Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feature and Region Selection for Visual Learning

Visual learning problems, such as object classification and action recognition, are typically approached using extensions of the popular bag-of-words (BoWs) model. Despite its great success, it is unclear what visual features the BoW model is learning. Which regions in the image or video are used to discriminate among classes? Which are the most discriminative visual words? Answering these questions is fundamental for understanding existing BoW models and inspiring better models for visual recognition. To answer these questions, this paper presents a method for feature selection and region selection in the visual BoW model. This allows for an intermediate visualization of the features and regions that are important for visual learning. The main idea is to assign latent weights to the features or regions, and jointly optimize these latent variables with the parameters of a classifier (e.g., support vector machine). There are four main benefits of our approach: 1) our approach accommodates non-linear additive kernels, such as the popular χ2 and intersection kernel; 2) our approach is able to handle both regions in images and spatio-temporal regions in videos in a unified way; 3) the feature selection problem is convex, and both problems can be solved using a scalable reduced gradient method; and 4) we point out strong connections with multiple kernel learning and multiple instance learning approaches. Experimental results in the PASCAL VOC 2007, MSR Action Dataset II and YouTube illustrate the benefits of our approach.
Significance of variable height-bandwidth group delay filters in the spectral reconstruction of speech

The signiﬁcance of varying the height and bandwidth of the group delay spectrum is hitherto unexplored in the spectral reconstruction of speech signals. In this paper, a family of variable height-bandwidth ﬁlters are designed to evaluate their performance in the reconstruction of speech. The design procedure for higher order group delay ﬁlters as a cascade of second order ﬁlters is ﬁrst described. These higher order ﬁlters enable the synthesis of speech sounds by simultaneously varying the height and bandwidth of the group delay spectrum. The group delay ﬁlter response is corrected by removing zeros in close proximity to the unit circle which give rise to abrupt phase transitions at points of signiﬁcant excitation. Experiments on spectral reconstruction and perception of speech using variable height bandwidth group delay ﬁlters are conducted to compute the optimal height and bandwidth of the group delay ﬁlter. The experimental results indicate that the optimal height bandwidth obtained from a family of variable height bandwidth group delay ﬁlters does indeed improve the spectral reconstruction and perception of speech sounds when compared to ﬁxed height bandwidth group delay ﬁlters.
T cell receptor signalling results in rapid tyrosine phosphorylation of the linker protein LAT present in detergent-resistant membrane microdomains.

Stimulation of human T cell line Jurkat results in rapid tyrosine phosphorylation of a 35-38 kDa protein that is found in large and buoyant detergent-resistant membrane microdomains containing also glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored proteins, glycolipids and Src-family protein tyrosine kinases ("GPI-microdomains"). The pp35-38 was found to be identical to LAT, a recently cloned key component of the T-cell receptor signalling pathway. Moreover, a modified form of protein tyrosine kinase Lck (pp60) was newly detected in the GPI-microdomains of the anti-CD3-stimulated Jurkat cells. These data support the idea that GPI-microdomains play important roles in immunoreceptor signalling.
Automatic detection of endothelial cells in 3D angiogenic sprouts from experimental phase contrast images

Cell migration studies in 3D environments become more popular, as cell behaviors in 3D are more similar to the behaviors of cells in a living organism (in vivo). We focus on the 3D angiogenic sprouting in microfluidic devices, where Endothelial Cells (ECs) burrow into the gel matrix and form solid lumen vessels. Phase contrast microscopy is used for long-term observation of the unlabeled ECs in the 3D microfluidic devices. Two template matching based approaches are proposed to automatically detect the unlabeled ECs in the angiogenic sprouts from the acquired experimental phase contrast images. Cell and non-cell templates are obtained from these phase contrast images as the training data. The first approach applies Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR) to find the discriminative features and their corresponding weight to distinguish cells and non-cells, whereas the second approach relies on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce the template feature dimension and Support Vector Machine (SVM) to find their corresponding weight. Through a sliding window manner, the cells in the test images are detected. We then validate the detection accuracy by comparing the results with the same images acquired with a confocal microscope after cells are fixed and their nuclei are stained. More accurate numerical results are obtained for approach I (PLSR) compared to approach II (PCA & SVM) for cell detection. Automatic cell detection will aid in the understanding of cell migration in 3D environment and in turn result in a better understanding of angiogenesis.
Enforcing Topic Diversity in a Document Recommender for Conversations

This paper addresses the problem of building concise, diverse and relevant lists of documents, which can be recommended to the participants of a conversation to fulfill their information needs without distracting them. These lists are retrieved periodically by submitting multiple implicit queries derived from the pronounced words. Each query is related to one of the topics identified in the conversation fragment preceding the recommendation, and is submitted to a search engine over the English Wikipedia. We propose in this paper an algorithm for diverse merging of these lists, using a submodular reward function that rewards the topical similarity of documents to the conversation words as well as their diversity. We evaluate the proposed method through crowdsourcing. The results show the superiority of the diverse merging technique over several others which not enforce the diversity of topics.
Ja n 20 02 Why Do AGN Lighthouses Switch Off ?

