Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel PCA based Noise Reduction for Color Images

Single-sensor digital color cameras use a process called color demosaicking to produce full color images from the data captured by a color filter array (CFA). The quality of demosaicked images is degraded due to the sensor noise introduced during the image acquisition process. The traditional solution for combating CFA sensor noise is demosaicking first, followed by a separate noise reduction i.e. denoising processing. This strategy will generate many noise-caused color artifacts in the demosaicking process, which are hard to remove in the denoising process. This paper presents a novel and modified principle component analysis (PCA) based denoising algorithm, which works directly on the CFA data. By exploiting the spatial and spectral correlations existed in the CFA image, the proposed method can effectively suppress noise while preserving color edges and details. Experiments using both simulated and real CFA images indicate that the proposed scheme outperforms many existing approaches viz. the conventional PCA based noise reduction method, including those sophisticated demosaicking and denoising schemes,in terms of both objective measurement and visual evaluation.
Exploring Human Cognition Using Large Image Databases

Most cognitive psychology experiments evaluate models of human cognition using a relatively small, well-controlled set of stimuli. This approach stands in contrast to current work in neuroscience, perception, and computer vision, which have begun to focus on using large databases of natural images. We argue that natural images provide a powerful tool for characterizing the statistical environment in which people operate, for better evaluating psychological theories, and for bringing the insights of cognitive science closer to real applications. We discuss how some of the challenges of using natural images as stimuli in experiments can be addressed through increased sample sizes, using representations from computer vision, and developing new experimental methods. Finally, we illustrate these points by summarizing recent work using large image databases to explore questions about human cognition in four different domains: modeling subjective randomness, defining a quantitative measure of representativeness, identifying prior knowledge used in word learning, and determining the structure of natural categories.
Inhibition of Neuroblastoma Tumor Growth by Targeted Delivery of MicroRNA-34a Using Anti-Disialoganglioside GD2 Coated Nanoparticles

Background Neuroblastoma is one of the most challenging malignancies of childhood, being associated with the highest death rate in paediatric oncology, underlining the need for novel therapeutic approaches. Typically, patients with high risk disease undergo an initial remission in response to treatment, followed by disease recurrence that has become refractory to further treatment. Here, we demonstrate the first silica nanoparticle-based targeted delivery of a tumor suppressive, pro-apoptotic microRNA, miR-34a, to neuroblastoma tumors in a murine orthotopic xenograft model. These tumors express high levels of the cell surface antigen disialoganglioside GD2 (GD2), providing a target for tumor-specific delivery. Principal Findings Nanoparticles encapsulating miR-34a and conjugated to a GD2 antibody facilitated tumor-specific delivery following systemic administration into tumor bearing mice, resulted in significantly decreased tumor growth, increased apoptosis and a reduction in vascularisation. We further demonstrate a novel, multi-step molecular mechanism by which miR-34a leads to increased levels of the tissue inhibitor metallopeptidase 2 precursor (TIMP2) protein, accounting for the highly reduced vascularisation noted in miR-34a-treated tumors. Significance These novel findings highlight the potential of anti-GD2-nanoparticle-mediated targeted delivery of miR-34a for both the treatment of GD2-expressing tumors, and as a basic discovery tool for elucidating biological effects of novel miRNAs on tumor growth.
Rapid meridional transport of tropical airmasses to the Arctic during the major stratospheric warming in January 2003

