Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NRC Publications Archive Archives des publications du CNRC Effective 3D Modeling of Heritage Sites

Over the past few years, remarkable increase has occurred in the demand for 3D models for cultural heritage applications. The techniques employed have evolved from surveying and CAD tools and/or traditional photogrammetry into laser scanning and more automated image-based techniques. However, selecting the most effective technique for a given project is not obvious. We will discuss each technique and point out its advantages and disadvantages. We will then present our approach, which is an integration of several technologies and is based on the experience we gained over more than a decade to accurately and completely model heritage monuments and sites. It was clear from our experience that using a single technique is not an effective approach. A highly detailed structure or site is best modeled at various levels of detail. Image-based modeling is used for the basic shape and structural elements, and high-precision laser scanning for fine details and sculpted surfaces. To present the site in its proper context, image-based rendering or panorama is used for landscapes and surroundings. We demonstrate our approach on two typical heritage sites in Italy: the Abbey of Pomposa near Ferrara and the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova.
Primary sequence of the alpha-toxin gene from Staphylococcus aureus wood 46

The complete DNA sequence of a cloned alpha-toxin gene from Staphylococcus aureus was determined. The amino acid sequence of the alpha-toxin protein, predicted from the DNA sequence, was described and compared with published data. The primary product of the cloned alpha-toxin gene contained a 26-amino-acid leader sequence which possessed characteristic features of a signal sequence involved in secretion. The mature alpha-toxin protein had a molecular size of 33,000 and contained only three short regions of high hydrophobicity in addition to a number of short, weakly hydrophobic regions.
Discriminatively Trained Sparse Inverse Covariance Matrices for Speech Recognition

We propose to use acoustic models with sparse inverse covariance matrices to deal with the well-known over-fitting problem of discriminative training, especially when training data are limited. Compared with traditional diagonal or full covariance models, significant improvement by using sparse inverse covariance matrices has been achieved with maximum likelihood training. In state-of-the-art large vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems, discriminative training is commonly employed to achieve the best system performance. This paper investigates training acoustic models with sparse inverse covariance matrices using one of the most widely used discriminative training criteria-maximum mutual information (MMI). A lasso regularization term is added to the traditional objective function for MMI to automatically sparsify the inverse covariance matrices. The whole training process is then derived by maximizing the new objective function. This is achieved through iteratively maximizing a weak-sense auxiliary function. The final problem is shown to be a convex optimization problem and can be efficiently solved. Experimental results on the published Wall Street Journal and our collected Mandarin data sets show that the acoustic models with sparse inverse covariance matrices consistently outperform the conventional diagonal and full covariance models.
Where Is the Phonics?

The purpose of this article is to review studies conducted in the last 12 years that consisted of examining the use of phonetic analysis strategies and/or phonics instruction with students with mental retardation. We conducted computer data-based searches and a manual search of 15 journals published from 1990 to 2002. Only 7 studies emerged that consisted of the use of phonetic analysis (making letter—sound correspondences) with individuals with mental retardation. Outcome measures varied across studies. However, no studies in the last 12 years focused on examining the effectiveness of direct/explicit phonics instruction with children with mental retardation. Findings from the 7 studies not emphasizing direct/explicit instruction revealed that individuals with mental retardation have the potential to benefit from phonic analysis strategies and/or instruction. Clearly, further research is needed before substantial conclusions can be derived. Suggestions for future research are provided.
Symbolic Modeling of Epistasis

The workhorse of modern genetic analysis is the parametric linear model. The advantages of the linear modeling framework are many and include a mathematical understanding of the model fitting process and ease of interpretation. However, an important limitation is that linear models make assumptions about the nature of the data being modeled. This assumption may not be realistic for complex biological systems such as disease susceptibility where nonlinearities in the genotype to phenotype mapping relationship that result from epistasis, plastic reaction norms, locus heterogeneity, and phenocopy, for example, are the norm rather than the exception. We have previously developed a flexible modeling approach called symbolic discriminant analysis (SDA) that makes no assumptions about the patterns in the data. Rather, SDA lets the data dictate the size, shape, and complexity of a symbolic discriminant function that could include any set of mathematical functions from a list of candidates supplied by the user. Here, we outline a new five step process for symbolic model discovery that uses genetic programming (GP) for coarse-grained stochastic searching, experimental design for parameter optimization, graphical modeling for generating expert knowledge, and estimation of distribution algorithms for fine-grained stochastic searching. Finally, we introduce function mapping as a new method for interpreting symbolic discriminant functions. We show that function mapping when combined with measures of interaction information facilitates statistical interpretation by providing a graphical approach to decomposing complex models to highlight synergistic, redundant, and independent effects of polymorphisms and their composite functions. We illustrate this five step SDA modeling process with a real case-control dataset.
The role of the organ microenvironment in the biology and therapy of cancer metastasis

