Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of decision trees for cloud detection from AVHRR data

Abstract : Automated cloud detection and tracking is an important step in assessing changes in radiation budgets associated with global climate change via remote sensing. Data products based on satellite imagery are available to the scientific community for studying trends in the Earth's atmosphere. The data products include pixel-based cloud masks that assign cloud-cover classifications to pixels. Many cloud-mask algorithms have the form of decision trees. The decision trees employ sequential tests that scientists designed based on empirical astrophysics studies and simulations. Limitations of existing cloud masks restrict our ability to accurately track changes in cloud patterns over time. In a previous study we compared automatically learned decision trees to cloud masks included in Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data products from the year 2000. In this paper we report the replication of the study for five-year data, and for a gold standard based on surface observations performed by scientists at weather stations in the British Islands. For our sample data, the accuracy of automatically learned decision trees was greater than the accuracy of the cloud masks p < 0.001.
Contractility in health and disease

Differentiated muscle cells make up 45–50% of the body mass [1] and, hence, are major determinants of overall physical health. Cardiac and smooth muscles are effectors of the cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive and genitourinary systems. Together, the abnormal contractile function of muscles encompasses a significant fraction of the concerns of internal medicine. This review series will span work from all three muscle types, cardiac, skeletal and smooth, and focus on recent advances in the understanding of the differentiated, contractile phenotype of these muscles, both with respect to molecular mechanisms and to pathophysiologies and potential therapeutics related to those mechanisms. Many excellent muscle biology reviews have been written on the topics of basic mechanisms of muscle developmental biology, and muscle cell proliferation and apoptosis as studied in cell culture models [2–10] and, thus, these topics will not be a focus of the present review series. In contrast, the current series will focus on recent advances in signalling mechanisms, the cytoskeleton, and disease in differentiated muscle tissue, areas to which relatively little attention has been given in recent reviews in translational journals. The contributors to this series span and integrate the fields of the fundamental muscle biology of contractile tissues and the pathophysiology and therapy of human muscle diseases. Initial challenges in the application of new molecular technologies to differentiated muscle cells (e.g. poor transfection efficiency, slow protein turnover rates and corresponding difficulty in knockdown approaches, loss of contractile phenotype in cell culture models) delayed the elucidation of the molecular details of function in these cell types. However, in recent years significant technical advances in basic studies in this field have improved our understanding of molecular mechanisms of contractility. The surprise is that these mechanisms are far more complex than initially imagined. Clearly, the regulation of contractility involves much more than a simple [Ca2+]i switch. As a result, many new molecular targets for potential drug discovery programs have become apparent. These areas will be reviewed in the coming articles.
Cancer-behavior-coping in women with breast cancer: Effect of a cancer self-management program

Objective: The Cancer Behavior Inventory (CBI), a measure of self-efficacy for coping with cancer, was used to examine the feasibility and impact of a self-management program for women with breast cancer. This controlled clinical trial was conducted on newly diagnosed breast cancer patients, using a time series, block design. Sixty-nine patients were allocated to receive four weekly sessions of the self-management training program, while 78 patients were allocated to the control (usual-care) group. Results: A significant difference was found between the means of the experimental and the control group at post-test (T2; P=.01) and at follow-up (T3; P=.02). The multivariate analyses of the three repeated measures showed significant differences (P=.001; partial eta-squared = 0.092). Pair-wise comparison shows that the differences were significant between baseline (T1) measure and follow-up (T3) measure (P=.01), and between post-test (T2) and follow-up (T3) (P=.03). Conclusion: For women undergoing intervention, the cancer-specific self-efficacy as measured by the cancer-behavior-coping inventory showed improvement over time. The result demonstrated that the self-management program to improve self-care correlates significantly with coping behavior in cancer. A larger and longer study of this efficacy-enhancing intervention is warranted.
Performance, metastability and soft-error robustness tradeoffs for flip-flops in 40nm CMOS

In modern CMOS processes there are numerous failure mechanisms, including soft errors and metastability. Cosmic neutron-induced single event upsets, or soft-errors, have become a dominant failure mechanism in sub-100nm CMOS memory and logic circuits. The effects of metastability have also becoming increasingly significant in high-speed applications implemented in nanometric processes. In this paper the design tradeoffs for flip-flops between performance, soft-error robustness and metastability are described. Soft-error robust flip-flops are implemented based on both the DICE cell and the Quatro cell. SPICE simulations are used to characterize the performance and metastability robustness. The flip-flops were fabricated in the TSMC 40nm process and radiation measurements were performed at numerous test facilities. The Quatro flip-flop showed improved soft-error robustness and metastability when compared with both a reference flip-flop and a DICE flip-flop.
Newton polyhedra and Poisson structures from certain linear Hamiltonian circle actions

