Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel framework for repeated measurements in diffusion tensor imaging

In the context of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), the utility of making repeated measurements in each diffusion sensitizing direction has been the subject of numerous studies. One can estimate the true signal value using either the raw complex-valued data or the real-valued magnitude signal. While conventional methods focus on the former strategy, this paper proposes a new framework for acquiring/processing repeated measurements based on the latter strategy. The aim is to enhance the DTI processing pipeline by adding a diffusion signal estimator (DSE). This permits us to exploit the knowledge of the noise distribution to estimate the true signal value in each direction. An extensive study of the proposed framework, including theoretical analysis, experiments with synthetic data, performance evaluation and comparisons is presented. Our results show that the precision of estimated diffusion parameters is dependent on the number of available samples and the manner in which the DSE accounts for noise. The proposed framework improves the precision in estimation of diffusion parameters given a sufficient number of unique measurements. This encourages future work with rich real datasets and downstream applications.
Using Unity 3D to facilitate mobile augmented reality game development

Mobile augmented reality (mobile AR) enables virtual content such as 3D models, animations and annotations to be placed on top of a real world objects in any context. We applied mobile AR to develop the Calory Battle AR exergame to tackle worldwide childhood obesity. In this game the player finds and defuses virtual calory bombs in a real world environment. Specifically, we present the development of two game versions. First prototype was created without a third party game engine and it led to many challenges. To explore solutions to these challenges, we created a new version of game with the Unity 3D game engine. Using the Unity 3D, the game development process was simplified. A mixed-method usability evaluation on children and university students indicated that especially interaction with AR content and user interface clarity were improved in the Unity 3D version. This study produced three important contributions: 1) a novel mobile AR exergame to motivate children to move; 2) reimplementation of the game using the Unity 3D; and 3) results of a usability evaluation comparing two game versions. We expect that game engines such as the Unity 3D will become essential for AR game development in the future.
Server-Aided Public Key Encryption With Keyword Search

Public key encryption with keyword search (PEKS) is a well-known cryptographic primitive for secure searchable data encryption in cloud storage. Unfortunately, it is inherently subject to the (inside) offline keyword guessing attack (KGA), which is against the data privacy of users. Existing countermeasures for dealing with this security issue mainly suffer from low efficiency and are impractical for real applications. In this paper, we provide a practical and applicable treatment on this security vulnerability by formalizing a new PEKS system named server-aided public key encryption with keyword search (SA-PEKS). In SA-PEKS, to generate the keyword ciphertext/trapdoor, the user needs to query a semitrusted third-party called keyword server (KS) by running an authentication protocol, and hence, security against the offline KGA can be obtained. We then introduce a universal transformation from any PEKS scheme to a secure SA-PEKS scheme using the deterministic blind signature. To illustrate its feasibility, we present the first instantiation of SA-PEKS scheme by utilizing the Full Domain Hash RSA signature and the PEKS scheme proposed by Boneh et al. in Eurocrypt 2004. Finally, we describe how to securely implement the client-KS protocol with a rate-limiting mechanism against online KGA and evaluate the performance of our solutions in experiments.
Myocardial Infarction after Endoscopic Removal of Foreign Body

The development of cardiac complications during or after endoscopic procedures is rare. However, mortality from myocardial ischemia, particularly in the elderly population, is elevated. We illustrate the rare case of a 79-year-old man with multiple cardiovascular risk factors who developed a non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) after endoscopic removal of a foreign body. This case report summarizes a rare complication of a low-risk procedure and highlights the importance of considering this potential adverse event, particularly in patients with significant cardiovascular risk factors, to promote early diagnosis and proper treatment.
Computer-Aided Complexity Classification of Dial-a-Ride Problems

In dial-a-ride problems, items have to be transported from a source to a destination. The characteristics of the servers involved as well as the specific requirements of the rides may vary. Problems are defined on some metric space, and the goal is to find a feasible solution that minimizes a certain objective function. The structure of these problems allows for a notation similar to the standard notation for scheduling and queueing problems. We introduce such a notation and show how a class of 7,930 dial-a-ride problem types arises from this approach. In examining their computational complexity, we define a partial ordering on the problem class and incorporate it in the computer program DARCLASS. As input DARCLASS uses lists of problems whose complexity is known. The output is a classification of all problems into one of three complexity classes: solvable in polynomial time, NP-hard, or open. For a selection of the problems that form the input for DARCLASS, we exhibit a proof of polynomial-time solvability or NP-hardness.
Automatic Annotation of Word Emotion in Sentences Based on Ren-CECps

