Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Iterative Constrained Optimization Approach to Classifier Design

In this paper, we propose an iterative constrained optimization (ICO) approach to classifier design. When a set of conflicting objectives needs to be simultaneously satisfied, it is often not easy to combine all the utilities in a single overall objective function for optimization. We instead formulate the problem with conflicting objectives as a single-objective optimization scenario while embedding other competing objectives in constraints so that the original problem can be solved by adopting conventional constrained nonlinear optimization techniques. The bounds needed to constrain each objective are determined based on the objective function values obtained in the previous iterate. The so-formed individual constrained optimization problems are solved until a stable solution is obtained. We illustrate the utility of our framework in the context of designing classifiers for text categorization and automatic language identification. The results of our experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves a significant improvement in one objective with only slight degradation of the other conflicting objective
A Hybrid Web-Based Measure for Computing Semantic Relatedness Between Words

In this paper, we build a hybrid Web-based metric for computing semantic relatedness between words. The method exploits page counts, titles, snippets and URLs returned by a Web search engine. Our technique uses traditional information retrieval methods and is enhanced by page-count-based similarity scores which are integrated with automatically extracted lexico-synantic patterns from titles, snippets and URLs for all kinds of semantically related words provided by WordNet (synonyms, hypernyms, meronyms, antonyms). A support vector machine is used to solve the arising regression problem of word relatedness and the proposed method is evaluated on standard benchmark datasets. The method achieves an overall correlation of 0.88, which is the highest among other metrics up to date.
RNA-Mediated Reprogramming of Primary Adult Human Dermal Fibroblasts into c-kit + Cardiac Progenitor Cells

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Heart failure is a common, costly, and potentially fatal condition that is inadequately managed by pharmaceuticals. Cardiac repair therapies are promising alternative options. A potential cardiac repair therapy involves reprogramming human fibroblasts toward an induced cardiac progenitor-like state. We developed a clinically useful and safer reprogramming method by nonintegrative delivery of a cocktail of cardiac transcription factor-encoding mRNAs into autologous human dermal fibroblasts obtained from skin biopsies. Using this method, adult and neonatal dermal fibroblasts were reprogrammed into cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs) that expressed c-kit, Isl-1, and Nkx2.5. Furthermore, these reprogrammed CPCs differentiated into cardiomyocytes (CMs) in vitro as judged by increased expression of cardiac troponin T, a-sarcomeric actinin, RyR2, and SERCA2 and displayed enhanced caffeine-sensitive calcium release. The ability to reprogram patient-derived dermal fibroblasts into c-kit CPCs and differentiate them into functional CMs provides clinicians with a potential new source of CPCs for cardiac repair from a renewable source and an alternative therapy in the treatment of heart failure.
Cognitive Trajectory After Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation

Background—Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) is known to be associated with silent cerebral injury, which could contribute to cognitive impairment. Considering its increasing use, thorough longitudinal investigation of cognitive trajectory after TAVI is pivotal. Methods and Results—Repeatable battery for the assessment of neuropsychological status was performed before (E1), 3 days (E2), 3 months (E3), 1 (E4) year, and 2 years (E5) after TAVI. Baseline characteristics, procedural data, imaging parameters of brain injury (diffusion-weighted MRI), and the use of conceivable neuroprotective approaches were investigated for their effect on cognitive function. Cognitive performance was investigated in 111 patients (mean log EuroSCORE, 30±13%). Global cognitive function (repeatable battery for the assessment of neuropsychological status total score) increased transiently at E2 (P=0.02) and was comparable with baseline levels at E3, E4, and E5. Six patients (5.4%) demonstrated early cognitive decline. Persistence and late onset were seen infrequently (n=3, 2.7% and n=4, 3.6%, respectively). Hence, early cognitive decline was ruled out in 105 patients (94.6%), and a majority of patients (91%) demonstrated sustained cognitive performance throughout all investigated time points. Interestingly, only patient age (P=0.012), but not prior cerebrovascular events, cognitive status, direct TAVI, cerebral embolism in diffusion-weighted MRI, or the use of a cerebral embolic protection device was found to be independently associated with cognitive decline, linking higher age to cognitive impairment along the first 2 years after TAVI. Conclusions—Long-term cognitive performance was preserved in the great majority (91%) of patients throughout the first 2 years after TAVI, despite the high intrinsic risk for cognitive deterioration. Clinical Trial Registration—URL: http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT00883285.
Surgical treatment of myasthenia gravis in two major Middle East teaching hospitals: factors influencing outcome.

