Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sketch express: facial expressions made easy

Finding an effective control interface to manipulate complex geometric objects has traditionally relied on experienced users to place the animation controls. This process, whether for key framed or for motion captured animation, takes a lot of time and effort. We introduce a novel sketching interface control system inspired in the way artists draw, in which a stroke defines the shape of an object and reflects the user's intention. We also introduce the canvas, a 2D drawing region where the users can make their strokes, which determines the domain of interaction with the object. We show that the combination of strokes and canvases provides a new way to manipulate the shape of an implicit volume in space. And most importantly, it is independent from the 3D model rig. The strokes can be easily stored and reused in other characters, allowing retargeting of poses. Our interactive approach is illustrated using facial models of different styles. As a result, we allow rapid manipulation of 3D faces on the fly in a very intuitive and interactive way. Our informal study showed that first time users typically master the system within seconds, creating appealing 3D poses and animations in just a few minutes.
The response to therapy of skeletal metastases from mammary cancer. Assessment by scintigraphy

Clinical, radiological, and scintigraphic methods were used to assess the response of 30 patients undergoing treatment for advanced mammary cancer. Scintigraphy provided more information than radiology in 13 patients. In 2 patients scintigraphy indicated that sclerotic metastases which had not altered radiologically following treatment were probably ‘healing’. In another 4 patients who developed apparently ‘new’ sclerotic metastases on serial radiographs the scintigrams indicated that these lesions probably represented ‘healing’ of lesions which had been too small for identification on the original radiographs.
Factors related to delayed graft function after laparoscopic live donor nephrectomy.

PURPOSE Delayed graft function after live donor transplantation affects 5% to 10% of recipients regardless of procurement technique. This delay in function is associated with an increased risk of rejection and decreased graft survival. In the present study we critically assess allograft recovery to identify the risk factors related to delayed graft function. MATERIALS AND METHODS We retrospectively reviewed donor and recipient medical records from 100 consecutive laparoscopic live donor nephrectomies from August 1997 to October 2001. Four criteria were used to classify delayed graft function: I) requirement of dialysis in postoperative week 1, II) creatinine 2.5 mg/dl or greater at postoperative day 5, III) time to half peak activity (mercaptoacetyltriglycine renal scan) at postoperative day 5 greater than 12.2 minutes (normal range 1 to 12.2) and IV) time to peak activity (mercaptoacetyltriglycine renal scan) at day 5 greater than 6.5 minutes (normal range 2.1 to 6.5). Patients could qualify for multiple outcome categories. Patients who did not match any of these criteria were classified as having normal renal function (outcome 0). RESULTS The number of patients in the delayed graft function categories were 5 with outcome I, 14 with outcome II, 39 with outcome III and 24 with outcome IV. There were 23 patients represented in more than 1 category and 59 patients were classified as having normal function. Recipient age, donor/recipient gender relationship, unrelated highly mismatched donors and cold/total preservation time were identified as risk factors related to impaired early renal function recovery. None of the variables related to the laparoscopic technique itself represented risk factors for delayed graft function. CONCLUSIONS Female donor kidneys into male recipients and highly HLA mismatched donors represent factors that may be controlled by donor selection when feasible. All attempts should be made to decrease cold ischemia time and, therefore, total preservation time. Prolonged carbon dioxide pneumoperitoneum, warm ischemia time, renal artery length or use of right kidney did not adversely affect the functional outcome of the allografts procured laparoscopically.
Structural inhomogeneity of deformed austenitic stainless steel

AbstractStructural inhomogeneities of austenitic stainless steel deformed by rolling at ambient temperature were investigated by optical and electron microscopy. The strains applied were e = 0.22, 0.52, 1.04, 1.62, 1.98, 2.90, 3.74, and 4.18. Large lattice curvatures appear in areas where deformation twins intersect, where twins reach grain boundaries, and in shear bands. Shear bands cross through twin boundaries and grain boundaries between grains with deformation twins, but do not trespass into areas not containing deformation twins. Usually, shear bands make an angle between 30° and 40° with the rolling direction, and their density increases with increasing deformation. Grains orientated with {110} parallel to the rolling plane and 〈001〉 parallel to the rolling direction do not alter their orientation during deformation. These grains do not form deformation twins. The hardness of these grains is much lower than the hardness of the other areas. After very heavy deformation only small lens-shaped areas o.
Radiation hybrid mapping of 75 previously unreported equine microsatellite loci.

