. In this article, we present learned statistical models that distinguish between pointing actions from diverse populations using real-world pointing samples. We describe how our models could be used to support individuals with different abilities sharing a computer, or one individual who experiences temporary pointing problems. Our investigation contributes to a better understanding of real-world pointing. We hope that these techniques will be used to develop systems that can automatically adapt to users’ current needs in real-world computing environments.
Critical Mass, Social Networks and Collective Action: Exploring Student Political Worlds

This article explores the role of ‘critical mass’ and social networks in the generation of collective action. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative (social network) data, the article argues that both are pivotal in the process whereby collective action takes shape. The empirical focus of the article is student politics but it is argued that the mechanisms and dynamics identified have a much wider domain of application.
Characteristics and Superoxide-Induced Activation of Reconstituted Myocardial Mitochondrial ATP-Sensitive Potassium Channels

Mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium (mitoKATP) channels have been suggested as triggers and end effectors in myocardial ischemic preconditioning. However, the intracellular mechanism regulating mitoKATP channels remains unclear. In the present study, mitoKATP channels from bovine ventricular myocardium were reconstituted using planar lipid bilayers, and the effect of superoxide (O2−·) on the activity of these reconstituted channels was examined. After incorporation, a potassium-selective current was recorded. The mean conductance of this current was 56 pS at 150 mmol/L KCl, which was substantially inhibited by 1 mmol/L MgATP. 5-Hydroxydecanoate (5-HD, 10 to 100 &mgr;mol/L), a selective mitoKATP antagonist, reduced the open state probability (NPo) of these channels in a concentration-dependent manner, whereas diazoxide (10 &mgr;mol/L), a selective mitoKATP agonist, significantly increased channel activity. HMR-1098 (100 &mgr;mol/L), a selective sarcolemmal KATP antagonist, had no effect on the activity of reconstituted channels. Addition of xanthine/xanthine oxidase (100 &mgr;mol/L per 0.038 U/mL), an O2−·-generating system, resulted in a marked activation of mitoKATP channels; the NPo of the channels was increased from 0.60±0.10 to 1.94±0.02. This O2−·-induced channel activation was completely abolished by pretreatment with 5-HD (100 &mgr;mol/L) or a sulfhydryl alkylating compound, N-ethylmaleimide (2 mmol/L). It is concluded that myocardial mitoKATP channels can be reconstituted into lipid bilayers and that O2−· activates these channels. The effect of O2−· may be associated with its direct action on the sulfhydryl groups of the channel protein.
Spatially Aware Term Selection for Geotagging

The task of assigning geographic coordinates to textual resources plays an increasingly central role in geographic information retrieval. The ability to select those terms from a given collection that are most indicative of geographic location is of key importance in successfully addressing this task. However, this process of selecting spatially relevant terms is at present not well understood, and the majority of current systems are based on standard term selection techniques, such as x2 or information gain, and thus fail to exploit the spatial nature of the domain. In this paper, we propose two classes of term selection techniques based on standard geostatistical methods. First, to implement the idea of spatial smoothing of term occurrences, we investigate the use of kernel density estimation (KDE) to model each term as a two-dimensional probability distribution over the surface of the Earth. The second class of term selection methods we consider is based on Ripley's K statistic, which measures the deviation of a point set from spatial homogeneity. We provide experimental results which compare these classes of methods against existing baseline techniques on the tasks of assigning coordinates to Flickr photos and to Wikipedia articles, revealing marked improvements in cases where only a relatively small number of terms can be selected.
Jackknife: A Reliable Recognizer with Few Samples and Many Modalities

Despite decades of research, there is yet no general rapid prototyping recognizer for dynamic gestures that can be trained with few samples, work with continuous data, and achieve high accuracy that is also modality-agnostic. To begin to solve this problem, we describe a small suite of accessible techniques that we collectively refer to as the Jackknife gesture recognizer. Our dynamic time warping based approach for both segmented and continuous data is designed to be a robust, go-to method for gesture recognition across a variety of modalities using only limited training samples. We evaluate pen and touch, Wii Remote, Kinect, Leap Motion, and sound-sensed gesture datasets as well as conduct tests with continuous data. Across all scenarios we show that our approach is able to achieve high accuracy, suggesting that Jackknife is a capable recognizer and good first choice for many endeavors.
The effect of flexible low glycemic index dietary advice versus measured carbohydrate exchange diets on glycemic control in children with type 1 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE To determine the long-term effect of low glycemic index dietary advice on metabolic control and quality of life in children with type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Children with type 1 diabetes (n = 104) were recruited to a prospective, stratified, randomized, parallel study to examine the effects of a measured carbohydrate exchange (CHOx) diet versus a more flexible low-glycemic index (GI) dietary regimen on HbA(1c) levels, incidence of hypo- and hyperglycemia, insulin dose, dietary intake, and measures of quality of life over 12 months. RESULTS At 12 months, children in the low-GI group had significantly better HbA(1c) levels than those in the CHOx group (8.05 +/- 0.95 vs. 8.61 +/- 1.37%, P = 0.05). Rates of excessive hyperglycemia (>15 episodes per month) were significantly lower in the low-GI group (35 vs. 66%, P = 0.006). There were no differences in insulin dose, hypoglycemic episodes, or dietary composition. The low-GI dietary regimen was associated with better quality of life for both children and parents. CONCLUSIONS Flexible dietary instruction based on the food pyramid with an emphasis of low-GI foods improves HbA(1c) levels without increasing the risk of hypoglycemia and enhances the quality of life in children with diabetes.
Heterogeneous IPv6 Infrastructure for Smart Energy Efficient Building

