Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Semantic segmentation based on neural network and Bayesian network

It is rather difficult for low-level visual features to describe the need for specific applications of image understanding, which results in the inconsistency between vision information and application need. In this paper, a new model is proposed to reduce this gap by combining low-level visual features with semantic features. It uses the output of neural network as the semantic feature, which is accompanied with the priori label features to describe the image after making normalization. And then, the proposed method employs Potts to model the distribution of label priori, and utilizes the Bayesian network to classify images. Several experiments on both synthetic and real images have verified that this method can get more accurate segmentation.
Interface Between Dysphagia and Nutritional Implication on Patients with Motor Neuron Disease/ Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neuromuscular disease characterized by the progressive degeneration of upper motor neuron (UMN) and lower motor neuron (LMN). When this degeneration gets to the brainstem motor nuclei, patients evolve to dysphagia, dysphonia and dysarthria [1]. Worldwide incidence ranges from 1,5 to 2,7:100,000 people/year. Masculine gender is more affected in a proportion of 2:1 [1,2]. The average age varies between 55 and 65 years old. The bulbar ALS onset is more common in elderly women [1]. After the onset, patients may develop dysphagia, malnutrition and dehydration. The speechlanguage pathologist intervention includes specific orientation and adjustment throughout the evolution of the underlying disease and the level of dysphagia; food consistency is modified and consequently, a reduction in the amount of food intake of high protein-energy content might be necessary, especially on patients with bulbar dysfunction [3]. Therefore, the total amount of daily food intake, may be qualitative and quantitative insufficient to meet these patients’ needs, which makes nutritional supplementation necessary [3-7]. Weight loss or body mass index (BMI) reduction is relevant indicators of malnutrition and negative predictors of survival on ALS/NMD [8-9]. It is likely that anthropometric measurements may reflect the nutritional condition, also the loss of motor neuron [3]. The reduction of nutritional intake is multifactorial, determined by inappetence, dysphagia, weakness, dyspnea and depression [5,7,10-13]. The goal is to analyze the interface between dysphagia and the nutritional implication on NMD/ALS patients. Abstract
General Purpose Steam Table Library: CASL L3:THM.CFD.P7.04 Milestone Report

Completion of the CASL L3 milestone THM.CFD. P7.04 provides a general purpose tabular interpolation library for material properties to support, in particular, standardized models for steam properties. The software consists of three parts, implementations of analytic steam models, a code to generate tables from those models, and an interpolation package to interface the tables to CFD codes such as Hydra-TH. Verification of the standard model is maintained through the entire train of routines. The performance of interpolation package exceeds that of freely available analytic implementation of the steam properties by over an order of magnitude.
La baja interacción del espectador de vídeos en Internet: caso Youtube España

Esta investigación demuestra que los internautas que consumen vídeos en Internet adoptan una actitud pasiva y heredan el comportamiento que tienen como espectadores ante los medios unidireccionales y tradicionales. Las investigaciones que analizan la actitud del espectador de vídeos en Internet son casi inexistentes. Los autores rompen con mitos y estudios sobre la potencialidad de interacción de Internet a través de una metodología que investiga el comportamiento de los usuarios a través del análisis de 278 vídeos y 650.884. 405 visitas hasta finales de 2009. El artículo se centra en el caso Youtube España como referente del consumo de vídeos por Internet y demuestra la hipótesis inicial con datos cuantitativos. Con estos resultados se resuelven muchas incógnitas y se abre el camino para otras líneas de investigación
MAgICS: Toward a multiagent introduction to computer science

