Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attribute Openings, Thinnings, and Granulometries

In this paper we establish an attribute-based approach to openings and closings and provide an efficient algorithm for their implementation on gray-scale images. Attribute openings are similar to openings by reconstruction since they are connected component transformations. However, attribute openings are more general because they can describe generalized shape features and openings that have no shape-bias. This work is then extended to gray-scale granuolmetries and to include gray-scale thinnings, which are nonincreasing filters. The use of nonincreasing gray-scale thinnings is seen as an important generalization because it allows the use of nonincreasing shape descriptors such as compactness and eccentricity to be applied to filter gray-scale images. Applications are then given to illustrate the performance of the filters proposed.
LIA: an intelligent advisor for e-learning

Intelligent e-learning systems have revolutionized online education by providing individualized and personalized instruction for each learner. Nevertheless, until now very few systems were able to leave academic laboratories and be integrated into real commercial products. One of these few exceptions is the Learning Intelligent Advisor (LIA) described in this article, built on results coming from several research projects and currently integrated in a complete e-learning solution named Intelligent Web Teacher (IWT). The purpose of this article is to describe how LIA works and cooperates with IWT in the provisioning of individualized e-learning experiences. Defined algorithms and underlying models are described as well as architectural aspects related to the integration in IWT. Results of experimentations with real users are discussed to demonstrate the benefits of LIA as an add-on in online learning.
Fibular Collateral Ligament Anatomical Reconstructions

Background After the development and biomechanical validation of an anatomical fibular collateral ligament reconstruction using a semitendinosus graft, this technique has subsequently been applied clinically. Hypothesis An anatomical reconstruction of a grade III fibular collateral ligament tear using a semitendinosus graft restores the knee to near-normal lateral compartment stability and results in improved patient outcomes. Study Design Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods A prospective study of 20 patients with an average age of 24 years (range, 16-45 years) who had an anatomical reconstruction of the fibular collateral ligament using a semitendinosus graft was performed. All patients were preoperatively and postoperatively evaluated with the modified Cincinnati and International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) subjective scoring systems, with the IKDC objective subscores for lateral and posterolateral knee stability and with varus stress radiographs. The patients were followed for an average of 2 years. Results Sixteen patients were available for follow-up. Six of the patients had an isolated fibular collateral ligament reconstruction. The average preoperative modified Cincinnati score was 28.2, and the average IKDC subjective score was 34.7. Postoperatively, there was a significant improvement of both the modified Cincinnati score (to 88.5) and the IKDC subjective outcome score (to 88.1). The Cincinnati component symptom and functional subscores were also evaluated. The average preoperative symptom subscore was 9.1 and the functional subscore was 19.1. Postoperatively, there was a significant improvement in both scores; symptom subscores improved to 43.0 and functional subscores improved to 45.5. Preoperative varus stress radiographs demonstrated an average differential of 3.9 mm (range, 2.5-6.2 mm) of lateral compartment gapping between the injured and noninjured knee. At an average of 2 years postoperatively, varus stress radiographs demonstrated an average side-to-side lateral compartment gap differential of —0.4 mm. Conclusion An anatomical fibular collateral ligament reconstruction using a semitendinosus graft results in improved patient outcomes and near-normal lateral compartment stability in patients with grade III injuries of the fibular collateral ligament.
Climbing the walls

Researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign are building a robot modeled on the lowly cockroach. If they're successful, their creation, called Biobot, will learn to scramble over treacherous terrain, crawl into crevices, and adapt to the loss of one or more of its legs-just like its juice-and-carapace cousin lurking under your sink. Such mechanical creatures could prove invaluable for such diverse tasks as conducting mining surveys in rugged mountains, working with hazardous nuclear materials, or even exploring distant planets. Currently, they have an 8 inch high, 22 inch long aluminum prototype, 31 inches long with legs extended called Protobot that can stand on its own and resist perturbation. The team also has computer simulations for modeling the behavior of both the biological and mechanical creatures. In coming months, before they scale their design to the full size 4 foot long Biobot, they hope to have the robot walking and then walking adaptively. >
Formula for the Viscosity of a Glycerol−Water Mixture

An empirical formula is proposed for the calculation of the viscosity of glycerol−water mixture for mass concentrations in the range of 0−100% and temperatures varying from 0 to 100 °C. It compares well with three databases available in the literature, and its application procedure is also simpler than other previously developed correlations.
Evaluation of short-time speech-based intelligibility metrics

