Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Meaningful Mesh Segmentation Based on Local Self-similarity Analysis

On the basis of minima rule from the cognitive theory, this paper presents an algorithm decomposing a mesh into smaller parts by feature contours, gotten from the minima negative curvature vertices. The algorithm is carried out in two steps. Firstly, to avoid over-segmentation, our method excludes unimportant local adjacent similar contours. Secondly, the remnant salient contours are automatically completed to form short loops around mesh's parts, constrained by two near parallel cutting planes that are determined by principal component analysis of all vertices. The algorithm has been demonstrated on many meshes, and the results show that it not only can perceptual group the adjacent self-similarity regions, but also can achieve reasonable segmentations.
Novel nonpharmacologic approaches for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation: results from clinical trials

Atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common cardiac arrhythmia, confers a 5-fold risk of stroke that increases to 17-fold when associated with mitral stenosis. At this time, the most effective long-term solution to protect patients from stroke and thromboembolism is oral anticoagulation, either with vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) or a novel oral anticoagulant (NOAC). Despite the significant benefits they confer, both VKAs and NOACs are underused because of their increased potential for bleeding, and VKAs are underused because of their narrow therapeutic range, need for regular international normalized ratio checks, and interactions with food or medications. In patients with nonvalvular AF, approximately 90% of strokes originate from the left atrial appendage (LAA); in patients with rheumatic mitral valve disease, many patients (60%) have strokes that originate from the left atrium itself. Surgical LAA amputation or closure, although widely used to reduce stroke risk in association with cardiac surgery, is not currently performed as a stand-alone operation for stroke risk reduction because of its invasiveness. Percutaneous LAA closure, as an alternative to anticoagulation, has been increasingly used during the last decade in an effort to reduce stroke risk in nonvalvular AF. Several devices have been introduced during this time, of which one has demonstrated noninferiority compared with warfarin in a randomized controlled trial. This review describes the available technologies for percutaneous LAA closure, as well as a summary of the published trials concerning their safety and efficacy in reducing stroke risk in AF.
A GRASP Heuristic for the Minimum Binary Cost Tension Problem

Hypermedia documents are composed of media objects (audio, video, text.), connected by a set of temporal constraints. The Minimum Binary Cost Tension Problem consists in maximizing the number of objects set at their ideal duration. We propose a hybrid GRASP / VND heuristic and a Path Relinking strategy to compute near-optimal solutions.
At the intersection of maps and emotion: The challenge of spatially representing experience

Only relatively recently have cartographers taken up the emotional component of the human relationship with space. Calls for a more humanized version of geospatial technologies have been heard since the mid 1990's (Pickles, 1995). However, only a relatively small proportion of cartographic efforts have been made in this direction because, perhaps, of the difficulties in data collection and representation that mapping emotion entails. This paper reviews recent humanistic cartography, including the representation of emotion in maps as well as the use of maps to collect emotional data. The role of maps in evoking emotion in map readers is also discussed. Finally, potential future intersections of cartography and emotion are explored. We argue that the time is ripe in cartography to engage with this element of human experience, as new data collection methodologies and Web 2.0-derived data sources provide the potential to open up whole new worlds for cartographers to more fully map the human experience, including emotions, and in so doing, to make a significant contribution to a richer understanding of human geographies.
Comportement local des enrobés recyclés : apport des mesures de champs cinématiques

Les enrobes bitumineux sont des materiaux composites complexes constitues de plusieurs phases : granulats, liants bitumineux et vides. L'assemblage de ces phases definit une microstructure tres complexe qui pilote la reponse macroscopique des enrobes. Classiquement, les reponses mecanique et thermique des enrobes sont caracterisees par des essais a l'echelle macroscopique en supposant que le materiau est homogene et isotrope. A l’echelle des constituants, la caracterisation de ces materiaux necessite d’utiliser une technique de mesure disposant simultanement d’une bonne resolution spatiale et d’une bonne resolution de mesure. L’enjeu de ce travail est d’une part d’evaluer les possibilites d’utilisation de la methode de la grille (MG) pour l’analyse des proprietes thermo-mecaniques des enrobes bitumineux, et d’autre part de caracteriser, grâce a l’apport de cette methode, l’effet de l’introduction d’agregats d’enrobes (AE). L’etude experimentale comprend des essais de compression et de traction ainsi que des essais de gel-degel. Les champs cinematiques issus de la MG ont permis d'etudier la reponse de ces materiaux a des echelles allant de l’echelle du constituant jusqu’a celle de l’eprouvette. Les resultats obtenus ont egalement permis de valider une approche experimentale innovante pour l’analyse des enrobes en permettant d’acceder a des informations fiables et riches a l’echelle de la microstructure. Certains aspects lies a l'impact du recyclage sur le comportement local de l’enrobe sont egalement fournis.
High-Resolution Seismic Reflection to Identify Areas with Subsidence Potential beneath U.S. 50 Highway in Eastern Reno County, Kansas

