Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
GazeDrone: Mobile Eye-Based Interaction in Public Space Without Augmenting the User

Gaze interaction holds a lot of promise for seamless human-computer interaction. At the same time, current wearable mobile eye trackers require user augmentation that negatively impacts natural user behavior while remote trackers require users to position themselves within a confined tracking range. We present GazeDrone, the first system that combines a camera-equipped aerial drone with a computational method to detect sidelong glances for spontaneous (calibration-free) gaze-based interaction with surrounding pervasive systems (e.g., public displays). GazeDrone does not require augmenting each user with on-body sensors and allows interaction from arbitrary positions, even while moving. We demonstrate that drone-supported gaze interaction is feasible and accurate for certain movement types. It is well-perceived by users, in particular while interacting from a fixed position as well as while moving orthogonally or diagonally to a display. We present design implications and discuss opportunities and challenges for drone-supported gaze interaction in public.
Electrified boosting systems in today's and future automotive applications

Increasing demands to fulfil future emissions legislation in the passenger car sector needs a continuous increase of efficiency of the internal combustion engine. Also a cut in raw emissions is a major challenge. An important step toward local emission free vehicles are hybrid vehicles with many variants of the degree of electrification. BorgWarner takes this challenge by continuously adapting the product portfolio in regards to mechatronic and pure electrical products.
Variation in mutualisms : the spatio-temporal mosaic of a pollinator assemblage

Variation in time (annual and seasonal) and space (betweenand within-population) is examined for the pollinator assemblage of Lavandula latifolia (Labiatae), an insect-pollinated, summerflowering, evergreen shrub of Mediterranean woodlands in southeastern Spain. Lauandula l a t i f l i a is pollinated there by nearly 85 species of comparatively long-tongued Hymenoptera, Diptera and Lepidoptera. The diversity, composition and abundance of pollinators varied markedly between years. Lepidopteran taxa prevailed numerically in one year, hymenopterans in four years, and both groups had similar abundance in the remaining year. The vast majority of pollinators exhibited significant annual differences in average abundance. Only 35.7% of taxa were recorded in all of the six study years. The pollinator assemblage had marked seasonal dynamics. Important changes in species richness, abundance and composition took place over the flowering season of L. l a t i f l i a (nearly 3 months). Only 21.7y0 of insect taxa occurred throughout the flowering season. Lavandula la t i f l ia populations at different distances from water courses differed broadly in the abundance and composition of pollinators. Hymenopterans dominated numerically at the water-distant sites, whereas lepidopterans prevailed in populations growing in the vicinity of streams. Only 40.7% of taxa were recorded at all of the four study populations. Within the same plant population, horizontal distances of the order of 25 m resulted in significant changes in pollinator composition. Variations at the four scales considered combine to produce, from the viewpoint of L. latifolia, a spatio-temporal mosaic of pollinators. As these differ broadly in frequency of pollen transfer, size of pollen loads deposited, and between-flower flight distance patterns, spatio-temporal variation will predictably result in inconsistent or contradictory selective pressures on the plant, thus hindering specialization in relation to particular pollinators.
Can insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), IGF-1 receptor connective tissue growth factor and Ki-67 labelling index have a prognostic role in pulmonary carcinoids?

Introduction Altered expression of Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), its receptor (IGF-1R), Connective Tissue Growth Factor (CTGF) and Hypoxia Inducible Factor-1 (HIF-1), has been implicated in tumorigenesis. So far, these factors have not been studied systematically in Pulmonary Carcinoids (PCs). Aims To examine IGF-1, IGF-1R, CTGF and HIF-1 expression in PCs, and assess their prognostic value over established factors. Materials & Methods Retrospective study of 121 PCs (104 Typical and 17 Atypical). The expression of growth factors was studied immunohistochemically and tumors were considered positive if immunoreactivity appeared in >50% of cells. Results All studied parameters were expressed in the majority of tumors (IGF-1, IGF-1R, CTGF and HIF-1, in 78.5%, 67%, 72% and 78%, respectively). Their expression tended to be more frequent in TCs and in tumors with Ki-67≤2% (significant only for HIF-1; 82 vs. 53%; p=0.023 and 83 vs. 63%; p=0.025 respectively). CTGF was the only factor correlated with more extensive disease (larger size; presence of lymph node and distant metastases). According to logistic regression analysis, only advanced age, Ki-67≥3.4% and lymph node involvement could predict the development of distant metastases. Conclusions IGF-1, IGF-1R, CTGF and HIF-1 are avidly expressed in PCs; however, their presence did not appear to be of statistically significant value over established prognostic factors.
Neural Coreference Resolution with Deep Biaffine Attention by Joint Mention Detection and Mention Clustering

