Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A TENTATIVE DETECTION OF A STARSPOT DURING CONSECUTIVE TRANSITS OF AN EXTRASOLAR PLANET FROM THE GROUND: NO EVIDENCE OF A DOUBLE TRANSITING PLANET SYSTEM AROUND TrES-1

There have been numerous reports of anomalies during transits of the planet TrES-1b. Recently, Rabus and coworkers' analysis of Hubble Space Telescope observations lead them to claim brightening anomalies during transit might be caused by either a second transiting planet or a cool starspot. Observations of two consecutive transits are presented here from the University of Arizona's 61 inch Kuiper Telescope on 2008 May 12 and May 15 UT. A 5.4 ± 1.7 mmag (0.54% ± 0.17%) brightening anomaly was detected during the first half of the transit on May 12 and again in the second half of the transit on May 15. We argue that the significance of these spot events are 3.2 and 2.9 σ for May 12 and May 15, respectively, and we estimate that each of these have a probability ⩾90% of not being systematic red-noise peaks. Therefore, we conclude that this is a tentative detection of a r ⩾6R⊕ starspot rotating on the surface of the star. We suggest that all evidence to date suggest TrES-1 has a spotty surface, and there is no need to introduce a second transiting planet in this system to explain these anomalies. Assuming that the spin axis of the star and orbital axis of the planet are aligned (and in the plane of the sky) suggests a stellar rotational period of 40.2 ± 0.1 days. Introducing the λ = 30° ± 21° inclination of the stellar spin axis with respect to the planetary orbital axis of Narita et al. adds much more uncertainty, and we are only able to constrain the rotational period of the star to 40.2+22.9−14.6 days, which is consistent with the previously observed Pobs = 33.2+22.3−14.3 day period. We note that this technique could be applied to other transiting systems for which starspots exist on the star in the transit path of the planet in order to constrain the rotation rate of the star.
The genetics of uveal melanoma: current insights

Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common malignant eye tumor in adults affecting ~7,000 individuals per year worldwide. UM is a rare subtype of melanoma with distinct clinical and molecular features as compared to other melanoma subtypes. UMs lack the most typical cutaneous melanoma-associated mutations (BRAF, NRAS, and NF1) and are instead characterized by a different set of genes with oncogenic or loss-of-function mutations. By next-generation sequencing efforts on UM tumors, several driver genes have been detected. The most frequent ones are BAP1, EIF1AX, GNA11, GNAQ, and SF3B1. In many cases, mutations in these genes appear in a mutually exclusive manner, have different risk of metastasis, and are consequently of prognostic importance. The majority of UM cases are sporadic but a few percentage of the cases occurs in families with an inherited predisposition for this malignancy. In recent years, germline mutations in the BAP1 gene have been found to segregate in an autosomal dominant pattern with numerous different cancer types including UM in cancer-prone families. This cancer syndrome has been denoted as the tumor predisposition syndrome.
Moment Invariants Based on SUSAN Initial Edge Response

In view of problem that it usually lacks of fusion depth to combine moment invariants with other extraction technology on local invariant features, this article proposes the moment invariants based on SUSAN initial edge response, which provides a sort of organic integration for moment invariants and SUSAN edge detection algorithm. The combination point is to treat SUSAN initial edge response matrix as gray scale matrix, then to calculate its corresponding moment invariants. Experiments show that the recall and precision of retrieval algorithm based on the above moment invariants will become satisfied as soon as the quality of retrieval results reaches to a critical value, and the moment invariants reflect certain invariance about affine transformation and illumination change.
Scalable conformal array for multi-gigabit body centric wireless communication

In this work a conceptual design of a conformal antenna array is presented for a millimeter-wave antenna system, optimized for low-cost mass production in PCB technology. The conformal array is constituted by four cube faces with two antennas realized on each face. A printed circuit board (PCB) laminate material was chosen for developing this integrated 60 GHz antenna solution. The beamforming capabilities of the 1 × 8 antenna array were validated using similar array topology but at frequency of 17.2 GHz. The proposed array enables the formation of a steerable high gain beam, significantly compensating the channel loss or shadowing in body area network (BAN), thus offering more robust, higher speed performance. The array topology is easily scalable and the antenna gain up till 12.2 dB is reachable. On one side such high gain combined with an agile beam steering is a significant power saving solution for RF front-end. On the other side a use of 60 GHz frequency band makes the antenna array extremely small and thus easily embeddable into wearable medical or commercial devices.
CREB Inhibits AP-2α Expression to Regulate the Malignant Phenotype of Melanoma

