Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accurate Depth Map Estimation from Small Motions

With the growing use of digital lightweight cameras, generating 3D information has become an important challenge in computer vision. Despite several attempts presented in the literature to solve this challenge, it remains an open problem when it comes to the structural accuracy of the depth map and the required baseline (distance between the first and the last frames) to capture a sequence of images. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to compute a high quality dense depth map together with a semi-dense/dense 3D structure from a sequence of images captured on a narrow baseline. Computing the depth information from small motions has been a challenge for decades because of the uncertain calculation of depth values when using a small baseline - up to 12mm. The proposed method can, in fact, perform on a much wider range of baselines from 8 mm up to 400 mm while respecting the structure of the reference frame. The evaluation has been done on more than 10 sets of recorded small motion clips and for the wider baseline, on 7 sets of stereo images from Middlebury benchmark. Preliminary results indicate that the proposed method has a better performance in terms of structural accuracy in comparison with the current state of the art methods. Also, the performance of the proposed method remains stable even when only a low number of frames are available for processing.
Polyester-Based (Bio)degradable Polymers as Environmentally Friendly Materials for Sustainable Development

This review focuses on the polyesters such as polylactide and polyhydroxyalkonoates, as well as polyamides produced from renewable resources, which are currently among the most promising (bio)degradable polymers. Synthetic pathways, favourable properties and utilisation (most important applications) of these attractive polymer families are outlined. Environmental impact and in particular (bio)degradation of aliphatic polyesters, polyamides and related copolymer structures are described in view of the potential applications in various fields.
An inheritance model for supporting flexible displays of data structures

We have designed an inheritance model that reduces the effort required to define presentations of data structures of programs written in conventional languages. It assumes that the presentation of a data structure is determined by one or more attributes of the data structure; classifies data structures into several groups based on their types, contexts, siblings, ancestors and other properties; and allows an attribute to be defined once for all members of a group. These groups are arranged in multiple intersecting hierarchies, and a subgroup is allowed to inherit attributes from its supergroups(s). This paper motivates, describes, and illustrates our method of grouping values and arranging the value groups in inheritance hierarchies.
A dataflow pattern catalog for sound and music computing

This article describes a set of patterns the authors have seen emerging during years of experience developing assorted applications in the sound and music domain and receiving influences from theoretical models, existing systems, and colleagues. Those patterns aim at offering a generative pattern language that falls within a generic data flow architecture. Regardless the audio domain origins of the patterns, we foresee that they have applicability in other domains. Contributions of this paper are: General Dataflow Patterns, that address problems about how to organize high-level aspects of the dataflow architecture, by having different types of modules connections; Flow Implementation Patterns, that address how to physically transfer tokens from one module to another, according to the types of flow defined by the "general dataflow patterns". Tokens life-cycle, ownership and memory management are recurrent issues in those patterns; and finally, Network Usability Patterns, that address how humans can interact with dataflow networks.
Local and global effects of strong DNA bending induced during molecular dynamics simulations

DNA bending plays an important role in many biological processes, but its molecular and energetic details as a function of base sequence remain to be fully understood. Using a recently developed restraint, we have studied the controlled bending of four different B-DNA oligomers using molecular dynamics simulations. Umbrella sampling with the AMBER program and the recent parmbsc0 force field yield free energy curves for bending. Bending 15-base pair oligomers by 90° requires roughly 5 kcal mol−1, while reaching 150° requires of the order of 12 kcal mol−1. Moderate bending occurs mainly through coupled base pair step rolls. Strong bending generally leads to local kinks. The kinks we observe all involve two consecutive base pair steps, with disruption of the central base pair (termed Type II kinks in earlier work). A detailed analysis of each oligomer shows that the free energy of bending only varies quadratically with the bending angle for moderate bending. Beyond this point, in agreement with recent experiments, the variation becomes linear. An harmonic analysis of each base step yields force constants that not only vary with sequence, but also with the degree of bending. Both these observations suggest that DNA is mechanically more complex than simple elastic rod models would imply.
Special Issue on University Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer: Equity and the Technology Transfer Strategies of American Research Universities

American universities are experimenting with new mechanisms for promoting the commercialization of academic research and generating revenue from university intellectual property. This paper discusses mechanisms available to universities in managing the commercialization of intellectual property, considering equity as a technology transfer mechanism that offers advantages for both generating revenue and aligning the interests of universities, industry and faculty. Employing data from a national survey of Carnegie I and Carnegie II institutions, we document the recent rise in university equity holdings. We present and estimate a model that considers the university's use of equity to be a function of behavioral factors related to the university's prior experiences with licensing, success relative to other institutions, and the organization of the technology transfer office, as well as structural characteristics related to university type.
Using symbolic evaluation to understand behavior in configurable software systems

