Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A segmentation-based method to retrieve stem volume estimates from 3-D tree height models produced by laser scanners

In the boreal forest zone and in many forest areas, there exist gaps between the forest crowns. For example, in Finland, more than 30% of the first pulse data of laser scanning reflect directly from the ground without any interaction with the canopy. By increasing the number of pulses, it is possible to have samples from each individual tree and also from the gaps between the trees. Basically, this means that several laser pulses can be recorded per m/sup 2/. This allows detailed investigation of forest areas and the creation of a three-dimensional (3D) tree height model. Tree height model can be calculated from the digital terrain and crown models both obtained with the laser scanner data. By analyzing the 3D tree height model by using image vision methods, e.g., segmentation, it is possible to locate individual trees, estimate individual tree heights, crown area, and, by using that data, to derive the stem diameter, number of stems, basal area, and stem volume. The advantage of the method is the capability to measure directly physical dimensions from the trees and use that information to calculate the needed stand attributes. This paper demonstrates for the first time that it is possible to accurately estimate standwise forest attributes, especially stem volume (biomass), using high-pulse-rate laser scanners to provide data, from which individual trees can be detected and characteristics of trees such as height, location, and crown dimensions can be determined. That information can be applied to provide estimates for larger areas (stands). Using the new method, the following standard errors were demonstrated for mean height, basal area and stem volume: 1.8 m (9.9%), 2.0 m/sup 2//ha (10.2%), and 18.5 m/sup 3//ha (10.5%), respectively.
Model Specifications for Estimating Labor Market Returns to Associate Degrees: How Robust Are Fixed Effects Estimates?

Recently, studies have adopted fixed effects modeling to identify the returns to college. This method has the advantage over ordinary least squares estimates in that unobservable, individual-level characteristics that may bias the estimated returns are differenced out. But the method requires extensive longitudinal data and involves complex specifications, raising the possibility that results are sensitive either to sample restrictions or to alternative specifications. Also, the extra requirements might not be justified if results from fixed effects models are broadly similar to those from conventional ordinary least squares models. In this paper we review results from fixed effects models of the earnings gains from completing an associate degree relative to non-completion for community college students. We examine both sampling restrictions and specification issues. We find results to be sensitive to assumptions about missing earnings data and to how time trend specifications are modeled. However, we find no substantively meaningful differences between estimates using fixed effects models and ordinary least squares methods. A main benefit of fixed effects models—controlling for unobservable student characteristics—should be weighed against the difficulty in interpreting coefficients and more intensive data requirements. On the other hand, a distinct advantage of fixed effects models is that they allow for analysis of earning profiles over the period from before to after college. Given the large fluctuations in earnings over this period, this advantage may be significant in yielding evidence on the full returns to college.
The power of the written word: team assessment of behaviour

student learning: theory versus practice. Med Educ 2015;49 (5):487–98. 10 Harrison CJ, K€ oning KD, Molyneux A, Schuwirth LWT, Wass V, van der Vleuten CPM. Web-based feedback after summative assessment: how do students engage? Med Educ 2013;47 (7):734–44. 11 Kogan JR, Conforti LN, Bernabeo EC, Durning SJ, Hauer KE, Holmboe ES. Faculty staff perceptions of feedback to residents after direct observation of clinical skills. Med Educ 2012;46 (2):201–15. 12 Eva KW, Bordage G, Campbell C, Galbraith R, Ginsburg S, Holmboe E, Regehr G. Towards a program of assessment for health professionals: from training into practice. Adv Health Sci Educ 2015 Nov;21:1–7. http://link.springer. com/article/ 10.1007/s10459-015-9653-6
Prototype Ku-band dual polarization SIW monopulse antenna

In this paper, a prototype slot array antenna for dual polarized monopulse operation is proposed. The suggested monopulse antenna structure is composed of a dual polarized radiating part using substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology and a feed network using metallic rectangular waveguides for dual plane tracking. Radiation patterns of the fabricated prototype antenna are measured at elevation and azimuth cutting planes for each linear polarization. Measured realized sum (Σ) pattern gains are more than 22 dBi and the null depths (NDs) for difference (Δ) patterns are less than -27 dB at boresight direction at center frequency of Ku-band. However, the proposed prototype monopulse antenna has somewhat high sidelobe and cross polarization levels. The reasons for these drawbacks are discussed at the end of this paper.
Cytokine arrays analysis of plasma from acute mountain sickness susceptible and resistant individuals

