Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Age Classification in Unconstrained Conditions Using LBP Variants

Automatic age classification from human faces is a challenging task which has recently attained an increasing attention. Most of the proposed approaches have however been mainly concerning controlled settings. In this paper, we propose a novel method for age classification in unconstrained conditions and provide extensive performance evaluation on benchmark datasets with standard protocols, thus allowing a fair comparison and an easy reproduction of the results. Our proposed method is based on a combination of local binary pattern (LBP) variants encoding the structure of elongated facial micro-patterns and their strength. The experimental analysis points out the complexity of the age classification problem under uncontrolled settings. The proposed method provides state-of-the-art performance that can be used as a reference for future investigations.
Vacuum-assisted closure versus saline-moistened gauze in the healing of postoperative diabetic foot wounds.

Diabetic foot wounds present a great challenge to wound care practitioners. The objective of this pilot study was to determine whether vacuum-assisted closure (V.A.C.) therapy would afford quicker wound resolution as compared to saline-moistened gauze in the treatment of postoperative diabetic foot wounds. Ten patients were randomized into either the experimental V.A. C. group or control saline gauze group. Included in the study were diabetic patients 18 to 75 years of age who had a nonhealing foot ulceration. Excluded were those patients with venous disease, coagulopathy, or those who had active infections not resolved by initial surgical debridement. All foot ulcers were surgically debrided prior to initiation of V.A. C. or gauze treatment. In the experimental group, V.A. C. dressings were applied in accordance with manufacturer's protocol for chronic wounds and changed every 48 hours. In the control group, saline gauze dressings were applied at the time of surgical debridement and changed twice a day thereafter. Measurements and photos were obtained to document wound progress. Main outcome measures included: 1) time to satisfactory healing (calculated from date of initial debridement to date of definitive closure, and 2) change in wound surface area (calculated from initial wound tracing to final tracing). Satisfactory healing in the V.A. C. group was achieved in 22.8 (+/- 17.4) days, compared to 42.8 (+/- 32.5) days in the control group. Surface area changes of 28.4% (+/- 24.3) average decrease in wound size in the V.A. C. group, compared to a 9.5% (+/- 16.9) average increase in the control group during measurement period.
Efficient Squared Curvature

Curvature has received increasing attention as an important alternative to length based regularization in computer vision. In contrast to length, it preserves elongated structures and fine details. Existing approaches are either inefficient, or have low angular resolution and yield results with strong block artifacts. We derive a new model for computing squared curvature based on integral geometry. The model counts responses of straight line triple cliques. The corresponding energy decomposes into submodular and supermodular pairwise potentials. We show that this energy can be efficiently minimized even for high angular resolutions using the trust region framework. Our results confirm that we obtain accurate and visually pleasing solutions without strong artifacts at reasonable runtimes.
Probing the Statistical Properties of Unknown Texts: Application to the Voynich Manuscript

While the use of statistical physics methods to analyze large corpora has been useful to unveil many patterns in texts, no comprehensive investigation has been performed on the interdependence between syntactic and semantic factors. In this study we propose a framework for determining whether a text (e.g., written in an unknown alphabet) is compatible with a natural language and to which language it could belong. The approach is based on three types of statistical measurements, i.e. obtained from first-order statistics of word properties in a text, from the topology of complex networks representing texts, and from intermittency concepts where text is treated as a time series. Comparative experiments were performed with the New Testament in 15 different languages and with distinct books in English and Portuguese in order to quantify the dependency of the different measurements on the language and on the story being told in the book. The metrics found to be informative in distinguishing real texts from their shuffled versions include assortativity, degree and selectivity of words. As an illustration, we analyze an undeciphered medieval manuscript known as the Voynich Manuscript. We show that it is mostly compatible with natural languages and incompatible with random texts. We also obtain candidates for keywords of the Voynich Manuscript which could be helpful in the effort of deciphering it. Because we were able to identify statistical measurements that are more dependent on the syntax than on the semantics, the framework may also serve for text analysis in language-dependent applications.
Regulation of apoptosis by long non-coding RNA HIF1A-AS1 in VSMCs: implications for TAA pathogenesis.

