Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Compressed domain texture based visual information retrieval method for I-frame coded pictures

In this paper we introduce a new compressed domain texture based visual information retrieval method. The proposed method is for the spatially predicted I-frames in the H.264 video coding standard. In I-Frame coding various prediction modes can be used for spatially predicting pixels of a block from upper or left side adjacent pixels. The selected prediction mode for a block indicates the way in which pixels of that block are related to their neighboring parts. Hence, we propose to use the histogram of the prediction modes as a texture descriptor of compressed I-frames. Since the method is based on independent I-Frame coded pictures, it can be used either for video analysis of H.264 coded videos or image retrieval of the I-frame based coded images such as advanced image coding. The simulation results indicate that this method has superior performance and lower computational load compared to an efficient realization of pixel domain texture retrieval method based on Gabor filter. Moreover, it is also robust to variations in image and coding parameters. Hence, this method is a powerful tool for visual information analysis in a wide range of applications.
A New System for Comparative Functional Genomics of Saccharomyces Yeasts

Whole-genome sequencing, particularly in fungi, has progressed at a tremendous rate. More difficult, however, is experimental testing of the inferences about gene function that can be drawn from comparative sequence analysis alone. We present a genome-wide functional characterization of a sequenced but experimentally understudied budding yeast, Saccharomyces bayanus var. uvarum (henceforth referred to as S. bayanus), allowing us to map changes over the 20 million years that separate this organism from S. cerevisiae. We first created a suite of genetic tools to facilitate work in S. bayanus. Next, we measured the gene-expression response of S. bayanus to a diverse set of perturbations optimized using a computational approach to cover a diverse array of functionally relevant biological responses. The resulting data set reveals that gene-expression patterns are largely conserved, but significant changes may exist in regulatory networks such as carbohydrate utilization and meiosis. In addition to regulatory changes, our approach identified gene functions that have diverged. The functions of genes in core pathways are highly conserved, but we observed many changes in which genes are involved in osmotic stress, peroxisome biogenesis, and autophagy. A surprising number of genes specific to S. bayanus respond to oxidative stress, suggesting the organism may have evolved under different selection pressures than S. cerevisiae. This work expands the scope of genome-scale evolutionary studies from sequence-based analysis to rapid experimental characterization and could be adopted for functional mapping in any lineage of interest. Furthermore, our detailed characterization of S. bayanus provides a valuable resource for comparative functional genomics studies in yeast.
Cutoff and target values for intra-abdominal fat area for prevention of metabolic disorders in pre- and post-menopausal obese women before and after weight reduction.

BACKGROUND The Japan Society for the Study of Obesity originally proposed a cutoff value of >100 cm(2) for the intra-abdominal fat area (IFA) as a definition for "visceral fat obesity" in Japanese adults. There are no studies on the cutoff or target values after weight reduction in pre- and post-menopausal women. METHODS AND RESULTS In the present study 149 pre-menopausal obese women (PreM, 43.3 years, 27.3 kg/m(2)) and 58 post-menopausal women (PostM, 53.9 years, 27.7 kg/m(2)) participated in a 14-week weight reduction program. The IFA was measured by computed tomography. The program induced significant reductions in body weight (8.6 kg in PreM and 7.8 kg in PostM). The IFA decreased significantly from 80.4 +/- 41.3 to 50.7 +/- 23.8 (PreM) and from 115.4 +/- 38.0 to 75.7 +/- 30.5 (PostM). CONCLUSIONS The receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses revealed that the appropriate cutoff values were 80 cm(2) (PreM) and 110 cm(2) (PostM) before the program, and after the program the appropriate target values were determined as 60 and 70 cm(2), respectively.
ACUTE PROMYELOCYTIC LEUKEMIA WITH FIBRINOGEN AND FACTOR V DEFICIENCIES.

1. Two patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) are reported. Many of the promyelocytes were atypical. Of the 57 patients with this disorder in the literature, only three survived more than 4 months. Our patients underwent complete remission on 6-mercaptopurine, and survived 8 and 14 months, respectively. 2. Coagulation abnormalities in these two patients were thrombocytopenia; fibrinogen and factor V deficiencies; and, in one, prothrombin deficiency. These defects disappeared with remission, then reappeared terminally. In contrast to most previous reports, no increased fibrinolytic activity was found in their blood. Infused fibrinogen disappeared abnormally rapidly from the blood of one patient; this was not affected by simultaneous heparin administration, and no thrombi were seen at autopsy. 3. Fibrinogen, factor V, and prothrombin were assayed in 86 patients with other forms of leukemia before treatment or in relapse. Fibrinogen deficiency was found in none; prothrombin and/or factor V deficiency in eight. Three of these had acute myeloblastic, three acute myelomonoblastic, and two chronic myelocytic leukemia. 4. The characteristic cellular morphology, combined with the usual finding of fibrinogen and factor V deficiencies, makes for a distinct differentiation of APL from other forms of leukemia.
Traveling waves and pulses in a one-dimensional network of excitable integrate-and-5re neurons

