Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blind Source Images Separation Based on Optical Fractional Fourier Transform Autocorrelation Width

Blind source separation is a process in which mixed signals are separated into their original sources. Both sources and mixtures are unknown but a priori information about their statistical behavior and the mixing model is available. An example for sources could be sound, EEG, MEG signals or images. The sources that shall be considered here are gray level 2-D images. In this paper we shall propose a new algorithm based on the difference in the statistical characteristics of the images in the fractional correlation plane, namely the fractional autocorrelation r.m. s width parameter of the sources that is to be separated. The autocorrelation r.m. s width parameter is explored using the fractional Fourier transform. It is noticed, that in case of negligible cross correlation between the source signals, a very good separation is obtained. The case of non-negligible cross correlation is discussed.
SmartKom : Symmetric Multimodality in an Adaptive and Reusable Dialogue Shell

We introduce the notion of symmetric multimodality for dialogue systems in which all input modes (eg. speech, gesture, facial expression) are also available for output, and vice versa. A dialogue system with symmetric multimodality must not only understand and represent the user's multimodal input, but also its own multimodal output. We present the SmartKom system, that provides full symmetric multimodality in a mixed-initiative dialogue system with an embodied conversational agent. SmartKom represents a new generation of multimodal dialogue systems, that deal not only with simple modality integration and synchronization, but cover the full spectrum of dialogue phenomena that are associated with symmetric multimodality (including crossmodal references, one-anaphora, and backchannelling). We show that SmartKom's plug-an-play architecture supports multiple recognizers for a single modality, eg. the user's speech signal can be processed by three unimodal recognizers in parallel (speech recognition, emotional prosody, boundary prosody). Finally, we detail SmartKom's three-tiered representation of multimodal discourse, consisting of a domain layer, a discourse layer, and a modality layer. To conclude, we discuss the economic and scientific impact of the SmartKom project, that has lead to more than 50 patents and 29 spin-off products.
Orientaciones de meta, satisfacción, creencias de éxito y clima motivacional en nadadores

En el presente estudio se plantearon varios objetivos; comprobar las relaciones existentes entre las orientaciones de meta, la satisfaccion, las creencias sobre las causas del exito en el deporte y el clima motivacional percibido en nadadores; examinar el efecto que tiene la orientacion de meta en las diferentes dimensiones analizadas; y, por ultimo, predecir la orientacion de meta. La muestra estuvo compuesta por 163 nadadores. Los instrumentos utilizados fueron las versiones validadas al castellano del TEOSQ, SSI, BACSSQ y PMCSQ-2. Se realizaron tres tipos de analisis estadisticos: analisis de correlaciones bivariadas, analisis multivariante (MANOVA 2x2) y analisis de regresion lineal multiple multivariado por pasos. Los resultados mostraron que la capacidad y el aburrimiento son variables predictoras de la orientacion de meta hacia el ego, mientras que el esfuerzo y la diversion lo son de las orientaciones de meta hacia la tarea.
Fitting Pulsar Wind Tori

Chandra X-Ray Observatory imaging has shown that equatorial tori, often with polar jets, are very common in young pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe). These structures are interesting both for what they reveal about the relativistic wind itself and for the (nearly) model-independent measurement of the neutron star spin orientation they provide. The latter is a particularly valuable probe of pulsar emission models and neutron star physics. We describe here a procedure for fitting simple three-dimensional torus models to the X-ray data, which provides robust estimates of the geometric parameters. An application to six PWN tori gives orientations, PWN shock scales, and postshock wind speeds, along with statistical errors. We illustrate the use of these data by commenting on the implications for kick physics and high-energy beaming models.
Modeling Social Interactions in Real Work Environments

