Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
View Learning Extended : Inventing New Tables for Statistical Relational Learning

Statistical relational learning (SRL) algorithms learn statistical models from relational data, such as that stored in a relational database. Last year saw the definition of view learning for SRL, in which the view of a relational database can be automatically modified, yielding more accurate statistical models. The present paper advances beyond the initial view learning approach in two ways. First, it learns views that introduce new relational tables, rather than merely new fields for an existing table of the database. Second, new tables or new fields are not limited to being approximations to some target concept; instead, the new approach performs a type of predicate invention. The new approach avoids the classical problem with predicate invention, of learning many useless predicates, by keeping only new fields or tables (i.e., new predicates) that immediately improve the performance of the statistical model. Retained fields or tables can then be used in the definitions of further new fields or tables. Presented at the ICML Workshop on Open Problems in Statistical Relational Learning, Pittsburgh, PA, 2006. Copyright 2006 by the author(s)/owner(s).
Lossless Location Coding for Image Feature Points

Image retrieval research activity has moved its focus from global descriptors to local descriptors of feature point such as SIFT. Currently MPEG is working on standardization of effective coding of location and local descriptors of feature point in the context mobile based image search driven application in the name of MPEG-7 CDVS (Compact Descriptor for Visual Search). While CDVS is dealing with lossy compression of location information, this paper presents various lossless compression methods of locations and provides comparative experimental results for applications requiring fine matching precision. Among 4 methods presented in this paper, Experimental results show that Block-based lossless location coding using circular scan order method shows the best compression results with compression ratio achieving 2.5 to 1 with reference to Fixed-Length lossless location coding method.
Bilge dump detection from SAR imagery using local binary patterns

Accidental or deliberate bilge dumping presents a major threat to the sea ecosystem. We present a semi automatic approach to detect bilge dumping in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The approach consist of three main parts. Firstly, areas with high probability of being bilge dumps are detected using Local Binary Patterns (LBP) with an adaptive threshold. Secondly, features are extracted from the detected dark spots and lastly, the features are analysed using bilge dump database to discriminate dark spot as bilge or not bilge. The automated approach was investigated on nine visually inspected images of SENTINEL 1A and ENVISAT Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) images. The performance was measured by comparing the number of detected bilge dumps using the automated approach with the visually detected database. The automated detection approach showed to be a good alternative of the labour intensive manual inspection of bilge dumps, particularly for large ocean area monitoring.
Evidence Implicating the Ras Pathway in Multiple CD28 Costimulatory Functions in CD4+ T Cells

CD28 costimulation is a critical event in the full activation of CD4+ T cells that augments cytokine gene transcription, promotes cytokine mRNA stability, prevents induction of anergy, increases cellular metabolism, and increases cell survival. However, despite extensive biochemical analysis of the signaling events downstream of CD28, molecular pathways sufficient to functionally replace the diverse aspects of CD28-mediated costimulation in normal T cells have not been identified. Ras/MAPK signaling is a critical pathway downstream of T cell receptor stimulation, but its role in CD28-mediated costimulation has been controversial. We observed that physiologic CD28 costimulation caused a relocalization of the RasGEF RasGRP to the T cell-APC interface by confocal microscopy. In whole cell biochemical analysis, CD28 cross-linking with either anti-CD28 antibody or B7.1-Ig augmented TCR-induced Ras activation. To determine whether Ras signaling was sufficient to functionally mimic CD28 costimulation, we utilized an adenoviral vector encoding constitutively active H-Ras (61L) to transduce normal, Coxsackie-Adenovirus Receptor (CAR) transgenic CD4+ T cells. Like costimulation via CD28, active Ras induced AKT, JNK and ERK phosphorylation. In addition, constitutive Ras signaling mimicked the ability of CD28 to costimulate IL-2 protein secretion, prevent anergy induction, increase glucose uptake, and promote cell survival. Importantly, we also found that active Ras mimicked the mechanism by which CD28 costimulates IL-2 production: by increasing IL-2 gene transcription, and promoting IL-2 mRNA stability. Finally, active Ras was able to induce IL-2 production when combined with ionomycin stimulation in a MEK-1-dependent fashion. Our results are consistent with a central role for Ras signaling in CD28-mediated costimulation.
Towards a Learning Approach for Abbreviation Detection and Resolution.