Background The loss of AP-2α and increased activity of cAMP-responsive element binding (CREB) protein are two hallmarks of malignant progression of cutaneous melanoma. However, the molecular mechanism responsible for the loss of AP-2α during melanoma progression remains unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings Herein, we demonstrate that both inhibition of PKA-dependent CREB phosphorylation, as well as silencing of CREB expression by shRNA, restored AP-2α protein expression in two metastatic melanoma cell lines. Moreover, rescue of CREB expression in CREB-silenced cell lines downregulates expression of AP-2α. Loss of AP-2α expression in metastatic melanoma occurs via a dual mechanism involving binding of CREB to the AP-2α promoter and CREB-induced overexpression of another oncogenic transcription factor, E2F-1. Upregulation of AP-2α expression following CREB silencing increases endogenous p21Waf1 and decreases MCAM/MUC18, both known to be downstream target genes of AP-2α involved in melanoma progression. Conclusions/Significance Since AP-2α regulates several genes associated with the metastatic potential of melanoma including c-KIT, VEGF, PAR-1, MCAM/MUC18, and p21Waf1, our data identified CREB as a major regulator of the malignant melanoma phenotype.
Absence of detailed balance in ecology

Living systems are typically characterized by irreversible processes. A condition equivalent to the reversibility is the detailed balance, whose absence is an obstacle for analytically solving ecological models. We revisit a promising model with an elegant field-theoretic analytic solution and show that the theoretical analysis is invalid because of an implicit assumption of detailed balance. A signature of the difficulties is evident in the inconsistencies appearing in the many-point correlation functions and in the analytical formula for the species area relationship.
WATER LEVEL TRACKING WITH CONDENSATION ALGORITHM

In this report, we propose a tracking method that tracks a water level as a line from a video sequence. This method targets the use in a river surveillance and alarm system. In our proposed method, a line tracking problem is transformed to a point tracking problem by using Hough transformation and the point is tracked with Condensation algorithm. Our proposed method is examined by comparing with the Kalman filtering approach.
An economic evaluation of cetuximab combined with radiotherapy for patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer in Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

OBJECTIVES A phase III randomized trial that compared the combination of cetuximab and radiotherapy to radiotherapy alone in patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck provided a platform for a comprehensive economic evaluation. The study was conducted to estimate the cost-effectiveness of cetuximab in combination with radiotherapy compared to radiotherapy alone, for the treatment of locally advanced head and neck cancer in patients for whom chemoradiotherapy is inappropriate or intolerable. METHODS Separate economic analyses were conducted for Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The economic model was based on individual patient data extracted from an international phase III trial. Country-specific costs of care from official sources were applied in each analysis. Clinical expert panels supplemented resource use estimates from the phase III trial and validated assumptions used to extrapolate costs and health outcomes beyond the follow-up of the phase III trial. RESULTS In the base-case analysis, the incremental cost per quality-adjusted life-year for patients receiving radiotherapy in combination with cetuximab compared to radiotherapy alone among all countries was in the range of 7538 euros to 10,836 euros. Sensitivity analysis showed the results to be robust. CONCLUSION This cost-effectiveness analysis indicated that the addition of cetuximab to high-dose radiotherapy offers a good value-for-money alternative to radiotherapy alone in the treatment of locally advanced head and neck cancer in five European countries.
ANN based Multi Classifier System for Prediction of High Energy Shower Primary Energy and Core Location

Cosmic showers, during the transit through space, pro- duce sub - products as a result of interactions with the intergalactic or interstellar medium which after entering earth generate secondary particles called Extensive Air Shower (EAS). Detection and analysis of High Energy Particle Showers involve a plethora of theoretical and experimental works with a host of constraints resulting in inaccuracies in measurements. Therefore, there exist a necessity to develop a readily available system based on soft-computational approaches which can be used for EAS analysis. This is due to the fact that soft computational tools such as Artificial Neural Network (ANN)s can be trained as classifiers to adapt and learn the surrounding variations. But single classifiers fail to reach optimality of decision making in many situations for which Multiple Classifier System (MCS) are preferred to enhance the ability of the system to make decisions adjusting to finer variations. This work describes the formation of an MCS using Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) with data inputs from correlation mapping Self Organizing Map (SOM) blocks and the output optimized by another SOM. The results show that the set- up can be adopted for real time practical applications for prediction of primary energy and location of EAS from density values captured using detectors in a circular grid. Keywords—EAS, Shower, Core, ANN, Location. Cosmic showers are the generators of Extensive Air Show- ers (EAS) (1) and travels from the emission source until it reaches the Earth. During its passage through space, there are interactions with the intergalactic or interstellar medium for which sub-products of the original cosmic particles are produced. When these particles enter the Earth they have extremely high energy and produce complicated processes due to the interactions with atmospheric nuclei. As a result, certain secondary particles are generated which are called Extensive Air Shower or EAS (2). The study of these EAS involves the measurement of the position, size, primary energy, time extent of the events and other factors. Detection and analysis of High Energy Particle Showers involve a plethora of theoretical and experimental works comprising of complex measurement and detection equipments. There are several constraints re- lated to experimental works involving the showers some of which are due to partial knowledge regarding interactions of shower particles and primary energies (2). As a result, inaccuracies become a part of measurements of EAS position, size, primary energy, time extent of the events etc. These
Jedule: A Tool for Visualizing Schedules of Parallel Applications

