Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correction of misclassifications in primary local image recognition using a nonlinear graph-based estimation technique

A description of an approach to primary local image recognition is given. The motivation for its application and its characteristics are discussed. Then a method for correction of misclassifications that occur in primary local image recognition is proposed. This method uses a graph-based estimation technique that uses information contained in supplementary classes in order to remove misclassifications and/or confirm the correct recognition of pixel hypotheses. In addition, the method is able to remove the supplementary classes after they are no longer needed. The particular features of the considered approach are that it is iterative and uses structures similar to those of center weighted median filters. The numerical simulation results are presented to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed technique.
The two staircase phenomena.

AbstractThe well known changes of amplitude of the ventricular contractions, which have been attributed to a staircase phenomenon, were confirmed in perfused dog hearts (figs. 1 and 2). All these changes are obtained by varying the frequency or the interval between the stimuli applied to the heart.Gradual changes of amplitude can also be obtained by modifying the amount of work performed by the ventricle. With a constant rate of stimulation, if the work increases because of an augmentation of either the input or the output pressures, the increased contractions cause a growth of those that follow. This growth persists for some time after the input or output pressures are returned to their initial values (figs. 3, 4 and 5). There are thus two staircase phenomena, one due to changes of the intervals between the stimuli and the other to changes in the amount of work performed by the ventricle. The two are independent (fig. 6).
Insulin Modulates Cocaine-Sensitive Monoamine Transporter Function and Impulsive Behavior

Because insulin acutely enhances the function of dopamine transporters, the tyrosine kinase receptors activated by this hormone may modulate transporter-dependent neurochemical and behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs. In this respect, we examined the effects of insulin on exocytotic monoamine release and the efficacy of the monoamine transporter blocker cocaine in rat nucleus accumbens. Whereas insulin reduced electrically evoked exocytotic [3H]dopamine release in nucleus accumbens slices, the hormone potentiated the release-enhancing effect of cocaine thereon. The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitor LY294002 abolished these effects, indicating the involvement of insulin receptors. Similar insulin effects were observed on the release of [3H]norepinephrine in nucleus accumbens slices, but not on that of [3H]serotonin, and were also apparent in medial prefrontal cortex slices. As might then be expected, insulin also potentiated the dopamine and norepinephrine release-enhancing effects of the selective monoamine uptake inhibitors GBR12909 and desmethylimipramine, respectively. In subsequent behavioral experiments, we investigated the role of insulin in motor impulsivity that depends on monoamine neurotransmission in the nucleus accumbens. Intracranial administration of insulin in the nucleus accumbens alone reduced premature responses in the five-choice serial reaction time task and enhanced the stimulatory effect of peripheral cocaine administration on impulsivity, resembling the observed neurochemical effects of the hormone. In contrast, cocaine-induced locomotor activity remained unchanged by intra-accumbal insulin application. These data reveal that insulin presynaptically regulates cocaine-sensitive monoamine transporter function in the nucleus accumbens and, as a consequence, impulsivity. Therefore, insulin signaling proteins may represent targets for the treatment of inhibitory control deficits such as addictive behaviors.
New Results in Linear Filtering and Prediction Theory

A nonlinear differential equation of the Riccati type is derived for the covariance matrix of the optimal filtering error. The solution of this "variance equation" completely specifies the optimal filter for either finite or infinite smoothing intervals and stationary or nonstationary statistics. The variance equation is closely related to the Hamiltonian (canonical) differential equations of the calculus of variations. Analytic solutions are available in some cases. The significance of the variance equation is illustrated by examples which duplicate, simplify, or extend earlier results in this field. The Duality Principle relating stochastic estimation and deterministic control problems plays an important role in the proof of theoretical results. In several examples, the estimation problem and its dual are discussed side-by-side. Properties of the variance equation are of great interest in the theory of adaptive systems. Some aspects of this are considered briefly.
How Much Coherent Interval Should be Dedicated to Non-Redundant Diagonal Precoding for Blind Channel Estimation in Single-Carrier Block Transmission?