The explosion of biomedical literature and with it the -uncontrolled- creation of abbreviations presents some special challenges for both human readers and computer applications. We developed an annotated corpus of Dutch medical text, and experimented with two approaches to abbreviation detection and resolution. Our corpus is composed of abstracts from two medical journals from the Low Countries in which approximately 65 percent (NTvG) and 48 percent (TvG) of the abbreviations have a corresponding full form in the abstract. Our first approach, a pattern-based system, consists of two steps: abbreviation detection and definition matching. This system has an average F-score of 0.82 for the detection of both defined and undefined abbreviations and an average F-score of 0.77 was obtained for the definitions. For our second approach, an SVM-based classifier was used on the preprocessed data sets, leading to an average F-score of 0.93 for the abbreviations; for the definitions an average F-score of 0.82 was obtained.
Immune Checkpoint Modulation in Colorectal Cancer: What's New and What to Expect

Colorectal cancer (CRC), as one of the most prevalent types of cancer worldwide, is still a leading cause of cancer related mortality. There is an urgent need for more efficient therapies in metastatic disease. Immunotherapy, a rapidly expanding field of oncology, is designed to boost the body's natural defenses to fight cancer. Of the many approaches currently under study to improve antitumor immune responses, immune checkpoint inhibition has thus far been proven to be the most effective. This review will outline the treatments that take advantage of our growing understanding of the role of the immune system in cancer, with a particular emphasis on immune checkpoint molecules, involved in CRC pathogenesis.
The Effects of Compensatory Acceleration on Upper-Body Strength and Power in Collegiate Football Players

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of maximum concentric acceleration training versus traditional upper-body training on the development of strength and power of collegiate NCAA Division 1AA football players. Power was tested with a seated medicine ball throw (n = 30) and a force platform plyometric push-up test (n = 24). Upper-body strength was tested by using a bench press with 1 repetition maximum (1RM) (n = 30). All players were on an identical off-season weight-training program. The control group performed exercises with conventional concentric velocity and the experimental group performed the concentric phase of each repetition as rapidly as possible. Two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to determine training and group differences. Significant training effects for all strength and power measures indicated that both groups increased strength and power. Significant training by group interaction indicates the experimental group increased significantly more than the control group in the bench press (+9.85 kg vs. +5.00 kg) and throw (+0.69 m vs. +0.22 m). Significance was not reached for any of the training by group interactions for force platform variables (amortization time -0.46 seconds for the experimental group vs. -0.22 seconds for the control group; average power was +365 W for the experimental group vs. +108 W for the control group). The results of this study support the use of maximal acceleration of concentric contractions by collegiate football players during upper-body strength and power training.
Advances in the isolation of HTLV-III from patients with AIDS and AIDS-related complex and from donors at risk.