In the context of increasing developments of home, building and city automation, the Power Line Communication (PLC) networking medium is called for unpreceeding usage. Our view of the future building networking infrastructure places PLC as the central point. We show in this paper that even if Wireless Sensors Networks (WSN) are good candidates in several cases of the sensor and actuator networking infrastructure, PLC is mandatory in several place of the smart-grid metering and command infrastructure. Also PLC will serve the infrastructure on the sensor/actuator side when the energy requirement cannot be fulfilled by autonomous battery and capacitor based nodes. PLC may provide the numerous bridges necessary to sustain a long lifetime (years) for the WSN infrastructures. This new role of PLC networking will be possible only if the inter-operability between all media and technology is made possible. Thanks to the design of converging IPv6 networking layers, we show that full inter-operability is already possible even in very tiny constrained networking devices. Moreover, low energy PLC, will be able to provide smart grid monitoring without impacting the overall energy balance.
Automatic Segmentation of Coronary Artery andAbnormality Detection in Angiographic Images

Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is the disease commonly leads to Heart Attack. Heart Attacks are due to the formation of plaque along the inner wall of the coronary artery, which narrows the arteries and reduces the blood flow to the heart. In this paper the coronary artery is segmented using Graph cut algorithm, which includes vesselness measure, geodesic measure and edge detection by canny edge detector. The images which contains blockages leads to reduced blood flow in the artery is classified as abnormal images ortherwise normal by using Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier.
Race, power and knowledge

This chapter examines race as a social divison by employing the distinctive concept of the "labour of division" (Hetherington and Munro, 1997). this idea emphasizes the effort, or labour, entailed in the construction and maintenance of divisions. In other words, social divisions are constructions that require work to manufacture and maintain distinctive ways of "seeing" the world. Vision, power and expertise are implicated in these constructions, as we will see in sections 2, 3 and 4.
Alterations in brain transition metals in Huntington disease: an evolving and intricate story.

BACKGROUND Aberrant accumulation of transition metals in the brain may have an early and important role in the pathogenesis of several neurodegenerative disorders, including Huntington disease (HD). OBJECTIVE To comprehensively evaluate and validate the distribution of metal deposition in the brain using advanced magnetic resonance imaging methods from the premanifest through symptomatic stages of HD. DESIGN Observational study. SETTING University imaging center. PARTICIPANTS Twenty-eight HD expanded gene carriers, 34 patients with symptomatic HD, and 56 age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects were included in the study. INTERVENTIONS Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging for the quantification of the phase evolution of susceptibility-weighted images. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES To verify the identity of the metals responsible for the changes in the phase evolution of the susceptibility signal in the brain and to assess correlations with systemic levels. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was used to measure transition metal concentrations in postmortem brains. RESULTS In the basal ganglia, progressive increases in the phase evolution were found in HD, beginning in premanifest individuals who were far from expected onset and increasing with proximity to expected onset and thereafter. Increases in the cerebral cortex were regionally selective and present only in symptomatic HD. Increases were verified by excessive deposition of brain iron, but a complex alteration in other transition metals was found. CONCLUSION An important and early role of altered metal homeostasis is suggested in the pathogenesis of HD.
On the Formal Analysis of Normative Conflicts

The study of the formal attributes of legal systems such as consistency, completeness, independence and generality is of special interest in legal philosophy and legal theory. Apart from concern with the content of the law, these formal attributes constitute desiderata without which a legal system is considered deficient. Legisprudence is a relatively new discipline within legal theory that studies these formal (and other) attributes of law at the level of law making (i.e. legislation). This trend in legal theory is also paralleled by research in the so-called field of legimatics, which focuses generally on the use of informatics in the process of drafting legislation. One approach within legimatics studies the limits and constraints of applying artificial intelligence (AI) techniques and methods to the law making process (e.g. Jurix, 1993) as well as application of these techniques to certain tasks within this process (Jurix, 1993; Valente, 1995; den Haan 1996). This paper discusses normative conflicts, their explication and typology, and relates these to the conceptualisation of legal knowledge and methods for representing it. We examine some common approaches in legal theory for the explication of normative conflicts and show their limitations. In particular, we argue that these common approaches do not pay sufficient attention to the role 'world knowledge' plays in the analysis of normative conflicts. Finally, we suggest alternative ways for dealing with the problems that arise from inconsistency in law. The observations we make are relevant for the development of computer programs designed to assist in the law-making process.
Budget Optimization for Sponsored Search: Censored Learning in MDPs

We consider the budget optimization problem faced by an advertiser participating in repeated sponsored search auctions, seeking to maximize the number of clicks attained under that budget. We cast the budget optimization problem as a Markov Decision Process (MDP) with censored observations, and propose a learning algorithm based on the well-known Kaplan-Meier or product-limit estimator. We validate the performance of this algorithm by comparing it to several others on a large set of search auction data from Microsoft adCenter, demonstrating fast convergence to optimal performance.