Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Selection of MPEG-7 Image Features for Improving Image Similarity Search on Specific Data Sets

In this paper a technique for evaluating the effectiveness of MPEG-7 image features on specific image data sets is proposed. It is based on well defined statistical characteristics. The aim is to improve the effectiveness of the image retrieval process, based on the similarity computed on these features. This technique is validated with extensive experiments with real users.
Influence of route of administration on haloperidol plasma levels in psychotic patients.

Haloperidol plasma concentrations were determined in psychotic patients to whom the drug was given by three different routes of administration (i. v. perfusion, intramuscularly and orally). When measured 15 hours after the last administration, a significant difference (p < 0,001) was found in the steady state plasma concentration between the oral and the i.m. route. The values were higher after intramuscular administration and were subject to less interindividual fluctuation than after the oral. The reduction in plasma levels after oral administration in respect to i.m. were in accordance with the bioavailability of haloperidol. The opportunity of switching from oral to intramuscular treatment is discussed.
The Development of Hydrogels and Nanoparticles for Drug and Cell Delivery to the Distal Airways

2 Acknowledgements . 12 Funding Sources . 13 Publications, Prizes and Presentations . 14 Journal Publications . 14 Prizes . 14 Presentations . 14 Abbreviations . 16 List of Tables, Figures and Equations . 20 Tables . 20 Figures . 20 Equations. 25 1. Chapter 1; Introduction and Literature Review . 26 1.1. Anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology of the lung and COPD . 27 1.1.1. Anatomy of the lung. 27 1.1.2. Physiology of the lung . 28 1.1.3. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and its pathophysiology . 30 1.2. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease today: management options and limitations 34 1.2.1. Pharmacotherapy . 34 1.2.2. Lung volume reduction strategies . 36 1.2. 3. Lung transplantation . 39 1.3. Future approaches to COPD treatment – regenerative medicine (RM) and tissue engineering (TE) . 39 1.3. 1. Cell sources for potential use in respiratory regeneration . 40 1.3. 1.1. Endogenous stem cell populations of the respiratory tract . 40 1.3. 1.2. Exogenous stem cells for regenerative purposes: MSCs . 41 1.3. 2. Signalling factors for potential respiratory regeneration . 45 1.3. 2.1. Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF) . 45 1.3. 2.2. Bone Morphogenetic Protein 4 (BMP-4) . 46
Extracranial-Intracranial Bypass for Stroke-Is This the End of the Line or a Bump in the Road?

The results of the recently published Carotid Occlusion Surgery Study, which failed to show a benefit of extracranial-intracranial (EC-IC) bypass over medical therapy in patients with symptomatic hemodynamically significant carotid occlusion, have been interpreted by some as the end of the line for EC-IC bypass in the management of stroke. Despite being carefully conceived and executed, several aspects of the trial design, study population, and underlying assumptions deserve further examination to determine how best to translate these results into clinical practice. Although a general expansion of EC-IC bypass use in this population would not be supported by the trial results, a select subset of patients with medically refractory hemodynamic symptoms may well benefit from surgery performed with sufficiently low perioperative morbidity. The potential for beneficial functional or cognitive impact of revascularization also remains under investigation. Limited application and further study with an eye to future developments, rather than complete abandonment, is warranted.
Predicting the QoS of service orchestrations

The ability to a priori predict the QoS of a service orchestration is of pivotal importance both for the design of service compositions and for the definition of their SLAs. In this paper we present an algorithm to probabilistically predict the QoS of WS-BPEL service orchestrations. Our algorithm employs Monte Carlo simulations and it improves previous approaches by coping with complex dependency structures, unbound loops, fault handling, and unresponded service invocations. A proof-of-concept implementation of the algorithm in F# is described.
Towards interoperable IOT systems with a constraint-aware semantic web of things. (Vers des systèmes IOT interopérables avec un réseau d'objets sémantique tenant compte des contraintes)

This thesis is situated in the Semantic Web of things (SWoT) domain, at the interface between the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Semantic Web (SW). The integration of SW approaches into the IoT aim at tackling the important heterogeneity of resources, technologies and applications in the IoT, which creates interoperability issues impeding the deployment of IoT systems. A first scientific challenge is risen by the resource consumption of the SW technologies, inadequated to the limites computation and communication capabilities of IoT devices. Moreover, IoT networks are deployed at a large scale, when SW technologies have scalability issues. This thesis addresses this double challenge by two contributions. The first one is the identification of quality criteria for IoT ontologies, leading to the proposition of IoT-O, a modular IoT ontology. IoT-O is deployed to enrich data from a smart building, and drive semIoTics, our autonomic computing application. The second contribution is EDR (Emergent Distributed Reasoning), a generic approach to dynamically distributed rule-based reasoning. Rules are propagated peer-to-peer, guided by descriptions exchanged among nodes. EDR is evaluated in two use-cases, using both a server and some constrained nodes to simulate the deployment.
Localization of light-harvesting complex II to the occluded surfaces of photosynthetic membranes

