Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feature Based Correspondence: A Comparative Study on Image Matching Algorithms

Image matching and recognition are the crux of computer vision and have a major part to play in everyday lives. From industrial robots to surveillance cameras, from autonomous vehicles to medical imaging and from missile guidance to space exploration vehicles computer vision and hence image matching is embedded in our lives. This communication presents a comparative study on the prevalent matching algorithms, addressing their restrictions and providing a criterion to define the level of efficiency likely to be expected from an algorithm. The study includes the feature detection and matching techniques used by these prevalent algorithms to allow a deeper insight. The chief aim of the study is to deliver a source of comprehensive reference for the researchers involved in image matching, regardless of specific applications.
Nephrotoxicity of Bence-Jones proteins: correlation with endocytosis by BHK cells and intracellular movement

The aim of this investigation was to evaluate the endocytosis of two Bence-Jones proteins by renal cells in order to elucidate the interference of their physical and chemical characteristics on nephrotoxicity. Bence-Jones proteins (AK and GL) were purified and isolated from the urine of two patients with multiple myeloma. The isotype of both proteins was characterised as being human monoclonal lambda light chain. The AK protein presented mainly an Ip>7.0, a high content of galactose and a low amount of sialic acid molecules. On the other hand, the GL protein presented a single band with an Ip of 4.3, a higher level of sialic acid and a reduced amount of galactose, in comparison with the AK protein. Baby Hamster Kidney (BHK) cells were maintained in culture in bottles at 37oC, using DMEM culture media supplemented with 10% of calf serum with a pH of 7.4. Once the monolayer was observed to be confluent, the BHK cells were incubated with the two proteins, dissolved in a serum-free medium for 1, 5, 15, 30, 60 minutes and 24 hours. Control cells were established omitting the incubation with Bence-Jones proteins, but maintaining all of the other conditions. After, this the cells were washed, trypsinised, centrifuged and fixed in a solution of 4% paraformaldehyde and 0.5% glutaraldehyde on a 0.1 M, pH 7.4 phosphate buffer. Cells were processed for immunocytochemical reactions by using protein A coupled with colloidal gold and further silver enhancement. Semi-thin sections of the pellets were obtained and submitted to the cytochemical reactions. Detection of labelling was made by using light microscopy. It was observed that GL protein tended to be directed towards a perinuclear position, whereas the AK protein tended to suffer lysosomal deviation, suggesting that there is a direct contribution of physical and chemical characteristics on intracellular direction taken by Bence-Jones proteins.
Control of peroxisome proliferation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by ADR1, SNF1 (CAT1, CCR1) and SNF4 (CAT3)

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae ADR1 gene has recently been demonstrated to control transcription of several genes encoding peroxisomal proteins or proteins necessary for peroxisome formation. Therefore, the effect of two other genes (SNF1 (CAT1, CCR1) and SNF4 (CAT3)) known to control derepression of glucose‐repressible genes was studied. Levels of transcripts of genes encoding catalase A, fatty acid β‐oxidation enzymes and of the PAS1 gene are reduced in snf1 and snf4 mutants of ethanol as well as on oleic acid medium. By immunogold labelling with an antibody directed against peroxisomal thiolase, clusters of peroxisomes were detected in wild‐types cells, whereas smaller single peroxisomes were observed in adr1 mutant cells. Results of immunofluorescence experiments are consistent with these observations. No peroxisomes were detected in snf1 and snf4 mutants by immunogold labelling as well as by imunofluorescence.
E2F activity is regulated by cell cycle-dependent changes in subcellular localization

