Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unsupervised Hashing with Neural Trees for Image Retrieval and Person Re-Identification

Recent vision studies have shown that learning compact codes is of paramount importance to improve the massive data processing while significantly reducing storage footprints. This has recently yielded to a surge of effort in learning compact and robust hash functions for image retrieval tasks. The majority of the existing literature has been devoted to the exploration of deep hash functions, typically under supervised scenarios. Unsupervised hashing methods have been less attractive due to the their difficulty in achieving satisfactory performance for the same objective. In this work, we propose a simple yet effective unsupervised hashing framework, which exploits the powerful visual representation capabilities of deep architectures and combines this within a tree structure involving a multi-path scheme. The key advantage of the proposed method is the ability to bring in a divide-and-conquer approach to reduce the complexity of the classification problem at each node of the tree without the need of labeled data. To validate the proposed solution, experimental results on two benchmark datasets for image retrieval and person re-identification have been computed.
Dose- and Glucose-Dependent Effects of Amino Acids on Insulin Secretion from Isolated Mouse Islets and Clonal INS-1E Beta-Cells.

BACKGROUND The influence of glucose and fatty acids on beta-cell function is well established whereas little is known about the role of amino acids (AAs). METHODS Islets isolated from NMRI mice were incubated overnight. After preincubation, isolated islets as well as clonal INS-1E beta-cells were incubated for 60 min in a modified Krebs Ringer buffer containing glucose and AAs. RESULTS At 16.7 mmol/l (mM) glucose, L-arginine, L-lysine, L-alanine, L-proline, L-leucine, and L-glutamine potentiated glucose-stimulated insulin secretion dose-dependently, while DL-homocysteine inhibited insulin secretion. Maximal insulin stimulation was obtained at 20 mM L-proline, L-lysine, L-alanine, L-arginine (islets: 2.5 to 6.7 fold increase; INS-1E cells: 1.6 to 2.2 fold increase). L-glutamine and L-leucine only increased glucose-stimulated (16.7 mM) insulin secretion (INS-1E cells: 1.5 and 1.3 fold, respectively) at an AA concentration of 20 mM. Homocysteine inhibited insulin secretion both at 5.6 mM and 16.7 mM glucose. At glucose levels ranging from 1.1 to 25 mM, the equimolar concentration of 10 mM, L-proline, L-lysine, L-arginine increased insulin secretion from mouse islets and INS-1E cells at all glucose levels applied, with a maximal effect obtained at 25 mM glucose. At a concentration of 10 mM, L-arginine and L-lysine had the highest insulinotropic potency among the AAs investigated. CONCLUSION L-arginine, L-lysine, L-alanine, L-proline, L-leucine and L-glutamine acutely stimulate insulin secretion from mouse islets and INS-1E cells in a dose- and glucose-dependent manner, whereas DL-homocysteine inhibits insulin release.
A Highly Efficient Composite Class-AB–AB Miller Op-Amp With High Gain and Stable From 15 pF Up To Very Large Capacitive Loads

In this paper, a highly power-efficient class-AB–AB Miller op-amp is discussed. The structure uses <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g_{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> enhancement based on local common-mode feedback to provide class-AB operation with enhanced effective <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g_{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, open-loop gain, unity-gain frequency, and slew rate (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$SR$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) without significant increase in quiescent power consumption. Utilization of a nonlinear load leads to large symmetric positive and negative <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$SR\text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Stability over an extremely wide range of capacitive loads is achieved through a combination of Miller and phase-lead compensations. The unity-gain frequency does not show sensitivity to capacitive load values. A test chip prototype fabricated in 0.18-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> CMOS technology shows 90.8-dB open-loop gain, 12.5-MHz bandwidth for a 25-pF load capacitance, and a factor <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$60~SR$ </tex-math></inline-formula> enhancement with maximum output current close to 1-mA and 43-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{A}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> total static current.
What are the perceptions about running and knee joint health among the public and healthcare practitioners in Canada?

