Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Single-Class Data Descriptors for Mapping Panax notoginseng through P-Learning

Machine learning-based remote-sensing techniques have been widely used for the production of specific land cover maps at a fine scale. P-learning is a collection of machine learning techniques for training the class descriptors on the positive samples only. Panax notoginseng is a rare medicinal plant, which also has been a highly regarded traditional Chinese medicine resource in China for hundreds of years. Until now, Panax notoginseng has scarcely been observed and monitored from space. Remote sensing of natural resources provides us new insights into the resource inventory of Chinese materia medica resources, particularly of Panax notoginseng. Generally, land-cover mapping involves focusing on a number of landscape classes. However, sometimes a subset or one of the classes will be the only part of interest. In term of this study, the Panax notoginseng field is the right unit class. Such a situation makes single-class data descriptors (SCDDs) especially significant for specific land-cover interpretation. In this paper, we delineated the application such that a stack of SCDDs were trained for remote-sensing mapping of Panax notoginseng fields through P-learning. We employed and compared SCDDs, i.e., the simple Gaussian target distribution, the robust Gaussian target distribution, the minimum covariance determinant Gaussian, the mixture of Gaussian, the auto-encoder neural network, the k-means clustering, the self-organizing map, the minimum spanning tree, the k-nearest neighbor, the incremental support vector data description, the Parzen density estimator, and the principal component analysis; as well as three ensemble classifiers, i.e., the mean, median, and voting combiners. Experiments demonstrate that most SCDDs could achieve promising classification performance. Furthermore, this work utilized a set of the elaborate samples manually collected at a pixel-level by experts, which was intended to be a benchmark dataset for the future work. The measuring performance of SCDDs gives us challenging insights to define the selection criteria and scoring proof for choosing a fine SCDD in mapping a specific landscape class. With the increment of remotely sensed satellite data of the study area, the spatial distribution of Panax notoginseng could be continuously derived in the local area on the basis of SCDDs.
Functional and Phenotypic Analysis of Two-Day Monocyte-Derived Dendritic Cells Suitable for Immunotherapy Purposes

Functional and Phenotypic Analysis of Two-Day Monocyte-Derived Dendritic Cells Suitable for Immunotherapy Purposes David Andrés Bernal-Estévez1,2,#, Diana Rocio Tovar Murillo1,2,#, and Carlos Alberto ParraLópez2* 1Immunology and Clinical Oncology Research Group (GIIOC). Fundación Salud de los Andes, Bogotá-Colombia South-America. 2Immunology and Translational Medicine Research Group, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Graduated School in Biomedical Sciences. Department of Microbiology. Carrera 30 Calle 45, Bogotá-Colombia South-America. #Both authors contribute equally to this work. SOJ Immunology Open Access Research Article
Sex and social costs of escaping in the striped plateau lizard Sceloporus virgatus

As a predator approaches, prey base decisions about when to flee on a balance between degree of predation risk and costs of escaping. Lost opportunities to perform activities that may increase fitness are major escape costs. Paramount among these are chances to increase fitness by courting and mating and by driving away sexual rivals. Because sexual selection imposes different social demands on the sexes, social opportunities can have different consequences for males and females, but effects of sex differences in social opportunity costs on escape behavior are unknown. We conducted a field experiment showing that male striped plateau lizards (Sceloporus virgatus) given the opportunity to court or perform aggressive behavior permit closer approach before fleeing, but females do not. Males allowed a simulated predator to approach closer before initiating escape if a tethered male or female rather than a control stimulus was introduced to them, but females initiated escape at similar distances in all conditions. For males, a trade-off between the greater predation risk accepted before fleeing due to the likelihood of enhancing fitness by sexual or aggressive behavior accounts for closer approach allowed in the presence of conspecifics. Mating opportunities are not limiting for females in most species and females often have little to gain by interacting aggressively with other females. Therefore, presence of a conspecific male or female may not justify taking greater risk. Results confirm the prediction of optimal escape theory that flight initiation decreases as cost of escaping increases. The sex difference in effect of presence of conspecifics on flight initiation distance is a consequence of the sex difference in costs of escaping. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.
Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond

Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race. He helped to launch Alan Shepard and John Glenn, then assumed the flight director's role in the Gemini program, which he guided to fruition. With his teammates, he accepted the challenge to carry out President John F. Kennedy's commitment to land a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. Kranz was flight director for both Apollo 11, the mission in which Neil Armstrong fulfilled President Kennedy's pledge, and Apollo 13. He headed the Tiger Team that had to figure out how to bring the three Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth. (In the film "Apollo 13, " Kranz was played by the actor Ed Harris, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.) In "Failure Is Not an Option, " Gene Kranz recounts these thrilling historic events and offers new information about the famous flights. What appeared as nearly flawless missions to the Moon were, in fact, a series of hair-raising near misses. When the space technology failed, as it sometimes did, the controllers' only recourse was to rely on their skills and those of their teammates. Kranz takes us inside Mission Control and introduces us to some of the whiz kids -- still in their twenties, only a few years out of college -- who had to figure it all out as they went along, creating a great and daring enterprise. He reveals behind-the-scenes details to demonstrate the leadership, discipline, trust, and teamwork that made the space program a success. Finally, Kranz reflects on what has happened to the space program and offers his own bold suggestions about what we ought to be doing in space now. This is a fascinating firsthand account written by a veteran mission controller of one of America's greatest achievements.
Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio as a Potential Early Marker of Antibiotic Resistance in Patients with Infected Cirrhotic Ascites.

BACKGROUND To evaluate the role of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in identification and management of infected ascites among patients with cirrhosis. METHODS A total of 439 patients (mean (SD) age: 64.5 (± 12.7) years, 63.3% were males) hospitalized with cirrhotic ascites were included in this retrospective study. Data on patient demographics, etiology of cirrhosis, type of ascites (sterile ascites, infected ascites), culture findings treatment response (antibiotic resistance vs. sensitivity) and baseline (Day 0), Day 1 and Day 2 levels for serum C-reactive protein (CRP; mg/L), and NLR were recorded. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve was plotted to determine performance of % change from baseline NLR on Day 1 in identifying treatment response. RESULTS In patients with infected ascites, antibiotic resistant patients had significantly higher Day 1 (6.9 (1.9 - 74.9) vs. 4.9 (1.1 - 51.1), p = 0.001) and Day 2 (8.0 (2.6 - 75.9) vs. 4.0 (1.1 - 40.3), p = 0.000) levels for NLR as compared with antibiotic sensitive patients, while the two groups had similar baseline (Day 0) NLR values (5.8 (1.1 - 62.3) vs. 5.7 (1.1 - 72.3), p = 0.969). ROC analysis revealed less than 0.93% decrease from baseline NLR on Day 1 (AUC (95% CI): 0.852 (0.799 - 0.895), p < 0.001) to be a potential marker of antibiotic resistance with a sensitivity of 87.72% and specificity of 88.50%. CONCLUSIONS Our findings indicate percent change from baseline NLR on Day 1 to be a potential early marker of antibiotic resistance in patients with infected cirrhotic ascites. Our findings emphasize the role of determining NLR levels in earlier recognition of treatment failure and thus prompt modification of antibiotic treatment in cirrhotic patients with infected ascites.
Ar-Ar Impact Heating Ages of Eucrites and Timing of the LHB

Ar (K-Ar) ages ~3.4-4.1 Ga agoand , many specimens show some disturbance of other radiometric chronometers as well (1,2). (1) argued that this age resetting occurred on Vesta and was produced by the same general population of objects that produced many of the lunar impact basins. The exact of the nature lunar late heavy bombardment (LHB or “cataclysm”) remains controversial (3, 4), but the timing is similar to reset age of eucritess . Neither the beginning nor ending time of the lunar LHB is well constrained. Comparison of -Ar ages of Ar brecciated eucrites with data for the lunar LHB can help resolve both the origin of these impactors the time and period over which they were delivered to the inner solar system (5).
An Evaluation of Multi-Hit Ray Traversal in a BVH Using Existing First-Hit / Any-Hit Kernels Jefferson Amstutz Intel Corporation

We explore techniques for multi-hit ray tracing in a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) using existing ray traversal kernels and intersection callbacks. BVHs are problematic for implementing multi-hit ray traversal correctly due to the potential for spatially overlapping leaf nodes. We demonstrate that the intersection callback feature of modern, high performance ray-tracing APIs enable correct and efficient implementation of multi-hit ray tracing despite this concern. Moreover, the callback-based approach enables multi-hit ray tracing using existing, highly optimized BVH data structures, mitigating maintenance issues imposed by handtuned multi-hit traversal kernels across various hardware architectures. Results show that memory-bandwidth limitations and SIMD vector width of the target hardware platform dictate ideal hit-point memory layout, as well as the point at which sorting should occur, in order to maximize performance with existing BVH traversal algorithms.
CONSTRUCTION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF SINGLE CHAIN VARIABLE FRAGMENT-ALKALINE PHOSPHATASE FOR RAPID DETECTION OF AFLATOXIN B1 IN AN ELISA-BASED ASSAY

