Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Surface Motion Patterns Changes for Detecting Baseline Shifts in Respiratory Tumor Motion Data

Respiratory motion during Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) causes significant errors in dose delivery to thoracic and abdominal tumors. The occurrence of anomalous or irregular motion, such as baseline shifts, might necessitate a pause in delivery or a change in dosage. Since tumor motion traces and body surface motion projections during breathing are highly correlated, body surface motion tracing and detection of abnormal breathing transitions can enable identification of anomalous motion occurrences. In this study, we analyze the changes in the surface motion patterns during changes or transitions in breathing styles that might potentially cause baseline shifts. We highlight the challenges involved in processing and extracting motion information from surface deformations, and present an approach based on surface region segmentation, correlation analysis and singular value decomposition to efficiently extract relevant information from surface motion data. Our technique for identifying breathing pattern transitions uses k-weighted Angular Similarity (kWAS), that compares the geometric structures in surface motion patterns for automatic segmentation and identification of breathing motion streams (chest versus stomach breathing, deep versus shallow breathing). Experiments show that our approach is able to identify the different breathing styles in consideration, and detects the transitions between the breathing styles with a reasonable latency.
The LHC Beam Loss Monitoring System

The LHC Beam Loss Monitor System (BLM) has been audited by a team of experts external to the BLM team. Generally, the auditors found that the design and implementation of the BLM electronics and the threshold management is sound, complete, straight-forward, and, in particular, conform to the requirement of high inherent level of safety, reliability and availability. However, quite a number of substantial recommendations have been made.
Stochastic techniques for MCMC methods

Approximate Bayesian inference seeks to perform inference over the complete posterior when it is not available in an analytic form (for example, if the prior is non-conjugate). Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods and variational methods are the two primary techniques used for approximate Bayesian inference. MCMC methods (refer [2]) yield a numerical approximation of the inference integral over the posterior by drawing samples that are asymptotically distributed as the posterior of interest. Recent advances in large-scale learning have made stochastic methods prevalent in learning models. However, the progress of stochastic methods in Bayesian learning is still in the nascent phase. Traditionally, MCMC methods or variational inference methods require computation over the complete dataset. Therefore, we mainly intend to look at the recent advances in using stochastic methods for Bayesian inference.
The Impact of Circular Migration on FGM/C: Transnational Communities in Spain and the Gambia

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a traditional harmful practice that migrates with people and has become a global phenomenon. Understanding how the diaspora resignifies and can change the tradition will allow us to measure the impact of transnational relations on information flows and decision making in a multisite space. The objective is to analyze the influence of migration on the practice of FGM/C with a participatory and circular methodology, focused on Gambian communities both in Spain and in The Gambia. The study shows the trends on how acculturation processes entail cultural change, both in Africa as well as in diaspora.
A study of Newcastle disease virus in poultry from live bird markets and backyard flocks in Kenya

A countrywide cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the presence of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) in poultry in live bird markets (LBMs) and backyard poultry farms in Kenya. A total of nine hundred and twenty two (922) poultry in backyard flocks and four hundred and fifty four (454) poultry in LBMs were examined. Overall, NDV was detected in 10.1% (46/454) of the poultry sampled in live bird markets. In backyard flocks, NDV was detected in 3.6% (33/922) of the poultry sampled. Regional variations in NDV occurrence was observed in both live bird markets and poultry flocks. Markets in major towns and cities had significantly (p<0.05) higher NDV detection rates. Higher NDV detection rates were observed in backyard farms in Lake Victoria Basin than other regions. Chicken had the highest NDV detection compared to other poultry species. The study detected NDV in apparently healthy chicken and brought forward the probable high importance of carrier birds in the circulation and transmission of NDV and in causing outbreaks. The study also points to the usefulness of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in screening for NDV to prevent the outbreaks and control of ND in Kenya. Key words: Backyard poultry, chicken, Kenya, live bird markets, NDV, RT-PCR.
In-vitro Control of Oral Thrush Causal Organisms Using Medicinal Plants Extracts

Oral hygiene is important to the generality of the human healthcare system. For this, the antifungal activities of the aqueous and ethanol extracts of four medicinal plants of Jatropha curcas (stem), Eucaluptus golbulus (leaves), Vernonia amygdalina (stem) and Zanthoxylum zanthoxyloides (root) were carried out in vitro against three species of Candida associated with oral thrush namely C. albicans, C. glabrata, C. tropicalis using the disc diffusion agar assay. The zones of inhibition varied with the test organisms as well as the extracts. The ethanolic extract of Jatropha curcas showed the highest zone of inhibition of 10.88 ± 0.22 mm against C. albicans while the least zone of inhibition (6.13 ± 0.13 mm) was exhibited by the ethanol extract of Z. zanthoxyloides on C. glabrata. The preliminary phytochemical screening showed the presence of tannin, saponin, alkaloids, flavonoids and reducing sugar in all plant samples. This study can be further used as a foundation for the screening of phytochemical constituents by pharmaceuticals for the control and eradication of oral thrush.
IMPROVING GPS TRAJECTORIES USING 3D CITY MODELS AND KINEMATIC POINT CLOUDS

