Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiscale Image Segmentation Using Active Contours

We propose a new approach for image segmentation at different scales of observation, based on a multiscale image decomposition and on the active contour segmentation model. The proposed method consists of two steps. Firstly, a representation of a given image at multiple scales is derived, by means of a smoothing method which minimizes the weighted total variation norm of the image. This method allows the longtime preservation of edges and contrast with increasing scale, facilitating the detection of underlying structures. Secondly, image structures are extracted at each scale, using a level set formulation of active contours, minimizing the Mumford-Shah functional. Promising results of the proposed segmentation approach on natural images are reported.
A Coupling and Cohesion Metrics Suite for Object-Oriented Software

The increasing need for software quality measurements has led to extensive research into software metrics and the development of software metric tools. To maintain high quality software, developers need to strive for a low-coupled and highly cohesive design. However, as mentioned by many researchers, coupling and cohesion metrics lack formal and standardized definitions and thus for each metric there is more than one interpretation. This paper introduces our view of coupling and cohesion metrics and our implementation approach. Coupling and cohesion metrics are calculated by considering a number of relationships, which were introduced by several researchers. Based on the relationships, some sets of metrics were chosen. The selected metrics are then formalized to aid the implementation of the metrics to actual software codes. The formalized metrics have been implemented in CCMETRICS, a tool for calculating the coupling and cohesion metrics of object-oriented software.
A MAINTAINABILITY ENHANCEMENT PROCEDURE FOR REDUCING AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT RISK

In mobile communications age, environment changes rapidly, the requirements change is the software project must face challenge. Able to overcome the impact of requirements change, software development risk can be effectively decreased. In order to reduce software requirements change risk, the paper investigates the major software development models and recommends the adaptable requirements change software development. Agile development applied the Iterative and Incremental Development (IID) approach, focuses on workable software and client communication. In software development, agile development is a very suitable approach to handle the requirements change. However, agile development maintenance existed many defects that include development documents control, user story inspection and CM system. The maintenance defects of agile development should be improved. Analysing and collecting the critical quality factors of agile development maintainability, in this paper proposes the Agile Development Maintainability Measurement (ADMM) model. Based on ADMM model, the Agile Development Maintainability Enhancement (ADME) procedure can be defined and deployed for reducing the risk of requirements change.
Online Task Allocation by Price Discrimination

Quality control in crowdsourcing is an important issue. A major approach is to select a best worker for a task. Many of the existing studies on a task allocation in crowdsourcing assume a 'push' crowdsourcing model where the system can decide which tasks are sent to a worker. On the other hand, a task allocation problem for a 'pull' crowdsourcing model such as Amazon Mechanical Turk has not been sufficiently studied. To tackle this issue we try to employ the price discrimination theory in microeconomics. However, the theory assumes the unlimited supply of resources, which does not fit the crowdsourcing situation and is difficult to apply directly. To overcome this difficulty, we provide a model of price discrimination for task allocation in crowdsourcing and give an efficient method for calculating the optimal payment setting. Furthermore, we evaluate the proposed method by using the data obtained from MTurk experiments and show it performs well.
Express yourself: bold individuals induce enhanced morphological defences

Organisms display an impressive array of defence strategies in nature. Inducible defences (changes in morphology and/or behaviour within a prey's lifetime) allow prey to decrease vulnerability to predators and avoid unnecessary costs of expression. Many studies report considerable interindividual variation in the degree to which inducible defences are expressed, yet what underlies this variation is poorly understood. Here, we show that individuals differing in a key personality trait also differ in the magnitude of morphological defence expression. Crucian carp showing risky behaviours (bold individuals) expressed a significantly greater morphological defence response when exposed to a natural enemy when compared with shy individuals. Furthermore, we show that fish of different personality types differ in their behavioural plasticity, with shy fish exhibiting greater absolute plasticity than bold fish. Our data suggest that individuals with bold personalities may be able to compensate for their risk-prone behavioural type by expressing enhanced morphological defences.
Distributed adaptive eigenvector estimation of the sensor signal covariance matrix in a fully connected sensor network

In this paper, we describe a distributed adaptive (time-recursive) algorithm to estimate and track the eigenvectors corresponding to the Q largest or smallest eigenvalues of the global sensor signal covariance matrix in a wireless sensor network (WSN). We only address the case of fully connected (broadcast) networks, in which the nodes broadcast compressed Q-dimensional sensor observations. It can be shown that the algorithm converges to the desired eigenvectors without explicitely constructing the global covariance matrix that actually defines them, i.e., without the need to centralize all the raw sensor observations. The algorithm allows each node to estimate (a) the node-specific entries of the global covariance matrix eigenvectors, and (b) Q-dimensional observations of the full set of sensor observations projected onto the Q estimated eigenvectors. The theoretical results are validated by means of numerical simulations.
GAUGE BOSON EXCHANGE IN AdS