Objectives To evaluate the perceptions of the general public and healthcare practitioners (HCP) in Canada about the relationship between running and knee joint health, and to explore HCP`s usual recommendations to runners with knee osteoarthritis (KOA). Methods Non-runners and runners (with and without KOA) and HCP completed an online survey regarding the safety of running for knee joint health. HCP also provided information related to usual clinical recommendations. Proportions of agreement were compared between non-runners and runners. Results A total of 114 non-runners, 388 runners and 329 HCP completed the survey. Overall, running was perceived as detrimental for the knee joint by 13.1% of the general public, while 25.9% were uncertain. More uncertainty was reported regarding frequent (33.9%) and long-distance (43.6%) running. Statistical analyses revealed greater proportions of non-runners perceiving running negatively compared with runners. Overall, 48.4% believed that running in the presence of KOA would lead to disease progression, while 53.1% believed running would lead to premature arthroplasty. In HCP, 8.2%, 9.1% and 22.2% perceived that running in general, running frequently, or running long-distances are risk factors for KOA, respectively. 37.1% and 2.7% of HCP typically recommended patients with KOA to modify their running training or to quit running, respectively. Conclusion High rates of uncertainty among the general public and HCP in Canada outline the need for further studies about running and knee joint health. Filling knowledge gaps will help inform knowledge translation strategies to better orientate the general public and HCP about the safety of running for knee joint health.
Design Issues of Energy-Efficient Access Methods for Cellular IoT Networks

In this paper, we review the current developments in cellular IoT networks and focus on the performance of LoRa. We discuss the main design choices for possible enhancement of LoRa and the possibility of its integration within 5G MTC that need to support scalable and energy-efficient access. The paper is oriented towards an open discussion of possible improvements to such access methods.
Coordination of cell migration mediated by site-dependent cell–cell contact

Significance Cell–cell contact-mediated responses play a key role in coordinating cell migration. The conventional view has emphasized repulsive responses, based primarily on studies of head-on collisions. Using micropatterned substrates to facilitate various modes of collision, we report that cells migrate toward their neighbors upon contact with tails. This response, referred to as contact following of locomotion (CFL), is found with both epithelial and mesenchymal cells and is reminiscent of the behavior of Dictyostelium discoideum during stream formation. Pharmacological studies implicate the Wnt signaling pathway, and suggest that CFL is necessary for collective migration. CFL may thus represent a critical aspect of diverse biological phenomena that involve collective migration, such as wound healing, tissue development, and metastasis. Contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL), the repulsive response of cells upon cell–cell contact, has been the predominant paradigm for contact-mediated responses. However, it is difficult for CIL alone to account for the complex behavior of cells within a multicellular environment, where cells often migrate in cohorts such as sheets, clusters, and streams. Although cell–cell adhesion and mechanical interactions play a role, how individual cells coordinate their migration within a multicellular environment remains unclear. Using micropatterned substrates to guide cell migration and manipulate cell–cell contact, we show that contacts between different regions of cells elicit different responses. Repulsive responses were limited to interaction with the head of a migrating cell, while contact with the tail of a neighboring cell promoted migration toward the tail. The latter behavior, termed contact following of locomotion (CFL), required the Wnt signaling pathway. Inhibition of the Wnt pathway disrupted not only CFL but also collective migration of epithelial cells, without affecting the migration of individual cells. In contrast, inhibition of myosin II with blebbistatin disrupted the migration of both individual epithelial cells and collectives. We propose that CFL, in conjunction with CIL, plays a major role in guiding and coordinating cell migration within a multicellular environment.
Tungsten-Embedded Graphene: Theoretical Study on a Potential High-Activity Catalyst toward CO Oxidation

The oxidation mechanism of CO on W-embedded graphene was investigated by M06-2X density functional theory. Two models of tungsten atom embedded in single and double vacancy (W-SV and W-DV) graphene sheets were considered. It was found that over W-SV-graphene and W-DV-graphene, the oxidation of CO prefers to Langmuir-Hinshelwood (LH) and Eley-Rideal (ER) mechanism, respectively. The two surfaces exhibit different catalytic activity during different reaction stages. The present results imply that W-embedded graphene is a promising catalyst for CO oxidation, which provides a useful reference for the design of a high-efficiency catalyst in detecting and removing of toxic gases.
Analyzing Gaze Behavior and Dialogue Act during Turn-taking for Estimating Empathy Skill Level