Abstract. Accurate and robust positioning of vehicles in urban environments is of high importance for many applications (e.g. autonomous driving or mobile mapping). In the case of mobile mapping systems, a simultaneous mapping of the environment using laser scanning and an accurate positioning using GNSS is targeted. This requirement is often not guaranteed in shadowed cities where GNSS signals are usually disturbed, weak or even unavailable. Both, the generated point clouds and the derived trajectory are consequently imprecise. We propose a novel approach which incorporates prior knowledge, i.e. 3D building model of the environment, and improves the point cloud and the trajectory. The key idea is to benefit from the complementarity of both GNSS and 3D building models. The point cloud is matched to the city model using a point-to-plane ICP. An informed sampling of appropriate matching points is enabled by a pre-classification step. Support vector machines (SVMs) are used to discriminate between facade and remaining points. Local inconsistencies are tackled by a segment-wise partitioning of the point cloud where an interpolation guarantees a seamless transition between the segments. The full processing chain is implemented from the detection of facades in the point clouds, the matching between them and the building models and the update of the trajectory estimate. The general applicability of the implemented method is demonstrated on an inner city data set recorded with a mobile mapping system.
Coding of Electrical Stimulation Patterns for Binaural Signal Processing in Cochlear Implants

Binaural sound coding strategies can improve speech intelligibility for cochlear implant (CI) users. Bilateral cochlear implant (BiCI) users do not benefit as much as NH listeners from binaural hearing. We hypothesize that these limitations arise from the fact that implants do not provide the electrical stimulus at the same time (i.e. synchronized electrical stimulation), but also, when using N-of-M type sound coding strategies, the selected bands used to stimulate in each of the sides will in general differ, limiting the access to binaural cues. In the first part of this work, we investigate the effect of bilaterally synchronized electrical stimulation on BiCI users in speech perception tasks in a better-signal-to-noise-ratio ear (better-SNR ear) listening scenario [1]. We also propose a Binaural N-of-M (BINOM) sound coding strategy to improve the SNR of the masked ear. The effect of synchronous bilateral stimulation and BINOM is assessed by means of speech-in-noise intelligibility tests. Furthermore, the effect of adding a worseSNR side is measured by also performing monaural speech innoise intelligibility tests with each listening side. Finally, speech performance is assessed by selecting the bands that would be selected if no noise was present (ideal band selection). The outcome of this work shows that in a better-SNR binaural listening scenario, bilaterally synchronized stimulation besides the sharing of band selection information provided by the favorable hearing side with the contralateral ear leads to an improvement in speech intelligibility in BiCI users. In the second part of this work we investigate an audio compression algorithm to transmit the signals from one processor to another as binaural sound coding strategies require a signal transmission between the two CIs [2]. As power consumption needs to be low in CIs, efficient coding of the signals is necessary. In this work it is proposed to code the excitation patterns (EP) of the CI instead of the audio signals captured by the microphones. For this purpose, a differential pulse code modulation codec with zero algorithmic delay to code the EP of the BINOM sound coding strategy is presented. The EP codec was compared to standardized speech codecs using the SNR as well as speech intelligibility and quality measures in bilateral CI users. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2177/1 Project ID 381895691 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) Project number: 396932747 (PIs: W. Nogueira; J. Ostermann). REFERENCES [1] T. Gajecki, W. Nogueira (2018), A Synchronized Binaural N-of-M Sound Coding Strategy for Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users, ITG Speech Communication, Oldenburg, Germany. [2] R. Hinrichs, T. Gajecki, J. Ostermann, W. Nogueira (2019), Coding of Electrical Stimulation Patterns for Binaural Sound Coding Strategies for Cochlear Implants, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference, Berlin, Germany, July. 1 Nogueiravaquez.waldo@mh-hannover.de
BEETLES RECORDED TO VISIT ELEPHANT DUNG IN TEMENGGOR FOREST, MALAYSIA