The Speech Transmission Index (STI) is based on acoustic measurements in environments and has been shown to be correlated with speech intelligibility under a wide range of acoustic conditions (Houtgast & Steeneken 1984). It is a weighted average of metrics derived from envelope signals in multiple frequency bands spanning the speech spectrum. A variety of methods have been proposed to compute the STI (Houtgast & Steeneken 1971; Steeneken & Houtgast 1980; Ludvigsen 1987; Drullman et al. 1994a, b; Payton et al. 1994; Drullman 1995; IEC 1998; Payton & Braida 1999; Payton et al. 2002; Goldsworthy & Greenberg 2004). Some of these methods use speech as the test stimulus rather than artificially modulated noise as originally proposed by Houtgast and Steeneken (1985). Many of the speech-based techniques have been shown to provide the same result as the traditional STI (Ludvigsen et al. 1990; Payton et al. 2002), which is based on modulation reductions in intensitymodulated noise and as a theoretically derived STI which is obtained from weighted signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in seven octave bands and room reverberation time (RT) (Houtgast & Steeneken 1985). To date, all speech-based approaches have used speech materials lasting at least a minute or two to generate metrics correlated with long-term speech intelligibility. Consequently, they have not been used to predict short-time changes in intelligibility due to time-varying environments such as fluctuating background noise. The current work investigates the ability of two speech-based methods to track short-term STI results by using speech segments of various lengths to compute results for environments with stationary speech-shaped noise, speechshaped noise plus reverberation or multi-talker babble. The methods that will be evaluated are the Envelope Regression (ER) and the Normalized Correlation (NC) methods. The ER method is based on the speech-based STI method proposed by Ludvigsen et al. (1990). The NC method was proposed by Goldsworthy and Greenberg (2004) who also analyzed the long-term characteristics of both metrics.
DYNAMIC AIR SAMPLING OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS USING SOLID PHASE MICROEXTRACTION

A new dynamic air sampling system was devised and evaluated in conjunction with solid phase microextraction (SPME) fiber materials for extracting odor-causing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) present in swine building environments. Utilizing a standard solution consisting of 11 compounds (i.e., volatile fatty acids, indoles, and phenol), sampling times, volumes, and flow rates were adjusted to establish optimal extraction conditions. Results indicated that the sampling system was effective with the Carboxen/Polydimethylsiloxane (CAR/PDMS) fiber in extracting all 11 standard compounds. The best sampling conditions for the extraction were a 100-mL sampling vial subjected to a continuous flow of 100 mL/min for 60 min. The gas chromatographic analysis showed that the reproducibility was within acceptable ranges for all compounds (RSD=4.24–17.26% by peak areas). In addition, field tests revealed that the sampling system was capable of detecting over 60 VOCs in a swine house whose major components were identified by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and by their retention times as volatile fatty acids, phenols, indole, and skatole. The field tests also showed that considerably different levels of VOCs were present in various parts of the swine building.
Decoupling the role of inertia and gravity on particle dispersion

Turbulent gas flows laden with small, dense particles are encountered in a wide number of important applications in both industrial settings and aerodynamics applications. Particle interactions with the underlying turbulent flow are exceedingly complex and, consequently, difficult to accurately model. The difficulty arises primarily due to the fact that response of a particle to the local environment is dictated by turbulence properties in the reference frame moving with the particle (particle-Lagrangian). The particle-Lagrangian reference frame is in turn dependent upon the particle relaxation time (time constant) as well as gravitational drift. The combination of inertial and gravitational effects in this frame complicates our ability to accurately predict particle-laden flows since measurements in the particle-Lagrangian reference frame are difficult to obtain. Therefore, in this work we will examine separately the effects of inertia and gravitational drift on particle dispersion through a combination of physical and numerical experiments. In this study, particle-Lagrangian measurements will be obtained in physical experiments using stereo image velocimetry. Gravitational drift will be varied in the variable-g environments of the NASA DC-9 and in the zero-g environment at the drop tower at NASA-Lewis. Direct numerical simulations will be used to corroborate the measurements from the variable-g experiments. We expect that this work will generate new insight into the underlying physics of particle dispersion and will, in turn, lead to more accurate models of particle transport in turbulent flows.
Affective asynchrony and the measurement of the affective attitude component

How should the affective component of attitudes be conceptualised and measured? Three studies compared measures based on different conceptualisations. Affective attitudes can be: (1) holistic reactions to objects or responses derived from spontaneous images of the objects; (2) bipolar or unipolar in structure; and finally (3) discrete emotional evaluations (e.g., angry, happy) or more general valenced evaluations (e.g., good, bad). It is recommended that further research with self-reports of the affective component include the holistic, unipolar, discrete emotion (HUE) evaluative measures developed in this paper in combination with a holistic bipolar valenced evaluation measure. Our results also supported a hypothesised affective asynchrony effect. Specifically, an affective measure that required more deliberative thought reduced the correspondence between the affective component and intended behaviours/attitudes. Implications for how the affective component may be represented in memory and the impact of that representation on constructed attitudes are discussed briefly.
Connexin30 null and conditional connexin26 null mice display distinct pattern and time course of cellular degeneration in the cochlea

