Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Homocentric Polar-Radius Moment for Shape Classification

The description of the object shape is an important subject in the area of image processing and pattern recognition. In this paper, a new approach to contour recognition is proposed. This approach is based on the homocentric polar-radius moment to extract feature vectors of boundaries. Firstly, the definition of homocentric polar-radius moment is introduced. Secondly, the invariance properties of translation, rotation and scaling are proved. In the classification experiments, the recognition results show that our method is more robust and precise than improved moment invariants
SELF-REPORTS ABOUT PLACE : THE APPLICATION OF SURVEY AND INTERVIEW METHODS TO THE STUDY OF SMALL AREAS

This paper argues for more frequent use of surveys and interviews to advance the criminology of place, and to improve current evaluations of place-specific crime prevention interventions by police, community groups, and others. Interview methodologies can produce reliable information about critical social processes and perceptions—data that are not obtainable through other methods. However, because survey researchers have placed too much emphasis on "sampling error," this paper encourages the adoption of a "total survey error" perspective. Also recommended is the use of other interview methods, including place-intercept surveys and focus groups to capture data from specific types of place users. The concept of "mental mapping" is proposed to enrich our understanding of users' fears and perceptions about the target area. A multi-method approach is recommended that will yield diverse types of information about place, and wiU. allow for triangulation and convergent validation of information. The criminology of place is a vital and growing area of research within the field of criminology. This paper argues, however, that continued advances in knowledge will be constrained unless researchers pay greater Address correspondence to: Dennis P. Rosenbaum, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison, Chicago, IL 60607.
Evaluation of a commercially available human C-reactive protein (CRP) turbidometric immunoassay for determination of canine serum CRP concentration.

BACKGROUND Serum C-reactive protein (CRP) is an acute phase marker in dogs that is useful for the diagnosis and monitoring of inflammatory disease. Rapid, reliable, and automated assays are preferable for routine evaluation of canine serum CRP concentration. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate whether canine serum CRP concentration could be measured reliably using an automated turbidometric immunoassay (TIA) designed for use with human serum. METHODS A commercially available TIA for human serum CRP (Bayer, Newbury, UK) was used to measure canine serum CRP concentration. Cross-reactivity of antigen was evaluated by the Ouchterlony procedure. Intra- and interassay imprecision was investigated by multiple measurements on canine serum samples and serum pools, respectively. Assay inaccuracy was investigated by linearity under dilution and comparison of methodologies (canine CRP ELISA, Tridelta Development Ltd, Kildare, UK). Then the assay was applied to serum samples from 14 clinically healthy dogs, 11 dogs with neoplasia, 13 with infections, 8 with endocrine or metabolic diseases, and 10 with miscellaneous diseases. RESULTS Cross-reactivity between canine serum CRP and the anti-human CRP antibody was found. Intra- and interassay imprecision ranged from 5.2% to 10.8% and 3.0% to 10.2%, respectively. Serum CRP concentration was measured in a linear and proportional manner. There was no significant disagreement and there was linear correlation of the results in the comparison of methodologies, except for a slight proportional discrepancy at low CRP concentrations (<10 microg/mL). Dogs with infections had a significantly higher concentration of serum CRP than did all other dogs, and dogs with neoplasia had a significantly higher concentration of serum CRP than did clinically healthy dogs. CONCLUSIONS Canine serum CRP concentration can be measured reliably using the commercially available TIA designed for human CRP.
Ethnic differences in stressors, resources, and psychological outcomes of family caregiving: a meta-analysis.

