Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Improved Image Fusion Method of Infrared Image and SAR Image Based on Contourlet and Sparse Representation

In this paper, we propose an improved image fusion method of infrared image and SAR image based on the Contour let transform and sparse representation. For the method, it decompose the source image into the low frequency sub band coefficients and the high frequency sub band coefficients with the Contour let transform. The low frequency coefficients with lower sparseness are dealed with sparse representation, construct over complete dictionary, solve sparse coefficient over the trained dictionary, and choose the low frequency coefficients with the larger energy fusion rule. The high frequency sub band coefficients are fused by gradient maxim in. Different frequency coefficients are used to reconstruct the fused image by the inverse Contour let transform. Experimental results show that the proposed method is a feasible and effective image fusion method in term of visual quality and objective evaluation.
The internally layered foot in Dutch

Abstract Recent metrical studies have proposed that, under certain circumstances, a weak syllable may be adjoined to a binary foot, giving rise to a minimally recursive foot. Adding to a growing body of research from metrical stress and foot-conditioned phenomena in various languages, the goals of this paper are twofold. First, we aim at providing empirical evidence for internally layered feet based on the distribution of three foot-conditioned processes of Dutch: vowel reduction, glottal stop /ʔ/ insertion and /h/ licensing/deletion. Second, we explore a less studied theoretical and descriptive advantage of internally layered feet: their potential to predict phonological strength distinctions that go beyond the traditional weak vs. strong dichotomy. In support of this view, we will argue that all three above-mentioned foot-based processes of Dutch distinguish between two types of unstressed syllables. We will demonstrate that the metrical representation that best captures this dual patterning of unstressed syllables necessitates internally layered feet.
Comprehension monitoring strategy intervention in children with hearing loss: a single case design study

ABSTRACT The objective of this single case design study was to examine the effectiveness of teaching comprehension monitoring strategy on strategy use as well as on reading comprehension performance. Four children with bilateral severe-profound hearing loss between the ages of 10–11 years and enrolled in the 3rd–5th grade classroom in a regional day school for the deaf participated in the study. Two comprehension monitoring strategies, namely retell and questioning, were taught to all four children. A third strategy, namely prediction, was used as a control strategy. Children received intervention for 20 min, twice a week for 13 weeks across a total of 26 sessions. During the first three sessions, children participated in probe sessions only. Following this baseline period, children participated in one intervention session and one probe session each week. Sessions were videotaped to monitor for treatment fidelity and to code for strategy use. Results showed a moderate evidence for a functional relation between comprehension strategy instruction and strategy use. Similarly, across participants, data also revealed moderate evidence for a functional relation between strategy implementation and reading comprehension performance. Future studies should investigate the effects of teaching a combination of reading comprehension monitoring strategies by increasing the duration and number of intervention sessions on reading comprehension performance by a larger group of children with hearing loss.
iCTNet2: integrating heterogeneous biological interactions to understand complex traits

iCTNet (integrated Complex Traits Networks) version 2 is a Cytoscape app and database that allows researchers to build heterogeneous networks by integrating a variety of biological interactions, thus offering a systems-level view of human complex traits. iCTNet2 is built from a variety of large-scale biological datasets, collected from public repositories to facilitate the building, visualization and analysis of heterogeneous biological networks in a comprehensive fashion via the Cytoscape platform. iCTNet2 is freely available at the Cytoscape app store.
Improved Glucose-Stimulated Insulin Secretion by Selective Intraislet Inhibition of Angiotensin II Type 1 Receptor Expression in Isolated Islets of db/db Mice

Recent evidence supported the presence of a local renin-angiotensin system (RAS) in the pancreas, which is implicated in many physiological and pathophysiological processes. We utilized small interfering RNA (siRNA) to investigate the effects of angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT1R) knockdown on glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) in isolated islets of db/db mice and to explore the potential mechanisms involved. We found that Ad-siAT1R treatment resulted in a significant decrease both in AT1R mRNA level and in AT1R protein expression level. With downexpression of AT1R, notable increased insulin secretion and decreased glucagon secretion levels were found by perifusion. Simultaneously, significant increased protein levels of IRS-1 (by 85%), IRS-2 (by 95%), PI3K(85) (by 112.5%), and p-Akt2 (by 164%) were found by western blot. And upregulation of both GLUT-2 (by 190%) and GCK (by 121%) was achieved after AT1R inhibition by Ad-siAT1R. Intraislet AT1R expression level is a crucial physiological regulator of insulin sensitivity of β cell itself and thus affects glucose-induced insulin and glucagon release. Therefore, the characteristics of AT1R inhibitors could make it a potential novel therapeutics for prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes.
Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present and Future

