Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Types of Malware and its Analysis

The paper explores the still-growing threat of website malware, specifically how hackers compromise websites and how users become infected. The consequences of malware attacks—including Google blacklisting—are also explored with an introduction describing the evolution, history & various types of malware. Types of malware described include Virus, Worms, Trojans, Adware, Spyware, Backdoors and Rootkits that can disastrously affect a Microsoft Windows operating system.
Cancer Incidence and Mortality in a Cohort of US Blood Donors: A 20-Year Study

Blood donors are considered one of the healthiest populations. This study describes the epidemiology of cancer in a cohort of blood donors up to 20 years after blood donation. Records from donors who participated in the Retroviral Epidemiology Donor Study (REDS, 1991–2002) at Blood Centers of the Pacific (BCP), San Francisco, were linked to the California Cancer Registry (CCR, 1991–2010). Standardized incidence ratios (SIR) were estimated using standard US 2000 population, and survival analysis used to compare all-cause mortality among donors and a random sample of nondonors with cancer from CCR. Of 55,158 eligible allogeneic blood donors followed-up for 863,902 person-years, 4,236 (7.7%) primary malignant cancers were diagnosed. SIR in donors was 1.59 (95% CI = 1.54,1.64). Donors had significantly lower mortality (adjusted HR = 0.70, 95% CI = 0.66–0.74) compared with nondonor cancer patients, except for respiratory system cancers (adjusted HR = 0.93, 95% CI = 0.82–1.05). Elevated cancer incidence among blood donors may reflect higher diagnosis rates due to health seeking behavior and cancer screening in donors. A “healthy donor effect” on mortality following cancer diagnosis was demonstrated. This population-based database and sample repository of blood donors with long-term monitoring of cancer incidence provides the opportunity for future analyses of genetic and other biomarkers of cancer.
Epigentic adaptation in action selection environments with temporal dynamics

John Lones, Lola Canamero, and Andrew Lewis, 'Epigenetic adaptation in action selection environments with temporal dynamics' in Pietro Lio, et al, eds., Advances in Artificial Life ECAL 2013, Proceedings of the twelfth European conference on the synthesis and simulation of living systems, (Massachussetts: MIT, 2013), available at doi: 10.7551/978-0-262-31709-2-ch073. This is an open access publication under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/nc/nd/3.0/us/. You are free to share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor; Noncommercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes; No Derivative Works: You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
Fully automatic three-dimensional visualization of intravascular optical coherence tomography images: methods and feasibility in vivo

Intravascular optical coherence tomography (IV-OCT) is an imaging modality that can be used for the assessment of intracoronary stents. Recent publications pointed to the fact that 3D visualizations have potential advantages compared to conventional 2D representations. However, 3D imaging still requires a time consuming manual procedure not suitable for on-line application during coronary interventions. We propose an algorithm for a rapid and fully automatic 3D visualization of IV-OCT pullbacks. IV-OCT images are first processed for the segmentation of the different structures. This also allows for automatic pullback calibration. Then, according to the segmentation results, different structures are depicted with different colors to visualize the vessel wall, the stent and the guide-wire in details. Final 3D rendering results are obtained through the use of a commercial 3D DICOM viewer. Manual analysis was used as ground-truth for the validation of the segmentation algorithms. A correlation value of 0.99 and good limits of agreement (Bland Altman statistics) were found over 250 images randomly extracted from 25 in vivo pullbacks. Moreover, 3D rendering was compared to angiography, pictures of deployed stents made available by the manufacturers and to conventional 2D imaging corroborating visualization results. Computational time for the visualization of an entire data sets resulted to be ~74 sec. The proposed method allows for the on-line use of 3D IV-OCT during percutaneous coronary interventions, potentially allowing treatments optimization.
Study on Asymptotic Stability and Bounded Stability of the Intelligent Vehicle Platoon