PURPOSE We investigated ethnic differences in caregiver background variables, objective stressors, filial obligations beliefs, psychological and social resources, coping processes, and psychological and physical health. DESIGN AND METHODS We used a meta-analysis to integrate the results of 116 empirical studies. RESULTS Ethnic minority caregivers had a lower socioeconomic status, were younger, were less likely to be a spouse, and more likely to receive informal support. They provided more care than White caregivers and had stronger filial obligations beliefs than White caregivers. Asian-American caregivers, but not African-American and Hispanic caregivers, used less formal support than non-Hispanic White caregivers. Whereas African-American caregivers had lower levels of caregiver burden and depression than White caregivers, we found that Hispanic and Asian-American caregivers were more depressed than their White non-Hispanic peers. However, all groups of ethnic minority caregivers reported worse physical health than Whites. Observed ethnic differences in burden and depression were influenced by study characteristics, such as the type of illness of the care recipient and the representativeness of the sample. IMPLICATIONS The results suggest that more specific theories are needed to explain differential effects of ethnic minority groups of caregivers. Intervention needs vary, in part, between ethnic groups of caregivers.
Smith's Patient Centered Interviewing: An Evidence-Based Method

1. The Medical Interview 2. Data Gathering and Relationship Building Skills 3. The Beginning of the Interview: Patient-Centered Interviewing 4. Symptom-Defining Skills 5. The Middle of the Interview: Clinician-Centered Interviewing 6. Step 11: The End of the Interview 7. Adapting the Interview to Different Situations and Other Practical issues 8. The Clinician-Patient Relationship 9. Summarizing and Presenting the Patient's Story Appendix A. Foreword to teh First Edition Appendix B. Research and humanistic Ratinale for Patient-Centred Interviewing Appendix C. Feelings and Emotions Appendix D. Complete Write-Up of Mrs. Jones' Initial Evaluation Appendix E. Mental Status Evaluation Subject Index
New Formulation Strategies in Topical Antifungal Therapy

Fungal infections of the skin are one of the often faced with dermatological diseases in worldwide. Topical therapy is an attractive choice for the treatment of the cutaneous infections due to its advantageous such as targeting of drugs to the site of infection and reduction of the risk of systemic side effects. Currently, antifungal drugs are generally used as conventional cream and gel preparations in topical treatment. The efficiency of that treatment depends on the penetration of drugs through the target layers of the skin at the effective concentrations. However, stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the skin, is an effective barrier for penetration of drugs into deeper layers of the skin. The physicochemical characteristics of drug molecules and the types of the formulations are effective factors in topical drug delivery. Therefore, a number of formulation strategies have been investigated for delivering antifungal compounds through targeted site of the skin. This review article focuses on the new alternative formulation approaches to improve skin penetration of antifungal drugs.
Progressive supranuclear palsy : clinical and research approaches

Almost three decades after progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) was first characterized, the first book on this disorder in now available. An authoritative resource, it provides state-of-the-art reviews of all the facets of this degenerative disease of the nervous system affecting movement, gaze, cognition, and other functions. Comprehensive chapters on clinical assessment and treatment will help clinicians achieve an earlier diagnosis of PSP and differentiate its clinical symptoms from those of other subcortical disorders such as Parkinson's disease and multiple system atrophy. The volume will also appeal to neuropsychologists and psychiatrists interested in subcortical dementia as there are chapters on visual attention, memory and cognition, and cognitive evoked-potentials. Neuro-ophthalmologists will find the discussion of specific abnormalities in ocular motility useful. The anatomical pathology and neurochemistry of PSP are given detailed discussion in chapters whose intent is to stimulate novel approaches to the study and treatment of this devastating but fascinating disorder. This book is a must-have reference volume for clinicians and investigators interested in PSP, clinical diagnosis of degenerative diseases of the central nervous system, and the subcortical dementias.
Steady state analysis of coded cooperative networks with HARQ protocol

We consider a network with an arbitrary number of nodes, where transmission of data packet is enhanced by a medium access control protocol that allows cooperation among nodes and solves transmission failures by an automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol. Nodes operate in half-duplex mode and may interfere with each other as no coordination is assumed. In this scenario, we first derive the outage probability for a given number of interfering nodes and then relate the interference level to the single node behavior. We analyze the network behavior with a steady state analysis that matches the number of interfering nodes with the number of ARQ retransmissions. Two alternatives for cooperation are considered: decode and forward (DF) cooperation and multiple input-single output (MISO) cooperation, where for each packet transmission either one node transmits at a given time or two cooperating nodes transmit simultaneously. In our steady state analysis we also include an opportunistic version of DF, where cooperation is activated only when the quality of the cooperator-destination link is better than that of the source-destination link. Moreover, we investigate cooperator selection based on its distance to the destination.
Contribution of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) activity in blood-brain barrier disruption and edema after acute ischemia/reperfusion in aortic coarctation-induced hypertensive rats.