We present a study for modeling the behavioral patterns of employees and keeping track of the social interactions among people in a real work environment. The main advantage of our approach to capture social interactions in a work environment is the use of off-the-shelf tools and devices - like smartphones available on the market - and the utilization of the discovered patterns for the optimum distribution of employees in a office building. We carried out an experiment in our building at Fernfachhochschule Schweiz and captured data about physical proximity, virtual interactions (i.e., email exchange) and individual performance satisfaction of 20 employees for 8 working days, during their working hours. The objective of the experiment was to investigate the interaction patterns of employees in relation to four aspects: quantity, space, performance and organization. Besides confirming the existence of different social interaction types, we also provide insights in how distance between office spaces affects type and amount of social interaction. Further, we describe the influence of contacts among workers on their performance. Finally, our analysis emphasizes the importance of an employee's role in terms of number of physical and virtual interactions.
Interpersonal psychotherapy for depression: a meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), a structured and time-limited therapy, has been studied in many controlled trials. Numerous practice guidelines have recommended IPT as a treatment of choice for unipolar depressive disorders. The authors conducted a meta-analysis to integrate research on the effects of IPT. METHOD The authors searched bibliographical databases for randomized controlled trials comparing IPT with no treatment, usual care, other psychological treatments, and pharmacotherapy as well as studies comparing combination treatment using pharmacotherapy and IPT. Maintenance studies were also included. RESULTS Thirty-eight studies including 4,356 patients met all inclusion criteria. The overall effect size (Cohen's d) of the 16 studies that compared IPT and a control group was 0.63 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.36 to 0.90), corresponding to a number needed to treat of 2.91. Ten studies comparing IPT and other psychological treatments showed a nonsignificant differential effect size of 0.04 (95% CI=-0.14 to 0.21; number needed to treat=45.45) favoring IPT. Pharmacotherapy (after removal of one outlier) was more effective than IPT (d=-0.19, 95% CI=-0.38 to -0.01; number needed to treat=9.43), and combination treatment was not more effective than IPT alone, although the paucity of studies precluded drawing definite conclusions. Combination maintenance treatment with pharmacotherapy and IPT was more effective in preventing relapse than pharmacotherapy alone (odds ratio=0.37; 95% CI=0.19 to 0.73; number needed to treat=7.63). CONCLUSIONS There is no doubt that IPT efficaciously treats depression, both as an independent treatment and in combination with pharmacotherapy. IPT deserves its place in treatment guidelines as one of the most empirically validated treatments for depression.
Human PIF1 helicase supports DNA replication and cell growth under oncogenic-stress

Unwinding duplex DNA is a critical processing step during replication, repair and transcription. Pif1 are highly conserved non-processive 5′->3′ DNA helicases with well-established roles in maintenance of yeast genome stability. However, the function of the sole member of Pif1 family in humans remains unclear. Human PIF1 is essential for tumour cell viability, particularly during replication stress, but is dispensable in non-cancerous cells and Pif1 deficient mice. Here we report that suppression of PIF1 function slows replication fork rates and increases arrested forks during normal cycling conditions. Importantly, PIF1-dependent replication impediments impair S-phase progression and reduce proliferation rates of RAS oncogene-transformed fibroblasts, where replication fork slowing is exacerbated, but not parental, non-cancerous cells. Disrupted fork movement upon PIF1-depletion does not enhance double-stranded break formation or DNA damage responses but affects resumption of DNA synthesis after prolonged replication inhibitor exposure, accompanied by diminished new origin firing and mainly S-phase entry. Taken together, we characterised a functional role for human PIF1 in DNA replication that becomes important for cell growth under oncogenic stress. Given that oncogenes induce high levels of replication stress during the early stages of tumorigenesis, this function of PIF1 could become critical during cancer development.
Anaesthesia for emergency caesarean section in a morbidly obese achondroplastic patient with PIH: Feasibility of Neuraxial anaesthesia?