Transmit precoding is a key technique for facilitating blind channel estimation at the receiver but the impact due to precoding on the channel capacity is scarcely addressed in the literature. In this paper we consider the single-carrier block transmission with cyclic prefix, in which a recently proposed diagonal-precoding assisted blind channel estimation scheme via covariance matching is adopted to acquire the channel information. It is shown that, when perfect channel knowledge is available at the receiver, the optimal noise resistant precoder proposed in the literature incurs the worst-case capacity penalty. When the coherent interval is finite, channel mismatch occurs due to finite-sample covariance matrix estimation. Thus, we aim to determine how much of the coherent interval should be dedicated to precoding in order to trade channel estimation accuracy for the maximal capacity. Toward this end, we leverage the matrix perturbation theory to derive a closed-form capacity measure which explicitly takes account of the channel uncertainty in the considered blind estimation setup. Such a capacity metric is seen to be a complicated function of the precoding interval. To facilitate analysis, an approximate formula for the derived capacity measure is further given. This allows us to find a closed-form estimate of the capacity-maximizing precoding time fraction, and can also provide insights into the optimal tradeoff between channel estimation accuracy and achievable capacity. Numerical simulations are used for evidencing the proposed analytic study.
Immunoneutralization of TGFβ1 Improves Skeletal Muscle Regeneration: Effects on Myoblast Differentiation and Glycosaminoglycan Content

When injured by crushing, the repair of the slow-twitch soleus rat muscle, unlike the fast-twitch EDL, is associated with fibrosis. As TGFβ1, whose activity can be controlled by glycosaminoglycans (GAG), plays a major role in fibrosis, we hypothesized that levels of TGFβ1 and GAG contents could account for this differential quality of regeneration. Here we show that the regeneration of the soleus was accompanied by elevated and more sustained TGFβ1 level than in the EDL. Neutralization of TGFβ1 effects by antibodies to TGFβ1 or its receptor TGFβ-R1 improved muscle repair, especially of the soleus muscle, increased in vitro growth of myoblasts, and accelerated their differentiation. These processes were accompanied by alterations of GAG contents. These results indicate that the control of TGFβ1 activity is important to improve regeneration of injured muscle and accelerate myoblast differentiation, in part through changes in GAG composition of muscle cell environment.
Complication of Endoleak and Retrograde Type A Dissection after Stenting of a Ruptured Type B Dissection

Purpose: We report a case of ruptured type B aortic dissection. Subject: A 59-year-old man with type B aortic dissection that ruptured into the left hemithorax, and was complicated by an endoleak and retrograde type A dissection after stenting. Results: This patient was treated with thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR), but was complicated by an endoleak. The patient died from a retrograde type A dissection on the 14th postoperative day. Conclusions: We recommend using a 200-mm stent without oversizing and avoidance of ballooning. A type II proximal endoleak must be treated in emergency aortic rupture cases.
Natural History of Asymptomatic Mitral Valve Prolapse in the Community

Background—The outcome of mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is controversial, with marked discrepancies in reported complication rates. Methods and Results—We conducted a community study of all Olmsted County, Minn, residents first diagnosed with asymptomatic MVP between 1989 and 1998 (N=833). Diagnosis, motivated by auscultatory findings (n=557) or incidental (n=276), was always confirmed by echocardiography with the use of current criteria. End points analyzed during 4581 person-years of follow-up were mortality (n=96, 19±2% at 10 years), cardiovascular morbidity (n=171), and MVP-related events (n=109, 20±2% at 10 years). The most frequent primary risk factors for cardiovascular mortality were mitral regurgitation from moderate to severe (P =0.002, n=131) and, less frequently, ejection fraction <50% (P =0.003, n=31). Secondary risk factors independently predictive of cardiovascular morbidity were slight mitral regurgitation, left atrium ≥40 mm, flail leaflet, atrial fibrillation, and age ≥50 years (all P <0.01). Patients with only 0 or 1 secondary risk factor (n=430) had excellent outcome, with 10-year mortality of 5±2% (P =0.17 versus expected), cardiovascular morbidity of 0.5%/y, and MVP-related events of 0.2%/y. Patients with ≥2 secondary risk factors (n=250) had mortality similar to expected (P =0.20) but high cardiovascular morbidity (6.2%/y, P <0.01) and notable MVP-related events (1.7%/y, P <0.01). Patients with primary risk factors (n=153) showed excess 10-year mortality (45±9%, P =0.01 versus expected), high morbidity (18.5%/y, P <0.01), and high MVP-related events (15%/y, P <0.01). Conclusions—Natural history of asymptomatic MVP in the community is widely heterogeneous and may be severe. Clinical and echocardiographic characteristics allow separation of the majority of patients with excellent prognosis from subsets of patients displaying, during follow-up, high morbidity or even excess mortality as direct a consequence of MVP.
Biomimetic design of materials and biomaterials inspired by the structure of nacre

