Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Animation realism affects perceived character appeal of a self-virtual face

Appearance and animation realism of virtual characters in games, movies or other VR applications has been shown to affect audiences levels of acceptance and engagement with these characters. However, when a virtual character is representing us in VR setup, the level of engagement might also depend on the levels of perceived ownership and sense of control (agency) we feel towards this virtual character. In this study, we used advanced face-tracking technology in order to map real-time tracking data of participants' head and eye movements, as well as facial expressions on virtual faces with different appearance realism characteristics (realistic or cartoon-like) and different levels of animation realism (complete or reduced facial movements). Our results suggest that virtual faces are perceived as more appealing when higher levels of animation realism are provided through real-time tracking. Moreover, high-levels of face-ownership and agency can be induced through synchronous mapping of the face tracking on the virtual face. In this study, we provide valuable insights for future games that use face tracking as an input.
Understanding Data Dependences in the Presence of Pointers

Understanding data dependences in programs is important for many software-engineering activities, such as program understanding, impact analysis, reverse engineering, and debugging. The presence of pointers, arrays, and structures can cause subtle and complex data dependences that can be difficult to understand. For example, in languages such as C, an assignment made through a pointer dereference can assign a value to one of several variables, none of which may appear syntactically in that statement. In the first part of this paper, we describe two techniques for classifying data dependences in the presence of pointer dereferences. The first technique classifies data dependences based on definition type, use type, and path type. The second technique classifies data dependences based on span. We present empirical results to illustrate the distribution of data-dependence types and spans for a set of real C programs. In the second part of the paper, we discuss two applications of the classification techniques. First, we investigate different ways in which the classification can be used to facilitate data-flow testing and verification. We outline an approach that uses types and spans of data dependences to determine the appropriate verification technique for different data dependences; we present empirical results to illustrate the approach. Second, we present a new slicing paradigm that computes slices based on types of data dependences. Based on the new paradigm, we define an incremental slicing technique that computes a slice in multiple steps. We present empirical results to illustrate the sizes of incremental slices and the potential usefulness of incremental slicing for debugging.
Cascade of Distinct Histone Modifications during Collagenase Gene Activation

ABSTRACT Gene activation in eukaryotes requires chromatin remodeling, in part via histone modifications. To study the events at the promoter of a mitogen-inducible gene, we examined the induction of expression of the collagenase gene. It has been established that the collagenase gene can be activated by c-Jun and c-Fos and that the transcriptional coactivator p300 is involved in the activation. As expected, we found histone acetyltransferase activity at the collagenase promoter during activation. Interestingly, we also found histone methyltransferase and kinase activity. Strikingly, the first modification observed is methylation of histone H3 lysine 4, which correlates with the binding of the SET9 methyltransferase and the assembly of a complex consisting of c-Jun, c-Fos, TATA binding protein, and RNA polymerase II. The assembly of the preinitiation complex also shows an ordered binding of the acetyltransferase p300, the RSK2 kinase, and the SWI/SNF component Brg-1. Our results suggest that collagenase gene activation involves a dynamic recruitment of different factors and that in addition to acetylation, histone H3 lysine 4 di- and trimethylation and histone H3 serine 10 phosphorylation are important steps in the activation of this gene.
THE CO-STABILITY MANIFOLD OF A TRIANGULATED CATEGORY

Abstract Stability conditions on triangulated categories were introduced by Bridgeland as a ‘continuous’ generalisation of t-structures. The set of locally-finite stability conditions on a triangulated category is a manifold that has been studied intensively. However, there are mainstream triangulated categories whose stability manifold is the empty set. One example is Dc(k[X]/(X2)), the compact derived category of the dual numbers over an algebraically closed field k. This is one of the motivations in this paper for introducing co-stability conditions as a ‘continuous’ generalisation of co-t-structures. Our main result is that the set of nice co-stability conditions on a triangulated category is a manifold. In particular, we show that the co-stability manifold of Dc(k[X]/(X2)) is ℂ.
A Light Field Camera For Image Based Rendering

The cost of building a digitizing system for image-based rendering can be prohibitive. Furthermore, the physical size, weight, and complexity of these systems has, in effect, limited their use to small objects and indoor scenes. The primary motivations for this project is to reduce the acquisition cost of light-field capture devices and create a portable system suitable for acquiring outdoor scenes. This paper describes the design of such an apparatus using readily available parts. One of the strategies for reducing the system cost has been to rely on software to correct as many of the geometric and photometric inaccuracies as possible. The resulting light field acquisition device can be built for under $200. The presented light-field acquisition system employs a modified lowcost flatbed scanner. The scanner is interfaced to a standard desktop PC for indoor use or a laptop for outdoor experiments. Focused onto the glass of the scanner is an 8-by11-grid assembly of one-inch plastic lenses. To make the scanner mobile, the DC power supply is replaced with a 12V lead acid battery. Although the construction of our light-field capture system is simple, the most significant challenges involve the processing of the raw scanner output. Necessary adjustments are color correction and radial distortion removal. Thesis Supervisor: Leonard McMillan Title: Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering
Does a Large-Scale Organizational Transformation Toward Patient-Centered Access Change the Utilization and Costs of Care for Patients With Diabetes?