Coreference resolution aims to identify in a text all mentions that refer to the same real world entity. The state-of-the-art end-to-end neural coreference model considers all text spans in a document as potential mentions and learns to link an antecedent for each possible mention. In this paper, we propose to improve the end-to-end coreference resolution system by (1) using a biaffine attention model to get antecedent scores for each possible mention, and (2) jointly optimizing the mention detection accuracy and mention clustering accuracy given the mention cluster labels. Our model achieves the state-of-the-art performance on the CoNLL-2012 shared task English test set.
Enhanced Photocatalytic Activity toward Organic Pollutants Degradation and Mechanism Insight of Novel CQDs/Bi2O2CO3 Composite

Novel carbon quantum dots (CQDs) modified with Bi2O2CO3 (CQDs/Bi2O2CO3) were prepared using a simple dynamic-adsorption precipitation method. X-ray diffractometry (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to test the material composition, structure, and band structures of the as-prepared samples. Methylene blue (MB) and colorless phenol, as target organic pollutants, were used to evaluate the photocatalytic performance of the CQDs/Bi2O2CO3 hybrid materials under visible light irradiation. Experimental investigation shows that 2–5 nm CQDs were uniformly decorated on the surface of Bi2O2CO3; CQDs/Bi2O2CO3 possess an efficient photocatalytic performance, and the organic matter removal rate of methylene blue and phenol can reach up to 94.45% and 61.46% respectively, within 2 h. In addition, the degradation analysis of phenol by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) proved that there are no other impurities in the degradation process. Photoelectrochemical testing proved that the introduction of CQDs (electron acceptor) effectively suppresses the recombination of e−-h+, and promotes charge transfer. Quenching experiments and electron spin resonance (ESR) suggested that ·OH, h+, and ·O2− were involved in the photocatalytic degradation process. These results suggested that the up-conversion function of CQDs could improve the electron transfer and light absorption ability of photocatalysts and ·O2− formation. Furthermore, the up-conversion function of CQDs would help maintain photocatalytic stability. Finally, the photocatalytic degradation mechanism was proposed according to the above experimental result.
Detection of Specific ZIKV IgM in Travelers Using a Multiplexed Flavivirus Microsphere Immunoassay

Zika virus (ZIKV) has spread widely in the Pacific and recently throughout the Americas. Unless detected by RT-PCR, confirming an acute ZIKV infection can be challenging. We developed and validated a multiplexed flavivirus immunoglobulin M (IgM) microsphere immunoassay (flaviMIA) which can differentiate ZIKV-specific IgM from that due to other flavivirus infections in humans. The flaviMIA bound 12 inactivated flavivirus antigens, including those from ZIKV and yellow fever virus (YFV), to distinct anti-flavivirus antibody coupled beads. These beads were used to interrogate sera from patients with suspected ZIKV infection following travel to relevant countries. FlaviMIA results were validated by comparison to the ZIKV plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT). The results highlight the complexity of serological ZIKV diagnosis, particularly in patients previously exposed to, or vaccinated against, other flaviviruses. We confirmed 99 patients with ZIKV infection by a combination of RT-PCR and serology. Importantly, ZIKV antibodies could be discriminated from those ascribed to other flavivirus infections. Serological results were sometimes confounded by the presence of pre-existing antibodies attributed to previous flavivirus infection or vaccination. Where RT-PCR results were negative, testing of appropriately timed paired sera was necessary to demonstrate seroconversion or differentiation of recent from past infection with or exposure to ZIKV.
Multi-Task Learning Framework for Mining Crowd Intelligence towards Clinical Treatment

In recent past, social media has emerged as an active platform in the context of healthcare and medicine. In this paper, we present a study where medical user’s opinions on health-related issues are analyzed to capture the medical sentiment at a blog level. The medical sentiments can be studied in various facets such as medical condition, treatment, and medication that characterize the overall health status of the user. Considering these facets, we treat analysis of this information as a multi-task classification problem. In this paper, we adopt a novel adversarial learning approach for our multi-task learning framework to learn the sentiment’s strengths expressed in a medical blog. Our evaluation shows promising results for our target tasks.
Managing IT Employee Attitudes that Lead to Turnover: Integrating a Person-Job Fit Perspective

IT staff turnover and low retention rates are costly and contribute to organizational inefficiency. The authors extend the existing literature by investigating whether differences in individual preferences for various job characteristics as well as the ability of organizations to meet employee expectations (person-job fit) affect contentment levels and, consequently, attrition rates. Specifically, they investigate the question, â€œDoes a person-job fit perspective provide more explanatory power with regard to antecedents to turnover among IT professionals than either person or job characteristics alone? â€ for systems developers. Survey results indicate that a person-job fit perspective does provide more explanatory power for certain job attributes, but not for others. In particular, the relationships between system developers' preferred and actual job levels of social support as well as of job challenge are better indicators of attitudes than actual levels of either attribute alone. However, actual job challenge and actual job stress (as perceived by workers) are, individually, better predictors of employee self-esteem, burnout, and alienation than their respective degrees of fit with employee preferences.
300-sparsans at SemEval-2018 Task 9: Hypernymy as interaction of sparse attributes