Mutations in connexin26 (Cx26) and Cx30 are the most common cause of nonsyndromic inherited deafness in humans. To understand the underlying molecular mechanisms, we investigated the pattern and time course of cellular degeneration in the cochlea of conditional Cx26 (cCx26) null and Cx30 null mice. In cCx26 null mice, initial degeneration was observed around postnatal day 14 in outer hair cells (OHCs) and supporting cells surrounding the OHCs. All cells in the middle turn organ of Corti were lost 1 month after birth, and degeneration gradually spread to the basal and apical turns. Most spiral ganglion (SG) neurons in the middle and basal turns disappeared in the first 3 months, whereas significant amounts of apical SG neurons survived. In the cochlea of Cx30 null mice, survival of most inner HCs, supporting cells, and SG neurons was observed for up to 18 months. The most severe degeneration was found in apical SG neurons and OHCs. OHC loss followed a slow time course and a base to apex gradient. Gross structures of the endolymphatic space and stria vascularis observed at the light microscope level were unchanged in either Cx null mouse models. This study revealed that cellular degeneration in the cochlea of cCx26 null mice was dramatically more rapid and widespread than that observed in Cx30 null mice. The radically different pathogenesis processes displayed by cCx26 and Cx30 null mice suggest heterogeneous underlying deafness mechanisms, despite co‐assembly of Cx26 and Cx30 in forming gap junctions in the cochlea. J. Comp. Neurol. 516:569–579, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Induction of Mixed Chimerism for Reversal of Autoimmunity in Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) results from autoimmune attack of insulin-producing pancreatic islet β cells. T1D autoimmunity is associated with particular MHC or HLA types in mouse or humans. T1D autoimmunity arises from defects in both central negative selection and peripheral regulation of autoreactive T cells as well as intrinsic defects of B cells. Current therapies that target at improving peripheral tolerance of autoreactive T cells or depleting B cells have not yielded significant therapeutic effects in reversal of autoimmunity in T1D patients. Induction of mixed chimerism with bone marrow cells from non-autoimmune donors has been recently indicated to be a curative therapy for reversal of autoimmunity in T1D. In this review, we have summarized and discussed T1D related abnormalities in the hematopoietic compartment, regimens that induce mixed chimerism in the T1D animal model of non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice, and how mixed chimerism corrects central negative selection and peripheral tolerance of autoreactive T and B cells.
Structure and reorientational dynamics of angiotensin I and II: a microscopic physical insight

We present a study of structural analysis and reorientational dynamics of Angiotensin I (AngI) and Angiotensin II (AngII) in aqueous solution. AngI is a decapeptide that acts as a precursor to the octapeptide AngII in the Renin–Angiotensin–Aldosterone system for blood pressure regulation. Experimental structural characterization of these peptides, carried out with circular dichroism and infrared spectroscopy, showed that the angiotensins are mostly disordered but exhibit a measurable population of ordered structures at room temperature. Interestingly, these change from the unordered polyproline-like conformation for AngI to a more compact and ordered conformation for AngII as the length of the peptide is decreased. Anisotropy decay measurements with picosecond time resolution indicate slower overall tumbling and a greater amplitude of internal motion in AngI compared to AngII, consistent with more compact and less flexible structure of the active form of the peptide. To model the microscopic behavior of the peptides, 2-μs molecular dynamics simulation trajectories were generated for AngI and AngII, at 300 K using the OPLS-AA potential and SPC water. The structures sampled in the simulations mostly agree with the experimental results, showing the prevalence of disordered structures, turns, and polyproline helices. Additionally, the computational results predict fewer sampled conformations, tighter side-chain packing and marked increase of Phe8 solvent accessibility upon AngI truncation to AngII. Our combined approach of experiment and extensive computer simulation thus yields new information on the conformational dynamics of the angiotensins, helping provide insight into the structural basis for the potency of AngI relative to AngII.
Beliefs about sexual behavior and other predictors of Papanicolaou smear screening among Latinas and Anglo women.

