Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Study of the Reliable Fully Convolutional Networks with Tree Arranged Outputs (TAO-FCN) for Handwritten String Recognition

The handwritten string recognition is still a challengeable task, though the powerful deep learning tools were introduced. In this paper, based on TAO-FCN, we proposed an end-to-end system for handwritten string recognition. Compared with the conventional methods, there is no preprocess nor manually designed rules employed. With enough labelled data, it is easy to apply the proposed method to different applications. Although the performance of the proposed method may not be comparable with the state-of-the-art approaches, it's usability and robustness are more meaningful for practical applications.
Autophagy and Human Neurodegenerative Diseases—A Fly’s Perspective

Neurodegenerative diseases in humans are frequently associated with prominent accumulation of toxic protein inclusions and defective organelles. Autophagy is a process of bulk lysosomal degradation that eliminates these harmful substances and maintains the subcellular environmental quality. In support of autophagy’s importance in neuronal homeostasis, several genetic mutations that interfere with autophagic processes were found to be associated with familial neurodegenerative disorders. In addition, genetic mutations in autophagy-regulating genes provoked neurodegenerative phenotypes in animal models. The Drosophila model significantly contributed to these recent developments, which led to the theory that autophagy dysregulation is one of the major underlying causes of human neurodegenerative disorders. In the current review, we discuss how studies using Drosophila enhanced our understanding of the relationship between autophagy and neurodegenerative processes.
Role of fibronectin in primary mesenchyme cell migration in the sea urchin

We studied the effect of fibronectin (FN) on the behavior of primary mesenchyme cells isolated from sea urchin mesenchyme blastulae in vitro using a time-lapse technique. The migration of isolated primary mesenchyme cells reconstituted in seawater and horse serum is dependent on the presence or absence of exogenous FN in the culture media. The cells in FN, 4 and 40 micrograms/ml, show a high percentage of migration and migrate long distances, whereas a higher concentration of FN at 400 micrograms/ml tends to inhibit migration.
Conserved Substitution Patterns around Nucleosome Footprints in Eukaryotes and Archaea Derive from Frequent Nucleosome Repositioning through Evolution

Nucleosomes, the basic repeat units of eukaryotic chromatin, have been suggested to influence the evolution of eukaryotic genomes, both by altering the propensity of DNA to mutate and by selection acting to maintain or exclude nucleosomes in particular locations. Contrary to the popular idea that nucleosomes are unique to eukaryotes, histone proteins have also been discovered in some archaeal genomes. Archaeal nucleosomes, however, are quite unlike their eukaryotic counterparts in many respects, including their assembly into tetramers (rather than octamers) from histone proteins that lack N- and C-terminal tails. Here, we show that despite these fundamental differences the association between nucleosome footprints and sequence evolution is strikingly conserved between humans and the model archaeon Haloferax volcanii. In light of this finding we examine whether selection or mutation can explain concordant substitution patterns in the two kingdoms. Unexpectedly, we find that neither the mutation nor the selection model are sufficient to explain the observed association between nucleosomes and sequence divergence. Instead, we demonstrate that nucleosome-associated substitution patterns are more consistent with a third model where sequence divergence results in frequent repositioning of nucleosomes during evolution. Indeed, we show that nucleosome repositioning is both necessary and largely sufficient to explain the association between current nucleosome positions and biased substitution patterns. This finding highlights the importance of considering the direction of causality between genetic and epigenetic change.
Pomegranate Protection against Cardiovascular Diseases

The current paper summarizes the antioxidative and antiatherogenic effects of pomegranate polyphenols on serum lipoproteins and on arterial macrophages (two major components of the atherosclerotic lesion), using both in vitro and in vivo humans and mice models. Pomegranate juice and its by-products substantially reduced macrophage cholesterol and oxidized lipids accumulation, and foam cell formation (the hallmark of early atherogenesis), leading to attenuation of atherosclerosis development, and its consequent cardiovascular events.
Sensor Guided Robot Path Generation for Surface Repair Tasks on a Large-Scale Buoyancy Module

In the offshore oil and gas industry, the repair of damaged drilling riser buoyancy modules (DRBMs) currently involves the removal of defective regions using hand-held abrasive tools. This operation is not only time consuming, but also exposes the worker to hazardous materials generated by the grinding process. In order to increase productivity and minimize occupational health hazards, an automated robotic repair system is developed. The DRBM has a large and almost featureless surface making it particularly challenging to accurately and efficiently detect and localize all the defective regions on the surface. To address these challenges, an eye-in-hand monocular vision system is used to generate the DRBM's global surface map. The defective regions can then be identified from the map using ellipse detection algorithms, and subsequently removed with a robotic manipulator. Experimental results have shown that the proposed solution is able to accurately and efficiently remove defective regions on the surface of DRBMs.
Biofabrication of Tissue Scaffolds

