Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
No-Reference Contrast Measurement for Color Images Based on Visual Stimulus

Image quality assessment without a reference image is essential for evaluating the performance of image enhancements. Much research has been done to develop an objective image quality measurement that is relevant to perceived quality evaluations. Because the contrast of an image is one of the important factors for a user to evaluate the image quality, methods for improving the contrast of images are also being extensively studied, but the assessment algorithms for evaluating them are limited. In this paper, we propose a contrast measurement of a color image based on a stimulus in the human visual system (HVS). The proposed method evaluates the luminance component of the image based on just-noticeable-difference to reflect the local contrast perceived in the HVS. The contrast in the color component is evaluated based on a model of the stimulus of the color component in the primary visual cortex (V1). The region response factor, which reflects the relative change of the color saturation in the different luminance values in V1, is used to image contrast. We tested the validity of the proposed method using various image databases and subjective tests. The experimental results showed that the proposed method had higher correlation with the evaluation of people than conventional methods of measuring image contrast without the original image.
Automated Dimensioning of Networked Labs-on-Chip

Two-phase flow microfluidics is a sophisticated and frequently applied Labs-on-Chip (LoC) technology as they allow to automatically conduct medical/biochemical experiments. In this technology, small volumes of reagents, so-called droplets, flow in an immiscible continuous flow inside closed channels making it particularly biocompatible. In the recent past, this technology was extended by a concept allowing to passively navigate droplets through the system—leading to so-called Networked Labs-on-Chips (NLoCs). After the design of an NLoC architecture which defines the comprising connectivity between components and, by this, how the considered medical/biochemical experiments are supposed to be realized, the question remains how to properly dimension the used components, i.e. especially how to dimension the used channels. However, this is a challenging task which is conducted manually thus far and frequently leads to specifications that do not work as intended. In this paper, we are addressing this issue by providing the designer with methods that allow to 1) automatically validate whether a chosen specification of an NLoC indeed works as intended and 2) automatically dimension NLoCs. Case studies demonstrate the importance and usefulness of the proposed methods for determining proper specifications of NLoCs.
Top management team diversity, ambidextrous innovation and the mediating effect of top team decision-making processes

Abstract Until now, the amount of evidences for and discussions of how a top management team (TMT)’s composition influences ambidextrous innovation are very limited. This article develops and tests a model that connects task-related TMT diversity and TMT decision-making processes to explain the heterogeneity in a firm’s strategic focus on ambidextrous innovation. The paper is based on a questionnaire survey/analysis with sample of 179 TMTs from high-tech firms in China. The conclusion exhibits that TMT task-related diversity has a strong effect on a firm’s strategic focus on ambidextrous innovation through strategic decision-making activities. The findings suggest that the TMT debate and decision comprehensiveness can mediate the relationship between TMT task-related diversity and a firm’s strategic focus on ambidextrous innovation. Overall, these results suggest that involvement in debate and comprehensiveness of strategic decision activities may bring out the potential of a TMT’s diversity in enabling them to focus on ambidextrous innovation strategy.
Evaluating What Works for Whom in Active Labour Market Policies

In order to make informed and legitimate decisions in labour market policies, European and national policy makers need better knowledge of what type of interventions works for whom. The European Commission and many Member States have high hopes that ‘experimental evaluation’ techniques (such as randomised controlled experiments, systematic meta-analysis and econometric outcome evaluations) will deliver solid and clear evidence to inform the development of more rational decision-making processes. This article reviews the evaluation literature on Active Labour Market Policy (ALMP) and examines what works for whom, under what circumstances. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the current drive towards ‘experimental evaluation’ and proposes an integrated framework for ALMP evaluation that combines ‘experimental evaluation’ with ‘programme theory evaluations' and quantitative with qualitative data collection.
Ultrasonographic Findings in 41 Dogs Treated with Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate and Platelet-Rich Plasma for a Supraspinatus Tendinopathy: A Retrospective Study