Source/description: Horse genomic DNA was digested with the restriction enzyme MboI, size selected by gel electrophoresis for fragments between 200 and 1200 bp, and ligated into the BamHI site of the M13 phage vector. Clones containing a potential microsatellite were identified by screening the library with [P] 5¢ end-labelled oligo [dCA]16 and oligo [dGT]16 probes. The DNA was isolated from positive plaques and the inserts were sequenced using an ABI 3100 automated sequencer. Primer pairs for PCR amplification of the markers were developed using the PRIMER program (Version 0.5; M. J. Daly, S. E. Lincoln and E. S. Lander, unpublished). Sequence accession numbers, repeat motif, PCR primer pairs and product sizes based on the cloned sequences are provided in Table 1.
Effects of mechanical strain hyaluronan metabolism of synovial cells from osteoarthritic knees

Development of the synovial joint is complex involving a sequence of precisely controlled events. Separation of the cartilage anlagen involves differential matrix turnover and requires mechanical stimuli, the loss of mechanical stimuli results in joint fusion. Synthesis of hyaluronan at the developing joint line occurs and its continued synthesis is necessary for maintenance of frictionless movement in the adult joint. Hyaluronan is synthesised by synovial fibroblasts and as a component of the synovial fluid and synovium, helps maintain a consistent volume and viscosity of synovial fluid when the joint is flexed. Reduction in hyaluronan concentration within the synovial fluid is associated with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Joints become painful to move and nihility is lost. The study aimed to investigate whether synovial cells from osteoarthritic knees were able to respond to mechanical stimuli and if so, were cells able to modulate hyaluronan synthesis. Results at the cellular level would be the first step in considering exercise based therapies as a treatment for osteoarthritis. A four point bending mechanical loading jig was used to apply mechanical strain to synovial cells. Results indicate that synovial cells from osteoarthritic knees are capable of responding to a brief period of mechanical stimuli and modulate hyaluronan release. Differential expression of the three HAS genes was also observed upon mechanical strain. It was clear however, that the response to strain varied depending on cell passage. As a result, the development of an immortalised synovial cell line was investigated. Data obtained however, showed that ectopic hTERT expression alone was not sufficient to immortalise synovial cells. Development of exercise based therapies for the treatment of osteoarthritis will require a considerable amount of further work. This study however, has demonstrated that alterations in hyaluronan synthase expression and subsequent hyaluronan synthesis by synovial cells occurs upon mechanical stimuli and thus provides a foundation for future studies.
Dynamic aspects of musical imagery

Auditory imagery can represent many aspects of music, such as the starting pitches of a tune or the instrument that typically plays it. In this paper, I concentrate on more dynamic, or time‐sensitive aspects of musical imagery, as demonstrated in two recently published studies. The first was a behavioral study that examined the ability to make emotional judgments about both heard and imagined music in real time. The second was a neuroimaging study on the neural correlates of anticipating an upcoming tune, after hearing a cue tune. That study found activation of several sequence‐learning brain areas, some of which varied with the vividness of the anticipated musical memory. Both studies speak to the ways in which musical imagery allows us to judge temporally changing aspects of the represented musical experience. These judgments can be quite precise, despite the complexity of generating the rich internal representations of imagery.
Computing perception from sensor data

This paper describes a framework for perception creation from sensor data. We propose using data abstraction techniques, in particular Symbolic Aggregate Approximation (SAX), to analyse and create patterns from sensor data. The created patterns are then linked to semantic descriptions that define thematic, spatial and temporal features, providing highly granular abstract representation of the raw sensor data. This helps to reduce the size of the data that needs to be communicated from the sensor nodes to the gateways or highlevel processing components. We then discuss a method that uses abstract patterns created by SAX method and occurrences of different observations in a knowledge-based model to create perceptions from sensor data.
Trends in Asthma Mortality in Japan

Asthma mortality has been increasing in many developed countries in recent years, so we have described the epidemiological features of asthma in Japan. Data on all certified asthma deaths from 1950 to 1997 were obtained from The National Vital Statistics, published annually by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Trends in crude and age-adjusted asthma mortality rates, as well as age-specific mortality rates, were analyzed. Age and birth cohort effects on mortality rates were also examined using multiplicative models. Between 1950 and 1980, crude asthma mortality rates steadily decreased in both sexes and began to level off thereafter. Age-adjusted mortality rates have also decreased since 1950, and showed a persistent downward trend in both sexes even in recent years. Asthma mortality rates were higher in males than in females during the entire study period. When analysis was restricted to those aged 5 to 34 years, an upward trend since 1980 was observed. The multiplicative model showed a rapidly decreasing cohort effect on mortality among those born after 1860. However, the slope increased in the cohorts born after 1950 in both sexes. The age effect increased linearly with advancing age after 50 years in both sexes. Overall asthma mortality rates have been decreasing during the past five decades in Japan, but the mortality rate has increased among the 5–34-year-old age group since 1980. The high fatality rate stemming from the overuse of beta 2-agonists may account for the mortality increase.
HIV Testing Among Men Who have Sex with Men : A Qualitative Study in Lima , Peru