Little is known about the beetles associated with Elephant dung in the South East Asian region. Elephant dung was inspected for beetles by manually pulling apart dung present at elephant salt licks. Two sites were visited on 3 occasions and at least 20 piles of dung were inspected on each visit. 11 taxa of dung beetle were collected, Copris numa, Cp. bellator, Cp. doriae, Copris sp. , Heliocopris tyrannus, Liatongus femoratus, Paragymnopleurus maurus, Sisyphus thoracicus, Onthophagus mulleri, O. rutilans and Megatelus sp. Most species were from the large tunnelers class in comparison to small tunnelers that tend to dominate other types of dung. While this is merely a preliminary sample, most of the species encountered have not been found in locations where elephants are absent. Larva of Campsiura nigripennis, a flower beetle was found to dwell inside the dung. The larvae were successfully bred to adulthood in elephant dung in laboratory conditions. Predatory Histeridae were found to also oviposit on the dung, in which the larvae preyed on other beetle and fly larva. One larva in a dung ball possibly belonging to Paragymnopleurus sp. was found. These observations match observations in tropical Africa, in which some large dung beetle species are dependent on elephant dung. It is possible that this beetle assemblage is similar and dependent on the presence of elephants or large herbivores.
One Writing System , Two Dialects : Tonal Information in Bilingual Visual Word Recognition

How is the tonal information of written words activated when the reader is a bilingual of two tonal dialects? Standard Chinese (SC) and Jinan Mandarin (JM) are two tonal dialects and share a large number of etymologically related translation equivalents, which are represented by the same Chinese character and usually identical in segments but potentially different in tone. In the present study, we adopted a Stroop paradigm to examine the activation of tonal information in Chinese visual word recognition by tonal bilinguals and tonal monolinguals. Native Beijing SC monolinguals and Jinan JM-SC bilinguals named the ink color of Chinese characters in SC and the bilinguals also performed the color-naming in JM. The Chinese characters were either (1) color characters (e.g. 红 , hong2, ‘red’), (2) within-dialect homophones of the color characters (S+T+; e.g. 洪, hong2, ‘flood’), (3) within-dialect different-tone homophones of the color characters (S+T−; e.g. 轰 , hong1, ‘boom’), or (4) neutral characters (S−T−; e.g. 贯 , guan, ‘penetrate’) as controls. We tested all the combinations of characters and ink colors. Both groups of participants showed classic Stroop interference for the incongruent conditions. However, only the bilinguals showed Stroop facilitation for the color-congruent conditions. They are slower in production but better at handling conflicts in lexical access. The within-dialect tonal effects were more complex than those found in earlier studies. Only the tonal monolinguals, not the tonal bilinguals, showed weak evidence in support of the retrieval of tonal information in automatic visual word recognition. Between-dialect tonal relations showed no additional effects on tonal bilinguals.
A Decomposition of US Net Exports Growth Rates 1966-1991

This paper is based on the work of Dixit and Woodland (1982) on the determinants of growth rate of net exports (T ). It incorporates the e¤ect of changes in commodity prices, while allows for the presence of jointness in output quantities in order to decompose the determinants of a change in the volume of net exports for an open economy with nonbalanced trade. A general equilibrium analysis is implemented where the revenue (GDP ) function and the expenditure function are estimated for the US economy for the period 1963 to 1991. Then a decomposition of the growth rate of the net exports is implemented. It involves a terms of trade component, an endowment component, a technological change both in production and consumption and an income component. Keywords: Net Exports, US Trade, non-balanced trade,3SLS JEL classi cation: F11, F14 GEP, School of Economics, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK (email: agelos.delis@nottingham.ac.uk)
Supplemental Information for Fast Estimation of Recombination Rates Using Topological Data Analysis

Filtering β1. Some authors have suggested that short-lived bars in a persistence diagram may arise due to topological noise (1). It is unclear whether a universal threshold exists to filter out potentially noisy bars, however. In the case of our own study, we tested whether filtering out short-lived bars improves the relationship between existing topological models of recombination and β1, specifically using Camara et al’s ρph for goodness of fit. We find that the filtration of short-lived bars only lowers the R2 values for this model applied to our simulated datasets, thus we opt not to use any filtration of these bars in practical applications (Figure 1).
Receptiveness as Determinant of Policy Effectiveness German childcare and women ’ s transition to first birth

During the past decade, German family policies have shifted from supporting the male breadwinner – female carer family to providing infrastructure for mothers’ employment and children’s daycare. Institutional theorists assume that increased availability of childcare will increase fertility, while family transition theorists argue that such increase depends on a change of norms. We examine these propositions for women’s transition to first birth. We apply event-history methods to German Pairfam panel data and consider the importance that women attribute to public childcare, the applicability of childcare to their work and family preferences, and the acceptability of childcare to their motherly care-employment norms. First birth risks are significantly elevated for women who regard childcare as a precondition to have a child, who want to combine work and family (applicability) and who do not oppose maternal employment (acceptability). In contrast, we find no such association between childcare necessity and first birth for women who want to focus on family (no applicability), and for those who are averse to or uncertain about maternal employment (no acceptability). Our results underline the importance to consider attitudes when evaluating the impact of policies on childbearing behavior. They also indicate that macro-level effects of policies on fertility may only become visible when policy offers and attitudes converge.
A Rational Approach For Data Reporting In Wireless Sensor Networks Using Sink Trial Protocol