BACKGROUND: The results of thymectomy on patients with generalised myasthenia gravis have been widely reported. However, there is no information on whether the experience of western countries can be generalised to the population of the Middle East. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of thymectomy in patients with myasthenia gravis in a Middle East patient population and to identify clinical and histopathological factors associated with improved long term outcome of surgery. METHODS: In a prospective study, sixty three patients (aged 1.5-51 years) were treated in two university teaching hospitals between 1984 and 1991 and followed up for a mean of four years. Close communication was established with neurologists to obtain early referral. Radical anterior mediastinal dissection through a median sternotomy was performed in all patients. The response was evaluated by modified Osserman's classification. RESULTS: Eighteen patients achieved complete remission and a further 39 improved, producing an overall response rate of 90.5%. Patients with milder disease (stage II) had a higher response rate (97%) than those with more advanced disease (78%). Patients operated on with less than three years of symptoms had a better outcome (94%) than those with longer duration of preoperative symptoms, especially in non-thymomatous patients. Age and sex had no effect on the outcome. There was no effect on response rate if patients had hyperplastic or non-specific thymic histological findings, but patients with thymoma fared worse. CONCLUSIONS: These results are comparable with reports from the western world and represent the first prospective study from the Middle East. Thymectomy is indicated for all patients suffering from generalised myasthenia gravis soon after the diagnosis is made, regardless of age, stage, thymic pathology, and preoperative clinical status.
Mosaicking of Ort horectified Aerial Images

Aerial photographs are widely used in surveying, geographic information systems (GIS), and other applications. Analysis of a large area requires the creation of an image mosaic, which is composed of several aerial photographs. In an ideal situation, a perfect mosaic can be generated using a series of rigid transformations on the source images. In practice, geometric distortions and radiometric differences interfere with the mosaicking process. In this paper a complete algorithm to mosaic images taken at different times and conditions with geometric distortions and radiometric differences is presented. The algorithm, which works without any human intervention, integrates global feature matching algorithms into the process of selecting a seam line. The algorithm may be applied to mosaic any set of images for which an appropriate matching algorithm exists. The creation of an image mosaic is accomplished using local transformations along a computed seam line and a rigid transformation elsewhere. An automatic stereo matching algorithm, originally developed for surface height measurement, is used to detect matching pairs of tie points across frame boundaries. These tie points are used to compute the seam line for the mosaic, and to compute geometric and radiometric correcting transformations around this seam line.
A New Variational Model for Segmentation and Denoising of Images with Multiplicative Noise I,II

In this paper, we develop a variational model for simultaneous multiphase segmentation and denoising of images corrupted with multiplicative noise. The presented model uses soft segmentation, which allows each pixel to belong to each image pattern with some probability being more exible than the classical hard segmentation. The denoising is performed by minimizing a variable exponential growth functional, which is a combination between TV-based and isotropic smoothing for better feature preserving. The model development and computational implementation are explored in detail, and experimental results on real and synthetic images are presented.
Economic Impacts of Tropical Cyclones Rapporteur

Global natural disaster losses have risen dramatically in recent decades and tropical cyclones have contributed significantly to this trend. Tropical cyclones account for nine of the ten most costly inflation-adjusted insurance natural disaster losses (2009 dollars) between 1970 and 2009 (Swiss Re, 2010). Of these nine, eight impacted the US and surrounding areas and one impacted Japan. In original loss values, tropical cyclones account for two of the five most costly economic losses and four of the five most costly insurance losses from natural disasters over the period 1950 to 2009 (Munich Re, 2010). All hurricanes in the top five of both original loss lists impacted the US and Hurricane Katrina tops the original and inflationadjusted loss lists.
Airborne tularemia in Sweden.

AbstractIn the autumn of 1966 an outbreak of tularemia started in Northern Sweden. Totally 676 cases were reported. In Sweden tularemia is usually transmitted by mosquitos or through direct contact with infected hares. In the present outbreak epidemiological, bacteriological and clinical data indicated that the infection was generally transmitted through inhalation of dust from hay contaminated with vole faeces. The clinical picture in this outbreak was dominated by general symptoms, such as high temperature, fatigue, malaise, and severe headache. Many of the patients showed signs of pneumonia or other respiratory symptoms. Extensive serological investigations indicated that in some areas over 20% of the total population had been infected. In 16–32% of the serologically verified cases the infection was subclinical.
[Changes in cardiovascular risk factors in developing countries].