In this paper we first describe the geometry of the Newton polyhedra of polynomials invariant under certain linear Hamiltonian circle actions. From the geometry of the polyhedra, various Poisson structures on the orbit spaces of the actions are derived and Poisson embeddings into model spaces, for the orbit spaces, are constructed. The Poisson structures, on respective source and model space, are compatible even for the minimum possible (embedding) dimension of the model spaces. This is, in particular, important since it is still an open question if, in general, there exist finite dimensional model spaces with Poisson structures compatible with the actions and the usual nondegenerate Poisson structure on the source spaces.
Algorithmes d'extraction robuste de l'intervalle-inter pulse du biosonar du cachalot : applications éthologiques et suivi des populations. (Robust extraction algorithms for the IPI in sperm whale clicks : ethological application and population monitoring)

Le cachalot, Physeter macrocephalus le plus grand des odontocetes, a ete longtemps expose a la peche pour extraire l'huile contenue dans sa tete (spermaceti), et est maintenant vulnerable. Les cachalots nagent dans divers endroits du globe et atteignent les plus grandes profondeurs, ou ils chassent par echolocation. Ils emettent des sons, des clics a large bande, a structure multi-pulsee generee par des reflexions intra-tete. Ces clics contiennent de l'information sur la taille de l'animal et sur son orientation, reposant sur les delais entre les pulses qui le composent (intervalle inter-pulse 'IPI'). Ces mesures sont utiles dans la preservation et les efforts de suivi populationnel du cachalot, puisqu'il est impossible de filmer ces mammiferes nageant en grandes profondeurs.Les avancees technologiques permettant un essor considerable du nombre d'enregistrements sous-marins. Des algorithmes d'analyse automatiques sont alors requis pour le suivi de cette population ou des etudes comportementales et mesures de protection. La litterature offre une variete de methodes pour le calcul de l'IPI. Cependant, elles souffrent d'un melange des differents delais entre pulses resultant en une estimation de l'IPI peu precise et, par consequent, de la taille de l'animal. De plus, ce melange des differents delais entre pulses ne permet pas l'extraction de donnees sur l'orientation de l'animal. Dans cette these, une nouvelle methode pour une analyse fine de l'IPI est presentee. Elle ne melange pas les differents delais entre pulses, mais selectionne les pulses a travers une analyse combinatoire et statistique. Il en resulte une meilleure estimation de la taille du cachalot. De plus une information supplementaire, sur son orientation, est extraite. Notre algorithme est compare avec ceux de l'etat de l'art. Nous en discutons ses forces et faiblesses.Les resultats experimentaux sont donnes autant sur des exemples avec un ou plusieurs cachalots emettant en meme temps, que sur des donnees obtenues en differentes zones geographiques (France, Italie, Etats-Unis) et a partir de differents systemes d'enregistrement. Ceci demontre la robustesse de la methode proposee, et donne des perspectives pour le suivi des cachalots a l'echelle du globe.
A Theory for the Complete Mechanization of a GPS-Type Problem Solver

The data structure that drives the General Problem Solver is the Connection Table. This paper describes the theoretical basis for the automatic construction of this table by computer programs.The programs for this purpose have been developed at the Case Western Reserve University. They basically isolate certain attributes of the problem states which are invariant under certain moves and then put those attributes together to "triangularize" the Connection Table.
p53 down‐regulates human bradykinin B1 receptor gene expression

The tumor suppressor, p53, has been shown to transcriptionally activate or silence a number of target genes. As an activator, p53 relies on its specific consensus sequence within the promoter. It is not clear whether p53 requires a specific DNA binding site in its action as a gene repressor. This report demonstrates that the human BKB1R gene is a p53 target. Expression of p53 in transiently transfected SV40‐transformed IMR90 cells strongly suppressed luciferase reporter activity driven by a 1.8 kb BKB1R promoter as well as its minigene. These down‐regulations were p53 dose‐dependent. p53 reduced both basal and induced promoter activities of the minigene. Expression of p53 abolished the inducibility of the minigene. Induction of endogenous p53 expression by etoposide also inhibited promoter activity and minigene inducibility. Replacing the region containing both the putative p53 binding site and the TATA‐box with a basal adenovirus promoter in the 1.8 kb promoter construct did not prevent p53 from inhibiting BKB1R promoter activity. Thus suppression by p53 is not mediated by competition with the TATA‐binding protein and is not through interaction with the putative p53‐binding site. p53 also does not appear to suppress BKB1R gene expression through interaction with c‐Jun which functions in the inducibility of this gene [Yang et al., 2001 ]. J. Cell. Biochem. 82: 38–45, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
LMI Stability Tests for the Fornasini-Marchesini Model