We study the amplitude for exchange of massless gauge bosons between pairs of massive scalar fields in Anti-de Sitter space. In the AdS/CFT correspondence this amplitude describes the contribution of conserved flavor symmetry currents to 4-point functions of scalar operators in the boundary conformal theory. A concise, covariant, Y2K compatible derivation of the gauge boson propagator in AdSd+1 is given. Techniques are developed to calculate the two bulk integrals over AdS space leading to explicit expressions or convenient, simple integral representations for the amplitude. The amplitude contains leading power and sub-leading logarithmic singularities in the gauge boson channel and leading logarithms in the crossed channel. The new methods of this paper are expected to have other applications in the study of the Maldacena conjecture. * Research supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grants PHY95-31023, PHY-94-07194 and PHY-97-22072. 1
Nearly Equal Distances in the Plane

For any positive integer k and ε > 0, there exist nk,ε, ck, e > 0 with the following property. Given any system of n > nk,ε points in the plane with minimal distance at least 1 and any t1, t2…, tk ≥ 1, the number of those pairs of points whose distance is between ti and for some 1 ≤ i ≤ k, is at most (n2/2) (1 − 1/(k+1)+ε). This bound is asymptotically tight.
Supervised Word Sense Disambiguation with Support Vector Machines and multiple knowledge sources

We participated in the SENSEVAL-3 English lexical sample task and multilingual lexical sample task. We adopted a supervised learning approach with Support Vector Machines, using only the ofﬁcial training data provided. No other external resources were used. The knowledge sources used were part-of-speech of neighboring words, single words in the surrounding context, local collocations, and syntactic relations. For the translation and sense subtask of the multilingual lexical sample task, the English sense given for the target word was also used as an additional knowledge source. For the English lexical sample task, we obtained ﬁne-grained and coarse-grained score (for both recall and precision) of 0.724 and 0.788 respectively. For the multilingual lexical sample task, we obtained recall (and precision) of 0.634 for the translation subtask, and 0.673 for the translation and sense subtask.
Quantifying the amount of impact ejecta at the MER landing sites and potential paleolakes in the southern Martian highlands

Applying previous equations for estimating ejecta thickness to Mars, tens of meters of ballistically‐emplaced impact ejecta might be expected over the heavily‐cratered southern Martian hemisphere. The calculated thickness of ejecta material, even accounting for large uncertainties in methods of estimation, is not enough to fully explain observed depth discrepancies in Gusev Crater or in other potential Martian paleolakes. Ejecta contributed to the Spirit landing site in Gusev Crater is largely derived from local craters while distal ejecta from large, faraway craters dominates the contribution to the Opportunity landing site in Meridiani Planum. However, emplacement of this type of ejecta probably predates the present surfaces. Thira crater may have excavated impact‐melt products created by Gusev, samples of which would provide a unique insight into the composition of the bulk Martian crust. Though ballistically‐emplaced crater ejecta contribute a relatively small amount of material to any given site, this type of material provides important lithologic diversity.
Increases in Endogenous or Exogenous Progestins Promote Virus-Target Cell Interactions within the Non-human Primate Female Reproductive Tract

Currently, there are mounting data suggesting that HIV-1 acquisition in women can be affected by the use of certain hormonal contraceptives. However, in non-human primate models, endogenous or exogenous progestin-dominant states are shown to increase acquisition. To gain mechanistic insights into this increased acquisition, we studied how mucosal barrier function and CD4+ T-cell and CD68+ macrophage density and localization changed in the presence of natural progestins or after injection with high-dose DMPA. The presence of natural or injected progestins increased virus penetration of the columnar epithelium and the infiltration of susceptible cells into a thinned squamous epithelium of the vaginal vault, increasing the likelihood of potential virus interactions with target cells. These data suggest that increasing either endogenous or exogenous progestin can alter female reproductive tract barrier properties and provide plausible mechanisms for increased HIV-1 acquisition risk in the presence of increased progestin levels.
Oxidative Damage and Mutagenic Potency of Fast Neutron and UV-B Radiation in Pollen Mother Cells and Seed Yield of Vicia faba L.