As a result of progressive urbanization and westernization of their lifestyle, developing countries are now undergoing an epidemiological transition. These changes are leading to a new epidemiological situation in the world with a decline in infectious diseases and emergence of cardiovascular diseases in general and coronary artery disease in particular. From the current level of 16 millions deaths annually worldwide, mortality due to coronary heart disease is expected to double in the next 20 years with 80% of this increase occurring in developing countries. INTERHEART was a large international study designed to assess the importance of cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF) in terms of prevalence and coronary-related morbidity worldwide. The main modifiable CVRF, i.e., tobacco use, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, blood apolipoproteins, and psychosocial factors were strongly correlated with the risk for myocardial infarction (MI). The level of risk associated with these CVRF was the same in industrialized and developing countries. Globally tobacco use remains the most serious epidemiological risk in terms of prevalence of coronary artery disease whereas raised lipid level was the factor most strongly correlated with MI risk in terms of coronary morbidity particularly in Africa. The greatest impact of the strong increase in diabetes and hypertension with accompanying obesity was observed in countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. The emergence and rapid growth of CVRF in developing countries accounts for the strong increase in coronary-related morbidity/mortality predicted over the next two decades and further underlines the need for an epidemiological control plan aimed at preventing cardiovascular disease in developing countries.
Aneuploid mosaicism in the developing and adult cerebellar cortex

Neuroprogenitor cells (NPCs) in several telencephalic proliferative regions of the mammalian brain, including the embryonic cerebral cortex and postnatal subventricular zone (SVZ), display cell division “defects” in normal cells that result in aneuploid adult progeny. Here, we identify the developing cerebellum as a major, nontelencephalic proliferative region of the vertebrate central nervous system (CNS) that also produces aneuploid NPCs and nonmitotic cells. Mitotic NPCs assessed by metaphase chromosome analyses revealed that 15.3% and 20.8% of cerebellar NPCs are aneuploid at P0 and P7, respectively. By using immunofluorescent analysis of cerebellar NPCs, we show that chromosome segregation defects contribute to the generation of cells with an aneuploid genomic complement. Nonmitotic cells were assessed by fluorescence‐activated cell sorting (FACS) coupled with fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), which revealed neuronal and nonneuronal aneuploid populations in both the adult mouse and human cerebellum. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the prevalence of neural aneuploidy includes nontelencephalic portions of the neuraxis and suggest that the generation and maintenance of aneuploid cells is a widespread, if not universal, property of central nervous system development and organization. J. Comp. Neurol. 507:1944–1951, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Biofouling Growth in Cold Estuarine Waters and Evaluation of Some Chitosan and Copper Anti-Fouling Paints

Ecological concerns about antifouling paints containing non-green tin and copper compounds have highlighted the need for environmentally friendly alternatives. We report here a field test conducted in estuarine waters over two months designed to evaluate the efficiency of a number of active natural and man-made chemical ingredients added into a silicon-polyurethane marine paint. Early steps of biofouling in cold seawater of the St. Lawrence Estuary (Canada) were observed. Analyses, including dry biomass, flow cytometry and spectrofluorimetry, demonstrated a short-term antibacterial action of chitosan-based paints although no significant anti-algal action was observed. Cuprous oxide paints were efficient against bacteria and algae invasion in the first two weeks, especially those with added organic biocides such as isothiazolone and copper pyrithione. However, the overall dry biomass and chlorophyll a content were similar for all chitosan-and copper-based paints after 63 days. Microscopic observations revealed variation in the highly diverse benthic diatom population including species Navicula, Melosira, Cocconeis, Nitshzcia, Fragilaria and Amphora. Results suggest no real long-term efficiency for tested antifouling paints and highlight a particular need for green antifouling ingredients that are active under northern estuarine conditions.
Quantum‐Dot‐Doped Polymer Nanofibers for Optical Sensing

High-quality quantum-dot/polystyrene nanofibers (QD/PS NFs) are synthesized by drawing solvated PS doped with CdSe/ZnS QDs. As-drawn QD/PS NFs offer ultra-long-term photostability, flexibility, and excellent optical properties for sensing applications. Based on these active NFs, optical humidity sensors with extremely low power consumption, fast response, and long-term stability are successfully demonstrated, which may lead to a new category of nanometer-scale optical sensors.
An Information Theory Subspace Analysis Approach with Application to Anomaly Detection Ensembles

