Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Segmentation and Shape Tracking of Whole Fluorescent Cells Based on the Chan–Vese Model

We present a fast and robust approach to tracking the evolving shape of whole fluorescent cells in time-lapse series. The proposed tracking scheme involves two steps. First, coherence-enhancing diffusion filtering is applied on each frame to reduce the amount of noise and enhance flow-like structures. Second, the cell boundaries are detected by minimizing the Chan-Vese model in the fast level set-like and graph cut frameworks. To allow simultaneous tracking of multiple cells over time, both frameworks have been integrated with a topological prior exploiting the object indication function. The potential of the proposed tracking scheme and the advantages and disadvantages of both frameworks are demonstrated on 2-D and 3-D time-lapse series of rat adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells and human lung squamous cell carcinoma cells, respectively.
Intuitionistic type-2 fuzzy set approach to image thresholding

In this paper, an image thresholding method based on Intuitionistic Type-2 Fuzzy Sets (InT2FS) method is introduced for the segmentation problems. Besides, intuitionistic type-2 fuzzy set has been formed as an extension of intuitionistic fuzzy set for handling uncertainty. As we know, the image data which usually contains noises or uncertainty so then utilizing the advantages of the InT2FS, we have introduced a thresholding algorithm using InT2FS for image thresholding. Experimental results with different types of images show that the proposed algorithm is better than the traditional thresholding algorithms especially with noisy images.
AF and DF Protocols based on Alamouti ST Code

In this work we propose a new amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol and a new decode-and-forward (DF) protocol based on the Alamouti space-time (ST) code, chosen because of its decoding simplicity. We also apply a new selection criterion for AF and DF protocols that improves their performance and solves the problem of bad performance at low SNR. Finally, we apply the Alamouti AF and DF protocols to a "non-line-of-sight" (NLOS) scheme to bring diversity. Outage probabilities and simulation results show that at low spectral efficiency, in spite of their rate of 1/2 symbol per channel use, these Alamouti AF and DF protocols have better performance than the non-orthogonal AF (NAF) protocol.
Using Grammar Based Genetic Programming for Data Mining of Medical Knowledge

We have developed a rule learning system that employed Grammar Based Genetic Program ming for knowledge discovery from databases A grammar is used as a template for the rule format Grammar Based Genetic Program ming can guide the evolution and the discovery of meaningful rules The technique Token Competition is used to achieve the learning of multiple rules simultaneously We have applied the approach to real life medical databases The rules discovered can provide insight into and allow better understanding of the medical domains
Proceedings of ‘ Second International Conference on Emerging Research in Computing , Information , Communication and Applications ’ ( ERCICA-14 ) A Perspective on Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment Analysis (SA) is indeed a fascinating area of research which has stolen the attention of researchers as it has many facets and more importantly it promises economic stakes in the corporate and governance sector. SA has been stemmed out of text analytics and established itself as a separate identity and a domain of research. The wide ranging results of SA have proved to influence the way some critical decisions are taken. Hence, it has become relevant in thorough understanding of the different dimensions of the input, output and the processes and approaches of SA.
Interactive Computer Animation of Hand Gestures using Status Estimation with Multiple Regression Analysis

This paper presents a method of interactively generating natural hand gesture animation using reduced dimensionality from multiple captured data sequences of finger motions conducting specific tasks. This method is achieved by introducing an estimation with multiple regression analysis. Even when the skeletal structure of the user who inputs the motion is different from that of the shape model in the computer, the motion that a user imagines is generated. Experimental results obtained from the interface applied to virtual object manipulation showed that the proposed method generates animation naturally, just as users would expect. This method enables us to make input devices that require minimal user training and computer calibration, and helps to make the user interface intuitive and easy to use.
A Bloom filter based semi‐index on q‐grams

We present a simple q‐gram based semi‐index, which allows to look for a pattern typically only in a small fraction of text blocks. Several space‐time tradeoffs are presented. Experiments on Pizza & Chili datasets show that our solution is up to three orders of magnitude faster than the Claude et al. (Journal of Discrete Algorithms 2012; 11:37) semi‐index at a comparable space usage. Moreover, the construction of our data structure is fast and easily parallelizable. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Superoxide Dismutase Bioavailability of Nitric Oxide in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease : Role of Comparative Effect of ACE Inhibition and Angiotensin II Type 1 Receptor Antagonism on