Abstract. We present observations of unusually high values of ozone and N2O in the middle stratosphere that were observed by the airborne submillimeter radiometer ASUR in the Arctic. The observations took place in the meteorological situation of a major stratospheric warming that occurred in mid-January 2003 and was dominated by a wave 2 event. On 23 January 2003 the observed N2O and O3 mixing ratios around 69° N in the middle stratosphere reached maximum values of ~190 ppb and ~10 ppm, respectively. The similarities of these N2O profiles in a potential temperature range between 800 and 1200 K with N2O observations around 20° N on 1 March 2003 by the same instrument suggest that the observed Arctic airmasses were transported from the tropics quasi-isentropically. This is confirmed by 5-day back trajectory calculations which indicate that the airmasses between about 800 and 1000 K had been located around 20° N 3–5 days prior to the measurement in the Arctic. Calculations with a linearized ozone chemistry model along calculated as well as idealized trajectories, initialized with the low-latitude ASUR ozone measurements, give reasonable agreement with the Arctic ozone measurement by ASUR. PV distributions suggest that these airmasses did not stay confined in the Arctic region which makes it unlikely that this dynamical situation lead to the formation of dynamically caused pockets of low ozone.
White/ethnic minority earnings and employment differentials in Britain: evidence from the LFS

It is 20 years since Britain passed legislation to combat racial discrimination. Despite this, evidence presented in this paper suggests that Britain's non-white ethnic minorities still do not appear to face a level playing field in the UK labour market and their relative position does not appear to have improved since the 1970s. Native ethnic minorities also appear to be faring little better than their parents. It is in gaining employment that the situation is particularly acute. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.
Co-occurrence of amikacin-resistant and -susceptible Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates in clinical samples from Beijing, China.

OBJECTIVES This study examined the phenomenon of heteroresistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates obtained from retreated patients in Beijing, China between 2006 and 2011. METHODS The iPLEX Gold assay platform was used to determine the prevalence of heteroresistance to injectable second-line drugs (amikacin, kanamycin and capreomycin) in resistant isolates. RESULTS Heteroresistance was identified in 10.9% of 220 phenotypic amikacin-resistant isolates. CONCLUSIONS Heteroresistance was related mainly to the short duration and repeated use of amikacin and capreomycin during retreatment. These findings further our understanding of the evolution of resistance to injectable drugs used for tuberculosis treatment and help guide the rational use of injectable drugs during therapy.
Hybrid control of semi-autonomous robots

This paper presents a hybrid architecture for robot control supported on basic concepts from the geometry of Hilbert spaces and nonsmooth calculus. The architecture develops in two classic layers. A supervising layer chooses which motion strategies to apply from a set contained in an execution layer. The paper focuses mainly in the lower execution layer, motivated by the control of semi-autonomous robots. A set of experiments on the control of unicycle robots is presented.
Intranight optical variability of blazars

We present results of a multi-epoch intranight optical monitoring of 11 blazars consisting of six BL Lac objects and five radio core-dominated quasars (CDQs). These densely sampled and sensitive R-band CCD observations, carried out from 1998 November to 2002 May during a total of 47 nights with an average of 6.5 h per night, have enabled us to detect variability amplitudes as low as ∼1 per cent on intranight time-scales. A distinction is found for the first time between the intranight optical variability (INOV) properties of the these two classes of relativistically beamed radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs). BL Lacs are found to show a duty cycle (DC) of INOV of ∼60 per cent, in contrast to CDQs, which show a much smaller INOV DC of ∼20 per cent, the difference being attributable mainly to the weakly polarized CDQs. On longer time-scales (i.e. between a week to a few years) variability is seen from all the CDQs and BL Lacs in our sample. The results reported here form part of our long-term programme to understand the intranight optical variability characteristics of the four main classes of luminous AGNs, i.e. radio-quiet quasars (RQQs) and radio lobe-dominated quasars (LDQs), as well as CDQs and BL Lac objects.
Factors Influencing Infarct Size Following Experimental Coronary Artery Occlusions