High-resolution seismic reflections were used to map the upper 200 m along an approximately 22 km stretch of U.S. 50 highway in Reno County, Kansas, where natural and anthropogenic salt dissolution is known to threaten ground stability. Surface subsidence in this part of Kansas can range from gradual (cm per year) to catastrophic (meter per second), representing a significant risk to public safety. The high signal-to-noise ratio and resolution of these seismic reflection data allowed detection, delineation, and evaluation of several abnormalities in the rock salt layer and overlying Permian sediments. Locations were identified where failure and associated episodes of material collapse into voids left after periodic and localized leaching of the 125 m deep, 40 m thick Permian Hutchinson Salt member were evident. Anhydrite and shale layers several meters thick within the salt are uniquely distinguishable and appear continuous for distances of several kilometers. Over a dozen unique features potentially related to subsidence risk were identified.
How worms survive desiccation

While life requires water, many organisms, known as anhydrobiotes, can survive in the absence of water for extended periods of time. Although discovered 300 years ago, we know very little about the fascinating phenomenon of anhydrobiosis. In this paper, we summarize our previous findings on the desiccation tolerance of the Caenorhabditis elegans dauer larva. A special emphasis is given to the role of trehalose in protecting membranes against desiccation. We also propose a simple mechanism for this process.
Coping with drought: stress and adaptive responses in potato and perspectives for improvement

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is often considered as a drought sensitive crop and its sustainable production is threatened due to frequent drought episodes. There has been much research aiming to understand the physiological, biochemical, and genetic basis of drought tolerance in potato as a basis for improving production under drought conditions. The complex phenotypic response of potato plants to drought is conditioned by the interactive effects of the plant's genotypic potential, developmental stage, and environment. Effective crop improvement for drought tolerance will require the pyramiding of many disparate characters, with different combinations being appropriate for different growing environments. An understanding of the interaction between below ground water uptake by the roots and above ground water loss from the shoot system is essential. The development of high throughput precision phenotyping platforms is providing an exciting new tool for precision screening, which, with the incorporation of innovative screening strategies, can aid the selection and pyramiding of drought-related genes appropriate for specific environments. Outcomes from genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and bioengineering advances will undoubtedly compliment conventional breeding strategies and presents an alternative route toward development of drought tolerant potatoes. This review presents an overview of past research activity, highlighting recent advances with examples from other crops and suggesting future research directions.
Improving Monitoring and Water Point Functionality in Rural Ethiopia

This study examines the patterns, trends, and factors associated with functional community water points in rural Ethiopia and identifies potential areas of improvement in terms of practitioner response to functionality and functionality monitoring. It was part of an integrated WaSH and nutrition program implemented by UNICEF Ethiopia and the Government of Ethiopia. Cross-sectional surveys were conducted to collect WaSH-related data in communities and WaSH committees from four community-based nutrition (CBN) program groupings in Ethiopia. In all areas, CBN was implemented, but only in less than half of the areas, a WaSH intervention was implemented. Seventy-three representative kebeles, comprising 30 intervention and 43 control communities, were surveyed. Two structured surveys were conducted. The ‘community survey’ addressed community water points and their functionality and the main areas for improvement needed. The ‘WaSH committee survey’ investigated technical and management aspects of water points and their functionality. Data were analyzed using bivariate regression to identify community characteristics and management practices associated with functionality of water points and explore opportunities to improve water point functionality and monitoring. In the communities, 65% of water points were functional. Eighty percent of communities had a WaSH committee. The WaSH committee members reported that the most used water point types were protected dug wells and boreholes, and that 80% of their water points were functional. India Mark II pumps were more likely to be functional and communities with longer established WaSH committees had higher water point functionality. Communities suggested that the key factors for water point sustainability were improving water quality and water pressure, reducing water collection time, and speeding up repair times. Taking community leaders’ ‘priority lists’ into consideration offers sustainable opportunities for demand-driven, adaptive and targeted design and implementation of rural water supply programs, which, if they include the grassroots level as key informants and actors of change, can succeed. Interventions should integrate the ‘voice’ of the community, the WaSH committees, and other stakeholders and thereby facilitate transdisciplinary approaches at different stages of program management (planning, monitoring, and evaluation). This would help closing the knowledge to action gap and improve policy, programming, practice, and service delivery.
The relationship between caregiver burden, caregivers' perceived health and their sense of coherence in caring for elders with dementia.