Textual information is an important communication medium contained rich expression of emotion, and emotion recognition on text has wide applications. Word emotion analysis is fundamental in the problem of textual emotion recognition. Through an analysis of the characteristics of word emotion expression, we use word emotion vector to describe the combined basic emotions in a word, which can be used to distinguish direct and indirect emotion words, express emotion ambiguity in words, and express multiple emotions in words. Based on Ren-CECps (a Chinese emotion corpus), we do an experiment to explore the role of emotion word for sentence emotion recognition and we find that the emotions of a simple sentence (sentence without negative words, conjunctions, or question mark) can be approximated by an addition of the word emotions. Then MaxEnt modeling is used to find which context features are effective for recognizing word emotion in sentences. The features of word, N-words, POS, Pre-N-words emotion, Pre-is-degree-word, Pre-is-negativeword, Pre-is-conjunction and their combination have been experimented. After that, we use the two metrics: Kappa coefficient of agreement and Voting agreement to measure the word annotation agreement of Ren-CECps. The experiments on above context features showed promising results compared with word emotion agreement on people's judgments.
The Clinical Performance of an Office-Based Risk Scoring System for Fatal Cardiovascular Diseases in North-East of Iran

Background Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are becoming major causes of death in developing countries. Risk scoring systems for CVD are needed to prioritize allocation of limited resources. Most of these risk score algorithms have been based on a long array of risk factors including blood markers of lipids. However, risk scoring systems that solely use office-based data, not including laboratory markers, may be advantageous. In the current analysis, we validated the office-based Framingham risk scoring system in Iran. Methods The study used data from the Golestan Cohort in North-East of Iran. The following risk factors were used in the development of the risk scoring method: sex, age, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, hypertension treatment, current smoking, and diabetes. Cardiovascular risk functions for prediction of 10-year risk of fatal CVDs were developed. Results A total of 46,674 participants free of CVD at baseline were included. Predictive value of estimated risks was examined. The resulting Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC) was 0.774 (95% CI: 0.762-0.787) in all participants, 0.772 (95% CI: 0.753-0.791) in women, and 0.763 (95% CI: 0.747-0.779) in men. AUC was higher in urban areas (0.790, 95% CI: 0.766-0.815). The predicted and observed risks of fatal CVD were similar in women. However, in men, predicted probabilities were higher than observed. Conclusion The AUC in the current study is comparable to results of previous studies while lipid profile was replaced by body mass index to develop an office-based scoring system. This scoring algorithm is capable of discriminating individuals at high risk versus low risk of fatal CVD.
Title Spike-Timing Precision Underlies the Coding Efficiency of Auditory

Sensory systems must translate incoming signals quickly and reliably so that an animal can act successfully in its environment. Even at the level of receptor neurons, however, functional aspects of the sensory encoding process are not yet fully understood. Specifically, this concerns the question how stimulus features and neural response characteristics lead to an efficient transmission of sensory information. To address this issue, we have recorded and analyzed spike trains from grasshopper auditory receptors, while systematically varying the stimulus statistics. The stimulus variations profoundly influenced the efficiency of neural encoding. This influence was largely attributable to the presence of specific stimulus features that triggered remarkably precise spikes whose trial-to-trial timing variability was as low as 0.15 milliseconds – one order of magnitude shorter than typical stimulus time scales. Precise spikes decreased the noise entropy of the spike trains, thereby increasing the rate of information transmission. In contrast, the total spike train entropy, which quantifies the variety of different spike train patterns, hardly changed when stimulus conditions were altered, as long as the neural firing rate remained the same. This finding shows that stimulus distributions that were transmitted with high information rates did not invoke additional response patterns, but instead displayed exceptional temporal precision in their neural representation. The acoustic stimuli that led to the highest information rates and smallest spike-time jitter feature pronounced sound-pressure deflections lasting for two to three milliseconds. These upstrokes are reminiscent of salient structures found in natural grasshopper communication signals, suggesting that precise spikes selectively encode particularly important aspects of the natural stimulus environment.
On the numerical analysis of rapid oscillation

This paper surveys recent advances in the allied challenges of discretizing highly oscillatory ordinary differential equations and computing numerical quadrature of highly oscillatory integrals, and attempts to sketch the mathematical foundations of a general approach to these issues. Having described the Magnus, Cayley and Neumann methods for highly oscillatory ordinary differential equations and analysed the Filon quadrature of highly oscillatory integrals, its overall conclusion is that, once numerical methods are properly crafted, their accuracy increases in the presence of high oscillation.
Glassiness in a Model without Energy Barriers.