The authors examined whether Group Health’s Access Initiative changed the utilization and costs of care among enrollees with diabetes. Using a single (one-group) interrupted time series design, repeated-measures generalized estimating equation models were used to estimate changes in utilization and costs during the Initiative rollout (2002-2003) and to compare the slopes (annual rates of change) for utilization and costs during the Pre-Initiative period (1998-2002) to the slopes during Full-Implementation (2003-2006) among 9,871 members continuously enrolled from 1997 to 2006 with type 1 or 2 diabetes. Total costs increased in Full-Implementation, but the annual change in total costs did not change. Primary care visits declined, but primary care contacts grew, largely from the Initiative’s introduction of secure messaging. Specialty visits did not change; however, the Initiative may have increased emergency visits. To reduce emergency visits, future access initiatives should include proactive and comprehensive outpatient care for patients with diabetes.
Surrounded by mycobacteria: nontuberculous mycobacteria in the human environment

A majority of the Mycobacterium species, called the nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), are natural inhabitants of natural waters, engineered water systems, and soils. As a consequence of their ubiquitous distribution, humans are surrounded by these opportunistic pathogens. A cardinal feature of mycobacterial cells is the presence of a hydrophobic, lipid‐rich outer membrane. The hydrophobicity of NTM is a major determinant of aerosolization, surface adherence, biofilm‐formation, and disinfectant‐ and antibiotic resistance. The NTM are oligotrophs, able to grow at low carbon levels [>50 μg assimilable organic carbon (AOC) l−1], making them effective competitors in low nutrient, and disinfected environments (drinking water). Biofilm formation and oligotrophy lead to survival, persistence, and growth in drinking water distribution systems. In addition to their role as human and animal pathogens, the widespread distribution of NTM in the environment, coupled with their ability to degrade and metabolize a variety of complex hydrocarbons including pollutants, suggests that NTM may be agents of nutrient cycling.
Adulthood in Women with Turner Syndrome

Turner syndrome, resulting from a complete or partial absence of one X chromosome, is the most commonly occurring chromosomal abnormality in females. Patients have traditionally been carefully followed in paediatric practice during childhood, but were often discharged to primary care on reaching adulthood. Adults with Turner syndrome are thought to have a reduced life expectancy, mainly due to excess cardiovascular risk, but they may also have multiple comorbidities including hypothyroidism, deafness, osteoporosis and the attendant problems of oestrogen deficiency and infertility. A multidisciplinary approach to focused adult care is needed, with consideration of how to optimise surveillance strategies in these women.
A Clustered Dwarf Structure to Speed up Queries on Data Cubes

Dwarf is a highly compressed structure, which compresses the cube by eliminating the semantic redundancies while computing a data cube. Although it has high compression ratio, Dwarf is slower in querying and more difficult in updating due to its structure characteristics. We all know that the original intention of data cube is to speed up the query performance, so we propose two novel clustering methods for query optimization: the recursion clustering method which clusters the nodes in a recursive manner to speed up point queries and the hierarchical clustering method which clusters the nodes of the same dimension to speed up range queries. To facilitate the implementation, we design a partition strategy and a logical clustering mechanism. Experimental results show our methods can effectively improve the query performance on data cubes, and the recursion clustering method is suitable for both point queries and range queries.
Community based Node Cooperative in Mobile Ad-Hoc Network

Generally In a network you will find selfish nodes , which don‟t want to forward other‟s information, Because of these nodes network performance will decrease drastically, sometimes even it get disconnected. From last few years research is going on this problem, and there are so many solutions were proposed , which are related to some incentive approaches, and some Game theory approaches. But in case of a large social networks implementing these methods are difficult and also becomes more complicated. So Instead of implementing methods on single node, it is better to divide the network into communities. If we divide the social network into some communities we can define some standard method over the communities to improve the network performance against the selfish nodes.
Prejudice against fat people: ideology and self-interest.