This paper describes 300-sparsians’s participation in SemEval-2018 Task 9: Hypernym Discovery, with a system based on sparse coding and a formal concept hierarchy obtained from word embeddings. Our system took first place in subtasks (1B) Italian (all and entities), (1C) Spanish entities, and (2B) music entities.
Detection of Intracellular Gold Nanoparticles: An Overview

Photothermal therapy (PTT) takes advantage of unique properties of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) (nanospheres, nanoshells (AuNSs), nanorods (AuNRs)) to destroy cancer cells or tumor tissues. This is made possible thanks principally to both to the so-called near-infrared biological transparency window, characterized by wavelengths falling in the range 700–1100 nm, where light has its maximum depth of penetration in tissue, and to the efficiency of cellular uptake mechanisms of AuNPs. Consequently, the possible identification of intracellular AuNPs plays a key role for estimating the effectiveness of PTT treatments. Here, we review the recognized detection techniques of such intracellular probes with a special emphasis to the exploitation of near-infrared biological transparency window.
Artificial Landmarks to Facilitate Spatial Learning and Recalling for Curved Visual Wall Layout in Virtual Reality

Current VR (Virtual Reality) browsing interfaces provide few landmarks, particularly, less is known about the effects of 3D landmarks on facilitating spatial learning and recalling for VR browsing interfaces. In this work, the implementation of a new artificial landmark (3D visual pin) along with three previous landmarks (grid, image, and anchor) are presented with a curved visual wall layout, in which we examined the effects on facilitating learning and recalling items' locations in small and large item sets. We found that both the 3D pin and the anchor interfaces assisted multiple targets retrieving and recalling, compared to the grid interface, and more preferences of 3D pins, but no significant difference of retrieval and recall performances between the 3D pin and the anchor interfaces. The image interface had little impact on trial completion time, but significantly improved the selection accuracy compared to the grid interface. The findings provide the possibility of enabling artificial landmarks for future VR browsing interfaces.
Assessment of EGFR Gene Expression Following Vitrification of 2-cell and Blastocyst Mouse Embryos

Background: Exact mechanisms of fetal harm following vitrification are still unknown. This study was conducted to evaluate the cryopreservation impact on the expression of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) gene in mouse 2-cell and blastocysts. Methods: To stimulate ovulation in mice, hCG was injected, followed by collecting 2-cells and blastocysts after 44–46 and 88–89 hr, respectively. These embryos were divided into two case and control groups. The fresh case group was cryopreserved using cryotop and warmed after 4 mounts. Normal 2-cells were selected based on their morphology and their RNA was extracted. Quantitative expression of EGFR gene in both groups was investigated by applying real time-PCR. Results: The statistical Real-Time (RT)-PCR analyses performed using SPSS revealed that the expression level of EGFR gene was diminished in the case group compared to the control group. Conclusion: The current study indicated the negative effect of cryopreservation on expression amount of EGFR gene in 2-cell and blastocyst mouse embryos.
Where so syllables come from ?

Young children are able to segment words into syllables, even though there are no perceptual or acoustic cues that indicate syllable boundaries in the primary linguistic data. We show that information about word boundaries can be used to predict syllable boundaries by replicating the results of experiments done by Gillis and De Schutter (1996) with children who syllabified Dutch disyllabic monomorphemes with a single intervocalic consonant. Word boundary probabilities were statistically computed in child language corpora and used to predict syllable boundaries with a simple statistical model. The fiveand six-year-olds’ syllabification behavior could be simulated using word-boundary probabilities estimated from child language corpora. Similar results were obtained for three different corpora. In our simulations, we also investigate the question whether children acquire their knowledge of word boundaries from words from the input, from the intake, or from their own output.
Exploring PMOs through Community of Practice Theory

This article explores project management offices (PMOs) through community of practice theory. Preliminary results from a national health care case study are used to confirm the legitimacy of this approach. Today's knowledge-based economy calls for mechanisms to share knowledge. The issue of making more with less is at stake in order to reuse good practices, support innovative practice, and prevent the reinvention of the wheel. Members of these communities are at the heart of the learning process. The originality of this research is that it sheds light on PMOs in a new theoretical perspective within the field of knowledge management.
Transitions , and Health A Longitudinal Examination of Adolescent and Young Adult Homeless Experience , Life Course

