Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beyond citations: Scholars' visibility on the social Web

Traditionally, scholarly impact and visibility have been measured by counting publications and citations in the scholarly literature. However, increasingly scholars are also visible on the Web, establishing presences in a growing variety of social ecosystems. But how wide and established is this presence, and how do measures of social Web impact relate to their more traditional counterparts? To answer this, we sampled 57 presenters from the 2010 Leiden STI Conference, gathering publication and citations counts as well as data from the presenters' Web "footprints. " We found Web presence widespread and diverse: 84% of scholars had homepages, 70% were on LinkedIn, 23% had public Google Scholar profiles, and 16% were on Twitter. For sampled scholars' publications, social reference manager bookmarks were compared to Scopus and Web of Science citations; we found that Mendeley covers more than 80% of sampled articles, and that Mendeley bookmarks are significantly correlated (r=.45) to Scopus citation counts.
CRT-Based AL-FEC and Its Application on Streaming over the WiMAX Networks for High-Speed Rail Reception

In recent years, Application-Layer Forward Error Correction (AL-FEC), especially rateless AL-FEC, receives a lot of attention due to its superior performance in both transmission and computation efficiency. Rateless AL-FEC (e.g., Raptor code or LT code) can protect large data block with the overhead somewhat close to ideal codes. In the meantime, its data processing rates of both encoding and decoding are quite efficient even in software implementations (probably reaching Gbps throughput on a modern PC). Due to its properties, rateless AL-FEC is suggested to be used to protect packet erasure for wireless communications or the environments where retransmissions are infeasible. However, we found that conventional rateless AL-FEC may not be the best candidate when considering streaming over WiMAX networks for high speed rail reception in Taiwan. To facilitate streaming service delivery for high-speed rail reception, we proposed a new AL-FEC scheme based on Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT). The scheme supports greater symbol size than conventional ideal codes and requires less overhead than conventional rateless codes, making the proposed AL-FEC scheme more feasible to harsh bandwidth-limited networks.
Introducing the cut-out star target to evaluate the resolution performance of 3D structured-light systems

Structured light depth map systems are a type of 3D system where a structured light pattern is projected into the object space and an adjacent receiving camera is used to capture the image of the scene. By using the distance between the camera and the projector together with the structured pattern you can estimate the depth of objects in the scene from the camera. It is important to be able to compare two systems to see how one compares to another. Accuracy, resolution, and speed are three aspects of a structured light system that are often used for performance evaluation. It would be ideal if we could use the accuracy and resolution measurements to answer questions such as how close two cubes can be together and be resolved as two objects. Or, determine how close a person must be to the structured light system in order to determine how many fingers this person is holding up. It turns out, from our experiments, a systems ability to resolve the shape of an object is dependent on a number of factors such as the shape of an object, its orientation and how close it is to other adjacent objects. This makes the task of comparing the resolution of two systems difficult. Our goal is to choose a target or a set of targets from which we make measurements that will enable us to quantify, on the average, the comparative resolution performance of one system to another without having to make multiple measurements on scenes with a large set of object shapes, orientations and proximities to each other. In this document we will go over a number of targets we evaluated and will focus on the “Cut-out Star Target” that we selected as being the best choice. Using this target we will show our evaluation results of two systems. The metrics we used for the evaluation were developed during this work. These metrics will not directly answers the question of how close two objects can be to each other and still be resolve, but it will indicate which system will perform better over a large set of objects, orientations and proximities to other objects.
Effect of an Ionic Liquid on the Flexural and Fracture Mechanical Properties of EP/MWCNT Nanocomposites