Extensive studies have been done on mechanisms of acute mountain sickness (AMS), but AMS biomarkers are still little known. In the present study, we used cytokine arrays analysis to identify novel AMS-associated biomarkers in human plasma. Peripheral blood samples from 23 healthy volunteers were collected and AMS symptoms diagnosed using the Lake Louise Questionnaire (LLQ) after exposure to a high altitude of 3800 m. Plasma samples were pooled at two time points, low altitude (LA, altitude of 400 m) and 9-hour high-altitude exposure (HA, altitude of 3800 m). Protein composition of the samples was tested by a cytokine arrays analysis. After 9 hours of hypobaric hypoxia, a total of 30 cytokines were founded differentially expressed due to high-altitude stressor (fold change > 1.5, P < 0.05), among which 21 cytokines were up-regulated, and 9 cytokines were down-regulated; a total of 164 differentially expressed cytokines were observed (fold change > 1.5, P < 0.05), among which 144 cytokines were up-regulated and 20 cytokines were down-regulated. There are more inflammatory cytokines responding to high altitude in AMSindividuals than AMS+ individuals. Our results suggested that AMSindividuals had more ability to anti-inflammation damage than AMS+ individuals.
Characterization of proteinases excreted by Bacillus subtilis Marburg strain during sporulation.

Summary. This study has characterized 3 proteolytic enzymes during sporulation by Bacillus subtilis Marburg strain when grown in nutrient broth. A method of purification is described which permits the separation of 2 different proteinases: one belonging to the metal enzyme group and the other to the serine enzyme group. The third enzyme, probably an esterase, showed a high esterolytic activity, but only low proteolytic activity. Determination of the 3 enzymes in a mixture was accomplished by using specific substrates and inhibitors. They were excreted simultaneously between the end of the growth phase until the appearance of the prespores. During this entire period, 20% of the total proteolytic activity was due to the metal proteinase; 80% of the proteolytic activity and 15% of the esterolytic activity was due to the serine proteinase; 85% of the esterolytic activity was the result of the esterase. These findings will contribute to a more complete phenotypic characterization of those mutants of sporulation that appear to be involved in the production of extracellular hydrolytic enzymes.
Predictive ridesharing based on personal mobility patterns

For digital mobility assistants it is advantageous to know users' mobility habits to be able to infer the most probable departure time and next destination. Different approaches are known to face this challenge, but most of them either have a very static feature model and limited extensibility capabilities or they are very complex and require exponential amount of training data for every added feature. This paper introduces a flexible and extendible mobility model — to represent a user's movement and habits — using a Variable-order Markov Model (VOMM) based on users' mobility patterns enriched with different temporal context information. Since this model uses a tree like data structure, it is possible to find patterns of different lengths in the same training data. Spatio-temporal next location prediction is based on the Prediction by Partial Matching (PPM) algorithm. We examine several classification and regression based machine learning algorithms for probability fusion of next location candidates and possible departure times to obtain the most accurate joint probability for the predicted location. The resulting prediction accuracy is between 60% and 81%.
Estrogen Controls embryonic stem cell proliferation via store‐operated calcium entry and the nuclear factor of activated T‐cells (NFAT)

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) can self‐renew indefinitely and differentiate into all cell lineages. Calcium is a universal second messenger which regulates a number of cellular pathways. Previous studies showed that store‐operated calcium channels (SOCCs) but not voltage‐operated calcium channels are present in mouse ESCs (mESCs). In this study, store‐operated calcium entry (SOCE) was found to exist in mESCs using confocal microscopy. SOCC blockers lanthanum, 2‐aminoethoxydiphenyl borate (2‐APB) and SKF‐96365 reduced mESC proliferation in a concentration‐dependent manner, suggesting that SOCE is important for ESC proliferation. Pluripotent markers, Sox‐2, Klf‐4, and Nanog, were down‐regulated by 2‐APB, suggesting that self‐renewal property of mESCs relies on SOCE. 17β‐estradiol (E2) enhanced mESC proliferation. This enhanced proliferation was associated with an increment of SOCE. Both stimulated proliferation and increased SOCE could be reversed by SOCC blockers suggesting that E2 mediates its stimulatory effect on proliferation via enhancing SOCE. Also, cyclosporin A and INCA‐6, inhibitors of calcineurin [phosphatase that de‐phosphorylates and activates nuclear factor of activated T‐cells (NFAT)], reversed the proliferative effect of E2, indicating that NFAT is involved in E2‐stimulated proliferation. Interestingly, E2 caused the nuclear translocation of NFATc4, and this could be reversed by 2‐APB. These results suggested that NFATc4 is the downstream target of E2‐induced SOCE. The present investigation provides the first line of evidence that SOCE and NFAT are crucial for ESCs to maintain their unique characteristics. In addition, the present investigation also provides novel information on the mechanisms of how E2, an important female sex hormone, affects ESC proliferation. J. Cell. Physiol. 227: 2519–2530, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Novel approaches to quantify failure probability due to process variations in nano-scale CMOS logic