Study of the intelligent vehicle platoon stability is always one focus of the automated highway system. The stability and control problem of the intelligent vehicle platoon will be studied, a parameter adaptive PID control algorithm is promoted as well as the analysis of the stability of the intelligent vehicle platoon based on this algorithm. Stability of the transfer function from the velocity and spacing distance of the platoon is raised. When the number of vehicles in the platoon is large, there occurs the bounded stability problems, a autonomous-nonautonomous hybrid control strategy is raised to meet asymptotically stability and bounded stability of the system at the same time.
Relief Mapping on facade of Sino Portuguese Architecture in Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is an artificial environment created for presented for users to interact to virtual world and to be experienced in the way that users believe and accept it such a real environment. The environment is created to be three dimensional world using computer technology which is called Virtual Environment (VE). Virtual Environment makes user experiences immersion and realize to be inside and the part of the virtual world. Therefore, Virtual Environment is very important factor for making user immersive effectively, user must be able to explore what appears in the virtual environment and be able to interact by changing perspectives seamlessly. Generally, Virtual Environment (VE) should be made to be reality as much as possible by using high resolution of 3D model to increase more information and detail to the model in the environment. However, high resolution model, high polygon, really needs high performance computing to calculate rendering process to support user's interaction in real-time. For this paper, we focus on implementing Relief Mapping technique to reduce the polygonal bas-relief built in 3D world which is applied to VR of Sino Portuguese Architecture due to the facade of buildings consist of many bas-relief pattern via game engine, Unity3D, for real-time rendering and VR walkthrough. The result of this uses a single polygon/1 bas-relief and the quality of visualization after rendering process is compatible to the conventional process.
Genome-Wide Expression Analysis of Placental Malaria Reveals Features of Lymphoid Neogenesis during Chronic Infection1

Chronic inflammation during placental malaria (PM) is most frequent in first time mothers and is associated with poor maternal and fetal outcomes. In the first genome-wide analysis of the local human response to sequestered malaria parasites, we identified genes associated with chronic PM and then localized the corresponding proteins and immune cell subsets in placental cryosections. B cell-related genes were among the most highly up-regulated transcripts in inflamed tissue. The B cell chemoattractant CXCL13 was up-regulated >1,000-fold, and B cell-activating factor was also detected. Both proteins were expressed by intervillous macrophages. Ig L and H chain transcription increased significantly, and heavy depositions of IgG3 and IgM were observed in intervillous spaces. The B cell phenotype was heterogenous, including naive (CD27-negative), mature (CD138-positive), and cycling (Ki-67-positive) cells. B cells expressed T-bet but not Bcl-6, suggesting T cell-independent activation without germinal center formation. Genes for the Fc binding proteins FcγRIa, FcγRIIIa, and C1q were highly up-regulated, and the proteins localized to intervillous macrophages. Birth weight was inversely correlated with transcript levels of CXCL13, IgG H chain, and IgM H chain. The iron regulatory peptide hepcidin was also expressed but was not associated with maternal anemia. The results suggest that B cells and macrophages contribute to chronic PM in a process resembling lymphoid neogenesis. We propose a model where the production of Ig during chronic malaria may enhance inflammation by attracting and activating macrophages that, in turn, recruit B cells to further produce Ig in the intervillous spaces.
Missing-Feature based Speech Recognition for Two Simultaneous Speech Signals Separated by ICA with a pair of Humanoid Ears

Robot audition is a critical technology in making robots symbiosis with people. Since we hear a mixture of sounds in our daily lives, sound source localization and separation, and recognition of separated sounds are three essential capabilities. Sound source localization has been recently studied well for robots, while the other capabilities still need extensive studies. This paper reports the robot audition system with a pair of omni-directional microphones embedded in a humanoid to recognize two simultaneous talkers. It first separates sound sources by independent component analysis (ICA) with single-input multiple-output (SIMO) model. Then, spectral distortion for separated sounds is estimated to identify reliable and unreliable components of the spectrogram. This estimation generates the missing feature masks as spectrographic masks. These masks are then used to avoid influences caused by spectral distortion in automatic speech recognition based on missing-feature method. The novel ideas of our system reside in estimates of spectral distortion of temporal-frequency domain in terms of feature vectors. In addition, we point out that the voice-activity detection (VAD) is effective to overcome the weak point of ICA against the changing number of talkers. The resulting system outperformed the baseline robot audition system by 15%
Rumor Spreading on Percolation Graphs