The improvement of interfacial adhesion between multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and epoxy resin (EP) was investigated in nanocomposites with the addition of an ionic liquid (IL, 1-Ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate - EMIM BF4) as interfacial adhesion promoter. MWCNT (0, 0.3 and 0.5 weight%) was dispersed in EP through diluting an MWCNT-rich masterbatch prepared in presence and absence of IL. Three point bending and compact tension (CT) fracture mechanical tests were performed on specimens with different MWCNT contents with and without IL surfactant. IL addition resulted in easier dispersion of MWCNT in the EP masterbatch. With the addition of the IL the three point bending strength, the bending modulus of elasticity and the critical force required for crack propagation have increased significantly at the optimal, 0.3 weight% MWCNT content. Scanning electron microscopic (SEM) investigation of the fracture surfaces of the CT specimens revealed that incorporation of MWCNTs and its IL-assisted dispersion produced rougher surfaces suggesting higher fracture toughness than the reference EP.
Cyclic fatigue resistance of two reciprocating nickel-titanium instruments after immersion in sodium hypochlorite.

AIM To assess resistance to cyclic fatigue of reciprocating nickel-titanium ( NiTi ) files (Reciproc and WaveOne) after immersion in NaOCl solution over several time periods. METHODOLOGY A total of 90 new Reciproc R25 and WaveOne Primary were tested. The 45 files of the same brand were randomly assigned to three groups (n = 15) and submitted to the following immersion protocol in 5% NaOCl at 37 °C for 16 mm: no immersion (control), 1 or 5 min dynamically. The dynamic immersion and the following cyclic fatigue tests were performed using the appropriate preset reciprocation modes ('RECIPROC ALL' or 'WAVEONE ALL') in a specially designed endodontic motor. Resistance to cyclic fatigue was determined by recording time to fracture (TtF) in a stainless steel artificial canal with a 60° angle of curvature and 5 mm radius of curvature. The artificial canal was manufactured reproducing the instrument's size and taper. Data were analysed by 2-way analyses of variance. RESULTS Resistance to cyclic fatigue of the same NiTi file was not significantly affected by immersion in NaOCl . Reciproc R25 was associated with a higher cyclic fatigue resistance in all groups compared to WaveOne Primary (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Reciprocating dynamic immersion in NaOCl for 1 or 5 min did not reduce the cyclic fatigue resistance of NiTi files significantly. However, the type of reciprocating instrument influenced cyclic fatigue resistance with Reciproc R25 being more resistant than WaveOne Primary.
Muscarinic Regulation of Ca2+ Currents in Rat Sensory Neurons: Channel and Receptor Types, Dose ‐ response Relationships and Cross‐talk Pathways

We studied, in rat sensory neurons, the modulation of high voltage‐activated Ca2+ currents (ICa mediated by the pertussis toxin‐sensitive activation of muscarinic receptors, which were found to be of subtypes M2, or M4. Muscarine reversibly blocked somatic Ca2+ spikes but strong predepolarizations only partially relieved the inhibited Ca2+ current. On the other hand, the putative coupling messenger could not rapidly diffuse towards channels whose activity was recorded from a macro‐patch. The perforated patch technique virtually prevented the response rundown present during whole‐cell experiments. Both ω‐conotoxin GVIA (ω‐CgTx)‐sensitive channels and ω‐CgTx‐ and dihydropyridine‐resistant channels are coupled to the muscarinic receptor, but not the L‐channel. When measured in the same neuron, dose ‐ response relationships for the first and subsequent agonist applications differed; maximal inhibition, the reciprocal of half‐maximal concentration and the Hill coefficient were always highest in the first trial. Muscarine and oxotremorine exhibited monotone dose ‐ response curves, but oxotremorine‐M showed non‐linear relationships which became monotonic when cells were intracellularly perfused with inhibitors of protein kinase A (PKA) and C (PKC), suggesting that either PKA or receptor‐induced PKC could phosphorylate and thus inactivate G‐proteins or other unknown proteins involved in inhibitory muscarinic actions on ICa. In summary, these data provide a preliminary pharmacological characterization of the muscarinic inhibition of the Ca2+ channels in sensory neurons, with implications about agonist specificity and the interplay between signalling pathways.
Task-Specific Gesture Analysis in Real-Time Using Interpolated Views

