Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating grassland biomass using SVM band shaving of hyperspectral data

In this paper, the potential of a band shaving algorithm based on support vector machines (SVM) applied to hyperspectral data for estimating biomass within grasslands is studied. Field spectrometer data and biomass measurements were collected from a homogeneously managed grassland field. The SVM band shaving technique was compared with a partial least squares (PLS) and a stepwise forward selection analysis. Using their results, a range of vegetation indices was used as predictors for grassland biomass. Results from the band shaving showed that one band in the near-infrared region from 859 to 1,006 nm and one in the red-edge region from 668 to 776 nm used in the weighted difference vegetation index (WDVI) had the best predictive power, explaining 61 percent of grassland biomass variation. Indices based on short-wave infrared bands performed worse. Results could subsequently be applied to larger spatial extents using a high-resolution airborne digital camera (for example, Vexcel’s UltraCamTM).
Glaucoma, depression and quality of life: multiple comorbidities, multiple assessments and multidisciplinary plan treatment.

BACKGROUND The present mini review evaluates assessment and comorbidity of glaucoma and depression with the possibilities of treatment options. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Web of science was searched for relevant articles using search terms "glaucoma", "depression", "glaucoma and depression", "quality of life and glaucoma". The additional relevant papers were added from the bibliography of selected papers. All types of articles were included, no time period was defined. RESULTS We have reviewed 11 studies regarding the comorbidities of glaucoma and depression. The number of participants in all studies ranged from 86 to 6760. Formats of scale in one study was clinician rated, others were self-reported scales. Two studies of the above mentioned studies explored specific types of glaucoma. In the three studies out of 11 there was no significant evidence of elevated depressive symptoms associated with glaucoma. In the six studies the prevalence of depression was significant among glaucoma patients. One study provided suboptimal assessments of depression in glaucoma patients. The other one showed the presence of glaucoma significantly associated with depression after adjustment for the demographic factor. Most of the studies used one scale, while two of them used two scales. The reviewed studies did not analyze the therapy options of included patients. CONCLUSION The results presented in this review indicate that glaucoma is accompanied by depression in the majority of analyzed studies. The comorbidity of glaucoma and depression should be the subject of further research on both, self-reflecting and clinician-rated scales, taking into account subjective experience of patients and physicians. The therapy options should be taken into account in future researches focusing on the multidisciplinary approach including novel possibilities of treating both diseases respectively.
Understanding the Tpb, the Tam, Cultural Intelligence and Factor-Based Pls-Sem

Psychological and behavioral theories are continuously applied in education. They help to explain a lot of phenomena in order to help improve teaching and learning in a classroom, or non-classroom, setting. As inspired by Dr. Samuel KW Chu of the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, I have developed my interest in studying students’ group performance. Further to what I have done in the past few years, I recently focus on three areas that I would like to share with readers of this journal. Through this short communication paper, I expect to see more discussion on these areas that may be of interest to the researchers in education and others beyond education.
Generation of word alternative pronunciations using weighted finite state transducers

This paper describes a speech segmentation tool allowing alternative word pronunciations within a WFST framework. Two approaches to word pronunciation graph generation were developed and evaluated. The first approach is grapheme-based where each grapheme is converted into all the phones it can give rise to, in the form of a WFST. Word graphs are obtained by concatenating all grapheme WFSTs. In the second approach, a training corpus is used to find the different realizations of the syllable. This information is used to generate alternative syllable-level pronunciations, represented as WFSTs, that are concatenated to produce the word graphs. Both approaches were evaluated by aligning the phone sequence generated by each approach with the manually labelled phone sequence for all utterance in the corpus. This alignment was used for computing F-rate values for each phone. The syllable-based approach produced the best results.
The Relationship Between COBOL and Computer Science

Based on interviews, reviews of the literature, and personal impressions, the author offers historical, technical, and social/psychological perspectives on the fragile relationship between COBOL and computer science. The technical contributions of COBOL to programming language design are evaluated. Five proposals for computer science research on COBOL and fourth-generation languages are described.
Allergy related to dental implant and its clinical significance

The oral cavity provides an ideal and unique environment for study of biological processes involving metallic dental aids. Dental materials within the mouth interact continually with physiological fluids. Oral tissues are exposed to a veritable bombardment of both chemical and physical stimuli as well as the metabolism of many species of bacteria; yet, for the most part, oral tissues remain healthy. The pH of saliva varies from 5.2 to 7.8. Teeth, restorations, or any prosthesis including dental implants in the oral cavity have to function in one of the most inhospitable environments in the human body. They are subject to larger temperature and pH variations than most other parts of the body. Corrosion, the graded degradation of materials by electrochemical attack, is of concern particularly when dental implants are placed in the hostile electrolytic environment provided by the human mouth. Allergic reactions may occur from the presence of ions produced from the corrosion of implants. The present article describes various manifestations of allergic reactions due to implant material in the oral cavity.
FIRST RESULTS OF A LOW-FREQUENCY 3 D-SAR APPROACH FOR MAPPING GLACIERS