E2F directs the cell cycle-dependent expression of genes that induce or regulate the cell division process. In mammalian cells, this transcriptional activity arises from the combined properties of multiple E2F-DP heterodimers. In this study, we show that the transcriptional potential of individual E2F species is dependent upon their nuclear localization. This is a constitutive property of E2F-1, -2, and -3, whereas the nuclear localization of E2F-4 is dependent upon its association with other nuclear factors. We previously showed that E2F-4 accounts for the majority of endogenous E2F species. We now show that the subcellular localization of E2F-4 is regulated in a cell cycle-dependent manner that results in the differential compartmentalization of the various E2F complexes. Consequently, in cycling cells, the majority of the p107-E2F, p130-E2F, and free E2F complexes remain in the cytoplasm. In contrast, almost all of the nuclear E2F activity is generated by pRB-E2F. This complex is present at high levels during G1 but disappears once the cells have passed the restriction point. Surprisingly, dissociation of this complex causes little increase in the levels of nuclear free E2F activity. This observation suggests that the repressive properties of the pRB-E2F complex play a critical role in establishing the temporal regulation of E2F-responsive genes. How the differential subcellular localization of pRB, p107, and p130 contributes to their different biological properties is also discussed.
Cas Mediates Transcriptional Activation of the Serum Response Element by Src

ABSTRACT The Src substrate p130Cas is a docking protein containing an SH3 domain, a substrate domain that contains multiple consensus SH2 binding sites, and a Src binding region. We have examined the possibility that Cas plays a role in the transcriptional activation of immediate early genes (IEGs) by v-Src. Transcriptional activation of IEGs by v-Src occurs through distinct transcriptional control elements such as the serum response element (SRE). An SRE transcriptional reporter was used to study the ability of Cas to mediate Src-induced SRE activation. Coexpression of v-Src and Cas led to a threefold increase in SRE-dependent transcription over the level induced by v-Src alone. Cas-dependent activation of the SRE was dependent on the kinase activity of v-Src and the Src binding region of Cas. Signaling to the SRE is promoted by a serine-rich region within Cas and inhibited by the Cas SH3 domain. Cas-dependent SRE activation was accompanied by an increase in the level of active Ras and in the activity of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) Erk2; these changes were blocked by coexpression of dominant-negative mutants of the adapter protein Grb2. SRE activation was abrogated by coexpression of dominant-negative mutants of Ras, MAPK kinase (Mek1), and Grb2. Coexpression of Cas with v-Src enhanced the association of Grb2 with the adapter protein Shc and the protein tyrosine phosphatase Shp-2; coexpression of Shc or Shp-2 mutants significantly reduced SRE activation by Cas and v-Src. Cas-induced Grb2 association with Shp-2 and Shc may account for the Cas-dependent activation of the Ras/Mek/Erk pathway and SRE-dependent transcription. 14-3-3 proteins may also play a role in Cas-mediated signaling to the SRE. Overexpression of Cas was found to modestly enhance epidermal growth factor (EGF)-induced activation of the SRE. A Cas mutant lacking the Src binding region did not potentiate the EGF response, suggesting that Cas enhances EGF signaling by binding to endogenous cellular Src or another Src family member. These observations implicate Cas as a mediator of Src-induced transcriptional activation.
Comparison of four pain scales in patients with hip fracture or other lower limb trauma

Background: The applicability of the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) has been questioned in the assessment of pain in the elderly. We compared VAS with three other pain scales, Verbal Rating Scale (VRS), Red Wedge Scale (RWS) and Box Scale (BS), in hip fracture patients.
Optimization and uncertainty assessment of strongly nonlinear groundwater models with high parameter dimensionality

