Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Computable Elastic Distances Between Shapes

We dene distances between geometric curves by the square root of the minimal energy required to transform one curve into the other. The energy is formally dened from a left invariant Riemannian distance on an innite dimensional group acting on the curves, which can be explicitly computed. The obtained distance boils down to a variational problem for which an optimal matching between the curves has to be computed. An analysis of the distance when the curves are polygonal leads to a numerical procedure for the solution of the variational problem, which can eciently be implemented, as illustrated by experiments. 1.1. Generalities. The problem of matching two objects together is very impor- tant in computer vision and shape recognition. In many cases, recognition is based on shapes (outlines), with the help of some suitably designed distance. A general principle is to associate with any pair (O1;O 2) of objects to be compared a measure of discrepancy d(O1;O 2 ):The recognition of an observed object O may be done by nding, from a dictionary of \templates," the previously recorded object Otemp, for which d(O;Otemp) is minimal. Clearly, the denition of the distance is the crucial step of the method, and much research has been done in this direction. We shall not try here to provide a review of the huge literature existing on the subject (see, for example, (17)) but rather focus on methods related to deformable templates, with which we are directly concerned. Instead of basing recognition on a nite collection of points of interest (primitives) taken from the outline of an object (corners, inflexion points, etc.), which is a popular way of handling the problem, our purpose is to base the comparison on the whole outline, considered as a plane curve. The distance we shall dene incorporates some deformation energy between the curves. The approach, as we will see, turns out to be intrinsic and robust to usual Euclidean transformations. The method is related to the wide literature on \snakes" (14), (7), (21) etc. in the way that our distance corresponds to some continuous process of deformation of one curve into another. It is also related to papers on elastic matching, such as (8); however, we provide an elastic matching algorithm which is based on a true distance between intrinsic properties of the shapes, taking into account possible invariance to scaling or Euclidean transformations in the case they are required. From this point of view, our results are indebted to the seminal work of Grenander on group theory applied to pattern recognition (cf. (10) and (11), in particular; see also (1), (2), 12). Another source of inspiration may come from mathematical physics, since we are going to look to the path (process) of lowest energy which deforms one object into
Despeckling of medical ultrasound images using multiscale weighting nonlinear diffusion

A new despeckling algorithm for medical ultrasound images using multiscale weighting nonlinear diffusion is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the input image is decomposed by redundant Laplace transformation. Then, in the multiscale images, nonlinear diffusion is used. For nonlinear diffusion in each sub-image, an image gradient index is automatically determined by weighting the image gradient indexes of all the sub-images. To test the validity of the proposed algorithm, the typical methods of directly nonlinear diffusion and adaptive wavelet filter were used for comparison. The simulation and real ultrasound image results indicate that our approach can not only decrease speckle noise significantly but also preserve image details.
Outcomes of nature of science instruction along a context continuum: preservice secondary science teachers’ conceptions and instructional intentions

ABSTRACT This investigation examined outcomes associated with nature of science (NOS) instruction along a science-content context continuum on the development of secondary preservice science teachers’ conceptions of and plans to teach NOS, moving beyond the common dichotomy of contextualized versus noncontextualized instruction. Participants comprised six teacher cohorts (n = 70) enrolled in a two-year Master of Teaching program. Participants were explicitly taught current NOS conceptions using activities that incorporated varied degrees of contextualization and were informed by conceptual change principles during the first program year. Participants’ pre- and post-instruction conceptions were assessed using VNOS-C questionnaire written responses and follow-up interviews. Participants’ views were classified by degree of alignment (non, partially, or fully aligned) with current NOS conceptions. Interview transcripts were analyzed using analytic induction to verify/refine VNOS responses and to identify patterns in NOS instructional plans and rationales. Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were run to assess possible statistical significance of pre- to post-instruction changes. Participants’ responses shifted markedly toward more aligned NOS conceptions post-instruction, with substantial and statistically significant gains for each assessed tenet (all p-values <.001). All participants planned future NOS instruction and most expressed a sophisticated rationale for this choice, including that NOS supported the teaching of key concepts such as evolution. These results indicate that teaching and scaffolding NOS lessons along a context continuum can be effective in eliciting desired changes in preservice teachers’ NOS conceptions and instructional intentions within the confines of the science methods course. Future research will examine post-methods course and post-program NOS instruction.
Conditional threshold wear-leveling algorithm for multi-channel NAND flash memory

Recently, NAND flash memory has become a widely-used data storage media. However, it has endurance problem that each NAND flash block has limited erase cycles. The first time erase failure usually occurs when a block has over 10K–100K erase cycles. Wear-leveling is a technique to solve this problem and extend the lifetime of a flash memory. In this paper, a conditional threshold wear-leveling algorithm fitting multi-channel architecture is proposed. The overall wear-leveling operation is separated and distributed to different channels. This reduces the runtime of the wear-leveling operation. The conditional threshold can reduce extra erase operations caused by wear-leveling when the flash memory is young. As the flash memory becomes older, the smaller threshold makes wear-leveling work more frequently to get more even erase cycle distribution.
Advanced Application of Porcine Intramuscular Adipocytes for Evaluating Anti-Adipogenic and Anti-Inflammatory Activities of Immunobiotics