A 25‐year‐old primigravida was referred to our hospital at 38 ± 3 week gestation with meconium stained liquor for emergency caesarean section (CS). She weighed 90 Kg with a height of 104 cm and body mass index (BMI 80 kg/m2, morbid obesity). She was a diagnosed case of pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH), not on medications. She had complaints of fever, productive cough and dyspnea (NYHA III) since10 days and was on antibiotics. She was afebrile, pale with stable vitals. Systemic examination revealed lumbar lordosis, pedal edema and crepitations in lung bases. She had an anticipated difficult airway in view of short neck, limited neck extension, large tongue and Mallampatti grade 3. Her haemoglobin was 7 gm% but coagulation, renal and liver functions were normal. Chest X‐ray demonstrated bilateral lower zones haziness, and increased bronchovesicular markings. ECG showed sinus rhythm and 2‐D echocardiography revealed left ventricular ejection fraction 55‐60%.
Switching Learning Law for Differential Neural Observer for Biodegradation Process

In this paper, it is presented a differential neural network supplied with a new learning law based on the sliding mode approach. The state observer is employed to estimate the dynamics states of degradation mathematical model, where the incomplete information and the limited on-line measure problems are considered. A new training method is applied in the learning algorithm is proposed to reconstruct biomass, organic matter recalcitrant concentrations and volume of biological culture evolutions. This allows ensuring an upper bound for the weights time evolution. This new scheme gives the possibility to construct not only one adaptive process but a set of learning laws. The effectiveness of this algorithm is shown by numerical results.
Application of data mining to candidate screening

Classification models are supervised learning methods used for predicting the value of a categorical target attribute. These models use a set of examples, called the training set, to learn to predict the target class of a future example whose class is unknown. The development of learning algorithms capable of learning from past experience is an important step in emulating inductive learning in humans. Classification finds application in many domains, of which selection of customers for a marketing campaign, fraud detection, diagnosis of diseases, image recognition, and spam e-mail filtering are just a few examples. In this paper, we present a comparative study of the application of the Naive Bayes and k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN) classification methods to the problem of screening candidates for a vacant position in an organization. The observable attributes of a candidate profile are first established. In the training phase, a training set of example profiles is used for learning the classification rules of the organization. In the test phase, the accuracy of the classification model is assessed by classifying example profiles not included in the training set, but for which the target class is already known. In the prediction phase, a profile whose target class is not known is classified. We present the results of the comparison of the Naive Bayes method with the kNN method.
P2P with JXTA-Java pipes

The peer-to-peer (p2p) paradigm is attracting increasing attention from both the research community and software engineers, due to potential performance, reliability and scalability improvements. This paper emphasizes that JXTA can help teachers to teach p2p with Java. This paper also presents an approach for performance analysis of JXTA pipes - one of the key abstractions in JXTA, which has not yet been fully evaluated. It explains how to assess a pipe and demonstrates performance results of the JXTA-Java implementation. In doing so, this paper assists software developers in estimating the overall performance and scalability of JXTA, and the suitability of choosing JXTA for their specific application.
Integrating Rules and Description Logics by Circumscription

We present a new approach to characterizing the semantics for the integration of rules and first-order logic in general, and description logics in particular, based on a circumscription characterization of answer set programming, introduced earlier by Lin and Zhou. We show that both Rosati's semantics based on NM-models and Lukasiewicz's answer set semantics can be characterized by circumscription, and the difference between the two can be seen as a matter of circumscription policies. This approach leads to a number of new insights. First, we rebut a criticism on Lukasiewicz's semantics for its inability to reason for negative consequences. Second, our approach leads to a spectrum of possible semantics based on different circumscription policies, and shows a clear picture of how they are related. Finally, we show that the idea of this paper can be applied to first-order general stable models.
A systematic study on the self-assembly behaviour of multi component fmoc-amino acid-poly(oxazoline) systems

We report a systematic study of a modular approach to create multi-component supramolecular nanostructures that can be tailored to be both enzyme and temperature responsive. Using a straightforward synthetic approach we functionalised a thermal responsive polymer, poly(2-isopropyl-2-oxazoline), with fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl-amino acids that drive the self-assembly. Depending on the properties of appended amino acids, these polymers undergo substantial morphological changes in response to the catalytic action of alkaline phosphatase.
Proximal calculus on Riemannian manifolds, with applications to fixed point theory