Burkhard Hornig, Ulf Landmesser, Christoph Kohler, Dorothe Ahlersmann, Stephan Superoxide Dismutase Bioavailability of Nitric Oxide in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease : Role of Comparative Effect of ACE Inhibition and Angiotensin II Type 1 Receptor Antagonism on Print ISSN: 0009-7322. Online ISSN: 1524-4539 Copyright © 2001 American Heart Association, Inc. All rights reserved. is published by the American Heart Association, 7272 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 75231 Circulation doi: 10.1161/01.CIR. 103.6. 799 2001;103:799-805 Circulation. http://circ.ahajournals. org/content/103/6/799 World Wide Web at: The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is located on the
Analog layer extensions for analog/mixed-signal assertion languages

Assertion-based methodology is gaining popularity in analog and mixed-signal (AMS) verification. Early AMS assertion languages are built on digital assertion languages. This results in limited native support to express most low-level aspects of AMS properties. We present three analog layer extensions to increase analog expressiveness in AMS assertion languages. We first describe the concept of haloes, an implicit way to handle tolerance values of analog signals in assertions. Then, booleanization of analog signals using dual-threshold is introduced to solve problems caused by fluctuations on signals. Finally, we integrate analog measurement operators into assertions. We validate our extensions using our prototype tool on a 10-bit two-stage pipelined analog-to-digital converter design.
Learning Bayesian network structures by searching for the best ordering with genetic algorithms

Presents a new methodology for inducing Bayesian network structures from a database of cases. The methodology is based on searching for the best ordering of the system variables by means of genetic algorithms. Since this problem of finding an optimal ordering of variables resembles the traveling salesman problem, the authors use genetic operators that were developed for the latter problem. The quality of a variable ordering is evaluated with the structure-learning algorithm K2. The authors present empirical results that were obtained with a simulation of the ALARM network.
Principled Policing: Warrior Cops and Guardian Officers

Policing in the United States is in crisis. Public confidence in policing is at the lowest point since the Rodney King beating. A bare majority of Americans still report confidence in the police, and an unprecedented number of people report no or very little confidence in policing. A long history of poor police/community relations in minority and low-income neighborhoods has been exacerbated by egregious acts of misconduct, some of which have been captured on video and shared on social media. Activists, politicians, and police officials themselves have called for better education and equipment, from de-escalation training to body-worn camera systems. But while training and equipment can marginally improve policing practices and public perceptions of the profession, and while both may prove to be necessary components of meaningful, long-term reform, they will not be sufficient. Law enforcement’s problems are, in large part, the result of principles that underlie policing. Resolving the crisis requires acknowledging and changing those principles.Policing principles shape the police mission and how officers perceive their relationship to the public, which affect in turn affect officers’ decisions and actions. This Article explores perhaps the most problematic aspect of modern policing: the idealization of the “Warrior” metaphor. To officers, the Warrior represents honor, duty, and resolve, and the concept provides them with both psychological and pragmatic benefits. But although it was adopted with the best of intentions, the Warrior ideal has been corrupted and its benefits more than offset by hidden costs. The Warrior concept contributes to an adversarial approach to policing that has undermined police/community relations, frustrated effective law enforcement, needlessly endangered officers and civilians, and stymied meaningful reform.As a profession, policing must realign its principles by emphasizing that the principle goal is protecting civilians from unnecessary indignity and harm. To resolve the friction that the Warrior metaphor has countenanced, law enforcement must adopt a procedurally just culture emphasizes communication over commands, cooperation over compliance, and legitimacy over authority. Officers must be capable of being Warriors when it is necessary, of course, but the profession and the public would be better served if officers patterned themselves on the image of the Guardian.
Intermittency in the control of continuous force production.

The purpose of the current investigation was to examine the influence of intermittency in visual information processes on intermittency in the control continuous force production. Adult human participants were required to maintain force at, and minimize variability around, a force target over an extended duration (15 s), while the intermittency of on-line visual feedback presentation was varied across conditions. This was accomplished by varying the frequency of successive force-feedback deliveries presented on a video display. As a function of a 128-fold increase in feedback frequency (0.2 to 25.6 Hz), performance quality improved according to hyperbolic functions (e.g., force variability decayed), reaching asymptotic values near the 6.4-Hz feedback frequency level. Thus, the briefest interval over which visual information could be integrated and used to correct errors in motor output was approximately 150 ms. The observed reductions in force variability were correlated with parallel declines in spectral power at about 1 Hz in the frequency profile of force output. In contrast, power at higher frequencies in the force output spectrum were uncorrelated with increases in feedback frequency. Thus, there was a considerable lag between the generation of motor output corrections (1 Hz) and the processing of visual feedback information (6.4 Hz). To reconcile these differences in visual and motor processing times, we proposed a model where error information is accumulated by visual information processes at a maximum frequency of 6.4 per second, and the motor system generates a correction on the basis of the accumulated information at the end of each 1-s interval.
No 1182 December 2012 China ' s Pure Exporter Subsidies

