Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robust Feature Tracking in DVS Event Stream using Bézier Mapping

Unlike conventional cameras, event cameras capture the intensity changes at each pixel with very little delay. Such changes are recorded as an event stream with their positions, timestamps, and polarities continuously, thus there is no notion of ‘frame’ as in conventional cameras. As many applications including 3D pose estimation use 2D trajectories of feature points, it is necessary to detect and track the feature points robustly and accurately in a continuous event stream. In conventional feature tracking algorithms for event streams, the events in fixed time intervals are converted into the event images by stacking the events at their pixel locations, and the features are tracked in the event images. Such simple stacking of events yields blurry event images due to the camera motion, and it can significantly degrade the tracking quality. We propose to align the events in the time intervals along Bézier curves to minimize the misalignment. Since the camera motion is unknown, the Bézier curve is estimated to maximize the variance of the warped event pixels. Instead of the initial patches for tracking, we use the temporally integrated template patches, as it captures rich texture information from accurately aligned events. Extensive experimental evaluations in 2D feature tracking as well as 3D pose estimation show that our method significantly outperforms the conventional approaches.
Exploring digital didactics: An explorative case study on learning to teach online

: Online teaching became increasingly popular during the last decennia. Therefore, many teachers face a challenge in combining technology with content and didactical approaches. However, not all teachers have experience with online teaching or the didactical approach towards it. For this reason the ‘Digital Didactics’ programme is developed in the context of teacher professional development in Flanders, Belgium. ‘Digital Didactics’ strives to provide teachers with hands-on experiences regarding the didactical possibilities of online teaching. These experiences could be implemented immediately in the teachers’ own practice. The programme builds on scientifically supported knowledge on teaching with technology such as the Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The research question this study addresses is first to investigate the reasons to participate in the Digital Didactics programme, and second how the participants and the coaches are experiencing this programme. Data was collected through qualitative online structured interviews and focus group interviews and analysed by using an inductive approach and thematic analysis. This paper presents the outcomes of the programme and clarifies the identified strengths and challenges of the ‘Digital Didactics’ programme. There are three main reasons for participation identified, namely: personal, professional and peer related motives. Next to that are the participants’ experiences divided into three levels, namely: content level, guidance level and practical level. The experiences of the coaches and participants were found to be similar: they agree on both the perceived merits as well as on the weaknesses of the programme. Conclusively, the study contributes to the knowledge on effective professional development strategies for online teaching and learning. This can be useful for practitioners or researchers in the field of online teaching and related professional development.
11. Spatial econometrics on survey data

Spatial econometrics requires comprehensive data on a territory, which in principle prohibits the use of survey data. This chapter presents the pitfalls in estimating spatial autoregressive models (SAR) on sampled data and assesses potential corrections offered by the empirical literature. We identify two sources of bias: (i) a "size effect" resulting from the distortion of the spatial weighting matrix and (ii) a "sparsity effect" resulting from the omission of units spatially correlated with the units observed. Both effects tend to underestimate the magnitude of spatial correlations. However, the bias is lower in the case of a cluster survey and when the sample is large enough. Two types of methods are offered by the empirical literature to sidestep these pitfalls: imputing missing values (linear regression, hot deck) and aggregating data on a higher scale. These potential solutions are efficient under very restrictive conditions, part of the difficulty being the reconstruction of complex information based on few observations. The last part of the chapter illustrates this issue with the estimation of production externalities between plants of the manufacturing sector located in the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône. 278 Chapter 11. Spatial econometrics on survey data R Prior reading of Chapters 2: “Codifying the neighbourhood structure”, 3: “Spatial autocorrelation indices” and 6 “Spatial econometrics: common models” is recommended.
Application of Supercritical Fluid Technology for Preparation of Drug Loaded Solid Lipid Nanoparticles