Hand and face gestures are modeled using an appearance-based approach in which patterns are represented as a vector of similarity scores to a set of view models defined in space and time. These view models are learned from examples using unsupervised clustering techniques. A supervised teaming paradigm is then used to interpolate view scores into a task-dependent coordinate system appropriate for recognition and control tasks. We apply this analysis to the problem of context-specific gesture interpolation and recognition, and demonstrate real-time systems which perform these tasks.
The genome-scale interplay amongst xenogene silencing, stress response and chromosome architecture in Escherichia coli

The gene expression state of exponentially growing Escherichia coli cells is manifested by high expression of essential and growth-associated genes and low levels of stress-related and horizontally acquired genes. An important player in maintaining this homeostasis is the H-NS-StpA gene silencing system. A Δhns-stpA deletion mutant results in high expression of otherwise-silent horizontally acquired genes, many located in the terminus-half of the chromosome, and an indirect downregulation of many highly expressed genes. The Δhns-stpA double mutant displays slow growth. Using laboratory evolution we address the evolutionary strategies that E. coli would adopt to redress this gene expression imbalance. We show that two global gene regulatory mutations—(i) point mutations inactivating the stress-responsive sigma factor RpoS or σ38 and (ii) an amplification of ∼40% of the chromosome centred around the origin of replication—converge in partially reversing the global gene expression imbalance caused by Δhns-stpA. Transcriptome data of these mutants further show a three-way link amongst the global gene regulatory networks of H-NS and σ38, as well as chromosome architecture. Increasing gene expression around the terminus of replication results in a decrease in the expression of genes around the origin and vice versa; this appears to be a persistent phenomenon observed as an association across ∼300 publicly-available gene expression data sets for E. coli. These global suppressor effects are transient and rapidly give way to more specific mutations, whose roles in reversing the growth defect of H-NS mutations remain to be understood.
Identification of Fe-Containing Phase in Oxidation Process of BOF Slag

In this paper, the Fe-containing phases in BOF slag were identified before and after oxidized with atmospheric air. XRD and SEM with EDS results showed that The element Fe existed in slag in the form of calcium ferrite, wustite solid solution and hematite. Mg solid solute in wustite. After oxidized, magnetite became the major mineral phase in slag and Mg + replace the Fe2+ of magnetite crystal to form spinel.
Does Regulatory Disclosure Affect Lending Practices? A Study of Subprime Lending to Minority Neighborhoods

The 2002 amendment to Regulation C, which implements the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), requires most lenders to disclose information about the relative cost at which they provide mortgage credit. We use this regulatory change as a natural experiment to study the effect of increased disclosure of loan pricing information on subprime loan origination in minority neighborhoods by two broad types of lenders, depository and nondepository institutions. We find that depository institutions approved relatively fewer subprime loans to minority neighborhoods after the new pricing disclosure requirement than what they were expected to approve without the pricing information disclosure requirement. However, our analysis does not show a similar effect for nondepository institutions. We also find that those depository institutions that received good reviews from regulators in terms of effectively serving the neighborhoods financing needs are less likely to issue higher-priced subprime loans.
Multiway K-Clustered Tensor Approximation

This article presents a generalized sparse multilinear model, namely multiway K-clustered tensor approximation (MK-CTA), for synthesizing photorealistic 3D images from large-scale multidimensional visual datasets. MK-CTA extends previous tensor approximation algorithms, particularly K-clustered tensor approximation (K-CTA) [Tsai and Shih 2012], to partition a multidimensional dataset along more than one dimension into overlapped clusters. On the contrary, K-CTA only sparsely clusters a dataset along just one dimension and often fails to efficiently approximate other unclustered dimensions. By generalizing K-CTA with multiway sparse clustering, MK-CTA can be regarded as a novel sparse tensor-based model that simultaneously exploits the intra- and inter-cluster coherence among different dimensions of an input dataset. Our experiments demonstrate that MK-CTA can accurately and compactly represent various multidimensional datasets with complex and sharp visual features, including bidirectional texture functions (BTFs) [Dana et al. 1999], time-varying light fields (TVLFs) [Bando et al. 2013], and time-varying volume data (TVVD) [Wang et al. 2010], while easily achieving high rendering rates in practical graphics applications.
Query Understanding in Web Search - by Large Scale Log Data Mining and Statistical Learning

