Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SECURE VISUAL CRYPTOGRAPHY

: - An effective and secure protection of sensitive information is the primary concerned in Communication systems or network storage systems. Never the less, it is also important for any information process to ensure data is not being tampered with. Encryption methods are one of the popular approaches to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of the protected information. However one of the critical vulnerabilities of encryption techniques is protecting the information from being exposed. To address these reliability problems, especially for large information content items such as secret images (satellite photos or medical images), an image secret sharing schemes (SSS) is a good alternative to remedy these types of vulnerabilities. With the rapid advancement of network technology, multimedia information is transmitted over the Internet conveniently. While using secret images, security issues should be taken into consideration because hackers may utilize weak link over communication network to steal information that they want. To deal with the security problems of secret images, various image secret sharing schemes have been developed. Because of the
ATF3 Protects against LPS-Induced Inflammation in Mice via Inhibiting HMGB1 Expression

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) triggers innate immunity mainly via TLR4 signaling. ATF3 is a negative regulator of TLR4 signaling. HMGB1 plays a critical role in the final step of sepsis. However, the mechanisms of ATF3 and the role of HMGB1 in regulating innate immunity-induced sepsis are incompletely understood. In this study, we found that serum HMGB1 levels were 10-fold higher in patients with sepsis than normal controls. We further demonstrated that ATF3 gene knockout in mice subjected to LPS-induced endotoxemia correlates with an increase in the mortality rate and the elevated expression of IL-6, TNF-α, NO, MCP-1, and HMGB1 in the lung tissues or serum. The biochemical effects of ATF3 were observed in in vitro macrophages and blocked by ATF3 siRNA treatment. We have also shown that adeno-associated virus-mediated ATF3 gene transfer protected ATF3 knockout mice from LPS-induced mortality. In addition, ATF3 knockdown increased LPS-induced release of HMGB1. In conclusion, upregulation of ATF3 contributes to the reduced release of inflammatory molecules, especially HMGB1, which induced lung injury and increased the survival rate of mice after LPS challenge. Therefore, suppressing LPS-induced inflammation with ATF3 induction or ATF3 mimetics may be an important strategy for sepsis therapy.
On the complexity of Unary Error Correction codes for the near-capacity transmission of symbol values from an infinite set

Unary Error Correction (UEC) codes have recently been proposed for the near-capacity Joint Source and Channel Coding (JSCC) of symbol values that are selected from a set having an infinite cardinality. In this paper, we characterize the computational complexity of UEC decoders and use complexity analysis for striking a desirable trade-off between the contradictory requirements of low complexity and near-capacity operation. We investigate a wide range of application scenarios and offer a deep insight into their beneficial parameterizations. In particular, we introduce puncturing for controlling the scheme's throughput and for facilitating fair comparisons with a Separate Source and Channel Coding (SSCC) benchmarker. The UEC scheme is found to offer almost 1.3 dB gain, when operating within 1.6 dB of the capacity bound. This is achieved without any increase in transmission energy, bandwidth, transmit duration or decoding complexity.
1 Advances in Fuzzy Clustering and its Applications Chapter 20 Novel Developments in Fuzzy Clustering for the Classification of Cancerous Cells using FTIR Spectroscopy

Cancer has become a major adversary to human health and the development and enhancement of techniques for use in its diagnosis and treatment have quickly become a focus of worldwide research. In recent years, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy has been increasingly applied to the study of biomedical conditions and is becoming a powerful tool for determining the biochemical composition within a biological system. In order to analyse the FTIR spectroscopic data from tissue samples, multivariate clustering techniques have often been used to separate sets of unlabelled infrared spectral data into different clusters based on their characteristics. The purpose of clustering is to group the spectral data such that the data in the same cluster are as similar as possible and data within different clusters are as dissimilar as possible. Hence, different types of cells can be separated within biological tissue. Among existing clustering techniques, it has been shown that fuzzy clustering techniques such as fuzzy c-means can have clear advantages over crisp and probabilistic clustering methods, and have been widely used in medical diagnosis and pattern recognition. In this Chapter, we summarise the fuzzy clustering techniques which we have developed and successfully applied to the identification of cancer cells using FTIR spectroscopy in a selection of tissue samples which have kindly been provided by Derby General Hospital and Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, England, UK.
Energy Evaluation of Nanometer CMOS Technologies

