Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Background learning for robust face recognition with PCA in the presence of clutter

We propose a new method within the framework of principal component analysis (PCA) to robustly recognize faces in the presence of clutter. The traditional eigenface recognition (EFR) method, which is based on PCA, works quite well when the input test patterns are faces. However, when confronted with the more general task of recognizing faces appearing against a background, the performance of the EFR method can be quite poor. It may miss faces completely or may wrongly associate many of the background image patterns to faces in the training set. In order to improve performance in the presence of background, we argue in favor of learning the distribution of background patterns and show how this can be done for a given test image. An eigenbackground space is constructed corresponding to the given test image and this space in conjunction with the eigenface space is used to impart robustness. A suitable classifier is derived to distinguish nonface patterns from faces. When tested on images depicting face recognition in real situations against cluttered background, the performance of the proposed method is quite good with fewer false alarms.
Endothelin Receptor Type B Gene Promoter Hypermethylation in Salivary Rinses Is Independently Associated with Risk of Oral Cavity Cancer and Premalignancy

Endothelin receptor type B (EDNRB) and kinesin family member 1A (KIF1A) are candidate tumor suppressor genes that are inactivated in cancers. In this study, we evaluated the promoter hypermethylation of EDNRB and KIF1A and their potential use for risk classification in prospectively collected salivary rinses from patients with premalignant/malignant oral cavity lesions. Quantitative methylation-specific PCR was performed to analyze the methylation status of EDNRB and KIF1A in salivary rinses of 191 patients. We proceeded to determine the association of methylation status with histologic diagnosis and estimate classification accuracy. On univariate analysis, diagnosis of dysplasia/cancer was associated with age and KIF1A or EDNRB methylation. Methylation of EDNRB highly correlated with that of KIF1A (P < 0.0001). On multivariable modeling, histologic diagnosis was independently associated with EDNRB (P = 0.0003) or KIF1A (P = 0.027) methylation. A subset of patients analyzed (n = 161) without prior biopsy-proven malignancy received clinical risk classification based on examination. On univariate analysis, EDNRB and risk classification were associated with diagnosis of dysplasia/cancer and remained significant on multivariate analysis (EDNRB: P = 0.047, risk classification: P = 0.008). Clinical risk classification identified dysplasia/cancer with a sensitivity of 71% and a specificity of 58%. The sensitivity of clinical risk classification combined with EDNRB methylation improved to 75%. EDNRB methylation in salivary rinses was independently associated with histologic diagnosis of premalignancy and malignancy and may have potential in classifying patients at risk for oral premalignant and malignant lesions in settings without access to a skilled dental practitioner. This may also potentially identify patients with premalignant and malignant lesions that do not meet the criteria for high clinical risk based on skilled dental examination. Cancer Prev Res; 3(9); 1093–103. ©2010 AACR.
Response to prescribed burning of 5-year-old hardwood regeneration on a mesic site in the Southern Appalachian Mountains

Five years after a Southern Appalachian cove was regenerated, vegetation was dominated by a dense stand of yellow-poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), which averaged 9,181±13,042 stems per acre, and other mesophytic hardwood seedlings and saplings. The stand was prescribed burned during late spring to improve habitat for turkey by reducing density of saplings to stimulate greater production of grasses and herbs. The prescribed fire completely killed about 69 percent of the saplings; the others were topkilled and produced basal sprouts that reclaimed much of the canopy growing space after one growing season. Regression analysis indicated that over a range of fire intensities the probability of mortality for yellow-poplar saplings was about twice that of other species. Results suggest that additional prescribed burns will be necessary to achieve the desired low density of arborescent vegetation to allow development of herbaceous species beneficial for wildlife.
A Novel Three Dimensional Probability-based Classifier for Improving Motor Imagery-based BCI

Objective: Motor imagery BCI based assistive robotics solution has the potential to empower the upper mobility independence of a disabled person. The objective of this work was to compare the classification performance of well-established classifiers with a novel prototype classifier.Approach: We developed an adaptive decision surface ADS classifier with the future objective to augment an assistive robotic prosthetic hand to open and close to grasp an object in cooperation with LIDAR sensors. The ADS was trained with a training data set from the BCI competition IV dataset 2a from Graz University of Technology.Main results: The classification accuracy in the offline tests reached 76.06 % class 1 and 81.50 % class 2 using a non-adaptive ADS and 79.55 % class 1 and 99.69 % class 2 using an adaptive ADS classifiers. We show a prototype adaptive decision classifier used with motor imagery datasets.
Modulatory effects of α- and γ-tocopherols on 4-hydroxyestradiol induced oxidative stresses in MCF-10A breast epithelial cells