The micro-architecture of nacre (mother of pearl) has been classically illustrated as a ‘brick-and-mortar’ arrangement. It is clear now that hierarchical organization and other structural features play an important role in the amazing mechanical properties of this natural nanocomposite. The more important structural characteristics and mechanical properties of nacre are exposed as a base that has inspired scientists and engineers to develop biomimetic strategies that could be useful in areas such as materials science, biomaterials development and nanotechnology. A strong emphasis is given on the latest advances on the synthetic design and production of nacre-inspired materials and coatings, in particular to be used in biomedical applications.
Scalable distance-based outlier detection over high-volume data streams

The discovery of distance-based outliers from huge volumes of streaming data is critical for modern applications ranging from credit card fraud detection to moving object monitoring. In this work, we propose the first general framework to handle the three major classes of distance-based outliers in streaming environments, including the traditional distance-threshold based and the nearest-neighbor-based definitions. Our LEAP framework encompasses two general optimization principles applicable across all three outlier types. First, our “minimal probing” principle uses a lightweight probing operation to gather minimal yet sufficient evidence for outlier detection. This principle overturns the state-of-the-art methodology that requires routinely conducting expensive complete neighborhood searches to identify outliers. Second, our “lifespan-aware prioritization” principle leverages the temporal relationships among stream data points to prioritize the processing order among them during the probing process. Guided by these two principles, we design an outlier detection strategy which is proven to be optimal in CPU costs needed to determine the outlier status of any data point during its entire life. Our comprehensive experimental studies, using both synthetic as well as real streaming data, demonstrate that our methods are 3 orders of magnitude faster than state-of-the-art methods for a rich diversity of scenarios tested yet scale to high dimensional streaming data.
Augmented Social Cognition

Research in Augmented Social Cognition is aimed at enhancing the ability of a group of people to remember, think, and reason; to augment their speed and capacity to acquire, produce, communicate, and use knowledge; and to advance collective and individual intelligence in socially mediated information environments. In this paper, we describe the emergence of this research endeavor, and summarize some results from the research. In particular, we have found that (1) analyses of conflicts and coordination in Wikipedia have shown us the scientific need to understand social sensemaking environments; and (2) information theoretic analyses of social tagging behavior in del.icio. us shows the need to understand human vocabulary systems.
The association between motivation in school physical education and self-reported physical activity during Finnish junior high school

The main purpose of this longitudinal study was to investigate the role of motivational climates, perceived competence and motivational regulations as antecedents of self-reported physical activity during junior high school years. The participants included 237 Finnish students (101 girls, 136 boys) that were 13 years old at the first stage of the study. Students completed the motivational climate and perceived competence questionnaires at Grade 7, motivation towards physical education questionnaire at Grade 8, and self-reported physical activity questionnaire at Grade 9. A path analysis revealed a path from task-involving motivational climate via perceived competence and intrinsic motivation to self-reported physical activity. Perceived competence and intrinsic motivation were statistically significant mediators between task-involving motivational climate and self-reported physical activity. This finding supports the four-stage causal sequence model of motivation.
Contamination of Foods by Food Handlers: Experiments on Hepatitis A Virus Transfer to Food and Its Interruption