Task scheduling is one of the most prominent problems in the era of parallel computing. We find scheduling algorithms in every domain of computer science, e.g., mapping multiprocessor tasks to clusters, mapping jobs to grid resources, or mapping fine-grained tasks to cores of multicore processors. Many tools exist that help understand or debug an application by presenting visual representations of a certain program run, e.g., visualizations of MPI traces. However, often developers want to get a global and abstract view of their schedules first. In this paper we introduce Jedule, a tool dedicated to visualize schedules of parallel applications. We demonstrate the effectiveness of Jedule by showing how it helped analyzing problems in several case studies.
Foreground and background dust in star cluster directions

This paper compares reddening values E(B-V) derived from the stellar content of 103 old open clusters and 147 globular clusters of the Milky Way with those derived from DIRBE/IRAS 100 micron dust emission in the same directions. Star clusters at |b|> 20 show comparable reddening values between the two methods, in agreement with the fact that most of them are located beyond the disk dust layer. For very low galactic latitude lines of sight, differences occur in the sense that DIRBE/IRAS reddening values can be substantially larger, suggesting effects due to the depth distribution of the dust. The differences appear to arise from dust in the background of the clusters consistent with a dust layer where important extinction occurs up to distances from the Plane of ~ 300 pc. For 3 % of the sample a significant background dust contribution might be explained by higher dust clouds. We find evidence that the Milky Way dust lane and higher dust clouds are similar to those of several edge-on spiral galaxies recently studied in detail by means of CCD imaging.
Behavioural Retrieval from Class

The central problem associated with libraries of reusable software components such as classes is that of retrieval: how to nd in the library those classes that can be used in the construction of a particular application. At the heart of class retrieval is the issue of behaviour: to decide if a library class is appropriate for a particular application it is necessary to know how objects of that class behave , i.e. how they react when sent messages by their environment. In this paper a methodology for searching libraries to nd classes whose objects behave in some speciied manner is deened. In general, it will not be possible to nd a class whose objects behave exactly as required. In this case the methodology nds classes whose objects best approximate the speciied behaviour in a precisely deened sense. The aim is to retrieve classes that can be easily modiied to deene objects that behave exactly as required.
Base-stacking and base-pairing contributions into thermal stability of the DNA double helix

Two factors are mainly responsible for the stability of the DNA double helix: base pairing between complementary strands and stacking between adjacent bases. By studying DNA molecules with solitary nicks and gaps we measure temperature and salt dependence of the stacking free energy of the DNA double helix. For the first time, DNA stacking parameters are obtained directly (without extrapolation) for temperatures from below room temperature to close to melting temperature. We also obtain DNA stacking parameters for different salt concentrations ranging from 15 to 100 mM Na+. From stacking parameters of individual contacts, we calculate base-stacking contribution to the stability of A•T- and G•C-containing DNA polymers. We find that temperature and salt dependences of the stacking term fully determine the temperature and the salt dependence of DNA stability parameters. For all temperatures and salt concentrations employed in present study, base-stacking is the main stabilizing factor in the DNA double helix. A•T pairing is always destabilizing and G•C pairing contributes almost no stabilization. Base-stacking interaction dominates not only in the duplex overall stability but also significantly contributes into the dependence of the duplex stability on its sequence.
Congressional Midterm Forecasts: A Trump Economic Difference?

Abstract Among certain politicians, pundits and people, the expectation was that President Trump would make an economic difference in the 2018 congressional elections. In particular, the belief was that his economic appeal, coupled with his economic policies, would favor Republican candidates. However, an application of the classic referendum model for forecasting congressional outcomes shows no detectable Trump economic effect. That is, the economic conditions prevailing prior to the election, measured in multiple ways, worked as usual, helping to predict the actual Republican 40 seat loss rather closely. Put another way, any incumbent administration, faced with this set of numbers, would likely have experienced the same outcome. In sum, the Trump presence, in its economic manifestations, did not positively impact the Republican party fortune at midterm time.
Successive Cambia: A Developmental Oddity or an Adaptive Structure?

