Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Shadow Detection and Removal in still images by using hue properties of color space and thresholding

This paper involves the review of the Shadow Detection and Removal in still images. No prior information has been used such as background images etc. for finding the shadows. It is a very challenging issue for the computer vision system that shadows effect the perception of artificial intelligence based machines in appropriately detecting the particular object as shadows also picked by them and detected as false positive objects. Also in surveillance, it affects the proper tracking of humans such as at airports. We proposed a method to remove shadows which eliminates the shadow much better than existed methods. RGB space has been used of the images and some morphological operations also applied to get better results.
Rates and Correlations of Psychiatric Drug Administration in a Rehabilitation Center

ABSTRACT Background: Physical injury has been associated with the development of several psychopathological manifestations. Less is known about the use of psychiatric medication in those patients. Objectives: This study aimed to explore the use of psychiatric medication by patients been admitted in a rehabilitation center in a tertiary care teaching hospital and to inquire for the correlations of such drug administration. Materials and Methods: The sample consisted of 127 patients who had been admitted to a rehabilitation center, being in the postacute phase of their condition during a 2-year period. Patients’ medical records were searched for the demographic and clinical information. Results: Analysis was performed for 118 patients, mostly men (62.7%) with the mean age of 57.5 years. About 43.2% of patients (n = 51) were referred for psychiatric consultation, and 39.8% (n = 47) were prescribed a psychiatric drug. Traumatic brain injury was the diagnosis, positively correlated to referral. Twenty-seven out of the 67 nonreferred patients (40.3%) were prescribed psychiatric regimens by physicians. Nearly 38.1% of patients were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder by the consultation-Liaison psychiatric service. Conclusions: In a rehabilitation center, psychiatric drug administration is common practice and drugs may be prescribed by the center's physicians and by psychiatrists. Such a drug prescription was found to be correlated to referral to the consultation-Liaison psychiatric service.
Audio classification and scene recognition and for hearing aids

Modern hearing aids provide a variety of options and settings that can be tuned based on the audio environment. We provide a robust audio classification system that could be used to switch automatically between different hearing aid algorithms based on the auditory scene. The classification system uses features derived from a model of the auditory system in conjunction with an AdaBoost-based classifier. We show that our system achieves high accuracy and good generalization with only one second segments. We also demonstrate the auditory scene recognition capabilities of the classification system.
Caspofungin for the Treatment of Immunocompromised and Severely Ill Children and Neonates with Invasive Fungal Infections

Caspofungin is the first member of the echinocandin class of antifungals to receive an indication for the use in infants, children, and adolescents from the United States Food and Drug Administration. Daily doses of 50 mg/m2 result in pharmacokinetic parameters that are similar to those observed in adults. Although fewer data are available, the response rates in pediatric patients who received caspofungin either as treatment or empiric therapy in clinical trials are similar to those reported in adults. In addition, caspofungin appears to be generally safe and well tolerated in this population. This represents a significant step forward in the treatment of invasive fungal infections within this population, as caspofungin is associated with few clinically significant drug-interactions and toxicities compared to other antifungals, such as the azoles and amphotericin B.
Distributed Channel Assignment in Cognitive Radio Networks: Stable Matching and Walrasian Equilibrium

We consider a set of secondary transmitter-receiver pairs in a cognitive radio setting. Based on channel sensing and access performances, we consider the problem of assigning channels orthogonally to secondary users through distributed coordination and cooperation algorithms. Two economic models are applied for this purpose: matching markets and competitive markets. In the matching market model, secondary users and channels build two agent sets. We implement a stable matching algorithm in which each secondary user, based on his achievable rate, proposes to the coordinator to be matched with desirable channels. The coordinator accepts or rejects the proposals based on the channel preferences which depend on interference from the secondary user. The coordination algorithm is of low complexity and can adapt to network dynamics. In the competitive market model, channels are associated with prices and secondary users are endowed with monetary budget. Each secondary user, based on his utility function and current channel prices, demands a set of channels. A Walrasian equilibrium maximizes the sum utility and equates the channel demand to their supply. We prove the existence of Walrasian equilibrium and propose a cooperative mechanism to reach it. The performance and complexity of the proposed solutions are illustrated by numerical simulations.
Modulus‐based matrix splitting iteration methods for linear complementarity problems

