Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Partial Face Biometry Using Shape Decomposition on 2D Conformal Maps of Faces

In this paper, we introduce a new approach for partial 3D face recognition, which makes use of shape decomposition over the rigid1 part of a face. To explore the descriptiveness of shape dissimilarity over an isometric part of a face, which has lower probability to be influenced by expression, we transform a 3D shape to a 2D domain using conformal mapping and use shape decomposition as a similarity measurement. In our work we investigate several classifiers as well as several shape descriptors for recognition purposes. Recognition tests on a subset of the FRGC data set show approximately 80% rank-one recognition rate using only the eyes and nose part of the face.
Soluble CD40L Levels Are Regulated by the −3459 A>G Polymorphism and Predict Myocardial Infarction and the Efficacy of Antithrombotic Treatment in Non-ST Elevation Acute Coronary Syndrome

Objectives—Current evidence suggests the CD40–CD40L pathway as a key process in the development, progression, and outcome of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). The aim was to investigate the prognostic importance of soluble (s) CD40L levels, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the CD40LG gene, and the relation between sCD40L and SNPs in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS). Methods and Results—Samples were obtained on admission from 2359 patients with non-ST elevation ACS randomized to an early invasive versus a conservative and to placebo controlled long-term dalteparin treatment in the FRISC-II study. The −3459 A>G SNP was identified as a novel regulator of sCD40L levels (P=0.001). In the placebo-treated group, sCD40L levels above median were associated with a 2.5-fold increased risk of myocardial infarction (MI) (P≤0.001) but not with raised mortality. In the dalteparin treated group, sCD40L showed no association with MI (P=0.75). Consequently, dalteparin treatment was effective in reducing the risk of MI only in patients with sCD40L levels above median. A combined assessment of troponin-T and sCD40L complemented the prognostic information on risk of MI. Conclusions—We identified a SNP in the CD40LG gene as a novel regulator of sCD40L plasma concentrations. Soluble CD40L levels above median reflect a prothrombotic state, which can be managed with the use of intense anti-thrombotic treatments.
iPads and the Use of “Apps” by Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Do They Promote Learning?

The advent of electronic tablets, such as Apple's iPad, has opened up the field of learning via technology, and the use of electronic applications (“apps”) on these devices continues to dramatically rise. Children with communication and social impairment, specifically those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), often use educational and recreational apps within the context of their home and school settings. Here we examine in which contexts learning via this medium may be beneficial, and outline recommendations for the use of electronic tablets and the design features for apps to promote learning in this population that is characterized by a unique profile of needs and heterogeneous ability levels.
Reducing time cost in hashing operations

During a forensic investigation, an investigator might be required to analyze the content of a personal computer. Due to huge amounts of data, it becomes necessary to recognize suspect files and automatically filter out non-relevant files. To achieve this goal, an investigator can resort to hashing algorithms in order to classify files into known-to-be-good, known-to-be-bad and unknown files. The working steps are quite simple: hash the file, compare the resulting hashes against a database and put it in one of the categories. Typically personal computers nowadays store several hundred thousand files on their hard disk and thus this operation becomes time consuming. The paper at hand demonstrates a framework that speeds up this proceeding as it uses multiple threads for different tasks. Besides the typical multi-threading where the hashing algorithm is performed by multiple threads , we use a dedicated thread for reading files from the device, a prefetcher. Compared to single threading we improved the run time efficiency by nearly 40%. Keywords-Digital forensics; hashing; cryptographic hash functions; performance; run time efficiency; file handling; prefetching.
“Green” Nanotechnologies: Synthesis of Metal Nanoparticles Using Plants

While metal nanoparticles are being increasingly used in many sectors of the economy, there is growing interest in the biological and environmental safety of their production. The main methods for nanoparticle production are chemical and physical approaches that are often costly and potentially harmful to the environment. The present review is devoted to the possibility of metal nanoparticle synthesis using plant extracts. This approach has been actively pursued in recent years as an alternative, efficient, inexpensive, and environmentally safe method for producing nanoparticles with specified properties. This review provides a detailed analysis of the various factors affecting the morphology, size, and yield of metal nanoparticles. The main focus is on the role of the natural plant biomolecules involved in the bioreduction of metal salts during the nanoparticle synthesis. Examples of effective use of exogenous biomatrices (peptides, proteins, and viral particles) to obtain nanoparticles in plant extracts are discussed.
Experience and Cognitive Biases in Oil and Gas Industry Personnel