Objective To report sonographic findings for dogs with a supraspinatus tendinopathy (ST) treated with an ultrasound-guided intratendinous injection of bone marrow aspirate concentrate (BMAC) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP). Methods Medical records for dogs diagnosed with an ST and treated with a BMAC-PRP injection were reviewed. Data collected included patient signalment, radiographic findings at the time of initial evaluation, and sonographic findings, including cross-sectional area (CSA), fiber pattern, and echogenicity. Results Of 70 records reviewed, 41 met the inclusion criteria. Mean CSA of the supraspinatus tendon decreased by 0.06 cm2 between baseline and 45 days post-treatment (p = 0.0025), and 0.09 cm2 between baseline and 90 days post-treatment (p < 0.0001). Analysis of CSA in dogs with a unilateral ST at baseline revealed a difference of 0.08 cm2 between the affected and unaffected tendon at baseline, with the affected tendon measuring larger than the contralateral tendon (p < 0.0001). This difference became statistically insignificant by 45 days after treatment (u1-u0 = 0.04 cm2, p = 0.2855) and remained so 90 days post-treatment (u1-u0 = 0.03 cm2, p = 0.1910). In most cases (90.6%), the fiber pattern and echogenicity was considered improved 90 days post treatment. In a minority of these cases (13.8%) the fiber pattern and echogenicity abnormalities were considered resolved. Conclusions Using qualitative and quantitative sonographic measures, BMAC-PRP was associated with an improvement in supraspinatus tendon size, fiber pattern, and echogenicity. Given the protracted nature of tendon healing, long-term evaluation may reveal continued improvements in chronic structural changes not captured during the current study. Functional studies are required to evaluate the clinical benefits of BMAC-PRP in the treatment of STs in dogs. Clinical significance An ST is a common contributor to forelimb lameness in dogs and remains notoriously difficult to treat. Previous studies have been associated with inconsistent treatment outcomes. In the current study, BMAC-PRP is investigated as a minimally invasive treatment option, revealing positive sonographic results.
Stakeholders Involvement and Perception towards Guidance and Counselling in Kambaa Division Secondary Schools, Kiambu County, Kenya

According to current studies, guidance and counselling services were introduced in Kenyan schools around independency period (1963). They were introduced with an aim of substituting the corporal punishment which was the method of curbing indiscipline cases among the students. In relation to this, Guidance of the youth and in some case adults has been practiced for as long as man has lived. Lately, there have been several developments in schools to achieve this goal, the latest one being the posting of a professionally trained teacher counsellor by the TSC to secondary schools to head counselling departments. However, despite all these efforts, the attainment of this goal seems to be indefinable. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate stakeholders involvement and perception towards guidance and counselling in kambaa division. Descriptive survey method of data collection was employed. Public day mixed secondary schools were targeted in the division. This is because of diverse indiscipline cases In addition; one boarding mixed school was studied in order to be able to generalize the results. The subjects comprised one teacher counsellor, five teaching staff and twenty students from every school. The sample consisted of one hundred and thirty subjects. Three sets of questionnaires were used as the instruments of data collection. The findings of the study revealed that parents are least involved in the follow-up of the guidance and counselling services. This is justified by the 60% majority who strongly agreed that parents are rarely involved. The data collected on the counselling services offered indicated clearly that they are mainly geared to meet academic needs of the students at the expense of other social, personal and physical needs.
Establishing Judicial Independence in West Germany The Impact of Opinion Leadership and the Separation of Powers

Comparativists have recently taken an increasing interest in the politics surrounding constitutional courts. This literature has focused mainly on the impact of constitutional review on policy output. ' A theoretically prior but intimately connected issue is the ability of courts to establish and protect their institutional integrity and to ensure compliance with their decisions. This issue is theoretically prior because without such authority courts will have little effect on policy. It is interesting because authority is problematic. Courts occupy a weak formal position. They possess no direct enforcement mechanisms and few powers to guard their independence.2 At the same time, courts with the power of constitutional review can impose an unpleasant constraint on government power, and historically executives have challenged them on numerous occasions. Franklin D. Roosevelt's court-packing plan, the curtailment of the Spanish constitutional court's powers in 1985, and the abolition of the constitutional courts of Cyprus in 1964 and of Austria in 1932 provide clear examples. This weak formal position thus raises a puzzle. How can constitutional courts resist executive challenges to their power and independence, or why do they fail to do so? Scholars concerned primarily with the U.S. Supreme Court have highlighted "public support" for courts as one component of court authority.3 As Caldeira has put it, "the lack of any formal connection to the electorate and its rather demonstrable vulnerability before the president and the Congress mean that the Supreme Court must depend to an extraordinary extent on the confidence, or at least the acquiescence, of the public. "4 In his work on Roosevelt's court-packing plan, Caldeira has made a strong case that the justices are aware of the importance of public support and that at least on occasion they act consciously to foster it. Implicit in such emphasis on public support, of course, is the notion that directly elected officials are likely to refrain from attacking an institution whose widespread support holds out the threat of electoral punishment.5 A second argument about the authority of high courts departs from an insight of James Madison. Madison argued that successful constitutional design depends on providing the various branches with the interest and means to defend each other against encroachments.6 The political system must be set up in such a way that the interplay of various institutions serves to hold them all in check; thus, the strategic interactions of political players are a key to understanding how courts can (or fail to)
Tail dependence coefficient of generalized hyperbolic distribution