Tissue engineering is an emerging interdisciplinary field that applies the principles of life science and engineering to produce engineered tissues for the repair and replacement of damaged tissues or organs [1]. In tissue engineering, tissue scaffolds play a crucial role. A tissue scaffold is a three-dimensional (3D) structure made from biological materials and bio‐ materials, which is used to facilitate cell/tissue growth and the transport of nutrients and wastes while degrading gradually itself. To fabricate such tissue scaffolds, a number of fab‐ rication techniques have been developed and reported in the literature and these techniques can generally be classified into two categories: conventional and advanced. Conventional techniques [2], including solvent-casting, particulate-leaching, and freeze drying, can build scaffolds with interconnected porous structures. However, they offer little capacity to pre‐ cisely control pore size, pore geometry, pore interconnectivity, and spatial distribution of pores or allow for the construction of internal channels within the scaffolds. Ideally, scaf‐ folds should not only provide a supporting structure but also the chemical, mechanical, and biological signals required to respond to environmental stimuli. As an alternative to conven‐ tional scaffold fabrication methods, advanced fabrication techniques have recently been de‐ veloped in tissue engineering, such as electrospinning [3], a nanotechnology-based fabrication technique, and rapid prototyping [4], a class of techniques by which a 3D scaf‐ fold is fabricated by laying down multiple, precisely formed layers in succession. With the development of such advanced tissue engineering fabrication techniques, the new concept of "biofabrication" has emerged. Biofabrication is defined as the production of complex liv‐ ing and non-living biological products from raw materials, such as living cells, molecules, extracellular matrices, and biomaterials. It has the potential to be the manufacturing para‐ digm of the 21st century and makes a significant contribution to the development of tissue engineering strategies [5].
Cost-effectiveness of pneumococcal vaccination strategies for the elderly in Korea

Background Although the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) showed good efficacy against pneumococcal disease in the the CAPiTA trial, the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccination (PPSV23) program has been ongoing for older adults aged ≥ 65 years in Korea since May of 2013. This study aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the current vaccination strategy (a single-dose PPSV23 vaccination) compared to a single-dose PCV13 vaccination and sequential PCV13-PPSV23 vaccinations in the elderly population aged ≥ 65 years. Methods Using a Markov model, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of three vaccination strategies were assessed in a societal context. The transition probabilities, utility weights to estimate quality adjusted life year (QALY), and disease treatment costs were either calculated or cited from published data and the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. Simulations were performed in hypothetical cohorts of Korean adults aged ≥ 19 years. The vaccine effectiveness of PPSV23 was cited from a Cochrane Review report, while PCV13 effectiveness data were gathered from the CAPiTA trial. Results Current PPSV23 vaccination strategies were cost-effective (ICER, $25,786 per QALY). However, the administration of PCV13 as a substitute for PPSV23 was shown to be more cost-effective than PPSV23 vaccination (ICER, $797 per QALY). Sequential PCV13-PPSV23 vaccination was also more cost-effective than PPSV23 for elderly people aged ≥ 65 years. In sensitivity analysis assuming significant PPSV23 effectiveness (50%) against non-bacteremic pneumococcal pneumonia, the PCV13 vaccination strategy was superior to the PPSV23 vaccination strategy in terms of cost-effectiveness. Conclusion The results suggest that PCV13 vaccination is more cost-effective in elderly subjects aged ≥ 65 years compared to the current PPSV23 vaccination strategy. When complete data is obtained in 2018 on the maximal herd effects of childhood PCV13 immunization, the incidence of pneumococcal pneumonia and the cost-effectiveness of vaccination strategies need to be reassessed.
Notification Services for Mobile and Wireless Terminals - A Class of Services Appropriate for Mobile Scenarios

A component (17) made of an aluminum silicon cast alloy whose surface is at least partly subjected to an anodic treatment to produce an oxide layer, which component comprises, prior to the anodic treatment, a surface-proximate deformation zone (4) configured as a homogeneous zone in which the silicon is uniformly distributed in the alpha -mixed crystal (1) and due to this homogeneous mixing of aluminum and silicon, the differing electric conductivities of the original structural constituents ( alpha -mixed crystal, eutectic) are replaced by a uniform electric conductivity so that uniform oxide layers can grow during the anodizing process.
FLAG n' FLARE: Fast Linearly-Coupled Adaptive Gradient Methods

We consider first order gradient methods for effectively optimizing a composite objective in the form of a sum of smooth and, potentially, non-smooth functions. We present accelerated and adaptive gradient methods, called FLAG and FLARE, which can offer the best of both worlds. They can achieve the optimal convergence rate by attaining the optimal first-order oracle complexity for smooth convex optimization. Additionally, they can adaptively and non-uniformly re-scale the gradient direction to adapt to the limited curvature available and conform to the geometry of the domain. We show theoretically and empirically that, through the compounding effects of acceleration and adaptivity, FLAG and FLARE can be highly effective for many data fitting and machine learning applications.
The algebra of open and interconnected systems