We propose a microscopic model without energy barriers in order to explain some generic features observed in structural glasses. The statics can be exactly solved while the dynamics has been clarified using Monte Carlo calculations. Although the model has no thermodynamic transition, it captures some of the essential features of real glasses, i.e., extremely slow relaxation, time dependent hysteresis effects, anomalous increase of the relaxation time, and aging. This suggests that the effect of entropy barriers can be an important ingredient to account for the behavior observed in real glasses.
Tool Integration for Signal Processing Architectural Exploration

This paper presents a design environment for efficiently generating and analyzing application-specific Intellectual Property (IP) cores for system level signal processing algorithms. We present our view of a framework that integrates existing electronic design automation (EDA) tools to alleviate the designer from manually constructing the hardware models and analyzing their performance. Our framework is well suited for designers with a range of signal processing and hardware expertise. Our framework builds the dedicated IP cores and estimates the performance such as area, critical path delay, and latency within seconds. We estimated area and delay within 5% accuracy when compared to actual synthesized designs. Our framework also compares different hardware designs for various digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms and allows the designer to make final decisions in selecting an optimized IP core. We used a GUIbased framework invoked from MATLAB to build and analyze the hardware designs. The end products are optimized hardware designs described in SystemC and Verilog code. We illustrate the use of our framework via two case studies: finite impulse response (FIR) filters and adaptive channel equalizers.
Computational Models for Big Data Processing

MapReduce framework has emerged as one of the most widely used parallel computing platforms for processing Big Data on tera- and peta-byte scale. In this note, we introduce several theoretical computational models for MapReduce from a standpoint of parallel algorithmic power by comparing MapReduce computation with standard parallel computational models such as PRAMs and/or combinational Boolean circuits.
The UV-A and visible solar irradiance spectrum: inter-comparison of absolutely calibrated, spectrally medium resolution solar irradiance spectra from balloon- and satellite-borne measurements

Abstract. Within the framework of the ENVISAT/-SCIAMACHY satellite validation, solar irradiance spectra are absolutely measured at moderate resolution in the UV/visible spectral range (in the UV from 316.7-418 nm and the visible from 400-652 nm at a full width half maximum resolution of 0.55 nm and 1.48 nm, respectively) from aboard the azimuth-controlled LPMA/DOAS balloon gondola at around 32 km balloon float altitude. After accounting for the atmospheric extinction due to Rayleigh scattering and gaseous absorption (O3 and NO2), the measured solar spectra are compared with previous observations. Our solar irradiance spectrum perfectly agrees within +0.03% with the re-calibrated Kurucz et al. (1984) solar spectrum (Fontenla et al., 1999, called MODTRAN 3.7) in the visible spectral range (415-650 nm), but it is +2.1% larger in the (370-415 nm) wavelength interval, and -4% smaller in the UV-A spectral range (316.7-370 nm), when the Kurucz spectrum is convolved to the spectral resolution of our instrument. Similar comparisons of the SOLSPEC (Thuillier et al., 1997, 1998a, b) and SORCE/SIM (Harder et al., 2000) solar spectra with MODTRAN 3.7 confirms our findings with the values being -0.5%, +2%, and -1.4% for SOLSPEC -0.33%, -0.47%, and -6.2% for SORCE/SIM, respectively. Comparison of the SCIAMACHY solar spectrum from channels 1 to 4 (- re-calibrated by the University of Bremen -) with MODTRAN 3.7 indicates an agreement within -0.4% in the visible spectral range (415-585 nm), -1.6% within the 370-415 nm, and -5.7% within 325-370 nm wavelength interval, in agreement with the results of the other sensors. In agreement with findings of Skupin et al. (2002) our study emphasizes that the present ESA SCIAMACHY level 1 calibration is systematically +15% larger in the considered wavelength intervals when compared to all available other solar irradiance measurements.
Towards a new design for trust reputation system

Trust is indispensible for any user of an e-service in order to make a decision before dealing with any transaction. That's the reason why, users and service providers need various and functional methods to build on-line trust reputation systems. This paper discusses the use of trust management and reputation systems in electronic transactions and particularly in e-commerce applications. It presents a survey of some existing trust reputation systems used in e-commerce applications. This survey proposes a new design for trust reputation systems (TRS) that focuses on the use of semantic feedbacks in order to calculate users' recommendation weights and to classify them according to these weights. This paper highlights the importance of making the distinction between trustful feedbacks or ratings and distrustful ones. It proposes also some methods to follow and to put in practice in order to give the right weight to the right recommendations.
Pegasus-CTSC Engagement Final Report

