Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Shading and shadow casting in image-based rendering without geometric models

representation of complex objects without geometric models. Now the key to IBR future prosperity is how to accomplish functionalities of conventional geometry-based approaches. We have already reported how to interact with image-based objects in the virtual environment 3. The next goal is how to make objects without polygon models react to transition of lighting conditions. This sketch describes a real-time rendering method that changes the shading of image-based objects and casts appropriate shadows according to the motion of viewpoint or objects and the transition of a local lighting. Method A set of multiple pictures taken under a certain lighting condition while moving a camera is called an image-set. Our idea is based on a simple method to select the image-set with the nearest lighting condition to that of virtual environment from the image-sets taken under various lighting conditions. Let I c be the image-set taken under ambient light. An image-set I(l) stores only the luminance part of pictures of real objects taken under a lighting condition l. While changing values of l, the image data is stored into the corresponding image-set. To render an image from a given viewpoint, corresponding pixels are extracted from I(l) and I c. Then the chrominance part of I c and luminance part of I(l) are applied to the pixel in order to get the final shading. Note that as the technology of IBR is used in this process, an image seen from any point of view can be reproduced. The shadow cast by an object is represented by the texture mapping of the image contour, which is viewed from the light position, onto the surface the object resides on as shown in Fig. 1. Implementation A system called CyberMirage 99 is realized in which ray-based data are placed in the geometry space. A light source can be switched on and off, and be moved. Of course, translation and rotation of objects and observer's walk-through are implemented. Note that all of these functions are realized in real-time. Fig. 2(a) shows an image of objects lit from a certain light source. It is noticed that the objects are appropriately shaded and cast an appropriate shadow. Fig. 2(b) is the image when an observer comes near to the objects and Fig. 2(c) is the image when an observer comes to another side of the objects. Fig. 2(d) and 2(e) are images when the light source is moved …
VOISERV: Creation and Delivery of Converged Services through Voice for Emerging Economies

WWW has made information accessible to computer users in various ways not imagined before. However; there is a huge pool ofpeople, especially in emerging economies, still untouched by this revolution and are either unaware of, or are unable or to join this bandwagon. Mobile phones are increasingly empowering the under-privileged to utilize data and services beyond the basic voice communication. However; factors such as high illiteracy rate, cost sensitivity, and user interface issues prevent these users from deriving benefits of available infrastructure and services. We have developed a novel system ¿ VOISERV that enables ordinary telephone subscribers to create, deploy and offer their own customized voice-driven applications called Voic-eSites. The generated VoiceSites get hosted in the network for low cost of ownership and maintenance, and are integrated with advanced services available in the converged networks of today.
Transgenic expression of VEGF in intestinal epithelium drives mesenchymal cell interactions and epithelial neoplasia.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is expressed robustly in human colon neoplasia and is a major new "rational" target of therapy for cancers of the colon and other organs. Nonetheless, the mechanism(s) of action of VEGF-targeted therapies and the biologic roles of VEGF in tumorigenesis have not been well defined. We used a transgenic approach to directly test the hypothesis that augmented VEGF expression can drive progression of intestinal neoplasia. METHODS Transgenic mouse lines were generated with moderate (vilVEGF1) and high (vilVEGF2) VEGF expression from the intestinal epithelium. vilVEGF1 mice were bred to Min mice (adenomatous polyposis coli [APC] +/-). Colon epithelial cells from an APC patient were cocultured with endothelial cells and fibroblasts. RESULTS vilVEGF mice were generally healthy but displayed red small intestines. Vessels were larger and more numerous in the submucosa but not the mucosa. The mucosa showed striking stromal and epithelial hypercellularity, with increased epithelial proliferation. Many crypts formed cysts composed of relatively undifferentiated epithelial cells surrounded by cells with endothelial and myofibroblast markers. Compared with Min controls, vilVEGF1-Min mice developed 6-fold more intestinal adenomas of all sizes, with more advanced histologic features. Polycystic masses were also observed. Coculture of human colonocytes with endothelial cells and fibroblasts directly stimulated colonocyte proliferation. CONCLUSIONS Augmented VEGF expression from intestinal epithelium potently stimulated cross talk with mesenchymal cells and proliferation of normal and neoplastic epithelium. These effects of VEGF, largely occurring prior to the canonical angiogenic switch in tumors, may be in part independent of angiogenesis.
5-AZA-2'-deoxycytidine induced demethylation influences N-glycosylation of secreted glycoproteins in ovarian cancer