The purpose of this study was the determination of whether hemodynamic and pharmacologic factors influence the extent and severity of myocardial necrosis produced by coronary occlusion. In 48 dogs, 10 to 14 epicardial leads were recorded on the anterior surface of the left ventricle in the distribution and vicinity of the site of occlusion of a branch of the left anterior descending coronary artery. The average S-T segment elevation for each animal was determined at 5-min intervals after occlusion. This elevation was used as an index of the presence and severity of myocardial ischemic injury. The number of sites showing this elevation provided an additional measure of the size of the injured area. Occlusion alone raised the average S-T segment elevation from 0.22 ± 0.04 to 3.32 ± 0.37 mv (SEM). Isoproterenol, ouabain, glucagon, bretylium, and tachycardia given prior to a repeated occlusion increased the severity and extent of ischemic injury, while propranolol decreased it. Elevation of arterial pressure with methoxamine reduced the occlusion-induced S-T segment elevation, and lowering of the mean arterial pressure by hemorrhage had the opposite effect. In 19 additional experiments, propranolol, isoproterenol, and alterations in arterial pressure produced similar alterations in S-T segment elevation when these interventions were applied as long as 3 hr after ligation. In a third group of dogs, myocardial creatine phosphokinase (CPK) activity was determined 24 hr after occlusion at the same sites at which epicardial electrocardiograms were taken. Depression of myocardial CPK activity in injured portions of the left ventricle 24 hr after coronary artery ligation correlated well with S-T segment elevation in the same sites 15 min after ligation. Moreover, isoproterenol increased and propranolol decreased the area of depression of myocardial CPK activity. We conclude that the hemodynamic status and neurohumoral background at the time of occlusion and for up to 3 hr thereafter can alter the extent and severity of myocardial ischemic injury and myocardial necrosis.
Deep Illumina-Based Shotgun Sequencing Reveals Dietary Effects on the Structure and Function of the Fecal Microbiome of Growing Kittens

Background Previously, we demonstrated that dietary protein:carbohydrate ratio dramatically affects the fecal microbial taxonomic structure of kittens using targeted 16S gene sequencing. The present study, using the same fecal samples, applied deep Illumina shotgun sequencing to identify the diet-associated functional potential and analyze taxonomic changes of the feline fecal microbiome. Methodology & Principal Findings Fecal samples from kittens fed one of two diets differing in protein and carbohydrate content (high–protein, low–carbohydrate, HPLC; and moderate-protein, moderate-carbohydrate, MPMC) were collected at 8, 12 and 16 weeks of age (n = 6 per group). A total of 345.3 gigabases of sequence were generated from 36 samples, with 99.75% of annotated sequences identified as bacterial. At the genus level, 26% and 39% of reads were annotated for HPLC- and MPMC-fed kittens, with HPLC-fed cats showing greater species richness and microbial diversity. Two phyla, ten families and fifteen genera were responsible for more than 80% of the sequences at each taxonomic level for both diet groups, consistent with the previous taxonomic study. Significantly different abundances between diet groups were observed for 324 genera (56% of all genera identified) demonstrating widespread diet-induced changes in microbial taxonomic structure. Diversity was not affected over time. Functional analysis identified 2,013 putative enzyme function groups were different (p<0.000007) between the two dietary groups and were associated to 194 pathways, which formed five discrete clusters based on average relative abundance. Of those, ten contained more (p<0.022) enzyme functions with significant diet effects than expected by chance. Six pathways were related to amino acid biosynthesis and metabolism linking changes in dietary protein with functional differences of the gut microbiome. Conclusions These data indicate that feline feces-derived microbiomes have large structural and functional differences relating to the dietary protein:carbohydrate ratio and highlight the impact of diet early in life.
Meteorological Visibility Measurements by a Micro Pulsed Lidar during the 2006 Qingdao International Sailing Regatta

Meteorological visibility is a basic parameter for aeronautical, seafaring, expressway and military operations. In most domestic and overseas meteorological departments, the method to measure visibility is by eyeballing, which lacks criteria and objectivity. Among the instruments for visibility measurement, lidar is a powerful tool by directly collecting the backscattering laser light from the atmosphere. During the 2006 Qingdao International Sailing Regatta, atmospheric horizontal visibility was measured by an eye-safe Micro-pulsed lidar (MPL) which was developed by the Ocean Remote Sensing Laboratory (ORSL) of the Ocean University of China (OUC) in Xiaomai island (36°3'9.91"N, 120°25'37.10"E) from August 18 to 29, 2006. Klett method was used for processing the data measured from MPL. In this 12 days period, the visibility ranges from 1km to 30 km, covering many different weather conditions. The MPL operated stably at all times including the continual measurement from August 21 to 23, 2006 for both days and nights. Simultaneous eye observation data from Qingdao Meteorological Bureau were obtained for comparison. Visibility results of MPL system show good agreement with the eye observations data, with a correlation coefficient of 0.88. Experiments and comparisons successfully prove the capability and feasibility of the MPL system for atmospheric visibility.
Associations of Adversity to Indicators of Child Well Being in a High Quality Early Education Context

