Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Study Latent Search and Feature Extraction Techniques used in Fingerprint Recognition

Fingerprint improvement is a serious part in automatic fingerprint recognition system. It is an essential select the suitable improvement approaches for fingerprint, in order to reduce the processing part of the fingerprint recognition system. Various methods of improvement fingerprint images described based upon non-stationary directional Fourier domain filtering. Fingerprints are first curved using a directional filter whose orientation is everywhere matched to local orientation. A robust method for latent fingerprint verification improvement is studied. In contrast with most state-of-art-method, approaches do not rely on the information of local gradients, which are sensitive to structured and unstructured background noise. Thus the previous methods are robust against gradient deviations. It also provides forceful estimates to frequencies of fingerprints in a limited region to allow effective filtering for fingerprint ridges and valley pattern improvement.
Triple pharmacological blockade of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system in nondiabetic CKD: an open-label crossover randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND Agents inhibiting the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone (RAAS) system have an important role in slowing the progression of chronic kidney disease. We evaluated the hypothesis that the addition of an aldosterone receptor antagonist to an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor and angiotensin II type 1 (AT-1) receptor blocker (ARB) (triple RAAS blockade) may provide an additional benefit compared with an ACE inhibitor and ARB (double RAAS blockade). DESIGN Randomized open controlled crossover study. SETTING & PARTICIPANTS 18 whites (7 women, 11 men) from the Outpatient Department of Nephrology with chronic nondiabetic proteinuric kidney diseases, mean age 42.4 +/- 1.9 years (SEM). INTERVENTIONS In the 8-week run-in period, all participants received the ACE inhibitor cilazapril (5 mg), the ARB telmisartan (80 mg), and the diuretic hydrochlorothiazide (12.5 mg) as double RAAS blockade to achieve the target blood pressure of less than 130/80 mm Hg. Participants were then randomly assigned to 2 treatment sequences, either the addition of spironolactone (25 mg) (triple RAAS blockade) through 8 weeks followed by double RAAS blockade through 8 weeks (sequence 1) or double RAAS blockade followed by triple RAAS blockade (sequence 2). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES 24-hour urine protein excretion (primary end point) and markers of tubular injury and fibrosis (secondary end points). Analysis was performed using analysis of variance for repeated measurements. RESULTS At baseline, mean serum creatinine level was 1.16 +/- 0.09 mg/dL (103 +/- 8 micromol/L), estimated glomerular filtration rate was 107.8 mL/min (95% confidence interval, 93 to 140.9 [1.8 mL/s; 95% confidence interval, 1.55 to 2.35; Cockcroft-Gault formula), and 24-hour mean proteinuria was 0.97 +/- 0.18 g. Mean urine protein excretion was 0.7 g/24 h (95% confidence interval, 0.48 to 0.92) less after triple RAAS blockade than after double RAAS blockade (P = 0.01), without change in blood pressure. Urine excretion of N-acetyl-beta-d-glucosaminidase (P = 0.02) and amino-terminal propeptide of type III procollagen (P = 0.05) also significantly decreased. Potassium levels increased significantly after triple therapy (P = 0.02). However, no patient was withdrawn because of adverse effects. LIMITATIONS Absence of blinding, small sample size, short treatment period, absence of histological assessment. CONCLUSIONS Administration of an aldosterone receptor antagonist in addition to double RAAS blockade with an ACE inhibitor and ARB may slow the progression of chronic kidney disease. Additional studies are necessary to confirm this result.
Gas Sensors Based on Molecular Imprinting Technology

Molecular imprinting technology (MIT); often described as a method of designing a material to remember a target molecular structure (template); is a technique for the creation of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) with custom-made binding sites complementary to the target molecules in shape; size and functional groups. MIT has been successfully applied to analyze; separate and detect macromolecular organic compounds. Furthermore; it has been increasingly applied in assays of biological macromolecules. Owing to its unique features of structure specificity; predictability; recognition and universal application; there has been exploration of the possible application of MIPs in the field of highly selective gas sensors. In this present study; we outline the recent advances in gas sensors based on MIT; classify and introduce the existing molecularly imprinted gas sensors; summarize their advantages and disadvantages; and analyze further research directions.
Dynamic Neural Program Embedding for Program Repair