The elevated level of circulating estradiol increases the risk of breast tumor development. To gain further insight into mechanisms involved in their actions, we investigated the molecular mechanisms of 4-hydroxyestradiol (4-OHE2) to initiate and/or promote abnormal cell growth, and of α- or γ-tocopherol to inhibit this process. MCF-10A, human breast epithelial cells were incubated with 0.1 µM 4-OHE2, either with or without 30 µM tocopherols for 96 h. 4-OHE2 caused the accumulation of intracellular ROS, while cellular GSH/GSSG ratio and MnSOD protein levels were decreased, indicating that there was an oxidative burden. 4-OHE2 treatment also changed the levels of DNA repair proteins, BRCA1 and PARP-1. γ-Tocopherol suppressed the 4-OHE2-induced increases in ROS, GSH/GSSG ratio, and MnSOD protein expression, while α-tocopherol up-regulated BRCA1 and PARP-1 protein expression. In conclusion, 4-OHE2 increases oxidative stress reducing the level of proteins related to DNA repair. Tocopherols suppressed oxidative stress by scavenging ROS or up-regulating DNA repair elements.
Amnesia for criminal offences

Synopsis Nearly 10% of a sample of men charged with a variety of offences claimed amnesia for their offence. The amnesia occurred only among those who had committed violence and was most frequent following homicide. All the amnesics had a psychiatric disorder, four having a primary depressive illness and the remainder being almost equally divided between schizophrenia and alcohol abuse. None of the amnesias had any legal implications. The circumstances of the offences suggested a variety of mechanisms to account for the amnesia, including repression, dissociation and alcoholic black-outs. Psychological defence mechanisms were probably of some importance, even when alcohol was an important factor.
Noise in NbTiN, Al, and Ta Superconducting Resonators on Silicon and Sapphire Substrates

We present measurements of the frequency noise and resonance frequency temperature dependence in planar superconducting resonators on both silicon and sapphire substrates. We show, by covering the resonators with sputtered SiOx layers of different thicknesses, that the temperature dependence of the resonance frequency scales linearly with thickness, whereas the observed increase in noise is independent of thickness. The frequency noise decreases when increasing the width of the coplanar waveguide in NbTiN on hydrogen passivated silicon devices, most effectively by widening the gap. We find up to an order of magnitude more noise when using sapphire instead of silicon as substrate. The complete set of data points towards the noise being strongly affected by superconductor-dielectric interfaces.
Antibióticos en cirugía dermatológica ¿Cuándo se deben usar?

Los porcentajes de infeccion en cirugia dermatologica son bajos y la mayoria de los procedimientos realizados en dermatologia no requieren profilaxis antibiotica. Sin embargo, se han venido utilizando los antibioticos de forma indiscriminada lo que contribuye a un aumento de la resistencia bacteriana, de costos y efectos secundarios. La decision de utilizar antibioticos profilacticos en los procedimientos dermatologicos debe estar sujeta al conocimiento de los factores que predisponen la infeccion de la herida quirurgica o endocarditis bacteriana y sobre todo, se deben controlar dichos factores de riesgo, asi como seguir de forma rigurosa las medidas de asepsia y antisepsia. Se hace una revision de la evidencia existente acerca del uso de antibioticos topicos, intraincisionales o sistemicos para prevenir la infeccion del sitio quirurgico asi como las recomendaciones de profilaxis para endocarditis bacteriana.
Liver injury in alpha1-antitrypsin deficiency: an aggregated protein induces mitochondrial injury.