In this paper we demonstrate first results of a three dimensional SAR processing method to generate height profiles of glaciers with the CARABAS UWB sensor. Several algorithms exist to extract height information in SAR data, ranging from interferometric approaches (for CARABAS e.g. [1]) and cross correlation in circular tracks [2] to tomographic processing of dual-pol data [3, 4]. The 3D SAR application of the CARABAS sensor is especially interesting for glacier height profiles since the low-frequency radar waves penetrate into ice and thus approximate the profile of the glacier bed up to a certain depth. In a CARABAS campaign conducted in 2003 the Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland, was recorded in several flight tracks. Due to the large antenna necessary for UWB SAR only HH polarization can be recorded in monostatic mode. Unfortunately, caused by air space restrictions, the flown tracks are suboptimal for generating a 3D profile of the Aletsch Glacier bed. Nevertheless, some promising results could be generated by an extended global backprojection processor which is capable to extract 3D information from only few, arbitrary flight tracks illuminating the area of interest. 2. METHOD
Optimal erasure selection of M-ary PAM signaling for errors and erasures decoding algorithms

Erasure selection for errors-and-erasures decoding algorithms is investigated and analyzed, where declaring erasures provides additional gain for hard decision decoding. To derive an analytical criterion for optimal erasure selection, we first investigate erasure effects on decoding performance, by which a metric function for erasure selection is derived. From the derived metric, a suboptimal threshold is defined, which can be used for errors and erasures decoding of large code-distance channel codes. Moreover, application to M-ary (M>2) PAM constellation is also described. For verification of the proposed erasure threshold, simulation results with popular channel codes are included.
The Many Dimensions of Program Management

This paper addresses the many dimensions of program management and their relationship to cost. Elements from quality function deployment are integrated with concurrent engineering and system engineering to provide a simulatable project management wiring diagram. The dimensions include customer desires, system functions, quality characteristics, subsystems, cost categories, life cycle project functions, life cycle phases, system concepts, requirements, and concept trades. These are displayed from various three dimensional views to illustrate the interactions of these dimensions. All dimensions are related to cost.
A generalized Grothendieck inequality and entanglement in XOR games

Suppose Alice and Bob make local two-outcome measurements on a shared entangled state. For any d, we show that there are correlations that can only be reproduced if the local dimension is at least d. This resolves a conjecture of Brunner et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 210503 (2008) and establishes that the amount of entanglement required to maximally violate a Bell inequality must depend on the number of measurement settings, not just the number of measurement outcomes. We prove this result by establishing the first lower bounds on a new generalization of Grothendieck's constant.
Kinetic Analysis of the Coordinated Interaction of SgrAI Restriction Endonuclease with Different DNA Targets*

SgrAI restriction endonuclease cooperatively interacts and cleaves two target sites that include both the canonical sites, CPuCCGGPyG, and the secondary sites, CPuCCGGPy(A/T/C). It has been observed that the cleaved canonical sites stimulate SgrAI cleavage at the secondary sites. Equilibrium binding studies show that SgrAI binds to its canonical sites with a high affinity (Ka = 4-8 × 1010 m-1) and that it has a 15-fold lower affinity for the cleaved canonical sites and a 30-fold lower affinity for the secondary sites. Steady-state kinetics reveals substrate cooperativity for SgrAI cleavage on both canonical and secondary sites. The specificity of SgrAI for the secondary site CACCGGCT, as measured by kcat/K is about 500-fold lower than that for the canonical site CACCGGCG, but this difference is reduced to 10-fold in the presence of the cleaved canonical sites. The efficiency of canonical site cleavage also increases by 3-fold when the cleaved canonical sites are present in the reaction. Furthermore, the substrate cooperativity for SgrAI cleavage is abolished for both types of sites in the presence of cleaved canonical sites. These results indicate that target site cleavage occurs via a coordinated interaction of two SgrAI protein subunits, where the subunit bound to the cleaved site stimulates the cleavage of the uncut site bound by the other subunit. The free subunits of SgrAI have the flexibility to bind different target sites and, consequently, assemble into various catalytically active complexes, which differ in their catalytic efficiencies.
Sparse time-frequency distributions of chirps from a compressed sensing perspective

Considering that multicomponent chirp signals are sparse in the time-frequency domain, it is possible to attach to them highly localized distributions thanks to a compressed sensing approach based on very few measurements in the ambiguity plane. The principle of the technique is described, with emphasis on the choice of the measurement subset for which an optimality criterion is proposed.
Image fusion using a new framework for complex wavelet transforms