Neural program embeddings have shown much promise recently for a variety of program analysis tasks, including program synthesis, program repair, fault localization, etc. However, most existing program embeddings are based on syntactic features of programs, such as raw token sequences or abstract syntax trees. Unlike images and text, a program has an unambiguous semantic meaning that can be difficult to capture by only considering its syntax (i.e. syntactically similar pro- grams can exhibit vastly different run-time behavior), which makes syntax-based program embeddings fundamentally limited. This paper proposes a novel semantic program embedding that is learned from program execution traces. Our key insight is that program states expressed as sequential tuples of live variable values not only captures program semantics more precisely, but also offer a more natural fit for Recurrent Neural Networks to model. We evaluate different syntactic and semantic program embeddings on predicting the types of errors that students make in their submissions to an introductory programming class and two exercises on the CodeHunt education platform. Evaluation results show that our new semantic program embedding significantly outperforms the syntactic program embeddings based on token sequences and abstract syntax trees. In addition, we augment a search-based program repair system with the predictions obtained from our se- mantic embedding, and show that search efficiency is also significantly improved.
High CRLF2 expression associates with IKZF1 dysfunction in adult acute lymphoblastic leukemia without CRLF2 rearrangement

Overexpression of cytokine receptor-like factor 2 (CRLF2) due to chromosomal rearrangement has been observed in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and reported to contribute to oncogenesis and unfavorable outcome in ALL. We studied B-ALL and T-ALL patients without CRLF2 rearrangement and observed that CRLF2 is significantly increased in a subset of these patients. Our study shows that high CRLF2expression correlates with high-risk ALL markers, as well as poor survival. We found that the IKZF1-encoded protein, Ikaros, directly binds to the CRLF2 promoter and regulates CRLF2 expression in leukemia cells. CK2 inhibitor, which can increase Ikaros activity, significantly increases Ikaros binding in ALL cells and suppresses CRLF2 expression in an Ikaros-dependent manner. CRLF2 expression is significantly higher in patients with IKZF1 deletion as compared to patients without IKZF1 deletion. Treatment with CK2 inhibitor also results in an increase in IKZF1 binding to the CRLF2 promoter and suppression of CRLF2 expression in primary ALL cells. We further observed that CK2 inhibitor induces increased H3K9me3 histone modifications in the CRLF2 promoter in ALL cell lines and primary cells. Taken together, our results demonstrate that high expression of CRLF2 correlates with high-risk ALL and short survival in patients without CRLF2 rearrangement. Our results are the first to demonstrate that the IKZF1-encoded Ikaros protein directly suppresses CRLF2 expression through enrichment of H3K9me3 in its promoter region. Our data also suggest that high CRLF2 expression works with the IKZF1 deletion to drive oncogenesis of ALL and has significance in an integrated prognostic model for adult high-risk ALL.
Active Digital Microfluidic Paper Chips with Inkjet‐Printed Patterned Electrodes

Active, paper-based, microfluidic chips driven by electrowetting are fabricated and demonstrated for reagent transport and mixing. Instead of using the passive capillary force on the pulp to actuate a flow of a liquid, a group of digital drops are transported along programmed trajectories above the electrodes printed on low-cost paper, which should allow point-of-care production and diagnostic activities in the future.
Evaluation of chronic stress indicators in geriatric and oncologic caregivers: a cross-sectional study