Small changes in pressure or temperature, close to the critical point, lead to large changes in solubility of supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2). Environmentally friendly supercritical CO2 is the most popular and inexpensive solvent which has been used for preparation of nanodrugs and nanocarriers in drug delivery system with supercritical fluid technology. Delivery of a drug is one of the most challenging research areas in pharmaceutical sciences. With a combination of drugs and innovative delivery systems such as lipid nanocarriers, drugs efficiency and safety have been improved significantly. There are various techniques available to produce drug loaded solid lipid nanoparticles. Among them, supercritical fluid technology has been identified as potentially effective and applicable approach which has attracted increasing attention during recent years. This technique has several advantages such as avoid the use of solvents, particles are obtained as a dry powder, instead of suspensions, mild pressure and temperature conditions can be applied. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to formation of drug loaded solid lipid nanoparticles by supercritical fluid technology. In this paper, we present a brief introduction to solid lipid nanocarriers. Then a general overview of different processes of supercritical fluid technology has been provided and also case studies are presented to show the potential benefits of this approach in drug loaded solid lipid nanoparticle production.
Simulations of the Northern Hemisphere through the last glacial-interglacial cycle with a vertically integrated and a three-ditnensional thertnotnechanical icesheet tnodel coupled to a climate model

We present simulations of the Northern Hemisphere la nd ice through the las t glacialinterglacia l cycl e with a ve rti cally integrated ice-shee t model and a three-dimensional thermomechanical ice-sheet model. Both models a re coupled asynchronously to the zonally averaged Louva in-l a-Neuve clim ate model, which includes simplified treatments of the atmosphere, ocean and sea ice. The two-dimensional vertically integrated ice-sheet model, which contains no thermomechanical coupling, was developed in spherical coordinates (Ma rsia t, 1994). The three-dimensional thermomechanical iceshee t model was developed using the two-dimensional ve rtica lly in teg ra ted model as source. We compare results of the ve rtically integrated with those of the thermomechanica l ice-shee t model. In the therm omechanical model th e deforma tion properti es of ice depend on the temperature within the ice and the enhancement factor; the latter is introduced to model, in a simplified approach, the different fl ow properties ofPl eistocene and Holocene ice due to varying dust content. The computations with the thermomechanical model show that the growth and decay of the Northern H emisphere ice sheets can be modelled with a common enhancement factor for all ice sheets. It is shown that there are model set-ups for the thermomechanical model yielding temporal developments of the total ice volume comparable to those of the vertically integrated model. Furthermore, we demonstrate that for the coupled climatejcryosphere system the total ice volume depends considerably on the enhancement factor.
Comparative Ultrasound Evaluation of Renal Resistive Index in Hypertensive and Normotensive Adults in Ibadan, SouthWestern, Nigeria

Results: Mean renal resistive index in the hypertensive patients was 0.60 ± 0.04 (± SD) and in the controls was 0.56 ± 0.04 (± SD) (p= <0.001). Renal resistive index correlated significantly with systolic blood pressure (r=0.382, p= <0.001) and diastolic blood pressure (r= 0.364, p=<0.001). It correlated weakly with body mass index (r= 0.170, 0.044). No significant association was found with age, gender, duration of hypertension and creatinine clearance. Multiple regression linear analysis showed systolic blood pressure to be the only independent variable influencing renal resistive index.
Yin Zhi Huang, a traditional Chinese herbal formula, ameliorates diet-induced obesity and hepatic steatosis by activating the AMPK/SREBP-1 and the AMPK/ACC/CPT1A pathways