Power consumption becomes a very important constrain integrated circuit designs. Researches propose numerous techniques for achieving low power, on several different levels of abstraction. One of the more efficient approaches is design the circuits with transistors operating in subthreshold or nearthreshold region. Its impact on system design is an exponential reduction in power consumption at the cost of reduced performance. This work proposes an evaluation of the effects on energy consumption (static and dynamic) of the subthreshold operation approach when applied to sub 45nm CMOS technologies. Moreover, this work explores the subthreshold operation approach to define how much energy consumption is possible to reduce when the system require mediumthroughput (10MHz) and low throughput (100kHz) frequencies. Results show that static energy gains even more importance at low throughput and is a constraint to nanometer technologies.
Understanding the effect of touchdown distance and ankle joint kinematics on sprint acceleration performance through computer simulation

This study determined the effects of simulated technique manipulations on early acceleration performance. A planar seven-segment angle-driven model was developed and quantitatively evaluated based on the agreement of its output to empirical data from an international-level male sprinter (100 m personal best = 10.28 s). The model was then applied to independently assess the effects of manipulating touchdown distance (horizontal distance between the foot and centre of mass) and range of ankle joint dorsiflexion during early stance on horizontal external power production during stance. The model matched the empirical data with a mean difference of 5.2%. When the foot was placed progressively further forward at touchdown, horizontal power production continually reduced. When the foot was placed further back, power production initially increased (a peak increase of 0.7% occurred at 0.02 m further back) but decreased as the foot continued to touchdown further back. When the range of dorsiflexion during early stance was reduced, exponential increases in performance were observed. Increasing negative touchdown distance directs the ground reaction force more horizontally; however, a limit to the associated performance benefit exists. Reducing dorsiflexion, which required achievable increases in the peak ankle plantar flexor moment, appears potentially beneficial for improving early acceleration performance.
Heart health when life is satisfying: evidence from the Whitehall II cohort study.

AIMS Negative psychological states such as stress and depression are associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), but it is unclear whether some positive states are protective. We investigated satisfaction with specific life domains as predictors of incident CHD. METHODS AND RESULTS Coronary risk factors and satisfaction within seven life domains (e.g. job and family) were assessed in 7956 initially healthy members of the Whitehall II cohort. Incident CHD (angina, non-fatal myocardial infarction, or death from CHD) was ascertained from medical screening, hospital data, and registry linkage over five person-years of follow-up. Satisfaction averaged across domains was associated with reduced CHD risk (HR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.78-0.98), controlling for demographic characteristics, health behaviours, blood pressure, and metabolic functioning. Associations with CHD risk were evident for satisfaction in four life domains-one's job, family, sex life, and self, but not one's love relationship, leisure activities, or standard of living. When examining CHD outcomes separately, average domain satisfaction was associated with angina but not myocardial infarction or coronary death. CONCLUSIONS Satisfaction in most life domains was associated with reduced CHD risk, with definite angina being mostly responsible for this association. These findings suggest that satisfaction with life may promote heart health. Further research should examine whether interventions to enhance life satisfaction in specific domains reduce CHD risk and whether life satisfaction is primarily associated with atherosclerosis rather than thrombotic factors associated with plaque rupture.
Are All Acts of Violence Against Intimate Partners the Same

for their critical review of the paper and insightful suggestions for change. INTRODUCTION Putting 'name' to an event, action, experience, or idea is a powerful act. " Naming " is an act of defining and authenticating that provides the person or group, which has successfully conducted the naming, with the authority to say what something is and what it is not. The capacity to name allows the person or group to categorically link the concept, which has been named, with the reality it is to represent. The leaders of the anti-domestic violence movement in the U.S. understood this power of naming and endorsed the term " battering " to represent women's realities of abuse by intimate partners. The word, battering, was to signify a pattern of coercive control, intimidation, and oppression that women often experienced at the hands of their male lovers and spouses Battering could include physical and sexual abuses, but was definitely not limited only to such brutalities. However, over time, the term battering has come to be used more or less synonymously with physical violence by an individual against an intimate partner. This restriction of the term has, to a certain degree, obscured the complexity of its original meaning and its connection to the real experiences of survivors of ongoing intimate abuse. Similarly, the phrase " domestic violence " was coined to emphasize the space where this violence occurred: home, supposedly a safe haven for its members. While many activists initially argued against its use, it highlighted the context of intimate abuse, the every day familial realm of women. The label, domestic violence, challenged the image of safety and tranquility of the household and family. It was a term that helped to reveal that women who lived with abusive men were thoroughly vulnerable to their violence because it was perpetrated in their own homes. Later, as laws were enacted in the U.S. to protect women and hold batterers accountable, " domestic violence " took on the gender-neutral meaning of any violence between partners occurring in the context of the home. As a result, every act of violence by one partner against another is now legally considered to be an act of domestic violence. Yet, confusion occurs when we begin to equate " battering " to all acts of " domestic violence. " The comparison is erroneous, as not all violence by intimate partners follows the systematic pattern …
Effects of Detail in Wireless Network Simulation