The photosynthetic membranes of green plants are organized into stacked regions interconnected by nonstacked regions that have been shown to be biochemically and structurally distinct. Because the stacking process occludes the surfaces of appressed membranes, it has been impossible to conduct structural or biochemical studies of the outer surfaces of the photosynthetic membrane in regions of membrane stacking. Although stacking is mediated at this surface, it has not been possible to determine whether membrane components implicated in the stacking process, including a major light-harvesting complex (LHC-II), are in fact exposed at the membrane surface. We have been able to expose this surface for study in the electron microscope and directly label it with antibodies to determine protein exposure. The appearance of the newly exposed outer stacked surface highlights the extreme lateral heterogeneity of the photosynthetic membrane. The surface is smooth in contrast to the neighboring nonstacked surface that is covered with distinct particles. Although some investigators have suggested the existence of a cytochrome b6/f-rich boundary region between stacked and nonstacked membranes, our results provide no structural support for this concept. To explore the biochemical nature of the occluded membrane surface, we have used an mAb against the amino terminal region of the LHC-II. This mAb clearly labels the newly exposed outer stacked surface but does not label the inner surface or the outer nonstacked surface. These experimental results confirm the presence of the amino terminal region of this complex at the outer surface of the membrane in stacked regions, and also show that this complex is largely absent from nonstacked membranes.
Relevant Examples and Relevant Features: Thoughts from Computational Learning Theory

It can be said that nearly all results in machine learning, whether experimental or theoretical, deal with problems of separating relevant from irrelevant information in some way. In this paper I will attempt to survey some of the results and intuitions developed in the area of computational learning theory. My focus will be on two issues in particular: that some examples may be more relevant than others, and that within an example, some features may be more relevant than others. This survey is by no means even close to comprehensive, and strongly reflects my own personal biases as well as issues brought up by results presented at this workshop. Issues of relevance are fundamental in the theoretical study of machine learning. In particular, questions regarding the meaning of a "relevant" or "informative" example are key motivations for the most popular and most basic theoretical models. Let me begin in the traditional manner of defining the basic models discussed, but do so from the point of view of the motivations from "relevance. "
Diazoxide and D600 Inhibition of Insulin Release: Distinct Mechanisms Explain the Specificity for Different Stimuli

The mechanisms by which diazoxide and D600 affect insulin release have been compared in experiments using isolated rat islets. Diazoxide (20–400 (JLM) and D600 (1–50 μM) produced a dose-dependent inhibition of glucose-stimulated release. Diazoxide also inhibited the insulinotropic effect of leucine and related substances (ketoisocaproate and BCH), but not that of potassium or of arginine and other cationic amino acids. Diazoxide suppressed glucose and leucine stimulation of Ca uptake in islet cells, but had no effect on the stimulation by potassium and arginine. By contrast, D600 suppressed the effect of all these agents on both Ca uptake and insulin release. Theophylline partially antagonized the inhibitory effect of D600 on release, in the presence of diazoxide, theophylline was much less effective, except when combined with cationic amino acids. Diazoxide inhibition of glucose-induced release was prevented by phentolamine, but hot by dihydroergotamine and yohimbine, two other blpckers of a-adrenergic receptors. Epinephrine abolished the insulinotropic effect of arginine alone or with theophylline. Diazoxide increased 86Rb+ efflux from islet cells, whereas D600 and epinephrine decreased it. The acceleration of efflux by diazoxide was inhibited by D600 and phentolamine, but not by epinephrine or dihydroergotamine. It thus appears that the effects of diazoxide on B-cells are not due to activation of α-adrenergic receptors. The results suggest that, in contrast to the direct blockade of Ca channels by D600, the blockade of these channels by diazoxide is secondary to the hyperpolarization of the B-cell membrane. Since the latter results from an increase in K permeability, the inhibitory effects of diazoxide are restricted to stimulators that depolarize the B-cell membrane by decreasing its K permeability (glucose, leucine, and related substances) and do not affect the stimulation by K and cationic amino acids, which depolarize by other mechanisms.
FUB, IASI-CNR and University of Tor Vergata at TREC 2008 Blog Track