One third of Chinese exporters sell more than ninety percent of their production abroad. We argue that this distinctive pattern is attributable to a wide range of subsidies that provide incentives to these “pure exporters”. We propose a heterogeneous firm model in which firms exporting all their output receive an ad-valorem sales subsidy. Using microdata on manufacturing firms matched with custom transactions for the years 2000-2006, we measure sizable differences in productivity and paid taxes between pure exporters and domestic firms and between pure and regular exporters, in line with the predictions of our model. Embedding a pure-exporter subsidy in a two-country general equilibrium environment, we show that this instrument is worse from a welfare standpoint than a standard export subsidy, partly because it increases protection of the domestic market. A counterfactual analysis suggests that eliminating these subsidies would result in a welfare gain for China comparable to halving its trade costs.
Investigating cognitive mechanisms of social interaction through musical joint action

Contagion, Empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM) are important social cognitive mechanisms that develop gradually in human ontogeny, enabling humans to interact with other human beings in a complex manner. However, the development of cognitive mechanisms for early social interaction is still underexplored. Therefore, the aim of the current paper is to investigate these mechanisms in a broader range from a theoretical as well as empirical perspective. In particular, we propose a musiccentered approach, which allows us to investigate cognitive mechanisms of social interaction independently of children’s language skills in a musical joint action setting. In our theoretical part, we delineate the social cognitive mechanisms, namely contagion, empathy and ToM. Especially, we suggest emergence of joint attention around nine months in ontogeny as a mile stone of the social cognitive development. Further, we propose that joint attentional skills scaffold empathy and ToM and are necessary to enable complex social communicative behaviors such as joint action. Our empirical part focuses on joint attentional behaviors and explores these in musical joint action of children of different age-groups (1.5–2.5 y; 3–4 y; 5–6 y) by using structured observation of video-recordings. The observation session takes place in a regular lesson of music education for young children, which includes interactive clapping, dancing and other rhythmic and musical gestures under the guidance of a tutor. Results of analyzing indicators of social interactions such as gaze following, mimicry, gestures, and intraand inter-individual synchronization will be presented. It is claimed that investigating musical joint action provides a new possibility to explore how increasingly complex social cognitive mechanisms emerge in human ontogeny in social communicative behaviors across a wide range of age and adds to current methods in social cognitive neuroscience.
Lipocalin (LCN) 2 Mediates Pro-Atherosclerotic Processes and Is Elevated in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease

Background Lipocalin (LCN) 2 is associated with multiple acute and chronic inflammatory diseases but the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we investigated whether LCN2 is released from macrophages and contributes to pro-atherosclerotic processes and whether LCN2 plasma levels are associated with the severity of coronary artery disease progression in humans. Methods and Results In an autocrine-paracrine loop, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α promoted the release of LCN2 from murine bone-marrow derived macrophages (BMDM) and vice versa. Moreover, LCN2 stimulation of BMDM led to up-regulation of M1 macrophage markers. In addition, enhanced migration of monocytic J774A.1 cells towards LCN2 was observed. Furthermore, LCN2 increased the expression of the scavenger receptors Lectin-like oxidized low-density lipoprotein receptor-1 (LOX-1) as well as scavenger receptor class A-1 (SRA-1) and induced the conversion of macrophages to foam cells. In atherosclerotic lesions of low density lipoprotein receptor-deficient (ldlr −/−) mice fed a high fat, high cholesterol diet, LCN2 was found to be co-localized with macrophages in the shoulder region of the atherosclerotic plaque. In addition, LCN2 plasma levels were significantly increased in plasma samples of these mice. Finally, LCN2 plasma levels correlated with the severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients as determined by coronary angiography. Conclusions Here we demonstrated that LCN2 plays a pivotal role in processes involved in atherogenesis by promoting polarization and migration of monocytic cells and development of macrophages towards foam cells. Moreover, LCN2 may be used as a prognostic marker to determine the status of CAD progression.
APPLICATION OF NEURAL NETWORKS TO CONTROL OF DRIVE FUNCTIONS OF A MANIPULATOR WITH A FLEXIBLE LINK