Nearby galactic nuclei are observed to be very much dimmer than active galactic nuclei in distant galaxies. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has provided a definitive explanation for why this is so. With its excellent angular resolution, Chandra has imaged hot X-ray-emitting gas close to the gravitational capture radius of a handful of supermassive black holes, including Sgr A∗ in the nucleus of our own Galaxy. These observations provide direct and reliable estimates of the Bondi mass accretion rate ṀBondi in these nuclei. It is found that ṀBondi is significantly below the Eddington mass accretion rate, but this alone does not explain the dimness of the accretion flows. In all the systems observed so far, the accretion luminosity Lacc ≪ 0. 1ṀBondic , which means that the accretion must occur via a radiatively inefficient mode. This conclusion, which was strongly suspected for many years, is now inescapable. Furthermore, if the accretion in these nuclei occurs via either a Bondi flow or an advection-dominated accretion flow, the accreting plasma must be two-temperature at small radii, and the central mass must have an event horizon. Convection, winds and jets may play a role, but observations do not yet permit definite conclusions.
Weight Status in the First 6 Months of Life and Obesity at 3 Years of Age

OBJECTIVE. The goal was to examine the associations of weight-for-length at birth and at 6 months with obesity at 3 years of age. METHODS. We studied 559 children in Project Viva, an ongoing, prospective, cohort study of pregnant women and their children. We measured length and weight at birth, 6 months, and 3 years. Our main exposures were weight-for-length z score at birth adjusted for gestational age and weight-for-length z score at 6 months adjusted for weight-for-length z score at birth. We used multivariate regression analyses to predict the independent effects of birth weight-for-length z score and, separately, 6-month weight-for-length z score on BMI z score, the sum of subscapular and triceps skinfold thicknesses, and obesity (BMI for age and gender of ≥95th percentile) at age 3. RESULTS. Mean weights at birth, 6 months, and 3 years were 3.55, 8.15, and 15.67 kg, respectively. Corresponding lengths were 49.9, 66.9, and 97.4 cm. At 3 years, 48 children (9%) were obese. After adjustment for confounding variables and birth weight-for-length z score, each increment in 6-month weight-for-length z score was associated with higher BMI z scores, higher sums of subscapular and triceps skinfold thicknesses, and increased odds of obesity at age 3. The predicted obesity prevalence among children in the highest quartiles of both birth and 6-month weight-for-length z scores was 40%, compared with 1% for children in the lowest quartiles of both. Whereas birth weight-for-length z scores were associated with higher BMI z scores, the magnitude of effect was smaller than that of weight-for-length z scores at 6 months. CONCLUSIONS. More-rapid increases in weight for length in the first 6 months of life were associated with sharply increased risk of obesity at 3 years of age. Changes in weight status in infancy may influence risk of later obesity more than weight status at birth.
Online Mining of Biomedical Text using Google

With the increasing amount of biomedical literature, there is a need for automatic extraction of information to support biomedical researchers. WebProt is an open source software tool for text mining in molecular biology texts. It is used to collect background information about genes and proteins from online literature sources. This is useful for molecular biologists working with many unfamiliar genes, like for example in a big micro array experiment results: A study using 42 different proteins and their official synonyms/aliases showed that 69.5% of all the results from Google were useful, i.e. containing either related protein names or biological functions, locations and processes related to the query protein. This is 10% lower than in a previous experiment, so we made a filter requiring each web page to yield at least 6 results, before being taken into consideration. This increased the precision to 91.5%, but the recall dropped to 2/3, thereby lowering the F-measure of the system from 82% to 78%.
Geodetic constraints on contemporary deformation in the northern Walker Lane: 2. Velocity and strain rate tensor analysis

We present a velocity and strain rate model for the northern Walker Lane derived from a compilation of geodetic velocities and corrected for transient effects owing to historic earthquakes on the Central Nevada seismic belt. We fi nd that from 37°N to 40°N, the Walker Lane is characterized by an ~100-km-wide zone with near-constant strain rates associated with ~10 mm yr total motion across the zone. The strain rates depict predominantly shear deformation, but south of 39°N, the extensional component of the strain rate tensor increases and thus refl ects more of a transtensional domain there. We conclude that this transtension is a kinematic consequence of the motion of the Sierra Nevada–Great Valley block, which is not parallel to its eastern margin, i.e., the eastern Sierra front, south of 39°N. While the orientations of several normal and strike-slip faults in the Walker Lane region are consistent with the strain rate model results at several places, the mode and rate at which geologic structures accommodate the deformation are less clear. Left-lateral faulting and clockwise rotations there may contribute to the accommodation of the velocity gradient tensor fi eld, and most normal faults are properly oriented to accommodate some component of the regional shear strain, but signifi cant additional right-lateral strike-slip faulting is required to accommodate the majority of the 10 mm yr relative motion. Overall, the along-strike variation in the active tectonics of Walker Lane suggests that (1) various mechanisms are at play to accommodate the shear, (2) parts of the surface tectonics may (still) be in an early stage of development, and (3) inherited structural grain can have a dominant control on the strain accommodation mechanism.
Knowledge Acquisition from Texts: Using an Automatic Clustering Method Based on Noun-Modifier Relationship