BACKGROUND Latinas use cervical cancer prevention services less often than Anglo women. OBJECTIVE To assess whether beliefs about cervical cancer influence the use of Papanicolaou (Pap) smears among Latinas and Anglo women in Orange County, California. METHODS We conducted a telephone survey using the computer-assisted telephone interview system, randomdigit dialing, and an instrument adapted from national surveys and a previous ethnographic study. RESULTS Participants included 1225 noninstitutionalized Spanish- or English-speaking respondents 18 years or older-803 Latinas (533 immigrants and 270 US born) and 422 Anglo women. Latina immigrants were more likely than US-born Latinas or Anglo women to believe that a variety of behaviors were risk factors for this disease. These behaviors included medically accepted risk factors such as early initiation of sexual intercourse (53% vs 41% vs 39%; P < .01) as well as unaccepted factors such as having sex during menstruation (56% vs 10% vs 3%; P < .01). Logistic regression analysis revealed that Latinas who held such beliefs were significantly less likely than others to report receiving a Pap smear within the past 3 years. Other independent predictors of Pap smear use included health insurance status, martial status, and acculturation. CONCLUSIONS Latinas have culturally based beliefs about cervical cancer that reflect the moral framework within which they interpret diseases and that may influence their use of Pap smears. These beliefs are most prevalent among Latina immigrants. Because the known risk factors for cervical cancer are primarily related to sexual activities and because such activities are private and sensitive for many Latinas, physicians should be cautious when counseling these patients about the cause of this disease. Indeed, stressing the sexual transmission of cervical cancer could even discourage Latina immigrants from obtaining appropriate Pap smear screening.
Patterns of Protective Factors in an Intervention for the Prevention of Suicide and Alcohol Abuse with Yup’ik Alaska Native Youth

Background: Community-based participatory research (CBPR) with American Indian and Alaska Native communities creates distinct interventions, complicating cross-setting comparisons. Objective: The objective of this study is to develop a method for quantifying intervention exposure in CBPR interventions that differ in their forms across communities, permitting multi-site evaluation. Methods: Attendance data from 195 youth from three Yup’ik communities were coded for the specific protective factor exposure of each youth, based on information from the intervention manual. The coded attendance data were then submitted to latent class analysis to obtain participation patterns. Results: Five patterns of exposure to protective factors were obtained: Internal, External, Limits, Community/family, and Low Protection. Patterns differed significantly by community and youth age. Conclusion: Standardizing interventions by the functions an intervention serves (protective factors promoted) instead of their forms or components (specific activities) can assist in refining CBPR interventions and evaluating effects in culturally distinct settings.
Analysis of spectral projectors in one-dimensional domains

In this paper we analyze a class of projection operators with values in a subspace of polynomials. These projection operators are related to the Hubert spaces involved in the numerical analysis of spectral methods. They are, in the first part of the paper, the standard Sobolev spaces and, in the second part, some weighted Sobolev spaces, the weight of which is related to the orthogonality relation satisfied by the Chebyshev polynomials. These results are used to study the approximation of a model fourth-order problem.
E-textiles for autonomous location awareness

In this paper, we describe an autonomous, wearable electronic textile location awareness system that will determine a user's location within a building given a map of that building. The system uses a moderate number of ultrasonic range transceivers as the sensing elements. Given a set of range readings from these sensors, the system attempts to match those actual readings to expected readings associated with a set of candidate locations for the wearer. These expected readings are calculated using a simulation model of the propagation of ultrasonic signals within a building. An additional algorithm is given for determining the wearer's movement between rooms, allowing for the uncertainty associated with sensor readings in complex, multiroom environments. A wearable prototype system is described and results from this system in a variety of situations are presented.
The most influential journals: Impact Factor and Eigenfactor

Progressin science is driven by the publication of novel ideas and experiments, most usually in peer-reviewed journals, but nowadays increasingly just on the internet. We all have our own ideas of which are the most influential journals, but is there a simple statistical metric of the influence of a journal? Most scientists would immediately say Impact Factor (IF), which is published online in Journal Citation Reports ® as part of the ISI Web of Knowledge sm (www.thomsonreuters.com/products\_services/scientific/Journal\_Citation_Reports). The IF is the average number of citations in a year given to those papers in a journal published in the previous 2 years. But what, for example, is the most influential of the 3 following journals: A, which publishes just 1 paper a year and has a stellar IF of 100; B, which published 1,000,000 papers per year and has a dismal IF of 0.1 but 100,000 citations; or C, which publishes 5,000 papers a year with an IF of 10? Unless there is a very odd distribution of citations in B, or A has a paradigm-shifting paper like the …
Religion and Coping in Older Adults

Abstract Religion is an important coping resource for many older adults. This paper briefly describes social work's religious roots, makes a distinction between religion and spirituality for older adults, and presents empirical data showing how older adults employ religious strategies to cope with life challenge. The study reports on religious coping in an available sample of 79 European American and African American older adults residing in urban community dwellings. Implications suggest how social workers and others may support religious coping.