Objective: The objective of this study is to identify features and content that short message service (SMS) should have in order to motivate HIV testing among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Lima, Peru. Methods: From October, 2010 to February, 2011, we conducted focus groups at two stages; six focus groups were conducted to explore and identify SMS content and features and two additional focus groups were conducted to tailor SMS content. The text messages were elaborated within the theoretical framework of the Information-MotivationBehavioral Skills model and the Social Support Theory. Results: A total of 62 individuals participated in the focus groups. The mean age of participants was 28 years (range 1839). We identified important features and content items needed for the successful delivery of text messages, including: a) the use of neutral and coded language; b) appropriate frequency and time of delivery; c) avoiding mass and repetitive messages; and d) use of short, concise and creative messages. Although in Peru receiving text messages is usually a free service, it is important to remind participants that receiving messages will be free of charge. Conclusion: Text messages can be used to promote HIV testing among Peruvian MSM. It is important to consider adequate frequency, message content and cost when delivering messages to promote HIV testing in this population.
Influence of inert gases on the reactive high power pulsed magnetron sputtering process of carbon-nitride thin films

The influence of inert gases (Ne, Ar, Kr) on the sputter process of carbon and carbon-nitride (CNx) thin films was studied using reactive high power pulsed magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS). Thin solid films were synthesized in an industrial deposition chamber from a graphite target. The peak target current during HiPIMS processing was found to decrease with increasing inert gas mass. Time averaged and time resolved ion mass spectroscopy showed that the addition of nitrogen, as reactive gas, resulted in less energetic ion species for processes employing Ne, whereas the opposite was noticed when Ar or Kr were employed as inert gas. Processes in nonreactive ambient showed generally lower total ion fluxes for the three different inert gases. As soon as N2 was introduced into the process, the deposition rates for Ne and Ar-containing processes increased significantly. The reactive Kr-process, in contrast, showed slightly lower deposition rates than the nonreactive. The resulting thin films were characterized rega.
LAPAROSCOPIC OOPHORECTOMY IN THE MANAGEMENT OF BREAST DISEASE

Background: Oophorectomy is being increasingly carried out in the management of breast disease, as either adjuvant treatment for breast cancer or for prevention of ovarian and fallopian tube cancer in BRCA gene mutation carriers. The aims of this study were to determine the surgical outcome of laparoscopic oophorectomy when carried out by breast surgeons and whether laparoscopic oophorectomy can be safely carried out during the same anaesthesia as breast surgery.
A new junction termination method employing shallow trenches filled with oxide

A new junction termination method employing shallow trenches filled with oxide, which successfully decreased the junction termination area, is proposed and fabricated without any complicated process such as Si-deep etching. Shallow trenches between the floating field limiting rings successfully redistributed the single electric field peak into two peaks so that the breakdown voltage could be increased with the same junction termination area. The experimental results show that the proposed method decreased the junction termination area by more than 25% compared to a conventional field limiting ring structure when breakdown voltages are equal.
Bearing torque characteristics of lithium soap greases with some synthetic base oils

This article describes the influence of rheological properties on the bearing torque characteristics of the lithium soap greases with five types of base oils. The greases used had different yield stress depending on the base oils even with the same thickener concentration. Measurement of bearing torque was conducted for a deep-groove radial ball bearing by using a bearing test apparatus. The bearings filled with greases initially exhibited high torque but showed gradual decrease in the torque with prolonged rotation, where the greases with higher yield stress showed larger normalized torque decrease. Observation of bearing after the rotation revealed a tendency that the greases with larger normalized torque decrease had been pushed aside in the raceway by channeling. This implied that the greases with higher yield stress tended to show channeling. On the other hand, the greases with lower yield stress circulated within the bearing by churning and showed smaller normalized torque decrease. These behaviors were explained in terms of the yield stress of the greases and the shear stress to entrain the greases into the contacts. Observation of grease structure was made with atomic force microscopy showed that the greases whose thickener network structure was distributed more densely had higher yield stress.
Detection of epileptiform activity in the electroencephalogram using artificial neural networks