OBJECTIVE Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in diverse biological processes, such as transcriptional regulation, cell growth and tumorigenesis. However, little was known about whether lncRNA HIF 1 alpha-antisense RNA 1 (HIF1a-AS1) in regulating the proliferation and apoptosis of VSMCs in vitro and the expression of HIF1a-AS1 in serum of TAA patients. METHODS The cell viability was detected by the CCK8 assay. The cell apoptosis was assessed by annexin V-PI double-labeling staining. Expression of genes and proteins were analyzed by real-time PCR and western blotting respectively. Cells were transfected with siRNAs as a gene silencing methods. RESULTS In serum of TAA patients, the expression of HIF1a-AS1 was significantly increased (superior to 6 folds) compared to the normal control. Moreover, PA induced cell apoptosis in VSMCs in a time- and dose-dependent manner, and the proportion of the apoptotic cells had gained as compared to untreatment group. PA also induced upregulation expression of HIF1a-AS1. We also found that transfection of cells with HIF1a-AS1 siRNA decreased the expression of caspase3 and caspase8 and increased the expression of Bcl2, and protected PA-induced cell apoptosis in VSMCs. CONCLUSIONS HIF1a-AS1 was overexpressed in the thoracoabdominal aorta aneurysm and the interaction between HIF1a-AS1 and apoptotic proteins plays a key role in the proliferation and apoptosis of VSMCs in vitro, which may contribute to the pathogenesis of thoracoabdominal aorta aneurysm.
Prediction of leisure participation from behavioral, normative, and control beliefs: An application of the theory of planned behavior

Abstract The theory of planned behavior (Ajzen 1985, 1987) is offered as a comprehensive framework for understanding of leisure participation. Salient behavioral, normative, and control beliefs, theoretically the basic determinants of behavior, were assessed with respect to five leisure activities: spending time at the beach, jogging or running, mountain climbing, boating, and biking. College students completed a questionnaire containing measures of these beliefs and of global expressions of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control. One year later the participants reported how often they had performed each behavior in the preceding 12 months. Behavioral beliefs were found to partition into beliefs about affective reactions and beliefs about costs and benefits. Participation in leisure activities was influenced by these affective and instrumental beliefs, as well as by normative beliefs about the expectations of important others and by control beliefs about required resources and other f.
2-W High-Efficiency Ridge-Waveguide Lasers With Single Transverse Mode and Low Vertical Divergence

We report recent developments on 980-nm single-transverse-mode ridge-waveguide (RW) lasers with high efficiency and low-vertical divergence. RW lasers fabricated with 7-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-wide ridge and 3-mm-long cavity achieve 2-W optical power, 59% maximum power conversion efficiency, as well as a beam divergence of 7.2° in lateral and 10.3° in vertical under 1.5-A injection current. The lateral beam quality factors M<sup>2</sup> are below 1.7 up to 2-W output power.
Developing Citizens: The Impact of Civic Learning Opportunities on Students’ Commitment to Civic Participation

This study of 4,057 students from 52 high schools in Chicago finds that a set of specific kinds of civic learning opportunities fosters notable improvements in students’ commitments to civic participation. The study controls for demographic factors, preexisting civic commitments, and academic test scores. Prior large-scale studies that found limited impact from school-based civic education often did not focus on the content and style of the curriculum and instruction. Discussing civic and political issues with one’s parents, extracurricular activities other than sports, and living in a civically responsive neighborhood also appear to meaningfully support this goal. Other school characteristics appear less influential.
Near-infrared spectrometry in pregnancy: progress and perspectives, a review of literature

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) allows continuous noninvasive monitoring of in vivo oxygenation in selected tissues. It has been used primarily as a research tool for several years, but it is seeing wider application in the clinical arena all over the world. It was recently used to monitor brain circulation in cardiac surgery, carotid endarteriectomy, neurosurgery and robotic surgery. According to the few studies used NIRS in pregnancy, it may be helpful to assess the impact of severe forms of preeclampsia on brain circulation, to evaluate the efficacy of different treatments. It may also be used during cesarean section to detect earlier sudden complications. The evaluation of placental function via abdominal maternal approach to detect fetal growth restriction is a new field of application of NIRS.
Effect of Nutrient Periodicity on Microbial Community Dynamics

ABSTRACT When microbes are subjected to temporal changes in nutrient availability, growth rate and substrate affinity can contribute to competitive fitness and thereby affect microbial community structure. This hypothesis was tested using planktonic bacterial communities exposed to nutrient additions at 1-, 3-, 7-, or 14-day intervals. Growth rates after nutrient addition were inversely proportional to the pulse interval and declined from 0.5 h−1 to 0.15 h−1 as the pulse interval increased from 1 to 14 days. The dynamics of community structure were monitored by 16S rRNA gene PCR-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis. At pulse intervals of more than 1 day, the community composition continued to change over 130 days. Although replicate systems exposed to the same pulse interval were physiologically similar, their community compositions could exhibit as much dissimilarity (Dice similarity coefficients of <0.5) as did systems operated at different intervals. Bacteria were cultivated from the systems to determine if the physiological characteristics of individual members were consistent with the measured performance of the systems. The isolates fell into three bacterial divisions, Bacteroidetes, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteria. In agreement with community results, bacteria isolated from systems pulsed every day with nutrients had higher growth rates and ectoaminopeptidase specific activities than isolates from systems pulsed every 14 days. However, the latter isolates did not survive starvation longer than those provided with nutrients every day. The present study demonstrates the dynamic nature of microbial communities exposed to even simple and regular environmental discontinuities when a substantial pool of species that can catabolize the limiting substrate is present.
Health Behavior Change and Life Course: A Qualitative Study Using Focus-Groups