Highly parameterized and CPU‐intensive groundwater models are increasingly being used to understand and predict flow and transport through aquifers. Despite their frequent use, these models pose significant challenges for parameter estimation and predictive uncertainty analysis algorithms, particularly global methods which usually require very large numbers of forward runs. Here we present a general methodology for parameter estimation and uncertainty analysis that can be utilized in these situations. Our proposed method includes extraction of a surrogate model that mimics key characteristics of a full process model, followed by testing and implementation of a pragmatic uncertainty analysis technique, called null‐space Monte Carlo (NSMC), that merges the strengths of gradient‐based search and parameter dimensionality reduction. As part of the surrogate model analysis, the results of NSMC are compared with a formal Bayesian approach using the DiffeRential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm. Such a comparison has never been accomplished before, especially in the context of high parameter dimensionality. Despite the highly nonlinear nature of the inverse problem, the existence of multiple local minima, and the relatively large parameter dimensionality, both methods performed well and results compare favorably with each other. Experiences gained from the surrogate model analysis are then transferred to calibrate the full highly parameterized and CPU intensive groundwater model and to explore predictive uncertainty of predictions made by that model. The methodology presented here is generally applicable to any highly parameterized and CPU‐intensive environmental model, where efficient methods such as NSMC provide the only practical means for conducting predictive uncertainty analysis.
Robust Observer-Based Fault Detection and Isolation in the Standard Control Problem Framework

Abstract This paper deals with the design of robust fault detection and isolation observers where only a single observer is employed to isolate different faults. To this end, the problem of parameterizing such observers is shown to be equivalent to designing a structurally constrained controller in the standard control problem framework. Thereby, the problem is reformulated as a well known classical control problem, which enables the use of existing tools to optimize robustness with respect to arbitrary exogenous disturbances. To account for parametric uncertainties, an approximate model matching approach is used.
The Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) in a large UK population: 10-year follow-up in the EPIC-Norfolk prospective population study

Background The European Society of Cardiology endorses cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk stratification using the Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) algorithm, with separate algorithms for high-risk and low-risk countries. In the 2012 European Guidelines on CVD Prevention in Clinical Practice, the UK has been reclassified as a low-risk country. However, the performance of the SCORE algorithm has not been validated in the UK. Design We compared CVD mortality as predicted by SCORE with the observed CVD mortality in the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer-Norfolk (EPIC-Norfolk) prospective population study, a cohort representative of the general population. Methods Individuals without known CVD or diabetes mellitus, aged 39–65 years at baseline, were included in our analysis. CVD mortality was defined as death due to ischaemic heart disease, cardiac failure, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral artery disease and aortic aneurysm. Predicted CVD mortality was calculated at baseline using the SCORE high-risk and low-risk algorithms. Results A total of 15,171 individuals (57.1% female) with a mean age of 53.9 (SD 6.2) years were included. Predicted CVD mortality was 2.85% (95% confidence interval (CI) 2.80–2.90) with the SCORE high-risk algorithm and 1.55% (95% CI 1.52–1.58) with the low-risk algorithm. The observed 10-year CVD mortality was 1.25% (95% CI 1.08–1.44). Similar results were observed across sex and age subgroups. Conclusion In the large EPIC-Norfolk cohort representative of the UK population, the SCORE low-risk algorithm performed better than the high-risk algorithm in predicting 10-year CVD mortality. Our findings indicate that the UK has been correctly reclassified as a low-risk country.
Traffic grooming for minimizing wavelength usage in WDM networks

We consider the traffic grooming problem on general topology WDM networks. The problem is: given a set of t connections and their routes, and the grooming factor g, to find an optimal wavelength assignment and grooming such that the number of wavelengths required in the network is minimized. We first formulate this problem as an integer linear programming problem, and then propose a heuristics method to solve it. Our simulation results show that an increase of the grooming factor can considerably decrease the number of wavelengths required in the system.
An Analysis of Sampling for Filter-based Feature Extraction and AdaBoost Learning

Abstract: In this work a sampling scheme for filter-based feature extraction in the field of appearance-based object detection is analyzed. Optimized sampling radically reduces the number of features during the AdaBoost training process and better classification performance is achieved. The signal energy is used to determine an appropriate sampling resolution which then is used to determine the positions at which the features are calculated. The advantage is that these positions are distributed according to the signal properties of the training images. The approach is verified using an AdaBoost algorithm with Haar-like features for vehicle detection. Tests of classifiers, trained with different resolutions and a sampling scheme, are performed and the results are presented.
A Comparative Analysis of the Medical Tourism Industry in India and Thailand