Abstract : We take part in the opinion and polarity retrieval tasks of the blog track. A test collection, called Blog06, was created for the blog track in 2006 with three main different components: feeds, permalinks and home-pages. The collection contains spam as well as possibly no blogs and no english pages. For our experimentation only permalinks have been taken into consideration, consisting of 3.2 million of Web pages for a total of 88.8GB, each one containing a post and its related comments. The evaluation metrics are precision/recall based, the Mean Average Precision (MAP) and R-Precision (RPrec), but we also focused on Precision at 10 (P@10), due to its relevance in evaluating the effectiveness of Web search engines. As in 2007, we based our approach on the construction of ad-hoc weighted dictionaries, containing terms assumed to be used to express a sentiment. The weight is a measure of how much sentiment the term expresses. To automatically construct our dictionaries, we assumed that opinion-bearing words distribute more randomly in the set of opinionated documents than semantic-bearing terms, but less randomly than not-informative terms.
Modelling Simple Market Structures in Process Algebras with Locations

One potential barrier to electronic trading is the almost co mplete absence of any guarantees, for either trading party, that each will meet th eir obligations. Trust can be acquired from the use of a well-known name with an established reputation, when people are involved, but if the traders are software agents, names mean very little in the absence of reputation models. Thus, we aim to establish confidence by the use of verifiable trading frameworks, which we call electronic institutions, and which specify rules for interaction, roles that (electronic) agents m ay play, the forms of discourse (via speech acts) in which agents may participate and the obligations that agents may acquire. We are aiming to ground our specification of electro nic institutions in process algebras augmented with places and in this paper we examine the specification of some key aspects of a prototypical e-institution using th e Seal and (typed Safe) Ambient calculi, in order to compare their properties. Plac es offer a nice correspondence with some aspects of our modelling approach, but although the type systems do permit the statement of some desirable (static) properti es, our needs are not fully met, nor are there yet adequate tools to support our objectiv es.
Parallel stiffness in a bounding quadruped with flexible spine

Legged locomotion involves periodic negative and positive work, which usually results in high power consumption. Improvement of the energy efficiency is possible by using energy storage elements to reversibly store the negative work performed during a walking or running cycle. While series elastics with high impedance (high gear ratio) actuators are widely used, we investigate the application of parallel stiffness with highly backdriveable actuators. We specifically show that the use of parallel springs in a bounding quadruped with a flexible spine can lower power consumption by over 50%.
New roles and challenges within the healthcare workforce: a Heideggerian perspective.

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to explore insights based on the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, on the dynamic relationships between human experience and work roles. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH Drawing on the findings of a hermeneutic phenomenological study of nurse mentors, the topics of new roles and role challenges are explored, along with a consideration of their relevance to wider issues of workforce redesign. Heidegger's philosophy of Dasein, in particular his concepts of inauthentic and authentic self, provided an interpretational lens. This paper applies these philosophical concepts to challenges associated with a changing workforce. FINDINGS Concepts elaborating human existence as proposed by Heidegger may offer analytic structures for understanding shifts in the lived experience of a changing workplace. In particular, the concepts could help managers to explore the implications of introducing novel work roles or extending roles. The understanding gained can also extend to situations where work practices may need to be challenged. ORIGINALITY/VALUE As work roles and skill mix undergo rapid shifts, this paper offers an original way of understanding the experience of work roles.
Improve Efficiency and Reliability in Single-Hop WSNs with Transmit-Only Nodes

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) will play a significant role at the “edge” of the future “Internet of Things. ” In particular, WSNs with transmit-only nodes are attracting more attention due to their advantages in supporting applications requiring dense and long-lasting deployment at a very low cost and energy consumption. However, the lack of receivers in transmit-only nodes renders most existing MAC protocols invalid. Based on our previous study on WSNs with pure transmit-only nodes, this work proposes a simple, yet cost effective and powerful single-hop hybrid WSN cluster architecture that contains not only transmit-only nodes but also standard nodes (with transceivers). Along with the hybrid architecture, this work also proposes a new MAC layer protocol framework called Robust Asynchronous Resource Estimation (RARE) that efficiently and reliably manages the densely deployed single-hop hybrid cluster in a self-organized fashion. Through analysis and extensive simulations, the proposed framework is shown to meet or exceed the needs of most applications in terms of the data delivery probability, QoS differentiation, system capacity, energy consumption, and reliability. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first that brings reliable scheduling to WSNs containing both nonsynchronized transmit-only nodes and standard nodes.
The X-Ray Emissions from the M87 Jet: Diagnostics and Physical Interpretation