During the last 2 yr more than 100 independent isolates of human T-cell leukemia virus type III have been obtained in this laboratory. Most isolates were from peripheral blood T-lymphocytes established in cell culture from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome-related complex (ARC) patients and healthy donors at risk for AIDS. Several were also obtained from leukocytes from bone marrow, lymph node, and brain tissue and from body excretions, e.g., saliva and semen. In addition HTLV-III was found in cell-free plasma. The incidence (number of isolates per number of patients or donors tested) of virus isolation was approximately 80% for ARC patients, approximately 50% for AIDS patients, and approximately 30% for healthy individuals at risk for AIDS. Inclusion of hydrocortisone in cell culture medium greatly facilitated the isolation of virus from primary leukocytes from AIDS/ARC patients and also promoted its transmission to fresh leukocytes in vitro. Biological analysis of cells from infected patients or donors, as well as from normal peripheral blood mononuclear cells exposed to virus in vitro, demonstrated that OKT4/leu3a+ T-lymphocytes were preferentially infected and were subjected to a characteristic cytopathic effect. In addition to the well-defined individuals at risk for AIDS, heterosexual transmission of HTLV-III with its subsequent pathological manifestations was found. Virus was isolated from males with heterosexual promiscuity as their only recognized risk factor and from the spouses of these and other AIDS and ARC patients.
Enhanced Angiotensin II Type 2 Receptor Mechanisms Mediate Decreases in Arterial Pressure Attributable to Chronic Low-Dose Angiotensin II in Female Rats

The renin-angiotensin system is a far more complex enzymatic cascade than realized previously. Mounting evidence suggests sex-specific differences in the regulation of the renin-angiotensin system and arterial pressure. We examined the hemodynamic responses, angiotensin II receptor subtypes, and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 gene expression levels after graded doses of angiotensin II in males and females. Mean arterial pressure was measured via telemetry in male and female rats in response to a 2-week infusion of vehicle, low-dose (50 ng/kg per minute SC) or high-dose (400 ng/kg per minute SC) angiotensin II. The effect of concurrent infusion of the angiotensin II type 2 receptor (AT2R) blocker (PD123319) was also examined. The arterial pressure response to high-dose angiotensin II was attenuated in females compared with males (24±8 mm Hg versus 42±5 mm Hg; P for the interaction between sex and treatment <0.002). Remarkably, low-dose angiotensin II decreased arterial pressure (11±4 mm Hg; P for the interaction between sex and treatment <0.02) at a dose that did not have an effect in males. This decrease in arterial pressure in females was abolished by AT2R blockade. Renal AT2R, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, and left ventricular AT2R mRNA gene expressions were markedly greater in females than in males with a renal angiotensin II type 1a receptor:AT2R ratio of ≈1 in females. Angiotensin II infusion did not affect renal AT2R mRNA expression but resulted in significantly less left ventricular mRNA expression. Renal angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 mRNA expression levels were greater in females than in males treated with high-dose angiotensin II (≈2.5 fold; P for the interaction between sex and treatment <0.05). In females, enhancement of the vasodilatory arm of the renin-angiotensin system, in particular, AT2R and angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 mRNA expression, may contribute to the sex-specific differences in response to renin-angiotensin system activation.
Modeling the Structure and Dynamics of the Consonant Inventories: A Complex Network Approach

We study the self-organization of the consonant inventories through a complex network approach. We observe that the distribution of occurrence as well as co-occurrence of the consonants across languages follow a power-law behavior. The co-occurrence network of consonants exhibits a high clustering coefficient. We propose four novel synthesis models for these networks (each of which is a refinement of the earlier) so as to successively match with higher accuracy (a) the above mentioned topological properties as well as (b) the linguistic property of feature economy exhibited by the consonant inventories. We conclude by arguing that a possible interpretation of this mechanism of network growth is the process of child language acquisition. Such models essentially increase our understanding of the structure of languages that is influenced by their evolutionary dynamics and this, in turn, can be extremely useful for building future NLP applications.
Does subjective sleep quality improve by a walking intervention? A real-world study in a Japanese workplace

Objectives The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a 4-week walking intervention on subjective sleep quality. Design A prospective open-label study. Participants A total of 490 healthy workers were included in the study. The 490 participants were divided into a group of 214 participants with exercise habits (exercising group, EG) and a group of 276 participants without exercise habits (non-EG). Interventions A walking intervention with a target of walking 10 000 steps daily for 4 weeks. Outcome measures The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) questionnaire was administered twice (before the start and after the end of the study). Results Overall, the walking intervention improved the participants’ PSQI global score, sleep latency (minutes), sleep duration (hours), perceived sleep quality factor and daily disturbance factor. Among the EG participants, the walking intervention significantly improved the PSQI global score and perceived sleep quality. Among the non-EG participants, the walking intervention significantly improved the PSQI global score, sleep latency, sleep duration and perceived sleep quality. Conclusions A walking intervention might reduce the sleep latency and increase total sleep duration in working persons without exercise habits.
A quick charger station for EVs using a pulse frequency technique