We previously established a clonal porcine intramuscular preadipocyte (PIP) line and we were able to establish a protocol to obtain functional mature adipocytes from PIP cells. We hypothesized that both PIP cells and mature adipocytes are likely to be useful in vitro tools for increasing our understanding of immunobiology of adipose tissue, and for the selection and study of immunoregulatory probiotics (immunobiotics) able to modulate adipocytes immune responses. In this study, we investigated the immunobiology of PIP cells and mature adipocytes in relation to their response to TNF-α stimulation. In addition, we evaluated the possibility that immunobiotic microorganisms modify adipogenesis and immune functions of porcine adipose tissue through Peyer’s patches (PPs) immune-competent cells. We treated the porcine PPs immune cells with different probiotic strains; and we evaluated the effect of conditioned media from probiotic-stimulated immune cells in PIP cells and mature adipocytes. The Lactobacillus GG and L. gasseri TMC0356 showed remarkable effects, and were able to significantly reduce the expression of pro-inflammatory factors and negative regulators (A20, Bcl-3, and MKP-1) in adipocytes challenged with TNF-α. The results of this study demonstrated that the evaluation of IL-6, and MCP-1 production, and A20 and Bcl-3 down-regulation in TNF-α-challenged adipocytes could function as biomarkers to screen and select potential immunobiotic strains. Taking into consideration that several in vivo and in vitro studies clearly demonstrated the beneficial effects of Lactobacillus GG and L. gasseri TMC0356 in adipose inflammation, the results presented in this work indicate that the PIP cells and porcine adipocytes could be used for the screening and the selection of new immunobiotic strains with the potential to functionally modulate adipose inflammation when orally administered.
The role of attachment styles in regulating the effects of dopamine on the behavior of salespersons

Two classic strategic orientations have been found to pervade the behavior of modern salespersons: a sales orientation (SO) where salespersons use deception or guile to get customers to buy even if they do not need a product, and a customer orientation (CO) where salespersons first attempt to discover the customer's needs and adjust their product and selling approach to meet those needs. Study 1 replicates recent research and finds that the Taq A1 variant of the DRD2 gene is not related to either sales or CO, whereas the 7-repeat variant of the DRD4 gene is related to CO but not SO. Study 2 investigates gene × phenotype explanations of orientation of salespersons, drawing upon recent research in molecular genetics and biological/psychological attachment theory. The findings show that attachment style regulates the effects of DRD2 on CO, such that greater avoidant attachment styles lead to higher CO for persons with the A2/A2 variant but neither the A1/A2 nor A1/A1 variants. Likewise, attachment style regulates the effects of DRD4 on CO, such that greater avoidant attachment styles lead to higher CO for persons with the 7-repeat variant but not other variants. No effects were found on a SO, and secure and anxious attachment styles did not function as moderators.
Physical characteristics of vocal folds during speech under stress

We focus on variations in the glottal source of speech production, which is essential for understanding the generation of speech under psychological stress. In this paper, a two-mass vocal fold model is fitted to estimate the stiffness parameters of vocal folds during speech, and the stiffness parameters are then analyzed in order to classify recorded samples into neutral and stressed speech. Mechanisms of vocal folds under stress are derived from the experimental results. We propose using a Muscle Tension Ratio (MTR) to identify speech under stress. Our results show that MTR is more effective than a conventional method of stress measurement.
The Shape of Nuclear Falls and their Effect on the Perception of Pitch and Prominence: Peaks vs. Plateaux

This article investigates the perceptual effect of a high plateau in the intonation contour. Plateaux are flat stretches of contour and have been observed associated with high tones in Standard Southern British (SSB) English. The hypothesis that plateaux may make the accents with which they are associated sound higher in pitch than sharp peaks of the same maximum frequency is tested experimentally. In the first experiment listeners heard pairs of resynthesized utterances where the nuclear accent differed only in shape, not frequency. They indicated which stimulus they thought contained the higher pitched accent. Results showed that plateau-shaped accents sound higher than peaks. In the second experiment the effect of a plateau on prominence relations within an utterance is investigated. Listeners heard resynthesized sentences, and compared two accents. One group indicated which accent sounded higher in pitch and the other indicated which sounded more prominent. Results again indicated that plateau-shaped accents sound higher in pitch and also more prominent; judgments of pitch and prominence were very similar to one another. The results from both experiments indicated that accent shape is a perceptually important variable, although such a fine level of detail is not taken into account by autosegmental-metrical theories of intonation.
Improving Hybrid FTL by Fully Exploiting Internal SSD Parallelism with Virtual Blocks