Herein we develop category-theoretic tools for understanding network-style diagrammatic languages. The archetypal network-style diagrammatic language is that of electric circuits; other examples include signal flow graphs, Markov processes, automata, Petri nets, chemical reaction networks, and so on. The key feature is that the language is comprised of a number of components with multiple (input/output) terminals, each possibly labelled with some type, that may then be connected together along these terminals to form a larger network. The components form hyperedges between labelled vertices, and so a diagram in this language forms a hypergraph. We formalise the compositional structure by introducing the notion of a hypergraph category. Network-style diagrammatic languages and their semantics thus form hypergraph categories, and semantic interpretation gives a hypergraph functor. The first part of this thesis develops the theory of hypergraph categories. In particular, we introduce the tools of decorated cospans and corelations. Decorated cospans allow straightforward construction of hypergraph categories from diagrammatic languages: the inputs, outputs, and their composition are modelled by the cospans, while the 'decorations' specify the components themselves. Not all hypergraph categories can be constructed, however, through decorated cospans. Decorated corelations are a more powerful version that permits construction of all hypergraph categories and hypergraph functors. These are often useful for constructing the semantic categories of diagrammatic languages and functors from diagrams to the semantics. To illustrate these principles, the second part of this thesis details applications to linear time-invariant dynamical systems and passive linear networks.
Atopic dermatitis: a genetic-epidemiologic study in a population-based twin sample.

BACKGROUND Atopic dermatitis is a common multifactorial disease that seems to be increasing in frequency. OBJECTIVE Our purpose was to evaluate and expand previous findings on the incidence of atopic dermatitis and its concordance rates in twins. METHODS A mailed questionnaire study was conducted. It involved 812 twin pairs living in Fyn County, Denmark, as of Jan. 1, 1987 and born between 1965 and 1979. Zygosity was determined by the similarity method. RESULTS The response rate was 92%. The cumulative incidence rate (up to 7 years) of atopic dermatitis increased significantly from 0.06 for the birth cohort 1965-1969 to 0.12 for the birth cohort 1975-1979. The pairwise concordance rate was 0.72 in monozygotic and 0.23 in dizygotic twin pairs. CONCLUSION The frequency of atopic dermatitis is still increasing but not as rapidly as in the 1960s. The magnitude of the concordance rates indicates that genetic factors are decisive in the development of atopic dermatitis. It is suggested that widespread environmental factors are operating in genetically susceptible persons.
A structural method based on fuzzy approach at producing emotional data

Human-machine interaction includes various challenges. Emotion recognition is one of the most important issues, which researchers become interested in recent years. Text content is the core of emotional data. The text of emotional data plays significant role in the emotional states. Textual content is important due to the fuzzy behavior, variegation in the meaning of words, and the effect of meaning on emotional states. Accordingly, meaning independent text which its polarity is neutral should be applied on the emotional data. This type of text induces advantages such as: multiple meanings are not generated, multiple emotional states are not perceived from one sentence and the phonotactics has no effect on the emotional states. This paper investigates the related challenges and proposes a structural method for designing the text of emotional data. The results illustrate emotional data which their text has been designed via proposed method eventuate higher performance in the emotion recognition. The proposed method was applied in the Persian language and the Persian Meaning Independent Text Dataset was born. The proposed method is not unique to the Persian language and it has been potential to apply to all languages.
COMPARING THE PROSODIC FEATURES OF ENGLISH, GERMAN, SPANISH AND FRENCH

By-Delattre, Pierre Comparing the Vocalic Features of English, German, Spanish, and French. Pub Date 64 Note-28p. Journal CitIRAL; v2 n2 p71-97 1964 EDRS Price MF -S0.25 HC-S1.50 Descriptors-Acoustic Phonetics, Articulation (Speech), Charts, *Comparative Analysis, English, French, German, Illustrations, Language Instruction, Language Research, Linguistics, *Modern Languages, Phonetic Analysis, * P hone tic s, Spanish, Tables (Data), *Vowels Phonetic characteristics of English, German, Spanish, and French vowels are compared and contrasted in this third of a series of articles on general phonetic characteristics of American. English. Much attention is given to acoustic and articulatory description. Vowel distribution, frequency, and duration are discussed. New vowel sounds for the speaker of English are identified in the other languages. Neutral vowel position, loss of vowel color, consonant anticipation, diphthongization, vowel color and syllable type, attack and release, and nasality are considered. For related documents see FL 000 782 and FL 000 784. (AF)
Valence-arousal analysis for mental-health document retrieval