Demonstrations of cognitive bias in expert decision makers are often criticised on the basis of their content being irrelevant to the participants. Herein two cognitive biases, anchoring and overconfidence, are shown to occur in batteries designed with questions relevant to the participants’ domains of expertise. Results suggest that neither industry experience nor risk training removes the biases’ effects. Instead, a relationship is found between the amount of time lapsed since such training occurred and calibration/overconfidence. This is taken as partial support for the proposition that regular training in risk, uncertainty and the mode of action of biases aids in remediation.
Hydrogen peroxide excretion by oral streptococci and effect of lactoperoxidase-thiocyanate-hydrogen peroxide

Approved type strains of Streptococcus sanguis, S. mitis, S. mutans, and S. salivarius were grown under aerobic and anaerobic conditions. The rate of hydrogen peroxide excretion, oxygen uptake, and acid production from glucose by washed-cell suspensions of these strains were studied, and the levels of enzymes in cell-free extracts which reduced oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, or hypothiocyanite (OSCN-) in the presence of NADH or NADPH were assayed. The effects of lactoperoxidase-thiocyanate-hydrogen peroxide on the rate of acid production and oxygen uptake by intact cells, the activity of glycolytic enzymes in cell-free extracts, and the levels of intracellular glycolytic intermediates were also studied. All strains consumed oxygen in the presence of glucose. S. sanguis, S. mitis, and anaerobically grown S. mutans excreted hydrogen peroxide. There was higher NADH oxidase and NADH peroxidase activity in aerobically grown cells than in anaerobically grown cells. NADPH oxidase activity was low in all species. Acid production, oxygen uptake, and, consequently, hydrogen peroxide excretion were inhibited in all the strains by lactoperoxidase-thiocyanate-hydrogen peroxide. S. sanguis and S. mitis had a higher capacity than S. mutans and S. salivarius to recover from this inhibition. Higher activity in the former strains of an NADH-OSCN oxidoreductase, which converted OSCN- into thiocyanate, explained this difference. The change in levels of intracellular glycolytic intermediates after inhibition of glycolysis by OSCN- and the actual activity of glycolytic enzymes in cell-free extracts in the presence of OSCN- indicated that the primary target of OSCN- in the glycolytic pathway was glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase.
Therapeutic approaches to vasospasm in subarachnoid hemorrhage

Delayed vasospasm as a result of subarachnoid blood after rupture of a cerebral aneurysm is a major complication. It is seen in over half of patients and causes symptomatic ischemia in about one third. If left untreated, it leads to death or permanent deficits in over 20% of patients. The essential cause and the relative contribution of true muscle spasm and other changes in the vessel wall remain uncertain. The mainstays of treatment are careful maintenance of fluid balance, induced hypervolemia and hypertension, calcium antagonists, balloon or chemical angioplasty, and, in some centers, cisternal fibrinolytic drugs. Promising future lines of treatment include gene therapy, nitric oxide donors, magnesium, sustained release cisternal drugs, and several other drugs that are under experimental or clinical trial.
Conditioning the Mind’s Eye

Many treatments for anxiety utilize associative learning theory and involve mental imagery components. However, the roles associative learning and imagery play in anxiety disorders and their treatments are still largely unknown. Here we show that voluntary mental imagery can undergo associative learning in the same manner as normal sensory perception. After conditioning voluntary mental images with emotion-evoking stimuli, perceptual stimuli of the same content were found to produce the associated emotional response—indicating generalization from imagery to perception. This associative learning with imagery was found to be orientation selective and could not be accounted for by alternative, non-imagery-based interpretations of the data. These results support pictorial theories of mental imagery by indicating the interchangeability of imagery and perception in associative learning and demonstrate that voluntary mental images can drive associative learning, providing a mechanistic account of clinical practice involving mental imagery.
Dose and Time-Dependent Selective Neurotoxicity Induced by Mephedrone in Mice

Mephedrone is a drug of abuse marketed as ‘bath salts". There are discrepancies concerning its long-term effects. We have investigated the neurotoxicity of mephedrone in mice following different exposition schedules. Schedule 1: four doses of 50 mg/kg. Schedule 2: four doses of 25 mg/kg. Schedule 3: three daily doses of 25 mg/kg, for two consecutive days. All schedules induced, in some animals, an aggressive behavior and hyperthermia as well as a decrease in weight gain. Mephedrone (schedule 1) induced dopaminergic and serotoninergic neurotoxicity that persisted 7 days after exposition. At a lower dose (schedule 2) only a transient dopaminergic injury was found. In the weekend consumption pattern (schedule 3), mephedrone induced dopamine and serotonin transporter loss that was accompanied by a decrease in tyrosine hydroxylase and tryptophan hydroxylase 2 expression one week after exposition. Also, mephedrone induced a depressive-like behavior, as well as a reduction in striatal D2 density, suggesting higher susceptibility to addictive drugs. In cultured cortical neurons, mephedrone induced a concentration-dependent cytotoxic effect. Using repeated doses for 2 days in an elevated ambient temperature we evidenced a loss of frontal cortex dopaminergic and hippocampal serotoninergic neuronal markers that suggest injuries at nerve endings.
Eye Gaze–Induced Mental Stress Alters the Heart Rate Variability Analysis