Many modern software systems are designed to be highly configurable, which increases flexibility but can make programs hard to test, analyze, and understand. We present an initial empirical study of how configuration options affect program behavior. We conjecture that, at certain levels of abstraction, configuration spaces are far smaller than the worst case, in which every configuration is distinct. We evaluated our conjecture by studying three configurable software systems: vsftpd, ngIRCd, and grep. We used symbolic evaluation to discover how the settings of run-time configuration options affect line, basic block, edge, and condition coverage for our subjects under a given test suite. Our results strongly suggest that for these subject programs, test suites, and configuration options, when abstracted in terms of the four coverage criteria above, configuration spaces are in fact much smaller than combinatorics would suggest and are effectively the composition of many small, self-contained groupings of options.
Nonphysician Medical Educators: A Literature Review and Job Description Resource

Purpose Designing, implementing, and evaluating high-quality, relevant education for physicians is of great importance. The purpose of this study was to describe the historical development of nonphysician medical educators, including health care professionals working in this role, and to develop a job description resource. Method In 2007, the authors conducted a historical content analysis and literature review to identify resources relevant to the early historical development of nonphysician medical educators. Also in 2007, they carried out a thorough review of the English-language literature, 1950–2007, to describe nonphysician health care professionals working as medical educators. To investigate job descriptions, the authors studied job boards of associations and medical education listservs, July 2006 to November 2007. Results Nonphysician educators have participated effectively in physicians’ learning for more than 80 years. Their popularity has grown exponentially in the last 15 years, as have the numbers of master’s-in-medical-education degree programs. The nonphysician medical educator can provide essential help to the overtaxed physician educator in many facets of the educational process, such as educational theory; curriculum design, validation, and evaluation; clinical instruction; and medical education research. The study of job descriptions yielded 237 distinctly different duties in 17 categories. Conclusions The nonphysician medical educator will never replace the physician educator. However, as team training, interdisciplinary education, and the general competencies become the norm, the need for the nonphysician medical educator will increase. The authors believe the use of nonphysician medical educators offers a way to improve the quality of physician clinical education while controlling costs. They also recommend areas for future research.
Omitting chest tube drainage after thoracoscopic major lung resection.

OBJECTIVES Absorbable mesh and fibrin glue applied to prevent alveolar air leakage contribute to reducing the length of chest tube drainage, length of hospitalization and the rate of pulmonary complications. This study investigated the feasibility of omitting chest tube drainage in selected patients undergoing thoracoscopic major lung resection. METHODS Intraoperative air leakages were sealed with fibrin glue and absorbable mesh in patients undergoing thoracoscopic major lung resection. The chest tube was removed just after tracheal extubation if no air leakages were detected in a suction-induced air leakage test, which is an original technique to confirm pneumostasis. Patients with bleeding tendency or extensive thoracic adhesions were excluded. RESULTS Chest tube drainage was omitted in 29 (58%) of 50 eligible patients and was used in 21 (42%) on the basis of suction-induced air leakage test results. Male gender and compromised pulmonary function were significantly associated with the failure to omit chest tube drainage (both, P < 0.05). Regardless of omitting the chest tube drainage, there were no adverse events during hospitalization, such as subcutaneous emphysema, pneumothorax, pleural effusion or haemothorax, requiring subsequent drainage. Furthermore, there was no prolonged air leakage in any patients: The mean length of chest tube drainage was only 0.9 days. Omitting the chest tube drainage was associated with reduced pain on the day of the operation (P = 0.046). CONCLUSIONS The refined strategy for pneumostasis allowed the omission of chest tube drainage in the majority of patients undergoing thoracoscopic major lung resection without increasing the risk of adverse events, which may contribute to a fast-track surgery.
Bioassay-Guided Antidiabetic Study of Phaleria macrocarpa Fruit Extract

