Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RATE CONTROL FOR MULTI-VIEW VIDEO CODING BASED ON VISUAL PERCEPTION

A rate control algorithm for multi-view video coding based on visual perception is proposed. The algorithm is performed on four levels, namely view level, group-of-picture (GOP) level, frame level and macro-block level. In the view level, we pre-encode a GOP to obtain the bitrates proportion among the views. In the GOP level, the initial quantization parameter and the target bits are calculated for the GOP combined with the feature of hierarchical B pictures (HBP). In the frame level, bits allocation is decided by the predicted complexity of the frame. In the macro-block level, the rate distortion model is adjusted based on the visual perception. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can increase the quality of visual sensitive region by 0.18 dB to 0.54 dB and improve the subjective quality compared with the conventional approach.
Exploring Nutrition Literacy and Knowledge among a National Sample of School Nutrition Managers

Purpose/Objectives The purpose of this national study was to describe nutrition literacy levels and nutrition knowledge among school nutrition (SN) managers, and explore if barriers to seeking SN information, perceived role in school wellness, and confidence in SN decision making varied by nutrition literacy and knowledge scores. Methods An expert panel consisting of seven SN professionals contributed to the development of the survey instruments for the national study. A random sample totaling 700 SN directors, equally stratified by USDA region, was selected for this study. A total of 199 SN directors responded to the request for participation and subsequently administered 728 SN managers' surveys. Chi-square, one-way ANOVA, MANCOVA and Pearson Correlation tests were used to examine survey data. Results The majority of SN managers (72.2%) had adequate nutrition literacy skills as measured by an adapted version of a previously validated instrument based on interpreting a food label. For the 10 nutrition knowledge statements, results indicate that knowledge was more compromised including 22.7% with low nutrition knowledge (0-5 questions correct), 45.0% with limited nutrition knowledge (6-7 questions correct), and 32.3% with adequate nutrition knowledge (8-10 questions correct). Nutrition literacy/knowledge scores varied significantly by the type of school and years worked in current position. No meaningful significant relationships were identified among knowledge and literacy scores and the barriers, roles, confidence scales. Applications to Child Nutrition Professionals This study provides a foundation to explore the causes and consequences associated with nutrition literacy within the context of child nutrition programs. Since SN managers make daily decisions regarding the provision of food to young children, it is critical to assure training agencies are providing opportunities for these managers to develop the skills necessary to locate, comprehend, and apply complex nutrition information for the children they serve.
Inflammation-Sensitive Plasma Proteins and Incidence of Myocardial Infarction in Men With Low Cardiovascular Risk

Objective—Myocardial infarction (MI) is sometimes experienced by individuals without any traditional risk factor. This prospective study explored whether incidence of MI in nonsmoking, nondiabetic men with normal blood pressure and serum lipids is related to inflammation-sensitive plasma proteins (ISPs). Methods and Results—Five ISPs (&agr;1-antitrypsin, haptoglobin, ceruloplasmin, fibrinogen, orosomucoid) were analyzed in 6075 men, 47±3.6 years old. A low-risk group (no traditional risk factor, n=1108) and a high-risk group (≥2 major risk factors, n=1011) were defined. Incidence of MI (n=227) was monitored over 18.1±4.3 years of follow-up. In the low-risk group, the age-adjusted relative risks (RRs) were 1.00 (reference), 1.9 (95% CI, 0.8 to 4.2), 1.8 (95% CI, 0.6 to 5.4), and 2.9 (95% CI, 1.05 to 8.1), respectively, for men with 0, 1, 2 and ≥3 ISPs in the top quartile (trend:P =0.03). In this group, the increased risk was observed only after ≥10 years of follow-up. In the high-risk group, the age-adjusted RRs were 1.00, 1.4 (95% CI, 0.9 to 2.2), 1.9 (95% CI, 1.2 to 3.1), and 2.0 (95% CI, 1.3 to 3.1), respectively, for men with 0, 1, 2, and ≥3 ISPs in the top quartile (trend:P =0.0004). Conclusion—Incidence of MI in nonsmoking, nondiabetic men with normal blood pressure and lipids was related to ISPs. The causes for this relationship remain to be explored.
Study on Sparse Representation based Classification for Biometric Verification

In this paper, we propose a multimodal verification system integrating face and ear based on sparse representation based classification (SRC). The face and ear query samples are first encoded separately to derive sparsity-based match scores, and which are then combined with sum-rule fusion for verification. Apart from validating the encouraging performance of SRC-based multimodal verification, this paper also dedicates to provide a clear understanding about the characteristics of SRC-based biometric verification. To this end, two sparsity-based metrics, i.e. spare coding error (SCE) and sparse contribution rate (SCR), are involved, together with face and ear unimodal SRC-based verification. As for the issue that SRC-based biometric verification may suffer from heavy computational burden and verification accuracy degradation with increase of enrolled subjects, we argue that it could be properly resolved by exploiting small random dictionary for sparsity-based score computation, which consists of training samples from a limited number of randomly selected subjects. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of SRC-based multimodal verification compared to the state-of-the-art multimodal methods like likelihood ratio (LLR), support vector machine (SVM), and the sum-rule fusion methods using cosine similarity, meanwhile the idea of using small random dictionary is feasible in both effectiveness and efficiency.
Specific viral antigens in rat cells transformed by herpes simplex virus type 2 and in rat tumors induced by inoculation of transformed cells.