Glycosylation is the most common posttranslational modification of proteins and is highly reflective of changes in the environment of a cell. Epigenetic modifications to the genome are stably transmitted to daughter cells without the requirement for genetic sequence alterations. Aberrant regulation of both epigenetic programming and glycosylation patterning are integral aspects of carcinogenesis. The objective of this study was to determine the interplay between these two complex cellular processes. We demonstrate that global DNA methylation changes in ovarian cancer epithelial cells (OVCAR3) resulted in significant alterations in the glycosylation of secreted glycoproteins. These changes included a reduction in core fucosylation, increased branching and increased sialylation. We further show that the change in core fucose levels was mirrored by altered expression of GMDS and FX, key enzymes in fucose biosynthesis. Alterations in the expression of key glycosyltransferase enzymes such as MGAT5 reflect the changes seen in the branching and sialylation of secreted glycans. Overall, our results highlight that modifications to the epigenetic machinery have a profound effect on the glycan structures generated by cells, which may be a key step in understanding metastasis and drug resistance during cancer progression.
GOLAZO DEL PERÚ: DE ÉLITES Y FÚTBOL

Como fue el caso en varios paises de America Latina, la Independencia del Peru en 1821 no significo un profundo cambio en las estructuras sociales, ni en la jerarquia de patrones culturales, que seguian pautas marcadas en buena medida por consideraciones raciales. Lo que se dio no fue una revolucion que busco reivindicar las culturas colonizadas en el siglo XVI, sino la formacion de una nueva elite politica, economica y cultural que hasta cierto punto siguio inspirandose en modelos europeos. En el Peru del siglo XIX se constituyo una oligarquia blanca, supuestamente de 44 familias, domino el panorama politico-economico hasta mediados del siglo XX, por lo menos. Durante los anos que siguieron la expulsion de las autoridades coloniales espanolas, hasta comienzos del siglo XX, el concepto de la identidad peruana se relacionaba estrechamente a esta elite blanca, cuya vision de la nacion ‘corresponde al concepto colonial de «castas», sustentado en una jerarquia racial y cultural donde lo blanco europeo es superior a lo americano nativo’ (Rebaza-Soraluz. 2000: 33). Un elemento importante de esta influencia blanca y europea lo representaba los britanicos, quienes llegaron para aprovechar las oportunidades comerciales y financieras que se presentaban despues de la salida de los espanoles, y como parte del bagaje cultural que llevaron al Peru (y a America Latina en general) el futbol comenzo a jugarse en los clubes exclusivos que establecieron en la capital, como Lima Cricket and Lawn Tennis, fundado en 1859. Tambien llegaron los italianos por razones parecidas, y formaron asimismo un Circolo Sportivo Italiano a comienzos del siglo XIX, pero el primer club peruano de futbol emergio del Union Cricket, club social formado en 1893 por miembros de la elite criolla, y a este club tambien le correspondio la primera cancha de futbol para uso de equipos peruanos, hecha en 1896 con cesped que se importo de Inglaterra en un local que las autoridades de la Municipalidad de Lima les concedio. De estos comienzos se puede apreciar la intima relacion entre la elite nacional (incluimos aqui a los britanicos que formaron su propia ‘colonia’ en Lima) y el futbol, una relacion que se mantuvo a lo largo del siglo XX, y que sigue en pie a comienzos del siglo XXI, como veremos, aun cuando la elite ha optado por la practica de deportes mas exclusivistas, como el golf, la hipica o el tenis, que les permiten marcar una distancia tanto fisica como cultural con respecto al pueblo. RAZON Y PALABRA Primera Revista Electronica en America Latina Especializada en Comunicacion www.razonypalabra. org.mx
Vision and Brain: How We Perceive the World

In this accessible and engaging introduction to modern vision science, James Stone uses visual illusions to explore how the brain sees the world. Understanding vision, Stone argues, is not simply a question of knowing which neurons respond to particular visual features, but also requires a computational theory of vision. Stone draws together results from David Marr's computational framework, Barlow's efficient coding hypothesis, Bayesian inference, Shannon's information theory, and signal processing to construct a coherent account of vision that explains not only how the brain is fooled by particular visual illusions, but also why any biological or computer vision system should also be fooled by these illusions. This short text includes chapters on the eye and its evolution, how and why visual neurons from different species encode the retinal image in the same way, how information theory explains color aftereffects, how different visual cues provide depth information, how the imperfect visual information received by the eye and brain can be rescued by Bayesian inference, how different brain regions process visual information, and the bizarre perceptual consequences that result from damage to these brain regions. The tutorial style emphasizes key conceptual insights, rather than mathematical details, making the book accessible to the nonscientist and suitable for undergraduate or postgraduate study.
Some Psychological Aspects of Privacy