This study aimed to explore the mechanisms of long-term behavior changes to a healthier lifestyle. We conducted focus group interviews with a sample of 18 adults without further selection criteria and applied a top-down thematic analysis approach to extract the determinants of long-term health behavior change. The results showed that long-term health behavior changes only occurred as a response to life events that force individuals to abandon established habits. These triggers accrued from the interplay of three life course elements: the life phase, a change in external living conditions (e.g. the social environment) over time, and internal motifs (past experience, future goals, and perceived immediate payoff). Our results are discussed in the context of sociological lifestyle theories, suggesting that long-term lifestyle change follows from a disturbed equilibrium between external determinants and identity cues.
Creation of Interactive Virtual Environments for Exposure Therapy Through Game-Level Editors: Comparison and Tests on Presence and Anxiety

Virtual reality and video games are becoming a part of everyday life. Computer games are provided with game-level editors (GLE), which allow the user to create customized virtual environments (VE). In a therapeutic framework, GLE's VEs combined with virtual reality have been used in many fields including psychotherapy. The present article comprises two studies. In the first study, criteria for selecting the most relevant GLE for the construction of interactive VEs are outlined. During the second study, the selected GLE was utilized to construct 9 distinct virtual situations in which a sample of 18 agoraphobics were immersed. Within each VE, the participants contended with their least feared situation and their most feared one. Questionnaires and physiological measures demonstrated increased levels of presence and anxiety within the feared VEs. There was a significant correlation between presence and anxiety. These data indicate that GLE's interactive worlds combined with VR offers a viable possibility to establish a therapeutic environment at an affordable cost.
An efficient transformation for implementing two-layer feedforward neural networks

Most Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have a fixed topology during learning, and often suffer from a number of short-comings as a result. Variations of ANNs that use dynamic topologies have shown ability to overcome many of these problems. This paper introduces Location-Independent Transformations (LITs) as a general strategy for implementing distributed feedforward networks that use dynamic topologies (dynamic ANNs) efficiently in parallel hardware. A LIT creates a set of location-independent nodes, where each node computes its part of the network output independent of other nodes, using local information. This type of transformation allows efficient support for adding and deleting nodes dynamically during learning. In particular, this paper presents an LIT for dynamic Backpropagation networks with a single hidden layer. The complexity of both learning and execution algorithms is O(n+p+logm) for a single pattern, where n is the number of inputs, p is the number of outputs, and m is the number of hidden nodes in the original network.
The Chinese version of the Parenting Stress Index: a psychometric study

This study examined the psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the Parenting Stress Index/Short Form (PSI/SF). A 15‐item simplified PSI/SF (S‐PSI/SF) was subsequently developed which maintained a level of reliability and validity similar to the full version. The Chinese PSI/SF was tested on 149 parents (100 mothers, 49 fathers) of pediatric cancer patients in Taiwan. Psychometric testing was conducted using item analysis, Cronbach's alpha and confirmatory factor analysis. The S‐PSI/SF was constructed based on the item analysis of the PSI/SF. Both the PSI/SF and S‐PSI/SF produced good reliability coefficients. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that both PSI/SF and S‐PSI/SF met all criteria for goodness of fit. Compared with the PSI/SF, the S‐PSI/SF demonstrated better internal consistency and overall fit at the one‐subscale level, and satisfactory overall fit at two‐ and three‐subscale levels. Despite the limited number of items included, the S‐PSI/SF had a very good factor structure. No gender difference in parenting distress index was observed between mothers and fathers of pediatric cancer patients.
Phosphorylation Site‐Independent Downregulation of Na‐Pump Current in A6 Epithelia by Protein Kinase C