An earlier anti-hyperglycemic study with serial crude extracts of Phaleria macrocarpa (PM) fruit indicated methanol extract (ME) as the most effective. In the present investigation, the methanol extract was further fractionated to obtain chloroform (CF), ethyl acetate (EAF), n-butanol (NBF) and aqueous (AF) fractions, which were tested for antidiabetic activity. The NBF reduced blood glucose (p < 0.05) 15 min after administration, in an intraperitoneal glucose tolerance test (IPGTT) similar to metformin. Moreover, it lowered blood glucose in diabetic rats by 66.67% (p < 0.05), similar to metformin (51.11%), glibenclamide (66.67%) and insulin (71.43%) after a 12-day treatment, hence considered to be the most active fraction. Further fractionation of NBF yielded sub-fractions I (SFI) and II (SFII), and only SFI lowered blood glucose (p < 0.05), in IPGTT similar to glibenclamide. The ME, NBF, and SFI correspondingly lowered plasma insulin (p < 0.05) and dose-dependently inhibited glucose transport across isolated rat jejunum implying an extra-pancreatic mechanism. Phytochemical screening showed the presence of flavonoids, terpenes and tannins, in ME, NBF and SFI, and LC-MS analyses revealed 9.52%, 33.30% and 22.50% mangiferin respectively. PM fruit possesses anti-hyperglycemic effect, exerted probably through extra-pancreatic action. Magniferin, contained therein may be responsible for this reported activity.
Erythrocyte DHA level as a biomarker of DHA status in specific brain regions of n-3 long-chain PUFA-supplemented aged rats

n-3 Long-chain PUFA (n-3 LC-PUFA), particularly EPA and DHA, play a key role in the maintenance of brain functions such as learning and memory that are impaired during ageing. Ageing is also associated with changes in the DHA content of brain membranes that could contribute to memory impairment. Limited studies have investigated the effects of ageing and n-3 LC-PUFA supplementation on both blood and brain fatty acid compositions. Therefore, we assessed the relationship between fatty acid contents in plasma and erythrocyte membranes and those in the hippocampus, striatum and cerebral cortex during ageing, and after a 5-month period of EPA/DHA supplementation in rats. In the blood, ageing was associated with an increase in plasma DHA content, whereas the DHA content remained stable in erythrocyte membranes. In the brain, ageing was associated with a decrease in DHA content, which was both region-specific and phospholipid class-specific. In EPA/DHA-supplemented aged rats, DHA contents were increased both in the blood and brain compared with the control rats. The present results demonstrated that n-3 LC-PUFA level in the plasma was not an accurate biomarker of brain DHA status during ageing. Moreover, we highlighted a positive relationship between the DHA levels in erythrocyte phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and those in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in EPA/DHA-supplemented aged rats. Within the framework of preventive dietary supplementation to delay brain ageing, these results suggest the possibility of using erythrocyte PE DHA content as a reliable biomarker of DHA status in specific brain regions.
Semiautomatic Text Baseline Detection in Large Historical Handwritten Documents

A semiautomatic iterative process for the detection of text baselines in historical handwritten document images is presented. It relies on the use of Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to provide initial text baselines hypotheses, followed by user review in order to produce ground-truth quality results. Using the set of revised baselines as ground truth, the HMM's are re-trained before processing the next batch of pages. This process has been evaluated in the context of a real transcription task which, as a by-product, has produced line-detection ground truth. We show that the usage of a formal, HMM-based line-detection approach which requires training data, not only yields good detection results but is also of practical use in large handwritten image collections. Through experiments with real users we show that the proposed approach has interesting features, namely, accuracy, scalability and ease of use, as well as low overall human effort requirements.
Study on parametric models of estimating the sea state bias based on the HY-2 altimeter

In this paper, which is based on the data of the HY-2 altimeter, the parametric models of estimating the sea state bias (SSB) were studied. The segmented fitting method of track was adopted to extract the crossing points dataset from the HY-2 geophysical data records (GDR). According to the Taylor expansion, 36 parametric models of estimating SSB as the function of the significant wave height and wind speed were established, and then the coefficients of each parametric model can be calculated by the method of linear regression. After evaluation and selection, the optimal model was obtained. The efficiency of this model can be verified by explained variance, determination coefficient and residual. By comparing with the original SSB estimated model used in the HY-2 GDR, the model formulated in this paper was better than the latter. The results showed this model can improve the correction of SSB in the HY-2 altimeter effectively.
Improved Algorithms for Bipartite Network Flow