A system for automated detection of epileptiform activity in the electroencephalogram (EEG) has been developed and tested on prerecorded data from a range of patients. Epileptiform activity is manifest as spikes in the EEG and consequently the automated detection of spikes in the EEG is an important tool in the diagnosis of epilepsy and is a goal sought by many researchers. The system presented herein is centred around artificial neural networks (ANNs), in particular the multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and the self-organising feature map (S·OFM). The MLP is used in the form of an adaptive filter to enhance the presence of epileptiform transients in the EEG while the SOFM is used to form a novel pattern classifier. A modification to the 'standard' calibration technique for the SOFM is proposed based on a method involving Bayesian probabilities. The SOFM allows a large quantity of EEG data to be used to form a pattern classifier in an unsupervised manner. Fuzzy logic is introduced in order to incorporate spatial contextual information in the spike detection process. By using fuzzy logic it has been possible to develop an approximate model of the spatial reasoning performed by an electroencephalographer (EEGer) as opposed to a precise biological model. The human brain is overviewed in terms of its structure, organisation and function. Simplistic mathematical modelling of the neural network of the brain is discussed and ANNs are introduced. After reviewing ANNs in general the perceptron based network is introduced and discussed. The SOFM is introduced and through a number of computer simulations several suggestions are put forward regarding the choice of parameters for training the SOFM. After a review of the literature on spike detection systems, in particular ANN based systems, a multi-stage spike detection system is proposed. There are four stages to the system: spike enhancer, mimetic stage, SOFM and fuzzy logic stage. Each stage of the system is discussed at length and measures of performance are indicated at each stage. The importance of spatial and temporal contextual information is discussed and a method using fuzzy logic is proposed to model the spatial reasoning of an EEGer. The system was trained on 35 epileptiform EEGs containing in excess of 3000 epileptiform events and was tested on a different set of 7 EEGs (6 containing epileptiform activity and 1 'normal') containing 133 epileptiform events. The EEGs consisted of standard clinical recordings with an average length of 22.9 minutes. Preliminary
Rheological Monitoring of Polyacrylamide Gelation: Importance of Cross-Link Density and Temperature

Dynamic shear oscillation measurements at small strains are used to characterize the polymerization process in situ and the viscoelastic properties of cross-linked polyacrylamide hydrogels. Hydrogels are synthesized by free-radical redox polymerization of acrylamide (8 wt %) for different concentrations of cross-linker, N,N‘-methylenebis(acrylamide) (BIS), at different temperatures. Both elastic modulus G‘ and viscous modulus G‘‘ are measured in real time during the gelation which takes place directly between parallel rheometer plates. The elastic modulus G‘ remains constant with frequency, G‘(ω) ≈ cte, and is significantly larger than G‘‘(ω), characteristic of a well-developed cross-linked polymer network. Temperature scanning of the elastic modulus shows that G‘(T) is a linear relationship with a proportionality value that depends on the polymerization temperature Tpol. This observation is in agreement with the classical theory of rubberlike elasticity, i.e., G‘ = neRT where ne is the active network lin.
Color histogram equalization using probability smoothing

A novel color histogram equalization approach is proposed that not only takes into consideration the correlation between color components in the color space, but it is also enhanced by a multi-level smoothing technique adopted from the field of language modeling. In this way, the correlation between color components is taken into account and the problem of unseen values for a color component, either considered independently or in combination with others, is efficiently dealt with. The proposed method is conducted in the HSI color space for intensity (I) component and saturation (S) component given the I component. The quality of the visually appealing equalized images was confirmed by means of the entropy and the Kullback-Leibler divergence estimates between the resulted color histogram and the multivariate uniform probability density function.
Sequential Quantile Prediction of Time Series

Motivated by a broad range of potential applications, we address the quantile prediction problem of real-valued time series. We present a sequential quantile forecasting model based on the combination of a set of elementary nearest neighbor-type predictors called “experts” and show its consistency under a minimum of conditions. Our approach builds on the methodology developed in recent years for prediction of individual sequences and exploits the quantile structure as a minimizer of the so-called pinball loss function. We perform an in-depth analysis of real-world data sets and show that this nonparametric strategy generally outperforms standard quantile prediction methods.
Broadband Scalable Antenna Arrays With Constant Beamwidths Fed by Frequency-Selective Networks

A novel concept of broadband scalable antenna arrays that allows achieving constant beamwidths across one frequency octave has been proposed. The presented antenna arrays consist of an odd number of broadband antenna elements equally spaced and fed by a frequency-selective feeding network. The feeding network gradually switches the signal between the radiating elements across the bandwidth. The required frequency characteristics for such a selective power divider have been shown and its circuit realization has been proposed. The presented concept has been verified by the design and measurements of an antenna array consisting of five radiating elements in which the beamwidth of around 24° is achieved. The developed antenna operates in the 2-4-GHz frequency range. Moreover, the presented concept has been extended showing the possibility of designing antenna arrays having an arbitrary odd number of effectively radiating elements and constant beamwidths over one frequency octave.