By the time of diagnosis, primary neoplasms are biologically heterogeneous and contain subpopulations of cells with different metastatic potentials. The pathogenesis of a metastasis consists of many sequential steps that must be completed to produce clinically relevant lesions. During any of these steps, tumor cells interact with host factors in the microenvironment that the tumor cells can usurp. Treatment of metastasis can be directed against tumor cells and/or microenvironmental factors that support tumor growth, such as tumor‐associated blood vessels. J. Cell. Biochem. 101: 927–936, 2007. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Modeling of nonlinear systems using relevance vector machines

A modeling method of nonlinear dynamic systems based on relevance vector machine (RVM) is presented. The RVM has a high modeling accuracy as well as a simpler model structure with a fewer control parameter in training phase. Due to the low computational complexity in testing phase, the RVM is more suitable than SVM for the real-time applications. In addition, the kernel function in RVM must not necessarily fulfill Mercer's conditions. Several simulation examples have been used to evaluate the performance of RVM method. The results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in the modeling of nonlinear dynamic systems.
The Upper Sonoran Lifestyle: Gated Communities in Scottsdale, Arizona

While much has been written on gated communities and the motivations and proposed implications of such a building paradigm, little has informed us about how a landscape is socially and economically transformed by the influx of this community design principle. This article explores a place defined by gated communities highlighting significant differences in social and community life in the city of Scottsdale, Arizona. This is a location, unlike many other gated spaces, where the gating of the community has little to do with avoiding crime. It is mainly a symbol of prestige and exclusivity. Housing in the Northern part of Scottsdale is mostly gated, master‐planned communities geared toward the upper class while the Southern part of Scottsdale is comprised of older housing stock and more organic community life. Both primary and secondary data are analyzed to highlight the socio‐cultural nature of the Upper Sonoran landscape. This article also explores social theory and proposes the use of multi‐scalar thinking and grounded fieldwork in gathering a more detailed, multi‐dimensional picture of community life behind the gate. This picture illustrates the changing nature of institutional forces shaping urban life as neoliberal policies in local government engender the proliferation of private institutions, as residents are willing to relinquish personal property rights for economic and social stability.
A 97dB, 21μW uncompensated CMOS Operational Amplifier Design for Biomedical Applications

In this paper the challenge of enhancing the gain and reducing the power requirement of amplifiers, preferably used in biomedical applications is addressed by demonstrating that composite cascode stages, operating in subthreshold/weak inversion regions provide a method of designing a ultra high gain (97dB) and low-power (21μW) op amp with 1.5V power supply. The op amp is designed without compensation capacitor. Additional advantages of this op amp design include low input noise and small chip area. Thus this design is applicable in biomedical applications where low power, low noise amplifiers, efficient in amplifying bio-signals in mHz-KHz range are required. The op amp is designed using 180nm CMOS technology and simulations that demonstrate results are given. Index Terms high gain, low power, low input noise, subthreshold, weak inversion, composite cascode. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Versatile voltage-mode multifunction biquadratic filter employing DDCCs

A new versatile voltage-mode biquadratic with four inputs and four outputs using two differential difference current conveyors (DDCCs), two grounded capacitors, and two resistors is proposed. The proposed circuit can act as a multifunction voltage-mode filter with one or three inputs and four outputs and can simultaneous realization of voltage-mode notch, highpass, bandpass and lowpass filter signals from the four output terminals, respectively, without any component choice conditions. On the other hand, it also can act as a universal voltage-mode filter with three inputs and a single output and can realize five generic voltage-mode filter signals from the same configuration without any component matching conditions. H-Spice and MATLAB simulations results are provided to demonstrate the theoretical analysis.
Coverage and capacity enhancement of CDMA cellular systems via multihop transmission

The uplink coverage and capacity of CDMA cellular systems are intracell and intercell interference limited. In this work, we propose a practical multihop based cellular network design to enhance the uplink performance. The proposed design is based on dividing each cell into two regions where users belonging to an inner region communicate with the base station (BS) using one hop and users belonging to an outer region communicate with the BS using two hops. Each of the two regions is allocated a separate frequency channel to enable practical implementation and reduce interference. Analytic results show that intercell interference in CDMA cellular systems can be reduced by more than 75%. Moreover, a link budget analysis is performed to obtain coverage-capacity results with different receiver structures at the BS. Results show that with the single user detector (SUD) receiver, gains up to 100% in area coverage are achieved with moderate to low user loads. Furthermore, deploying multiuser detection to combat intracell interference, the proposed multihop based design achieves very high gains exceeding 100% in pole capacity and 300% in area coverage per cell.
Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms in Pig EPHX1 Gene are Associated with Pork Quality Traits

