Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tracking of microtubules in anisotropic volumes of neural tissue

For both the automatic and manual reconstruction of neural circuits from electron microscopy (EM) images, the detection and identification of intracellular structures provide useful cues. This is particularly true for microtubules which are indicative of the scaffold of neuronal morphology. However, to our knowledge, the automated reconstruction of microtubules from EM images of neural tissue has received no attention so far. In this paper, we present an automatic method for the tracking of microtubules in 3D EM volumes of neural tissue. We formulate an energy-based model on short candidate segments of microtubules found by a local classifier. We enumerate and score possible links between candidates, in order to find a cost-minimal subset of candidates and links by solving an integer linear program. The model provides a way to incorporate biological priors including both hard constraints (e.g. microtubules are topologically chains of links) and soft constraints (e.g. high curvature is unlikely). We test our method on a challenging EM dataset of Drosophila neural tissue and show that our model reliably tracks microtubules spanning many image sections.
Facial expression synthesis through facial expressions statistical analysis

This paper presents a method for generalizing human facial expressions or personalizing (cloning) them from one person to completely different persons, by means of a statistical analysis of human facial expressions coming from various persons. The data used for the statistical analysis are obtained by tracking a generic facial wireframe model in video sequences depicting the formation of the different human facial expressions, starting from a neutral state. Wireframe node tracking is performed by a pyramidal variant of the well-known Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi (KLT) tracker. The loss of tracked features is handled through a model deformation procedure increasing the robustness of the tracking algorithm. The dynamic facial expression output model is MPEG-4 compliant. The method has been tested on a variety of sequences with very good results, including a database of video sequences representing human faces changing from the neutral state to the one that represents a fully formed human facial expression.
A systematic review of the association between the Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia and burden of care

Background: Several reports have indicated that the Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia (BPSD) are associated with increased burden of care, carer depression and increased rates of institutionalization of patients. The present study aims to review the association between these variables in cross-sectional as well as longitudinal studies. Methods: Systematic review and meta-analysis of all available information published in English between January 1990 and December 2001 was made. Case-reports, case-series and studies with 20 or fewer subjects were excluded from the analyses. Results: Thirty articles are included in the review of cross-sectional data and 12 in the systematic review of longitudinal data. Pooled correlation coefficients were generated for the relationship between BPSD and caregiver burden (rpooled=0.57; 95% CI=0.52 to 0.62), caregiver psychological distress (rpooled=0.41; 95% CI=0.32 to 0.49) and caregiver depression (rpooled=0.30; 95% CI=0.21 to 0.39), suggesting that these concepts have a moderately strong association. Multivariate data, on the whole, further supported the notion that BPSD are a predictor of burden of care and of psychological distress and depression. Limited longitudinal data made clarifying the temporal relationahip between BPSD and the psychological sequelae of care (PSC) difficult. The limited data pertaining to the relationship between BPSD and institutionalization suggest that caregiver variables may be more important in predicting institutionalization than BPSD. Methodological issues and limitations associated with this type of investigation were also considered. Conclusion: The results of this review support, but do not conclusively establish, the association between BPSD and PSC. We propose that the concept of burden of care be abandoned in favor of more clinically relevant outcomes such as caregiver depression.
Detection of Micro Aneurysms using Multiple Classifiers and Hidden Markov Models

Diabetic retinopathy is a complication of diabetes and early detection is essential for effective treatment. In this paper, a novel technique for the detection of micro aneurysms is presented. Various features are extracted using image processing techniques and then fed through multiple classifiers for initial classification of candidate micro aneurysms. Hidden Markov models are then used to perform contextual analysis to recognise true micro aneurysms.
A Majority of Low (1-10%) ER Positive Breast Cancers Behave Like Hormone Receptor Negative Tumors

Background: The 2010 guidelines by ASCO-CAP have mandated that breast cancer specimens with ≥1% positively staining cells by immunohistochemistry should be considered Estrogen Receptor (ER) positive. This has led to a subclass of low-ER positive (1-10%) breast cancers. We have examined the biology and clinical behavior of these low ER staining tumors. Methods: We have developed a probabilistic score of the “ER-positivity” by quantitative estimation of ER related gene transcripts from FFPE specimens. Immunohistochemistry for ER was done on 240 surgically excised tumors of primary breast cancer. Relative transcript abundance of 3 house-keeping genes and 6 ER related genes were determined by q-RT PCR. A logistic regression model using 3 ER associated genes provided the best probability function, and a cut-off value was derived by ROC analysis. 144 high ER (>10%), 75 ER negative and 21 low-ER (1-10%) tumors were evaluated using the probability score and the disease specific survival was compared. Results: Half of the low-ER positive tumors were assigned to the ER negative group based on the probability score; in contrast 95% of ER negative and 92% of the high ER positive tumors were assigned to the appropriate ER group (p<0.0001). The survival of the low-ER group was intermediate between that of the high ER positive and ER negative groups (p<0.05). Conclusion: Our results suggest that the newly lowered ASCO-CAP criteria for ER positivity, leads to the false categorization of biologically ER negative tumors as ER positive ones. This may have particular relevance to India, where we have a much higher proportion of ER negative tumors in general.
Properties of$rm MgB_2$Superconductor by Doping Impurity of SiC, Graphite,$rm C_60$, and C Nano-Tube