Studies have shown that adversity in childhood has harmful effects on well-being across the lifespan. This study examined the prevalence of children’s cumulative experiences of adversity, based on parent report, in a national sample of low-income children (N=3,208) enrolled in a high quality early childhood education (ece) program. It explored the association between family adversity that occurred within the year prior to the parents’ interview and the child’s well-being measured after the interview. Well-being was based on language, school readiness, and social emotional outcomes. Almost half of all families reported experiencing at least one adversity. Family adversity was associated with worse school readiness and health outcomes. Adversity had mixed associations with socialemotional outcomes and no association with language outcomes. This study also explored time enrolled in ece (dosage) as a protective or promotive factor in relation to adversity. Time in program had a positive relationship to most child outcomes and could be interpreted as a promotive factor within the context of adversity for all outcomes except behavioral concerns.
Query Workload Driven Summarization for P2P Query Routing

Query routing in peer-to-peer systems is based onthe peers' content summaries. For the sake of scalability, summaries are built at a "peer level. " The coarseness of peer level summaries limits their ability to route queries accurately to peers sharing relevant contents. We propose to improve the quality of each peer's summary by grouping its contents and summarizing each group individually. To enhance grouping effectiveness, we incorporate information about real-world term distributions into group generation. Experimental results show that our techniques significantly improve query routing accuracy with little cost.
Optically-Selected Cluster Catalogs as a Precision Cosmology Tool

We introduce a framework for describing the halo selection function of optical cluster finders. We treat the problem as being separable into a term that describes the intrinsic galaxy content of a halo (the Halo Occupation Distribution, or HOD) and a term that captures the effects of projection and selection by the particular cluster finding algorithm. Using mock galaxy catalogs tuned to reproduce the luminosity dependent correlation function and the empirical color-density relation measured in the SDSS, we characterize the maxBCG algorithm applied by Koester et al. to the SDSS galaxy catalog. We define and calibrate measures of completeness and purity for this algorithm, and demonstrate successful recovery of the underlying cosmology and HOD when applied to the mock catalogs. We identify principal components -- combinations of cosmology and HOD parameters -- that are recovered by survey counts as a function of richness, and demonstrate that percent-level accuracies are possible in the first two components, if the selection function can be understood to ~15% accuracy.
Test of the Chinese Version of Multidimensional Students′ Life Satisfaction Scale

Objective:To construct a Chinese Version of MSLSS(Multidimensional Students' Life Satisfac- tion Scale)and test its reliability and validity.Methods:A total of 793 Chinese middle school students completed the MSLSS.Results:In the analysis of Chinese version of MSLSS,the cronbach's a coefficient was 0.90 and the test-retest reliability was 0.86. The correlative coefficients between the total and factors ranged from 0.71 to 0.80,and from 0.36 to 0.57 between different factors.The standardized loading coefficients of items to factors were from 0.35 to 0.89. The standardized loading coefficients of five latent variables to the previous latent variables were from 0.55 to 0.74. All the indexes of confirmatory factor analysis including x~2,x~2/df,NFI,CFI,TLI,RMSEA met the requirement of psychological measurement.Conclusion:The Chinese version of MSLSS can be used to evaluate Chinese middle school students' life satisfaction.
Foundations for Survivable System Development: Service Traces, Intrusion Traces, and Evaluation Models