Identifying anomalies in multi-dimensional datasets is an important task in many real-world applications. A special case arises when anomalies are occluded in a small set of attributes (i.e., subspaces) of the data and not necessarily over the entire data space. In this paper, we propose a new subspace analysis approach named Agglomerative Attribute Grouping (AAG) that aims to address this challenge by searching for subspaces that comprise highly correlative attributes. Such correlations among attributes represent a systematic interaction among the attributes that can better reflect the behavior of normal observations and hence can be used to improve the identification of future abnormal data samples. AAG relies on a novel multi-attribute metric derived from information theory measures of partitions to evaluate the ”information distance” between groups of data attributes. The empirical evaluation demonstrates that AAG outperforms state-of-the-art subspace analysis methods, when they are used in anomaly detection ensembles, both in cases where anomalies are occluded in relatively small subsets of the available attributes and in cases where anomalies represent a new class (i.e., novelties). Finally, and in contrast to existing methods, AAG does not require any tuning of parameters.
A multinomial logistic model for ranking technical efficiency of public project

Ranking efficiency of large projects based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) could be used for grouping decision-making units. Utilizing the expert score tool on super efficiency results, we propose a multinomial regression model which aims to achieve the selection purpose of new public constructed projects. The efficiency of decision making units represented is estimated using the nonparametric frontier model of DEA and statistical inference for estimators is based on bootstrap. Conclusion is conducted that it ought to have at least one influential environmental factor that plays significant roles in terms of ranking public projects performance. And the method would be beneficial to the government decision-making process in public resource allocation and operation problems.
Optimisation of distribution networks using Genetic Algorithms. Part 2 - the Genetic Algorithm and Genetic Operators

This paper presents a methodology developed for the optimisation of distribution networks based on Genetic Algorithms (GA), specifically capacitated location-allocation problems. Due to the complexity and extent of the paper, it was split into two parts. Modelling issues and automatic generation of initial population of chromosomes were treated in the first part. This second part details the rest of the GA. Due to the intricacy of the problem, the GA was designed to work only with feasible chromosomes and modified operators were chosen to handle its highly constrained character. They are presented in detail. An example of applying the algorithm for 25 Production Facilities (PF), 10 Distribution Centres (DCs) and 25 Retailers (R) – including 520 variables, tightly interconnected – is presented, demonstrating the robustness of GA and its capacity to tackle problems of considerable size.
Concurrent/Resettable Zero-Knowledge With Concurrent Soundness in the Bare Public-Key Model and Its Applications

In this work, we investigate concurrent knowledge-extraction (CKE) and concurrent non-malleability (CNM) for concurrent (and stronger, resettable) ZK protocols in the bare public-key model. We formulate, driven by concrete attacks, and achieve CKE for constant-round concurrent/resettable arguments in the BPK model under standard polynomial assumptions. We get both generic and practical implementations. Here, CKE is a new concurrent verifier security that is strictly stronger than concurrent soundness in public-key model. We investigate, driven by concrete attacks, and clarify the subtleties in formulating CNM in the public-key model. We then give a new (augmented) CNM formulation in the public-key model and a construction of CNMZK in the public-key model satisfying the new CNM formulation.
(ONTO)2 Agent: an Ontology-based WWW broker to select ontologies

Knowledge reuse by means of ontologies now faces three important problems: (1) there are no standardized identifying features that characterize ontologies from the user point of view; (2) there are no web sites using the same logical organization, presenting relevant information about ontologies; and (3) the search for appropriate ontologies is hard, timeconsuming and usually fruitless. To solve the above problems, we present: (1) a living set of features that allow us to characterize ontologies from the user point of view and have the same logical organization; (2) a living domain ontology about ontologies (called Reference Ontology) that gathers, describes and has links to existing ontologies; and (3) (ONTO)2Agent, the ontology-based www broker about ontologies that uses the Reference Ontology as a source of its knowledge and retrieves descriptions of ontologies that satisfy a given set of constraints. (ONTO)2Agent is available at http://delicias.dia. fi.upm. es/REFERENCE_ONTOLOGY/
Evaluating Accessible Synchronous CMC Applications

This paper proposes a more comprehensive evaluation methodology to measure the usability and user experience qualities of accessible synchronous computer-mediated communication applications. The methodology goes beyond current practices by evaluating how the interaction between a user and a product influences the user experience of those at the other endpoint of the communication channel. A major contribution is given with the proposal of a user test where one of the participants tries to guess whether the other participant has a disability or not. The proposed test is inspired in the Turing Test, and is a consequence of user requirements elicited from a group of individuals with motor and speech disabilities. These ideas are tested and validated with two examples of synchronous communication applications.