BACKGROUND Nitric oxide synthase (NOS) activity is increased during hypertension and cerebral ischemia. NOS inactivation reduces stroke-induced cerebral injuries, but little is known about its role in blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption and cerebral edema formation during stroke in acute hypertension. Here, we investigated the role of NOS inhibition in progression of edema formation and BBB disruptions provoked by ischemia/reperfusion injuries in acute hypertensive rats. METHODS Rats were made acutely hypertensive by aortic coarctation. After 7 days, the rats were randomly selected for the recording of carotid artery pressure, or regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) using laser Doppler. Ishcemia induced by 60-min middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), followed by 12-h reperfusion. A single i.p. dose of L-NAME (1 mg/kg) was injected before MCAO. After evaluation of neurological disabilities, rats were slaughtered under deep anesthesia to assess cerebral infarction volume, edema, or BBB disruption. RESULTS A 75-85% reduction in rCBF was occurred during MCAO which returned to pre-occluded levels during reperfusion. Profound neurological disabilities were evidenced after MCAO alongside with severe cerebral infarctions (628 ± 98 mm3), considerable edema (4.05 ± 0.52%) and extensive BBB disruptions (Evans blue extravasation, 8.46 ± 2.03 mug/g). L-NAME drastically improved neurological disabilities, diminished cerebral infarction (264 ± 46 mm3), reduced edema (1.49 ± 0.47%) and BBB disruption (2.93 ± 0.66 mug/g). CONCLUSION The harmful actions of NOS activity on cerebral microvascular integrity are intensified by ischemia/reperfusion injuries during acute hypertension. NOS inactivation by L-NAME preserved this integrity and diminished cerebral edema.
Phase I trial of concurrent tirapazamine, cisplatin, and radiotherapy in patients with advanced head and neck cancer.

PURPOSE To determine the maximum-tolerated dose of tirapazamine when combined with cisplatin and radiation in patients with T3/4 and/or N2/3 squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. PATIENTS AND METHODS The starting schedule was conventionally fractionated radiotherapy (70 Gy in 7 weeks) with concomitant cisplatin 75 mg/m2 and tirapazamine 290 mg/m2 (before cisplatin) in weeks 1, 4, and 7 and tirapazamine alone 160 mg/m2 three times a week in weeks 2, 3, 5, and 6. Positron emission tomography scans for tumor hypoxia (18F misonidazole) were performed before and during radiotherapy. RESULTS We treated 16 patients with predominantly oropharyngeal primary tumors, including 10 patients with T4 or N3 disease. Febrile neutropenia occurred toward the end of radiotherapy in three out of six patients treated on the initial dose level. Two of these patients also developed grade 4 acute radiation reactions. Another 10 patients were treated with the same doses, but the week 5 and week 6 tirapazamine doses were omitted. This resulted in less neutropenia and only one dose-limiting toxicity (DLT) (febrile neutropenia), and eight out of 10 patients completed treatment without any dose omissions. In these 10 patients, the acute radiation toxicities were not obviously enhanced compared with chemoradiotherapy regimens using concurrent platinum and fluorouracil. 18F misonidazole scans detected hypoxia in 14 of 15 patients at baseline, with only one patient having detectable hypoxia at the end of treatment. With a median follow-up of 2.7 years, the 3-year failure-free survival rate was 69% (SE, 12%), the 3-year local progression-free rate was 88% (SE, 8%), and the 3-year overall survival rate was 69% (SE, 12%). CONCLUSION DLT was due unexpectedly to febrile neutropenia, which could be overcome by omitting tirapazamine in weeks 5 and 6. The combination of tirapazamine, cisplatin, and radiotherapy resulted in remarkably good and durable clinical responses in patients with very advanced head and neck cancers. It warrants further investigation.
Common Genetic Variants in the Vitamin D Pathway Including Genome-Wide Associated Variants Are Not Associated with Breast Cancer Risk among Chinese Women