We introduce a proximal subdifferential and develop a calculus for nonsmooth functions defined on any Riemannian manifold $M$. We give several applications of this theory, concerning: 1) differentiability and geometrical properties of the distance function to a closed subset $C$ of $M$; 2) solvability and implicit function theorems for nonsmooth functions on $M$; 3) conditions on the existence of a circumcenter for three different points of $M$; and especially 4) fixed point theorems for expansive and nonexpansive mappings and certain perturbations of such mappings defined on $M$.
Time to abandon Internet Addiction? Predicting problematic internet, game, and social media use from psychosocial well-being and application use

__Objective:__ There have long been indications that those with problems controlling their Internet use manifest those problems in relation to specific applications. The current study empirically explores the option of abandoning a unified approach to problematic ‘Internet use’, by splitting the concept into more specific application level measurement. __Method:__ The current study used self-report survey data, collected from Dutch adolescents (aged 12-15, N=3945). Two Structural Equation Models predicted either problematic Internet use (model 1) or both problematic game use and problematic social media use (model 2). Problematic use of the Internet/games/social media was assessed with three abbreviated 6-item versions of the CIUS. Predictors included computer-activity use type in hours per week, depressive mood, loneliness, social anxiety, negative self-esteem, and general life-satisfaction. __Results:__ Problematic Internet use was associated with both social and gaming activities, as well as depressive mood. In the split model, problematic social media use was associated with three types of social, Internet behavior (social networking, Twitter, and instant messenger) and depressive mood, while problematic gaming was associated with both online (Internet) and offline gaming, as well as by gender (male) and depressive mood. __Conclusions:__ The more specific problematic social media use and problematic game use measures provide a less ambiguous and clearer picture that also reveals the role of gender within problematic game use. This provides some evidence to support splitting up measures of problematic Internet use into more specific measures in the future.
Global Consistent Shape Correspondence for Efficient and Effective Active Shape Models

Finding the accurate corresponded landmarks from a collection of shape instances plays critical role in constructing active shape models (ASMs). We have developed a global consistent shape correspondence paradigm for efficient and effective active shape models to address challenging issues in statistical shape modelling. Specifically, in this paper, we developed techniques to perform a fast multiple shape matching to identify global consistent shape correspondence from a set of training shape instances via efficient low-rank recovery optimization. High quality ASMs can then be constructed based on the identified corresponded points. The entire process is unsupervised without manual annotation as well as free of selection of anatomically significant point. Experimental results on mobile hand image data demonstrate the superior performance of our proposed method over other state-of-the-art techniques like MDL in constructing active shape models.
Accuracy of gestalt perception of acute chest pain in predicting coronary artery disease

AIM To test accuracy and reproducibility of gestalt to predict obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients with acute chest pain. METHODS We studied individuals who were consecutively admitted to our Chest Pain Unit. At admission, investigators performed a standardized interview and recorded 14 chest pain features. Based on these features, a cardiologist who was blind to other clinical characteristics made unstructured judgment of CAD probability, both numerically and categorically. As the reference standard for testing the accuracy of gestalt, angiography was required to rule-in CAD, while either angiography or non-invasive test could be used to rule-out. In order to assess reproducibility, a second cardiologist did the same procedure. RESULTS In a sample of 330 patients, the prevalence of obstructive CAD was 48%. Gestalt’s numerical probability was associated with CAD, but the area under the curve of 0.61 (95%CI: 0.55-0.67) indicated low level of accuracy. Accordingly, categorical definition of typical chest pain had a sensitivity of 48% (95%CI: 40%-55%) and specificity of 66% (95%CI: 59%-73%), yielding a negligible positive likelihood ratio of 1.4 (95%CI: 0.65-2.0) and negative likelihood ratio of 0.79 (95%CI: 0.62-1.02). Agreement between the two cardiologists was poor in the numerical classification (95% limits of agreement = -71% to 51%) and categorical definition of typical pain (Kappa = 0.29; 95%CI: 0.21-0.37). CONCLUSION Clinical judgment based on a combination of chest pain features is neither accurate nor reproducible in predicting obstructive CAD in the acute setting.
Research on Classification and Subdivision Model of Telecom Rural Channel Based on Clustering Analysis