The generalized hyperbolic distribution was introduced in [3], and has been developed by many authors, see among others [17], [12], [16], [2], especially in relation with several applications in the Finance, see [15], [6]. This family contains and generalizes many familiar distributions such as the Student t, Gaussian, variance gamma, Cauchy and others. The aim of this paper is to investigate the upper tail dependence coefficient in the case of the generalized hyperbolic distribution. More precisely, a bivariate random variable X = (X1,X2) follows a generalized hyperbolic distribution GH(λ ,α,β ,δ ,γ) if
Anthropometric and Fitness Characteristics of Elite Australian Female Water Polo Players

Tan, FHY, Polglaze, T, Dawson, B, and Cox, G. Anthropometric and fitness characteristics of elite Australian female water polo players. J Strength Cond Res 23(5): 1530-1536, 2009-The purpose of this study was to investigate the anthropometric and fitness characteristics of elite female water polo players and examine the differences between players of different competition levels (national and international) and playing positions (center and perimeter). Twenty-six female water polo players (National League, n = 12, and National Squad, n = 14) underwent measurements of standard anthropometry (height, body mass, and sum of 7 skinfolds), lower-body muscular power (in-water vertical jump), speed (10-m maximal sprint swim), and aerobic fitness (multistage shuttle swim test). No goalkeepers were involved. The National Squad players were taller (173.7 ± 5.5 vs. 169.6 ± 4.4 cm; p < 0.05) and heavier (74.6 ± 8.0 vs. 65.8 ± 8.4 kg; p < 0.05) and had better jumping (139.0 ± 7.0 vs. 129.7 ± 4.6 cm; p < 0.001), sprinting (5.96 ± 0.21 vs. 6.26 ± 0.34 seconds; p < 0.05), and endurance swimming abilities (652 ± 84 vs. 449 ± 124 m; p < 0.001) compared with the National League players. Perimeter players had lower-body mass (70.2 ± 3.8 vs. 82.5 ± 7.4 kg; p < 0.001) and skinfold levels (88.7 ± 14.1 vs. 118.6 ± 22.2 mm; p < 0.01) and better sprinting (5.88 ± 0.19 vs. 6.10 ± 0.19 seconds; effect size [ES] = 1.16, p > 0.05) and endurance swimming abilities (678 ± 65 vs. 606 ± 102 m; ES = 0.84, p > 0.05) compared with center players. These findings demonstrate that anthropometric and fitness characteristics can discriminate between players of different competition levels and playing positions. These water polo-specific field tests may assist coaches in profiling players and evaluating adaptations to training.
Fast microcalcification detection on digital breast tomosynthesis datasets

In this paper, we present a fast method for microcalcification detection in Digital Breast Tomosynthesis. Instead of applying the straight-forward reconstruction/filtering/thresholding approach, the filtering is performed on projections before simple back-projection reconstruction. This leads to a reduced computation time since the number of projections is generally much smaller than the number of slices. For an average breast thickness and a typical number of projections, the number of operations is reduced by a factor in the range of 2 to 4. At the same time, the approach yields a negligible decrease of the contrast to noise ratio in the reconstructed slices. Image segmentation results are presented and compared to the previous method as visual performance assessment.
Income inequality and social capital, are they negatively related?: European cross-country analyses 2006-2012

Theoretical notions in the literature suggest the existence of a negative relationship between earnings inequality and social capital as measured by interpersonal trust. In a number of crosscountry studies this negative relationship has been confirmed. However, in later cross country-studies that control for per capita wealth and several characteristics of the population and analyse one year or shifts over longer periods find no relationship between inequality and trust. In our study we take into account that socio-cultural factors may obscure this relationship. Our main focus is on the role of a country’s welfare regime. Four regimes are distinguished: social democratic regime, conservative regime, liberal regime and transition country. We further examine the impact on interpersonal trust of per capita GDP and the societal indicators percent of residents with tertiary education, percent urbanization, government spending as a percent of GDP. We use data over four points of time from 17 European countries. Besides cross-section OLS regression models using averaged data, fixed-effects models are estimated to control for unobserved time-invariant factors. We find the hypothesised negative relationship between earnings inequality and interpersonal trust not confirmed by our data. Our findings do suggest associations between interpersonal trust and welfare regime. With regard to the welfare regime, we found in particular that a conservative regime, a liberal regime and a transition regime are all associated with a much lower level of interpersonal trust than a social democratic regime. The difference in the level of interpersonal trust from countries with a social democratic regime is largest in countries in transition and smallest in countries with a liberal regime. For the development of institutions that can raise the transition countries to higher levels of social capital and economic development, those from the social democratic welfare regime appear to offer the best perspective. The social democratic welfare regime not only pays more attention to the socially vulnerable in society by paying their benefits, but – in addition to that – by investing in strengthening their productive capabilities to improve their chances on the labour market.
Casting Protocols Following BoNT-A Injections to Treat Spastic Hypertonia of the Triceps Surae in Children with Cerebral Palsy and Equinus Gait: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ABSTRACT Aim: To study the effects of single versus serial casting post-Botulinum toxin A (BoNT-A) injections on hypoextensibility of triceps surae in children, 2–7 years old, with cerebral palsy and equinus gait. Methods: A randomized, stratified, parallel, two-group trial was conducted at a pediatric health center with assessments at baseline, precast, postcast and, 1-, 2-, and 6-month follow-ups. One week following BoNT-A injections into triceps surae muscle, a single below-knee cast (n = 10) or 3 serial casts (n = 10) were applied for 3 weeks. Primary outcome measure was the Modified Tardieu Scale (MTS), secondary outcome measures were Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), GAITRite™, Gross Motor Function Measure-66 (GMFM-66), and Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI). Results: Significant effects of time, but not group-by-time, were found for MTS R1 (P < 0.001), MTS R2 (P < 0.001), MAS (P = 0.001), GMFM-66 (P = 0.002), and PEDI (P < 0.001–0.009). One participant who received a single cast did not complete the 6-month assessment. Conclusions: Magnitudes of improvements were similar using single or serial casting. If these findings are corroborated in a larger scale study, the recommendation of a single cast may be appropriate due to its greater convenience for families and clinicians.
Solving a Conjecture on Identification in Hamming Graphs