Image fusion is the process of extracting meaningful visual information from two or more images and combining them to form one fused image. Image fusion is important within many different image processing fields from remote sensing to medical applications. Previously, real valued wavelet transforms have been used for image fusion. Although this technique has provided improvements over more naive methods, this transform suffers from the shift variance and lack of directionality associated with its wavelet bases. These problems have been overcome by the use of a reversible and discrete complex wavelet transform (the dual tree complex wavelet transform DT-CWT). However, the existing structure of this complex wavelet decomposition enforces a very strict choice of filters in order to achieve a necessary quarter shift in coefficient output. This paper therefore introduces an alternative structure to the DT-CWT that is more flexible in its potential choice of filters and can be implemented by the combination of four normally structured wavelet transforms. The use of these more common wavelet transforms enables this method to make use of existing optimised wavelet decomposition and recomposition methods, code and filter choice.
A novel biosensor based on intestinal 3D organoids for detecting the function of BCRP

Abstract Breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP), a key drug efflux transporter, significantly affects the therapeutic efficacy of many drugs. Thus, screening specific BCRP inhibitors and distinguishing between substrates and non-substrates of BCRP are valuable in drug discovery and development. This study presents a novel BCRP biosensor based on intestinal 3D organoids for rapid and sensitive detection of BCRP function. First, the crypts were isolated from mouse small intestine, and cultured in advanced DMEM/F12 medium to develop intestinal 3D organoids. Second, immunohistochemical studies demonstrated that BCRP protein in the organoids presented a similar expression and physiologic position to the small intestinal epithelium. Finally, the cultured organoids were treated in BCRP fluorogenic probe substrate Hoechst 33342 with or without BCRP inhibitor Ko143 and YHO-13177. The fluorescence intensity of Hoechst 33342 released from inner of the organoids was detected by microplate reader and the concentrations were calculated. Ko143 and YHO-13177 significantly inhibited the BCRP-mediated Hoechst 33342 transport in the 3D organoids. Consequently, a rapid and efficient biosensor has been successfully established to study BCRP, especially screening BCRP inhibitors in a high-throughput way.
Automated Selection of Assertions for Bit-Flip Detection During Post-Silicon Validation

Post-silicon validation deals with detection and diagnosis of errors that, due to existing limitations in pre-silicon verification, escape to the silicon prototypes and need to be fixed before committing to high-volume manufacturing. Electrical errors, such as those caused by cross-talk or power droops, are particularly difficult to catch during the pre-silicon phase because of the insufficient accuracy of device models, which is often traded-off against simulation time. This challenge is further aggravated by the rising number of voltage domains, especially if subtle errors are excited in unique electrical states. In fact these electrically-induced subtle errors most commonly manifest in the logic domain as bit-flips and, to the best of our knowledge, there are no systematic methods for designing embedded hardware monitors for generic logic blocks that can detect bit-flips with low detection latency. Moreover, unlike pre-silicon verification and manufacturing test that benefit from well-defined and universally accepted coverage metrics, there is no generic metric from which confidence can be implied at the end of post-silicon validation. Toward these goals, we present a method that relies on design invariants (assertions) that are ranked based on their potential to detect bit-flips. We also introduce two metrics bit-flip coverage estimate and flip-flop coverage estimate that can be used to assess the quality of the selected assertions, and, in general, the effectiveness of the post-silicon validation process.
The use of Cellomics to study enterocyte cytoskeletal proteins in coeliac disease patients

Coeliac disease is characterised by inflammation of small intestinal mucosa accompanied by abnormal villous architecture. It is now accepted that some patients with positive coeliac serology tests may have minor mucosal lesions that may not be apparent on routine histopathological analysis. The aim of the study was to perform detailed examination of enterocyte morphology and cytoskeletal structures using a high content analysis technology. Duodenal biopsies from 14 untreated and 10 treated coeliac patients and from 20 non-coeliac controls were examined. Tissue sections from six patients (study group subjects) before and after the development of gluten-sensitive enteropathy were also investigated. Immunohistochemical studies were performed on paraffin-embedded sections using an anti-α-tubulin antibody. Significant differences in enterocyte morphology and intracellular cytoskeletal structures were demonstrated in patients with proven coeliac disease and in the study group subjects. These changes were present in study group biopsies before evidence of enteropathy, as assessed by routine microscopy. This is the first study to demonstrate detailed characteristics of enterocyte morphology in coeliac patients using a high content analysis approach. The use of this technology allows a quantitative analysis of enterocyte intracellular structures from routine biopsy material and permits detection of subtle changes that precede the characteristic histological lesion.
CB1 Cannabinoid Receptor Expression in the Striatum: Association with Corticostriatal Circuits and Developmental Regulation