Rapid advances in data collection and storage technology have enabled telecom company to accumulate vast amounts of data. However, extracting useful information has proven extremely challenging. Telecom enterprises are holding massive customers’ data and should convert it to competitive advantage in order to maximize customers’ profitability. Based on CRISP-DM (Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining) methodology, this paper discusses the application of clustering analysis in telecom rural channel classification and subdivision model, combining with telecom industry basic data and Clementine data mining tool, this thesis establishes model of rural channel classification and subdivision, and classify telecom carriers in grade efficiently.
A Case-Control Study Comparing Bone Bruising and Intra-articular Injuries in Patients Undergoing Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction With and Without Medial Collateral Ligament Tears

Background: Concomitant injuries can occur in patients with combined anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and medial collateral ligament (MCL) tears; however, no studies have compared these injuries in patients undergoing ACL reconstruction with an MCL tear to those with an intact MCL. Purpose: To compare bone bruising, meniscus tears, and chondral lesions in patients undergoing ACL reconstruction with an MCL tear (cases) to those with an intact MCL (controls). Study Design: Case-control study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Thirty-two cases and 352 controls were identified from a prospective registry. Bone bruising was confirmed on magnetic resonance imaging, and meniscus tears and chondral lesions were confirmed arthroscopically. Demographics and concomitant injuries were compared between cases and controls using exact chi-square tests. Multivariate logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, and mechanism and type of injury. Results: Cases had significantly more contact injuries than controls (58.1% vs 21.3%, P < .0001). The prevalence and odds of bone bruising of the lateral tibial plateau (89.7% vs 84.6%; P = .59; OR, 3.53; 95% CI, 0.45-27.71), lateral femoral condyle (82.8% vs 72.8%; P = .28; OR, 1.94; 95% CI, 0.64-5.88), medial tibial plateau (20.7% vs 31.7%; P = 0.29; OR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.19-1.53), and medial femoral condyle (6.9% vs 8.3%; P ≥ .999; OR, 1.07; 95% CI, 0.21-5.40) did not differ significantly between cases and controls. The prevalence and odds of lateral meniscus tears (53.3% vs 43%; P = .34; OR, 1.85; 95% CI, 0.76-4.52), medial meniscus tears (31.3% vs 33.5%; P = .85; OR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.37-2.21), and chondral lesions (16% vs 10.8%; P = .50; OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.15-3.21) also did not significantly differ between cases and controls. Conclusion: ACL-MCL injuries were most often due to a contact mechanism, whereas ACL tears without associated MCL injury were more frequently due to a noncontact mechanism. However, there were no significant differences in concomitant injuries in ACL-MCL knees versus ACL knees.
Rapid and robust ranking of text documents in a dynamically changing corpus

Ranking documents in a selected corpus plays an important role in information retrieval systems. Despite notable advances in this direction, with continuously accumulating text documents, maintaining up-to-date ordering among documents in the domains of interest is a challenging task. Conventional approaches can produce an ordering that is only valid within a given corpus. Thus, with such approaches, ordering should be completely redone as documents are added to or deleted from the corpus. In this paper, we introduce a corpus- independent framework for rapid ordering of documents in a dynamically changing corpus. Like in many practical approaches, our framework suggests utilizing a similarity measure in some metric space indicating the degree of relevance of a document to the domain of interest. However, unlike in corpus- dependent approaches, the relevance score of a document remains valid with changes being introduced into the corpus (insertion of new documents, for example), thus allowing a rapid ordering within the corpus. This paper particularly details a statistical approach to compute such relevance scores.