In this paper, network flow algorithms for bipartite networks are studied. A network $G=(V,E)$ is called bipartite if its vertex set $V$ can be partitioned into two subsets $V_1$ and $V_2$ such that all edges have one endpoint in $V_1$ and the other in $V_2$. Let $n=|V|$, $n_1 = |V_1|$, $n_2 = |V_2|$, $m=|E|$ and assume without loss of generality that $n_1 \leq n_2$. A bipartite network is called unbalanced if $n_1 \ll n_2$ and balanced otherwise. (This notion is necessarily imprecise.) It is shown that several maximum flow algorithms can be substantially sped up when applied to unbalanced networks. The basic idea in these improvements is a two-edge push rule that allows one to "charge" most computation to vertices in $V_1$, and hence develop algorithms whose running times depend on $n_1$ rather than $n$. For example, it is shown that the two-edge push version of Goldberg and Tarjan's FIFO preflow-push algorithm runs in $O(n_1 m + n_1^3)$ time and that the analogous version of Ahuja and Orlin's excess scaling algorithm runs in $O(n_1 m + n_1^2 log U)$ time, where $U$ is the largest edge capacity. These ideas are also extended to dynamic tree implementations, parametric maximum flows, and minimum-cost flows.
An algorithm for PAPR reduction by SLM technique in OFDM with hadamard matrix row factor

This paper is concerned with the performance improvement of PAPR reduction of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) using selective mapping based design. Note that OFDM is one of the most proficient multi-carrier transmission scheme which has been implemented in long term evolution (LTE) downlink. However peak to average power ratio (PAPR) is the main problem with OFDM, therefore in this paper we have proposed a reduction procedure of the PAPR by using selective mapping technique. Here we have used hadamard matrix row factor as it's phase sequence to investigate the reduction of the PAPR. Our results show that the proposed method with the hadamard matrix row factor significantly enhances the PAPR performance.
Do increases in physical activity encourage positive beliefs about further change in the ProActive cohort?

Effects of behaviour change on cognitions are rarely examined within the Theory of Planned Behaviour. We tested whether increases in physical activity resulted in more positive beliefs about further change among a cohort of sedentary adults participating in a behavioural intervention trial (ProActive). At baseline, 6 and 12 months, 365 adults completed questionnaires assessing physical activity and cognitions about becoming more active over the coming year. Objective activity was assessed at baseline and 12 months. Participants reporting larger increases in activity were no more positive about making further increases than those reporting less behaviour change (p-values > 0.05). Participants with larger increases in objective activity reported weaker perceived control (β = −0.342; p = 0.001) and more negative instrumental attitudes (β = −0.230; p = 0.017) at 12 months. Participants may have felt that they had changed enough or measures of perceived success may be more sensitive to behaviour change. Alternatively, long measurement intervals may have missed immediate cognitive and affective consequences of behaviour change, or such effects may require participants to consistently self-monitor or receive feedback on performance. Future studies could test the effect of such techniques on physical activity and a wider range of cognitive, affective and physiological consequences, using more frequent measurement intervals.
High Nitrogen stainless steel as a preferred substratum for bacteria and other microfouling organisms

High Nitrogen steels (HNS) have gained importance in recent years as construction materials. Their resistance to pitting corrosion makes them better candidates for industrial use. In the medical field, these materials are welcomed as their use can minimize the risk of nickel allergy. Nitrifying bacteria are a group of bacteria widely distributed in soils, freshwater, seawater etc. and since they derive their energy by oxidation of nitrogen compounds, they pose a threat to these materials. Experiments on the adhesion of nitrifying bacteria on HNS were carried out following coupon exposure method in the laboratory. Nitrobacter winogradskyi (nitrite oxidizing bacteria) and Nitrosomonas europea (ammonia oxidizing bacteria) were used for the adhesion studies. In addition, adhesion of a heterotrophic strain, Pseudomonas sp. also was studied for comparison. Materials used for the experiment were AISI type 304 L, 304 LN, and high nitrogen stainless steels. The results showed that Nitrobacter winogradskyi, Nitrosomonas europea and Pseudomonas sp. , invariably, adhered more on the high nitrogen stainless steel coupons compared to the other two types of coupons tested. During the initial stages, i.e. on the first day, the trend was not so clear, but as the exposure period increased the pattern has clearly evolved. The area of adhesion showed a gradual decrease going from HNS, to 304 L through 304 LN coupons. The acidic metabolic products of nitrifying bacteria might interact with the surface of HNS, disturbing the equilibrium of ammonium ion formation, thereby leading to localized corrosion. Exposure to a natural freshwater pond showed a heavy microfouling load on HNS coupons. The consequences of preferential adhesion of bacteria and other microfouling organisms on the corrosion resistance of HNS are discussed. As a possible means to mitigate bacterial adhesion on HNS, silver contained high nitrogen stainless steel was tested. The results suggested a significant decrease in bacterial adhesion on silver containing HNS compared to 304 L and HNS.