Organizational ambidexterity refers to the ability of an organization to both explore and exploit—to compete in mature technologies and markets where efficiency, control, and incremental improvement are prized and to also compete in new technologies and markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation are needed. In the past 15 years there has been an explosion of interest and research on this topic. We briefly review the current state of the research, highlighting what we know and don't know about the topic. We close with a point of view on promising areas for ongoing research.
Maintaining Materialized Relations Incrementally to Improve Performance of Ontology Query

For ontology-based applications, the efficiency of ontology query is vital. Different from existing approaches, the paper improves performance of ontology query by materializing some derived relations. Experimental results show that the integrated performance of ontology query can be improved greatly by maintaining materialized relations and the materialized relations technique has good scalability. Here the challenge is how to maintain the materialized relations incrementally with the update of ontologies. Because transitive relations are in common use in ontology, the paper proposes a novel algorithm for maintaining transitive materialized relations incrementally based on a special weighted materialized relation transitive graph, which can solve the coexistence problem of multiple derived paths better and proves the correctness of the algorithm.
Multicast multigroup precoding for frame-based multi-gateway satellite communications

The present work focuses on the forward link of fixed multibeam broadband satellite systems which employ aggressive frequency reuse patterns in the user-link. For such scenarios, the state-of-the art frame based precoding methods can improve the system performance, exploiting the super framing structure of the latest physical layer evolutions in satellite communications. Nevertheless, the limitations of feeder link need to be considered. Since the increase of the user link capacity leads to a proportional increase in the capacity requirements of the point-to-point feeder link, the deployment of multiple gateways to feed the satellite is examined. The main concept lies in each earth station being dedicated to serve a cluster of beams. In this context, the performance degradation due to inter-cluster interference is quantified. Since inter-cluster interference is expected to primarily affect cluster-edge users, the chosen performance metric is system fairness. Next, coordination between the multiple gateways is proposed as a means to mitigate interference between the different clusters and thus increase the minimum SINR over the coverage. Consequently, the gains in terms of system availability, a crucial metric in satellite communications, are exhibited via numerical system level simulations. The energy efficiency of the proposed system is also presented.
Dynamic link models for global decision making with binding-by-synchrony

We address the problem of integrating information about multiple objects and their positions on a visual scene. A primate visual system has fewer difficulties in rapidly achieving integration, given even when presented with several objects. Here, we propose a neurally plausible mechanism for simultaneously coordinating the local decision-making process of “what”- and “where”-information for the organization of global multi-object recognition. The mechanism is based on paradigms of binding-by-synchrony and dynamic link matching in a network system of the macrocolumnar cortical model. These paradigms are responsible for encoding an individual object and its position through a synchronization-desynchronization process among selected or unselected links of the objects.
Thermodynamic derivation of the mutual information for discrete symmetric channels

The mutual information for the binary symmetric channel as well as for the discrete symmetric channel consisting of 4-input/output (I/O) symbols is explicitly calculated using the generalized second law of thermodynamics which was recently proposed by the first two authors. For equiprobable I/O the mutual information of the examined channels has a very simple thermodynamic form as a function of the internal energy of the channel. We prove that this simple form of the mutual information governs the class of discrete memoryless symmetric communication channels with equiprobable I/O symbols.
Evaluating Completeness of Reporting in Behavioral Interventions Pilot Trials

Purpose: This systematic survey evaluates the completeness of reporting in pilot and feasibility randomized controlled trials investigating behavioral interventions based on the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) extension for pilot trials. Methods: The authors searched Medline/Pubmed and randomly selected 100 articles from 2012 through 2016 to determine the proportion of reported CONSORT extension items. They examined study factors related to reporting, including year and country of publication, psychotherapy intervention, multiple centers, industry funding, and journal endorsement of CONSORT. Results: The authors found that the mean reporting score on the CONSORT extension was 51.6% (SD = 15.1). Studies of psychotherapy interventions had significantly higher reporting scores than other interventions (incidence rate ratio = 1.10, 95% confidence interval: 1.01–1.20). Conclusions: Our findings indicate that current reporting quality is suboptimal. Many included trials failed to provide rationale for piloting, assess feasibility objectives, or indicate clear progression to a future large trial. Reporting quality should be reevaluated following uptake of the 2016 CONSORT extension for pilot trials.
Diagnosis and treatment selection in elderly patients with epilepsy

This expert panel of interdisciplinary thought leaders representing academia and the medical community was assembled by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Office of Continuing Medical Education to review the existing literature and author this publication on advances in the clinical management of epilepsy in senior patients. Where evidence existed, it served as the basis for specific recommendations. In the absence of evidence, consensus was obtained. ABSTRACT
Large-scale image annotation using prototype-based models