In recent years, there has been a great deal of attention toward free radicals, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by exposure of crop plant cells to physical radiations. Henceforth, the current study was planned to compare oxidative stress and mutagenic potential of different irradiation doses of fast neutron (FN) and UV-B on meiotic-pollen mother cells (PMCs), pollen grains (PGs) and seeds yielded from irradiated faba beans seedlings. On the cytogenetic level, each irradiation type had special interference with DNA of PMC and exhibited wide range of mutagenic action on the frequency and type of chromosomal anomalies, fertility of PGs and seed yield productivity based on the irradiation exposure dose and radiation sensitivity of faba bean plants compared with un-irradiated ones. On the molecular level, SDS-PAGE and RPAD-PCR analyses of seeds yielded from irradiated seedlings exhibited distinctive polymorphisms based on size, intensity, appearance, and disappearance of polypeptides bands compared with un-irradiated ones. The total values of protein and DNA polymorphisms reached 88% and 90.80% respectively. The neutron fluency (2.3 × 106 n/cm2) and UV-B dose for 1 hr were recorded as bio-positive effects. The present study proved that genetic variations revealed by cytogenetic test could be supported by gene expression (alterations in RAPD and protein profiles).
Pain education to prevent chronic low back pain: a study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

Introduction Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Of those patients who present to primary care with acute LBP, 40% continue to report symptoms 3 months later and develop chronic LBP. Although it is possible to identify these patients early, effective interventions to improve their outcomes are not available. This double-blind (participant/outcome assessor) randomised controlled trial will investigate the efficacy of a brief educational approach to prevent chronic LBP in ‘at-risk’ individuals. Methods/analysis Participants will be recruited from primary care practices in the Sydney metropolitan area. To be eligible for inclusion participants will be aged 18–75 years, with acute LBP (<4 weeks’ duration) preceded by at least a 1 month pain-free period and at-risk of developing chronic LBP. Potential participants with chronic spinal pain and those with suspected serious spinal pathology will be excluded. Eligible participants who agree to take part will be randomly allocated to receive 2×1 h sessions of pain biology education or 2×1 h sessions of sham education from a specially trained study physiotherapist. The study requires 101 participants per group to detect a 1-point difference in pain intensity 3 months after pain onset. Secondary outcomes include the incidence of chronic LBP, disability, pain intensity, depression, healthcare utilisation, pain attitudes and beliefs, global recovery and recurrence and are measured at 1 week post-intervention, and at 3, 6 and 12 months post LBP onset. Ethics/dissemination Ethical approval was obtained from the University of New South Wales Human Ethics Committee in June 2013 (ref number HC12664). Outcomes will be disseminated through publication in peer-reviewed journals and presentations at international conference meetings. Trial registration number https://www.anzctr. org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx? ACTRN=12612001180808
Condition Diagnosis of Blower System Using Rough Sets and a Fuzzy Neural Network

: - This paper presents a condition diagnosis method for a blower system using the rough sets, and a fuzzy neural network to detect faults and distinguish fault types. In order to solve the ambiguous problem between the symptoms and the fault types, the diagnosis knowledge for the training of the neural network is acquired by using the rough sets. The fuzzy neural network realized by partially-linearized neural network (PNN), which can automatically distinguish the faults. The PNN can quickly converge when learning, and can quickly and high-accurately distinguish fault types on the basis of the probability distributions of the machine conditions when diagnosing. The non-dimensional symptom parameters are also defined in frequency domain, and those parameters are processed by rough sets to sensitively diagnose machinery conditions. Practical examples of the diagnosis for a blower system are shown in order to verify the efficiency of the method proposed in this paper.
Knowledge and brokerage in REDD+ policy making: A Policy networks analysis of the case of Tanzania

As various countries are preparing their national REDD+ strategies, balancing different types of knowledge and interests for legitimate and effective policies has become a primary, pressing challenge. Knowledge and discourses on REDD+ are deliberated in political bargaining processes between various actors involved in the policy domain that differ in their resources and capacity to influence outcomes. Using Tanzania as a country case, this study assesses the relative influence of deliberation and knowledge brokerage on the dynamics of the REDD+ policy process and its outputs vis-a-vis institutional structures and power relations between the involved policy actors. It is proposed that the more public and politicized the policy process, the less the discursive dimension may be ignored and the more there is to gain for discourse coalitions with wide bases of legitimacy among policy actors with varying power resources and institutionalized opportunities for policy influence. A structured survey and semi-structured in-depth interviews were carried out with sixty-four organizational actors involved in the Tanzanian REDD+ domain between March and September 2011. Social Network Analysis techniques were applied to analyze the quantitative survey data, complemented by a q ualitative content analysis of the actors’ discourse and strategies related to the national REDD+ policy. The results suggest that through sustained public efforts, actors engaged in so-called protest events parallel to the formal government-led process have influenced the course of the policy process and to an extent, at the early formulation stage, policy content. Successful coalitions include brokers that occupy strategic positions in networks of information and resources, and have the capacity to enhance information flow and promote closure of REDD+ discourse on the appropriate policy proposals. Brokers that are characterized by discourses based on legitimized knowledge and ties to central policy actors have the greatest potential to enhance information flow and deliberation the policy process and outcomes. In the Tanzania case, there is considerable overlap between brokers and central actors, and the key brokers may be considered members of discourse coalitions rather than discursively neutral actors. Nevertheless, the influence of actors and coalitions that appear successful in the early stages of the policy process will be filtered by the institutional context applying to the formal decision making stages, and by shifting national and international political commitments to climate change mitigation and REDD+.
Deadlock-free Routing Scheme for Irregular Mesh Topology NoCs with Oversized Regions