AIM The aim of this study is to examine associations between caregiver burden, perceived health and sense of coherence in family caregivers to persons with dementia living at home. BACKGROUND Most of the studies on family caregivers have focused on burden and morbidity. However, the caregiver's sense of coherence and perceived health have not been studied earlier in relation to caregiver burden. DESIGN A cross-sectional investigation design was used. METHODS Older persons, 2238 subjects, with any form of social services, were invited to an assessment of cognitive capacity. Those who had cognitive decline (255) were invited for a medical examination and 130 persons were diagnosed as having dementia. The family caregivers to persons with dementia answered a questionnaire including a caregiver burden scale, the Nottingham health profile scale, sense of coherence scale and the Euroqol instrument. RESULTS The family caregivers experienced moderate burden, and strong associations were noted between burden, especially isolation, disappointment and emotional involvement with perceived health and sense of coherence, adjusted for age and relationship. Caregivers with lower burden reported significantly better perceived health and higher mean score of sense of coherence than caregivers with higher burden. CONCLUSIONS Assessment of status of family caregivers of persons with dementia living at home seems to be gaining considerable importance. The caregiver burden scale and the sense of coherence scale seem to be highly useful for identifying carers at risk of stress, pattern of burden and coping strategies. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE Nurses can help family caregivers to identify their negative experiences about caregiving and can help them reflect upon their coping strategies to find balance in their situation. Risk groups of caregivers may be identified, especially those with low perceived health and sense of coherence, for early interventions to reduce burden.
Cooperative multipath-aided indoor localization

To obtain good position accuracy with state-of-the-art indoor localization algorithms, multiple anchors must be within radio range of the user. However, anchor placement and maintenance is expensive. By reducing the number of anchors per room, overall costs are reduced. In [1], an algorithm that can estimate the position of a user using only one anchor and a priori floor plan information. However, performance for static localization was poor due to the presence of ambiguities. This paper describes a cooperative positioning algorithm that utilizes a single anchor and provides both the position and the position uncertainty for multiple users, by letting the users exchange their position information. The problem is represented with a factor graph, and belief propagation (BP) is used to extract the positions and their accuracy. The proposed cooperative algorithm leads to a significant improvement of the positioning accuracy compared to the non-cooperative method from [1].
Lexical stress in continuous speech recognition

Human listeners use lexical stress for word segmentation and disambiguation. We look into using lexical stress for largevocabulary speech recognition for the Dutch language. It appears that beside vowels, consonants should be taken into account. By introducing stressed phonemes, and features for spectral bands and the fundamental frequency, we reduce the word error rate by 2.6 %. Index Terms: speech recognition, lexical stress, Dutch.
Clinical Features and Treatment Outcomes of Infections Caused by Sphingomonas paucimobilis

The incidence of bloodstream infection due to S. maltophilia did not change significantly in the intensive care units over time, ranging from 0.16 to 1.0 episode (median, 0.58 episode) per 1,000 patient-days (P — .5) and from 0.25 to 1.24 episodes (median, 0.84 episode) per 1,000 central line-days (P = .1) (Figure). In the hematology ICU and the marrow transplant units, the number of bloodstream infections due to S. maltophilia per 1,000 patient-days ranged from 0 to 1.6 (median, 0.7; P .08). The use of imipenem increased significantly during the study period, from 82.4 DDDs per 1,000 patient-days in 1999 to 208.4 DDDs per 1,000 patient-days in 2006 (P< .001). The use of meropenem also increased, from 41.2 to 160.1 DDDs per 1,000 patient-days (P<.001), and the use of cefepime increased from 7.8 to 449.5 DDDs per 1,000 patient-days (P< .001). The use of ceftazidime during the study period decreased significantly from 100.3 to 17.9 DDDs per 1,000 patient-days (P< .001). In the hematology unit, the use of imipenem increased from 56.8 to 152.5 DDDs per 1,000 patient-days (P<.001), and the use of meropenem increased from 117.4 to 428.8 DDDs per 1,000 patient-days (P .001).
Worldview-2 high resolution remote sensing image processing for the monitoring of coastal areas

The spectral information provided by the multispectral Worldview-2 satellite increases the amount of spectral data available, thereby improving the quality of coastal environmental products. The atmospheric correction has proven to be a very important step in the processing of Worldview-2 high resolution images. On the other hand, specular reflection of solar radiation on non-flat water surfaces is a serious confounding factor for bathymetry and benthic remote sensing classification in shallow-water environments. This paper describes an optimal atmospheric correction model, as well as an improved algorithm for sun-glint removal based on combined physical and image processing techniques. This way, the atmospheric reflectance can be estimated and the effects from the apparent reflectance leaving from the water surface and the seafloor can be eliminated. Finally, using the corrected multispectral data, we have implemented an efficient physics-based method to obtain the remote bathymetry and a supervised classification for benthic mapping.
Change of tubular reabsorption of sodium and water after renal denervation in the dog.