While many have studied the antecedents of homelessness and health status among the actively homeless, no studies have evaluated the long-term health outcomes of formerly homeless adolescents and young adults. In this article, we examine the prospective association of early homeless experience and health outcomes after homelessness has subsided and whether factors that impede successful life course transitions following homeless experiences (e.g., low education attainment, depressive symptoms) mediate these associations. Among 4,651 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth–Child Study participants, formerly homeless adolescents and young adults (aged 15–25) were at greater risk of developing asthma, health-limiting conditions (HLCs), and fair/poor self-rated health over 8 years of follow-up, particularly among females. Factors that disrupt life course transitions mediated associations for asthma and HLCs. Using 20 years of life course information, this study demonstrates the enduring health risks for adolescents and young adults with homeless experience as they age.
Heart motion tracking on cine MRI based on a deep Boltzmann machine-driven level set method

Tracking the heart motion during radiation treatment of cancer patients can provide important information for designing strategies to reduce radiation-induced heart toxicity. Recently, in-treatment cine MRI images are used for guiding radiation therapy. However, dynamic changes of heart shape and limited-contrast of cine MRI images make automatic heart motion tracking a very challenging task. This paper proposes a deep generative shape model-driven level set method to address these challenges and automatically track heart motion on 2D cine MRI images. First, we use a three-layered Deep Boltzmann Machine (DBM) to train a heart shape model that can characterize both global and local heart shape variations. Second, the shape priors inferred from the trained heart shape model are incorporated into the distance regularized level set evolution-based segmentation method to guide frame-by-frame heart segmentation on cine MRI images. We demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method on cine MRI image sequences acquired from seven volunteers and also compare it with four other methods.
Elemental sulfur reduction in the deep‐sea vent thermophile, Thermovibrio ammonificans

The reduction of elemental sulfur is an important energy-conserving pathway in prokaryotes inhabiting geothermal environments, where sulfur respiration contributes to sulfur biogeochemical cycling. Despite this, the pathways through which elemental sulfur is reduced to hydrogen sulfide remain unclear in most microorganisms. We integrated growth experiments using Thermovibrio ammonificans, a deep-sea vent thermophile that conserves energy from the oxidation of hydrogen and reduction of both nitrate and elemental sulfur, with comparative transcriptomic and proteomic approaches, coupled with scanning electron microscopy. Our results revealed that two members of the FAD-dependent pyridine nucleotide disulfide reductase family, similar to sulfide-quinone reductase and to NADH-dependent sulfur reductase (NSR), respectively, are over-expressed during sulfur respiration. Scanning electron micrographs and sulfur sequestration experiments indicated that direct access of T. ammonificans to sulfur particles strongly promoted growth. The sulfur metabolism of T. ammonificans appears to require abiotic transition from bulk elemental sulfur to polysulfide to nanoparticulate sulfur at an acidic pH, coupled to biological hydrogen oxidation. A coupled biotic-abiotic mechanism for sulfur respiration is put forward, mediated by an NSR-like protein as the terminal reductase.
The role of cognitive function and physical activity in physical decline in older adults across the cognitive spectrum

ABSTRACT Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate physical decline over 1-year in a cohort of older people across the cognitive spectrum. Methods: Physical function was assessed using the Physiological Profile Assessment (PPA) in 593 participants (cognitively normal [CN]: n = 342, mild cognitive impairment [MCI]: n = 77, dementia: n = 174) at baseline and in 490 participants available for reassessment 1-year later. Neuropsychological performance and physical activity (PA) were assessed at baseline. Results: Median baseline PPA scores for CN, MCI and dementia groups were 0.41 (IQR = −0.09–1.02), 0.66 (IQR = −0.06–1.15) and 2.37 (IQR = 0.93–3.78) respectively. All baseline neuropsychological domains and PA were significantly associated with baseline PPA. There were significant interaction terms (Time × Cognitive Group, Global Cognition, Processing Speed, Executive Function and PA) in the models investigating PPA decline. In multivariate analysis the Time × Executive Function and PA interaction terms were significant, indicating that participants with poorer baseline executive function and reduced PA demonstrated greater physical decline when compared to individuals with better executive function and PA respectively. Discussion: Having MCI or dementia is associated with greater physical decline compared to CN older people. Physical inactivity and executive dysfunction were associated with physical decline in this sample, which included participants with MCI and dementia. Both factors influencing physical decline are potentially amenable to interventions e.g. exercise.
Genome Sequence of PM2-Like Phage Cr39582, Induced from a Pseudoalteromonas sp. Isolated from the Gut of Ciona robusta

ABSTRACT Phage Cr39582 was induced by mitomycin C from Pseudoalteromonas sp. strain Cr6751, isolated from a marine invertebrate gut. Pseudoalteromonas phage Cr39582 has 85% pairwise nucleotide identity with phage PM2 but lacks sequence homology in the spike protein. This report supports previous bioinformatic identification of corticoviral sequences within aquatic bacterial genomes.