Since MgB2 superconductor was discovered by Akimitsu, many scientists has been studied this new intermediate temperature superconductor material. Recently Dou reported the critical current density and flux pinning of MgB2 is enhanced by doping of SiC nano powder, and Fujii reported MgB2 superconductor made by the powder-in-tube in-situ process using MgH2 as a precursor powder enhanced the critical current density especially under high magnetic field. Also Matsumoto reported the irreversibility field of MgB 2 tape prepared by the in-situ powder in tube process using MgH2 as a precursor powder increased to 23 T by the SiC doping. These results show MgB2 has high potential as a strong candidate for a practical use. We study the effects of doping nano carbon impurity because graphite has the same structure as the hexagonal Boron structure in MgB2. We added carbon impurities of graphite, C60, and open-ended carbon nano tube respectively to MgB2 conductors made by powder in tube ex-situ process
Accelerating Fractal Compression With a Real-Time Decoder

Image data compression by fractal techniques has been widely investigated. Although its high compression ratio and resolution-independent decoding properties are attractive, the encoding process is computationally demanding in order to achieve an optimal compression. A variety of speed-up algorithms have been proposed since Jacquin published a novel fractal coding algorithm. Unfortunately, the quantization strategy of scaling coefficients and the programming techniques lead to the results reported by different researchers are various even on the same image data which causes the speed-up of compression is incomparable. This paper proposes a real-time fractal decoder as a standard. We report the implementation results of a nearly optimal encoding algorithm OPT on commonly used images: Jet, Lenna, Mandrill ,a ndPeppers of size 512×512. An accelerating compression algorithm using maximum gradient MG is shown to be 1300 times faster than OPT with a slight drop of PSNR value when encoding a 512×512 image.
Control of nonlinear systems with full state constraint using a Barrier Lyapunov Function

This paper presents a control for state-constrained nonlinear systems in strict feedback form to achieve output tracking. To prevent states from violating the constraints, we employ a Barrier Lyapunov Function, which grows to infinity whenever its arguments approaches some limits. By ensuring boundedness of the Barrier Lyapunov Function in the closed loop, we guarantee that the limits are not transgressed.We show that asymptotic output tracking is achieved without violation of state constraints, and that all closed loop signals are bounded, provided that some feasibility conditions on the initial states and control parameters are satisfied. Sufficient conditions to ensure feasibility are provided, and they can be checked offline by solving a static constrained optimization problem. The performance of the proposed control is illustrated through a simulation example.
Comparison of Three Neural Network Classifiers for Aphasic and Non-Aphasic Naming Data

This paper reports a comparison of three neural network models (Multi-Layer Perceptrons, Probabilistic Neural Networks, Self-Organizing Maps) for classifying naming data of aphasic and non-aphasic speakers. The neural network classifiers were tested with the artificial naming data generated from confrontation naming data of 23 aphasic patients and one averaged control subjet. The results show that one node MLP neural network performed best in the classification task, while the two other classifiers performed typically 1 2 % worse than the MLP classifier. Although the differences between the different classifier types were small, these results suggests that a simple one node MLP classifier should be preferred over more complex neural network classifiers when classifying naming data of aphasic and non-aphasic speakers.
The Economics of Information Security

The economics of information security has recently become a thriving and fast-moving discipline. As distributed systems are assembled from machines belonging to principals with divergent interests, we find that incentives are becoming as important as technical design in achieving dependability. The new field provides valuable insights not just into “security” topics (such as bugs, spam, phishing, and law enforcement strategy) but into more general areas such as the design of peer-to-peer systems, the optimal balance of effort by programmers and testers, why privacy gets eroded, and the politics of digital rights management.
Effect of the radiative background flux in convection

Numerical simulations of turbulent stratified convection a re used to study models with approximately the same convective flux, but different radiative fluxes. As the radia tive flux is decreased, for constant convective flux: the entr opy jump at the top of the convection zone becomes steeper, the temperature fluctuations increase and the velocity fluctuations de crease in magnitude, and the distance that low entropy fluid from the surface can penetrate increases. Velocity and temperature fluctuations follow mixing length scaling laws.
A chemoattractant receptor on macrophages exists in two affinity states regulated by guanine nucleotides