For the large sparse linear complementarity problems, by reformulating them as implicit fixed‐point equations based on splittings of the system matrices, we establish a class of modulus‐based matrix splitting iteration methods and prove their convergence when the system matrices are positive‐definite matrices and H+‐matrices. These results naturally present convergence conditions for the symmetric positive‐definite matrices and the M‐matrices. Numerical results show that the modulus‐based relaxation methods are superior to the projected relaxation methods as well as the modified modulus method in computing efficiency. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Connecting spatial and temporal scales of tropical precipitation in observations and the MetUM-GA6

Abstract. This study analyses tropical rainfall variability (on a range of temporal and spatial scales) in a set of parallel Met Office Unified Model (MetUM) simulations at a range of horizontal resolutions, which are compared with two satellite-derived rainfall datasets. We focus on the shorter scales, i.e. from the native grid and time step of the model through sub-daily to seasonal, since previous studies have paid relatively little attention to sub-daily rainfall variability and how this feeds through to longer scales. We find that the behaviour of the deep convection parametrization in this model on the native grid and time step is largely independent of the grid-box size and time step length over which it operates. There is also little difference in the rainfall variability on larger/longer spatial/temporal scales. Tropical convection in the model on the native grid/time step is spatially and temporally intermittent, producing very large rainfall amounts interspersed with grid boxes/time steps of little or no rain. In contrast, switching off the deep convection parametrization, albeit at an unrealistic resolution for resolving tropical convection, results in very persistent (for limited periods), but very sporadic, rainfall. In both cases, spatial and temporal averaging smoothes out this intermittency. On the ∼ 100 km scale, for oceanic regions, the spectra of 3-hourly and daily mean rainfall in the configurations with parametrized convection agree fairly well with those from satellite-derived rainfall estimates, while at ∼ 10-day timescales the averages are overestimated, indicating a lack of intra-seasonal variability. Over tropical land the results are more varied, but the model often underestimates the daily mean rainfall (partly as a result of a poor diurnal cycle) but still lacks variability on intra-seasonal timescales. Ultimately, such work will shed light on how uncertainties in modelling small-/short-scale processes relate to uncertainty in climate change projections of rainfall distribution and variability, with a view to reducing such uncertainty through improved modelling of small-/short-scale processes.
Phospholipase A2IVα Regulates Phagocytosis Independent of Its Enzymatic Activity*

Background: The mechanistic regulation of phagocytosis by phospholipase A2 (PLA2) remains to be defined. Results: A specific PLA2 isoform is activated during phagocytosis, translocates to the plasma membrane, and directly participates in phagosome formation, without involving its enzymatic activity. Conclusion: PLA2IVα regulates phagocytosis via a novel mechanism that requires membrane binding of its C2 domain. Significance: PLA2IVα mediates a novel mechanism of phagocytosis regulation. Group IVα phospholipase A2 (PLA2IVα) is a lipolytic enzyme that catalyzes the hydrolysis of membrane phospholipids to generate precursors of potent inflammatory lipid mediators. Here, the role of PLA2IVα in Fc receptor (FcR)-mediated phagocytosis was investigated, demonstrating that PLA2IVα is selectively activated upon FcR-mediated phagocytosis in macrophages and that it rapidly translocates to the site of the nascent phagosome. Moreover, pharmacological inhibition of PLA2IVα by pyrrophenone reduces particle internalization by up to 50%. In parallel, fibroblasts from PLA2IVα knock-out mice overexpressing FcγRIIA and able to internalize IgG-opsonized beads show 50% lower phagocytosis, compared with wild-type cells, and transfection of PLA2IVα fully recovers this impaired function. Interestingly, transfection of the catalytically inactive deleted PLA2IVα mutant (PLA2IVα(1–525)) and point mutant (PLA2IVα-S228C) also promotes recovery of this impaired function. Finally, transfection of the PLA2IVα C2 domain (which is directly involved in PLA2IVα membrane binding), but not of PLA2IVα-D43N (which cannot bind to membranes), rescues FcR-mediated phagocytosis. These data unveil a new mechanism of action for PLA2IVα, which demonstrates that the membrane binding, and not the enzymatic activity, is required for PLA2IVα modulation of FcR-mediated phagocytosis.
Packet cache network function for peer-to-peer traffic management with Bloom-filter based flow classification