We describe the early stage of our methodology of knowledge acquisition from technical texts. First, a partial morpho-syntactic analysis is performed to extract "candidate terms". Then, the knowledge engineer, assisted by an automatic clustering tool, builds the "conceptual fields" of the domain. We focus on this conceptual analysis stage, describe the data prepared from the results of the morpho-syntactic analysis and show the results of the clustering module and their interpretation. We found that syntactic links represent good descriptors for candidate terms clustering since the clusters are often easily interpreted as "conceptual fields".
Susceptibility-Weighted Imaging is More Reliable Than T2*-Weighted Gradient-Recalled Echo MRI for Detecting Microbleeds

Background and Purpose— We investigated the sensitivity and reliability of MRI susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) compared with routine MRI T2*-weighted gradient-recalled echo (GRE) for cerebral microbleed (CMB) detection. Methods— We used data from a prospective study of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (n=9; mean age, 71±8.3) and healthy non–cerebral amyloid angiopathy controls (n=22; mean age, 68±6.3). Three raters (labeled 1, 2, and 3) independently interpreted the GRE and SWI sequences (using the phase-filtered magnitude image) blinded to clinical information. Results— In 9 cerebral amyloid angiopathy cases, the raters identified 1146 total CMBs on GRE and 1432 CMBs on SWI. In 22 healthy control subjects, the raters identified ≥1 CMBs in 6/22 on GRE (total 9 CMBs) and 5/22 on SWI (total 19 CMBs). Among cerebral amyloid angiopathy cases, the reliability between raters for CMB counts was good for SWI (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.87) but only moderate for GRE (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.52). In controls, agreement on the presence or absence of CMBs in controls was moderate to good on both SWI (&kgr; coefficient ranged from 0.57 to 0.74 across the 3 combinations of rater pairs) and GRE (&kgr; range, 0.31 to 0.70). A review of 114 hypointensities identified as possible CMBs indicated that increased detection and reliability on SWI was related to both increased contrast and higher resolution, allowing better discrimination of CMBs from the background and better anatomic differentiation from pial vessels. Conclusions— SWI confers greater reliability as well as greater sensitivity for CMB detection compared with GRE, and should be the preferred sequence for quantifying CMB counts.
A tool for nesting and clustering large objects

In implementations of non-standard database systems, large objects are often embedded within an aggregate of different types, i.e. a tuple. For a given size and access probability of a large object, query performance depends on its representation: either inlined within the aggregate or swapped out to a separate object. Furthermore, the implementation of complex data models often requires nested large objects, and access performance is highly influenced by the clustering strategy followed to store the resulting tree of large objects. In this paper we describe a large object extension which automatically clusters nested large objects. A rank function is developed which indicates the suitability of a large object being inserted into a given cluster. We present two clustering algorithms of different run-time complexity, both using the rank function, and a series of simulations is performed to compare them to each other as well as to two trivial ones. One of the algorithms proves to compute the most efficient clustering in all tests.
Factors Identified by Experts to Support Decision Making for Post Acute Referral

Background: Each year, more than 13 million post acute referral decisions are made for Medicare recipients, yet there are no national, empirically derived decision support tools to assist in making these important decisions. Objectives: The aim of this study was to elicit expert knowledge about factors important to referral decision making and identify the characteristics of hospitalized patients who need a post acute referral. Methods: This was a retrospective and prospective mixed-methods study of the referral decisions made by discharge planning experts for 355 hospitalized older adults. Variables included sociodemographics, living arrangement, insurance, diagnosis, comorbid conditions, adverse events, medications, home care use, hospitalization in last 30 days or 6 months, patients' perception of need for and use of assistive devices or post acute services, length of stay, cognition, self-rated health, depression, functional status, and post acute referral decision. Results: The final model identified six factors associated with the need for a post acute referral. A cutpoint was derived with a sensitivity and specificity of 87.6% and 63.2%, respectively. Experts were more likely to refer patients who had no or intermittent help available (odds ratio [OR] = 3.0), major walking restrictions (OR = 6.5), less than excellent self-rated health (3.1 and 4.0 times more likely with good and fair-poor health, respectively), remained in the hospital longer (OR = 1.2), and had higher depression scores (OR = 1.1) or number of comorbidities (OR = 1.2). Discussion: This study begins to identify information useful to clinicians caring for hospitalized older adults who may benefit from post acute services. By assuring the systematic, valid, and reliable collection of these items, the multidisciplinary team is alerted to patients who may benefit from post acute services. Further work is needed to increase the specificity and generalizability of the model and to test its effects on patient and clinician outcomes.
Effectiveness of Aldosterone Blockade in Patients With Diabetic Nephropathy

