Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An efficient subpixel image registration based on the phase-only correlations of image projections

This paper presents an efficient method of subpixel image registration based on the phase-only correlations (POCs) of image projections. Conventional POC-based methods need the two-dimensional discrete Fourier transforms three-times for calculating the 2-D POC of images. In order to reduce the computational cost caused by the two-dimensional discrete Fourier transforms, we decompose the two-dimensional POC of images into two one-dimensional POCs of the image projections. The vertical displacement and horizontal displacement are estimated with subpixel accuracy using the POC of the horizontal image projections and the POC of the vertical image projections, respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed method can estimate the subpixel displacement between two given images with high accuracy at a low computational cost.
Post ranking in a blogosphere: algorithms and evaluation

Existing algorithms of post ranking in a blogosphere do not consider the information on categories and timestamps of posts, which is valuable to improve the accuracy of post rankings. The category, created by a blogger, implies her/his interesting topics, and the timestamps, which indicates the creation times of a post and a blog action, are closely related to the quality of a post. In this paper, we propose three strategies that exploit the information related to the categories and timestamps, and address how to apply it to four existing post ranking algorithms, i.e., PostRank, BAITS, BloggerAVG, and PBFS. We evaluate the accuracy of these algorithms by conducting extensive experiments using real-world blog data. The results show that our strategies help each algorithm improve the accuracy.
CELLULAR MECHANISMS OF PROTEIN METABOLISM IN THE NEPHRON

Parenteral injection of amino acids resulted in the formation of Gram-positive droplets in the cytoplasm of the proximal convoluted tubule cells of the kidney of the rat within 15 minutes after intravenous administration. At this time the free alpha amino nitrogen in the cortex of the kidney had increased 2-fold. At the end of 1 hour this level was still somewhat higher than that of the control animals. The administration of increasing amounts of the amino acid disclosed the existence of a maximal concentration level in the renal cortex. When it was reached droplets appeared. Fractionation of the cells 15 minutes after the injection of lysine resulted in the recovery of free amino acid in the supernatant fluid but 1 hour after the injection lysine was contained within the particulate protein of the fractions which contain droplets. The increase in lysine was of the order of 2- 3-fold. It is concluded that the mitochondria-droplet complex is a locus of amino acid concentration and metabolism within the cytoplasm of the renal cell. A method is described for the determination of lysine in micro quantities.
Assessing a Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction-Based Approach to Biological Network Reconstruction

Deeper understanding of biological processes requires a systems perspective, integrating knowledge of both component elements (genes, proteins, metabolites, etc.), as well as their broader interactions. Graph theory provides a rich language for describing and analyzing these sorts of complex, networked systems. But, reliable inference of biological network structure from noisy, high-dimensional, and still fundamentally limited data remains a challenging problem. A promising avenue involves integrating nonlinear dimensionality reduction (DR) approaches with network analysis and reconstruction algorithms. Beyond basic dimensionality reduction, these approaches can potentially accentuate latent structure and organize data in ways that allow integration of diverse information sources, including prior knowledge. Software tools for performing elements of this analysis exist, but they are distributed over many packages, which often do not interact easily together.
Cognitive Dysfunction Is Sustained after Rescue Therapy in Experimental Cerebral Malaria, and Is Reduced by Additive Antioxidant Therapy

Neurological impairments are frequently detected in children surviving cerebral malaria (CM), the most severe neurological complication of infection with Plasmodium falciparum. The pathophysiology and therapy of long lasting cognitive deficits in malaria patients after treatment of the parasitic disease is a critical area of investigation. In the present study we used several models of experimental malaria with differential features to investigate persistent cognitive damage after rescue treatment. Infection of C57BL/6 and Swiss (SW) mice with Plasmodium berghei ANKA (PbA) or a lethal strain of Plasmodium yoelii XL (PyXL), respectively, resulted in documented CM and sustained persistent cognitive damage detected by a battery of behavioral tests after cure of the acute parasitic disease with chloroquine therapy. Strikingly, cognitive impairment was still present 30 days after the initial infection. In contrast, BALB/c mice infected with PbA, C57BL6 infected with Plasmodium chabaudi chabaudi and SW infected with non lethal Plasmodium yoelii NXL (PyNXL) did not develop signs of CM, were cured of the acute parasitic infection by chloroquine, and showed no persistent cognitive impairment. Reactive oxygen species have been reported to mediate neurological injury in CM. Increased production of malondialdehyde (MDA) and conjugated dienes was detected in the brains of PbA-infected C57BL/6 mice with CM, indicating high oxidative stress. Treatment of PbA-infected C57BL/6 mice with additive antioxidants together with chloroquine at the first signs of CM prevented the development of persistent cognitive damage. These studies provide new insights into the natural history of cognitive dysfunction after rescue therapy for CM that may have clinical relevance, and may also be relevant to cerebral sequelae of sepsis and other disorders.
An Empirical Analysis of RL's Drift From Its Behaviorism Roots