Compared with either block or page-mapping Flash Translation Layer (FTL), hybrid-mapping FTL for flash Solid State Disks (SSDs), such as Fully Associative Section Translation (FAST), has relatively high space efficiency because of its smaller mapping table than the latter and higher flexibility than the former. As a result, hybrid-mapping FTL has become the most commonly used scheme in SSDs. But the hybrid-mapping FTL incurs a large number of costly full-merge operations. Thus, a critical challenge to hybrid-mapping FTL is how to reduce the cost of full-merge operations and improve partial merge operations and switch operations. In this article, we propose a novel FTL scheme, called Virtual Block-based Parallel FAST (VBP-FAST), that divides flash area into Virtual Blocks (VBlocks) and Physical Blocks (PBlocks) where VBlocks are used to fully exploit channel-level, die-level, and plane-level parallelism of flash. Leveraging these three levels of parallelism, the cost of full merge in VBP-FAST is significantly reduced from that of FAST. In the meantime, VBP-FAST uses PBlocks to retain the advantages of partial merge and switch operations. Our extensive trace-driven simulation results show that VBP-FAST speeds up FAST by a factor of 5.3--8.4 for random workloads and of 1.7 for sequential workloads with channel-level, die-level, and plane-level parallelism of 8, 2, and 2 (i.e., eight channels, two dies, and two planes).
Mediterranean Journal of Hematology and Infectious Diseases Decreased Cd10 Expression I Patients Expression in the Bone Marrow Neutrophils of F Hiv Positive

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided Publisher's Disclaimer. This is an early PDF version of manuscripts that have completed a regular peer review and have been accepted for now undergo editing, proof correction and final approval by the authors. Please note that during this production process minor changes may be made, and errors may be identified and corrected. The final version of the manuscr Abstract Background: HIV-1 infection is associated with various quantitative and qualitative changes in haemopoietic cells. Clear distinction between primary myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and secondary dysplasia may not always be possible. Adjunctive analyses used in the diagnosis of MDS include cytogenetics and flow cytometry (FCM). Much focus has been placed on establishing FCM guidelines aiding in the diagnosis of MDS, and to distinguish this condition from secondary dysplastic changes. One of the parameters often cited is expression on the granulocyte population, as this marker denotes granulocytic maturation. Aims: To determine the expression level of CD10 on granulocytes in HIV positive patients. Methods: In total, 117 HIV-1 positive and 29 HIV study. Bone marrow aspirate samples were evaluated in terms of morphological abnormality as well as CD10 expression on the granulocytic population. Results: The average CD10 expression among the HIV reduced, at 18.4%, and 113 patients (96.6%) of these patients had expression levels below 50%. Discussion: Disease conditions causing secondary dysplasia, especially HIV associated with a marked reduction in CD10 expression on the granul independent from the presence of myelodysplastic features. This marker is therefore of doubtful significance as a diagnostic tool in distinguishing between primary and secondary dysplasia. have declared that no competing interests exist. permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited This is an early PDF version of manuscripts that have completed a regular peer review and have been accepted for publication. This paper will correction and final approval by the authors. Please note that during this production process minor changes may be made, and errors may be identified and corrected. The final version of the manuscript will appear without the label " Advance online publication ". 1 infection is associated with various quantitative and qualitative changes in haemopoietic cells. Clear distinction between primary myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and secondary dysplasia may not always be possible. Adjunctive …
COSMOLOGICAL STRING MODELS FROM MILNE SPACES AND SL(2, ℤ) ORBIFOLD

The (n + 1)-dimensional Milne universe with extra free directions is used to construct simple FRW cosmological string models in four dimensions, describing expansion in the presence of matter with p= κρ, κ = (4 - n)/3n. We then consider the n = 2 case and make SL(2, ℤ) orbifold identifications. The model is surprisingly related to the null orbifold with an extra reflection generator. The study of the string spectrum involves the theory of harmonic functions in the fundamental domain of SL(2, ℤ). In particular, from this theory one can deduce a bound for the energy gap and the fact that there are an infinite number of excitations with a finite degeneracy. We discuss the structure of wave functions and give examples of physical winding states becoming light near the singularity.
Esprit-type algorithms for a received mixture of circular and strictly non-circular signals