Background: Previous studies evaluating the association of vitamin D–related genetic variants with breast cancer risk have produced inconsistent results. Methods: We evaluated the association between breast cancer risk and 559 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in 12 vitamin D–related genes, including 6 genes associated with circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] level identified by recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS), using directly observed and imputed GWAS genotyping data from 2,919 breast cancer cases and 2,323 controls recruited in the Shanghai Breast Cancer Study. Results: Of the SNPs studied, only rs12570116 in the ACADSB gene, rs4760658 in the VDR gene and rs6091822, rs8124792, and rs6097809 in the CYP24A1 gene, and rs10902845 in C10orf88 had a nominal association with breast cancer risk (P < 0.05 for all). None of these associations persisted after adjustment for multiple comparisons. The most extensively studied SNPs including rs10735810, also known as rs2228570 (Fok1, VDR), rs1544410 (Bsm1, VDR), and rs2296241 (CYP24A1), were not associated with breast cancer risk. GWAS-identified genetic variants that were associated with 25(OH)D were also not related to breast cancer risk. Conclusions: Our data suggest that genetic polymorphisms in vitamin D–related genes do not play a major role in breast cancer risk in Chinese women. Impact: Although our study confirms previously documented breast cancer risk factor associations, our null results suggest that common genetic variants in vitamin D genes and loci associated with control of vitamin D levels are not risk factors for breast cancer in Chinese women. Our data contribute to filling the gap in this field of research. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 20(10); 2313–6. ©2011 AACR.
Abrupt change detection in power system fault analysis using wavelet transform

This paper describes the application of the wavelets used to detect the abrupt changes in the signals recorded during disturbances in the electrical power network in South Africa. Main focus has been to estimate exactly the timeinstants of the changes in the signal model parameters during the pre-fault condition and following events like initiation of fault, circuit-breaker opening, auto-reclosure of the circuit-breakers using the wavelet transform, particularly the dyadicorthonormal wavelet transform. The key idea is to decompose the fault signals into effective detailed and smoothed version using the multiresolution signal decomposition technique based on discrete wavelet transform. Then we apply the threshold method on the decomposed signals to estimate the change time-instants, segmenting the fault signals. After segmenting the fault signal precisely into the event-specific sections, further signal processing and analysis can be performed on these segments, leading to automated fault recognition and analysis. In the scope of this paper, we focus on the first task i.e., segmentation of the fault signal into event-specific sections using the wavelet transform and threshold method. This paper presents application on recorded signals in the transmission network of South Africa.
Complex Interactions in the Content Distribution Ecosystem and Quality-of-Experience : A White Paper for Internet QoE Workshop