Experience with wired networks has provides guidance about what level of detail is appropriate for simulation-based protocol studies. Wireless simulations raise many new questions about appropriate levels of detail in simulation models for radio propagation and energy consumption. This paper describes the trade-offs associated with adding detail to simulation models. We evaluate the effects of detail in fi ve case studies of wireless simulations for protocol design. Ultimately the researcher must judge what level of detail is required for a given question, but we suggest two approaches to cope with varying levels of detail. When error is not correlated, networking algorithms that are robust to a range of errors are often stressed in similar ways by random error as by detailed models. We also suggest visualization techniques that can help pinpoint incorrect details and manage detail overload.
Tree clustering for layout-based document image retrieval

We describe a system for the retrieval on the basis of layout similarity of document images belonging to collections stored in digital libraries. Layout regions are extracted and represented with the XY tree. The proposed indexing method combines a new tree clustering algorithm (based on self organizing maps) with principal component analysis. The combination of these techniques allows us to retrieve the most similar pages from large collections without the need for a direct comparison of the query page with each indexed document
Effect Sizes for 2×2 Contingency Tables

Sample size calculations are an important part of research to balance the use of resources and to avoid undue harm to participants. Effect sizes are an integral part of these calculations and meaningful values are often unknown to the researcher. General recommendations for effect sizes have been proposed for several commonly used statistical procedures. For the analysis of tables, recommendations have been given for the correlation coefficient for binary data; however, it is well known that suffers from poor statistical properties. The odds ratio is not problematic, although recommendations based on objective reasoning do not exist. This paper proposes odds ratio recommendations that are anchored to for fixed marginal probabilities. It will further be demonstrated that the marginal assumptions can be relaxed resulting in more general results.
Search Logs as Information Footprints: Supporting Guided Navigation for Exploratory Search

While current search engines serve known-item search such as homepage finding very well, they generally cannot support exploratory search effectively. In exploratory search, users do not know their information needs precisely and also often lack the needed knowledge to formulate effective queries, thus querying alone, as supported by the current search engines, is insufficient, and browsing into related information would be very useful. In this paper, we present a formal navigation-based retrieval framework to unify querying and browsing and treat both as navigation over topic regions. To support browsing effectively, we treat search logs as “footprints” left by previous users in the information space and build a multi-resolution topic map to guide a user in navigating in the information space. To test the effectiveness of the proposed methods, we build a prototype system based on a small sample of search logs and a commercial search engine. Our experiment results show that the proposed navigationbased framework is promising and the proposed methods for guided navigation are effective.
Three-year findings of an early lung cancer detection feasibility study with low-dose spiral computed tomography in heavy smokers.

BACKGROUND Low-dose spiral computed tomography (sCT) showed a four-fold increase in the detection rate in high-risk subjects and a higher percentage of stage I lung cancer in comparison with chest X-ray. However, there is a considerable discrepancy among studies in the percentage of lung nodules, overall lung cancer and stage I detection rate. SUBJECTS AND METHODS From April to December 2001, 520 asymptomatic volunteers aged >or=55 years with a history of cigarette smoking >or=20 pack-years and no previous cancer were enrolled to receive an annual sCT of the chest for five consecutive years. RESULTS Seventy three per cent were male, median age was 59 years and 91% were current smokers. At baseline, nodules >or=5 mm were detected in 114 (22%) undergoing sCT; the size of lung nodules ranged from 5 to 9.9 mm in 81.5% of the cases. Five (1%) cases of lung cancer were detected. In two additional cases a pathological diagnosis of atypical adenomatous hyperplasia was made. Three new cases of lung cancer were detected in the second and third year of the study. One interval case was detected during the third year. CONCLUSIONS Despite some promising data, convincing evidence from ongoing randomized trials is needed to support the routine use of sCT as a recommended tool for screening of lung cancer.
A polynomial time attack against algebraic geometry code based public key cryptosystems

We give a polynomial time attack on the McEliece public key cryptosystem based on algebraic geometry codes. Roughly speaking, this attacks runs in O(n4) operations in Fq, where n denotes the code length. Compared to previous attacks, the present one allows to recover a decoding algorithm for the public key even for codes from high genus curves.
Efficient rendering of projective model for image-based visualization

This work describes a method for synthesizing correct virtual images of a real scene, described by a set of uncalibrated reference images. The approach used is rendering a projective 3D model. Projective model reconstruction and positioning a projective virtual camera are not addressed. First, the algorithm transfers the vertices of triangles in the triangulated model and then warps interiors of triangles. Hidden faces are removed by z-buffering. The algorithm is more efficient than the ray-tracing-like algorithm for virtual view synthesis by Laveau and Faugeras (1996).
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.net Ischemic and Oxidative Damage to the Hypothalamus May Be Responsible for Heat Stroke