The increasing incidence of depression has attracted increased attention to mental-health document retrieval techniques which aims to help individuals efficiently locate documents and resources relevant to their depressive problems. However, current retrieval systems generally have low accuracy. We propose combining a Valence-Arousal-based (VA-based) retrieval model and other word-based retrieval models to improve the precision of retrieval results. The VA-based retrieval model considers affective words extracted from queries, which help provide a better understanding of user queries. Experimental results demonstrate that the combined methods outperform the word-based retrieval models which adopt word-level information alone, such as vector space model and BM25 model.
Postal Envelope Segmentation using Learning-Based Approach

This paper presents a learning-based approach to segment postal address blocks where the learning step uses only one pair of images (a sample image and its ideal segmented solution). First, this approach learns the available knowledge among pixels (each gray level) in an input image and its corresponding output in the ideal segmented solution. A classification array is generated which is re-utilized during the segmentation of new images. Features are extracted and updated by means of an adaptive square neighborhood. At the moment of new image segmentation, the submitted images are segmented by means of a k-Nearest Neighbor ( k-NN ) algorithm that seeks, for each pixel, the best solution in the classification array. Tests on a database of 200 complex envelope images were performed and a pixel to pixel accuracy measure validates the new approach. Results compared to other approaches for the same database show the efficiency and performance of the proposed learning-based approach. Success rates achieved for address block, stamps, rubber stamps and noise suggest that the features used in the proposed approach improves the segmentation results.
Prevalence of and Risk Factors for Oral Human Papillomavirus Infection With Multiple Genotypes in the United States

Background This study investigated the prevalence of and risk factors for oral human papillomavirus (HPV) infection with multiple genotypes in the United States. Methods Data were from the nationally representative 2009–2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This analysis comprised 9257 participants for whom data on oral HPV (37 genotypes) and associated risk factors were available. Results The weighted prevalence of multitype (2–6 types) oral HPV infection was 1.5% (2.5% for men, 0.4% for women) in the whole sample and 19.7% (22.0% for men, 12.1% for women) in those who had any type of oral HPV positivity. Most multitype oral HPV cases (83.8%) harbored one or more oncogenic types. In the adjusted multinominal logistic regression model, being male (relative risk ratio [RRR] = 3.69; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.57–8.65), being a current cigarette smoker (RRR = 2.57; 95% CI, 1.23–5.36), and having a new sex partner in the past year (RRR = 2.10; 95% CI, 1.03–4.28) were associated with an increased risk of multitype oral HPV infection over single-type HPV infection. Conclusions Men, smokers, and those who had new sexual partners were at a significantly higher risk for multitype oral HPV infection.
Mitogenomic differences between the normal and tumor cells of colorectal cancer patients

So far, a reliable spectrum of mitochondrial DNA mutations in colorectal cancer cells is still unknown, and neither is their significance in carcinogenesis. Indeed, it remains debatable whether mtDNA mutations are “drivers” or “passengers” of colorectal carcinogenesis. Thus, we analyzed 200 mitogenomes from normal and cancer tissues of 100 colorectal cancer patients. Minority variant mutations were detected at the 1% level. We showed that somatic mutations frequently occur in colorectal cancer cells (75%) and are randomly distributed across the mitochondrial genome. Mutational signatures of somatic mitogenome mutations suggest that they might arise through nucleotide deamination due to oxidative stress. The majority of somatic mutations localized within the coding region (in positions not known from the human phylogeny) and was potentially pathogenic to cell metabolism. Further analysis suggested that the relaxation of negative selection in the mitogenomes of colorectal cancer cells may allow accumulation of somatic mutations. Thus, a shift in glucose metabolism from oxidative phosphorylation to glycolysis may create advantageous conditions for accumulation of mtDNA mutations. Considering the fact that the presence of somatic mtDNA mutations was not associated with any clinicopathological features, we suggested that mtDNA somatic mutations are “passengers” rather than the cause of colorectal carcinogenesis.
Children With Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus: Self-Management Experiences in School.

BACKGROUND Children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) need to perform self-management activities at school and in other environments. Learning about their experiences at school is crucial to assist them in this challenging task. METHODS Qualitative interviews were conducted with children with T1DM, aged between 7 and 12. A scenario was created and puppets were used during the interviews to help the participating children to communicate about school, daily routines, and experiences in diabetes management. Data were collected over a period of 1 year and analyzed according to content analysis procedures. RESULTS Nineteen children, 13 boys and 6 girls, at the mean age of 9.8 ± 1.8 years and mean time since diagnosis of 3.3 years, participated in the study. Three themes were identified: lack of information on T1DM, diabetes self-care at school, and support received by the children. CONCLUSIONS The study provides useful information to understand the children's experiences in managing the disease at school. The partnership between school staff, health teams, children with T1DM, and their families need to be enhanced to promote appropriate strategies that improve the management of diabetes in this setting.