Aflatoxins are metabolites produced by Aspergillus spp. and can be found as contaminants in various food and agricultural products. A specific antibody is needed for the development of serological method, such as Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), as a screening process to determine toxin contamination. In this study, nine clones of specific single chain variable fragments (scFv) were selected from naïve mouse phage display scFv library and their reactivity with aflatoxins were determined. The experiments were conducted in the Serology and Diagnostic Laboratory, Center of Agricultural Biotechnology, Kasetsart University from 2012-2013. The scFv gene from the recombinant phagemid clone 22A12 (scFv-22A12 gene), which gave the strongest reaction, was selected for further investigation on aflatoxin analysis. The recombinant protein product was 30 kDa. Concurrently, an alkaline phosphatase (AP) gene was amplified from Escherichia coli strain HB2151. The scFv-22A12 and the AP genes were ligated into pCANTAB-5E phagemid and transformed into E. coli TG1 and HB2151 to produce phage scFv-AP and soluble scFv-AP, respectively. Comparison on the efficiency of Phage scFv, Phage scFv-AP and soluble scFv-AP to whole molecule antibody for detecting AFB1 was performed by ELISA. The resulst showed that the soluble scFv-AP gave highest reactivity and in accordance with those obtained from the whole molecule antibody. Cross reactivity with other aflatoxins (B2, G1 and G2) was reported to be 38.63%, 21.24 % and 9.64%, respectively. When using soluble scFv-AP to analyze ground samples of corn and groundnut spiked with 100 μg/kg of AFB1, acceptable results were obtained with 87.02 and 94.41% recovery, respectively. Analysis of the certified reference material (TMAF No.2 and TMAF No.3) showed comparable results with those analyzed through high performance liquid chromatography.
Measuring the neck transfer function of laryngectomy patients

Measurements of the Neck Transfer Function (NTF), defined as the ratio of the estimated volume velocity that excites the vocal tract to the acceleration measured at the neck wall when the neck is driven by a mini-shaker, were made at three different positions on the necks of ten laryngectomized subjects (five males and five females) and four normal laryngeal speakers (two males and two females). A mini-shaker driven by broadband noise, provided excitation to the necks of subjects as they configured their vocal tracts to mimic the production of the vowels /a/, /ae/, and I/. The sound pressure at the lips was measured with a microphone and an impedance head mounted on the shaker measured both the force and acceleration. Overall, the results indicated that the neck wall passes low frequency sounds better than high frequency sounds. A comparison of the NTFs of four subject sub-groups revealed that the NTFs of female laryngeal speakers differed from the NTFs of the other groups (male laryngeal speakers, laryngectomized males and laryngectomized females). In addition, there was a notable amount of inter-subject variability even within a subject group. The results also indicate that the NTF is relatively independent of the amount of pressure with which one applies the shaker to the neck. These results should be useful for aiding in the design of an improved neck-type electrolarynx. Thesis Supervisor: Kenneth N. Stevens Title: Professor of Electrical Engineering Thesis Supervisor: Robert E. Hillman Title: Associate Professor of Otology and Laryngology, Harvard Medical School
The Sleep Control Strategy for Wireless Sensor Networks

The sensor node in a wireless sensor network has the characteristics of low power consumption and a non-rechargeable sensor node. Therefore, power consumption is limited. Effectively controlling the power of the sensor node and extending the life time of the whole network become very important issues. In this paper, we offer the optimal sleep control for wireless sensor networks: randomly setting the sensor nodes in the entire network and determining the sleeping probability by the distance between the sensor node and sink. This method reduces the transmission frequency of the sensor nodes that are closer to the sink and effectively reaches the network's loading balance. However, the sensor nodes process their sleeping schedules according to their own residual power to save energy.
Prevalence and Antimicrobial Susceptibility of Staphylococcus aureus Isolated from Retail Chicken Meat in Chennai, India

The present study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of S. aureus in retail chicken meat marketed in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of these isolates. A total of 120 meat samples were collected from different retail outlets and it was observed that 66.67 (80/120) per cent of the samples were positive for the presence of S. aureus based on biochemical characterization. The S. aureus count in chicken meat samples (160) ranged from 2.8 × 102 to 1.5 × 104 CFU/ g with an overall average of 2.98 × 103 CFU/ g. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing of these isolates against 16 antimicrobials revealed that all the isolates were resistant to Ampicillin (100%) followed by Tetracycline (87.50%), Amoxicillin (77.50%), Erythromycin (72.50%), PolymyxinB (70%), Cefoxitin (67.50%), Novobiocin (67.50%), Oxacillin (65%) and Ciprofloxacin (50%). Majority of the chicken isolates were sensitive to Gentamicin (92.50%), followed by Vancomycin (87.50%), Chloramphenicol (82.50%), Neomycin (80%), Kanamycin (77.50%), Co-trimoxazole (62.50%) and Methicillin (55%). Results of Multiple Antibiotic Resistance (MAR) Index revealed that 99.38 per cent of the isolates (119/120) had MAR index of above 0.2 and only one isolate had index below 0.2. The results clearly indicated higher prevalence of multidrug resistant S. aureus in retail Chicken meat from public health point and the level of hygiene prevalent in these outlets.
ELEMENTAL PROFILING OF SURFACE WATER AROUND DHAKA CITY BY LASER INDUCED BREAKDOWN SPECTROSCOPY