Background Yin Zhi Huang (YZH) is a formula composed of Artemisia scoparia, Gardeniae fructus, Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, and Lonicerae Japonicae Flos. Most of the components are eaten as food in Asia. Here, we evaluated the role of YZH on a high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity and hepatic steatosis. Methods Male C57BL/6J mice were fed with normal-chow diet, HFD, and HFD with low- or high-dose YZH for 16 weeks. Body weight gain, adipose mass, and plasma lipids levels were measured to evaluate the effect of YZH on obesity. Liver weight and staining methods on liver tissues were used to determine hepatic steatosis. The expression of involved genes and proteins were screened with qRT-PCR and immunoblotting, respectively. Results The results showed that YZH significantly reduced body weight gain, adipose mass, and the size of adipocytes, while did not affect food intake in HFD-fed mice. H&E staining, bodipy staining, and oil red O staining displayed that YZH alleviates hepatic lipid accumulation. It also effectively restored elevated plasma levels of triglycerides (TG), total cholesterol (TC), alanine aminotransferase, and aspartate aminotransferase in HFD-fed mice. Mechanistically, these effects of YZH have associated with a decrease of AMPK/SREBP-1 pathway-mediated de novo lipogenesis and an increase of AMPK/ACC/CPT1A pathway-mediated mitochondrial fatty acid β oxidation. Conclusions YZH supplementation ameliorated diet-induced obesity and hepatic steatosis by decreasing AMPK/SREBP-1 pathway-mediated de novo lipogenesis and increasing AMPK/ACC/CPT1A pathway-mediated mitochondrial fatty acid β oxidation.
Influence of night ventilation on the cooling demand of typical residential buildings in Germany

The current type of construction preferred for new high energy efficient buildings in Germany, featuring highly insulated building components and an almost completely airtight building shell, raises several new challenges with regard to design, construction and use of these buildings. Cooling, in particular, is an issue that gains importance also in the residential sector, in connection with rising temperatures induced by the climate change. Increased night ventilation is a cost-effective option to influence the indoor climate such that comfortable conditions are durably ensured, keeping technical expenditure within reasonable bounds. Though the functional principle of night ventilation is well known and its applications are manifold, it is not widely considered by building planners. One of the reasons for lacking attention might be that the potentials of night ventilation with regard to building cooling cannot be sufficiently estimated. The present study investigates the impact of night ventilation on the cooling demand of typical new residential buildings in Germany. The potentials of night ventilation are examined for two exemplary cases, namely for a single-family home and a multi-family building. Thermal building simulation is used to perform numerical assessments and to discuss functionality and effects of natural ventilation. The study analyses several influences on the indoor thermal comfort including the impact of different types of construction, various designs, thermal insulation standards, ventilation strategies and the use of solar shading devices in combination with or without night ventilation. The simulation results show that the problem of excess summer temperatures occurring under current climatic conditions in typical, new residential buildings in Germany can be controlled by appropriately adapting the building design and by using solar shading devices. Especially night ventilation can be a very efficient and effective measure to minimize the risk of overheating, irrespective of the type of construction, the use of solar shading systems, the standard of thermal insulation or the building design, thus making the use of an active cooling system superfluous. Even for a worst-case scenario, night ventilation can guarantee comfortable indoor temperatures to a large extent.
Translation and Psychometric Evaluation of the Vietnamese Clinical Learning Environment Inventory With Nursing Students

Summary: This study aimed to translate and assess the psychometric properties of the Vietnamese language version of the Clinical Learning Environment Inventory in a sample of undergraduate Bachelor of Nursing students (n=1023) in Vietnam. Factor analysis demonstrated a new model fit with 5-factor solution explaining 41.03% of the total variance. Content Outline: Introduction
Sachet Coffees on Body Weight, Urea, Creatinine, Lipid and Enzyme Profiles and Electrolytes in Healthy Albino Wistar Rats