Corticostriatal circuits mediate various aspects of goal-directed behavior and are critically important for basal ganglia-related disorders. Activity in these circuits is regulated by the endocannabinoid system via stimulation of CB1 cannabinoid receptors. CB1 receptors are highly expressed in projection neurons and select interneurons of the striatum, but expression levels vary considerably between different striatal regions (functional domains). We investigated CB1 receptor expression within specific corticostriatal circuits by mapping CB1 mRNA levels in striatal sectors defined by their cortical inputs in rats. We also assessed changes in CB1 expression in the striatum during development. Our results show that CB1 expression is highest in juveniles (P25) and then progressively decreases toward adolescent (P40) and adult (P70) levels. At every age, CB1 receptors are predominantly expressed in sensorimotor striatal sectors, with considerably lower expression in associative and limbic sectors. Moreover, for most corticostriatal circuits there is an inverse relationship between cortical and striatal expression levels. Thus, striatal sectors with high CB1 expression (sensorimotor sectors) tend to receive inputs from cortical areas with low expression, while striatal sectors with low expression (associative/limbic sectors) receive inputs from cortical regions with higher expression (medial prefrontal cortex). In so far as CB1 mRNA levels reflect receptor function, our findings suggest differential CB1 signaling between different developmental stages and between sensorimotor and associative/limbic circuits. The regional distribution of CB1 receptor expression in the striatum further suggests that, in sensorimotor sectors, CB1 receptors mostly regulate GABA inputs from local axon collaterals of projection neurons, whereas in associative/limbic sectors, CB1 regulation of GABA inputs from interneurons and glutamate inputs may be more important.
Reinstating Combinatorial Protections for Manipulation and Bribery in Single-Peaked and Nearly Single-Peaked Electorates

Understanding when and how computational complexity can be used to protect elections against different manipulative actions has been a highly active research area over the past two decades. A recent body of work, however, has shown that many of the NP-hardness shields, previously obtained, vanish when the electorate has single-peaked or nearly single-peaked preferences. In light of these results, we investigate whether it is possible to reimpose NP-hardness shields for such electorates by allowing the voters to specify partial preferences instead of insisting they cast complete ballots. In particular, we show that in single-peaked and nearly single-peaked electorates, if voters are allowed to submit top-truncated ballots, then the complexity of manipulation and bribery for many voting rules increases from being in P to being NP-complete.
Comparing EGF Methods for Estimating Corner Frequency and Stress Drop From P Wave Spectra

Empirical Green's functions (EGFs) are widely applied to correct earthquake spectra for attenuation and other path effects in order to estimate corner frequencies and stress drops, but these source parameter estimates often exhibit poor agreement between different studies. We examine this issue by analyzing a compact cluster of over 3,000 aftershocks of the 1992 Landers earthquake. We apply and compare two different analysis and modeling methods: (1) the spectral decomposition and global EGF fitting approach and (2) a more traditional EGF method of modeling spectral ratios. We find that spectral decomposition yields event terms that are consistent with stacks of spectral ratios for individual events, but source parameter estimates nonetheless vary between the methods. The main source of differences comes from the modeling approach used to estimate the EGF. The global EGF‐fitting approach suffers from parameter trade‐offs among the absolute stress drop, the stress drop scaling with moment, and the high‐frequency falloff rate but has the advantage that the relative spectral shapes and stress drops among the different events in the cluster are well resolved even if their absolute levels are not. The spectral ratio approach solves for a different EGF for each target event without imposing any constraint on the corner frequency, fc, of the smaller events, and so can produce biased results for target event fc. Placing constraints on the small‐event fc improves the performance of the spectral ratio method and enables the two methods to yield very similar results.
PhishTester: Automatic Testing of Phishing Attacks

Phishing is a web-based attack where users are allured to visit fake websites and provide their personal information. Traditional anti-phishing tools are successful to mitigate the attack partially. Most of the tools are focused on protecting users. However, there exists lack of efforts to help anti-phishing professionals who manually verify a reported phishing site and take further actions. Moreover, current tools cannot detect phishing attacks that leverage vulnerabilities in trusted web applications such as cross site scripting. An attacker might generate input forms by injecting script code and steal credentials. This paper attempts to address these issues by leveraging traditional web application testing method which can be seen as a complementary effort to current anti-phishing techniques. We consider a suspected website as a web application and test the application based on a behavior model. The model is described using the notion of Finite State Machine (FSM) that captures submission of forms with fake inputs and corresponding responses. We then identify several heuristic coverage criteria to detect inconsistencies which lead to the conclusion that a website is phishing or real. We implement a tool named Phish Tester to automate the testing process. We evaluate the proposed approach with both phishing and real applications. The initial results show that the approach incurs negligible false negatives (less than 3%) and zero false positive for detecting phishing and real websites, respectively. The approach can be complementary to current anti-phishing tools to discover advanced phishing attacks.