1. Renal function was compared in dogs before and after denervation, with normal or reduced glomerular filtration rate (GFR). GFR was reduced by one of two means, aortic clamping or injection of plastic microspheres into one renal artery.2. The data showed that the tubular rejection fraction of denervated kidneys increased at a time when the same value for the control kidney decreased, indicating that denervation diuresis is not simply a result of increased filtered load of Na and water.3. Changes in excretion after aortic clamping are not due solely to reduced filtered load. A reduction in renal blood pressure itself appears to have a direct effect on Na transport since Na excretion was significantly decreased before there were any changes in GFR, renal plasma flow and urine volume.4. When GFR in a denervated kidney was reduced by microsphere injection it was demonstrated that a significant natriuresis (U(Na) V) and diuresis (V) occurred when. GFR was reduced by as much as 40%. 5. These experiments support the hypothesis that denervation diuresis does not result solely from increased filtered load, but entails altered Na transport.
Parallel algorithms for mapping pipelined and parallel computations

Many computational problems in image processing, signal processing, and scientific computing are naturally structured for either pipelined or parallel computation. When mapping such problems onto a parallel architecture it is often necessary to aggregate an obvious problem decomposition. Even in this context the general mapping problem is known to be computationally intractable, but recent advances have been made in identifying classes of problems and architectures for which optimal solutions can be found in polynomial time. Among these, the mapping of pipelined or parallel computations onto linear array, shared memory, and host-satellite systems figures prominently. This paper extends that work first by showing how to improve existing serial mapping algorithms. These improvements have significantly lower time and space complexities: in one case a published O(nm sup 3) time algorithm for mapping m modules onto n processors is reduced to an O(nm log m) time complexity, and its space requirements reduced from O(nm sup 2) to O(m). Run time complexity is further reduced with parallel mapping algorithms based on these improvements, which run on the architecture for which they create the mappings.
Potential Predictability of Regional Precipitation and Discharge Extremes Using Synoptic-Scale Climate Information via Machine Learning: An Evaluation for the Eastern Continental United States

Current generation general circulation models (GCMs) simulate synoptic-scale climate state variables such as geopotential heights, specific humidity, and integrated vapor transport (IVT) more reliably than mesoscale precipitation. Statistical downscaling methods that condition precipitation on GCM-based, synoptic-scale climate features have shown promise in the reproduction of local precipitation. However, current approaches to climate-state-informed downscaling impose some limitations on the skill of precipitation reproduction, including hard clustering of climate modes into a discrete set of states, utilization of numerical clustering methodologies poorly suited to nonnormal data, and a tendency to focus on relationships to a limited set of large-scale climate modes. This study presents a methodology based on emerging machine learning techniques to develop global approximators of regional precipitation and discharge extremes given a suite of synoptic-scale climate state variables. Archetypal analysis is first used to define regional modes of winter and summer extreme precipitation and discharge across the eastern contiguous United States. A 2D convolution neural network (NN) is then used to predict the co-occurrence of the archetypes using 300- and 700-hPa geopotential heights, 300- and 700-hPa specific humidity, and IVT. Results suggest that 300-hPa geopotential height, 700-hPa specific humidity, and IVT yield the most reliable predictions, although with some important differences by season and region. Finally, we demonstrate that the trained activations of NN convolutional layers can be used to infer the causal pathways between synoptic-scale climate features and regional extremes.
Multi-stage multi-task feature learning

Multi-task sparse feature learning aims to improve the generalization performance by exploiting the shared features among tasks. It has been successfully applied to many applications including computer vision and biomedical informatics. Most of the existing multi-task sparse feature learning algorithms are formulated as a convex sparse regularization problem, which is usually suboptimal, due to its looseness for approximating an [Formula: see text]-type regularizer. In this paper, we propose a non-convex formulation for multi-task sparse feature learning based on a novel regularizer. To solve the non-convex optimization problem, we propose a Multi-Stage Multi-Task Feature Learning (MSMTFL) algorithm. Moreover, we present a detailed theoretical analysis showing that MSMTFL achieves a better parameter estimation error bound than the convex formulation. Empirical studies on both synthetic and real-world data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of MSMTFL in comparison with the state of the art multi-task sparse feature learning algorithms.
Leisure, Home Production, and Work--the Theory of the Allocation of Time Revisited

The paper tries to formalize the trichotomy of work in the market, work at home, and leisure. Time is used at home to produce home goods that are perfect substitutes for market goods, where home production is subject to diminishing marginal productivity. An increase in the market wage rate is expected to reduce work at home, while its effect on leisure and work in the market is indeterminate. An increase in income increases leisure, reduces work in the market, and leaves work at home unchanged. These conclusions are supported by empirical tests based on the Michigan Income Dynamics data, as well as by previous time budget studies. Further implications for labor supply, fertility, gain from marriage, demand for child care, and the measurement of home output are investigated.