A rat cell line, RE1, oncogenically transformed by a herpes simplex virus type 2 ts mutant (ts 1), has been demonstrated to contain herpes simplex virus type 2-specific thymidine kinase activity, as have two of four tumors induced in rats by inoculation of these transformed cells. A high proportion of sera from tumor-bearing rats (5 of 11) have detectable antibody against herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase, and there is a correlation between enzyme activity in a tumor and antibody in "tumor sera. " A proportion of tumor sera possess neutralizing activity for herpes simplex virus infectivity. Immunfluorescence studies indicate that the transformed cells express antigens which are probably induced early in herpes simplex virus type 2-productive infection.
Monetary policy transmission mechanism in Samoa

In recent years, Samoa has emerged to be the most successful economy amongst all Pacific island countries. Its achievements of low inflation and high growth rates were due to sustained fiscal adjustment and appropriate monetary policy measures. This paper undertakes an empirical study of transmission mechanism of monetary policy by adopting a VAR approach and using quarterly data over a 17-year period (1990-2006). The study findings are that money and exchange rate channels are important channels in transmitting monetary impulses to Samoa’s real sector, followed by credit and interest rate channels.
From symptom relief to interpersonal change: Treatment outcome and effectiveness in inpatient psychotherapy

Abstract This study evaluated the impact of psychodynamic inpatient psychotherapy on patients’ psychological distress and interpersonal problems during the course of treatment and 1 year later. A total of 156 patients were assessed with the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems at intake, 4 weeks later, and at the end of therapy. The follow-up assessment was conducted 1 year later. Results support psychodynamic approaches as well as the phase model, which stresses that the goals to be achieved by psychotherapeutic interventions are not only improvement of well-being and symptoms but also changes in interpersonal behavior. Consequently, on a long-term basis, the first 4 weeks of therapy seem to be insufficient, especially for adequate changes on the interpersonal level.
Discrimination with many variablesP

Many statistical methods for discriminant analysis do not adapt well or easily to situations where the number of variables is large, possibly even exceeding the number of cases in the training set. We explore a variety of methods for providing robust identiication of future samples in this situation. We develop a range of exible Bayesian methods, and primarily a new hierarchical covariance compromise method, akin to regularized discriminant analysis. Although the methods are much more widely applicable, the motivating problem was that of discriminating between groups of samples on the basis of their near infrared spectra. Here the ability of the Bayesian methods to take account of continuity of the spectra may be beneecial. The spectra may consist of absorbances or reeectances at as many as 1000 wavelengths, and yet there may be only tens or hundreds of training samples where both sample spectrum and group identity are known. Such problems arise in the food and pharmaceutical industries, for example the authentication of food (eg. detecting the adulteration of orange juice) and the identiication of pharmaceutical drug ingredients. Our illustrating example concerns the discrimination of 39 microbiological taxa and 8 aggregate genera. Simulations also illustrate the eeectiveness of the hierarchical Bayes covariance method. We discuss a number of scoring rules both local and global for judging the t of data to the Bayesian models, and adopt a cross-classiicatory approach for estimating hyperparameters.
Deadline-aware routing with probabilistic delay guarantee in cyber-physical systems

In this paper, we propose a deadline-aware routing algorithm that considers a probabilistic delay constraint with a pre-specified deadline for cyber-physical systems (CPS). Most routing algorithms minimize a certain average performance metric such as mean delay. Whereas, our proposed routing algorithm can route traffic to maximize the probability reached within a given deadline by considering the delay distribution rather than the mean delay only. Therefore, our algorithm can enhance the quality of control (QoC) of networked control in CPS. We analyze the proposed routing algorithm by using the queueing delay distribution when the single hop delay follows exponential distribution. We then construct a network topology and carry out simulation to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. Our simulation results show that the proposed routing algorithm can effectively increase the probability of delay reached within the deadline and can improve the performance of networked control in CPS.
Towards a Standardization in the Use of Physiological Signals for Affective Recognition Systems