The binding characteristics of the oligopeptide chemoattractant receptor on guinea pig macrophages and macrophage membrane preparations were characterized using detailed binding studies and computer analysis. Viable macrophages bound the radiolabeled chemoattractant N- formyl-methionyl-leucyl-[3H]phenylalanine with single dissociation constant (KD) of 18.4 +/- 4.6 nM with 15,300 +/- 1,800 sites per cell. Binding data from membrane preparations indicated the presence of two classes of binding sites with KD of 1.5 +/- 0.4 nM and 25.5 +/- 11.0 nM. Approximately 23% of the receptors were in the high affinity state. In the presence of added guanine nucleotide di- or triphosphates, the high affinity receptors in the membrane preparations were converted to low affinity states with no change in the total receptor number. Nonhydrolyzable derivatives of GTP were most potent in converting the receptor from its high to low affinity state. These data suggest that the affinity state of the oligopeptide chemoattractant receptor in macrophages is regulated by guanine nucleotides and GTPase, implying that the transduction mechanisms of this receptor may be controlled by a guanine nucleotide regulatory unit.
Influence of Injection Strategy on B20MOME Fueled CRDI Engine with Toroid Shaped Piston Cavity

New technologies in the fuel injection system have improved the performance of the CI engine. Even though the biodiesel is universally accepted as a suitable alternate fuel for the CI (compression ignition) engine, there have been limited study reported on its utilization for single cylinder CRDI (common rail direct injection) engine. Use of biodiesel with diesel in a CRDI engine reduces proportionate consumption of diesel. In the present study, performance and combustion tests were carried out with the CRDI engine using the B20 blend of mahua methyl ester in diesel on volume basis called (B20 MOME). This study was conducted on a CRDI converted variable compression ratio engine with toroidal shaped cavity in the piston adopted. The tests were carried out at three injection pressures of 400 bar, 600 bar and 800 bar and for three injection timings of 15° BTDC, 20°BTDC and 25°BTDC, respectively. The results of the combustion and performance tests with the CRDI engine were compared with the performance of a CI engine at specified operating conditions with mechanical injection system using diesel as the fuel. The results indicated significant increase in the performance of the engine with increase of injection pressure. At 800 bar injection pressure, brake thermal efficiency of 29.98%, 27.61%, and 26.98% was attained at 15BTDC, 20BTDC and 25BTDC, injection timing respectively using B20 MOME.
Socio-Economic Status and Reproduction among Adults Born with an Oral Cleft: A Population-Based Cohort Study in Norway

Background It has been reported that people born with orofacial clefts do worse in life than their peers regarding a range of social markers, such as academic achievement and reproduction. We have compared otherwise healthy individuals with and without clefts, to investigate if these differences are due to the cleft or other background factors. Materials and Methods In a retrospective national cohort study, based on compulsory registers with data collected prospectively, we included everybody born in Norway between 1967 and 1992 (1490279 individuals, 2584 with clefts). This cohort was followed until the year 2010, when the youngest individuals were 18 years old. In order to ensure that the individuals were not affected by unknown syndromes or diseases, we excluded all individuals with any chronic medical condition, or who had other birth defects than clefts, hydroceles and dislocated hips. Individuals with oral clefts who were included in the study are said to have isolated clefts. Results Isolated cleft patients are similar to the general population regarding education, income and social class. Isolated cleft patients have lower fertility than the background population, but considering only married couples this difference in fertility disappeared. Conclusions An oral cleft did not appear to affect future socioeconomic status or chances of becoming a parent for children born in Norway. An exception was males with cleft lip and palate, but differences were small.
Rapid downregulation of programmed death‐1 and interferon‐γ‐inducible protein‐10 expression is associated with favourable outcome during antiviral treatment of chronic hepatitis B