Query understanding is an important component of web search, like document understanding, query document matching, ranking, and user understanding. The goal of query understanding is to predict the user’s search intent from the given query. Needless to say, search log mining and statistical learning are fundamental technologies to address the task of query understanding. In this talk, I will first introduce a large-scale search log mining platform which we have developed at MSRA. I will then explain our approach to query understanding, as well as document understanding, query document matching, and user understanding. After that, I will describe in details about our methods for query understanding based on statistical learning. They include query refinement using CRF, named entity recognition in query using topic model, context aware query topic prediction using HMM. This is joint work with Gu Xu, Daxin Jiang and other collaborators.
Crowdsourcing Sensing to Smartphones: A Randomized Auction Approach

Crowdsourcing to mobile users has emerged as a compelling paradigm for collecting sensing data over a vast area for various monitoring applications. It is of paramount importance for such crowdsourcing paradigm to provide effective incentive mechanisms. State-of-the-art auction mechanisms for crowdsourcing to mobile users are typically deterministic in the sense that for a given sensing job from a crowdsourcer, only a small set of smartphones are selected to perform sensing tasks and the rest are not selected. One apparent disadvantage of such deterministic auction mechanisms is that the diversity with respect to the sensing job is reduced. As a consequence, the quality of the collected sensing data is also decreased. This is due to failure to exploit the intrinsic advantage of the large set of diverse mobile users in a mobile crowdsourcing network. In this paper, we propose a randomized combinatorial auction mechanism for the social cost minimization problem, which is proven to be NP-hard. We design an approximate task allocation algorithm that is near optimal with polynomial-time complexity and use it as a building block to construct the whole randomized auction mechanism. Compared with deterministic auction mechanisms, the proposed randomized auction mechanism increases the diversity in contributing users for a given sensing job. We carry out both solid theoretical analysis and extensive numerical studies and show that our randomized auction mechanism achieves approximate truthfulness, individual rationality, and high computational efficiency.
Worldwide Scientific Production Indexed by Scopus on Labour Relations

This article examines the features of the worldwide contributions to the specialized literature in labour relations in the period 1970–2016. The source considered has been the Scopus Elsevier database, together with bibliometric analysis techniques. Different aspects of the publications are analysed, such as publication type, field, language, subcategory and journal type, as well as the keyword occurrence frequency. The results of this work show that the most popular keywords were Trade Union, Employment, Labour Market and Industrial Relations. It is observed how the United States, being the most productive country, leads in almost all the keywords except in two, “Labour market” and “Working Conditions”, which are led by UK. If the keywords are studied only as geographical terms we can find the United States, Eurasia and India. The contributions are geographically and institutionally broken down. The most active categories are Social Sciences, Business, and Management and Accounting. The evolution of the most popular keywords indicates how in the last years “Trade Unions” “Industrial Relations” and “Personnel” have lost importance against “Labor Market” and “Employment”, showing new concerns in the labour relations field.
More medical students, more stress in the medical education system

A recent report from the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England set out the United Kingdom government’s progress towards one of its key targets in strengthening the National Health Service (NHS). The 1997 report of the Medical Workforce Standing Advisory Committee recommended an increase in the annual intake of medical students by 1000 to meet increasing demand and changes in service patterns. The NHS Plan published in 2000 subsequently incorporated further growth of up to another 1000 places in England resulting in the largest increase in medical school places since the NHS was established.
Response to “Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate Is Not an Inhibitor of Human Organic Cation Transporter 1”