At present, typical application-specific NoC systems often integrate a number of heterogeneous components which have varied functions, sizes and communication requirements. Instead of regular topology networks, constructing irregular mesh topology network on chip (NoCs) becomes an attractive approach to building future NoC systems with irregular structure. Deadlock-free routing control algorithm is a promising problem for irregular mesh topology. The available routing algorithms from regular mesh are not suitable for irregular mesh network. So in this paper, we introduce a hybrid scheme multiphase routing algorithm for irregular mesh integrating oversized rectangle modules. The basic idea of the scheme is borrowed from the area of fault tolerant networks, where a network topology is rendered irregular due to fault regions. The proposed scheme only employs 2 virtual channels per physical channel with fast routing decisions. In the case that the proposed two-phase routing scheme does not keep connection between some pairs of nodes, certain healthy nodes are deactivated to guarantee its deadlock-freeness. A greedy method is presented to ensure that only the minimum nodes are deactivated.
A new implementation approach for cyclostationary signal-based adaptive arrays

In this paper, we propose a new approach for implementing the cyclostationary signal-based adaptive array. Two methods for calculating the control vector of the adaptive array are provided. The first method employs the eigenvalue decomposition technique and the second method uses a simple cyclostationary correlation method to calculate the control vector from the received data. Simulation examples are illustrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Extraction of Core Contents from Web Pages

The information available on web pages mostly contains semi-structured text documents which are represented either in XML, or HTML, or XHTML format that lacks formatted document structure. The document does not discriminate between the text and the schema that represent the text. Also the amount of structure used to represent the text depends on the purpose and size of text document. No semantic is applied to semi-structured documents. This requires extracting core contents of text document to analyse words or sentences to generate useful knowledge. This paper discusses several techniques and approaches useful for extracting core content from semi-structured text documents and their merits and demerits
Estradiol Induces Formation of Dendritic Spines in Hippocampal Neurons: Functional Correlates

Dissociated cultured rat hippocampal pyramidal neurons respond to estradiol with a time-dependent, twofold increase in density of their dendritic spines. This effect is mediated by an estrogen receptor, probably of the alpha nuclear receptor type. In searching for the molecular mechanisms leading from the initial activation of the estrogen receptor to the final formation of new dendritic spines, we found that estradiol acts on GABAergic interneurons expressing the estrogen receptor by decreasing their inhibitory tone. In culture, this is assumed to cause a shift in the balance between excitation and inhibition toward enhanced excitation, overactivation of the pyramidal neurons, and subsequent formation of novel dendritic spines. The action of estradiol on spine formation is mediated by phosphorylation of cyclic AMP response element binding protein in the pyramidal neurons and is blocked when inhibition is enhanced by diazepam and when excitation is blocked by tetrodotoxin. Progesterone blocks the effect of estradiol on dendritic spines through its conversion to tetrahydroprogesterone, which enhances GABAergic inhibition. Subsequent to formation of novel dendritic spines, there is an increase in the density of glutamatergic receptors in the affected cells, an increase in the cellular calcium response to glutamate, and an increase in network synaptic activity among the cultured neurons.
BhαBar: big Hα kinematical sample of barred spiral galaxies — I. Fabry-Perot observations of 21 galaxies

The Halpha gas kinematics of twenty-one representative barred spiral galaxies belonging to the BHaBAR sample is presented. The galaxies were observed with FaNTOmM, a Fabry-Perot integral-field spectrometer, on three different telescopes. The 3D data cubes were processed through a robust pipeline with the aim of providing the most homogeneous and accurate dataset possible useful for further analysis. The data cubes were spatially binned to a constant signal-to-noise ratio, typically around 7. Maps of the monochromatic Halpha emission line and of the velocity field were generated and the kinematical parameters were derived for the whole sample using tilted-ring models. The photometrical and kinematical parameters (position angle of the major axis, inclination, systemic velocity and kinematical centre) are in relative good agreement, except maybe for the later-type spirals.
An implementation of multimodal Gaze Direction Recognition System using Image and EOG

There have been many recent studies on Gaze Direction Recognition System in the field of HCI (Human Computer Interaction). This system will be the most natural and intuitive HCI system due to the application of gaze direction or biomedical Signals. This paper proposes a multi-modal gaze direction recognition system using the nine directional gaze recognition based on Image and EOG signal recognition. In this paper, we use DFA (Deterministic Finite Accepter), Haar-like feature and SVM (Support Vector Machine) for gaze recognition based on the EOG signal and Image. The proposed multi-modal gaze direction recognition system solves the problem of constraint of single modal recognition systems. As a result, the proposed system achieves higher recognition performance.