We study the relation between the performance of the randomized rumor spreading (push model) in a d-regular graph G and the performance of the same algorithm in the percolated graph Gp. We show that if the push model successfully broadcast the rumor within T rounds in the graph G then only (1 + ǫ)T rounds are needed to spread the rumor in the graph Gp when T = o(pd).
Longitudinal analysis of sleep in relation to BMI and body fat in children: the FLAME study

Objectives To determine whether reduced sleep is associated with differences in body composition and the risk of becoming overweight in young children. Design Longitudinal study with repeated annual measurements. Setting Dunedin, New Zealand. Participants 244 children recruited from a birth cohort and followed from age 3 to 7. Main outcome measures Body mass index (BMI), fat mass (kg), and fat free mass (kg) measured with bioelectrical impedance; dual energy x ray absorptiometry; physical activity and sleep duration measured with accelerometry; dietary intake (fruit and vegetables, non-core foods), television viewing, and family factors (maternal BMI and education, birth weight, smoking during pregnancy) measured with questionnaire. Results After adjustment for multiple confounders, each additional hour of sleep at ages 3-5 was associated with a reduction in BMI of 0.48 (95% confidence interval 0.01 to 0.96) and a reduced risk of being overweight (BMI ≥85th centile) of 0.39 (0.24 to 0.63) at age 7. Further adjustment for BMI at age 3 strengthened these relations. These differences in BMI were explained by differences in fat mass index (−0.43, −0.82 to −0.03) more than by differences in fat free mass index (−0.21, −0.41 to −0.00). Conclusions Young children who do not get enough sleep are at increased risk of becoming overweight, even after adjustment for initial weight status and multiple confounding factors. This weight gain is a result of increased fat deposition in both sexes rather than additional accumulation of fat free mass.
Development of a sensory lexicon for a specific subcategory of soy sauce: Seasoning soy sauce

General lexicons have been developed to describe sensory characteristics of soy sauce. However, no study has examined a large sample set of seasoning soy sauce, a subcategory of soy sauce, and developed a lexicon to fully describe its specific sensory characteristics. In this study, a wide variety of seasoning soy sauces (n = 25) were examined by a descriptive panel composed of nine highly trained panelists and a lexicon consisting of 34 attributes was developed. Each attribute was defined and referenced. Results showed that almost all attributes were needed to explain the common sensory characteristics found in seasoning soy sauces. However, five terms may be used occasionally to describe targeted specific sensory characteristics. As compared with published general lexicons of soy sauce, the current lexicon revealed eight new attributes that were specific to seasoning soy sauces. In addition, new references were also developed for some attributes, thus providing new choices of references for researchers. Practical applications Understanding sensory characteristics of seasoning soy sauce, an increasingly popular flavoring ingredient, is very useful for manufacturers to capture or improve product qualities in order to strengthen their competitiveness in the marketplace. A developed lexicon from this study can be used to determine sensory quality of seasoning soy sauces accurately and precisely. The lexicon can also facilitate communication regarding product quality among sensory scientists, product developers, marketing professionals and suppliers.
Dynamically Pruned A* for re-planning in navigation meshes