The role of protein kinase C (PKC) in regulating the function of Na pumps in the context of epithelia formed by A6 cells (Xenopus luevis distal nephron) was investigated after permeabilization of the apical membrane with amphotericin B. The function of the Na pumps was measured as Na-pump current (I,) at controlled intracellular Na concentrations. The stimulation of PKC by phorbol myristate acetate (PMA), which was prevented by the PKC inhibitor bisindolylmaleimide GF 109203X (BIM), decreased the I b 28-35% within 25 minutes independent of the intracellular Na concentration. In addition to this major effect of PMA, a further BIM-resistant decrease in I, was observed at low Na concentrations (total reduction -50% at 5 mM Na). To determine if phosphorylation of the Na,K-ATPase by PKC was playing a role in downregulation of Na-pump function by PMA, we established cell lines expressing wild-type or PKC site-mutant2 ouabain-resistant a I subunits from Bufo marinus. Residues Thr15 and Ser-16 which are replaced by two Ala in this mutant a1 subunit had been shown to be the unique phosphorylation sites for PKC in vitro and in intact cells. * PMA produced a (BIM-sensitive and BIM-resistant) downregulation of the I, carried by Na pumps containing exogenous wild-type or mutant al subunit equal to that observed for endogenous Na pumps (FIG. 1). To measure the effect of PKC stimulation on cell-surface expression of Na,KATPase, independent of its functional state, we labeled the basolateral surface proteins with sulfosuccinimidobiotin and visualized the biotinylated immunoprecipitated p subunit by streptavidin blotting. The amount of p subunits labeled at the cell surface was reduced by PKC stimulation by 20% within 25 minutes. The same treatment was shown to stimulate endocytosis sevenfold measured as uptake of the fluid phase marker horseradish peroxidase. Furthermore, using capacitance measurements to estimate the basolateral surface area of apically amphotericin-permeabilized epithelia, we could demonstrate that PMA treatment produced 16% reduction of the basolateral cell surface area. In conclusion, PKC stimulation produces withdrawal of Na pumps and a correP Y
A Fuzzy Tree Similarity Measure and Its Application in Telecom Product Recommendation

The recommender systems field has been well developed in the last few years to provide item recommendations to related users. Existing recommendation approaches, however, assume that an item is described by a single value or a vector. Unfortunately, some items in real world applications, such as telecom products, could have a tree structure. This paper aims to handle this issue by developing a comprehensive fuzzy tree similarity measure. The fuzzy tree similarity measure compares both the concepts and values in two trees of items. The focus of this study is primarily on the fuzzy value similarity between two trees. In the similarity measure, each attribute is associated with a set of linguistic terms to express the value granularly. The node values are first transformed to membership vectors related to the linguistic terms, and the values of the conceptual corresponding nodes are then compared. These local similarities are aggregated into the final fuzzy value similarity between the two trees. A telecom product recommendation case study shows the effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy tree similarity measure and its applicability for telecom product recommendations.
Factor Graph Decoding for Speech Presence Probability Estimation

This paper is concerned with speech presence probability estimation employing an explicit model of the temporal and spectral correlations of speech. An undirected graphical model is introduced, based on a Factor Graph formulation. It is shown that this undirected model cures some of the theoretical issues of an earlier directed graphical model. Furthermore, we formulate a message passing inference scheme based on an approximate graph factorization, identify this inference scheme as a particular message passing schedule based on the turbo principle and suggest further alternative schedules. The experiments show an improved performance over speech presence probability estimation based on an IID assumption, and a slightly better performance of the turbo schedule over the alternatives.
Systemic Obstacles to the Criminal Prosecution of a Battering Partner

It is well known in the criminal justice community that victims often wish to drop charges against their abusers, even after initially expressing enthusiasm about going forward. Despite the prevalence of no-drop prosecution policies, victim reluctance is important to understand because it is often the biggest obstacle to successful prosecution and because it implies that there are ways in which the court is not meeting victims' needs. There has been minimal research exploring victims' reasons for following through with pressing charges or asking that charges be dropped. This article presents one perspective: that of victims who have entered the process of pressing criminal charges against an intimate partner. Drawing on qualitative interviews and experience working with victims involved in the court system, the authors present several themes that reflect victims' experience. Implications for intervention and future research are discussed.
1.5-GHz CMOS voltage-controlled oscillator based on thickness-field-excited piezoelectric AlN contour-mode MEMS resonators

This paper reports on the first demonstration of a 1.5 GHz CMOS oscillator based on thickness-field-excited (TFE) piezoelectric AlN MEMS contour-mode resonators (CMRs). The measured phase noise is −85 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset frequency and −151 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz. This is the highest frequency MEMS oscillator ever reported using a laterally vibrating mechanical resonator. The high frequency operation has been enabled by optimizing the geometrical design and micro-fabrication process of TFE AlN CMRs, so that a low effective motional resistance around 50 Ω is achieved together with a high unloaded quality factor (Qu) approaching 2500 and simultaneously high k2t up to 1.96%. A tunable-supply oscillator design is proposed for fine frequency tuning (or trimming) over a narrow bandwidth. The circuit design enables a novel GHz voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) without the use of any low-Q tunable component. The 1.5 GHz VCO exhibits a 1500 ppm tuning range by a DC voltage change of 2.5 V. This technique can be utilized for fine frequency trimming and temperature compensation applications.