We explored the gaze behavior towards the end of utterances and dialogue act (DA), i.e., verbal-behavior information indicating the intension of an utterance, during turn-keeping/changing to estimate empathy skill levels in multiparty discussions. This is the first attempt to explore the relationship between such a combination. First, we collected data on Davis' Interpersonal Reactivity Index (which measures empathy skill level), utterances that include the DA categories of Provision, Self-disclosure, Empathy, Turn-yielding, and Others, and gaze behavior from participants in four-person discussions. The results of analysis indicate that the gaze behavior accompanying utterances that include these DA categories during turn-keeping/changing differs in accordance with people's empathy skill levels. The most noteworthy result was that speakers with low empathy skill levels tend to avoid making eye contact with the listener when the DA category is Self-disclosure during turn-keeping. However, they tend to maintain eye contact when the DA category is Empathy. A listener who has a high empathy skill level often looks away from the speaker during turn-changing when the DA category of a speaker's utterance is Provision or Empathy. There was also no difference in gaze behavior between empathy skill levels when the DA category of the speaker's utterance was turn-yielding. From these findings, we constructed and evaluated models for estimating empathy skill level using gaze behavior and DA information. The evaluation results indicate that using both gaze behavior and DA during turn-keeping/changing is effective for estimating an individual's empathy skill level in multi-party discussions.
Low-protein vegetarian diet with alpha-chetoanalogues prior to pre-emptive pancreas-kidney transplantation.

BACKGROUND Pre-emptive pancreas-kidney transplantation is increasingly considered the best therapy for irreversible chronic kidney disease (CKD) in type 1 diabetics. However, the best approach in the wait for transplantation has not yet been defined. AIM To evaluate our experience with a low-protein (0.6 g/kg/day) vegetarian diet supplemented with alpha-chetoanalogues in type 1 diabetic patients in the wait for pancreas-kidney transplantation. METHODS Prospective study. Information on the progression of renal disease, compliance, metabolic control, reasons for choice and for drop-out were recorded prospectively; the data for the subset of patients who underwent the diet while awaiting a pancreas-kidney graft are analysed in this report. RESULTS From November 1998 to April 2004, 9 type 1 diabetic patients, wait-listed or performing tests for wait-listing for pancreas-kidney transplantation, started the diet. All of them were followed by nephrologists and diabetologists, in the context of integrated care. There were 4 males and 5 females; median age 38 years (range 27.9-45.5); median diabetes duration 23.8 years (range 16.6-33.1), 8/9 with widespread organ damage; median creatinine at the start of the diet: 3.2 mg/dl (1.2-7.2); 4 patients followed the diet to transplantation, 2 are presently on the diet, 2 dropped out and started dialysis after a few months, 1 started dialysis (rescue treatment). The nutritional status remained stable, glycemia control improved in 4 patients in the short term and in 2 in the long term, no hyperkalemia, acidosis or other relevant side effect was recorded. Proteinuria decreased in 5 cases, in 3 from the nephrotic range. Albumin levels remained stable; the progression rate was a loss of 0.47 ml/min of creatinine clearance per month (ranging from an increase of 0.06 to a decrease of 2.4 ml/min) during the diet period (estimated by the Cockroft-Gault formula). CONCLUSIONS Low-protein supplemented vegetarian diets may be a useful tool to slow CKD progression whilst awaiting pancreas-kidney transplantation.
Design of Rectangular Patch Antenna with X-slots for Wireless Communications