Following the emergence of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, millions of computer users have used P2P systems to search for desired content. P2P traffic is known to be highly redundant because of its inherent self-scaling characteristics, which means that file sharing is performed more efficiently when more users exchange the same content. To remove redundant P2P traffic, we have proposed a method to control the P2P traffic through a packet-level data cache that acts as a network function at the edge of the Internet service provider (ISP) networks [1]. However, our previous method involves high levels of memory consumption. Software-defined networking (SON) and network functions virtualization (NFV) are representative trends in network soft-warization that may lower the barrier to deployment of network management functions that are considered to be useful but are difficult to actually implement and deploy. In this paper, we propose a new flow classification for P2P that uses a queue Bloom filter (QBF) to reduce the memory consumption of the P2P cache. The QBF is a time series queue that manages Bloom filters and it can remove inserted Bloom filter elements without generating false positives. If the router can confirm that P2P flows are carrying duplicate contents using QBF, it then begins to cache the duplicate content. Our analysis shows that the proposed method reduces memory consumption to 67% and improves the P2P cache hit ratio by 4% when compared with the previous approach, while its performance in removing redundancy from the P2P traffic is degraded by only 14% . In addition, we discuss the implementation and deployment of the proposed system at the edge routers of ISP networks by applying SON and NFV.
Incorporating a parenchymal thermal diffusion cerebral blood flow probe in bedside assessment of cerebral autoregulation and vasoreactivity in patients with severe traumatic brain injury.

OBJECT Cerebral autoregulation may be altered after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Recent evidence suggests that patients' autoregulatory status following severe TBI may influence cerebral perfusion pressure management. The authors evaluated the utility of incorporating a recently upgraded parenchymal thermal diffusion probe for the measurement of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in the neurointensive care unit for assessing cerebral autoregulation and vasoreactivity at bedside. METHODS The authors evaluated 20 patients with severe TBI admitted to San Francisco General Hospital who underwent advanced neuromonitoring. Patients had a parenchymal thermal diffusion probe placed for continuous bedside monitoring of local CBF ((loc)CBF) in addition to the standard intracranial pressure and brain tissue oxygen tension (P(bt)O(2)) monitoring. The CBF probes were placed in the white matter using a separate cranial bolt. A pressure challenge, whereby mean arterial pressure (MAP) was increased by about 10 mm Hg, was performed in all patients to assess autoregulation. Cerebral CO(2) vasoreactivity was assessed with a hyperventilation challenge. Local cerebral vascular resistance ((loc)CVR) was calculated by dividing cerebral perfusion pressure by (loc)CBF. Local cerebral vascular resistance normalized to baseline ((loc)CVR(normalized)) was also calculated for the MAP and hyperventilation challenges. RESULTS In all cases, bedside measurement of (loc)CBF using a cranial bolt in patients with severe TBI resulted in correct placement in the white matter with a low rate of complications. Mean (loc)CBF decreased substantially with hyperventilation challenge (-7 ± 8 ml/100 g/min, p = 0.0002) and increased slightly with MAP challenge (1 ± 7 ml/100 g/min, p = 0.17). Measurements of (loc)CBF following MAP and hyperventilation challenges can be used to calculate (loc)CVR. In 83% of cases, (loc)CVR increased during a hyperventilation challenge (mean change +3.5 ± 3.8 mm Hg/ml/100 g/min, p = 0.0002), indicating preserved cerebral CO(2) vasoreactivity. In contrast, we observed a more variable response of (loc)CVR to MAP challenge, with increased (loc)CVR in only 53% of cases during a MAP challenge (mean change -0.17 ± 3.9 mm Hg/ml/100 g/min, p = 0.64) indicating that in many cases autoregulation was impaired following severe TBI. CONCLUSIONS Use of the Hemedex thermal diffusion probe appears to be a safe and feasible method that enables continuous monitoring of CBF at the bedside. Cerebral autoregulation and CO(2) vasoreactivity can be assessed in patients with severe TBI using the CBF probe by calculating (loc)CVR in response to MAP and hyperventilation challenges. Determining whether CVR increases or decreases with a MAP challenge ((loc)CVR(normalized)) may be a simple provocative test to determine patients' autoregulatory status following severe TBI and helping to optimize CPP management.
Using Dialog Corrections to Improve Speech Recognition