Abstract Caregiving induces chronic stress with physical and psychological impact on informal caregivers health. Therefore, subjective and objective indicators are needed for the early diagnosis of pathologic stress to prevent the risk of developing stress-related diseases in caregivers. Our aim was to assess the self-perceived stress, that is, how and how much the stressor affects the individual, through endocrine, metabolic, and immunologic biomarkers levels in geriatric and oncologic informal caregivers. Informal caregivers and non-caregivers were invited to participate in a cross-sectional study at the Clinic Hospital of Barcelona. Demographic and lifestyle characteristics, self-perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Stress Visual Analogue Scale), and biomarkers (copeptin, glucose, glycated hemoglobin, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), cholesterol, triglycerides, α-amylase, cortisol, tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α), and Interleukins (IL-6 and IL-10)) were evaluated. Descriptive and non-parametric statistical data analysis were performed. Fifty-six subjects (19 non-caregivers, 17 geriatric caregivers, and 20 oncologic caregivers) participated. Median age (IQR) was 57 years (47–66) and 71.46% were women. Self-perceived stress was higher in oncologic caregivers than geriatric caregivers in all psychometric test analyzed (Wilcoxon Rank Sum test, p value < .05). Glucose concentrations and glycated hemoglobin levels differed statistically among groups (Kruskal–Wallis test (K–W tests), p value < . 05), even though the median levels were not clinically relevant. Levels of other biomarkers did not differ significantly (K–W tests, p value > .05). These findings suggest that perceived stress is not homogeneous in the caregivers community and thus these two groups could be differentiated. These results provide the baseline information to initiate social actions addressed to each group of caregivers to increase their wellbeing.
Functional fabric treatment using tannic acid and extract from purple-fleshed sweet potato

Purple-fleshed sweet potato (PSP) has a reddish purple color with high amounts of anthocyanins and phenolic acids, both of which have various health-promoting effects. The acylated anthocyanins present in PSP are more heat-resistant than the nonacylated types found in other plants. Therefore, PSP extract was considered as a natural pigment and functional agent for textile dyeing and/or finishing processes. Here, wool and cotton fabrics are pretreated by a tannic acid aqueous solution to increase their dyeability and then dyed by PSP extract. The dyed fabrics are then investigated by various analysis techniques. The results revealed that wool and cotton fabrics can be dyed bluish red through the pretreatment and dyeing process. The wool and cotton fabrics also showed antibacterial and antioxidant characteristics.
Task Relevance and Diversity as Worker Motivation in Crowdsourcing

Task assignment is a central component in crowdsourcing. Organizational studies have shown that worker motivation in completing tasks has a direct impact on the quality of individual contributions. In this work, we examine motivation-aware task assignment in the presence of a set of workers. We propose to model motivation as a balance between task relevance and task diversity and argue that an adaptive approach to task assignment can best capture the evolving nature of motivation. Worker motivation is observed and task assignment is revisited appropriately across iterations. We prove the problem to be NP-hard as well as MaxSNP-Hard and develop efficient approximation algorithms with provable guarantees. Our experiments with synthetic data examine the scalability of our algorithms, and our live real data experiments show that capturing motivation using relevance and diversity leads to high crowdwork quality.
Federal Timber Restrictions and Interregional

Hrrn~e.sting restrictiom to protect the hahitcrt of the northem . sptted wt.1 011 ,federul ,forests in t/w PNC$C Nor-tim*e.st (Ph’lV) . substalrticrii~ reduced timber cit~~~ilrL7le ,for ptwe. ~~5iil,g h! the ,fore.st prodwts irldwsty. We consider tile e-vtent to tcAici7 tiiese restrictioris my iitr\~ riitered the degree of irltegrcitim of the PNW u11d U.S. South ii7 (I mitioricil mrrket ,fi)r i~r~iiber. Lkscripti1.e . stcrti.stics crud e c o n o m e t r i c cmrr/~. si.s of nioritiii~~ price drrtrr . sqgest tiitrt (I .structurui hrecrk ocurrr-ed in tile reirrtiomi~ip het~~.eerl tile tjt‘o regions product price.s ~~row~d tile time of tile iwr\vst restrictioiis irudirig to a m o r e ~ritegruted nmrket ufter tile ,e.striction.s \t’erc impo.sed. ( JEL Q23)
Progress in bipolar disorder drug design toward the development of novel therapeutic targets: a clinician’s perspective

ABSTRACT Introduction: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a considerable burden to the affected individual. The need for novel drug targets and improved drug design (DD) in BD is therefore clear. Areas covered: The following article provides a brief, narrative, clinician-oriented overview of the most promising novel pharmacological targets for BD along with a concise overview regarding the general DD process and the unmet needs relevant to BD. Expert opinion: A number of novel potential drug targets have been investigated. With the notable exception of the kynurenine pathway, available evidence is too scarce to highlight a definitive roadmap for forthcoming DD in BD. BD itself may present with different facets, as it is a polymorphic clinical spectrum. Therefore, promoting clinical-case stratification should be based on precision medicine, rather than on novel biological targets. Furthermore, the full release of raw study data to the scientific community and the development of uniform clinical trial standards (including more realistic outcomes) should be promoted to facilitate the DD process in BD.
Mobile phone identification from speech recordings using Weighted Support Vector Machine