The dynamics of programmed death‐1 (PD‐1) as well as cytokine/chemokine expression and its correlation with virological response in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is unclear. This study was conducted in 29 treatment‐naïve patients undergoing telbivudine treatment for 52 weeks. The results showed that PD‐1 expression on both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells was positively correlated with hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA levels (r = 0.621, P < 0.0001; r = 0.548, P = 0.002, respectively), and in virological responders, this decrease was directly correlated with a decrease in HBV DNA levels (r = 0.664, P = 0.002; r = 0.572, P = 0.01, respectively). Furthermore, at the end of 52 weeks, in virological responders, the decreased rate in the frequency of PD‐1+ CD8+ T cells was significantly higher than in non‐virological responders (58.3% vs 25.7%, P = 0.001), and at weeks 24 and 52, in virological responders, PD‐1 expression on CD4+ and CD8+ T cells was lower than in non‐virological responders (P = 0.01 and P = 0.035; P < 0.0001 and P < 0.0001, respectively). In 34 cytokines/chemokines detected in serum, IP‐10 expression was positively correlated with viral load, level of ALT and PD‐1 expression on CD8+ and CD4+ T cells at baseline (r = 0.36, P = 0.055, r = 0.635, P < 0.0001, r = 0.414, P = 0.026, and r = 0.402, P = 0.030, respectively). Moreover, the decrease in IP‐10 in serum directly correlated with a decrease in ALT levels (r = 0.751, P < 0.0001). At weeks 24 and 25, IP‐10 expression was significantly lower than baseline in virological responders (both P = 0.005); however, this was not observed in nonresponders. Based on the above findings, PD‐1 and IP‐10 may be used as predictors for virological response, and blockade of their pathway may improve the outcome of patients with CHB.
FCMAC-BYY: Fuzzy CMAC Using Bayesian Ying-Yang Learning

As an associative memory neural network model, the cerebellar model articulation controller (CMAC) has attractive properties of fast learning and simple computation, but its rigid structure makes it difficult to approximate certain functions. This research attempts to construct a novel neural fuzzy CMAC, in which Bayesian Ying-Yang (BYY) learning is introduced to determine the optimal fuzzy sets, and a truth-value restriction inference scheme is subsequently employed to derive the truth values of the rule weights of implication rules. The BYY is motivated from the famous Chinese ancient Ying-Yang philosophy: everything in the universe can be viewed as a product of a constant conflict between opposites-Ying and Yang, a perfect status is reached when Ying and Yang achieve harmony. The proposed fuzzy CMAC (FCMAC)-BYY enjoys the following advantages. First, it has a higher generalization ability because the fuzzy rule sets are systematically optimized by BYY; second, it reduces the memory requirement of the network by a significant degree as compared to the original CMAC; and third, it provides an intuitive fuzzy logic reasoning and has clear semantic meanings. The experimental results on some benchmark datasets show that the proposed FCMAC-BYY outperforms the existing representative techniques in the research literature.
On-line Recognition of Handwritten Mathematical Symbols

This paper presents a classification system which uses the pen trajectory to classify handwritten symbols. Five preprocessing steps, one data multiplication algorithm, five features and five variants for multilayer Perceptron training were evaluated using 166898 recordings. The evaluation results of 21 experiments were used to create an optimized recognizer. This improvement was achieved by supervised layer-wise pretraining (SLP) and adding new features.
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Learning visual contexts for image annotation from Flickr groups

—We present an extension of automatic image an- notation that takes the context of a picture into account. Our core assumption is that users do not only provide individual images to be tagged, but group their pictures into batches (e.g., all snapshots taken over the same holiday trip), whereas the images within a batch are likely to have a common style. These batches are matched with categories learned from Flickr groups, and an accurate context-speciﬁc annotation is performed. In quantitative experiments, we demonstrate that Flickr groups, with their user-driven categorization and their rich group space, provide an excellent basis for learning context categories. Our approach — which can be integrated with virtually any annotation model — is demonstrated to give signiﬁcant improve- ments of above 100 %, compared to standard annotations of individual images.
Multiscale and Uniform Liquid Metal Thin‐Film Patterning Based on Soft Lithography for 3D Heterogeneous Integrated Soft Microsystems: Additive Stamping and Subtractive Reverse Stamping

The use of intrinsically soft conductors, such as gallium‐based liquid metal (eutectic gallium–indium alloy, EGaIn), has enabled bioinspired and skin‐like soft electronics. Thereby, creating patterned, smooth, and uniform EGaIn thin films with high resolution and size scalability is one of the primary technical hurdles. Soft lithography using wetting/nonwetting surface modifications and 3D heterogeneous integration can address current EGaIn patterning challenges. This paper demonstrates multiscale and uniform EGaIn thin‐film patterning by utilizing an additive stamping process for large‐scale (mm–cm) soft electronics and a subtractive reverse stamping process for microscale (µm–mm) soft electronics. While EGaIn patterning based on stamping is regarded as the least reliable patterning technique, this paper highlights multiscale and uniform thin‐film patterning by stamping at room temperature and under atmospheric pressure utilizing proper chemical/physical surface modification to obtain selective nonwetting or uniform wetting properties. By combining structures fabricated using these additive and subtractive stamping techniques with 3D heterogeneous integration, functional soft microsystems are demonstrated: i) a soft LC (inductor‐capacitor) sensing platform with high areal capacitance, ii) a fingertip‐mountable biological sensing platform, and iii) soft heaters with localized and distributed heating capability. The demonstrated fabrication and integration approaches enable high‐density and multifunctional soft microsystems for versatile sensing applications.