Estimating the failure probability of nano-scale generic logic cells is a key point for the evaluation of digital system reliability. Noise-induced input variations with process-induced threshold voltage variations affect the probability of correct operation of logic cells. This work quantitatively analyses the probability of invalid output of a cell by introducing novel analytical and semi-analytical approaches in comparison with SPICE Monte-Carlo verification approach.
The Rise in Old Age Longevity and the Market for Long-Term Care

This paper analyzes how markets for old-age care respond to the aging of populations. We consider how the biological forces, which govern the stocks of frail and healthy persons in a population, interacct with economic forces, which govern the demand and suppoly for labor-intensive care. Many economists have argued that aging will raise the market demand for long-term care, and hence price and quantity through classic market effects. We argue that the direct effect of aging is to lower the demand for market care by incresing the supply of home production. By influencing the length of frail lifetimes, aging may also have a further indirect demand effect, which may reinforce or counteract the direct negative demand effect. By providing healthy spouses, the marriage market provides care-givers for home production of long-term care; therefore, growth in old-age longevity may lower the demand for market production. Growth of elderly males serves to contract the long-term care market becuase it eases the scarcity of men in the old-age marriage market; growth of females serves to expand market care because it worsens the scarcity of men. These predictions lend themselves to an interpretation of the rapid deceleration in output growth that has taken place in the US over the last two decades, despite a constant rate of longevity growth and enormous growth in demand subsidies: since growth in elderly males has risen dramatically relative to growth in elderly females, the rate of long-term care growth has slowed significantly. We test our predictions empirically using state- and county-level evidence on the US market for long-term care in nursing homes over the last three decades. The evidence provides support for our predictions concerning the response in output growth to aging and the contraction of output due to the aging of males.
A novel high performance ECC processor architecture with two staged multiplier

This paper discourse about a low area elliptical curve cryptographic processor with high performance is implemented. The architecture proposed comprises of a full precision multiplier with two staged segmented pipelining to lessen the clock cycles used by avoiding data dependency. The multiplier uses a modified Montgomery algorithm for point multiplication. The simulation results are obtained using VDHL coding. The processor is implemented on Virtex-5 FPGA of Xilinz. The high speed timing closure approach is acclimated to attain best possible results.
Cellular interactions of Candida albicans with human oral epithelial cells and enterocytes

The human pathogenic fungus Candida albicans can cause systemic infections by invading epithelial barriers to gain access to the bloodstream. One of the main reservoirs of C. albicans is the gastrointestinal tract and systemic infections predominantly originate from this niche. In this study, we used scanning electron and fluorescence microscopy, adhesion, invasion and damage assays, fungal mutants and a set of fungal and host cell inhibitors to investigate the interactions of C. albicans with oral epithelial cells and enterocytes. Our data demonstrate that adhesion, invasion and damage by C. albicans depend not only on fungal morphology and activity, but also on the epithelial cell type and the differentiation stage of the epithelial cells, indicating that epithelial cells differ in their susceptibility to the fungus. C. albicans can invade epithelial cells by induced endocytosis and/or active penetration. However, depending on the host cell faced by the fungus, these routes are exploited to a different extent. While invasion into oral cells occurs via both routes, invasion into intestinal cells occurs only via active penetration.
Is Sexual Well-Being Part of Subjective Well-Being? An Empirical Analysis of Belgian (Flemish) Survey Data Using an Extended Well-Being Scale

Most conventionally used subjective well-being scales do not include any measurement of sexual well-being, despite the fact that most available research and theories indicate that sexuality is to be considered an important and integral part of human well-being. This article proposes a five-item subjective well-being scale that includes sexual well-being. A representative pilot survey in Belgium (n = 2,080) indicated that item non-response on the sexual item was limited. The new scale is strongly one-dimensional and internally coherent. A multivariate analysis demonstrated that including sexual well-being allows for a better understanding of subjective well-being, highlighting the importance of age and having a partner, and the interaction between both variables. This article concludes that the positive impact of having a partner on subjective well-being significantly increases with age. It is argued that sexual well-being should be included in subjective well-being measurements that are routinely being used in population surveys.
Molecular modeling, total synthesis, and biological evaluations of C9-deoxy bryostatin 1.