ABSTRACT Hepatitis A virus (HAV) is an important pathogen which has been responsible for many food-borne outbreaks. HAV-excreting food handlers, especially those with poor hygienic practices, can contaminate the foods which they handle. Consumption of such foods without further processing has been known to result in cases of infectious hepatitis. Since quantitative data on virus transfer during contact of hands with foods is not available, we investigated the transfer of HAV from artificially contaminated fingerpads of adult volunteers to pieces of fresh lettuce. Touching the lettuce with artificially contaminated fingerpads for 10 s at a pressure of 0.2 to 0.4 kg/cm2resulted in transfer of 9.2% ± 0.9% of the infectious virus. The pretreatments tested to interrupt virus transfer from contaminated fingerpads included (i) hard-water rinsing and towel drying, (ii) application of a domestic or commercial topical agent followed by water rinsing and towel drying, and (iii) exposure to a hand gel containing 62% ethanol or 75% liquid ethanol without water rinsing or towel drying. When the fingerpads were treated with the topical agents or alcohol before the lettuce was touched, the amount of infectious virus transferred to lettuce was reduced from 9.2% to between 0.3 and 0.6% (depending on the topical agent used), which was a reduction in virus transfer of up to 30-fold. Surprisingly, no virus transfer to lettuce was detected when the fingerpads were rinsed with water alone before the lettuce was touched. However, additional experiments with water rinsing in which smaller volumes of water were used (1 ml instead of 15 ml) showed that the rate of virus transfer to lettuce was 0.3% ± 0.1%. The variability in virus transfer rates following water rinsing may indicate that the volume of water at least in part influences virus removal from the fingerpads differently, a possibility which should be investigated further. This study provided novel information concerning the rate of virus transfer to foods and a model for investigating the transfer of viral and other food-borne pathogens from contaminated hands to foods, as well as techniques for interrupting such transfer to improve food safety.
Well-being in organizations : a reader for students and practitioners

About the Series. About the Editors. Contributors. Introduction. HEALTH-RELATED ISSUES IN ORGANIZATIONS. Work Control and Employee Well-being: A Decade Review (D.J. Terry and N.L. Jimmieson). Workplace Bullying (H. Hoel, et al.). Working Time, Health and Performance (A. Spurgeon and C.L. Cooper). Understanding Acts of Betrayal: Implications for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (J.L. Pearce and G. R Henderson). The Interface Between Job and Off-Job Roles: Enhancement and Conflict (M.P. O'Driscoll). GENDER IN ORGANIZATIONS. Women's Careers and Occupational Stress (J. Langan-Fox). Organizational Men: Masculinity and Its Discontents (R.J. Burke and D.L. Nelson). INDIVIDUAL/ORGANIZATIONAL ADJUSTMENT. Drug and Alcohol Programs in the Workplace: A Review of Recent Literature (M.M. Harris and M.L. Trusty). Work Adjustment: Extension of the Theoretical Framework (A.Tziner and E.I. Meir). Vacations and Other Respites: Study Stress On and Off the Job (D. Eden). Subject Index.
Co-PoeTryMe: a Co-Creative Interface for the Composition of Poetry

Co-PoeTryMe is a web application for poetry composition, guided by the user, though with the help of automatic features, such as the generation of full (editable) drafts, as well as the acquisition of additional well-formed lines, or semantically-related words, possibly constrained by the number of syllables, rhyme, or polarity. Towards the final poem, the latter can replace lines or words in the draft.
SAMMI Semantic Affect-enhanced MultiMedia Indexing

Multimedia indexing is about developing techniques allowing people to effectively find media. Content-based methods become necessary when dealing with big databases. Current technology allows exploring the emotional space which is known to carry very interesting semantic information. In this paper we state the need for an integrated method which extracts reliable affective information and attaches this semantic information to the medium itself. We present a list of possible applications and advantages that the emotional information can bring about together with a framework called SAMMI and the preliminary results of this newly initiated research work.
Reduction by granulocyte colony-stimulating factor of fever and neutropenia induced by chemotherapy in patients with small-cell lung cancer.