α1-Antitrypsin (α1AT), the archetype of the Serpin supergene family, is the principal blood-borne inhibitor of destructive neutrophil proteases including elastase, cathepsin G, and proteinase 3 (reviewed in ref. 1). This glycoprotein, is secreted by liver cells and is considered an acute-phase reactant because its plasma levels increase during the host response to inflammation/tissue injury. The classical form of α1AT deficiency, which affects 1 in 1,800 live births in Northern European and North American populations, is associated with a mutant molecule termed α1ATZ, which is retained as a polymer in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) of liver cells (reviewed in refs. 2, 3). Homozygotes are predisposed to premature development of pulmonary emphysema by a loss-of-function mechanism in which lack of α1AT in the lung permits uninhibited proteolytic damage to the connective tissue matrix (4, 5). Cigarette smoking markedly increases the risk and rate of development of emphysema (6). One mechanism for this environmental risk factor involves the functional inactivation of residual α1AT by phagocyte-derived active oxygen intermediates (4, 5). However, a growing body of evidence suggests that other environmental factors and genetic traits affect the incidence and severity of lung disease among α1AT-deficient individuals (7). It is still not entirely clear whether heterozygotes for α1ATZ are predisposed to lung disease. Homozygotes for α1ATZ (“PIZZ” individuals) are also at risk for liver disease. In fact, α1AT deficiency is the most common genetic cause of liver disease in children (2, 3), and it predisposes adults to chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma (8). However, in contrast to the pathobiology of lung disease, liver injury in this deficiency appears to involve a gain-of-function mechanism whereby retention of the mutant α1ATZ molecule in the ER triggers a series of events that are eventually hepatotoxic. The strongest evidence for a gain-of-function mechanism comes from studies in which mice transgenic for mutant human α1ATZ develop liver injury with many of the histopathologic hallmarks of the human condition (9, 10). Because there are normal levels of anti-elastases in these mice, as directed by endogenous genes, the liver injury cannot be attributed to a loss of function. Landmark nationwide prospective screening studies done by Sveger in Sweden have documented an extraordinary variation in the phenotypic expression of liver disease among homozygotes. In these studies, only 10–15% of the PIZZ population developed clinically significant liver disease over the first 20 years of life (11, 12). These data indicate that other genetic traits and/or environmental factors predispose a subgroup of PIZZ individuals to liver injury. Because only a subgroup of homozygotes develop liver disease and because there is an inherent bias in ascertainment in other clinical studies of α1AT deficiency, it has been very difficult to determine whether heterozygous (“PIMZ”) individuals are at increased risk for liver disease.
Determining Appropriate Staffing Adjustments in a Call Center Staff Group

This paper deals with determining workload requirements and staffing allocations in call center environments. This paper will outline a process for achieving proper sizing of staff in a call center system which consists of 2 call centers having different operating hours. First, historical information is gathered and trend lines created and used as future predictors. These trends and relationships of metrics are then used to determine required agent work. That required agent work is then scaled to payroll equivalents. The call center system will be evaluated using 30 minute intervals (48 total intervals) for each day of week. This paper will discuss the importance of key performance indicators in an attempt to qualify certain decision points in this process, while attempting optimize efficiency and achieve cost reduction without detracting from the customer experience.
Portal dosimetry using a liquid ion chamber matrix: dose response studies.

Current intensive investigations of electronic portal imaging devices (EPIDs) have prompted their potential application to portal dosimetry. In this paper, the progress made in using a commercial liquid ion chamber matrix EPID for portal dosimetry is discussed. The pixel value of the liquid ion chamber element was calibrated against dose by exposing the imager to 6-MV x-ray beams of various intensities obtained with various thicknesses of lead attenuators and a range of source to detector distances. Absolute dose values were determined using an ion chamber on the central axis at the depth of maximum dose in a solid water phantom. The pixel values of the matrix were determined for various field sizes in order to evaluate the dependence of pixel value on dose at those field sizes. It was confirmed that the pixel value was proportional to the square root of the dose rate and was nearly independent of the field size. The 2D pixel values were converted to 2D dose maps in the water phantom after applying a correction for the effect of horns in the flood calibration field. The flood calibration field was used to obtain the relative sensitivity of each pixel. Good agreement was observed (normally better than 1% in relative standard deviation) between the converted dose distribution obtained from the pixel matrix and the direct dose measurement using an ion chamber scanned in a water phantom in regions of shallow dose gradient. For application to on-line portal dosimetry, both the short- and long-term stability of this EPID system were found to be within 1% relative standard deviation. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Instruction Level Parallelism through Microthreading - A Scalable Approach to Chip Multiprocessors

Most microprocessor chips today use an out-of-order instruction execution mechanism. This mechanism allows superscalar processors to extract reasonably high levels of instruction level parallelism (ILP). The most significant problem with this approach is a large instruction window and the logic to support instruction issue from it. This includes generating wake-up signals to waiting instructions and a selection mechanism for issuing them. Wide-issue width also requires a large multi-ported register file, so that each instruction can read and write its operands simultaneously. Neither structure scales well with issue width leading to poor performance relative to the gates used. Furthermore, to obtain this ILP, the execution of instructions must proceed speculatively. An alternative, which avoids this complexity in instruction issue and eliminates speculative execution, is the microthreaded model. This model fragments sequential code at compile time and executes the fragments out of order while maintaining in-order execution within the fragments. The only constraints on the execution of fragments are the dependencies between them, which are managed in a distributed and scalable manner using synchronizing registers. The fragments of code are called microthreads and they capture ILP and loop concurrency. Fragments can be interleaved on a single processor to give tolerance to latency in operands or distributed to many processors to achieve speedup. The implementation of this model is fully scalable. It supports distributed instruction issue and a fully scalable register file, which implements a distributed, shared-register model of communication and synchronization between multiple processors on a single chip. This paper introduces the model, compares it with current approaches and presents an analysis of some of the implementation issues. It also presents results showing scalable performance with issue width over several orders of magnitude, from the same binary code.
Measuring software library stability through historical version analysis