The objective of this work was to investigate mental stress produced under eye fixation through the analysis of heart rate variability (HRV). The multichannel electrophysiological data (electrocardiogram, pulse plethysmogram along with electro-oculogram) were acquired from young, healthy male volunteers (aged 20-30 years; weight, 55-65 kg), and 20 trials per subject were recorded for 30 seconds of eye gaze followed by 10 seconds of relaxation. The parameters for HRV were calculated, analyzed, and compared before the feature extraction and classification of eye gaze from rest using “fuzzy C means clustering” and “Kohonen neural network. ” Only HRV data were considered for final feature extraction and classification purposes as the pulse rate variability represented similar variations as HRV. Irrespective to subject and condition, analyses show changes in all the parameters, but with contradiction in 1 of 2 subjects that showed no change in at least 1 parameter. Furthermore, on the extracted features from frequency spectrum of HRV data (100 gaze and 100 relax), fuzzy C means clustering and Kohonen neural network were found to be efficient with an accuracy of 98%. This high accuracy in features classification strongly supports its practical implementation in the evaluation of mental stress level.
Structural Determinants for the Membrane Insertion of the Transmembrane Peptide of Hemagglutinin from Influenza Virus

Membrane fusion is a process involved in a high range of biological functions, going from viral infections to neurotransmitter release. Fusogenic proteins increase the slow rate of fusion by coupling energetically downhill conformational changes of the protein to the kinetically unfavorable fusion of the membrane lipid bilayers. Hemagglutinin is an example of a fusogenic protein, which promotes the fusion of the membrane of the influenza virus with the membrane of the target cell. The N-terminus of the HA2 subunit of this protein contains a fusion domain described to act as a destabilizer of the target membrane bilayers, leading eventually to a full fusion of the two membranes. On the other hand, the C-terminus of the same subunit contains a helical transmembrane domain which was initially described to act as the anchor of the protein to the membrane of the virus. However, in recent years the study of this peptide segment has been gaining more attention since it has also been described to be involved in the membrane fusion process. Yet, the structural characterization of the interaction of such a protein domain with membrane lipids is still very limited. Therefore, in this work, we present a study of this transmembrane peptide domain in the presence of DMPC membrane bilayers, and we evaluate the effect of several mutations, and the effect of peptide oligomerization in this interaction process. Our results allowed us to identify and confirm amino acid residue motifs that seem to regulate the interaction between the segment peptide and membrane bilayers. Besides these sequence requirements, we have also identified length and tilt requirements that ultimately contribute to the hydrophobic matching between the peptide and the membrane. Additionally, we looked at the association of several transmembrane peptide segments and evaluated their direct interaction and stability inside a membrane bilayer. From our results we could conclude that three independent TM peptide segments arrange themselves in a parallel arrangement, very similarly to what is observed for the C-terminal regions of the hemagglutinin crystallographic structure of the protein, to where the segments are attached.
Respiratory muscle function in interstitial lung disease

Interstitial lung diseases limit daily activities, impair quality of life and result in (exertional) dyspnoea. This has mainly been attributed to a decline in lung function and impaired gas exchange. However, the contribution of respiratory muscle dysfunction to these limitations remains to be conclusively investigated. Interstitial lung disease patients and matched controls performed body plethysmography, a standardised 6-min walk test, volitional tests (respiratory drive (P0.1), global maximal inspiratory mouth occlusion pressure (PImax), sniff nasal pressure (SnPna) and inspiratory muscle load) and nonvolitional tests on respiratory muscle function and strength (twitch mouth and transdiaphragmatic pressure during bilateral magnetic phrenic nerve stimulation (TwPmo and TwPdi)). 25 patients and 24 controls were included in the study. PImax and SnPna remained unaltered (both p>0.05), whereas P0.1 and the load on the inspiratory muscles were higher (both p<0.05) in interstitial lung disease patients compared with controls. TwPmo and TwPdi were lower in interstitial lung disease patients (mean±sd TwPmo 0.86±0.4 versus 1.32±0.4, p<0.001; TwPdi 1.34±0.6 versus 1.88±0.5, p=0.022). Diaphragmatic force generation seems to be impaired in this cohort of interstitial lung disease patients while global respiratory muscle strength remains preserved. Central respiratory drive and the load imposed on the inspiratory muscles are increased. Whether impaired respiratory muscle function impacts morbidity and mortality in interstitial lung disease patients needs to be investigated in future studies.
Incremental RANSAC for online relocation in large dynamic environments