The hypothalamus may be involved in regulating homeostasis, motivation, and emotional behavior by controlling autonomic and endocrine activity. The hypothalamus communicates input from the thalamus to the pituitary gland, reticular activating substance, limbic system, and neocortex. This allows the output of pituitary hormones to respond to changes in autonomic nervous system activity. Environmental heat stress increases cutaneous blood flow and metabolism, and progressively decreases splanchnic blood flow. Severe heat exposure also decreases mean arterial pressure (MAP), increases intracranial pressure (ICP), and decreases cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP = MAP ICP), all of which lead to cerebral ischemia and hypoxia. Compared with normothermic controls, rodents with heatstroke have higher hypothalamic values of cellular ischemia (e.g., glutamate and lactate-to-pyruvate ratio) and damage (e.g., glycerol) markers, pro-oxidant enzymes (e.g., lipid peroxidation and glutathione oxidation), proinflammatory cytokines (e.g., interleukin-1 and tumor necrosis factor-), inducible nitric oxide synthase-dependent nitric oxide, and an indicator for the accumulation of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (e.g., myeloperoxidase activity), as well as neuronal damage (e.g., apoptosis, necrosis, and autophagy) after heatstroke. Hypothalamic values of antioxidant defenses (e.g., glutathione peroxidase and glutathione reductase), however, are lower. The ischemic, hypoxic, and oxidative damage to the hypothalamus during heatstroke may cause multiple organ dysfunction or failure through hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis mechanisms. Finding the link between the signaling and heatstroke-induced hypothalamic oxidative and ischemic damage might allow us to clinically attenuate heatstroke. In particular, free radical scavengers, heat shock protein-70 inducers, hypervolemic hemodilution, inducible nitric oxide synthase inhibitors, progenitor stem cells, flutamide, estrogen, interleukin-1 receptor antagonists, glucocorticoid, activated protein C, and baicalin mitigate preclinical heatstroke levels.
Near-Infrared Imaging Polarimetry of the Star-Forming Region NGC 2024

We conducted wide-field JHKs imaging polarimetry toward NGC 2024. We found a prominent and extended polarized nebula over NGC 2024, and constrained the location of illuminating source of the nebula through the analysis of polarization vectors. A massive star, IRS 2b, is located in the center of the symmetric vector pattern. Five small polarized nebulae associated with YSOs are discovered on our polarization images. These nebulae are responsible for the structures of circumstellar matter that produce strongly polarized light through dust scattering. For the point-like sources, we performed software aperture polarimetry in order to measure integrated polarizations, and found five young brown dwarfs with highly polarized integrated emission. These sources serve as direct evidence for the existence of disk/envelope system around brown dwarfs. We investigated the magnetic field structure of NGC 2024 through the measurements of dichroic polarization. The average position angle of projected magnetic fields across the region is found to be 110 degrees. We found a good consistency in magnetic field structures obtained using near-infrared dichroic polarization and sub-mm/far-infrared dust emission polarization, indicating that the dichroic polarizations at near-infrared wavelengths trace magnetic field structures inside dense molecular clouds.
Functional characterization of a naturally occurring Cx50 truncation.

PURPOSE Lens connexins undergo proteolytic cleavage of their C termini during fiber maturation. Although the functional significance of this is unknown, cleavage has been correlated with changes in channel-gating properties. This study evaluates the functional consequences of this endogenous truncation by characterizing the properties of a C-terminal truncated Cx50 protein. METHODS Murine and human Cx50 were truncated at amino acids 290 and 294, respectively, before expression in paired Xenopus oocytes or mammalian cells. Protein expression was evaluated by immunocytochemistry. Dual whole-cell voltage clamp techniques were used to analyze macroscopic and single-channel conductance, voltage-gating properties, and kinetics; pH gating sensitivity was measured by superfusion with 100% CO2-saturated media. RESULTS Cx50tr290 channels exhibited an 86% to 89% reduction in mean macroscopic conductance compared with full-length Cx50. Heterotypic channels formed functional gap junctions, displayed an intermediate level of coupling, and exhibited unaltered voltage-gating properties. C-terminal truncation did not alter single-channel gating characteristics or unitary conductance. Interestingly, truncated and full-length Cx50 channel conductances were reversibly blocked by cytoplasmic acidification. CONCLUSIONS C-terminal truncation of Cx50 did not inhibit the formation of homotypic or heterotypic channels. However, a significant decrease in conductance was observed for truncated channels, a phenomenon independent of alterations in voltage-gating sensitivity, kinetics, or chemical gating. These results provide a plausible explanation for the 50% decrease in junctional coupling observed during lens fiber maturation.