Abstract : Survivability is a new branch of dependability. It addresses explicit requirements for restricted modes of operation that preserve mission-critical essential services in adverse operational environments. A survivable system is one that satisfies its survivability specification of essential services and adverse environments. On the system side, survivability specifications can be defined by essential-service traces that map essential-service workflows, derived from user requirements, into system component dependencies and required survivability attributes. On the environment side, survivability specifications can be defined by intrusion traces that map intruder work flows, derived from attack patterns, into compromisable system components. Survivability design applies resistance, recognition, and recovery strategies to maintain essential-service workflows where possible despite compromised components. Test environments for survivable system implementations can be defined by survivability evaluation models that merge essential-service and intruder workflows into usage-based, statistically valid test suites. This paper describes initial results of research in these areas.
Survey on methods for query rewriting and query answering using views

A Data Integration System is constituted by three main components: source schemas, a global schema and a mapping between the two. There exist two main approaches for specifying the mapping: in the local-as-view (LAV) approach the source structures are defined as views over the global schema; on the contrary in the global-as-view (GAV) approach each global concept is defined in terms of a view over the source schemas. The problem of query processing is to find efficient methods for answering queries posed to the global schema on the basis of the data stored at sources. In LAV there exist two approaches to query processing: by query rewriting, in which one tries to compute a rewriting of the query in terms of the views and then evaluates such a rewriting, and by query answering, in which one aims at directly answering the query based on the view extensions. In GAV, existing systems deal with query processing by simply unfolding each global concept in the query with its definition in terms of the sources. In this paper, we survey the most important query processing algorithms proposed in the literature for LAV, and we describe the principal GAV data integration systems and the form of query processing they adopt.
Electroacupuncture inhibits inflammatory injury by targeting the miR-9-mediated NF-κB signaling pathway following ischemic stroke

The aim of the present study was to investigate the neuroprotective mechanism of the miR-9-mediated activation of the nuclear factor (NF)-κB signaling pathway by electroacupuncture (EA) stimulation of the Quchi (LI11) and Zusanli (ST36) acupoints in a rat model of middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). The present study demonstrated that EA alleviated the symptoms of neurological deficits and reduced the infarct volume in the rat brains. The expression of miR-9 in the peri-infarct cortex was increased in the EA group compared with the MCAO group, and the expression of NF-κB signaling pathway-associated factors, NF-κB p65, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and interleukin (IL)-1β were reduced. Notably, miR-9 inhibitors were revealed to have the ability to suppress EA-alleviated cerebral inflammation and the expression of NF-κB downstream-related factors, NF-κB p65, TNF-α and IL-1β, and caused no alteration on the level of NF-κB upstream-related protein inhibitor of κBα, suggesting that the cerebral protective efficacy of EA targets miR-9-mediated NF-κB downstream pathway following ischemic stroke.
ClusterSculptor: A Visual Analytics Tool for High-Dimensional Data

Cluster analysis (CA) is a powerful strategy for the exploration of high-dimensional data in the absence of a-priori hypotheses or data classification models, and the results of CA can then be used to form such models. But even though formal models and classification rules may not exist in these data exploration scenarios, domain scientists and experts generally have a vast amount of non-compiled knowledge and intuition that they can bring to bear in this effort. In CA, there are various popular mechanisms to generate the clusters, however, the results from their non- supervised deployment rarely fully agree with this expert knowledge and intuition. To this end, our paper describes a comprehensive and intuitive framework to aid scientists in the derivation of classification hierarchies in CA, using k-means as the overall clustering engine, but allowing them to tune its parameters interactively based on a non-distorted compact visual presentation of the inherent characteristics of the data in high- dimensional space. These include cluster geometry, composition, spatial relations to neighbors, and others. In essence, we provide all the tools necessary for a high-dimensional activity we call cluster sculpting, and the evolving hierarchy can then be viewed in a space-efficient radial dendrogram. We demonstrate our system in the context of the mining and classification of a large collection of millions of data items of aerosol mass spectra, but our framework readily applies to any high-dimensional CA scenario.