Using the technique of Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), which uses a pulsed laser to create plasma and advanced spectroscopic techniques, we analyzed the contents of surface water (river water) around the city of Dhaka. Several elements such as Li, C, Na, Mg, Al, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Sr were identified in the water samples collected in addition to Cr, which was found at two locations at different concentrations. Chromium is a toxic element, and its presence at high concentrations is hazardous for human beings as well as the environment. Its presence in water is suspected due to the effluent discharge from the nearby tanning industries. Semi-quantitative analysis of the chromium present was performed. To our knowledge, this is the first example of the application of the LIBS technique in water analysis in Bangladesh. DOI: 10.3329/jbas.v33i2. 4104 Journal of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences , Vol. 33, No. 2, 209-218, 2009
Digtits Using KNN and Random Forest

Natural handwriting is often a mixture of different “styles”, some even hard to recognize by human. A reliable recognizer for such handwriting would greatly help. In this paper, we compare the accuracy and reliability of several different classifiers in recognizing handwritten digit. Classifiers such as K-Nearest Neighbors, Decision Tree, and Random Forest are applied to the problem and results are compared. Our results show that using K-Nearest Neighbors is the most accurate of the recognizer algorithms. Introduction Classification, a supervised learning approach, is probably the most widely used form of machine learning, and has been used to solve many interesting and often difficult realworld problems. In this paper, we study image classification. Now consider the harder problem of classifying images directly, where a human has not pre-processed the data. We might want to classify the image as a whole, e.g., is it an indoors or outdoors scene? is it a horizontal or vertical photo? does it contain a dog or not? This is called image classification. In the special case that the images consist of isolated handwritten letters and digits, for example, in a postal or ZIP code on a letter, we can use classification to perform handwriting recognition(Murphy, 2012). Natural handwriting is often a mixture of different “styles”, thin, fat, italic, some even hard recognized by human. A reliable recognizer for such handwriting would greatly improve interaction with pen-based devices, but its implementation presents technical challenges(LeCun et al., 1995). Great algorithms have been developed in the area of handwritten digit recognition. In this paper we contrast the relative merits of each of the algorithms. Approaches The following are three approaches that can be used in determining the handwritten digit in an image. All of these approaches require supervised learning and a number of training examples. Copyright c © 2016, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. K-Nearest Neighbors The K nearest neighbor (KNN) classifier(Murphy, 2012) is a non-parametric classifier. This simply looks at the K points in the training set that are nearest to the test input x, counts how many members of each class are in this set, and returns that empirical fraction as the estimate. More formally,
Poly-L-lactide nanofibers by electrospinning – Influence of solution viscosity and electrical conductivity on fiber diameter and fiber morphology

Abstract Poly-L-lactide (PLA) fibers were obtained by electrospinning of PLA / dichloromethane solutions. Formation of beaded fibers combined with decreased fiber diameters were observed for low PLA concentrations in solution. Increase of the electrical conductivity by addition of pyridinium formiate (PF) caused a significant reduction of bead formation. The electrospinning of dilute PLA / PF / dichloromethane solutions resulted in PLA nanofibers. Systematic variations clearly identified the solution viscosity and the electrical conductivity at otherwise fixed parameters (surface tension, molecular weight, electrode geometry, electrical field, etc.) as crucial parameters for the formation of beads upon electrospinning of PLA / dichloromethane solutions.
House Price Prediction: Hedonic Price Model vs. Artificial Neural Network

The objective of this paper is to empirically compare the predictive power of the hedonic model with an artificial neural network model on house price prediction. A sample of 200 houses in Christchurch, New Zealand is randomly selected from the Harcourt website. Factors including house size, house age, house type, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, number of garages, amenities around the house and geographical location are considered. Empirical results support the potential of artificial neural network on house price prediction, although previous studies have commented on its black box nature and achieved different conclusions.
Exploiting Subprograms in Genetic Programming May 1

Compelled by the importance of subprogram behavior, we investigate how much Behavioral Genetic Programming is sensitive to model bias. We experimentally compare two different decision tree algorithms analyzing whether it is possible to see significant performance differences given that the model techniques select different subprograms and differ in how accurately they can regress subprogram behavior on desired outputs. We find no remarkable difference between REPTree and CART in this regard, though for a modest fraction of our datasets we find that one algorithm results in superior error reduction than the other. We also investigate alternative ways to identify useful subprograms beyond examining those within one program. We propose a means of identifying subprograms from different programs that work well together. This method combines behavioral traces from multiple programs and uses the information derived from modeling the combined program traces.