The half bridge modular converter configuration is used to perform the charging pulses with both positive and negative pulse. The positive pulse charge permits the high peak current charge: this will lead to quick charging mode; whereas, the negative pulse and idle state can offer low battery temperature rise. The frequency used for pulse charge technique can be varied depending on the type and condition of a battery. PSIM 9.0. 3 is utilized for simulation study and the 500 W prototype is developed to validate the proposed notion. The simulation and experimental results illustrate that the proposed pulse frequency charging technique requires shorter time to fully charge battery at SOC 80% comparing to conventional constant current and constant voltage technique about 3 times at same average charging current. The temperature rise of pulse frequency charging technique is less than a conventional one about 1 °C: these can lead to quicker charge and longer battery lifetime. The results suggest that the proposed technique can be applied for an electric vehicle quick charger station.
Exploring the Potential of Children in Crowdsourcing

Recently, companies and academia have turned to crowdsourcing to stimulate creativity and innovation. Although children's creative nature has been well documented in the design process in co-creation for new products and/or services, this has not yet extended to crowdsourcing. With this paper, we investigate -- through crowdsourcing -- the gap between children and crowdsourcing. To gather a diverse sample of participants we used CrowdFlower, a crowdsourcing platform, to generate, evaluate and rank ideas and concepts. Results show that 93% of parents and 80% of non-parents would involve children in crowdsourcing. The most valued concept of the crowd was the collaboration between parents and children, who are innovating for companies. This concept involves publishing companies requesting drawings from children for book illustrations.
Painting style transfer and 3D interaction by model-based image synthesis

It presents a model-based image synthesis framework to accomplish goal to immerse a 3D object into a 2D model painting. By image synthesis and color transfer technique, the style of the model painting is transferred to the 3D image. The color transfer is automatically accomplished by basic color categories and statistical analysis of model painting and projected image. It proposed a new algorithm for relief image mapping. This algorithm greatly reduces search area when finding the intersection between rays and height-field by exploiting the min-max information. In the preprocessing step, we create min-max image to store min and max-min depth values that intersected by the rays passing through the texel. Thus it can reduce the search steps and then improve the performance and the visual quality. As the experimental results show the style of the model painting well and immerse the 3D object into a painting seamlessly.
Speech and Audio Signal Processing - Processing and Perception of Speech and Music, Second Edition

When Speech and Audio Signal Processing published in 1999, it stood out from its competition in its breadth of coverage and its accessible, intutiont-based style. This book was aimed at individual students and engineers excited about the broad span of audio processing and curious to understand the available techniques. Since then, with the advent of the iPod in 2001, the field of digital audio and music has exploded, leading to a much greater interest in the technical aspects of audio processing.This Second Edition will update and revise the original book to augment it with new material describing both the enabling technologies of digital music distribution (most significantly the MP3) and a range of exciting new research areas in automatic music content processing (such as automatic transcription, music similarity, etc.) that have emerged in the past five years, driven by the digital music revolution.New chapter topics include:Psychoacoustic Audio Coding, describing MP3 and related audio coding schemes based on psychoacoustic masking of quantization noiseMusic Transcription, including automatically deriving notes, beats, and chords from music signals.Music Information Retrieval, primarily focusing on audio-based genre classification, artist/style identification, and similarity estimation.Audio Source Separation, including multi-microphone beamforming, blind source separation, and the perception-inspired techniques usually referred to as Computational Auditory Scene Analysis (CASA).
The 26th Bartlett Memorial Lecture from Truths of Bartlett to Illusions of Vision