S u m m a r y The thermovision method was applied for the determination of temperature of a workpiece during abrasive cut-off operations. Abrasive cutting of steel workpieces with grinding wheels purchased from 3 different manufacturers was conducted under different conditions. The temperature distribution along the grinding wheel circumference and along its radial cross-section was determined. The relative efficiency of a grinding wheel (grinding ratio) G was estimated.
NETWORKED PREDICTIVE CONTROL OF SYSTEMS WITH RANDOM COMMUNICATION DELAY

This paper proposes a novel networked predictive control strategy and analyses the stability of closed-loop networked predictive control systems with random communication delay. The proposed networked predictive controller consists of a networked control predictor and a conventional predictive controller. The networked control predictor compensates the network communication delay. The conventional predictive controller achieves the required control performance. The stability criteria of a closed-loop networked predictive control system are analytically derived for both the fixed communication delay and random communication delay. The simulated results confirm the analytical results given in the paper.
Design and implementation of low cost integrated navigation system for mini autonomous helicopter

A low cost integrated navigation system based on cascaded coupled architecture was developed for mini autonomous helicopter. A novel linear attitude fusion algorithm was introduced to fuse gyros' output with accelerometers' gravity observation and magnetometers' magnetic observation, and the estimation errors were proven to be bounded. By considering the measurement delay of GPS, the velocity and position were estimated from previous attitude estimation, accelerometer measurement and delayed GPS measurement using two cascaded complementary filters. Finally the terrain clearance was derived from ultra sonic ranger finder and vertical velocity estimation by method combined of outlier rejection and reset. The experimental results have shown that the flight state estimations from the proposed navigation system possess excellent static accuracy and dynamic performance, and can fully meet the requirements of mini autonomous helicopter.
Music Haptic : Musical Harmony Notions for All with a force feedback mouse and a Spatial Representation

This paper describes Music Haptic, an application which enables users (especially blind users) to train of musical harmony notions due to a spatial representation and a force feedback mouse. This mouse enables the progressive rebuilding of the mental image of a graphical document through knowing the positions of its elements. We present technical context of our prototype and the possible alternatives. Then, we describe our prototype and discuss directions for future research.
Intergenerational and intercultural researches and experimentations for a social tourism of quality

Since the first research carried out by the Generational Meetings Laboratory of the University of Milan (1998) on I. T. languages and intergenerational communication and having as primary aim the one shown by the research projects carried out during the academic years 1998-99: “socializing the generations, by socializing the institutions” (A. Albanese 1999, 2000); during 2002-2008 at Viterbo experimental research of intergenerational tourism and environmental education took place. The central Italy experiences\researches are characterized by:  the choice of a particular type of tourism: thermal tourism;  for choosing the use of digital camera and video as learning process. These two can be considered the instruments able to involve the both of parts within a common interest and vehicle able to reduce the generational gap;  since 2003 the cross cultural meeting has been implemented together with the intergenerational one. During the Vth A.R. I.P.T. Congress (Viterbo\Tarquinia, 15-17 October 2009) we refer the research data concerning the research-experiences of intergenerational tourism carried out at Viterbo during the period 2007-2008.
Amphioxus Evx genes: implications for the evolution of the Midbrain-Hindbrain Boundary and the chordate tailbud.

Evx genes are widely used in animal development. In vertebrates they are crucial in gastrulation, neurogenesis, appendage development and tailbud formation, whilst in protostomes they are involved in gastrulation and neurogenesis, as well as segmentation at least in Drosophila. We have cloned the Evx genes of amphioxus (Branchiostoma floridae), and analysed their expression to understand how the functions of Evx have evolved between invertebrates and vertebrates, and in particular at the origin of chordates and during their subsequent evolution. Amphioxus has two Evx genes (AmphiEvxA and AmphiEvxB) which are genomically linked. AmphiEvxA is prototypical to the vertebrate Evx1 and Evx2 genes with respect to its sequence and expression, whilst AmphiEvxB is very divergent. Mapping the expression of AmphiEvxA onto a phylogeny shows that a role in gastrulation, dorsal-ventral patterning and neurogenesis is probably retained throughout bilaterian animals. AmphiEvxA expression during tailbud development implies a role for Evx throughout the chordates in this process, whilst lack of expression at the homologous region to the vertebrate Midbrain-Hindbrain Boundary (MHB) is consistent with the elaboration of the full organiser properties of this region being a vertebrate innovation.