Identifying codes in graphs have been widely studied since their introduction by Karpovsky, Chakrabarty and Levitin in 1998. In particular, there are a lot of results regarding the binary hypercubes, that is, the Hamming graphs $K_2^n$. In 2008, Gravier et al. started investigating identification in $K_q^2$. Goddard and Wash, in 2013, studied identifying codes in the general Hamming graphs $K_q^n$. They stated, for instance, that $\gamma^{ID}(K_q^n)\leq q^{n-1}$ for any $q$ and $n\geq3$. Moreover, they conjectured that $\gamma^{ID}(K_q^3)=q^2$. In this article, we show that $\gamma^{ID}(K_q^3)\leq q^2-q/4$ when $q$ is a power of four, disproving the conjecture. Our approach is based on the recursive use of suitable designs. Goddard and Wash also gave the following lower bound $\gamma^{ID}(K_q^3)\ge q^2-q\sqrt{q}$. We improve this bound to $\gamma^{ID}(K_q^3)\ge q^2-\frac{3}{2} q$. The conventional methods used for obtaining lower bounds on identifying codes do not help here. Hence, we provide a different technique building on the approach of Goddard and Wash. Moreover, we improve the above mentioned bound $\gamma^{ID}(K_q^n)\leq q^{n-1}$ to $\gamma^{ID}(K_q^n)\leq q^{n-k}$ for $n=3\frac{q^k-1}{q-1}$ when $q$ is a prime power. For this bound, we utilize suitable linear codes over finite fields and a class of closely related codes, namely, the self-locating-dominating codes. In addition, we show that the self-locating-dominating codes satisfy the result $\gamma^{SLD}(K_q^3)=q^2$ related to the above conjecture.
Unconstrained ear recognition using deep neural networks

The authors perform unconstrained ear recognition using transfer learning with deep neural networks (DNNs). First, they show how existing DNNs can be used as a feature extractor. The extracted features are used by a shallow classifier to perform ear recognition. Performance can be improved by augmenting the training dataset with small image transformations. Next, they compare the performance of the feature-extraction models with fine-tuned networks. However, because the datasets are limited in size, a fine-tuned network tends to over-fit. They propose a deep learning-based averaging ensemble to reduce the effect of over-fitting. Performance results are provided on unconstrained ear recognition datasets, the AWE and CVLE datasets as well as a combined AWE + CVLE dataset. They show that their ensemble results in the best recognition performance on these datasets as compared to DNN feature-extraction based models and single fine-tuned models.
Alopecia Areata: Review of Epidemiology, Clinical Features, Pathogenesis, and New Treatment Options

Alopecia areata (AA) is a complex autoimmune condition that causes nonscarring hair loss. It typically presents with sharply demarcated round patches of hair loss and may present at any age. In this article, we review the epidemiology, clinical features, pathogenesis, and new treatment options of AA, with a focus on the immunologic mechanism underlying the treatment. While traditional treatment options such as corticosteroids are moderately effective, a better understanding of the disease pathogenesis may lead to the development of new treatments that are more directed and effective against AA. Sources were gathered from PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane database using the keywords: alopecia, alopecia areata, hair loss, trichoscopy, treatments, pathogenesis, and epidemiology.
The characteristic polynomial of some anti-tridiagonal 2-Hankel matrices of even order

In this paper we derive the characteristic polynomial for a family of anti-tridiagonal 2-Hankel matrices of even order at the expense of Chebyshev polynomials giving also a representation of its eigenvectors. An orthogonal diagonalization for these type of matrices having null northeast-to-southwest diagonal is still provided using prescribed eigenvalues.