Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel Adaptive Edge Detection Algorithm using Haar-like Features

This paper presents an adaptive method of the edge detection problem, based on the algorithm of Canny. It is designed to be used in the real-scene object recognition problems in those cases where, because of the complexity of the environment’s structure and the time-varying illumination, regular edge detection algorithms fail to offer a good and stabile response. The algorithm is based on the same principle as Canny’s method, but the hysteresis threshold values are adapted for each pixel considering the local approximation of the gradient value. The gradients are approximated by Haar-like features, computed with integral images in constant time. In terms of edge extraction, the proposed algorithm improves the performance obtained with the method of Canny in complex lightening conditions. It also provides to the user more control over the detection process and assures a more stable result concerning the illumination conditions. The results of the proposed algorithm are compared with those obtained with the classic method of Canny for edge detection in real scenarios. Both implementations use the speed-optimized functions of Open Computer Vision
Central nervous system involvement following diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma: a risk model.

BACKGROUND To determine the incidence and risk factors for central nervous system (CNS) relapse in patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). PATIENTS AND METHODS Patient records were registered prospectively in successive patients with NHL admitted to the Norwegian Radium Hospital from 1980 to 1996. A total of 2514 patients had no CNS involvement at diagnosis and were treated according to standard protocols. The incidence and risk factors for CNS progression or relapse were examined retrospectively. RESULTS In low-grade (L)-NHL, the risk of CNS involvement was low (2.8%). In high-grade (H)-NHL, lymphoblastic and Burkitt's NHL patients had a high risk of CNS recurrence (24.4%) at 5 years, and prophylaxis seemed to reduce this risk. For the other patients with H-NHL, the proportion with CNS involvement at 5 years was 5.2%. Multivariate analysis identified five independent risk factors, each present in >5% of patients: elevated serum lactate dehydrogenase, serum albumin <35 g/l, <60 years of age, retroperitoneal lymph node involvement and involvement of more than one extranodal site. If four or five of these risk factors were present, the risk of CNS recurrence was in excess of 25% at 5 years. CONCLUSIONS The risk of CNS involvement in this study is comparable with the results from other large series. CNS prophylaxis is not recommended in any subgroup of L-NHL. The risk of CNS involvement among patients with either Burkitt's or lymphoblastic lymphomas is considerable and these patients should therefore receive intensive chemotherapy including systemic and intrathecal methotrexate. Patients with other types of H-NHL should receive adequate CNS prophylaxis if at least four of the five risk factors identified are present.
Ocular Counter Rotation During Gaze Shifts

Abducens motor neurons (ABD) are known to receive oculomotor signals via the excitatory and inhibitory burst neurons (BN) as well as head velocity related signals via the vestibular nucleus (VN). If the oculomotor input to the ABD was the same, would there be a difference in the properties of the observed eye movement between head restrained (HR) and head unrestrained (HU) gaze shifts? To answer this question, the activity of 22 BN was recorded during HR and HU visual motor tasks performed by non human primates. A template matching algorithm was used to find a pair of trials (HR, HU) with matching BN activity. This guaranteed that the oculomotor input to the ABD was the same. Matched trials were found to have similar gaze amplitudes, but the peak eye velocity of HU movement was lower than HR movement. A time varying gain of the head velocity input was calculated as the ratio of the difference between the eye velocities over the head velocity. This yielded a gain that was high at the onset of the movement, decreased through out the gaze shift and plateau at one after gaze shift offset. Thus the head movement was highly inhibiting the eye movement at HU gaze onset which decreased throughout the gaze shift until it reached and remained at one at the end of the gaze shift. Finally a computer simulation was used to check if the difference in the eye velocities could be explained by VN inputs. The simulation modeled the difference in ABD firing rate (AABD) between HR and HU matched trials as the weighted sum of the difference in the firing rate of VN (APVPc, APVPi and AEHc) input. The BN input was not used in this model because for matched trials the input was the same, thus the difference was equal to zero. The simulation showed that the weight of EHc cells input was the highest, thus accounting for most of the difference in the ABD. This lead to the conclusion that EHc cells played a major role in reducing the eye velocity during head unrestrained gaze shifts.
Can Large Eddy Simulation Techniques Improve Mesoscale Rich Ocean Models