We present an empirical survey of reinforcement learning techniques and relate these techniques to concepts from behaviorism, a field of psychology concerned with the learning process. Specifically, we examine two standard RL algorithms, model-free SARSA, and model-based R-MAX, when used with various shaping techniques. We consider multiple techniques for incorporating shaping into these algorithms, including the use of options and potentialbased shaping. Findings indicate any improvement in sample complexity that results from shaping is limited at best. We suggest that this is either due to reinforcement learning not modeling behaviorism well, or behaviorism not modeling animal learning well. We further suggest that a paradigm shift in reinforcement learning techniques is required before the kind of learning performance that techniques from behaviorism indicate are possible can be realized.
An Incremental Polynomial Model Network for System Modelling and Control

For the purposes of control, it is essential that the chosen class of models is transparent in the sense that the model structure and parameters may be interpreted in the context of control system design. The unclear representation of the system developed by most of the neural networks highly restrict their application for system modelling and control. Local computation tends to give clarity into the neural representation. The local models network (LMN) applies this method while adapting diierent models to diierent operating regions of the system. This paper builds on the Local Model Network approach and makes two main contributions: the network is not of a xed structure, but rather is constructed incrementally on line and the models are not linear but rather polynomial in the variables. The resulting network is named the incre-mental polynomial model network (IPMN). In this paper we show that the transparency of the IPMN's representation makes model analysis and control design straight forward. The many advantages of this approach exposed in conclusion demonstrate the powerful capability of the IPMN to model and control non-linear systems.
Twice-Exceptional College Students Identified as Gifted and Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Comparative Case Study.

This comparative case study investigated the college experiences of twice-exceptional college students identified as gifted and diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (GTASD). Increasing numbers of students with ASD are entering universities (NCES, 2008; Shattuck et al., 2012) making the identification of supports for their academic success imperative. However, little is known about their college experiences and their challenges in transitioning to higher education settings. This study examined the college experience from the perspective of the GTASD college student. Based on ecological systems theory, five cases were designed that included ten participants. Each of the five cases contained one GTASD college student and their respective advocate. Data was collected from multiple sources (twenty-five interviews of students and advocates, student generated photographs, and an online demographic and educational experiences surveys) and analyzed from a grounded theory perspective. Findings from this study indicated that accurate diagnosis of autism and early identification of giftedness is needed to determine individual differences and provide
Emotion recognition from telephone speech using acoustic and nonlinear features

This paper addresses the problem of the automatic recognition of emotional states from speech recordings, especially those kind of emotions reflecting that the life or the human integrity are at risk. The paper compares the performance of two different systems: one being fed with speech signals recorded directly from the people (whole spectrum) and other one in which the speech signals are recorded through a telephone channel. The characterization stage is based on cepstral, noise and nonlinear features, and the classification strategy uses a fusion of multiple classifiers (Gaussian Mixture Models - Universal Background Model and Support Vector Machines). The proposed system achieves classification rates around 99%, even in the case of telephone speech.
Managing Legal Precedents with Case Retrieval Nets

Knowledge in the legal domain assumes two distinct forms: case law and legislation. Case law complements legislation, and refers to the use of cases decided in court to provide interpretations to subjective aspects of the legislation. These cases are used as guidance in future similar cases. This paper presents a Case-Based Reasoning system that establishes legal case-bases, allowing the users to find and retrieve information on cases similar to current ones. The system uses Case Retrieval Nets to index the cases, and Information Extraction techniques together with an ontology to semi-automate the conversion of legal texts into cases.
Are external knee load and EMG measures accurate indicators of internal knee contact forces during gait?

Mechanical loading is believed to be a critical factor in the development and treatment of knee osteoarthritis. However, the contact forces to which the knee articular surfaces are subjected during daily activities cannot be measured clinically. Thus, the ability to predict internal knee contact forces accurately using external measures (i.e., external knee loads and muscle electromyographic [EMG] signals) would be clinically valuable. We quantified how well external knee load and EMG measures predict internal knee contact forces during gait. A single subject with a force‐measuring tibial prosthesis and post‐operative valgus alignment performed four gait patterns (normal, medial thrust, walking pole, and trunk sway) to induce a wide range of external and internal knee joint loads. Linear regression analyses were performed to assess how much of the variability in internal contact forces was accounted for by variability in the external measures. Though the different gait patterns successfully induced significant changes in the external and internal quantities, changes in external measures were generally weak indicators of changes in total, medial, and lateral contact force. Our results suggest that when total contact force may be changing, caution should be exercised when inferring changes in knee contact forces based on observed changes in external knee load and EMG measures. Advances in musculoskeletal modeling methods may be needed for accurate estimation of in vivo knee contact forces. © 2012 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 31: 921–929, 2013
Temporal stability of ADHD in the high-IQ population: results from the MGH Longitudinal Family Studies of ADHD.