We present a linear matrix inequality (LMI) for testing the stability of a 2-D system described by the Fornasini-Marchesini first model. The test is based on the properties of sum-of-squares polynomials with matrix coefficients. Although the test implements a sufficient condition, extensive experiments suggest that the gap to necessity is very small. We also derive an LMI describing stability conditions around a given model and useful in robust stability testing.
Flexible muscle-based locomotion for bipedal creatures

We present a muscle-based control method for simulated bipeds in which both the muscle routing and control parameters are optimized. This yields a generic locomotion control method that supports a variety of bipedal creatures. All actuation forces are the result of 3D simulated muscles, and a model of neural delay is included for all feedback paths. As a result, our controllers generate torque patterns that incorporate biomechanical constraints. The synthesized controllers find different gaits based on target speed, can cope with uneven terrain and external perturbations, and can steer to target directions.
MOPAR: a mobile peer-to-peer overlay architecture for interest management of massively multiplayer online games

In this paper we propose a fully distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) infrastructure supporting Networked Virtual Environment (NVE) applications, such as massively multiplayer online games (MMOG). While many attempts have been made to tackle one of the most challenging issues in MMOGs - interest management, none of them are considered truly successful. Our architecture is a hybrid scheme focusing on NVEs' interest management. Our scheme takes the advantage of both structured overlay, i.e. Distributed Hash Table (DHT), and the unstructured P2P architecture. It not only has more stable and consistent performance with respect to neighbor discovery, but also is more scalable and fault tolerant than the existing approaches. Unlike other hexagonal zoning approaches in which each participant has a discrete view of the virtual world, our zoning design guarantees that all participants have a continuous view. Moreover, our novel hierarchical architecture and the message dissemination algorithm greatly save network bandwidth and alleviate each node's workload. We implemented our infrastructure running on top of an emulated network. We also implemented a simple game simulation and a visualization tool to demonstrate and visualize our infrastructure.
Deformable Tracking of Textured Curvilinear Objects

Threads and wires are deformable 3-dimensional (3D) and curvilinear objects which are commonly manipulated by humans in various medical and manufacturing tasks. Several applications, including computerassisted evaluation, augmented reality guidance, and autonomous robotic manipulation [2, 3] would benefit from the real-time estimation of the 3D shapes of these deformable objects from images. This estimation is however challenging due to multiple factors: 1) little information is available within an image to visually detect and distinguish a curvilinear object due to its thin and usually uniform appearance; 2) different 3D shapes may lead to the same visual perception, even in a stereo setting in case portions of the objects lie in an epipolar plane; and 3) the motions and deformations can be large, depending on the stiffness of the object. Additionally, a tracking approach that can consistently track specific points along the object defined by their arclength, such as the extremities or midpoint, would be particularly useful in the aforementioned applications. To deal with visual ambiguities such as drift along the curve, we propose to texture the object with a coarse pattern of alternating colors and formulate the shape estimation as a deformable 1D template tracking problem. Tracking is expressed as an energy minimization over a set of control pointsQ parameterizing a 3D NURBS C3D modeling the object:
Circulating cytokines and chemokines in acute symptomatic parvovirus B19 infection: Negative association between levels of pro‐inflammatory cytokines and development of B19‐associated arthritis