Large-eddy simulations (LES) differ from other fluid flow computations in that the largest eddies are explicitly resolved and the smaller eddies are modeled (as engineers call it) or parameterized (as oceanographers call it). Modeling the ocean and atmosphere inspired the first large-eddy simulations, but true large-eddy simulations of the ocean and atmosphere are surprisingly rare. Ocean models almost always have eddy parameterizations, be they just larger than natural values of constant diffusivities and viscosities, perhaps oriented along isopycnal surfaces [Redi, 1982], or more sophisticated models such as the eddy extraction of potential energy by along-isopycnal bolus flux model of Gent and McWilliams [1990], perhaps with nonlinear transfer coefficient scaling [Visbeck et al., 1997; Held and Larichev, 1996], the “Neptune” effect parameterizing eddy-topography interaction [Holloway, 1993], or parameterizations based on linear instability analysis [Stone, 1972; Branscome, 1983; Killworth, 2005]. All of these parameterizations are designed for situations where eddies are not present or weak, and, as a result, the model resolution does not appear explicitly. The Herculean—perhaps Sisyphean—task of parameterizing the important effects of eddies in ocean models is done by offline theoretical analysis in lieu of resolved eddies. It is no wonder that there is enormous model sensitivity to the parameterization choices made [e.g., Steiner et al., 2004]. Leaving all to theory seems very unlikely to succeed, as eddies are sensitive to difficult to quantify parameters, such as interaction with unresolved topography [Holloway, 1993], regional variations of hydrodynamic instability [Killworth, 2005], bottom drag [Arbic and Flierl, 2004a; Thompson and Young, 2006], and subtle sensitivity to the Coriolis parameter variation [Arbic and Flierl, 2004b; Thompson and Young, 2007]. Subgrid-scale parameterizations for LES are quite different in character because they attempt only to represent the effects Can Large Eddy Simulation Techniques Improve Mesoscale Rich Ocean Models?
Ultrasound in acute urinary retention and retroverted gravid uterus

In this issue of the Journal, Yang and Huang1 present a five-patient series exploring the pathophysiology of acute urinary retention in association with a gravid uterus. They report the largest number of cases of urinary retention during pregnancy, and as such should be congratulated. They attempt to characterize the sonographic findings of such a rare clinical event and conclude that the cause of retention is not compression of the urethra, but rather mechanical compression of the lower bladder. Urinary retention during pregnancy has been described in all three trimesters. It is an emergency condition and knowledge of the pathophysiology will help to provide a rational approach to the clinical problem. Retention during pregnancy can occur secondary to lumbar disc herniation, paraurethral abscess, breech presentation, ectopic pregnancy and conversion psychological disorder. A retroverted/retroflexed uterus is another predisposing factor for urinary retention during pregnancy. The incidence of urinary retention due to a retroverted uterus is 1.4%2. Although retroversion is often transient, the gravid, retroverted uterus can become impacted in the pelvis as it enlarges causing retention. Other factors that predispose the gravid uterus to become incarcerated within the pelvis are prior gynecological surgery, pelvic adhesions due to pelvic inflammatory disease and/or endometriosis, and leiomyoma. There are no simple diagnostic tests that help identify the cause of urinary retention during pregnancy. Delay in the diagnosis of retention can result in irreversible uterine ischemia and spontaneous miscarriage. Thus Yang and Huang’s report can be considered a landmark endeavor. The use of sonography as a non-invasive diagnostic tool to define the underlying cause of retention should be encouraged in a larger group of patients – and a multiinstitutional effort to accrue more data is needed. The use of cystoscopy as a diagnostic tool in this clinical problem has been suggested by some3. Because the cause of retention in pregnancy is external compression, I do not believe that cystoscopy can provide an answer. Further elucidation as to why these patients develop retention may lie in a videourodynamic test. Such a study would provide radiological real-time information regarding the anatomy of the lower urinary tract and identify the point of obstruction. Unfortunately, the use of radiation during fluoroscopy precludes its use as a standard diagnostic test during pregnancy.
EE 267 - Project proposal

Three dimensional (3D) displays are becoming popular consumer technologies. The 3D effect mainly comes from the projection of two respective images on right and left eyes. For example, some movie projectors superpose two different images on the same screen with orthogonal polarlization states so that viewers wearing polarlization glasses see different images with different eyes. Head-mounted displays exploit lenses with a near-eye display to directly display separate images to each eye. In the expense of their high-quality 3D effect, however, they require specialized hardware. Among such 3D technologies, anaglyph is the most inexpensive way for the projection of two different images. This method uses a conventional display or a printer and plastic red-cyan glasses for the separate projection. The display shows an image only with a red channel for a left eye and an image with green and blue channels for a right eye. The red-cyan glasses wore by the viewer block out the respective channels for each eye to decompose the superposed image. Although this simple setup provides a 3D effect, it lacks color preservation for both eyes due to the color filters. This lack is the main disadvantage of anaglyphs among others including color distortion, retinal rivalry and ghosting effect. To suppress these disadvantages, several algorithms have been developed for generating anaglyph images. In 2001, Dubois developed a least square method to minimize the color discrepancy between original stereoscopic images and generated anaglyph images in the CIE XYZ color space [1]. This XYZ anaglyph method significantly improved the color distortion and has been considered to be the state-of-the art method until recently. Following this work, McAllister et. al. performed the minimization of Euclidian distance in the CIE L*a*b* space, which produced better color perception due to the perceptual linearity in CIE L*a*b* space [2]. However, this L*a*b* anaglyph method is computationally expensive because it solves an iterative optimization problem for each pixel. To further improve the color perception, Li et al. proposed a method to minimize the color discrepancy in HSV color space [3]. In addition to its superior performance, their method significantly reduced the computational cost by finding an approximated closed-form solution for the minimization. Similarly, this type of color retaining algorithm has been developed for a projector in which color primaries are customized [4].
Phase Transformation Synthesis of Novel Ag2O/Ag2CO3 Heterostructures with High Visible Light Efficiency in Photocatalytic Degradation of Pollutants