This is an informal account of Sir Frederic Bartlett's department at the time I was a student and started research in the late 1940s and 1950s, developing some themes of his influence and how his ideas, with Craik's, have had a major effect on experimental psychology ever since. As one of the diminishing tribe of those who knew “Sir Fred”, it seems appropriate to make this quite a personal statement, representative of his influence on us, rather than a formal paper. His interests were very great, including not only memory, but thinking and social issues largely based on anthropology, as well as practical problems of selection for skill, and design of machines to be appropriate for humans. A “subliminal” theme is errors of perception. It is this that will be developed here as, following his influence as my teacher, this has been the central interest of my work, which took off from the Cambridge Psychology Department of that time.
Annual Report

NOTE: PLEASE INDICATE WHICH COURSE(S) HAD A SERVICE-LEARNING COMPONENT AND BRIEFLY EXPLAIN THE NATURE OF THIS COMPONENT. For examples of service-learning in courses, see: http://www.esf. edu/students/service/courses.htm. Service-learning is a form of structured experiential education in which students engage with the community to be active learners, to enrich their sense of civic responsibility, and to explore practical application for course content. Faculty oversight, reflective thinking, and reciprocity are key components of service-learning.
The Association of Tumor Microsatellite Instability Phenotype with Family History of Colorectal Cancer

Family history is a strong predictor of colorectal cancer risk; however, a diagnosis of colorectal cancer among first-degree relatives has not been systematically investigated as a function of the colorectal cancer molecular subtypes related to tumor microsatellite instability (MSI) status. We investigated whether the observable familial colorectal cancer risks differed according to tumor MSI subtypes, stratified as MSI-High (>30% instability), MSI-Low (<30% instability), and MSS (no instability). Data from 3,143 population-based colorectal cancer cases from five institutions were assessed for family history according to the Amsterdam criteria and the Bethesda guidelines, age at diagnosis, sex, tumor location, and MSI status. The distribution of patient characteristics by MSI status was compared using polytomous logistic regression. Overall, 2.8% colorectal cancer cases met the Amsterdam criteria and 37% met the Bethesda guidelines. There were 14% MSI-High, 13% MSI-Low, and 73% MSS colorectal cancers. MSI-High (P < 0.0001) and MSI-Low tumors (P = 0.01) were more proximally located than MSS tumors. MSI-High tumors were more common among females (P < 0.001). The highest proportion of MSI-High tumors occurred in cases <40 years of age whereas the age-dependent distribution of MSI-Low tumors was unchanged. MSI-High tumors showed a statistically significant association with increasing numbers of first-degree relatives with colorectal cancer (P = 0.002); this association disappeared, however, when MSI-High cases meeting Amsterdam criteria were removed from the analysis. MSI-Low tumors did not show a similar association with family history of colorectal cancer. Familial risk associated with MSI-High tumors is primarily driven by the Amsterdam-criteria patients. MSI-Low tumors may represent a distinct subtype of colorectal cancer with respect to certain epidemiologic variables studied here. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(3):967–75)
A Wide-Locking Range  ${\div} 3$ Injection-Locked Frequency Divider Using Linear Mixer

A new low power wide locking range divide-by-3 injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) using a standard 0.13 m CMOS process is presented. The push-push ILFD circuit is realized with a cross-coupled n-core MOS LC-tank oscillator with linear mixer to extend the locking range. The power consumption of the ILFD core is 2.05 mW. The divider's free-running frequency is tunable from 4.37 to 5.43 GHz by tuning the varactor's control bias, and at the incident power of 0 dBm the maximum locking range is 2.6 GHz (16.5%), from the incident frequency 14.5 to 17.1 GHz. The operation range is 5.1 GHz (35.1%), from 12.0 to 17.1 GHz.