We study the existence and stability of traveling waves and pulses in a one-dimensional network of integrate-and-"re neuronswith synaptic coupling. This provides a simple model of excitable neural tissue. We "rst derive a self-consistency condition for the existence of traveling waves, which generates a dispersion relation between velocity and wavelength. We use this to investigate how wave-propagation dependson variousparametersthat characterize neuronal interactions such as synaptic and axonal delays, and the passive membrane proper- ties of dendritic cables. We also establish that excitable networks support the propagation of solitary pulses in the long-wavelength limit. We then derive a general condition for the (local) asymptotic stability of traveling wavesin termsof the characteris tic equation of the lin- earized "ring time map, which takesthe form of an integro-di ! erence equation of in"nite order. We use this to analyze the stability of solitary pulses in the long-wavelength limit. Solitary wave solutions are shown to come in pairs with the faster (slower) solution stable (unstable) in the case of zero axonal delays; for non-zero delays and fast synapses the stable wave can itself destabilize via a Hopf bifurcation.
Empirical risk minimization for support vector classifiers

In this paper, we propose a general technique for solving support vector classifiers (SVCs) for an arbitrary loss function, relying on the application of an iterative reweighted least squares (IRWLS) procedure. We further show that three properties of the SVC solution can be written as conditions over the loss function. This technique allows the implementation of the empirical risk minimization (ERM) inductive principle on large margin classifiers obtaining, at the same time, very compact (in terms of number of support vectors) solutions. The improvements obtained by changing the SVC loss function are illustrated with synthetic and real data examples.
Delaying Gal4-Driven Gene Expression in the Zebrafish with Morpholinos and Gal80

The modular Gal4/UAS gene expression system has become an indispensable tool in modern biology. Several large-scale gene- and enhancer-trap screens in the zebrafish have generated hundreds of transgenic lines expressing Gal4 in unique patterns. However, the early embryonic expression of the Gal4 severely limits their use for studies on regeneration or behavior because UAS-driven effectors could disrupt normal organogenesis. To overcome this limitation, we explored the use of the Gal4 repressor Gal80 in transient assays and with stable transgenes to temporally control Gal4 activity. We also validated a strategy to delay Gal4-driven gene expression using a morpholino targeted to Gal4. The first approach is limited to transgenes expressing the native Gal4. The morphant approach can also be applied to transgenic lines expressing the Gal4-VP16 fusion protein. It promises to become a standard approach to delay Gal4-driven transgene expression and enhance the genetic toolkit for the zebrafish.
A survey of GF (2m) multipliers on FPGA

Finite field multiplication is one of the most important operation in the finite field arithmetic. This paper presents a study that compares the architectures and the performances of some of the major GF (2m) multiplication algorithms. Hardware implementation on a reconfigurable circuit (FPGA) allowed assessment of the performance of architecture multipliers in terms of area and time complexities. Results show that serial/sequential multipliers require less area and lead to a small computational drawback, whereas parallel/combinational multipliers consume more area but are faster. Thus a trade-off between area and speed should be obtained using hybrid multipliers.
Information Requirements for Strategic Decision Making in the Production Environment

The success of supply chain management depends on the strategic decisions made at various stages of the supply chain, and especially at that part of the chain that affects the actual production. In view of this, the availability of information required to make optimal decisions becomes critical. With the advent of innovations in information technology (IT) and the increased use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the situation is vastly improved in many areas. However, there are some areas such as making decisions on dropping/adding a product or business segment, replacing/keeping equipment or implementing alternate processes/type of technology automated systems are not that effective. In this paper we examine the information requirements for making these strategic decisions in the production environment.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Role of Lamotrigine Augmentation to Anti-Depressant Medication in Winter Depression

Background: Many therapeutic options have been evaluated and tried for seasonal affective disorder (SAD) including bright light therapy (BLT), anti-depressants, beta-blockers and psychotherapy, but the data supporting use of mood-stabilizing agents is just handful in spite of this condition being understood most frequently to be associated with bipolar affective disorder II (BPAD II). So we planned to study role of Lamotrigine (Mood stabilizing agent) in SAD. Materials and Methods: 30 patients of SAD who were prescribed lamotrigine in addition to antidepressant medications for a minimum of 8 weeks and were assessed for severity using HAM-D were selected retrospectively from the hospital records for this study. HAM-D scores at 2, 4 and 8 weeks were compared to baseline scores. Statistics Analysis: Single tailed t-test was used to study the difference of means to assess the therapeutic response and pre/post analysis of change. Statistical significance was set at P < 0.05. Results: Though no significant difference was seen in HAM-D Scores at 2 weeks of treatment compared to baseline, but results were statistically significant at 4 and 8 weeks of treatment with lamotrigine augmentation of antidepressant medications. Conclusion: We conclude that lamotrigine augmentation was found to be effective treatment strategy for managing winter depression phase of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Identifying inference attacks against healthcare data repositories