Modern simulations feature crowds of AI-controlled agents moving through dynamic environments, with obstacles appearing or disappearing at run-time. A dynamic navigation mesh can represent the traversable space of such environments. The A* algorithm computes optimal paths through the dual graph of this mesh. When an obstacle is inserted or deleted, the mesh changes and agents should re-plan their paths. Many existing re-planning algorithms are too memory-intensive for crowds, or they cannot easily be used on graphs where vertices and edges are added or removed. In this paper, we present Dynamically Pruned A* (DPA*), an extension of A* for re-planning optimal paths in dynamic navigation meshes. DPA* has similarities to adaptive algorithms that make the A* heuristic more informed based on previous queries. However, DPA* prunes the search using only the previous path and its relation to the dynamic event. We describe the four re-planning scenarios that can occur; DPA* uses different rules in each scenario. Our algorithm is memory-friendly and robust against structural changes in the graph, which makes it suitable for crowds in dynamic navigation meshes. Experiments show that DPA* performs particularly well in complex environments and when the dynamic event is visible to the agent. We integrate the algorithm into crowd simulation software to model large crowds in dynamic environments in real-time.
Impact of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Contact Isolation Units on Medical Care

Background Patient isolation using contact precautions has gained widespread use to halt MRSA transmission, however supportive data is scarce and concerns regarding patient safety and satisfaction have been raised. At our institution, MRSA patients are isolated on a dedicated ward (cohort isolation), rather than in separate rooms. Our objectives were (1) to determine the proportion of bedside medical visits to patients on an isolation ward, (2) to quantify complications in those patients and (3) to determine if those complications are related to isolation and if they can be prevented. Methods This retrospective case-control study was performed on the two sites of a tertiary teaching hospital in Sherbrooke, QC, Canada. We matched MRSA patients with an admission diagnosis of heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to similar non-isolated controls. The proportion of bedside visits was ascertained through the number of progress notes with subjective elements or with a physical examination. Complications were sought through an extensive file review, and events were analysed according to Baker’s CAES causality and preventability scales. Results Overall, 111 patient pairs were analysed (35 with heart failure and 76 with COPD). Isolated patients received less bedside visits (subjective notes/1,000 patient-days: 849.6 vs. 983.3, p = 0,001). Attending physicians (454.5 vs. 451.4, p = 0,02) and residents (347.0 vs. 416.9, p = 0.01) are responsible for this discrepancy, while medical students appear to visit isolated and non-isolated patients equally (116.5 vs. 114.9, p = 0.90). Isolated patients showed a tendency towards longer stay and more preventable complications, although no difference in the total number of complications was observed. Conclusion Isolated patients have less documented care that suggests less bedside visits from the medical staff, which could hamper the therapeutical relationship. Further studies are needed to explain this finding.
Comparing an FPGA to a Cell for an Image Processing Application

Modern advancements in configurable hardware, most notably Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), have provided an exciting opportunity to discover the parallel nature of modern image processing algorithms. On the other hand, PlayStation3 (PS3) game consoles contain a multicore heterogeneous processor known as the Cell, which is designed to perform complex image processing algorithms at a high performance. In this research project, our aim is to study the differences in performance of a modern image processing algorithm on these two hardware platforms. In particular, Iris Recognition Systems have recently become an attractive identification method because of their extremely high accuracy. Iris matching, a repeatedly executed portion of a modern iris recognition algorithm, is parallelized on an FPGA system and a Cell processor. We demonstrate a 2.5 times speedup of the parallelized algorithm on the FPGA system when compared to a Cell processor-based version.
Effects of short-term inhaled fluticasone on oxidative burst of sputum cells in cystic fibrosis patients.

Inhaled corticosteroids have been proposed to decrease pulmonary inflammation in cystic fibrosis (CF). In this study the effects of therapy with inhaled fluticasone on clinical and sputum outcomes (leukocyte count, activity of myeloperoxidase, superoxide anion release) in adult CF patients were investigated in an open label design. Twenty-six stable patients (median+/-SD forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) 58.1+/-19.9% pred. ) were randomly assigned to the study group (500 microg b.i.d., for three weeks) or the control group (n=14; nonsteroid medication). Sputum samples were obtained during inhalation of hypertonic saline (3%, 20 min), which was found not to alter the investigated sputum parameters. No significant changes in clinical parameters, sputum leukocyte count, activity of myeloperoxidase, and baseline superoxide anion release where observed following therapy. Surprisingly, stimulated superoxide anion release increased significantly after therapy (34.1+/-17.7 versus 25.2+/-17.4 nmol x hr(-1) x 10(6) cells, p<0.03) and exceeded spontaneous variability of this parameter (p=0.02 versus control group). In conclusion, in adult cystic fibrosis patients short-term fluticasone therapy had no evident effect on clinical and sputum parameters. Further investigations are necessary to evaluate whether the observed up-regulation of oxidative capacity of inflammatory cells is of concern or benefit in these patients.
The Positive Effects of Status Conflicts in Teams Where Members Perceive Status Hierarchies Differently