In this paper, we propose a mobile phone identifier called Weighted Support Vector Machine with Weighted Majority Voting (WSVM-WMV) for a closed-set mobile phone identification task. The proposed WSVM-WMV can be regarded as a generalization of the traditional SVM identifier. On using Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Linear-frequency Cepstral Coefficients (LFCC) as the feature vectors, the proposed identifier can improve the identification accuracy from 92.42% to 97.86% and from 90.44% to 98.33% respectively, as compared with the traditional SVM identifier in identifying a set of 21 mobile phones.
Human detection and classification of landing sites for search and rescue drones

Search and rescue is often time and labour intensive. We present a system to be used in drones to make search and rescue operations more effective. The system uses a drone downward facing camera to detect people and to evaluate potential sites as being safe or not for the drone to land. Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) features are extracted and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used as classifier. Our results show good performance on classifying frames as containing people (Sensitivity > 78%, Specificity > 83%), and distinguishing between safe and dangerous landing sites (Sensitivity > 87%, Specificity > 98%).
Survey for Trichomonas gallinae in Northern Bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) from the Rolling Plains Ecoregion, Oklahoma and Texas, USA

Abstract Northern Bobwhites (Colinus virginianus) have been in decline throughout the southeastern US. Prevalence of Trichomonas gallinae in wild bobwhites is unknown, although T. gallinae caused morbidity and mortality in experimentally infected bobwhites. Many species of Columbidae (pigeons and doves) in Texas are hosts to T. gallinae. Bobwhites potentially may become exposed to this protozoan through supplemental feed or water sources contaminated by columbids infected with T. gallinae. All of 506 bobwhites collected in Oklahoma and Texas, 2011–13, were PCR negative for T. gallinae. These data suggest T. gallinae is not contributing to the population decline of bobwhites in this region.
Distal Pancreatectomy Utilizing a Flexible Stapler Closure Eliminates the Risk of Pancreas-Related Factors for Postoperative Pancreatic Fistula

Objectives: To identify the risk factors for clinically relevant pancreatic fistula after distal pancreatectomy with a flexible cartridge stapler, TL60. Methods: Forty consecutive patients who underwent a distal pancreatectomy by the TL60 stapler were retrospectively reviewed in association with postoperative complications. Results: The overall morbidity rate was 43% (17 patients), and mortality was null. Pancreatic fistula was the most frequent postoperative complication, seen in 11 patients (27.5%): grade A in 4 (10%) and grade B in 7 (17.5%). No grade C pancreatic fistula was observed. Univariate analyses of risk factors demonstrated that pancreas-related factors, including diabetes mellitus, thickness and texture of the pancreatic parenchyma, transection line for the pancreas, pancreatic duct ligation, and use of artificial patches had no impact on the occurrence of pancreatic fistula. A multivariable logistic regression analysis identified operative time (≥300 min) as the only notable predictor of clinically relevant pancreatic fistula (odds ratio = 3.253, 95% confidence interval 1.739-5.752; p = 0.031). Conclusion: Distal pancreatectomy with the use of the TL60 stapler eliminated the risk of pancreas-related factors for the occurrence of clinically relevant pancreatic fistula.
Brief Report: Selection of HIV-1 Variants With Higher Transmission Potential by 1% Tenofovir Gel Microbicide