Vehicle relocation is the problem in which a mobile robot has to estimate the self-position with respect to an a priori map of landmarks using the perception and the motion measurements without using any knowledge of the initial self-position. Recently, random sample consensus (RANSAC), a robust multi-hypothesis estimator, has been successfully applied to offline relocation in static environments. On the other hand, online relocation in dynamic environments is still a difficult problem, for available computation time is always limited, and for measurement include many outliers. To realize real time algorithm for such an online process, we have developed an incremental version of RANSAC algorithm by extending an efficient preemption RANSAC scheme. This novel scheme named incremental RANSAC is able to find inlier hypotheses of self-positions out of large number of outlier hypotheses contaminated by outlier measurements
A Generic Methodology to Derive Empirical Power Consumption Prediction Models for Multi-Core Processors

With the emergence of multi-core processors and their P-states, deriving power consumption models expressed in terms of easily extractable parameters becomes a necessity. In this paper, we introduce a generic methodology to devise power consumption estimation models for multi-core processors. The proposed approach takes into account three metrics: The number of active cores (i.e. executing instructions), frequency and utilization rate of the processor. Consequently, the derived models are expressed in terms of the above-mentioned parameters which can be extracted by any monitoring system. In order to assess the correctness as well as the accuracy of the proposed methodology, an experimental analysis is performed on Intel quad- and hexa-core processors. The results confirm the exactitude of the proposed methodology.
Architecture and the extracellular matrix: the still unappreciated components of the adipose tissue

Fibrosis is usually characterized by the modification of both the amount and composition of a wide panel of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. In the liver, pancreas, kidney and lung the accumulation of fibrosis disrupts cellular processes and appears detrimental for organ function. This review highlights the available evidence supporting an important ECM remodelling in adipose tissue (AT) and, in particular, during the development of obesity. The modifications and occurrence of new adipose ECM components leads to an abnormal accumulation of fibrosis in this tissue. This phenomenon was well described in rodent models and evidence is beginning to emerge in humans; however, the origin and potential impact of these depots in AT biology are unclear. Two animal models with disruptions in ECM components (secreted proteins acidic in nature rich in cysteine null mice and ob/ob collagen VI null mice) suggest that fibrosis limits adipocyte hypertrophy and may cause the metabolic disorders associated with obesity. Over‐expression of Hypoxia‐inducible factor 1 leading to an increase in collagen expression suggests a role for hypoxia in fibrosis development. We conclude this review with possible hypotheses regarding the cellular and molecular contributors of fibrosis initiation.
The topology of the space of matrices of Barvinok rank two

The Barvinok rank of a $d \times n$ matrix is the minimum number of points in $\mathbb{R}^d$ such that the tropical convex hull of the points contains all columns of the matrix. The concept originated in work by Barvinok and others on the travelling salesman problem. Our object of study is the space of real $d \times n$ matrices of Barvinok rank two. Let $B_{d,n}$ denote this space modulo rescaling and translation. We show that $B_{d,n}$ is a manifold, thereby settling a conjecture due to Develin. In fact, $B_{d,n}$ is homeomorphic to the quotient of the product of spheres $S^{d-2} \times S^{n-2}$ under the involution which sends each point to its antipode simultaneously in both components. In addition, using discrete Morse theory, we compute the integral homology of $B_{d,n}$. Assuming $d \ge n$, for odd $d$ the homology turns out to be isomorphic to that of $S^{d-2} \times \mathbb{RP}^{n-2}$. This is true also for even $d$ up to degree $d-3$, but the two cases differ from degree $d-2$ and up. The homology computation straightforwardly extends to more general complexes of the form $(S^{d-2} \times X)/\mathbb{Z}_2$, where $X$ is a finite cell complex of dimension at most $d-2$ admitting a free $\mathbb{Z}_2$-action.
A developmental model of financial capability

This study proposes a developmental model of financial capability to understand the process by which young adults acquire the financial knowledge and behaviors needed to manage full-time adult social roles and responsibilities. The model integrates financial knowledge, financial self-beliefs, financial behavior, and well-being into a single financial decision-making process. With two-time longitudinal survey data from college students (N = 1,511; aged 18–23 years at Wave 1 and 21–26 years at Wave 2), the findings provide support for a pattern of co-occurring change: changing knowledge about personal finances associated with changing self-beliefs about finances; changing self-beliefs associated with changing financial behaviors; and changing financial behaviors ultimately associated with changes in financial and overall well-being. We discuss the findings in the context of facilitating a positive transition to adulthood during widespread economic uncertainty.