Automatic image annotation is a challenging problem in the field of image retrieval. Dealing with large databases makes the annotation problem more difficult and therefore an effective approach is needed to manage such databases. In this work, an annotation system has been developed which considers images in separate categories and constructs a profiling model for each category. To describe an image, we propose a new feature extraction method based on color and texture information that describes image content using discrete distribution signatures. Image signatures of one category are partitioned using spectral clustering and a prototype is determined for each cluster by solving an optimization problem. The final model of one category will be constructed based on its prototypes in a generative modeling framework. To study the accuracy of the proposed approach, a large amount of pictures from a standard dataset are used for experiment. The results reveal that our system outperforms other methods which follow the same structure as the proposed approach.
On merging object-oriented formal specifications

Collaborative development allows the delegation of tasks among developers, which eases the development of complex software systems. The software artifacts created because of this collaboration need to be merged at the end of a particular development activity. To achieve this, a merging approach must be able to produce results that are correct, complete and consistent. Furthermore, the merge approach must rely on a strong similarity detection technique that allows determining the similarities that exist between the different artifacts. Merging requirement specifications allows discovering and dealing with inconsistencies at an early stage which reduces both the time and effort associated with such task compared to dealing with them at later stages such as during design or deployment. This paper proposes an approach for merging Object-Oriented (OO) formal specification views of a given system. The proposed approach is redundancy-aware, and uses a heuristic matching approach to find the correspondences between the views. Finally, the approach’s performance is empirically evaluated.
Use of Community Health Workers for Management of Malaria and Pneumonia in Urban and Rural Areas in Eastern Uganda

Use of community health workers (CHWs) has been implemented the same way in urban and rural areas despite differences in availability of health providers and sociodemographic characteristics. A household survey was conducted in rural and urban areas in eastern Uganda, and all children who were febrile in the previous two weeks were assessed for their symptoms, treatment received at home, and when and where they first went for treatment. Rural children were more likely to use CHWs than urban children. Urban children received outside treatment more promptly, and used herbs at home less. Symptoms and proportion of children being taken out for treatment were similar. Children from the poorest households used CHWs less and private providers more than the middle quintiles. Drug shops and private clinics should be included in the community case management to cater for the poorest in rural areas and persons in urban areas.
On the Performance of DS Spread-Spectrum Systems in AWGN Channel

It is known that spread spectrum serves no help against white noise, but little literature gives explicit demonstration on this problem. In this paper, two receiver structures for direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) systems are described, the error probabilities for the two receivers are obtained, and the equivalence of the two receivers is studied. It is shown that a system using spread spectrum does not achieve an improvement in error probability or signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as long as the background noise is additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN).
4 In Vivo and In Vitro Models to Study Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is the most common adult-onset neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the death of large motor neurons in the cerebral cortex and spinal cord (Tandan and Bradley, 1985). Dysfunction and death of these cell populations lead to progressive muscle weakness, atrophy, fasciculations, spasticity and ultimately, paralysis and death usually within 3 to 5 years after disease onset (Mulder, 1982). The estimated worldwide incidence for this disease is around 2 per 100,000 in the general population and the life-long risk to develop ALS is approximately 1:2000. The disease occurs in sporadic (90%) and familial forms (10%) (Gros-Louis, et al., 2006). With the exception of few FALS cases in which other neurodegenerative disorders can simultaneously occur, FALS and SALS are clinically indistinguishable. To date, mutations in the Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) gene have remained the major known genetic causes associated with ALS. However, the mechanism whereby mutant SOD1 causes specific degeneration of motor neurons remains unclear. Nonetheless, many neuronal death pathways have been revealed through studies with transgenic mice expressing SOD1 mutants. Other vertebrate, invertebrate and in vitro models of ALS have also been described. Here, we will review various animal and cellular models that have been used to study the toxicity of ALS-linked gene mutations and also to investigate pathological hallmarks of the disease.
1A1-S07 Cluster analysis of complex and various skin flow fields around human lips for enriching robot facial expressions

To enrich human-like robot facial expressions, robot designers should know how much and to which directions each human facial part moves for various facial expressions. However, combinations of facial part movements are too complex to determine appropriate design parameters of robot facial deformation mechanisms such as the number, locations, and orientations of actuators for realizing intended reproducibility of each human facial expression. This paper proposes an analysis method of various human facial expressions to determine the design parameters for human-like face robots. The proposed method superimposes several measured human skin flow fields, and extracts the direction of the first principal component of the motion vectors for each facial marker. Its contribution rate was 86%, which indicates each facial part moves almost only in one direction even when a human exhibits several facial expressions. Then, the proposed method estimates which face area moves similarly through cluster analysis of a vector field of the first principal component vector of each facial marker.
A Load-Balanced Clustering Protocol for Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