Health care data repositories play an important role in driving progress in medical research. Finding new pathways to discovery requires having adequate data and relevant analysis. However, it is critical to ensure the privacy and security of the stored data. In this paper, we identify a dangerous inference attack against naive suppression based approaches that are used to protect sensitive information. We base our attack on the querying system provided by the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, though it applies in general to any medical database providing a query capability. We also discuss potential solutions to this problem.
Improving Virtual Appliance Management through Virtual Layered File Systems

Managing many computers is difficult. Recent virtualization trends exacerbate this problem by making it easy to create and deploy multiple virtual appliances per physical machine, each of which can be configured with different applications and utilities. This results in a huge scaling problem for large organizations as management overhead grows linearly with the number of appliances. To address this problem, we introduce Strata, a system that combines unioning file system and package management semantics to enable more efficient creation, provisioning and management of virtual appliances. Unlike traditional systems that depend on monolithic file systems, Strata uses a collection of individual sotware layers that are composed together into the Virtual Layered File System (VLFS) to provide the traditional file system view. Individual layers are maintained in a central repository and shared across all file systems that use them. Layer changes and upgrades only need to be done once in the repository and are then automatically propagated to all virtual appliances, resulting in management overhead independent of the number of appliances. Our Strata Linux prototype requires only a single loadable kernel module providing the VLFS support and doesn't require any application or source code level kernel modifications. Using this prototype, we demonstrate how Strata enables fast system provisioning, simplifies system maintenance and upgrades, speeds system recovery from security exploits, and incurs only modest performance overhead.
Deep encrypted text categorization

Long short-term memory (LSTM) is a significant approach to capture the long-range temporal context in sequences of arbitrary length. This had shown astonishing performance in sentence and document modeling. To leverage this, we use LSTM network to the encrypted text categorization at character and word level of texts. These texts are transformed in to dense word-vectors by using bag-of-words embedding. Dense word vectors are fed in to recurrent layers to capture the contextual information and followed by dense and activation layer with nonlinear activation function such as softmax for classification. The optimal network architecture has found by conducting various experiments with varying network parameters and network structures. All the experiments are run up to 1000 epochs with learning rate in the range [0.01-0.5]. Most of the LSTM network structures substantially performed well in 5-fold cross-validation. Based on the 5-fold cross-validation results, we claim that the character level inputs are more efficient in dealing with the encrypted texts in comparison to word level, due to the fact that character level input keeps more information from low-level textual representations. Character level based LSTM models achieved highest accuracy as 0.99 and the word level achieved highest accuracy as 0.94 in the classification settings of 5-fold cross validation using LSTM networks. On the real-world test data of CDMC 2016 e-News categorization task, word level LSTM models attained its highest accuracy as 0.43.
Trends in postdischarge mortality and readmissions: has length of stay declined too far?

BACKGROUND Length of hospital stay continues to decline, but the effect on postdischarge outcomes is unclear. METHODS We determined trends in risk-adjusted mortality rates and readmission rates for 83,445 Medicare patients discharged alive after hospitalization for myocardial infarction, heart failure, gastrointestinal hemorrhage, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, or stroke. Patients were stratified into deciles of observed/expected length of stay to determine whether patients whose length of stay was much shorter than expected had higher risk-adjusted mortality and readmission rates. Analyses were stratified by whether a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order was written within 2 days of admission (early) or later. RESULTS From 1991 through 1997, risk-adjusted postdischarge mortality generally remained stable for patients without a DNR order. Postdischarge mortality increased by 21% to 72% for patients with early DNR orders and increased for 2 of 6 diagnoses for patients with late DNR orders. Markedly shorter than expected length of stay was associated with higher than expected risk-adjusted mortality for patients with early DNR orders but not for others (no DNR and late DNR). Risk-adjusted readmission rates remained stable from 1991 through 1997, except for a 15% (95% confidence interval, 3%-30%) increase for patients with congestive heart failure. Short observed/expected length of stay was not associated with higher readmission rates. CONCLUSIONS The dramatic decline in length of stay from 1991 through 1997 was not associated with worse postdischarge outcomes for patients without DNR orders. However, postdischarge mortality increased among patients with early DNR orders, and some of this trend may be due to patients being discharged more rapidly than previously.
CORRIGENDUM: Hitting Ras where it counts: Ras antagonism in the basolateral amygdala inhibits long‐term fear memory