On the basis of experiments reported in their letter, Shen and coworkers concluded that tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) is not an inhibitor of human organic cation transporter 1 (OCT1). They expressed their concern that high-affinity inhibition of the uptake of N- methyl - 4-phenylpyridinium (
The age-specific force of natural selection and biodemographic walls of death

W. D. Hamilton’s celebrated formula for the age-specific force of natural selection furnishes predictions for senescent mortality due to mutation accumulation, at the price of reliance on a linear approximation. Applying to Hamilton’s setting the full nonlinear demographic model for mutation accumulation recently developed by Evans, Steinsaltz, and Wachter, we find surprising differences. Nonlinear interactions cause the collapse of Hamilton-style predictions in the most commonly studied case, refine predictions in other cases, and allow walls of death at ages before the end of reproduction. Haldane’s principle for genetic load has an exact but unfamiliar generalization.
Curvature Computation on Free-Form 3-D Meshes at Multiple Scales

A novel technique for multiscale curvature computation on a smoothed 3-D surface is presented. This is achieved by iteratively convolving local parameterizations of the surface with 2-D Gaussian filters. In our technique, semigeodesic coordinates are constructed at each vertex of the mesh which becomes the local origin. A geodesic from the origin is first constructed in an arbitrary direction such as the direction of one of the incident edges. The smoothing eliminates surface noise and small surface detail gradually and results in gradual simplification of the object shape. The surface Gaussian and mean curvature values are estimated accurately at multiple scales together with curvature zero-crossing contours. The curvature values are then mapped to colors and displayed directly on the surface. Furthermore, maxima of Gaussian and mean curvatures are also located and displayed on the surface. These features have been utilized by later processes for robust surface matching and object recognition. Our technique is independent of the underlying triangulation and is also more efficient than volumetric diffusion techniques since 2-D rather than 3-D convolutions are employed. Another advantage is that it is applicable to incomplete surfaces which arise during occlusion or to surfaces with holes.
Real-time face detection in Full HD images exploiting both embedded CPU and GPU

CPU-GPU heterogeneous systems have become a mainstream platform in both server and embedded domains with ever increasing demand for powerful accelerator. In this paper, we present parallelization techniques that exploit both data and task parallelism of LBP based face detection algorithm on an embedded heterogeneous platform. By running tasks in a pipelined parallel way on multicore CPUs and by offloading a data-parallel task to a GPU, we could successfully achieve 29 fps for Full HD inputs on Tegra K1 platform where quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU and CUDA supported 192-core GPU are integrated. This corresponds to 5.54x speedup over a sequential version and 1.69x speedup compared to the GPU-only implementations.
Objective measurement of hyperactivity and attentional problems in ADHD.

OBJECTIVE To precisely describe movement abnormalities in seated children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) while they were engaged in a continuous performance task (CPT). METHOD Diagnoses were made by using structured interviews (Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Epidemiologic Version) and DSM-IV criteria. Movement patterns of 18 boys with ADHD (9.3 +/- 2.4 years) and 11 normal controls (8.6 +/- 1.8 years) were recorded using an infrared motion analysis system that tracked the position of four markers 50 times per second to a resolution of 0.04 mm. RESULTS Boys with ADHD moved their head 2.3 times more often than normal children (p < .002), moved 3.4 times as far (p < .01), covered a 3.8-fold greater area (p < .001), and had a more linear and less complex movement pattern (p < .00004). They responded more slowly and with greater variability on the CPT. Complexity of head movement and variability in response latency significantly correlated with teacher ratings. A predefined composite of movement and attention discriminated 16 of 18 patients from 11 of 11 controls. CONCLUSIONS The relative inability of boys with ADHD to sit still can be objectively verified, and "fidgeting" appears to consist of more frequent, larger amplitude, whole body movements.