Coreshell-like Ag2 O/Ag2 CO3 nanoheterostructures with tailored interface are fabricated by a facile, low-cost and one-step phase transformation method. The unique bandgap structure of the Ag2 O/Ag2 CO3 exhibits high separation efficiency of photogenerated electrons and holes, which effectively protects the Ag2 CO3 semiconductor to avoid its photoreduction and gives rise to high activity and stability in degradation of the typical water pollutants.
Business form classification using strings

Business forms are "linear" documents which can be accurately described by a one-dimensional data structure. This paper proposes a novel approach for form identification using strings. This application can be used as a basis for extension to other "linear" documents such as logos or line drawings. A set of known blank forms is stored in a database and incoming forms are automatically matched to one of these. In addition, forms which are not in the database can also be detected. A novel and simple method is used for matching by considering a distinctive "signature" for each document. This takes the shape of a string which describes the elements present on the form. Included are the location and size of lines, corners and blocks of text, quantised as discrete symbols. A specially adapted and efficient string edit distance calculation is then applied for matching. Unregistered forms can be detected by examining the unmatched elements between two strings. This novel string format makes it possible to extend the conventional one-dimensional representation possibilities of strings to a richer "one-and-a-half dimensional" structure and requires no training.
Interdependence of stroke survivors' recovery and their relatives' attitudes and health: A contribution to investigating the causal effects

Purpose. One goal of the study was to test specific hypotheses concerning the interdependence of the stroke survivors' recovery and their caregiving partners' attitudes and health. The other aim was to find an applicable method for investigating causal effects on the rehabilitation of chronically sick persons in longitudinal studies with medium-sized samples. Method. The recovery of 81 stroke survivors regarding the physical and mental functioning in everyday life and their caregiving partners' health and attitudes were assessed twice, once after the patients left the hospital and again one year later. We applied the structure equation modeling and the cross-lagged partial correlation analysis (CLPC) for testing causal effects. Results. Particularly stroke victims' cognitive and emotional recovery seems to be influenced by psychosocial factors such as the caregiving partners' acceptance of a post-stroke life-situation. In contrast to this, the research suggests that the patients' recovery regarding physical functioning is not substantially affected by the partners, rather the patients' difficulties with motor functioning influence their partners' health. Conclusions. Caregivers merit attention as part of rehabilitation interventions. We recommend the CLPC for investigating causal effects in the complex interdependence of chronically sick persons' convalescence and their family members' health and state of mind in medium-sized samples.
Advanced learning-based approaches for reflectarrays design

The problem of efficiently and effectively compute the response (i.e., reflection coefficients) of next-generation reflectarray elements with wide number of degrees-of-freedom is addressed in this work. Towards this end, a machine learning-based approach based on advanced Kriging strategies is exploited (instead of classical full-wave solvers) in order to predict the response of complex unit cells of interest for the design of high-performance reflectarrays. Preliminary numerical results aimed at comparing the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed methodology with respect to standard full-wave approaches are illustrated.
Survival of foetal spinal allografts into acute lesions of the adult dog spinal cord

SUMMARY In order to compensate the loss of motoneurons caused by neurodegenerative disease or spinal cord injury, solid pieces of foetal canin spinal cord from embryos at 30, 35 or 45 days of age were transplanted into focal aspiration lesions of the lumbar spinal cord of adult dogs. Concomitantly, a 10-15 cm autologous peripheral nerve graft was transplanted adjacent to the foetal transplant to stimulate and guide axogenesis of the transplanted neurons. This preliminary study shows that foetal spinal neurons can survive for at least four months when grafted in the spinal cord of adult dogs. However, despite immunosuppression to prevent rejection, viable allografts were observed in only three out of 8 grafted dogs. The results obtained allow us to conclude that embryo tissue taken between 30 and 35 days of gestation permits successful transplantation. The results of this experiment also suggest that for transplantation to work, the traumatism caused by surgery to the spinal cord must be as minor as possible.
The Assay of Bone Reaction after Implantation of Calcium Sulfate and a Composite of Calcium Sulfate and Calcium Phosphate