Since their advent in the early 90s, web applications and services have evolved from the simple clientserver model, where content (e.g., a file) is delivered point-to-point from a single web server to a single client, to a vast and complex system consisting of numerous servers (some located close to users and others in large back-end data centers), network elements, and software components owned and controlled by a variety of entities such as content providers (CPs), content distribution networks (CDNs), and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). These three entities along with the users that they serve form the content distribution ecosystem. The content distribution ecosystem is a dominant force driving the evolution of the Internet as CDNs carry most of the world’s web pages, videos, social networks, software downloads, e-commerce sites, software-as-a-service (SaaS) portals, and other web applications. Each entity in the ecosystem has its own business interest, and attempts to optimize the performance of its components more often individually, but sometimes in cooperation with others. Online video streaming services in particular heighten the importance of understanding the complex interactions present in content distribution, where content providers often employ multiple CDNs to stream videos to a large number of geographically dispersed users. The enormous burden that video traffic places on the Internet infrastructure [8] creates tensions, but also opportunities. Interactions, whether competitive or cooperative, among content providers, CDNs and ISPs are inevitable, and will likely evolve rapidly and become far more complex. For example, they have fostered several important trends, e.g., increasing cooperation among ISPs and CDNs that are variously called Network CDNs, Telco-CDNs, Carrier CDNs, or Managed CDNs, while at the same time content providers compete to attract more users via (specialized) streaming apps or devices (e.g., chromecast) on the end systems. The complex interactions among various entities in today’s large-scale content distribution ecosystem makes it a challenging task to ensure high quality-of-experience (QoE) for end users. This is in spite that providing a high quality of QoE for their users is also a key goal for any content or application service provider including online video streaming service providers such as NetFlix, web search services such as Google and Microsoft Bing, social network service providers such as Facebook, and so forth. This is because these service providers rely on either online ads, user subscriptions, or pay-perview/pay-per-click for their revenues. All three monetization models depend on engaging the user by enticing them to watch more videos, conducting more searches or staying on social networking sites longer, and to come back to their website more often.
Prevention of chronic NSAID induced upper gastrointestinal toxicity.

BACKGROUND Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are important agents in the management of arthritic and inflammatory conditions, and are among the most frequently prescribed medications in North America and Europe. However, there is overwhelming evidence linking these agents to a variety of gastrointestinal (GI) toxicities. OBJECTIVES To review the effectiveness of common interventions for the prevention of NSAID induced upper GI toxicity. SEARCH STRATEGY A literature search was conducted, according to the Cochrane methodology for identification of randomized controlled trials in electronic databases, including MEDLINE from 1966 to January 2000, Current Contents for 6 months prior to January 2000, Embase to Febuary 1999, and a search of the Cochrane Controlled Trials Register from 1973 to 1999. Recent conference proceedings were reviewed and content experts and companies were contacted. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) of prostaglandin analogues (PA), H2-receptor antagonists (H2RA) or proton pump inhibitors (PPI) for the prevention of chronic NSAID induced upper GI toxicity were included. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Two independent reviewers extracted data regarding population characteristics, study design, methodological quality and number of patients with endoscopic ulcers, ulcer complications, symptoms, overall drop-outs, drop outs due to symptoms. Dichotomous data was pooled using Revman V3.1. Heterogeneity was evaluated using a chi square test. MAIN RESULTS Thirty-three RCTs met the inclusion criteria. All doses of misoprostol significantly reduced the risk of endoscopic ulcers. Misoprostol 800 ug/day was superior to 400 ug/day for the prevention of endoscopic gastric ulcers (RR=0.18, and RR=0. 38 respectively, p=0.0055). A dose response relationship was not seen with duodenal ulcers. Misoprostol caused diarrhea at all doses, although significantly more at 800ug/day than 400ug/day (p=0.0012). Misoprostol was the only prophylactic agent documented to reduce ulcer complications. Standard doses of H2RAs were effective at reducing the risk of endoscopic duodenal (RR=0.24; 95% CI: 0.10-0. 57) but not gastric ulcers(RR=0.73; 95% CI:0.50-1.09). Both double dose H2RAs and PPIs were effective at reducing the risk of endoscopic duodenal and gastric ulcers (RR=0.44; 95% CI:0.26-0.74 and RR=0.37;95% CI;0.27-0.51 respectively for gastric ulcer), and were better tolerated than misoprostol. REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS Misoprostol, PPIs, and double dose H2RAs are effective at preventing chronic NSAID related endoscopic gastric and duodenal ulcers. Lower doses of misoprostol are less effective and are still associated with diarrhea. Only Misoprostol 800ug/day has been directly shown to reduce the risk of ulcer complications.