The authors present a preliminary version of the MAgICS (Multi-Agent Introduction to Computer Science) framework, which is a new approach for revitalizing introductory undergraduate or high school computer science curricula through the deep integration of agent-based modeling (ABM) and multi-agent systems (MAS) perspectives. The authors discuss the merits of using multi-agent systems as a lens for conceptual understanding across disciplines, compare multi-agent approaches to traditional serial ones, and explore how this approach can bring together disparate topics in computer science through the common focus on emergent systems to promote a broader view of the field as a whole. To exemplify this approach, they have developed a suite of curricular models for topics spanning from searching and sorting to machine learning and networks and security. By introducing these topics with a focus on parallel, distributed, and stochastic methods, they can make traditionally upper-level topics both motivating and accessible to introductory-level students. The authors review findings from a short implementation of several elements of MAgICS in an introductory computer science classroom with regard to student motivation and evidence of learning of distributed design strategies.
ASSESSMENT OF OXIDATIVE STRESS DURING NARROW BAND UVB PHOTOTHERAPY IN VITILIGO PATIENTS OF NORTH INDIA

Vitiligo is an acquired epidermal pigment loss which occurs anywhere in the body. The disease occurs worldwide with an estimated overall prevalence of less than 0.5%. The biological basis of vitiligo has been an intractable problem to confront. Among several therapies for the disease, narrow band UVB phototherapy is preferred modality and is effective. Recently, oxidative stress has been speculated to be the primary event in the pathogenesis of vitiligo. The ability of free radicals to destroy melanocytes is considered as missing link. This study is aimed to assess the oxidative stress and antioxidant status in vitiligo patients with and without NB-UVB phototherapy for 4 weeks. 30 Vitiligo patients were recruited for study from OPD of Department of Dermatology, Era’s Lucknow Medical College & Hospital, Lucknow. Blood of all subjects was investigated for anti-oxidant parameters such as Superoxide dismutase (SOD), Catalase (CAT), Glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and Lipid peroxides (LPO). Results indicated significant increase in the CAT and SOD activity in stable vitiligo patients after NB-UVB phototherapy as compared to its baseline activity. However, in active vitiligo patients, the increase in the CAT and SOD activity were found non-significant. GPx activity was found statistically non-significant in active vitiligo group after NB-UVB phototherapy compared to its baseline value, however in stable vitiligo patients the GPx activity was statistically significant. Following the NB-UVB phototherapy the LPO levels increased significantly in both active and stable vitiligo patients as compared to their baseline values.
Elizabeth Costello - Eight Lessons

Elizabeth Costello is an Australian writer of international renown; she is f-ted, studied, honoured. Famous principally for an early novel that established her reputation and from which, it seems, she will never escape, she has reached the stage, late in life, where her remaining function is to be venerated and applauded. One of a new breed of intellectual nomads, her life has become a series of engagements in sterile conference rooms throughout the world - a private consciousness obliged to reveal itself to a curious public: the presentation of a major award at an American college where she is required to deliver a lecture; a sojourn as the writer in residence on a cruise liner during which she encounters a fellow guest lecturer, an African poet also employed to divert the passengers; a visit to her sister, a missionary in Africa, who is receiving an honorary degree, an occasion which both recognise as the final opportunity for effecting some form of reconciliation; and a disquieting appearance at a writers' conference in Amsterdam where she finds the subject of her talk unexpectedly amongst the audience. She has made her life's work the study of other people yet now it is she who is the object of scrutiny. But, for her, what matters is the continuing search for a means of articulating her vision and the verdict of future generations. Elizabeth Costello is a humane, moral, and uncompromising creation; J. M. Coetzee's latest work of fiction offers us a profound and delicate vision of literary celebrity, artistry and the private life of the mind.
Intégration de bobine sur silicium pour la conversion d'énergie

Dans un contexte d'integration des dispositifs de conversion d'energie de petite puissance, le travail de these presente porte sur la realisation de micro-bobines integrees sur silicium. Les contraintes liees a ce type d'integration resident dans la mise au point, la compatibilite des procedes technologiques contribuant a la fabrication du systeme complet et le cout de fabrication. Dans un premier temps, une etude bibliographique nous a permis de faire une synthese sur les structures integrables de micro-bobines ainsi que sur les materiaux conducteurs et magnetiques et leurs techniques de depot. Une fois les objectifs fixes, notamment concernant la nature des materiaux a deposer, nous avons mis au point les depots electrochimiques et les procedes photolithographiques de resines epaisses destinees a la realisation de moules. Ces resines doivent resister a la fois a des contraintes chimiques et physiques fortes. Une premiere structure de micro-bobine de type spirale a ete dimensionnee et le processus de fabrication a ete identifie. En parallele, des motifs specifiques de forme bien definie ont ete etudies puis realises afin de caracteriser les couches deposees par electrochimie, en termes de resistivite, permeabilite et composition de l'alliage. La derniere partie de la these a consiste a appliquer ce procede de fabrication a une seconde structure de bobine dont la geometrie a ete definie dans le but de reduire le nombre d'etapes technologiques. Actuellement les premiers prototypes de ces bobines ont ete realises avec de faibles epaisseurs de materiaux. Ceci nous a permis de valider les procedes de fabrication de ces dispositifs.
Semi-Automatic Ontology Extension in the Maritime Domain