Man's words and actions are intelligible to others only if the experience reflected therein is known or inferable. If an individual's behavior evokes puzzlement from another, the first may seek to give an account of the experiencing revealed by his action. But man, being free, may conceal his experiencing if he wishes, thus leaving the meaning of his acts a mystery for others to conjecture about. He may choose the time and place for disclosures of his experience, as well as the company before whom such disclosures are made. He may also elect to remain in solitude, so none can see or hear him. In extreme cases, a man may become mute and immobile, enacting a charade of invisibility or death. But so long as he remains alive, it is reasonable to assume that, even though he be thus unmoving and uncommunicative, he is yet disclosing some experience of the world, albeit in an undecipherable code. It will be assumed throughout this article that man always experiences the world in some mode; that he is always involved in some form of communication with other people; that he is always involved in some project or other; and that he is the embodiment of freedom. Within this framework, which is adapted from the tradition of existential phenomenology,l the state of privacy is related to the act of concealment. Privacy is an outcome of a person's wish to withhold from others certain knowledge as to his past and present experience and action and his intentions for the future. The wish for privacy expresses a desire to be an enigma to others or, more generally, a desire to control others' perceptions and beliefs vis-a-vis the self-concealing person.2 A man may seek to elude others' direct experience of his action, and he may seek to distort or misrepresent his experiencing to others in order that their view of him will not coincide with his direct view and knowledge of himself. Why will a person allow himself to be seen or known? And why might he seek to conceal his being or to encourage others to form concepts and beliefs about his being that he knows are not veridical? What consequences follow from chronic selfconcealment, from authentic self-disclosure, from compulsory visibility? Under what conditions will a person reveal or conceal his being-for-himself, i.e., his experience, and before whom will his intended being-for-others coincide with his being-for-
Anti-Deprecation: Towards Complete Static Checking for API Evolution (Extended Version)

API evolution is the process of migrating an inter-library interface from one version to another. Such a migration requires checking that all libraries which interact through the interface be updated. Libraries can be updated one by one if there is a transition period during which both updated and non-updated libraries can communicate through some transitional version of the interface. Static type checking can verify that all libraries have been updated, and thus that a transition period may end and the interface be moved forward safely. Anti-deprecation is a novel type-checking feature that allows static checking for more interface evolutions periods. Anti-deprecation, along with the more familiar deprecation, is formally studied as an extension to Featherweight Java. This formal study unearths weaknesses in two widely used deprecation checkers.
The development of negation in early child language

The development of early logic in the use of language is investigated in this thesis by studying the acquisition of negation in the language of children. In particular, the use of negation to express judgements about the truth-value of statements made by others is viewed as a linguistic manifestation of early logical abilities. The central hypotheses of the thesis are 1) the logical operation of negation to deny statements (truth-functional negation) becomes evident near the onset of syntax in the language of the two year-old child; 2) the developmental sequence for the emergence of semantic functions which negation serves progresses from the expression of internal states (rejection), to comments on external states (e.g., object disappearance), to comments on correspondences between external states and language use (truth-functional negation); and 3) the ability to judge negative statements as true is a later development than either judging misnamings to be false or judging another's denials to be incorrect, i.e., there is an interaction between PRAGMATIC factors (where the judged utterance is appropriate, given prior discourse) and SEMANTIC factors (where the judged utterance is correct, given specific truth-conditions), with an early overemphasis of pragmatic factors. Hypotheses (1) and (2) were supported by the studies of very young children reported here, while evidence for (3) was only suggestive. These findings support several claims about early linguistic competence: First, that the child has abstract, reflective knowledge of at least one major feature of language, that it is a system relating to the world with logical structure, and second, that the child is nonegocentric in certain aspects of language use in that he or she evidences knowledge of truth conditions on the use of language which involve not only his or her own language but that of others.
Brain APCs including microglia are only differential and positional polymorphs

The antigen presentation to lymphocytes in brain occurs in two steps. Initially it happens at perivascular spaces by perivascular microglia/macrophage population and finally at the site of inflammation deep into brain parenchyma by the resident microglia. But recent evidence challanges the existing notion of involvement of distinct and different cells at these sites. Studies have shown that many of these microglial cells show dendritic cell phenotype in pathogenic and cytokine driven environment. Different subsets of the cell show wide range of myeloid lineage functions indicating a pre-differentiated status of the cell. Monocytic CD34+/B220+ precursor cells have been transformed to microglial cells in vitro and transplantation of these cells show Iba-1 or F4/80 positivity with microglial phenotypes in vivo in adults. Even they can be converted into dendritic cell like forms. The interconvertability among macrophage-microglia-dendritic cells and final effector maturation according to the microenvironmental cues indicates existence of a pre-mature myeloid cell population concerned with antigen presentation and related functions in brain. With the substantial recent observation this article sketches the idea that brain APCs appearing as macrophage/microglia/DC like forms are derivatives of the same stock in response to their position and microenvironment. And also microglia is never any distinct cells, both in neonatal stage and adults.
Correlation between Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership Behaviour