Prejudice against fat people was compared with symbolic racism. An anti-fat attitudes questionnaire was developed and used in several studies testing the notion that antipathy toward fat people is part of an "ideology of blame. " Three commonalities between antifat attitudes and racism were explored: (a) the association between values, beliefs, and the rejection of a stigmatized group, (b) the old-fashioned antipathy toward deviance of many sorts, and (c) the lack of self-interest in out-group antipathy. Parallels were found on all 3 dimensions. No in-group bias was shown by fat people. Fatism appears to behave much like symbolic racism, but with less of the negative social desirability of racism.
Impact of Adding a Single Allele in the 9p21 Locus to Traditional Risk Factors on Reclassification of Coronary Heart Disease Risk and Implications for Lipid-Modifying Therapy in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study

Background—A single-nucleotide polymorphism on chromosome 9p21, rs10757274 (9p21 allele), has been shown to predict coronary heart disease (CHD) in whites. We evaluated whether adding the 9p21 allele to traditional risk factors (RFs) improved CHD risk prediction in whites from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study and whether changes in risk prediction would modify lipid therapy recommendations. Methods and Results—Whites (n=9998) in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study for whom the 9p21 genotype and traditional RF information was available were included. Using Cox proportional hazards models, the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Cardiovascular Risk Score, which is based on traditional RFs, was determined. A total of 1349 individuals (13.5%) developed incident CHD events during a period of 14.6 years. Adding the 9p21 allele to traditional RFs was associated with a hazard ratio of incident CHD of 1.2 per allele (P<0.000003) and a significant increase in the area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic from 0.782 to 0.786 (95% CI, 0.001, 0.007). The 9p21 allele’s greatest influence to the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Cardiovascular Risk Score was observed in the intermediate-low (>5% to ≤10% 10-year CHD risk) and intermediate-high (>10% to ≤20% 10-year CHD risk) categories, with 12.1% and 12.6% reclassified, respectively. This may impact therapy because 90% of these reclassified individuals had low-density lipoprotein cholesterol >100 mg/dL. Conclusion—Adding the 9p21 allele to traditional RFs in whites in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study modestly improved CHD risk prediction in the intermediate categories.
Lessons from the endothelial junctional mechanosensory complex

Mechanotransduction plays a key role in both normal physiology and in diseases such as cancer, atherosclerosis and hypertension. Nowhere is this more evident than in the vascular system, where fluid shear stress from blood flow plays a critical role in shaping the blood vessels and in determining their function and dysfunction. Responses to flow are mediated in part by a complex of proteins comprised of PECAM-1, VE-cadherin and VEGFR2 at endothelial cell-cell junctions; all proteins that clearly have other, non-mechanical functions. We review recent progress toward understanding the functions and mechanisms of mechanotransduction by this complex and suggest some principles that may apply more broadly.
Why is Unemployment so Low in Denmark? Evidence from Four Social Experiments

We analyse the eects of four randomised experiments in active labour market policy conducted in Denmark in 2008. The experiments entailed dierent combi- nations of early and intensive treatment in terms of meetings and activation. The eects are remarkable; fortnightly individual meetings between newly unemployed workers and case workers can increase employment rates over the next two years by 10% corresponding to 5 weeks. For men, we …nd evidence of a large threat eect of having to participate in early activaiton programmes, while no such eect is found for women. In general, we …nd large dierences between men and women, especially in the exact timing of the eects. We conduct a cost-bene…t analysis of each of the four experiments and …nd that individual meetings yield the largest net gains to society.
Darwin ’ s Secure BGP ? An Open Platform for the Evolution of Routing Security

For the past decade, operators and researchers have struggled with how to response to well-known security vulnerabilities in BGP. Despite many strong technical proposals, an agreed upon and deployed solution remains distant [2]. Instead of focusing on selecting and globally deploying a particular secure routing proposal (s-BGP vs. so-BGP, etc.), we advocate the creation of a generic interface for selecting routes capable of interpreting data generated by any routing security approach. The specific mechanism used to generate the data can change, allowing the infrastructure to “evolve” over time as additional attack resistance is needed.
Somatic hypermutation as a generator of antinuclear antibodies in a murine model of systemic autoimmunity

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is characterized by high-avidity IgG antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) that are almost certainly products of T cell–dependent immune responses. Whether critical amino acids in the third complementarity-determining region (CDR3) of the ANA originate from V(D)J recombination or somatic hypermutation (SHM) is not known. We studied a mouse model of SLE in which all somatic mutations within ANA V regions, including those in CDR3, could be unequivocally identified. Mutation reversion analyses revealed that ANA arose predominantly from nonautoreactive B cells that diversified immunoglobulin genes via SHM. The resolution afforded by this model allowed us to demonstrate that one ANA clone was generated by SHM after a VH gene replacement event. Mutations producing arginine substitutions were frequent and arose largely (66%) from base changes in just two codons: AGC and AGT. These codons are abundant in the repertoires of mouse and human V genes. Our findings reveal the predominant role of SHM in the development of ANA and underscore the importance of self-tolerance checkpoints at the postmutational stage of B cell differentiation.
Byzantine replication under attack