One of the tasks of a maritime safety and security (MSS) system is to map incoming observations in the form of sensor data onto existing maritime domain knowledge. This domain knowledge is modeled in an ontology. The sensor data contains information on ship trajectories, labeled with ship types from this ontology. These ship types are broad and within one type there can be several distinctive behavior patterns. As a consequence we cannot make a good mapping from these trajectories to the ship types. To make this possible we should change the ontology by adding relevant subtypes. This paper presents a semi-automatic method to extend the ontology of ship types on the basis of trajectory data. The first part involves the use of hidden Markov models to model the data of each ship within one ship type and the clustering of these models. The clusters are input to the second part where we use internet querying and natural language processing based ontology extension techniques to extend the maritime domain ontology. We present the promising results of a preliminary experiment that shows an interesting possibility in terms of semi-automatic ontology extension, which would enable an optimal coverage of a given domain: not providing too many concepts, and not leaving essential ones out.
DÖNÜŞÜMCÜ LİDERLİĞİN ÖRGÜTSEL VATANDAŞLIK DAVRANIŞINA ETKİSİ: TÜRKİYE’DE YEREL YÖNETİMLERE DAİR UYGULAMALI BİR ARAŞTIRMA

Liderlik teorileri konusundaki bilimsel literatur incelendiginde, liderlik kavraminin yaklasik olarak son otuz yildir degisik tartismalarin odak noktasi oldugunu gormek mumkundur. Bunun kismi olarak nedeni liderlik taniminin ve teorisinin degisik kavramsal cercevelerde ve degisik disiplinlerce ele alinmis olmasidir. Dolayisiyla liderlik kavraminin bir degil bircok tanimi bulunmaktadir. Bu calisma kapsaminda liderlik, bireyin bir grup insani, belirli amaclar etrafinda toplayabilme ve bu amaclari gerceklestirebilmek icin onlari hareket gecirmek ve etkileyebilmek icin gerekli olan bilgi ve yeteneklerinin toplami olarak tanimlanmaktadir. Bu calismanin teorik ve metodolojik temelini olusturan donusumcu liderlik ve orgutsel vatandaslik davranisi teorileri ve bu teorilerin birbirleriyle karsilikli etkilesimi sonucu ortaya cikan olcek modeli ile Turkiye’de yerel yonetimlere dair uygulamali bir arastirma yapilmasi amaclanmistir Bu dogrultuda belediyeleri iceren veriler toplanmis ve analiz edilmistir. Arastirmanin genel amaci, donusumcu liderligin orgutsel vatandaslik davranisina etkisini analiz etmektir. Donusumcu liderligin orgutsel vatandaslik davranisinin olusumundaki etkisinin, ozellikle insan faktorunun etkin oldugu hizmet kuruluslari kapsaminda olan yerel yonetimlerin, yerel yonetimler dahilinde de belediyelerde incelenmesinin bilimsel literatur icin onemli ve faydali olacagi dusunulmustur. Bu cercevede, donusumcu liderlik ile orgutsel vatandaslik davranisi arasindaki ilintiyi Turkiye’deki yerel yonetimler/belediyeler, kapsaminda uygulamali olarak incelemek bu calismanin temel amacini olusturmaktadir. Arastirmada, Kouzes ve Posner (1993)’in gelistirdikleri “Bes Boyutlu Donusturucu Liderlik” olcegi ile Smith, Organ, Near (1983) ve McNeely, Meglino’nun (1994) gelistirdikleri, Lee ve Allen (2002) tarafindan duzenlenen “Orgutsel Vatandaslik Davranisi” olcegi etkilesimli olarak kullanilmistir. Soz konusu olcekte belirlenen donusumcu liderlik boyutlari; calisanlarin basarilarini odullendirme / kutlama, personeli gelisimi konusunda cesaretlendirme, ornek olma, paylasilan farkli bir vizyon yaratma ve sureci sorgulama olarak belirlenmistir.
Enhanced recovery after surgery: Neuroanaesthetic perspective