Status conflicts, conflicts about members’ relative positions in a team’s status hierarchy, generally harm group performance. We integrate research on status conflicts and social information processing and find in two longitudinal survey studies that the disruptive effects of status conflicts depend on the extent to which members agree about the group’s status hierarchy. Specifically, status conflicts in teams with high-status agreement disrupt team performance by producing lower status agreement after the conflict. Status conflicts that occur in teams with low-status agreement, however, benefit performance by helping members clarify the hierarchy, leading to higher subsequent status agreement. In a third study, we examine how status conflict and status agreement interactively impact teams’ use of task-relevant cues to assign status. By contextualizing status conflicts in terms of the teams’ status agreement, we identify conditions in which the dysfunctional effects of status conflicts counterintuitively enhance team performance.
Father's brain is sensitive to childcare experiences

Significance Brain, oxytocin, and parenting behavior were measured in primary-caregiving mothers, secondary-caregiving fathers, and primary-caregiving homosexual fathers raising infants without maternal involvement. Parenting integrated functioning of two neural networks: subcortical-paralimbic structures implicated in emotional processing and cortical circuits involved in social understanding. Mothers showed greater activation in the emotional processing network and fathers in the socio-cognitive circuits, which were differentially linked with oxytocin and behavior. Primary-caregiving fathers exhibited high amygdala activation similar to mothers, alongside high superior temporal sulcus (STS) activation comparable to fathers, and functional connectivity between amygdala and STS. Among all fathers, time spent in childcare correlated with amygdala-STS connectivity. Findings describe mechanisms of brain malleability with caregiving experiences in human fathers. Although contemporary socio-cultural changes dramatically increased fathers' involvement in childrearing, little is known about the brain basis of human fatherhood, its comparability with the maternal brain, and its sensitivity to caregiving experiences. We measured parental brain response to infant stimuli using functional MRI, oxytocin, and parenting behavior in three groups of parents (n = 89) raising their firstborn infant: heterosexual primary-caregiving mothers (PC-Mothers), heterosexual secondary-caregiving fathers (SC-Fathers), and primary-caregiving homosexual fathers (PC-Fathers) rearing infants without maternal involvement. Results revealed that parenting implemented a global “parental caregiving” neural network, mainly consistent across parents, which integrated functioning of two systems: the emotional processing network including subcortical and paralimbic structures associated with vigilance, salience, reward, and motivation, and mentalizing network involving frontopolar-medial-prefrontal and temporo-parietal circuits implicated in social understanding and cognitive empathy. These networks work in concert to imbue infant care with emotional salience, attune with the infant state, and plan adequate parenting. PC-Mothers showed greater activation in emotion processing structures, correlated with oxytocin and parent-infant synchrony, whereas SC-Fathers displayed greater activation in cortical circuits, associated with oxytocin and parenting. PC-Fathers exhibited high amygdala activation similar to PC-Mothers, alongside high activation of superior temporal sulcus (STS) comparable to SC-Fathers, and functional connectivity between amygdala and STS. Among all fathers, time spent in direct childcare was linked with the degree of amygdala-STS connectivity. Findings underscore the common neural basis of maternal and paternal care, chart brain–hormone–behavior pathways that support parenthood, and specify mechanisms of brain malleability with caregiving experiences in human fathers.