Medical tourism is a relatively new industry which has risen in a big way over the last two decades. Globalisation in the highly lucrative healthcare sector has opened up new opportunities for the economies of India and Thailand. This thesis provides a descriptive and analytical overview of the Medical Tourism industry in India and Thailand. Approach: The author evaluates the sector in terms of Porter's Diamond model of National Competitiveness. The author has gathered data from available literature and from primary sources on the financial parameters of major local competitors in medical tourism. Findings: The author concludes that major competitors in medical tourism benefit from strong government support and rely heavily on the international market to fuel their growth.
Comparative Study between Physical Properties of Virgin Oil and Re-Refining Oil

The lubricating oils are essential for operating engine with high efficiency. Therefore, the physical properties of oil such as flash point, pour point, kinematic viscosity, specific gravity and the American Petroleum Institute are necessary to be studied to indicate good quality of the lubricating oil. In this study, we compare the physical properties of two virgin oils with re-refining oil. The results indicated slight differences in the re-refining oil properties in comparing to virgin oils due to larger values of specific gravity and carbon residue, and lower value of flash point, pour point, kinematic viscosity, and American Petroleum Institute.
Quantum dot-based nanosensors for diagnosis via enzyme activity measurement

Enzymes are essential in the human body, and the disorder of enzymatic activities has been associated with many different diseases and stages of disease. Luminescent semiconductor nanocrystals, also known as quantum dots (QDs), have garnered great attention in molecular diagnostics. Owing to their superior optical properties, tunable and narrow emissions, stable brightness and long lifetime, QD-based enzyme activity measurement has demonstrated improved detection sensitivity, which is considered particularly valuable for early disease diagnosis. Recent studies have also shown that QD-based nanosensors are capable of probing multiple enzyme activities simultaneously. This review highlights the current development of QD-based nanosensors for enzyme detection. The enzyme–QD hybrid system, equipped with unique electronic, optical and catalytic properties, is envisioned as a potential solution in addressing challenges in diagnostics and therapeutics.
Nitrate accumulation in leafy vegetables and its relationship with water

Abstract Present studies show that nitrate accumulation is the major factor influencing the water uptake by vegetables, but there is lack of knowledge on how the relationship between nitrate and water concentrations in different vegetable tissues. We determined nitrate accumulation and water content in vegetables of rape, Chinese cabbage, and spinach under different nitrogen levels (experiment I), 29 spinach cultivars (experiment II), and 27 rape cultivars (experiment III). The results from experiments I–III showed a highly linear relationship between nitrate accumulation and water content, and the levels thereof in different organs of the vegetables revealed that the petiole exhibited the best correlation between them compared with the root and leaf blade. These suggest that (1) vegetables with high water content have high nitrate content, (2) water content in the petiole can be used to screen cultivars with low levels of nitrate accumulation, and (3) increasing soil water content in agronomic practice is essential to decreasing nitrate accumulation in vegetables.
Correlation Curves: Measures of Association as Functions of Covariate Values

For experiments where the strength of association between a response variable Y and a covariate X is different over different regions of values for the covariate X, we propose local nonparametric dependence functions which measure the strength of association between Y and X as a function of X = x. Our dependence functions are extensions of Galton's idea of strength of co-relation from the bivariate normal case to the nonparametric case. In particular, a dependence function is obtained by expressing the usual Galton-Pearson correlation coefficient in terms of the regression line slope ,3 and the residual variance o,2 and then replacing ,3 and 72 by a nonparametric regression slope 13(x) and a nonparametric residual variance o-2(x) = var(YIx), respectively. Our local dependence functions are standardized nonparametric regression curves which provide universal scale-free measures of the strength of the relationship between variables in nonlinear models. They share most of the properties of the correlation coefficient and they reduce to the usual correlation coefficient in the bivariate normal case. For this reason we call them correlation curves. We show that, in a certain sense, they quantify Lehmann's notion of regression dependence. Finally, the correlation curve concept is illustrated using data from a study of the relationship between cholesterol levels x and triglyceride concentrations y of heart patients.
Factors associated with delayed intracerebral hemorrhage after superficial temporal artery‐middle cerebral artery bypass in steno‐occlusive cerebrovascular diseases