Abstract Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) is a systematic multimodal perioperative care aimed at reducing the immense surgical stress of the patient and thereby facilitating early recovery. This is basically a multidiscipline, multimodal integrated approach in patient care and it integrates the basic knowledge in a more streamlined fashion, which ultimately improves the outcome of surgery. This article reviews the various aspects of ERAS, and its implementation in neurosurgical practice as some concepts of ERAS may not be applicable in the setting of neurosurgery.
Pixel-level data fusion: from algorithm to chip

Pixel level image processing algorithms have to work with noisy sensor data to extract spatial features. This often required the use of operators which amplify high frequency noise. One method of dealing with this problem is to perform image smoothing prior to any use of spatial differentiation. Such spatial smoothing results in the spread of object characteristics beyond the object boundaries. Identification of discontinuities and explicit use of these as boundaries for smoothing has been proposed as a technique to overcome this problem. This approach has been used to perform cooperative computations between multiple descriptions of the scene, e.g., fusion of edge and motion field for a given scene. This approach is extended to multisensor systems. The discontinuities detected in the output of one sensor are used to define regions of smoothing for a second sensor. For example, the depth discontinuities present in laser radar can be used to define smoothing boundaries for infrared focal plane arrays. The authors have recently developed a CMOS chip (28 X 36) which performs this task in real time. This chip consists of a resistive network and elements that can be switched ON or OFF, by loading a suitable bit pattern. The bit pattern for the control of switches can be generated from the discontinuities found in the output of sensor #1. The output of sensor #2 is applied to the resistive network for data smoothing. If all the switches are held in conducting state, this chip performs the usual data smoothing. However, if switches along object boundaries are turned OFF, a region for bounded smoothing is created. In this chip, information from a third sensor data (e.g., intensity data from laser radar) can be incorporated in the form of a map of 'confidence in data. ' The results obtained with this chip using synthetic data and other potential applications of this chip are described.
Hierarchical remote data possession checking method based on massive cloud files

Cloud storage service enables users to migrate their data and applications to the cloud, which saves the local data maintenance and brings great convenience to the users. But in cloud storage, the storage servers may not be fully trustworthy. How to verify the integrity of cloud data with lower overhead for users has become an increasingly concerned problem. Many remote data integrity protection methods have been proposed, but these methods authenticated cloud files one by one when verifying multiple files. Therefore, the computation and communication overhead are still high. Aiming at this problem, a hierarchical remote data possession checking (hierarchical-remote data possession checking (H-RDPC)) method is proposed, which can provide efficient and secure remote data integrity protection and can support dynamic data operations. This paper gives the algorithm descriptions, security, and false negative rate analysis of H-RDPC. The security analysis and experimental performance evaluation results show that the proposed H-RDPC is efficient and reliable in verifying massive cloud files, and it has 32–81% improvement in performance compared with RDPC.
Segmentation of motion picture images and image sequences

Segmentation of images into foreground (an actor) and background is required for many motion picture special effects. To produce these shots, the unwanted background must be removed so that none of it appears in the final composite shot. The standard approach requires the background to be a blue screen. Systems that are capable of segmenting actors from more natural backgrounds have been proposed, but many of these are not readily adaptable to the resolution involved in motion picture imaging. An algorithm is presented that requires minimal human interaction to segment motion picture resolution images. Results from this algorithm are quantitatively compared with alternative approaches. Adaptations to the algorithm, which enable segmentation even when the foreground is lit from behind, are described. Segmentation of image sequences normally requires manual creation of a separate hint image for each frame of a sequence. An algorithm is presented that generates such hint images automatically, so that only a single input is required for an entire sequence. Results are presented that show that the algorithm successfully generates hint images where an alternative approach fails.
Building FIFO and Priority-Queuing Spin Locks from Atomic Swap