OBJECTIVE The diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in high-IQ youths remains controversial. METHOD To further explore the diagnostic validity of ADHD in this population, we studied two cohorts of high-IQ youths, both with and without ADHD, across a 4.5-year period. RESULTS Compared to those without ADHD, high-IQ youths with ADHD had significantly higher rates of mood, anxiety, and disruptive behavior disorders at follow-up. In addition, ADHD status was a significant predictor for higher impairments across most social, academic, and family functional domains. Associations between baseline and follow-up IQ scores did not differ between groups. Syndromal persistence rates of ADHD were similar between high-IQ and average-IQ youths with ADHD. CONCLUSIONS These results provide further support for the predictive validity of ADHD in high-IQ youths.
Dynamic spectrum management for next-generation DSL systems

The performance of DSL systems is severely constrained by crosstalk due to the electromagnetic coupling among the multiple twisted pairs making up a phone cable. In order to reduce performance loss arising from crosstalk, DSL systems are currently designed under the assumption of worst-case crosstalk scenarios leading to overly conservative DSL deployments. This article presents a new paradigm for DSL system design, which takes into account the multi-user aspects of the DSL transmission environment. Dynamic spectrum management (DSM) departs from the current design philosophy by enabling transceivers to autonomously and dynamically optimize their communication settings with respect to both the channel and the transmissions of neighboring systems. Along with this distributed optimization, when an additional degree of coordination becomes available for future DSL deployment, DSM will allow even greater improvement in DSL performance. Implementations are readily applicable without causing any performance degradation to the existing DSLs under static spectrum management. After providing an overview of the DSM concept, this article reviews two practical DSM methods: iterative water-filling, an autonomous distributed power control method enabling great improvement in performance, which can be implemented through software options in some existing ADSL and VDSL systems; and vectored-DMT, a coordinated transmission/reception technique achieving crosstalk-free communication for DSL systems, which brings within reach the dream of providing universal Internet access at speeds close to 100 Mb/s to 500 m on 1-2 lines and beyond 1 km on 2-4 lines. DSM-capable DSL thus enables the broadband age.
Including virtual constraints in motion planning for anthropomorphic hands

This paper copes with the problem of finding a collision-free path for a hand-arm robotic system from an initial unconstrained configuration to a final grasping (or preshape) one. The aim is to obtain a natural motion as a sequence of human-like postures that both capture the coupling that there exist between the fingers of the human hand and also maintain the palm oriented towards the object to be grasped. The proposed method is a sampling-based approach whose efficiency relies in the reduction of the dimensionality obtained by considering, for the finger joints, a subspace determined by the main principal motion directions that capture the coupling and, for the position and orientation of the palm, the submanifold that satisfies the orientation constraint. The approach is illustrated with an example and compared to the case where no virtual constrains are used, validating the proposal.
Wireless security threat taxonomy

Several papers have published very specific threats to wireless networks; specifically in the area of attacks against the IEEE 802.11 Wired Equivalency Protocol (WEP). Other papers have addressed wireless attacks based on the attack models used in wired networks. However, the different characteristics of wireless networks require looking at the threat differently. We present a wireless threat taxonomy that we used to build the security architecture for the wireless network at West Point.
Reward craving and withdrawal relief craving: assessment of different motivational pathways to alcohol intake.