This document is a product of the Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure (CTSC). CTSC is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number OCI-1234408. For more information about the Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure please visit: http://trustedci.org/. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Short-Term Projects versus Adaptive Governance: Conflicting Demands in the Management of Ecological Restoration

Drawing on a survey of large-scale ecological restoration initiatives, we find that managers face contradictory demands. On the one hand, they have to raise funds from a variety of sources through competitive procedures for individual projects. These projects require the specification of deliverable outputs within a relatively short project period. On the other hand, ecologists argue that the complexity of ecosystem processes means that it is not possible to know how to deliver predetermined outcomes and that governance should be adaptive, long-term and implemented through networks of stakeholders. This debate parallels a debate in public administration between New Public Management and more recent proposals for a new approach, sometimes termed Public Value Management. Both of these approaches have strengths. Projectification provides control and accountability to funders. Adaptive governance recognises complexity and provides for long-term learning, building networks and adaptive responses. We suggest an institutional architecture that aims to capture the major benefits of each approach based on public support dedicated to ecological restoration and long-term funding programmes.
Sense of Coherence among Older Adult Residents of Long-Term Care Facilities in Taiwan: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Background Growing evidence shows that sense of coherence (SOC) is related to health promotion. Knowledge of SOC among older adults in Taiwan is limited. The present study aimed to investigate SOC status and its relationship to personal and environmental factors among older adult residents of long-term care facilities (LTCFs) in northeastern Taiwan. Methods This cross-sectional study was performed in Yilan, Taiwan. With face-to-face interviews, we obtained data from 104 LTCF residents (aged 65 years and older) using the Chinese version of Antonovsky's short 13-item SOC scale. We also collected the information on personal characteristics, physical and social environmental resources. Multiple linear regression was used to analyze factors potentially influencing SOC. Results Of the participants, the mean score (±standard deviation) of SOC was 58.3 (±8.8), while scores on SOC subscales (comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness) were 23.4 ±4.5, 17.9 ±3.8, and 17.0 ±3.2, respectively. Education level, activities of daily living and number of LTCF staff were found to be independently associated with SOC status after adjusting for demographic characteristics, health status, and environmental resources. In addition, interactions between personal and environmental factors had a crucial influence on SOC status. Conclusions Participants in this study had relatively low SOC scores compared to their counterparts in Western countries. In addition to personal factors, environmental factors can play a significant role in SOC status among older adult LTCF residents. Comprehensive evaluation of SOC status should consider person-environment interaction effects.
Inventory optimisation with an Interval Type-2 Fuzzy model

The planning of resources within a supply chain can prove to be a deciding factor in the success or failure of an operation. This research continues the authors' previous work using an extended Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Logic supply chain model, with an Evolutionary Algorithm to search for good resource plans. A set of enhanced experiments is conducted to validate our novel approach with optimal configurations, and determine an appropriate Evolutionary Algorithm set up for the given problem.
Ju l 1 99 5 IASSNS-HEP-95 / 62 Statistics Of The Burst Model At Supercritical Phase

We investigate the statistics of a model of type-I X-ray burst [Phys. Rev. E, 51, 3045 (1995)] in its super-critical phase. The time evolution of the burnable clusters, places where fire can pass through, is studied using simple statistical arguments. We offer a simple picture for the time evolution of the percentage of space covered by burnable clusters. A relation between the time-average and the peak percentage of space covered by burnable clusters is also derived. PACS number: 05.70. Ln, 05.40. +j, 64.60. -i, 64.80,-v Typeset using REVTEX †Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University §Corresponding author, e-mail: chau@sns.ias. edu
An efficient parallel storage scheme in data grid environment

It is important to improve data reliability and data accessing efficiency for data-intensive applications in data grid environment. We propose an IDA-based parallel storage scheme in Data Grid environment. The scheme partitions a data file into unrecognizable blocks and distributes them across storage nodes according to user profile and system conditions. A subset of blocks, which could be downloaded in parallel to the remote client, is required to reconstruct the data file. The scheme can be deployed on top of current grid middleware. Experimental results and analysis show that the IDA-based parallel storage scheme has better data reliability and data accessing performance than the existing data replication methods.