We propose a preliminary method for automatically correcting errors in spoken dialogue systems1. Current spoken dialogue systems usually show a rather static and rigid behavior regarding recognition errors, therefore a feasible method of correcting system errors might be helpful to successfully support user requests. Moreover, a correction differs from non-correction prosodically [1]. Generally a user correction exhibits a greater prosodic difference the more distant it is from the initial error. In this case it is recognized more poorly, and it involves a longer human-machine interaction because this often leds to the same recognition errors. This paper will focus on methods to adapt the system using the error feedback provided by the user, and basically requires the adaptation of the language model.
Idiopathic chronic fatigue in older adults is linked to impaired mitochondrial content and biogenesis signaling in skeletal muscle

Fatigue is a symptom of many diseases, but it can also manifest as a unique medical condition, such as idiopathic chronic fatigue (ICF). While the prevalence of ICF increases with age, mitochondrial content and function decline with age, which may contribute to ICF. The purpose of this study was to determine whether skeletal muscle mitochondrial dysregulation and oxidative stress is linked to ICF in older adults. Sedentary, old adults (n = 48, age 72.4 ± 5.3 years) were categorized into ICF and non-fatigued (NF) groups based on the FACIT-Fatigue questionnaire. ICF individuals had a FACIT score one standard deviation below the mean for non-anemic adults > 65 years and were excluded according to CDC diagnostic criteria for ICF. Vastus lateralis muscle biopsies were analyzed, showing reductions in mitochondrial content and suppression of mitochondrial regulatory proteins Sirt3, PGC-1α, NRF-1, and cytochrome c in ICF compared to NF. Additionally, mitochondrial morphology proteins, antioxidant enzymes, and lipid peroxidation were unchanged in ICF individuals. Our data suggests older adults with ICF have reduced skeletal muscle mitochondrial content and biogenesis signaling that cannot be accounted for by increased oxidative damage.
Ziv-Zakai lower bound for UWB based TOA estimation with unknown interference

This paper derives the Ziv-Zakai lower bound (ZZLB) for the time of arrival (TOA) estimation in the presence of one interfering pulse from which no a priori knowledge is available. The bound is obtained by including the interference in the system model but only the transmitted pulse as a candidate for the likelihood ratio (LR) test. A compact ZZLB expression that depends on the time delay and amplitude of the interference is obtained. We compare the performance of the first path maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) with the bound as a function of the relative distance between the first path and the interfering path.
Distinct Lipid A Moieties Contribute to Pathogen-Induced Site-Specific Vascular Inflammation