A compact patch antenna has been designed to work at wireless applications is presented in this article. A simple rectangular microstrip antenna with small and narrow X-shaped slots on radiating patch has proposed. The proposed antenna model is operated below −10dB return loss with single resonating frequency at 9.9GHz. The return loss is observed wide bandwidth of −35.48dB with 2.80GHz (8.49−11.30GHz) impedance bandwidth of 28.25% is obtained. The current distribution and radiation patterns of proposed model has presented in the results.
Optimal Threshold Calculation for Improved Impulsive Noise Mitigation in the Frequency Domain

Impulsive noise (IN) can significantly degrade the performance of multi-carrier based communication systems. In order to improve the performance of such systems, conventional IN suppression methods have been proposed to process the signal in the time domain. However, attention has recently focused on using methods implemented in the Frequency Domain (FD). In general, the aim of IN frequency domain estimation schemes is to consider noise samples whose amplitudes are below a fixed threshold as Gaussian distributed noise and therefore are blanked (nulled). In contrast to existing work, this paper presents a novel optimal threshold calculation method to improve the IN frequency domain mitigation methods. The system adopt in this paper is the G.fast standard which uses high order QAM constellations over copper channels. The derived optimum threshold is used in an IN compensation method based on the relationship between two parameters, namely, impulsive Index A and the noise ratio Γ. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, its performance is compared with that of the conventional FD mitigation method which uses a fixed threshold. The impact of both the impulsive Index A and the noise ratio Γ on the DMT-based G.fast copper channel is also discussed in detail. Results show that the proposed method considerably outperforms conventional frequency domain IN mitigation schemes.
A Rule-Based Transducer for Querying Incompletely Aligned Datasets

A growing number of Linked Open Data sources (from diverse provenances and about different domains) that can be freely browsed and searched to find and extract useful information have been made available. However, access to them is difficult for different reasons. This study addresses access issues concerning heterogeneity. It is common for datasets to describe the same or overlapping domains while using different vocabularies. Our study presents a transducer that transforms a SPARQL query suitably expressed in terms of the vocabularies used in a source dataset into another SPARQL query suitably expressed for a target dataset involving different vocabularies. The transformation is based on existing alignments between terms in different datasets. Whenever the transducer is unable to produce a semantically equivalent query because of the scarcity of term alignments, the transducer produces a semantic approximation of the query to avoid returning the empty answer to the user. Transformation across datasets is achieved through the management of a wide range of transformation rules. The feasibility of our proposal has been validated with a prototype implementation that processes queries that appear in well-known benchmarks and SPARQL endpoint logs. Results of the experiments show that the system is quite effective in achieving adequate transformations.
The k-μ/Inverse Gamma Shadowed Distribution with Arbitrary Fading Parameters

In this paper, following the multiplicative approach, novel closed form expression for probability density function (PDF) of instantaneous SNR over the k−μ/Inverse Gamma shadowed distribution is derived. The new PDF expression following the multiplicative approach is relatively simpler in comparison to the aforementioned result in literature. The previous expression computation is difficult both analytically and numerically in terms of implementation. Specifically, the analytic PDF expression presented here is in simple mathematical form along with Meijer G function and more tractable hence seems to make feasible the derivation of other statistical parameters. The reason being Meijer G is a very general popular function which includes most of the special functions such as Exponential function, Bessel functions for specific values. Integral transforms such as the Laplace transform, Hankel and Mellin transform can be viewed as special cases of the Meijer G- function. This is not feasible for the old expression due to the inherent mathematical complexity which renders it intractable for further analysis.
Development and evaluation of a food frequency questionnaire to assess nutrient intakes of adult women in New Zealand