Abstract—It has been reported that continuous ACE inhibitor therapy does not necessarily produce a maintained decrease in plasma aldosterone levels, which may remain high or increase eventually during long-term use (aldosterone escape). We have examined the role of aldosterone escape in 45 patients with type 2 diabetes and early nephropathy treated with an ACE inhibitor for 40 weeks. With treatment, there was a 40% reduction in average urinary albumin excretion, although urinary albumin excretion in patients with aldosterone escape (18 patients) was significantly higher than that in patients without escape (27 patients). In the 18 patients with escape, spironolactone (25 mg/d) was added to ACE inhibitor treatment in 13. After a 24-week study period, urinary albumin excretion and left ventricular mass index were significantly reduced without blood pressure change. In conclusion, the present study demonstrates that aldosterone escape is observed in 40% of patients with type 2 diabetes with early nephropathy despite the use of ACE inhibitors. Our study suggests the possibility that aldosterone blockade may represent optimal therapy for patients with early diabetic nephropathy who show aldosterone escape during ACE inhibitor treatment and who no longer show maximal antiproteinuric effects of ACE inhibition. Additional, larger, prospectively randomized, double-blind studies will be needed before adaptation of this strategy.
sFPGA — A scalable switch based FPGA architecture and design methodology

The poor scalability of current mesh-based FPGA interconnection networks is impeding our attempts to build next-generation FPGA of larger logic capacity. A few alternative interconnection network architectures have been proposed for future FPGAs, but they still have several design challenges that need to be addressed. In this paper, we propose sFPGA, a scalable FPGA architecture, which is a hybrid between hierarchical interconnection and network-on-chip. The logic resources in sFPGA are organized into an array of logic tiles. The tiles are connected by a hierarchical network of switches, which route data packets over the network. In addition, we have proposed a design flow for sFPGA which integrates current design flows seamlessly. By doing a case study in our emulation prototype, we have validated our sFPGA design flow.
Osteoclasts and Arthritis

INFLAMMATORY ARTHRITIS TYPICALLY presents as joint pain, swelling, and stiffness, which may be of short duration. For example, parvovirus B 19 infection, attended by painful polyarticular swelling, generally resolves spontaneously within 2 wk without joint destruction. Chronic manifestations of these diseases, however, typically represent a self-perpetuating hyperimmune, pathological phenomenon and yield progressive structural damage. Rheumatoid (RA) and psoriatic arthritis, in particular, are joint destructive consequent to chronic inflammation of the synovial membrane and its bone-associated ligaments and tendons.
Secure background watermarking based on video mosaicing

Digital watermarking was introduced during the last decade as a complementary technology to protect digital multimedia data. Watermarking digital video material has already been studied, but it is still usually regarded as watermarking a sequence of still images. However, it is well-known that such straightforward frame-by-frame approaches result in low performance in terms of security. In particular, basic intra-video collusion attacks can easily defeat basic embedding strategies. In this paper, an extension of the simple temporal frame averaging attack will be presented, which basically considers frame registration to enlarge the averaging temporal window size. With this attack in mind, video processing, especially video mosaicing, will be considered to produce a temporally coherent watermark. In other words, an embedding strategy will be proposed which ensures that all the projections of a given 3D point in a movie set carry the same watermark sample along a video scene. Finally, there will be a discussion regarding the impact of this novel embedding strategy on different relevant parameters in digital watermarking e.g. capacity, visibility, robustness and security.
The Role of Secondary Growth Factor Production in Thrombin-lnduced Proliferation of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

Alpha-thrombin is a multifunctional serine proteinase that is concentrated at sites of vascular injury and has been implicated in vascular healing responses following balloon injury. In addition to its well-known hemostatic effects, thrombin stimulates smooth muscle cell (SMC) proliferation via binding of protease activated receptor-1 (PAR-1), a seven transmembrane, G-protein-coupled cell surface receptor. Following activation of this receptor, SMC produce and secrete various autocrine growth factors, including platelet-derived growth factor-AA (PDGF-AA), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), heparin binding epidermal growth factor (HBEGF), and transforming growth factor-beta (TGFbeta). The role that autocrine growth factors play in alpha-thrombin-induced proliferation will be discussed in this review.