Epoxide hydrolase 1 (EPHX1) plays an important role in both the activation and detoxification of exogenous chemicals. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis showed that the highest level of EPHX1 expression occurred in Berkshire liver, which is an organ that plays a key role in detoxification. We examined EPHX1 SNPs to analyze effect on increased expression of EPHX1 gene in Berkshire liver by total of 192 pigs of a pure Berkshire line (males = 97; females = 95). As a result, two nonsynonymous SNPs (nsSNPs) of EPHX1 were found from c.685T>G and c.776C > T, and located in 5th and 6th exons, respectively, which constitute the A/b hydrolase 1 domain of epoxide hydrolase. The nsSNP c.685T > G was significant differences in meat color, protein content, collagen content, and pH24 hr. Especially, T and G alleles of the nsSNP c.685T > G were significantly associated with CIE a*/CIE b* and protein content/pH24 hr, respectively. The nsSNP c.776C > T was significant differences in drip loss and protein content. Among meat quality traits to associate with SNPs, the protein content was only significantly associated with sex. Therefore, it is suggested that nsSNP c.685T > G in EPHX1 gene is a potential to apply as appropriate DNA markers for improvement of porcine economic traits.
Classifying tag relevance with relevant positive and negative examples

Image tag relevance estimation aims to automatically determine what people label about images is factually present in the pictorial content. Different from previous works, which either use only positive examples of a given tag or use positive and random negative examples, we argue the importance of relevant positive and relevant negative examples for tag relevance estimation. We propose a system that selects positive and negative examples, deemed most relevant with respect to the given tag from crowd-annotated images. While applying models for many tags could be cumbersome, our system trains efficient ensembles of Support Vector Machines per tag, enabling fast classification. Experiments on two benchmark sets show that the proposed system compares favorably against five present day methods. Given extracted visual features, for each image our system can process up to 3,787 tags per second. The new system is both effective and efficient for tag relevance estimation.
Linear programming based design of reconfigurable network on chip on eFPGA

Multiprocessors system on chip are expected to be used for multiple applications which might exhibit distinct communication patterns. Finding a common efficient network on chip for these multiple applications might be simply impossible due to the diverging requirements. Reconfigurable network on chip is a potential solution in which the network is reconfigured before application execution in order to match the application specific requirements. Implementation of this reconfigurability might be done using eFPGA. In this paper we propose a methodology to specify the area dimension of reconfigurable eFPGA for NoC (Network on Chip). Various objective functions are used to drive out study. Experimental results show the effectiveness of our approach.
Problematika Möbiova syndromu

Diplomova prace se zabýva problematikou Mobiova syndromu. V prvni casti prace jsou vymezeny zakladni terminy problematiky, symptomy a možnostmi terapie. Dale jsou zde rozpracovany okruhy narusene komunikacni schopnosti spojene s Mobiovým syndromem (dysfagie, palatolalie, vývojova dysartrie). Druha cast diplomove prace obsahuje analýzu výsledků dotaznikoveho setřeni mezi logopedy, neurology, fyzioterapeuty a psychology, take jednu kazuistiku ditěte s Mobiovým syndromem a informacni letak.
Cost-effectiveness of treatment for chronic hepatitis C infection in an evolving patient population.

CONTEXT Approximately 2.7 million US individuals are chronically infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). As public health campaigns are pursued, a growing number of treatment candidates are likely to have minimal evidence of liver damage. OBJECTIVE To examine the clinical benefits and cost-effectiveness of newer treatments for chronic hepatitis C infection in a population of asymptomatic, HCV sero-positive but otherwise healthy individuals. DESIGN AND SETTING Cost-effectiveness analysis using a Markov model of the natural history of HCV infection and impact of treatment. We used an epidemiologic model to derive a range of natural history parameters that were empirically calibrated to provide a good fit to observed data on both prevalence of HCV seropositivity and time trends in outcomes related to HCV infection. PATIENTS Cohorts of 40-year-old men and women with elevated levels of alanine aminotransferase, positive results on quantitative HCV RNA assays and serologic tests for antibody to HCV, and no histological evidence of fibrosis on liver biopsy. INTERVENTIONS Monotherapy with standard or pegylated interferon alfa-2b; combination therapy with standard or pegylated interferon plus ribavirin. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Lifetime costs, life expectancy, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios. RESULTS The probability of patients with chronic HCV developing cirrhosis over a 30-year period ranged from 13% to 46% for men and from 1% to 29% for women. The incremental cost-effectiveness of combination therapy with pegylated interferon for men ranged from 26 000 dollars to 64 000 dollars per QALY for genotype 1 and from 10 000 dollars to 28 000 dollars per QALY for other genotypes; and for women ranged from 32 000 dollars to 90 000 dollars for genotype 1 and from 12 000 dollars to 42 000 dollars for other genotypes. Because the benefits of treatment were realized largely in the form of improvements in health-related quality of life, rather than prolonged survivorship, cost-effectiveness ratios expressed as dollars per year of life were substantially higher. Results were most sensitive to assumptions about the gains and decrements in health-related quality of life associated with treatment. CONCLUSIONS While newer treatment options for hepatitis C appear to be reasonably cost-effective on average, these results vary widely across different patient subgroups and depend critically on quality-of-life assumptions. As the pool of persons eligible for treatment for HCV infection expands to the more general population, it will be imperative for patients and their physicians to consider these assumptions in making individual-level treatment decisions.
Regulatory dendritic cells: New targets for cancer immunotherapy