Existing Byzantine-resilient replication protocols satisfy two standard correctness criteria, safety and liveness, in the presence of Byzantine faults. In practice, however, faulty processors can, in some protocols, significantly degrade performance by causing the system to make progress at an extremely slow rate. While ldquocorrectrdquo in the traditional sense, systems vulnerable to such performance degradation are of limited practical use in adversarial environments. This paper argues that techniques for mitigating such performance attacks are needed to bridge this ldquopracticality gaprdquo for intrusion-tolerant replication systems. We propose a new performance-oriented correctness criterion, and we show how failure to meet this criterion can lead to performance degradation. We present a new Byzantine replication protocol that achieves the criterion and evaluate its performance in fault-free configurations and when under attack.
Neurodegenerative central nervous system Langerhans cell histiocytosis and coincident hydrocephalus treated with vincristine/cytosine arabinoside

Central nervous system (CNS) complications of Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) include mass lesions and a neurodegenerative (ND) syndrome with ataxia, dysarthria, dysmetria, learning and behavior difficulties and/or characteristic changes on brain MRIs. Hydrocephalus has rarely been reported in LCH. LCH lesions of the orbit, mastoid and temporal bones (“CNS‐Risk” lesions) and diabetes insipidus predispose patients to ND‐CNS‐LCH. Treatment options have been limited and only a case series using trans‐retinoic acid (ATRA) and intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) have been published.
Early and Middle Triassic trends in diversity, evenness, and size of foraminifers on a carbonate platform in south China: implications for tempo and mode of biotic recovery from the end-Permian mass extinction

Abstract Delayed biotic recovery from the end-Permian mass extinction has long been interpreted to result from environmental inhibition. Recently, evidence of more rapid recovery has begun to emerge, suggesting the role of environmental inhibition was previously overestimated. However, there have been few high-resolution taxonomic and ecological studies spanning the full Early and Middle Triassic recovery interval, leaving the precise pattern of recovery and underlying mechanisms poorly constrained. In this study, we document Early and Middle Triassic trends in taxonomic diversity, assemblage evenness, and size distribution of benthic foraminifers on an exceptionally exposed carbonate platform in south China. We observe gradual increases in all metrics through Early Triassic and earliest Middle Triassic time, with stable values reached early in the Anisian. There is little support in our data set for a substantial Early Triassic lag interval during the recovery of foraminifers or for a stepwise recovery pattern. The recovery pattern of foraminifers on the GBG corresponds well with available global data for this taxon and appears to parallel that of many benthic invertebrate clades. Early Triassic diversity increase in foraminifers was more gradual than in ammonoids and conodonts. However, foraminifers continued to increase in diversity, size, and evenness into Middle Triassic time, whereas diversity of ammonoids and conodonts declined. These contrasts suggest decoupling of recovery between benthic and pelagic environments; it is unclear whether these discrepancies reflect inherent contrasts in their evolutionary dynamics or the differential impact of Early Triassic ocean anoxia or associated environmental parameters on benthic ecosystems.
Evaluation of detection methods for Campylobacter infections among under-fives in Mwanza City, Tanzania

Introduction Campylobacter species are recognized as a major cause of acute gastroenteritis in humans throughout the world. The diagnosis is mainly based on stool culture. This study was done to evaluate the effectiveness of staining methods (Gram stain using 0.3% carbol fuchsin as counter stain and 1% carbol fuchsin direct stain) versus culture as the gold standard. Methods A total of 300 children attending Bugando Medical Centre (BMC) and the Sekou Toure regional hospital with acute watery diarrhea were enrolled. Two sets of slides were prepared stained with 1% carbol fuchsin for 30 seconds first set, and the second set stained with Gram's stain using 0.3% carbol fuchsin as counter stain for five minutes. Concurrently, stool samples were inoculated on Preston Agar selective. Results Of 300 stool specimens, 14(4.7%) showed positive culture after 48 hours of incubation and 28 (9.3%) shows typical morphology of Campylobacter species by both Gram stain and direct stain. The sensitivity of the Gram stain using 0.3% carbol fuchsin as counter stain and 1% carbol fuchsin simple stain versus culture as gold standard was 64.3%, with a specificity of 93.4%. The positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 32.1% and 98.2% respectively. Conclusion The detection of Campylobacter by 1% carbol fuchsin is simple, inexpensive, and fast, with both a high sensitivity and specificity. Laboratories in settings with high prevalence of campylobacteriosis and/or limited resources can employ 1% carbol fuchsin direct stain in detecting campylobacter infections.
Automatically Assessing the Post Quality in Online Discussions on Software

Assessing the quality of user generated content is an important problem for many web forums. While quality is currently assessed manually, we propose an algorithm to assess the quality of forum posts automatically and test it on data provided by Nabble.com. We use state-of-the-art classification techniques and experiment with five feature classes: Surface, Lexical, Syntactic, Forum specific and Similarity features. We achieve an accuracy of 89% on the task of automatically assessing post quality in the software domain using forum specific features. Without forum specific features, we achieve an accuracy of 82%.