Backward compatibility is a major concern for any library developer. In this paper, we evaluate how stable a set of frequently used third-party libraries is in terms of method removals, implementation change, the ratio of change in old methods to change in new ones and the percentage of new methods in each snapshot. We provide a motivating example of a commercial company which demonstrates several issues associated with the usage of third-party libraries. To obtain dependencies from software systems we developed a framework which extracts dependencies from Maven build files and which analyzes system and library code. We propose four metrics which provide different insights in the implementation and interface stability of a library. The usage frequency of library methods is utilized as a weight in the final metric and is obtained from a dataset of more than 2300 snapshots of 140 industrial Java systems. We finally describe three scenarios and an example of the application of our metrics.
The role of mammalian cardiac t‐tubules in excitation–contraction coupling: experimental and computational approaches

The sarcolemmal membrane of mammalian cardiac ventricular myocytes is characterized by the presence of invaginations called transverse tubules (t‐tubules). Transverse tubules occur at the Z‐line as transverse elements with longitudinal extensions. While the existence of t‐tubules has been known for some time, recent experimental studies have suggested that their structure and function are more complex than previously believed. There are, however, aspects of t‐tubule function that are not currently amenable to experimental investigation, but can be investigated using computational and mathematical approaches. Such studies have helped elucidate further the possible role of t‐tubules in cell function. This review summarizes recent experimental and complementary computational studies which highlight the important role of t‐tubules in cardiac excitation–contraction coupling.
XML Security in XML Data Integrity, Authentication, and Confidentiality

The widely application of XML has increasingly required high security. XML security confronts some challenges that are strong relating to its features. XML data integrity needs to protect element location information and contextreferential meaning as well as data content integrity under fine-grained security situations. XML data authentication must satisfy a signing process under a dependent and independent multi-signature generation scenario. When several different sections are encrypted within the XML data, it cannot query the encrypted contents without decrypting the encrypted portions. The technologies relating to XML security demand further development. This thesis aims to improve XML security relative technologies, and make them more practicable and secure. A novel revocation information validation approach for X.509 certificate is proposed based on the XML digital signature technology. This approach reduces the complexity of XKMS or PKI systems because it eliminates the requirement for additional revocation checking from XKMS or CA. The communication burden between server and client could be alleviated. The thesis presents the context-referential integrity for XML data. An integrity solution for XML data is also proposed based on the concatenated hash function. The integrity model proposed not only ensures XML data content integrity, but also protects the structure integrity and elements’ context relationship within an XML data. If this model is integrated into XML signature technology, the signature cannot be copied to another document still keeping valid. A new series-parallel XML multi-signature scheme is proposed. The presented scheme is a mixed order specified XML multi-signature scheme according to a dependent and independent signing process. Using presented XML data integrity-checking pool to provide integrity-checking for decomposed XML data, it makes signing XPath expression practicable, rather than signing XML data itself. A new labeling scheme for encrypted XML data is presented to improve the efficiency of index information maintenance which is applied to support encrypted XML data query processing. The proposed labelling scheme makes maintenance index information more efficient, and it is easy to update XML data with decreasing the number of affected nodes to the lowest. In order to protect structural information for encrypted XML data, the encrypted nodes are removed from original XML data, and structural information is hidden. A case study is carried out to demonstrate how the proposed XML security relative approaches and schemes can be applied to satisfy fine-grained XML security in calibration certificate management.
A Data-selective LS Solution to TDOA-based Source Localization

In this paper, the localization of an emitter based on Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) has been investigated. The classical least-squares (LS) algorithm, with a limited number of TDoA measurements, has been utilized for obtaining a closed-form solution to the source localization problem. Recently, an extension of the classical LS algorithm has been employed in an attempt to improve the precision of the localization technique by using a larger set of TDoA estimates. However, considering all TDoA values can eventually degrade the accuracy of the localization method due to the presence of heavily noisy measurements. In this work, by employing a data-selective approach, we have proposed a closed-form LS solution that disregards bad measurements. To this end, we have used two distinct objective functions, one to obtain a solution and a second one to test that particular solution among all possible ones within a subset of measurements. Simulation results indicate the superior performance of the proposed algorithm in the source localization problem.