We reanalyze the deep Chandra observations of the M87 jet, first examined by Wilson & Yang in 2002. By employing an analysis chain that also includes image deconvolution, knots HST-1 and I are fully separated from adjacent emission. We derive the spatially resolved X-ray spectrum of the jet using the most recent response functions and find slight but significant variations in the spectral shape, with values of αX(Sν ∝ ν-α) ranging from ~1.2-1.4 (in the nucleus and knots HST-1, D, and C) to ~1.6 (in knots F, A, and B). We make use of VLA radio observations, as well as HST imaging and polarimetry data, to examine the jet's broadband spectrum and inquire as to the nature of particle acceleration in the jet. As shown in previous papers, a simple continuous injection model for the synchrotron-emitting knots, in which one holds constant both the filling factor facc of the regions within which particles are accelerated and the energy spectrum of the injected particles, cannot account for the flux or spectrum of the X-ray emission. Instead, we propose that facc is a function of both position and energy and find that in the inner jet, facc ∝ E ∝ E, and in knots A and B, facc ∝ E ∝ E, where Eγ is the energy of the emitted photon and Ee is the energy of the emitting electron. In this model, the index p of the relativistic electron energy spectrum at injection [n(Ee) ∝ E] is p = 2.2 at all energies and all locations along the jet, in excellent agreement with the predictions of models of cosmic-ray acceleration by ultrarelativistic shocks (p = 2.23). There is a strong correlation between the peaks of X-ray emission and minima of optical percentage polarization, i.e., regions where the jet magnetic field is not ordered. We suggest that the X-ray peaks coincide with shock waves that accelerate the X-ray-emitting electrons and cause changes in the direction of the magnetic field; the polarization is thus small because of beam averaging.
Information Extraction from Korean Radiology Reports Mingled Two Language

This study presents overall of Information Extraction (IE) for SNUH (Seoul National University Hospital) radiology reports coexisted Korean and English using Concept Node (CN) which is a case frame as extraction rule. The following steps are performed: design conceptual model by terminology exploration based on lexical analysis, create a CN definition based on syntactic relationship pattern and implement automatic IE system using CN. Main purposes is to investigate whether syntactic and semantic analysis technique using extraction rule (CN) is effective for typical Korean medical text in mixed two different languages.
Complex karyotype is a stronger predictor than del(17p) for an inferior outcome in relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients treated with ibrutinib‐based regimens

Ibrutinib is active in patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In patients treated with ibrutinib for R/R CLL, del(17p), identified by interphase fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), is associated with inferior progression‐free survival despite equivalent initial response rates. Del(17p) is frequently associated with a complex metaphase karyotype (CKT); the prognostic significance of CKT in ibrutinib‐treated patients has not been reported.
Improving the Quality of Electronic Cleansing of Colorectal CT Images Using a Hybrid Method

Introduction: Colorectal cancer, as one of the most important fatal cancers, is caused by the lack of timely diagnosis of colorectal polyps. Presently, because of the advancements in CT imaging of the colorectal device, the CTC-CAD is a promising method for the duly diagnosis of these appendages. In this regard, Electronic Colon Cleansing (ECC) is one of the effective factors that enhance diagnostic accuracy in the methods used in CTC-CAD. Method: In this study, to implement ECC, the thresholding method, statistical functions, and image processing methods were combined. Then, to evaluate the proposed method, 22 images were randomly selected and ranked by seven radiologists. Regarding the extent of the interpretable, the images taken before and after ECC were collected using MD and LM_ECC methods. The concordance of concordance of all three categories of opinions was calculated based on Kendall’s tau-b correlation coefficient test. Findings: The value of t-test between the mean score of radiologists' opinions for the main images and the results of the LM_ECC method (p <0.001) is -9.355, while it is -5.414 between the mean score of radiologists for the MD results and the results obtained from the LM_ECC method (p <0.001). Conclusion: Based on the coefficient of concordance, it is found that there is a high agreement between the ranked opinions of the radiologists, based on which the results of the T-tests show the significant effect of the LM_ECC method on electronic cleansing compared to the main images and the results of MD method.
Different clustering algorithms for Big Data analytics: A review

The era of huge data is snowballing at frequent swiftness in size (volume) and in different formats (variety). This data which comes from various sources e.g. media, communication devices, internet, business etc. and there are many difficulties and challenges that one faces while handling it. Data mining is a process intended to reconnoiter analytical data (typically business or market associated data - also acknowledged as “Big data”). There are several data mining techniques such as outlier analysis, organization, clustering, prediction and association rule mining. In this paper we have discussed several applications and the importance of clustering. To examine the huge volume of data, clustering algorithms aid in providing a powerful meta-learning tool. Numerous clustering techniques (including traditional and the recently developed) in reference to large data sets with their pros & cons are being discussed in this paper.
Vesselness estimation through higher-order orientation tensors

We recently proposed a method for estimating vesselness based on detection of ring patterns in the local distribution of the gradient. This method has a better performance than other state-of-the-art algorithms. However, the original implementation of the method makes use of the spherical harmonics transform locally, which is time consuming. In this paper we propose an equivalent formulation of the method based on higher-order tensors. A linear mapping between the spherical harmonics transform and higher-order orientation tensors is used in order to reduce the complexity of the method. With the new implementation, the analysis of computed tomography angiography data can be performed 2.6 times faster compared with the original implementation.