Background Secondary growth by successive cambia is a rare phenomenon in woody plant species. Only few plant species, within different phylogenetic clades, have secondary growth by more than one vascular cambium. Often, these successive cambia are organised concentrically. In the mangrove genus Avicennia however, the successive cambia seem to have a more complex organisation. This study aimed (i) at understanding the development of successive cambia by giving a three-dimensional description of the hydraulic architecture of Avicennia and (ii) at unveiling the possible adaptive nature of growth by successive cambia through a study of the ecological distribution of plant species with concentric internal phloem. Results Avicennia had a complex network of non-cylindrical wood patches, the complexity of which increased with more stressful ecological conditions. As internal phloem has been suggested to play a role in water storage and embolism repair, the spatial organisation of Avicennia wood could provide advantages in the ecologically stressful conditions species of this mangrove genus are growing in. Furthermore, we could observe that 84.9% of the woody shrub and tree species with concentric internal phloem occurred in either dry or saline environments strengthening the hypothesis that successive cambia provide the necessary advantages for survival in harsh environmental conditions. Conclusions Successive cambia are an ecologically important characteristic, which seems strongly related with water-limited environments.
Indeterministic Handling of Uncertain Decisions in Deduplication

In current research and practice, deduplication is usually considered as a deterministic approach in which database tuples are either declared to be duplicates or not. In ambiguous situations, however, it is often not completely clear-cut, which tuples represent the same real-world entity. In deterministic approaches, many realistic possibilities may be ignored, which in turn can lead to false decisions. In this article, we present an indeterministic approach for deduplication by using a probabilistic target model including techniques for proper probabilistic interpretation of similarity matching results. Thus, instead of deciding for one of the most likely situations, all realistic situations are modeled in the resultant data. This approach minimizes the negative impact of false decisions. Moreover, the deduplication process becomes almost fully automatic and human effort can be largely reduced. To increase applicability, we introduce several semi-indeterministic methods that heuristically reduce the set of indeterministically handled decisions in several meaningful ways. We also describe a full-indeterministic method for theoretical and presentational reasons.
Monocular real-time 3D articulated hand pose estimation

Markerless, vision based estimation of human hand pose over time is a prerequisite for a number of robotics applications, such as learning by demonstration (LbD), health monitoring, teleoperation, human-robot interaction. It has special interest in humanoid platforms, where the number of degrees of freedom makes conventional programming challenging. Our primary application is LbD in natural environments where the humanoid robot learns how to grasp and manipulate objects by observing a human performing a task. This paper presents a method for continuous vision based estimation of human hand pose. The method is non-parametric, performing a nearest neighbor search in a large database (100000 entries) of hand pose examples. The main contribution is a real time system, robust to partial occlusions and segmentation errors, that provides full hand pose recognition from markerless data. An additional contribution is the modeling of constraints based on temporal consistency in hand pose, without explicitly tracking the hand in the high dimensional pose space. The pose representation is rich enough to enable a descriptive human-to-robot mapping. Experiments show the pose estimation to be more robust and accurate than a non-parametric method without temporal constraints.
Reversible and embedded watermarking of medical images for telemedicine

In this paper, we propose a new reversible watermarking of medical images for the applications in telemedicine. By using a bit-stream insertion scheme, the patient's information can be treated as a watermark and can be embedded into the bit-stream of a cover image for remote transmission. The proposed method simplifies the design of traditional image coding after a reversible watermarking. Experimental results show that the compression ratio can be achieved up to 3.025. The watermarking capacity can be obtained over 0.75 bpp for some common images. In addition, the watermark can be extracted exactly and the cover image can be reconstructed either in a lossless way or a lossy way. The obtained results also show the improvement with respect to previous works.
Asymptotic Behavior of the Maximum Entropy Routing in Computer Networks

Maximum entropy method has been successfully used for underdetermined systems. Network design problem, with routing and topology subproblems, is an underdetermined system and a good candidate for maximum entropy method application. Wireless ad-hoc networks with rapidly changing topology and link quality, where the speed of recalculation is of crucial importance, have been recently successfully investigated by maximum entropy method application. In this paper we prove a theorem that establishes asymptotic properties of the maximum entropy routing solution. This result, besides being theoretically interesting, can be used to direct initial approximation for iterative optimization algorithms and to speed up their convergence.