The aim of the study was to characterise the profile and clinical correlates (arthritis, rash, and fatigue) of cytokines, chemokines, and other mediators in symptomatic acute parvovirus B19 infection. Serum was examined from cases of acute B19 infection (as defined by serum anti‐B19 IgM positivity) (n = 84), and in normal persons (n = 43) for B19 markers (serum B19 antibodies and DNA), rheumatoid factor (RF), and antinuclear antibody (ANA). A panel of cytokines/chemokines was measured in duplicate using the Bioplex Protein Array system (BioRad Hemel Hempstead, UK). These included interleukin‐1β (IL‐1β), IL‐4, IL‐5, IL‐6, IL‐8, IL‐13, tumor necrosis factor‐α (TNF‐α), interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ), macrophage chemoattractant protein‐1 (MCP‐1), granulocyte‐monocyte colony stimulating factor (GM‐CSF), transforming growth factor‐β1 (TGF‐β1), endothelin‐1 (ET‐1), and neopterin. Acute symptomatic infection was characterised by specific IgG positivity (83%), serum B19 DNA positivity (96%), and raised levels of IL‐4, IL‐6, IL‐8, TNF‐α, IFN‐γ, MCP‐1, GM‐CSF, TGF‐β1, and ET‐1. Patients with acute B19‐associated arthritis were found to have lower levels of IL‐6, TNF‐α, and GM‐CSF than patients without arthritis, while those with rash had lower levels of TGF‐β1. It is concluded that cytokine levels following acute symptomatic infection with parvovirus B19 indicate a state of immune activation. The profile of circulating mediators may provide insights into the possible pathogenesis of particular clinical manifestations of this infection. J. Med. Virol. 74:147–155, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Extraction of site–site bridge functions and effective pair potentials from simulations of polar molecular liquids

We develop an efficient method to extract site–site bridge functions from molecular simulations. The method is based on the inverse solution of the reference site interaction model. Using the exact long‐range asymptotics of site–site direct correlation functions defined by the site–site Ornstein–Zernike equations, we regularize the ill‐posed inverse problem, and then calculate site–site bridge functions and effective pair potentials for ambient water, methanol, and ethanol. We have tested the proposed algorithm and checked its performance. Our study has revealed various peculiarities of the site–site bridge functions, such as long‐range behavior, strong dependence on the electrostatic interactions. Using the obtained data, we have calculated thermodynamic properties of the solvents, namely, isothermal compressibility, internal energy, and Kirkwood‐Buff integrals. The obtained values are in excellent agreement not only with molecular simulations but also with available experimental data. Further extensions of the method are discussed. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Pure Consciousness: Distinct Phenomenological and Physiological Correlates of “Consciousness Itself”

This paper explores subjective reports and physiological correlates of the experience of “consciousness itself” - self awareness isolated from the processes and objects of experience during Transcendental Meditation practice. Subjectively, this state is characterized by the absence of the very framework (time, space, and body sense) and content (qualities of inner and outer perception) that define waking experiences. Physiologically, this state is distinguished by the presence of apneustic breathing, autonomic orienting at the onset of breath changes, and increases in the frequency of peak EEG power. A model, called the junction point model, is presented that integrates pure consciousness with waking, dreaming, or sleeping. It could provide a structure to generate a coherent program of research to test the full range of consciousness and so enable us to understand what it means to be fully human.
Methods for analyzing performance of musical rhythm

Performance of musical rhythm was analyzed to test the hypothesis that such performance is characterized by certain systematic variations as regards the durations of the sound events in relation to strict mechanical regularity. Monophonic performances of 28 melodies in different notations were registered, and the duration data were treated by a special computer program for systematic variations and by factor analysis. The methods are illustrated for one of the melodies demonstrating pronounced systematic variations and different types of performance as found by factor analysis.
Experiences with Transdisciplinary Research

Research for Sustainable Land Management appears to be a designated field for a transdiciplinary approach. Because of the number of involved scientific disciplines, stakeholders and target groups, sustainable land management is characterized by a high level of complexity. An integrative understanding is required that goes beyond disciplinary knowledge and sectoral viewpoints, including diverse societal needs, values as well as local knowledge. From April 17th to April 19th 2013, the ‘Sustainable Land Management’ funding measure launched by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research sponsored a status conference in Berlin, Germany, to discuss findings from the first 3 years. This article reports on experiences with and discussion results about transdisciplinary research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Lost primacy: crime in Italy at the end of the twentieth century

This article attempts to answer four questions. First: has Italy today, or has it had in the last thirty years, rates of theft, robbery and homicide that are higher than those in other western European countries? Second: have crime statistics in Italy followed the same pattern as in other European countries in the same period? Third: have crime statistics become more or less comparable in the western European countries in this period? Fourth: what factors have determined changes in crime rates in Italy in recent decades?
Internet access in libraries

Abstract This article compares the newspaper coverage of Internet access in public libraries across two countries, Canada and Singapore. The aim is to discover some of the main concerns and themes that the press identifies with libraries, noting the differences between the two countries in this regard, and then to provisionally link these differences to certain structural characteristics of their respective societies and states. To achieve these aims I compare press coverage produced in terms of dates of publication, discourse producers, and discourse content. Implications of the findings for libraries and librarians are discussed.