The bryostatins are a family of natural products of marine origin that display both intriguing structural complexity and a fascinating profile of biological activity. [1] These materials were isolated (from Bugula neritina) and their structures determined through the pioneering work of Pettit and coworkers. [2] Subsequently, a monumental large scale collection and isolation effort managed to yield some 18 grams of bryostatin 1, the most abundant and now most thoroughly investigated member of this family, from some 13,000 kg of the source organism. [3] This world’s supply of material has supported numerous biological investigations and roughly 80 clinical trials against various cancers. [4] Recently, a clinical trial against Alzheimer’s disease has also commenced. [5]
Wavelet speech enhancement algorithm using exponential semi-soft mask filtering

ABSTRACT In this paper, we propose a new speech enhancement algorithm based on wavelet packet decomposition and mask filtering. In the traditional mask filtering such as ideal binary mask (IBM), the basic idea is to classify speech components as target signal and non-speech components as background noises. However, speech and non-speech components cannot be well separated in target signal and background noise. Therefore, the IBM has residual noise and signal loss. To overcome this problem, the proposed algorithm used semi-soft mask filter to exponentially increase. The semi-soft mask minimizes signal loss and the exponential filter removes residual noise. We performed experiments using various types of speech and noise signals, and experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves better performances than the traditional other speech enhancement algorithms.
Binary Graph-Signal Recovery from Noisy Samples

—We study the problem of recovering a smooth graph signal from incomplete noisy measurements, using random sampling to choose from a subset of graph nodes. The signal recovery is formulated as a convex optimization problem. We reformulate the optimization problem in a way that the optimality conditions form a system of linear equations which is solvable via Laplacian solvers. We use an incomplete Cholesky factorization conjugate gradient (ICCG) method for graph signal recovery. Numerical experiments validate the performance of the recovery method over real-world blog-data of 2004 US election.
Emerging drugs for acute myocardial infarction

Importance of the field: The present review is aimed at going over the pharmacological profile (and the clinical impact) of the emerging drugs involved in the management of patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) in order to provide the cardiologists who deal with these patients in the early phase with the most recent evidence on this topic.Areas covered in this review: Anticoagulant and antiplatelet drugs are the main cornerstones of therapy in the treatment of STEMI patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The main issues that clinicians have to deal with are represented by balancing thrombotic and bleeding risks. In tailoring therapy, variables such as age, sex and previous disease should be taken into account, as well as ongoing complications (such as acute renal failure) that could affect hemostasis. Despite the well-established clinical benefits of antiplatelet agents, questions remain, mainly surrounding potential for variable platelet response, which are strictly related to non-genetic (i.e., diet, drug–drug interaction, clinical factors such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, and inflammation) and genetic determinants. What the reader will gain: In their daily practice, cardiologists cannot abstract from the knowledge and updating on the ongoing research fields as well as the newly developed drugs, which they should frame in the very patient in the attempt to the develop a personalized medical strategy. These include also the pharmacological option(s) in the treatment of the reperfusion injury, the metabolic aspects and the stem cell therapy. Take home massage: In our opinion, the goal of ongoing research on the pharmacological approach to STEMI patients is a personalized medical strategy that relies on critical clinicians who merge newly developed acquisitions on this topic and a more complete, systemic and critical approach to the patient.
Preferential Formation of MT1/MT2 Melatonin Receptor Heterodimers with Distinct Ligand Interaction Properties Compared with MT2 Homodimers

Heterodimerization has been documented for several members of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily, including the closely related MT1 and MT2 melatonin receptors. However, the relative abundance of hetero-versus homodimers and the specific properties, which can be attributed to each form, are difficult to determine. Using a bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET) donor saturation assay, we show that half-maximal MT1/MT2 heterodimer formation is reached for expression levels as low as ∼4000 receptors per cell. The relative propensity of MT1 homodimer and MT1/MT2 heterodimer formation are similar, whereas that for the MT2 homodimer formation is 3- to 4-fold lower. These data indicate that both the relative expression level of each receptor isoform and the affinities between monomers may determine the actual proportion of homo- and heterodimers. The specific interaction of ligands with the MT1/MT2 heterodimer was studied using a BRET-based assay as a readout for the conformational changes of the heterodimer. An MT1/MT2 heterodimer-specific profile and ligands selective for the MT1/MT2 heterodimer compared with the MT2 homodimer could be identified. Classic radioligand binding and BRET studies suggest that heterodimers contain two functional ligand binding sites that maintain their respective selectivity for MT1 and MT2 ligands. Occupation of either binding site is sufficient to induce a conformational change within the heterodimer. Taken together, these results show that the probability of GPCR heterodimer formation may be equal to or even higher than that of the corresponding homodimers and that specific properties of heterodimers can be revealed using a BRET-based ligand/receptor interaction assay.