Several successful pathogens have evolved mechanisms to evade host defense, resulting in the establishment of persistent and chronic infections. One such pathogen, Porphyromonas gingivalis, induces chronic low-grade inflammation associated with local inflammatory bone loss and systemic inflammation manifested as atherosclerosis. P. gingivalis expresses an atypical lipopolysaccharide (LPS) structure containing heterogeneous lipid A species, that exhibit Toll-like receptor-4 (TLR4) agonist or antagonist activity, or are non-activating at TLR4. In this study, we utilized a series of P. gingivalis lipid A mutants to demonstrate that antagonistic lipid A structures enable the pathogen to evade TLR4-mediated bactericidal activity in macrophages resulting in systemic inflammation. Production of antagonistic lipid A was associated with the induction of low levels of TLR4-dependent proinflammatory mediators, failed activation of the inflammasome and increased bacterial survival in macrophages. Oral infection of ApoE−/− mice with the P. gingivalis strain expressing antagonistic lipid A resulted in vascular inflammation, macrophage accumulation and atherosclerosis progression. In contrast, a P. gingivalis strain producing exclusively agonistic lipid A augmented levels of proinflammatory mediators and activated the inflammasome in a caspase-11-dependent manner, resulting in host cell lysis and decreased bacterial survival. ApoE−/− mice infected with this strain exhibited diminished vascular inflammation, macrophage accumulation, and atherosclerosis progression. Notably, the ability of P. gingivalis to induce local inflammatory bone loss was independent of lipid A expression, indicative of distinct mechanisms for induction of local versus systemic inflammation by this pathogen. Collectively, our results point to a pivotal role for activation of the non-canonical inflammasome in P. gingivalis infection and demonstrate that P. gingivalis evades immune detection at TLR4 facilitating chronic inflammation in the vasculature. These studies support the emerging concept that pathogen-mediated chronic inflammatory disorders result from specific pathogen-mediated evasion strategies resulting in low-grade chronic inflammation.
Development of quantitative FT-IR methods for analyzing the cure kinetics of epoxy resins

Son, Sang Ha. Ph.D., Purdue University, December 20 13. Development of Quantitative FT-IR Methods for Analyzing the Cure Kinetics of Ep oxy Resins. Major Professor: James M. Caruthers. Epoxy thermosets are important engineering material s with applications in coating, adhesives, packaging and as structural components i n a variety of advanced engineering products. The ultimate performance of polymer criti ally depends upon the details of the cure chemistry used to produce the thermoset. In or der to better understand and monitor the cure chemistry, quantitative analysis of the FT -IR response has been developed for describing the epoxy-amine curing reaction as well as monitoring the hydrogen bonding that occurs in these systems The FT-IR analysis inc ludes (i) quantitative deconvolution of complex peaks into individual spectral contribution s, (ii) peak identification via DFT analysis and (iii) appropriate baseline correction. These FT-IR analysis methods were utilized to resolve spectral complexity in epoxy-am ine thermoset resin systems. Using the quantitative FT-IR tools described above, th hydrogen bonding of amine and hydroxyl groups was determined for (i) the self ass ociation and inter-association of Nmethylaniline (NmA) and isopropanol and (ii) the re action with a series of hydrogen bonding acceptors, including toluene, triethylamine , epoxy butane and dipropylether that represent π-bond, electron pair on amine, epoxide and ether gr oups. Simple mass-action
Predictable bus arbitration schemes for heterogeneous time-critical workloads running on multicore processors

Multi-core architectures are now considered as possible candidates to implement future time-critical embedded systems. The challenge is to make the worst-case execution time (WCET) of each task predictable. In this paper, we investigate bus arbitration schemes with upper-bounded bus latencies. We focus on heterogeneous workloads in which tasks exhibit distinct requirements in terms of bandwidth. The proposed schemes perform a two-level arbitration: the cores are organized into groups and all the cores in the same group benefit from the same bandwidth. Different algorithms are considered to share the bus slots among the groups. Experimental results (WCET estimates) show an improved global WCET compared to usual round-robin schemes. This will enhance the schedulability of heterogeneous task sets.
Lecture 4 — September 17 4.1 Digital Fountain Characterization 4.1.1 Limitations of Building Digital Fountain with Rs Codes

A Digital Fountain is an approach used to provide reliability in multicast networks without the use of receiver initiated packet retransmissions. Prior work to Digital Fountain has shown that use of receiver initiated retransmissions to recover lost data is unscalable in multicast networks and the impact is significant in lossy networks. Instead, like many other techniques that transmit redundant codewords, Digital Fountain uses the concept of encoding data using Tornado and LT codes such that reconstruction of data at the receiver is done with minimal overhead. The intuition behind Digital Fountain is that there is a tradeoff between decoding time and decoding efficiency. By accepting an almost negligible penalty of decoding inefficiency, significant improvements are achieved for encoding and decoding times . In the following section, we discuss the limitations of RS codes to make the advantages of Tornado and LT codes clear.