The in vivo implantation of calcium sulfate and a composite of calcium sulfate and calcium phosphate of the proximal epiphysis of tibia of the rabbit was investigated to evaluate biocompatibility, bioabsorbability and biodegradability. The materials were in situ for 6, 12 and 24 weeks in 3 different groups of rabbits in all 6 cases. Light microscopy reveals calcium sulfate in bone marrow is completely resorbed and replaced by connective tissue and fatty tissue. Significant osteogenesis is noted once calcium sulfate contacts with periosteum and endosteum. We do not recommend use of calcium sulfate as filler of bone defect because new bone formation is not ideal due to fast absorption of implant. A composite of calcium sulfate and calcium phosphate is slowly resorbed. The absorbed calcium sulfate will be used as materials of bone matrix. It will cause a porous effect in composite. The newly formed bone integrates into the implant along with the pore and contacts directly with crystals of calcium phosphate. Osteoblasts are in direct contact with implanted granules of calcium phosphate. There is no evidence of acute or chronic inflammation. Therefore a composite of calcium sulfate and calcium phosphate is considered a good choice of bone defect filler.
Replacing reprogramming factors with antibodies selected from autocrine antibody libraries

Signaling pathways initiated at the membrane establish and maintain cell fate during development and can be harnessed in the nucleus to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from differentiated cells. Yet, the impact of extracellular signaling on reprogramming to pluripotency has not been systematically addressed. Here, we screen a lentiviral library encoding ˜100 million secreted and membrane-bound antibodies and identify multiple antibodies that can replace Sox2/c-Myc or Oct4 during reprogramming. We show that one Sox2-replacing antibody initiates reprogramming by antagonizing the membrane-associated protein Basp1, thereby inducing nuclear factors WT1 and Esrrb/Lin28 independent of Sox2. By successively manipulating this pathway we identify three new methods to generate iPSCs. This study expands current knowledge of reprogramming methods and mechanisms and establishes unbiased selection from autocrine antibody libraries as a powerful orthogonal platform to discover new biologics and pathways regulating pluripotency and cell fate.
Detection and quantitation of Ehrlichia risticii genomic DNA in infected horses and snails by real-time PCR

A real-time quantitative PCR using the TaqMan fluorogenic detection system (TaqMan PCR) was established for identification of Ehrlichia risticii, the agent of Potomac horse fever (PHF). The TaqMan PCR identified an 85 base pair section of the 16S rRNA gene by use of a specific fluorogenic probe and two primers. This technique was specific for eight tested E. risticii strains. The TaqMan system identified 10 copies of a cloned section of the 16S rRNA gene of E. risticii. The sensitivity and specificity of the TaqMan PCR were similar to those of conventional nested PCR. The TaqMan PCR was evaluated on horses with infectious colitis and on freshwater stream snails collected from regions with a history of PHF. E. risticii could be detected in 22 of 153 (14.4%) horses with infectious colitis and in 25 of 234 (10.7%) snails in the TaqMan PCR. The same results were obtained in the conventional nested PCR. The Ehrlichia-load was in the range of 10,000–9,000,000 and 35,000–680,000,000 Ehrlichia equivalents per mg leukocyte DNA and snail DNA, respectively. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Influence of Environmental Constraints on Profit-Based Short-Term Thermal Scheduling

This paper is on the short-term thermal scheduling (STTS) problem, particularly concerning the new competitive and environmentally constrained electricity supply industry. On the one hand, within the electricity market, STTS has evolved from a minimum-cost policy in state-owned monopolistic companies to a profit-based policy under market conditions. On the other hand, as a consequence of growing environmental concerns, an unprecedented change points to a scenario where it is necessary to take into account the constraints related to the environment. We propose a multiobjective optimization (MO) approach to solve the profit-based STTS problem with environmental concerns. Two case studies are considered: the IEEE 30-bus system and a 75-bus system. Finally, conclusions are duly drawn.
Complete mitogenome of Pseudohemiculter dispar (Cyprinidae: Cultrinae)

The complete mitogenome was first determined for a minnow Pseudohemiculter dispar in this study. It is 16,621 bp in length, including 13 protein-coding genes, 2 rRNA genes, 22 tRNA genes, and 1 control region. Overall nucleotide base composition is 30.30% A, 27.10% C, 17.10% G, and 25.50% T, with a A+T bias. Except for the tRNA-Ser2 that lost the dihydrouridine arm and replaced with one 11-bp loop, the other 22 tRNA genes can fold into the typical cloverleaf secondary structures. The origin of light-strand replication (OL) was found between the tRNA-Asn and tRNA-Cys genes, while the termination-associated sequence (TAS) was found in the control region. Both OL and TAS can form the hairpin structure that acts as the signals participated in the mitochondrial DNA replication.