Background: Women in the CAPRISA 004 trial assigned to use 1% tenofovir (TFV) microbicide gel, who became HIV-1 infected, had higher viral load set-point and slower antibody avidity maturation compared with placebo participants. We investigated whether TFV gel was selected for viruses with altered genetic characteristics. Setting: The participants of the CAPRISA 004 trial (n = 28 TFV and 43 placebo) were from KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa and were infected with HIV-1 subtype C. After HIV-1 diagnosis, they were recruited into the CAPRISA 002 cohort. Methods: We analyzed gag sequences from the earliest time point post infection (within 3 months of estimated time of infection). Transmission index was measured using a model which predicts the likelihood of an amino acid to be transmitted. Phylogenetic distance from a regional consensus sequence was calculated from a maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree. Results: Transmission index and distance from the most common (consensus) sequence have been shown to be markers of transmission fitness. We found that viruses infecting TFV gel recipients were closer to the consensus sequence of regional strains (P = 0.003) and had higher transmission index (P = 0.01). The transmission index was weakly correlated with concomitant viral load (Spearman r = 0.22, P = 0.06). Conclusion: Decreased acquisition risk may have increased the barrier to infection therefore selecting for fitter, more consensus-like viruses. Such virus fitness effects will need to be considered for future pre-exposure prophylaxis and vaccine trials.
Effect of Thermal Treatment on the Surface Roughness of Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) Wood after Plane Milling

The surface roughness in plane milled Scots pine wood that was thermally modified at 190 °C and 220 °C was examined. Indicators of wood surface roughness included the three most commonly applied parameters, arithmetic mean surface roughness (Ra), surface roughness depth (Rz), and total height of the roughness profile (Rt). Roughness was tested separately for earlywood and latewood using two feed speeds of 1 and 5 m/min. The thickness of the milled layer was 1 mm. The effect of all controlled factors, i.e., feed speed, temperature of modification, and place of measurements, on the parameters of surface roughness were statistically significant (P < 0.05). Surface roughness increased with an increase in feed speed, whereas it decreased with an increased modification temperature. Latewood was characteristically lower in roughness than earlywood. The greatest differences in homogenous groups for the determination of the roughness parameters were found in measurements taken on earlywood and latewood, while the smallest differences were recorded for different feed speeds.
Impact of sea grass density on carbonate dissolution in Bahamian sediments

Carbonate dissolution has been widely observed in shallow water tropical sediments. However, sediment budgets have generally not been closed with respect to the amount of acid required to produce the observed carbonate dissolution. Recently it has been suggested that enhanced oxygen transport into sediments through the roots and rhizomes of sea grasses might play a role in resolving this mass balance problem. We conducted studies of sea grass‐carbonate sediment interactions around Lee Stocking Island, Exuma Islands, Bahamas to further examine this problem. Our studies showed that alkalinity, total dissolved inorganic carbon (σCO2) and Ca2+ increased with depth in the pore waters, while pH and calculated carbonate ion concentration decreased with depth. These observations are consistent with the occurrence of carbonate dissolution in these sediments. The magnitude of pore water alkalinity, σCO2, and Ca21 changes was also related to sea grass density, with the largest gradients seen in the sediments of dense sea grass beds. Calculations suggested that less than ~50% of the O2 needed to drive aerobic respiration (and ultimately carbonate dissolution via CO2 production) could be supplied by transport processes such as diffusion, bioturbation, and physical pore water advection. Furthermore, the O2 needed to balance the carbonate dissolution budget could be provided by the transport of <15% of the photosynthetically derived O2 to the sediments through sea grass roots and rhizomes without enhancing the removal of carbonate dissolution end products. Thus sea grasses play an important role in controlling the rates of carbonate dissolution in shallow water tropical marine sediments.
Effect of hygrothermal conditioning on the fracture toughness of carbon/epoxy composites cured in autoclave/Quickstep

The hygrothermal effect on the flexural, interfacial and glass transition behaviors of 977-2A carbon/epoxy composites cured in an autoclave and by using Quickstep were evaluated in the previous paper. This article concerns with the hygrothermal effect on the mode I and mode II delamination resistance of the samples cured in an autoclave and by Quickstep. It was observed that the mean initiation and propagation GC values (i.e. GIC and GIIC) of both autoclave and Quickstep 60 cured specimens were apparently reduced after hygrothermal conditioning; however, the data obtained from both autoclave and Quickstep 60 cured specimens in dry and wet states were not statistically significant. The scanning electron micrograph confirmed the enhancement of matrix ductility; however, no effect of this matrix ductility was observed in the GIC and GIIC data.