Background and Objectives: Coffee the source of caffeine is consumed globally. The amount of caffeine in food product varies depending upon the serving size, type product and production method (Elmaadawy et al., 2015). Caffeine, one of the several ingredients in foods is capable of exerting a physiological and pharmacological effect. Nescafe is a brand of instant coffee made by Nestle. It comes in different product forms (Elmaadawy et al., 2015). Nescafe 3 in 1 Ghana PLC and Cowbell Promasidor Nigeria Limited Coffee are brands of coffee widely consumed in Nigeria. From a public health point of view little seems to be understood about the health benefits. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the effect of Nescafe 3 in 1 and cowbell TM coffees on body weight, serum urea, creatinine, lipid, and enzyme profile in healthy rats. Material and Methods: Thirty healthy male albino rats (150±5.35g) were assigned into five groups of six rats. Group 1 served as control fed with basal diets; groups 2 and 3 Nescafe 3 in 1 high dose, 770mg/kg, and Low dose, 510mg/kg of body weight. Group 4 and 5 cowbell coffee high doses, 620mg/kg and low dose 310mg/kg. All administration was done orally, water and food given ad libitum. The treatment lasted for 30days. At the end of the period, the animals were sacrificed and blood samples were collected for analysis. Result: Nescafe 3 in 1 low dose cause significant (p<0.01) increase in body weight while cowbell coffee TM treated groups caused a decrease in body weight. There was an increase in AST, creatinine, HDL, serum urea, K, HCO3 levels in Nescafe 3 in 1 while Na, Cl were decreased in cowbell coffee TM compared with control. Conclusion: Nescafe 3 in 1 coffee caused increased body weight although the high dose group was not statistically significant while the consumption of cowbell coffee TM caused a significant decrease. These differences might result from the composition of these coffees especially their coffee content. Further investigation might be necessary on these brand sachet coffees. To cite this article [Okwari O. O. , Alagwu A. E. , Edoga C. O. , Lelei S. A. , & Ekonesi G.A. (2017). Effect of Nescafe 3 in 1 and Cowbell TM Sachet Coffees on Body Weight, Urea, Creatinine, Lipid and Enzyme Profiles and Electrolytes in Healthy Albino Wistar Rats. The Journal of Middle East and North Africa Sciences, 3(9), 15-21]. (P-ISSN 24129763) (e-ISSN 2412-8937). www.jomenas. org. 3
Sensitivity versus Specificity in the Evaluation of Adverse Event Data from Clinical Trial

The evaluation of safety is an important part of clinical trials of pharmaceutical, biological, and vaccine products. In early phase trials, the evaluation is mostly exploratory with a focus primarily on serious adverse reactions to the candidate product. In later phases of clinical development programs the safety profile is characterized more fully using larger numbers of patients. Unlike the evaluation of drug efficacy, the outcome of which is based on a single or a collection of prespecific hypotheses, the hypotheses to test to conclude a drug has potential safety burden is generally not prespecified. The test and conclusion of potential safety issue of a drug are usually based on an arbitrary number of reports of adverse events that have not been identified at the outset, which amounts to using observed data to test hypotheses that are generated by the same data.
Teachers’ Implementation of Pedagogy of Multiliteracies in Indonesian Context (A Case Study)

This research was conducted in one EFL Classroom of Primary school Indonesia. It aimed to find out “How the teachers of primary school put pedagogy of multiliteracies into the classroom teaching practice? ”. This was designed qualitatively in which the data were collected by using in depth interview and observation and the participant was a teacher of Primary school in Palopo Indonesia. The Data was then analyzed using thematic Analysis. This research indicated that the Implementation performed some model of teaching which consist of SIB-Class, FBL-Class, CBL-Class, and ML-Class. The ML-Class is then classified in to three categories, i.e. Digitalpicture Based Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (DP-BM), Picture Based Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (PB-PM), Video-picture Based Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (VB-PM).
LogChunks: A Data Set for Build Log Analysis