Several studies have implicated the Ras/mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway in Pavlovian fear conditioning. RasGRF1 knockout mice show significant deficits in acquisition of long-term fear memories and long-term potentaition (LTP) in the basolateral amygdala (BLA). MAPK kinase inhibition also impairs fear conditioning and amygdaloid LTP. However, there is no direct evidence to date for the involvement of Ras itself in fear conditioning. To address this issue, we examined the effects of intra-amygdala infusions of the selective Ras antagonist farnesylthiosalicylic acid (FTS) on the acquisition and expression of conditional freezing in rats. Micro-infusions of FTS into the BLA prior to contextual fear conditioning significantly impaired acquisition of long-term contextual fear memory in a dose-dependent manner. Post-training FTS infusions had no effect on acquisition of long-term fear memory. The effects of FTS on fear conditioning were specific for the BLA. Finally, intra-amygdala infusions of FTS inhibited MAPK activation in BLA. Collectively, these results provide further evidence for the involvement of amygdaloid Ras in the acquisition of long-term conditional fear memory.
Immune stress in late pregnant rats decreases length of gestation and fecundity, and alters later cognitive and affective behaviour of surviving pre-adolescent offspring

Immune challenge during pregnancy is associated with preterm birth and poor perinatal development. The mechanisms of these effects are not known. 5α-Pregnan-3α-ol-20-one (3α,5α-THP), the neuroactive metabolite of progesterone, is critical for neurodevelopment and stress responses, and can influence cognition and affective behaviours. To develop an immune challenge model of preterm birth, pregnant Long–Evans rat dams were administered lipopolysaccharide [LPS; 30 μg/kg/ml, intraperitoneal (IP)], interleukin-1β (IL-1β; 1 μg/rat, IP) or vehicle (0.9% saline, IP) daily on gestational days 17–21. Compared to control treatment, prenatal LPS or IL-1β reduced gestational length and the number of viable pups born. At 28–30 days of age, male and female offspring of mothers exposed to prenatal IL-1β had reduced cognitive performance in the object recognition task compared to controls. In females, but not males, prenatal IL-1β reduced anxiety-like behaviour, indicated by entries to the centre of an open field. In the hippocampus, progesterone turnover to its 5α-reduced metabolites was lower in prenatally exposed IL-1β female, but not in male offspring. IL-1β-exposed males and females had reduced oestradiol content in hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex and diencephalon compared to controls. Thus, immune stress during late pregnancy reduced gestational length and negatively impacted birth outcomes, hippocampal function and central neurosteroid formation in the offspring.
A survey of multi-agent organizational paradigms

Many researchers have demonstrated that the organizational design employed by an agent system can have a significant, quantitative effect on its performance characteristics. A range of organizational strategies have emerged from this line of research, each with different strengths and weaknesses. In this article we present a survey of the major organizational paradigms used in multi-agent systems. These include hierarchies, holarchies, coalitions, teams, congregations, societies, federations, markets, and matrix organizations. We will provide a description of each, discuss their advantages and disadvantages, and provide examples of how they may be instantiated and maintained. This summary will facilitate the comparative evaluation of organizational styles, allowing designers to first recognize the spectrum of possibilities, and then guiding the selection of an appropriate organizational design for a particular domain and environment.
Adaptive color display via perceptually-driven factored spectral projection

Fundamental display characteristics are constantly being improved, especially resolution, dynamic range, and color reproduction. However, whereas high resolution and high-dynamic range displays have matured as a technology, it remains largely unclear how to extend the color gamut of a display without either sacrificing light throughput or making other tradeoffs. In this paper, we advocate for adaptive color display; with hardware implementations that allow for color primaries to be dynamically chosen, an optimal gamut and corresponding pixel states can be computed in a content-adaptive and user-centric manner. We build a flexible gamut projector and develop a perceptually-driven optimization framework that robustly factors a wide color gamut target image into a set of time-multiplexed primaries and corresponding pixel values. We demonstrate that adaptive primary selection has many benefits over fixed gamut selection and show that our algorithm for joint primary selection and gamut mapping performs better than existing methods. Finally, we evaluate the proposed computational display system extensively in simulation and, via photographs and user experiments, with a prototype adaptive color projector.
Players' perceptions on the concept of the "good player" in MMOGs

In this paper we focus on the concept of the “Good Player” in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). Through a mixed method research (interviews and survey) we explore the perceptions of the players on the criteria that define a good player. We identified skills and qualities that are relevant not only to the gaming skills of the players but also to their personality, behavior, attitudes, and relations with others. These findings further suggest that MMOGs constitute designed environments and also communities with their own rules and expectations from the players. Expertise in MMOGs seems to require additional traits than efficiency in game tasks.