The implementation of physiological signals, as an approach for emotion recognition in computer systems, is not a straight forward task. This paper discusses five main areas that lack of standards and guided principles, which have led HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) researchers to take critical decisions about (i) models, (ii) stimulus, (iii) measures, (iv) features and (v) algorithms with some degree of uncertainty about their results. Methodology standardization would allow comparison of results, reusability of findings and easier integration of the various affective recognition systems created. The background theory is given for each of the five areas and the related work from psychology is briefly reviewed. A comparison table of the HCI common approaches of the five discussed areas is presented, and finally some considerations to take the best decisions are discussed. The aim of this paper is to provide directions on which the future research efforts for affective recognition in HCI should be focused on.
An Inexpensive Packet Loss Compensation Scheme for Distributed Speech Recognition Based on Soft-Features

Soft-feature based speech recognition, which is an example of uncertainty decoding, has been proven to be a robust error mitigation method for distributed speech recognition over wireless channels exhibiting bit errors. In this paper we extend this concept to packet-oriented transmissions. The a posteriori probability density function of the lost feature vector, given the closest received neighbours, is computed. In the experiments, the nearest frame repetition, which is shown to be equivalent to the MAP estimate, outperforms the MMSE estimate for long bursts. Taking the variance into account at the speech recognition stage results in superior performance compared to classical schemes using point estimates. A computationally and memory efficient implementation of the proposed packet loss compensation scheme based on table lookup is presented
Recognition and Classification of Fast Food Images

We aim to utilize learnt machine learning algorithms to do fast food recognition. Our goal is to find a computational efficient algorithm with high accuracy. We use Bag of SIFT, color histogram and a combination of them as the features. k-NN and SVM method (with and without kernel) are used to classify fast food images to eight classes.
Comparative analyses of time-course gene expression profiles of the long-lived sch9Δ mutant

In an attempt to elucidate the underlying longevity-promoting mechanisms of mutants lacking SCH9, which live three times as long as wild type chronologically, we measured their time-course gene expression profiles. We interpreted their expression time differences by statistical inferences based on prior biological knowledge, and identified the following significant changes: (i) between 12 and 24 h, stress response genes were up-regulated by larger fold changes and ribosomal RNA (rRNA) processing genes were down-regulated more dramatically; (ii) mitochondrial ribosomal protein genes were not up-regulated between 12 and 60 h as wild type were; (iii) electron transport, oxidative phosphorylation and TCA genes were down-regulated early; (iv) the up-regulation of TCA and electron transport was accompanied by deep down-regulation of rRNA processing over time; and (v) rRNA processing genes were more volatile over time, and three associated cis-regulatory elements [rRNA processing element (rRPE), polymerase A and C (PAC) and glucose response element (GRE)] were identified. Deletion of AZF1, which encodes the transcriptional factor that binds to the GRE element, reversed the lifespan extension of sch9Δ. The significant alterations in these time-dependent expression profiles imply that the lack of SCH9 turns on the longevity programme that extends the lifespan through changes in metabolic pathways and protection mechanisms, particularly, the regulation of aerobic respiration and rRNA processing.
The adoption of Loan Replacement Grants for low- and moderate-income students at American colleges and universities: A comparative case study

In recent years, a growing number of American colleges and universities have implemented financial aid policies targeted at lower-income students. These initiatives - referred to in this study as Loan Replacement Grant (LRG) programs - seek to reduce or eliminate loans as part of student financial aid awards and replace them with grants. Since the first LRG was instituted in 1998, the programs have proliferated; in the past five years over 40 institutions have adopted LRGs. This qualitative study investigates how and why LRGs are adopted at colleges and universities. Using a comparative case study design, the policy adoption process at three institutions is considered in relation to the diffusion of policy innovation theory - a widely accepted mechanism for investigating the spread of new policies across adopting units. The theoretical framework, which has been derived from policy innovation and diffusion literature, consists of eight dimensions and guides analysis of archival data and interviews with institutional policymakers. The core study finding offers support for a "unified theory" (Berry, 1994) of policy adoption, which simultaneously considers the influence of internal determinants and diffusion-related factors. Results suggest that in LRG adoption, an evaluation of internal determinants is most effective in describing an institution's ability or capacity to implement programs, while diffusion-related factors provide insight regarding the likelihood that institutions will adopt. Additional findings point to a centrality of institutional finances in the policymaking process, the prominent role of policy entrepreneurs, and the influence of institutional problems stemming from underrepresentation of lower-income students. Among diffusion explanations, competition between institutions and the borrowing of policy ideas out of convenience represent the most relevant factors in LRG adoption.
Achievable Rates Of Half-Duplex Relay Networks