Recently, ESPRIT-based parameter estimation algorithms have been developed to exploit the structure of signals from strictly second-order (SO) non-circular (NC) sources. They achieve a higher estimation accuracy and can resolve up to twice as many sources. However, these NC methods assume that all the received signals are strictly non-circular. In this paper, we present the C-NC Standard ESPRIT and the C-NC Unitary ESPRIT algorithms designed for the more practical scenario of a received mixture of circular and strictly non-circular signals. Assuming that the number of circular and strictly non-circular signals is known, the two proposed methods yield closed-form estimates and C-NC Unitary ESPRIT also enables an entirely real-valued implementation. As a main result, it is shown that the estimation accuracy of the presented algorithms improves with an increasing number of strictly non-circular signals among a fixed number of sources. Thereby, not only the estimation accuracy of the strictly non-circular signals themselves is improved, but also the estimation accuracy of the circular signals. These results are validated by simulations.
Effect of piracetam on the cognitive performance of patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery: A meta-analysis

Cognitive impairments are observed in numerous patients following coronary bypass surgery, and piracetam are nootropic compounds that modulate cerebral functions by directly enhancing cognitive processes. The present meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the protective effect of piracetam on the cognitive performance of patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery. The relevant studies were identified by searching Medline, EMBASE, PubMed and the Cochrane Library up to June 2013 and the pertinent bibliographies from the retrieved studies were reviewed. Data were selected from the studies according to predefined criteria. The meta-analysis included two randomized control trials involving 184 patients and including the Syndrom-Kurz test (SKT). Findings of the meta-analysis showed that following treatment the change from baseline observed in five SKT subtest scores, conducted with piracetam patients, indicated a significant advantage over those patients that were in the placebo group. The subtests included immediate pictured object recall, weighted mean difference (WMD)=0.91, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.51–1.31, P<0.00001; delayed pictured object recall, WMD=0.74, 95% CI 0.19–1.28, P=0.008; delayed picture recognition, WMD=0.82, 95% CI 0.31–1.31, P=0.001; immediate word recall, WMD=0.87, 95% CI 0.47–1.28, P<0.0001; and letter interference, WMD=3.46, 95% CI −5.69 to −1.23, P=0.002. These results indicated that piracetam may have been effective in improving the short-term cognitive performance of patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery. High quality, well-controlled and longer randomized trials are required to corroborate this result.
Bioinformatics Resources for MicroRNA Discovery

Biomarker identification is often associated with the diagnosis and evaluation of various diseases. Recently, the role of microRNA (miRNA) has been implicated in the development of diseases, particularly cancer. With the advent of next-generation sequencing, the amount of data on miRNA has increased tremendously in the last decade, requiring new bioinformatics approaches for processing and storing new information. New strategies have been developed in mining these sequencing datasets to allow better understanding toward the actions of miRNAs. As a result, many databases have also been established to disseminate these findings. This review focuses on several curated databases of miRNAs and their targets from both predicted and validated sources.
Morphological and functional MDCT: problem-solving tool and surrogate biomarker for hepatic disease clinical care and drug discovery in the era of personalized medicine

This article explains the significant role of morphological and functional multidetector computer tomography (MDCT) in combination with imaging postprocessing algorithms served as a problem-solving tool and noninvasive surrogate biomarker to effectively improve hepatic diseases characterization, detection, tumor staging and prognosis, therapy response assessment, and novel drug discovery programs, partial liver resection and transplantation, and MDCT-guided interventions in the era of personalized medicine. State-of-the-art MDCT depicts and quantifies hepatic disease over conventional CT for not only depicting lesion location, size, and extent but also detecting changes in tumor biologic behavior caused by therapy or tumor progression before morphologic changes. Color-encoded parameter display provides important functional information on blood flow, permeability, leakage space, and blood volume. Together with other relevant biomarkers and genomics, the imaging modality is being developed and validated as a biomarker to early response to novel, targeted anti-VEGF(R)/PDGFR or antivascular/angiogenesis agents as its parameters correlate with immunohistochemical surrogates of tumor angiogenesis and molecular features of malignancies. MDCT holds incremental value to World Health Organization response criteria and Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors in liver disease management. MDCT volumetric measurement of future remnant liver is the most important factor influencing the outcome of patients who underwent partial liver resection and transplantation. MDCT-guided interventional methods deliver personalized therapies locally in the human body. MDCT will hold more scientific impact when it is fused with other imaging probes to yield comprehensive information regarding changes in liver disease at different levels (anatomic, metabolic, molecular, histologic, and other levels).
Unions and Pay Equity Bargaining in Canada

Provincial government pay equity policies require the negotiation of pay equity in unionized workplaces. The methodology is complex and unions have to be knowledgeable and committed to rectifying discriminatory wages. According to the literature, Canadian unions have shown varied levels of effectiveness regarding their pursuit of women’s equality, and this article explores how well these unions represent women’s interests during pay equity bargaining. Based on case studies of the Ontario public service and health care in Newfoundland, the article concludes that the most effective unions supplemented their conventional negotiating techniques with gender analysis and pay equity expertise. These tools were developed primarily through negotiators’ formal links with internal equality structures and their knowledge of equality policies, together with women’s networking inside and outside the labour movement.