AIMS Craving for the rewarding effects of alcohol may be evoked by conditioned alcohol-like effects whereas conditioned compensatory responses may induce withdrawal relief craving. We tested the hypothesis that drinking in positive emotional states is associated with appetitive reactions to alcohol-associated cues and contributes to reward craving, while conditioned withdrawal is associated with drinking in negative situations and distressful, obsessive preoccupations with alcohol. METHODS In 38 detoxified alcoholics, the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale was used to assess the craving factors 'impaired control', 'interference with social functioning' and 'obsession'. Affective responses to alcohol-associated visual stimuli were measured with the affect-modulated eyeblink startle reflex, positive and negative drinking situations with the Inventory of Drinking Situations (IDS) and withdrawal-like symptoms preceding alcohol intake with the revised Clinical Institute Assessment for Alcohol Scale (CIWA-Ar). RESULTS Appetitive reactions to alcohol-associated cues correlated positively with drinking in positive situations and contributed significantly to the craving factor 'interference' with social and work functioning. The severity of withdrawal-like symptoms preceding alcohol intake contributed to the craving factor 'obsession'; however, contrary to our hypothesis, this measure of conditioned withdrawal correlated with drinking not only in negative but also in positive situations. CONCLUSIONS Drinking in positive and negative situations, appetitive reactions to alcohol and withdrawal-like symptoms contributed differentially to the craving factors 'obsession' and 'interference', supporting the notion of different craving factors with separate underlying mechanisms.
Naive psychology and the inverted Turing test

This paper argues that the Turing test implicitly rests on a ‘naive psychology,’ a naturally evolved psychological faculty which is used to predict and understand the behaviour of others in complex societies. This natural faculty is an important and implicit bias in the observer’s tendency to ascribe mentality to the system in the test. The paper analyses the effects of this naive psychology on the Turing test, both from the side of the system and the side of the observer, and then proposes and justifies an inverted version of the test which allows the processes of ascription to be analysed more directly than in the standard version.
Evidence for a causal role of the renin-angiotensin system in nitrate tolerance.

BACKGROUND We have previously shown that nitroglycerin (NTG) therapy increases vascular expression of endothelin 1 (ET-1) and stimulates vascular superoxide (O2.-) production via activation of NADH/NADPH oxidases. Both phenomena are stimulated by angiotensin II in vitro, and the renin-angiotensin system is activated during early nitrate therapy. We hypothesized that either angiotensin II or ET-1 may increase vascular O2. - production during nitrate therapy. METHODS AND RESULTS In New Zealand White rabbits, 3 days of treatment with NTG patches increased plasma renin activity for the entire treatment period. After 24 hours of NTG treatment, angiotensin II type 1 (AT1) receptor expression and vascular ACE activity were significantly decreased. At this time, constrictions to angiotensin I and II were depressed, but there was no loss of NTG vasodilator potency. Within 3 days of continuous NTG treatment, relaxations to NTG were markedly blunted. This was associated with an increase in AT1 receptor mRNA expression, a return of ACE activity back to baseline, and a marked increase in constrictions to angiotensin I and II despite continuously increased plasma renin activity. Tolerance was associated with a 2-fold increase in vascular O2. -, as estimated by lucigenin-enhanced chemiluminescence. Concomitant treatment with the AT1 receptor antagonist losartan (5 to 25 mg. kg-1. d-1) dose-dependently normalized vascular O2. - and prevented tolerance to NTG and cross-tolerance to endogenous nitric oxide released by acetylcholine. The nonselective ET-1 receptor blocker bosentan (100 mg. kg-1. d-1) had similar but less pronounced effects. CONCLUSIONS The positive effects of AT1 and ET-1 receptor blockade on tolerance and O2. - production imply a pathophysiological role for angiotensin II and to some extent for ET-1 in the development of nitrate tolerance.
Improving Rendering Performance by Texture-Map-Based Triangle Strips

Improving the rendering performance is a basic problem for computer graphics system. In this paper, we are aiming to investigate the impact on the rendering performance of some geometry compression methods. These methods are devised to optimize the use of the vertex cache. We will study how they interact with the on-chip texture cache. Based on the study, one simple method of improving rendering by texture-map-based triangle strips is proposed to balance the use of the vertex and texture caches. We have conducted the experiments to show the effectiveness of this method.
Nimotuzumab combined with concurrent chemoradiotherapy in locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma: a retrospective analysis

Nimotuzumab is a blocking monoclonal antibody against epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). However, little is known about the safety and preliminary efficacy of nimotuzumab combined with concurrent chemoradiotherapy in locally advanced NPC patients. A total of 42 patients diagnosed between 2011 and 2013 were enrolled. Our results demonstrated 38 patients had a complete response (90.5%), 4 patients had a partial response (9.5%). And no patients had progressive disease at early treatment response evaluation, giving an ORR of 100%. The 2-year local recurrence-free survival (LRFS), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) and overall survival (OS) were 96.4%, 93.1% and 96.6% respectively. The most common adverse events were mucositis (19 patients), hematology toxicity (14 patients) with 6 and 3 cases of grade 3/4 toxicity respectively. Skin rash was not developed in our 43 patients. Thus, nimotuzumab combined with concurrent chemoradiotherapy showed encouraging outcomes in the treatment of locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, without accumulation of toxicity and well-tolerated.