The energy limitations and associated problems are main challenging issues for designing and employing battery powered wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This paper proposes a novel energy-efficient clustering protocol. The protocol uses a new algorithm for distributing cluster heads (CHs) in network. The cluster formation structure is used for load balancing among far and near cluster heads to the base station (BS). The paper focuses on intra-cluster communication and CHs use single hop scheme to communicate with BS. The protocol works well in small size networks. Simulation results verify that proposed protocol outperform over LEACH and TCAC protocols for 29% and 10% in term of functional network lifetime respectively.
The Association between Plasma 25-Hydroxyvitamin D and Subgroups in Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Cross-Sectional Study

Objectives To evaluate potential differences in plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin in subtypes of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and in patients in Clinical Age-Related Maculopathy Staging (CARMS) group 5 with or without subretinal fibrosis. Methods This single-center cross-sectional study included 178 participants during a period of 20 months. Ninety-five patients belonged to CARMS 5; twelve belonged to CARMS 4; twenty-two belonged to CARMS 2 or 3; and 49 individuals did not have AMD (CARMS 1). Following a structured interview, a detailed bilateral retinal examination was performed and participants were allocated to their respective subgroups in accordance with the Clinical Age-Related Maculopathy Staging system. Plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D2 and D3 were analyzed using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Genomic DNA was extracted from leukocytes and genotyped for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the vitamin D metabolism. Differences in plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D were determined in the subgroups as well as between patients in CARMS 5 with or without subretinal fibrosis. Results Plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D was comparable in patients across CARMS groups 1 to 5 (p = 0.83). In CARMS 5, the presence of subretinal fibrosis was associated with significantly lower concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D as compared to the absence of subretinal fibrosis (47.2 versus 75.6 nmol/L, p<0.001). Patients in CARMS 5 with subretinal fibrosis were more likely to have insufficient levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D compared to patients without subretinal fibrosis (p = 0.006). No association was found between the SNPs rs10877012, rs2228570, rs4588, or rs7041 and AMD subgroups or plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin levels. Conclusions This study suggests that the presence of subretinal fibrosis in patients belonging to CARMS 5 may be associated with a poor vitamin D status. Our observations warrant further investigation into the role of vitamin D in the development of subretinal fibrosis.
Selection of model selection criteria for multivariate ridge regression

In the present study, we consider the selection of model selection criteria for multivariate ridge regression. There are several model selection criteria for selecting the ridge parameter in multivariate ridge regression, e.g., the Cp criterion and the modified Cp (MCp) criterion. We propose the generalized Cp (GCp) criterion, which includes Cp andMCp criteria as special cases. The GCp criterion is specified by a non-negative parameter λ, which is referred to as the penalty parameter. We attempt to select an optimal penalty parameter such that the predictive mean square error (PMSE) of the predictor of ridge regression after optimizing the ridge parameter is minimized. Through numerical experiments, we verify that the proposed optimization methods exhibit better performance than conventional optimization methods, i.e., optimizing only the ridge parameter by minimizing the Cp or MCp criterion.
Computer‐Aided Psychotherapy for Anxiety Disorders: A Meta‐Analytic Review

Computer‐aided psychotherapy (CP) is said to (1) be as effective as face‐to‐face psychotherapy, while requiring less therapist time, for anxiety disorder sufferers, (2) speed access to care, and (3) save traveling time. CP may be delivered on stand‐alone or Internet‐linked computers, palmtop computers, phone‐interactive voice response, DVDs, and cell phones. The authors performed a meta‐analysis of 23 randomised controlled studies (RCTs) that compared CP with non‐CP in anxiety disorders: phobias, n = 10; panic disorder/agoraphobia, n = 9; PTSD, n = 3; obsessive–compulsive disorder, n = 1. Overall mean effect size of CP compared with non‐CP was 1.08 (95% confidence interval: 0.84–1.32). CP and face‐to‐face psychotherapy did not differ significantly from each other (13 comparisons, d = −0.06). Much caution is needed when interpreting the findings indicating that outcome was unrelated to type of disorder, type of comparison group, mode of CP delivery (Internet, stand‐alone PC, palmtop), and recency of the CP system and that effect size decreased when more therapist time was replaced by the computer. Because CP as a whole was as effective as face‐to‐face psychotherapy, certain forms of CP deserve to be integrated into routine practice.