In recent years rendering data sink’s vigourness for data gathering has gaunt affluent interest in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). On the double we are knuckle down on outdoing network performance either by drafting a ambulatory sink’s heart-warming orbit in proffer or bullseye at accumulate a slender region of intuit data in the network. In multitudinous enactment framework, still, an ambulatory sink cannot decamp freely in the situate area. Therefore, the foreordained orbit may not be germane. To circumvent immutable sink locale overhaul peddles when a sink’s fortune locales cannot be programmed in foreordained, we propound two energy methodical ardent data reporting protocols, Sink Trail and Sink Trail-S, for mobile sink-based data throng. The propounded protocols feature low-complexity and diminished control overheads. Two idiosyncratic aspects discern our approach from previous ones: 1) we empower ample pliability in the manoeuvre of mobile sinks to lively revamp to miscellaneous mundane recasts; and 2) without demands of GPS gadget or foreordained lodestars, Sink Trail inaugurates a logical coordinate framework for routing and shipping data packets, making it fit for sundry enactment framework. In addition to that we are going to perform data aggregations by data clustering technique among sensors.We systematically scrutinize the effect of sundry design determinant in the propounded algorithms. Both theoretical scrutiny and facsimile results corroborate that the propounded algorithms diminish control overheads and bestow fair parade in finding shorter routing paths.
OPTIMIZATION OF SELF-ORGANIZED GROWTH OF NANOPOROUS ANODIC ALUMINA TEMPLATES FOR CAPACITOR APPLICATION

High-voltage nanoporous anodic films grown on aluminium in certain organic electrolytes are of increasing interest for potential applications as nanotemplates to electrical capacitors and, more generally, as models for investigating self-organized growth of anodic oxides at the frontier conditions. The major difficulty associated with this technology is that the process of pore nucleation and growth over a large-area aluminium substrate needs optimization and adaptation to the specific technological conditions applied to aluminium substrates as the surface finishing pre-treatments. In this work we have studied the impact of important pre-treatment technologies for Al foils, such as high temperature annealing and electrochemical polishing, on the pore nucleation and growth during galvanostatic formation of nanoporous anodic alumina templates in aqueous solutions of citric acid. It was revealed that the self-organized pore nucleation and growth is strictly dependent upon the anodizing setup, anodizing variables, surface morphology and crystalline structure of aluminium foils, which are additionally affected by the conditions of vacuum annealing and electropolishing pre-treatments. The findings are useful for growing well-ordered nanopores for non-lithographic formation of metal and metaloxide nanostructures for advanced capacitor application.
Electroacoustic resonators: system identification and stability

An Electroacoustic Resonator consists of a loudspeaker used as a membrane resonator, through an acoustic pressure-based controlled electrical current, in order to vary its vibrating velocity in response to an exogenous sound field. This way, the loudspeaker membrane can be turned, for example, into an effectively broadband sound absorber. However, the effectiveness and stability conditions of such an active device are intrinsically dependent on the accurate knowledge of its electromechanical constituents and the whole control chain, and any mismatch might impair significantly the control performance. In this paper, we propose a new method for identifying the Thiele-Small parameters of a loudspeaker to be used as an active electroacoustic resonator through a digitally-implemented control architecture. Then, numerical and experimental investigation are undertaken to show how the application of Impedance Control laws affects the stability of the electro-mechano-acoustical system. An experimental verification of the acoustic performance of the proposed control strategy is provided, leading to concluding discussion on further developments.
Morphological and molecular characterization of culturable leaf endophytic fungi from Malabar Spinach: The first report

To isolate and identify the cultivable leaf endophytic fungi of Basella alba L. and B. rubra L. , healthy and fresh leaves were chosen and collected from Sri Devaraj Urs Academy of Higher Education and Research college botanical garden. Authenticated materials were made into small bits, surface sterilized by applying the standard protocol and cultured on a potato dextrose agar plate supplemented with appropriate antibiotics, incubated for 7 to10 days at 28 ̊C. Seed borne fungal endophytes were also identified by keeping scarified seeds on sterilized agarose. A phylogenetic tree was constructed for the fungi of both the plants. A total of 26 and 19 endophytic cultivable fungi were isolated from B. alba and B. rubra respectively. Majority of the endophytes belongs to the genus Alternaria and several genera in class Dothideomycetes. Our preliminary observation indicated that the vertically transmitted endophytic fungi are the dominant endophytes of the selected plants. We conclude that Alternaria is predominant in both the plants. The mechanism of transition of the microbe from being non-pathogenic in its host to being pathogenic in other plants needs to be studied and elucidated.