BACKGROUND Neutropenia and infection are major dose-limiting side effects of chemotherapy. Previous studies have suggested that recombinant methionyl granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) can reduce chemotherapy-related neutropenia in patients with cancer. We conducted a randomized clinical trial to test this hypothesis and the clinical implications. METHODS Patients with small-cell lung cancer were enrolled in a multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of recombinant methionyl G-CSF to study the incidence of infection as manifested by fever with neutropenia (absolute neutrophil count, less than 1.0 x 10(9) per liter, with a temperature greater than or equal to 38.2 degrees C) resulting from up to six cycles of chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and etoposide. The patients were randomly assigned to receive either placebo or G-CSF, with treatment beginning on day 4 and continuing through day 17 of a 21-day cycle. RESULTS The safety of the study treatment could be evaluated in 207 of the 211 patients assigned to either drug, and its efficacy in 199. At least one episode of fever with neutropenia occurred in 77 percent of the placebo group, as compared with 40 percent of the G-CSF group (P less than 0.001). Over all cycles of chemotherapy, the median duration of grade IV neutropenia (absolute neutrophil count, less than 0.5 x 10(9) per liter) was six days with placebo as compared with one day with G-CSF. During cycles of blinded treatment, the number of days of treatment with intravenous antibiotics, the number of days of hospitalization, and the incidence of confirmed infections were reduced by approximately 50 percent when G-CSF was given, as compared with placebo. Mild-to-moderate medullary bone pain occurred in 20 percent of the patients receiving G-CSF. CONCLUSIONS The use of G-CSF as an adjunct to chemotherapy in patients with small-cell cancer of the lung was well tolerated and led to reductions in the incidence of fever with neutropenia and culture-confirmed infections; in the incidence, duration, and severity of grade IV neutropenia; and in the total number of days of treatment with intravenous antibiotics and days of hospitalization.
Stress and Subjective Age: Those With Greater Financial Stress Look Older

Subjective indicators of age add to our understanding of the aging process beyond the role of chronological age. We examined whether financial stress contributes to subjective age as rated by others and the self. The participants (N = 228), aged 26–75, were from a Boston area satellite of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) longitudinal study. Participants reported how old they felt and how old they thought they looked, and observers assessed the participants’ age based on photographs (other-look age), at two occasions, an average of 10 years apart. Financial stress was measured at Time 1. Controlling for income, general stress, health, and attractiveness, participants who reported higher levels of financial stress were perceived as older than their actual age to a greater extent and showed larger increases in other-look age over time. We consider the results on accelerated aging of appearance with regard to their implications for interpersonal interactions and in relation to health.
Multiple Resolution Skeletons

This paper presents a new algorithm to compute skeletons of noisy images of objects which can be described as ``amorphous blobs. '' Such a requirement arose from our research to obtain a better understanding of the role of the pseudopod in leukocyte locomotion. It involves the modeling and detection of pseudopods which are by their nature nonrigid bodies appearing on the cell's surface membrane. By computing skeletons at different resolutions, a filtered version can be produced without violating the constraints imposed by the semantic knowledge of pseudopod morphology. The filtered version incorporates all the significant ``events'' that occur at the different resolutions. The resolution at which the shape is examined is related to the degree of smoothing, in that the lower the resolution gets, the higher the degree of smoothing. Skeleton branches that persist over several scales arise from convexities that are locally as well as globally significant. Their stability is related to their perceptual significance. Our approach is to combine an initial region centered description (skeleton) with a boundary analysis executed at different resolutions. Having computed the skeleton at different scales, we then use those computed at the lower resolutions as a measure of how global the underlying convexity is. Clearly the skeletons computed at higher resolutions represent the exact location and orientation of the underlying convexities.