Aim In New Zealand, there are few adequate food frequency questionnaires for assessing dietary intake. This study aimed to develop and assess the relative validity of a multi‐nutrient, culturally appropriate, semi‐quantitative food frequency questionnaire for use in young adult New Zealand women (the New Zealand Women's Food Frequency Questionnaire (NZWFFQ)). Methods Women (n = 110) aged 16–45 years of Māori, Pacific or European ethnicity completed a NZWFFQ assessing dietary intake over the previous month, and a 4‐day weighed food record. Relative validity was evaluated by comparing nutrient intakes from the NZWFFQ with the food record using Spearman's rank correlation coefficients, cross‐classification, the weighted kappa statistic and Bland–Altman analysis. Results Nutrient intake was higher from the NZWFFQ compared with the food record for all nutrients (range: 1%–64% difference) except alcohol (−16% difference). Energy‐adjusted correlations ranged from 0.23 to 0.67 (average 0.48). Correct classification into same and adjacent quartiles was over 70% for all nutrients except folate and vitamin D. Gross misclassification into opposite quartiles ranged from 1% (monounsaturated fat, magnesium, calcium) to 10% (iron). The weighted kappa showed poor agreement for vitamin D and folate, fair agreement for most nutrients, and moderate agreement for fibre, vitamin E, magnesium, calcium and phosphorus. Conclusions The NZWFFQ overestimated intake of nearly all nutrients. While not suitable for assessing absolute intake, the NZWFFQ is suitable for ranking individuals based on nutrient intake demonstrating reasonable relative validity for this purpose.
Mutant: Balancing Storage Cost and Latency in LSM-Tree Data Stores

Today's cloud database systems are not designed for seamless cost-performance trade-offs for changing SLOs. Database engineers have a limited number of trade-offs due to the limited storage types offered by cloud vendors, and switching to a different storage type requires a time-consuming data migration to a new database. We propose Mutant, a new storage layer for log-structured merge tree (LSM-tree) data stores that dynamically balances database cost and performance by organizing SSTables (files that store a subset of records) into different storage types based on SSTable access frequencies. We implemented Mutant by extending RocksDB and found in our evaluation that Mutant delivers seamless cost-performance trade-offs with the YCSB workload and a real-world workload trace. Moreover, through additional optimizations, Mutant lowers the user-perceived latency significantly compared with the unmodified database.
A Multi-Stage Optimization Approach for Active Distribution Network Scheduling Considering Coordinated Electrical Vehicle Charging Strategy

The increasing integration of renewable resources and electric vehicles (EVs) presents new requirements for the construction of a current distribution network. As an alternative of conventional distribution network, active distribution network (ADN) has gained more interest for its flexibility and interactivity. However, the unpredictable behavior of ADN participants from source-side, network-side, and demand-side brings more challenges on ADN dispatch. Thus, it is urged to design an ADN optimal scheduling approach that can comprehensively regulate the ADN participants’ behavior. In this paper, an ADN performance assessment system is first established to provide a quantitative analysis on ADN’s scheduling in terms of active controllability, active manageability, and active economy, respectively. Then, according to the ADN assessment system, a multi-stage optimal scheduling approach for ADN considering coordinated EV charging strategy is proposed. It is able to not only smooth the fluctuations caused by the integration of intermittent power sources and EVs but also reconfigure the network topology. Therefore, this approach can be applied to day-ahead dispatches to help operators effectively manage the ADN. Simulation results verify the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Sentiment Classification using N-ary Tree-Structured Gated Recurrent Unit Networks

Recurrent Neural Networks(RNN) is a good way of modeling sequences. However this type of Artificial Neural Networks(ANN) has two major drawbacks, it is not good at capturing long range connections and it is not robust at the vanishing gradient problem(Hochreiter, 1998). Luckily, there have been invented RNNs that can deal with these problems. Namely, Gated Recurrent Units(GRU) networks(Chung et al., 2014)(Gülçehre et al., 2013) and Long Short Term Memory(LSTM) networks(Hochreiter and Schmidhuber, 1997). Many problems in Natural Language Processing can be approximated with a sequence model. But, it is known that the syntactic rules of natural language have a recursive structure(Socher et al., 2011b). Therefore a Recursive Neural Network(Goller and Kuchler, 1996) can be a great alternative. Kai Sheng Tai (Tai et al., 2015) has come up with an architecture that gives the good properties of LSTM in a Recursive Neural Network. In this report, we will present another alternative of Recursive Neural Networks combined with GRU which performs very similar on binary and fine-grained Sentiment Classification (on Stanford Sentiment Treebank dataset) with N-ary Tree-Structured LSTM but is trained faster.