This paper discusses two coding approaches for a network of half-duplex relay terminals and presents achievable rates for the discrete memoryless relay channel. Both proposals gain on an implicit (in case of compress-and-forward) or explicit (in case of decode-and-forward) inter-relay cooperation. I. I NTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION In [1] Cover and El Gamal proposed two fundamental coding strategies for the three-terminal relay channel: d code-andforward and compress-and-forward. More recently, Kramer et al. presented in their comprehensive work [2] different protocols for theT -terminal relay network. Both papers concentrated on full-duplex relay terminals which are hard to i mplement cost-efficiently due to practical constraints. Lan eman et al. investigated this problem in [3] and proposed different cooperative relaying protocols forhalf-duplex relay terminals. We apply the ideas of compress-and-forward and decodeand-forward to a network of half-duplex relay terminals to exploit an additional inter-relay cooperation. The advant ages of this proposal are that a) it supports a continuous sourcedestination transmission, b) it ensures that the complete source message is retransmitted by the relay nodes, and c) it offers an additional inter-relay cooperation. The paper is struct ured as follows: Section II presents the underlying relay networ k model and nomenclature. We proceed in Section III with the description of two proposals for the half-duplex relay netw ork and present achievable rates. Section IV concludes the pape r with an outlook. II. RELAY NETWORK MODEL AND NOMENCLATURE In the following we will usex to denote vectors, X to denote ordered sets, ‖X‖ to denote the cardinality of a set and [b; b + k] to denote a set of numbers (b, · · · , b + k) with [b; b + k] = ∅ for k < 0. We further define the index r over the set[1;N ] and define addition using the modulo, i. e. , r +k := mod (r+k−1, N)+1. Let π(R) be the set of all permutations of a setR andπj(r) the r-th element inπj ∈ π(R). We consider in this paper a network of N + 2 nodes: the set of N relay nodest ∈ R := [1;N ], the source node s = N + 1 and the destination node d = N + 2. The relay channel is defined over all possible channel inputs (x1, · · · , xN , xs) ∈ X1 × · · · XN × Xs and channel outputs (y1, · · · , yN , yd) ∈ Y1×· · · YN ×Yd with Xi andYj denoting Part of this work has been performed in the framework of the IST p roject IST-4-027756 WINNER II, which is partly funded by the Europea n Union. The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of t heir colleagues in WINNER II, although the views expressed are those of the aut hors and do not necessarily represent the project. the input and output alphabets, respectively. We further us y R to symbolize the vector of all yt with t ∈ R. Using this notation the discrete memoryless relay channel is defined by the joint pdf p (
Agricultural Productivity Constraints in Uganda: Implications for Investment

Uganda has put emphasis on the agricultural sector as a strategy for raising rural incomes and reducing rural poverty. The Plan for Modernization of Agriculture (PMA) was designed in 2000 for this purpose. However, available secondary data show that crop yields are low despite the availability of productivity-enhancing technologies on the market. This study uses household data from rural districts selected from two ago-ecological zones to explore profitability and productivity of two technologies: improved maize varieties and improved cattle breeds. The research findings indicate that growing improved maize is more profitable than local maize across all farm sizes. Similarly, improved cattle breeds are more profitable and more productive than indigenous cattle.
A Hybrid Evolutionary Algorithm for Solving Function Optimization Problems

This paper proposes a hybrid evolutionary algorithm based on DE and TLBO (HDT). The HDT algorithm independently evolved the two sub populations of DE and TLBO to preserve the diversity of population. In every generation of evolution, we first get a composite individual from current best individuals of the two sub populations, then we use search guide of composite individual to remain the variety of population and to achieve complementary advantages of DE and TLBO. Experiments have been conducted on 13 benchmark problems. Empirical results fully demonstrate the effectiveness and competitiveness of the proposed hybrid evolutionary algorithm.
libboincexec: A Generic Virtualization Approach for the BOINC Middleware

BOINC is a client-server desktop grid middleware that has grown to power very large computational projects. BOINC clients request computing jobs to a central server and run them alongside other regular applications. Unfortunately, this kind of execution causes two kinds of problems. Firstly, developers must port their application to every single operating system target, which usually means maintaining several different versions of the same application. Secondly, any application running natively on desktop grid hardware is a potential security threat to the volunteer client. During the course of this research we sought an efficient and generic method for alternative execution of jobs in BOINC clients. Our approach is strongly guided by the principles of non-intrusiveness and contains two main components. The first is a library, libboincexec, which is able to control several virtual machines monitors. The second is a modified BOINC wrapper that provides the glue between libboincexec and the middleware. Through the use of this solution we are able to effectively use virtual machines to perform computation on desktop grids. This computation is inherently safe because virtual machines provide sand boxing. Additionally, by targeting the same virtual operating system, the problem of maintaining different versions of an application does not exist, thereby solving the heterogeneity problem of desktop grid nodes.