We present practical new algorithms for FIFO or priority-ordered spin locks on shared-memory multiprocessors with an atomic swap instruction. Dierent versions of these queuing spin locks are designed for machines with coherent-cache and NUMA memory models. We include extensions to provide nested lock acquisition, conditional locking, timeout of lock requests, and preemption of waiters. These locks apply to both real-time and non-real-time parallel systems and we include a comparison of the traits of several lock schemes aimed at those environments. Our main technical contributions are our techniques and algorithms that provide tight control over lock grant order, use only the atomic swap instruction, use at most one (local only) spin for lock acquisition and no spinning for lock release, and need only O(L + P) space on either a coherent-cache or NUMA machine.
Image Fusion for Enhanced Vision System using Laplacian Pyramid

— Aviation safety is the primary concern in this era of air travel. As a major step towards improving safety of air transport, a system called Integrated Enhanced and Synthetic Vision System (IESVS) is being developed at NAL, Bangalore. One of the sub-blocks that drive this system is the Enhanced Vision System (EVS). EVS uses visual feedback from two cameras mounted on aircraft nose that deliver real-time video streaming. These video streams are combined or ‘Fused’ to render an enhanced multi-spectral video stream that will enable the pilot to get a better view of the surroundings during poor visibility conditions. This paper discusses a detailed real-time implementation of the Laplacian Pyramid based fusion algorithm implemented on a C++ platform. The input images are acquired from Charge Coupled Device (CCD) (colour) and Infrared (IR) camera and passed into the algorithm. The captured images are registered using a suitable affine transform. The registered images are used for construction of their respective Laplacian pyramids and the two pyramids are fused. Using the output pyramid structure, the fused image is reconstructed. The base of the fused pyramid is obtained as the output of the Fusion algorithm. This fused image is then rendered using Open graphic library (OpenGL).
COMPREHENSIVENESS OF A STRATEGY EXECUTION MEASUREMENT SYSTEM

The article describes the issue of strategy execution measurement taking into consideration two variables – the level of its comprehensiveness and the effectiveness of activities performed. The comprehensiveness was defined by means of three areas: the use of measurement tools, processes and regularity of the measurement work conducted. Whereas the effectiveness of strategy implementation was expressed through the level to which intended strategic objectives are achieved and income dynamics. The research sample included managers of 200 companies that have been operating for at least 5 years and are listed among the 500 largest Polish companies in the ranking of “Polityka” magazine and in the “Forbes Diamonds 2013” ranking. The study was conducted the PAPI (Paper and Pencil Interview) technique. The questions in the questionnaire were of nominal value (the respondents declared the existence of specific obstacles) and or ordinal variable nature (the respondents indicated the strength of their impact on a 5-point scale). In order to test the hypotheses, Pearson's correlation coefficient was calculated. The research has shown the existence of a positive correlation between these, indicating that the greatest role is played by appropriately designed measurement processes. Concurrently, it is important to take into consideration mutual interactions between the elements of the measurement system, in order to adopt a holistic perspective and design it using the comprehensive approach.
Smart Card Based Protection for Dalvik Bytecode — Dynamically Loadable Component of an Android APK

The global smartphone market is growing at a brisk pace. Android, an open source platform of Google has become one of the most popular mobile operating systems. Android apps generate lot of revenue which is increasing every year. The reverse engineering of Android applications is much easier than owing to the use of open source platform. Therefore, it becomes important to protect applications running on Android from attackers. The goal is to minimize software flaws and use anti-reverse engineering techniques. In this paper, we present a protection scheme based on obfuscation, code modification and cryptographic protection that can effectively counter reverse engineering on the Android platform. Our approach aims at making it tough for a reverse engineer to get the business logic performed by an Android application.