Build logs are textual by-products that a software build process creates, often as part of its Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline. Build logs are a paramount source of information for developers when debugging into and understanding a build failure. Recently, attempts to partly automate this time-consuming, purely manual activity have come up, such as rule- or information-retrieval-based techniques. We believe that having a common data set to compare different build log analysis techniques will advance the research area. It will ultimately increase our understanding of CI build failures. In this paper, we present LogChunks, a collection of 797 annotated Travis CI build logs from 80 GitHub repositories in 29 programming languages. For each build log, LogChunks contains a manually labeled log part (chunk) describing why the build failed. We externally validated the data set with the developers who caused the original build failure. The width and depth of the LogChunks data set are intended to make it the default benchmark for automated build log analysis techniques.
Percutaneous aortic balloon valvuloplasty under echocardiographic guidance solely

Background Percutaneous balloon aortic valvuloplasty (PBAV) is an alternative to surgical valvulotomy for the treatment of congenital aortic stenosis (AS). This article aims to summarize our preliminary experience on feasibility and safety of PBAV under only echocardiographic guidance in patients with congenital AS. Methods Clinical data from 20 consecutive patients with aortic valve stenosis who underwent PBAV under only echocardiographic guidance at Fuwai Hospital from January 2016 to January 2019 were analyzed retrospectively. Median age of patients was 18.38±15.88 years and 65% of the patients were male. Aortic annulus diameter was 18.40±3.25 mm and balloon diameter was 17.38±3.89 mm, with B/A ratio of 0.93±0.06. Results All the patients successfully underwent PBAV. The peak transaortic gradient (TG) significantly decreased from 81.59±24.91 (range, 58–112) mmHg preoperatively to 36.32±12.83 (range, 16–51) mmHg (P=0.000) immediately post operation, without significant difference in aortic regurgitation (AR). At mean 24.31±17.35 months follow-up, peak TG was 37.06±13.52 (range, 21–58) mmHg which was not significantly different from the immediate postoperative value (P=0.65). Conclusions In this retrospective, single center study, systematic use of Doppler echocardiography as only guidance modality for PBAV was feasible and associated with a high success rate and a very low complication rate.
Method for Definition of ‘Reliable’ Co-Expression Set

Background: Large amounts of gene expression data from several different platforms are being made available to the scientific community and increasingly used as tools for validation and integration of other studies. Several studies have compared two or three platforms to evaluate the consistency of expression profiles for a single tissue or sample series but few have determined if these translate into reliable gene co-expression patterns across many conditions. We have conducted such a comparison and produced a database of the most reliable co-expression predictions.
Tricuspid regurgitation and in-hospital outcomes after transcatheter aortic valve replacement in high-risk patients

Background The prognostic impact of tricuspid regurgitation (TR) following transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) is uncertain, and the management of patients with severe aortic stenosis and significant TR undergoing TAVR is unclear. Methods Retrospective study investigating the role of TR severity on hospital outcomes in high risk patients with severe aortic stenosis undergoing TAVR. Results A total of 174 participants were included in the present study. The median age was 84 years and 48% were women. The median (IR) STS score was 7.3 (4.7–13.6). The pre-procedural mean (SD) aortic valve area (AVA) was 0.69 (0.2) cm2 and the average (SD) peak and mean gradients were 71 [23]/42 [15] mmHg. Pre TAVR, 28.7% of patients had significant (moderate or severe) TR. Significant TR pre-TAVR increased the risk of in-hospital cardiovascular (CV) and all-cause and mortality [adjusted relative risk (RR) (95% CI): 14.67 (1.35–159.51) and 5.09 (1.14–22.72), respectively], and those with severe TR post-TAVR had longer hospital stay [median (IR): 9.9 (2.9–17.0) days]. No improvement or worsened TR (greater than mild) post-TAVR was associated with higher CV and all-cause mortality [adjusted RR (95% CI): 21.5 (1.81–255.96) and 8.19 (1.67–40.29), respectively]. Right ventricular systolic pressure (RVSP) was independently associated with TR severity pre and post TAVR. Conclusions Significant TR was common among patients undergoing high risk TAVR, and is associated with increased in hospital mortality and longer hospital stay. Patients with elevated RVSP and persistent moderate or severe TR after TAVR are at higher risk of in hospital death.