Commentary to: A new tumor vaccine: FAPτ-MT elicits effective antitumor response by targeting Indolamine2, 3-dioxygenase in antigen presenting cells Yan-Mei Yi, Ge Zhang, Jun Zeng, Si-Chao Huang, Ling-Ling Li, Rui Fang,Guan-Min Jiang, Xian-Zhang Bu, Shao-Hui Cai and Jun Du
Polarized D + /Pd-D2O system: Hot spots and mini-explosions

Two types of activities occurring within the polarized D + /Pd‐D2O system, viz. the presence of localized heat sources (hot spots) and associated with them mini‐ explosions, are described. The “birth and death” of hot spots is monitored by IR imaging while the mini‐explosions are displayed by the voltage spikes exhibited by a piezoelectric substrate onto which a Pd/D film was co‐deposited. Processes leading to the formation of unstable domains as a precursor to the observed behavior is examined.
Dialogical Thinking and Self-Innovation

In the tradition of American pragmatism, theorists like James, Mead and Allport have emphasized the self’s capacity for change and innovation. In the tradition of the Russian dialogical school, Bakhtin and his co-workers have dealt with the relationship between dialogue and innovation. These two traditions are brought together in the concept of the ‘dialogical self’, which is taken as the starting point for an empirical investigation. 103 participants were invited to describe a personal problem and, subsequently, think about this problem through a sequence of dialogical steps. Three types of dialogical movement are distinguished representing increasing, decreasing and stabilizing levels of novelty. Moreover, thinking about a problem from the position of a significant other (other-position) and from one’s own point of view (self-position) are compared. The results were analyzed on the group and individual level. On the group level it was found that a sizeable minority of the participants show increasing levels of novelty, and, contrary to expectations, those who think via the other-position demonstrate more cases of stabilizing and decreasing novelty than increasing novelty. On the individual level a series of idiographic analyses was performed demonstrating an intimate relationship between the dialogical processing of a personal problem and changes in the corresponding experience of novelty. Finally, the relevance of the Bakhtinian notion of polyphony and the collaborative relationship between researcher and subject are discussed.
Reviews

Abstract By Bernadette McSherry and Patrick Keyzer Sydney: The Federation Press, 2009. Edited by Roy Coleman, Joe Sim, Steve Tombs and David Whyte London: Sage Publications, 2009 Edited by Richard Jackson, Eamon Murphy and Scott Poynting London: Routledge, 2010 Edited by Miranda Horvath and Jennifer Brown Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2009 Ann Jones New York: The Feminist Press, 2009
Class error rates for evaluation of machine translation output

We investigate the use of error classification results for automatic evaluation of machine translation output. Five basic error classes are taken into account: morphological errors, syntactic (reordering) errors, missing words, extra words and lexical errors. In addition, linear combinations of these categories are investigated. Correlations between the class error rates and human judgments are calculated on the data of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth shared tasks of the Statistical Machine Translation Workshop. Machine translation outputs in five different European languages are used: English, Spanish, French, German and Czech. The results show that the following combinations are the most promising: the sum of all class error rates, the weighted sum optimised for translation into English and the weighted sum optimised for translation from English.
Improving mutual awareness and distributed cognition in collaborative design communication via a virtualized reality-integrated telepresence system

Remote collaboration becomes increasingly important and common in designers' working routine. This paper presents a computer-mediated remote collaborative design system to enhance the distributed cognition through the combination of telepresence technology and Virtualized Reality. It could afford a high level externalization of shared resources to support mutual awareness and distributed cognition. Common ground, social capitals, perspective invariance, trust, and spatial faithfulness are the key issues this system is designed to address.