Background Intra‐cerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a devastating complication that can result from superficial temporal artery‐middle cerebral artery (STA‐MCA) bypass in patients undergoing treatment for steno‐occlusive cerebrovascular disease (CVD). There is a clinical need to find the possible risk factors to prevent ICH, as it is a significant cause of mortality and morbidity. The aim of the study was to investigate the factors associated with delayed ICH after STA‐MCA bypass in patients with steno‐occlusive CVDs. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the records of 163 patients seen from 2002 to 2011 with STA‐MCA bypass for steno‐occlusive cerebrovascular diseases at the Department of Neurosurgery, Xuan Wu Hospital, Beijing. Demographic and clinical data, including age, gender, vascular risk factors, preoperative syndrome, preoperative National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), ipsilateral ischemic lesions, classification of steno‐occlusive CVDs, donor branches of STA, graft patency, postoperative hypertension, and postoperative‐increased MCA velocity were recorded and analyzed. Binary Logistic regression served to identify factors associated with delayed ICH after STA‐MCA bypass. Results We identified 8 (4.9%) patients with delayed ICH after STA‐MCA bypass. Patients with hypertension, preoperative stroke, ipsilateral ischemic lesions, postoperative hypertension and postoperative‐increased MCA velocity were significantly more prone to experiencing delayed ICH after STA‐MCA bypass. Logistic regression analysis shows ipsilateral ischemic lesions, postoperative hypertension, and postoperative‐increased MCA velocity remained independent predictors for delayed ICH after STA‐MCA bypass. Conclusion Despite the varied associated factors in patients with steno‐occlusive CVDs, ipsilateral ischemic lesions, postoperative hypertension, and postoperative‐increased MCA velocity could be associated with delayed ICH after STA‐MCA bypass.
Facial Expression Recognition Based on Facial Region Segmentation and Modal Value Approach

SUMMARY This paper presents a facial expression recognition algo-rithm based on segmentation of a face image into four facial regions (eyes-eyebrows, forehead, mouth and nose). In order to unify the di ﬀ erent results obtained from facial region combinations, a modal value approach that employs the most frequent decision of the classiﬁers is proposed. The robustness of the algorithm is also evaluated under partial occlusion, using four di ﬀ erent types of occlusion (half left / right, eyes and mouth occlusion). The proposed method employs sub-block eigenphases algorithm that uses the phase spectrum and principal component analysis (PCA) for feature vector estimation which is fed to a support vector machine (SVM) for classiﬁcation. Experimental results show that using modal value approach improves the average recognition rate achieving more than 90% and the performance can be kept high even in the case of partial occlusion by excluding occluded parts in the feature extraction process.
Characterization of the cereulide NRPS alpha-hydroxy acid specifying modules: activation of alpha-keto acids and chiral reduction on the assembly line.

Several nonribosomal peptide natural products are composites of alpha-hydroxy acid and alpha-amino acid monomers. Cereulide, the emetic toxin from the human pathogen Bacillus cereus, and valinomycin, from Streptomyces spp. , are closely related macrocyclic K+ ionophores. The macrocyclic core of each natural product contains alternating peptide (six) and ester (six) bonds, and their cyclododecadepsipeptide structures consist of a tetradepsipeptide unit repeated three times. Here we overexpress the cereulide NRPS alpha-hydroxy acid specifying modules from CesA and CesB and demonstrate that each contains an alpha-keto acid activating adenylation domain and a chiral alpha-ketoacyl-S-carrier protein reductase (alpha-KR). The logic used by the cereulide NRPS is likely at work in the valinomycin NRPS and may be the general strategy used in bacterial NRPSs to form alpha-hydroxy acid containing natural products.