The purpose of this article is to analyse how emotional intelligence and transformational leadership are interrelated. Transformational leadership and emotional intelligence are defined and critically discussed exploring the components of theories of leadership theories. Following theoretical perspective the paper constructs the coherent linkage between the competencies of transformational leadership and emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence and transformational leadership behavior are found interconnected and complementary.
Basic Science : First Prize Evaluation of the Tensile Strength of the Human Ureter — Preliminary Results

Background and Purpose: Ureteral injuries such as avulsion are directly related to mechanical damage of the ureter. Understanding the tensile strength of this tissue may assist in prevention of iatrogenic injuries. Few published studies have looked at the mechanical properties of the animal ureter and, of those, none has determined the tensile strength of the human ureter. Therefore, the purpose of this work was to determine the tensile strength of the human ureter. Methods: We harvested 11 human proximal ureters from patients who were undergoing nephrectomy for either kidney tumors or nonfunctioning kidney. The specimens were then cut into multiple circumferentially and longitudinally oriented tissue strips for tensile testing. Strips were uniaxially stretched to failure in a tensile testing machine. The corresponding force and displacement were recorded. Finally, stress at failure was noted as the tensile strength of the sample. Circumferential tensile strength was also compared in the proximal and distal regions of the specimens. Results: The tensile strength of the ureter in circumferential and longitudinal orientations was found to be 457.52 – 33.74 Ncm 2 and 902.43 – 122.08 Ncm , respectively (P < 0.001). The circumferential strength in the proximal portion of the ureter was 409.89 – 35.13 Ncm 2 in comparison with 502.89 – 55.85 Ncm 2 in the distal portion (P = 0.08). Conclusions: The circumferential tensile strength of the ureter was found to be significantly lower than the longitudinal strength. Circumferential tensile strength was also lower with more proximal parts of the ureter. This information may be important for the design of ‘‘intelligent’’ devices and simulators to prevent complications.
Stellar wind accretion in high-mass X-ray binaries

Recent discoveries have confirmed the existence of a large population of X-ray sources fuelled by accretion from the stellar wind of an OB supergiant. Such systems are powerful laboratories to study many aspects of astrophysics. Over the last decades, the physics of accretion in these systems has been the subject of extensive research, mainly through numerical methods. In spite of this effort, large uncertainties remain in our understanding, reflecting the complexity of the physical situation. A crucial issue that remains open is the possible formation of accretion discs. Though the spin evolution of neutron stars in these systems suggests that angular momentum is, at least occasionally, accreted, and many observational facts seem to require the existence of discs, computational results do not favour this possibility. In this brief review, I will summarise some of the open questions in this area.
Middleware aided context-aware service for smart home

To realize smart home services, several context-aware applications should be deployed which adapt their behavior depend on context information of home occupants. For context-aware service, context providing, processing, reasoning, delivery and designing context-aware applications are complex tasks. In this paper, we present a context-aware middleware which provides above tasks and supports context sharing in cooperative manner. We model domain context using ontology and adopt FOL which helps the context reasoning.
SET Emulation Considering Electrical Masking Effects

A new approach is proposed for evaluating circuit robustness against Single Event Transients (SETs) through FPGA emulation. A voltage-time quantization model allows capturing circuit delays in the FPGA, including electrical masking effects. Experimental results demonstrate this approach improves SET fault injection rate by three orders of magnitude with respect to logic simulation and provides an accuracy close to analog simulation.
Experiencing a SOA approach for network-centric data integration in the maritime surveillance domain

Coordination and operational bodies involved in maritime surveillance need a common integrated maritime picture for performing their duties in an effective and cost-efficient way. Emerging trends for building an integrated maritime picture are focused on the adoption of a network-centric approach by leveraging on Service Oriented Architecture models and technological standards. This work presents results in the design and development of a message- and service-oriented middleware (named SAI - Service Application Integration - system), endowed with scalability, security and dependability capabilities. A demonstrator has been built in order to assess the SAI system capabilities for enabling information search and integration in the maritime surveillance scenario.