Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating pruned object detection networks for real-time robot vision

Convolutional Neural Networks are the state of the art for computer vision problems such as classification and detection. Networks like YOLO and SSD have demonstrated excellent results on benchmark datasets such as the PASCAL VOC and COCO datasets. However these networks only run at real time with the support of powerful GPUs and are infeasible for use in low power embedded real-time robotic applications. Pruning has been shown to be an efficient technique for reducing the runtime computational cost of a neural network while maintaining performance in image classification tasks. In this work we evaluate the efficacy of pruning on the problem of object detection using a modified tiny-YOLO network. The network was trained on a custom object detection task and three pruning techniques were evaluated, including our contribution which specifically targets reducing the FLOPS in the network. The results show that pruning with our method followed by extended fine-tuning achieved a 4.5x reduction in FLOPS and a 7x reduction in parameters with no drop in accuracy.
Monocular Depth from Small Motion Video Accelerated

We propose a novel four-stage pipeline densely reconstructing depth from video sequences with small baselines with the goal of being fast. In our pipeline we make use of the sub-pixel precision of direct photometric bundle adjustment to reduce the number of tracked points required to estimate an accurate pose. Instead of using the exhaustive plane sweeping approach of existing small baseline methods, dense depth maps are calculated efficiently using an algorithm inspired by PatchMatch. Instead of a stereo matching error, our algorithm minimizes the variance over multiple frames with a robust mean estimation. The experiment results suggest that our method has the ability to cope with a wider range of baselines and sequence sizes. We also compare qualitative results on real small motion clips from Ha et al. in addition to our own, and show that our method outputs dense depth maps of similar or better quality and at least 10x faster.
Salivary secretion in health and disease

Saliva is a complex fluid produced by 3 pairs of major salivary glands and by hundreds of minor salivary glands. It comprises a large variety of constituents and physicochemical properties, which are important for the maintenance of oral health. Saliva not only protects the teeth and the oropharyngeal mucosa, it also facilitates articulation of speech, and is imperative for mastication and swallowing. Furthermore, saliva plays an important role in maintaining a balanced microbiota. Thus, the multiple functions provided by saliva are essential for proper protection and functioning of the body as a whole and for the general health. A large number of diseases and medications can affect salivary secretion through different mechanisms, leading to salivary gland dysfunction and associated oral problems, including xerostomia, dental caries and fungal infections. The first part of this review article provides an updated insight into our understanding of salivary gland structure, the neural regulation of salivary gland secretion, the mechanisms underlying the formation of saliva, the various functions of saliva and factors that influence salivary secretion under normal physiological conditions. The second part focuses on how various diseases and medical treatment including commonly prescribed medications and cancer therapies can affect salivary gland structure and function. We also provide a brief insight into how to diagnose salivary gland dysfunction.
Role of Parathyroid Hormone in Regulating Transporter and Metabolizing Enzyme Function

Recent studies demonstrate that parathyroid hormone (PTH) not only maintains mineral homeostasis through targeting the kidneys and bone, but also exerts its effects on other organs. For instance, PTH induces urate accumulation through inhibiting the expression of the ABCG2 in both the intestine and the kidney. In addition, PTH downregulates the expression of cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A, a major enzyme for drug metabolism in both the intestine and liver, resulting in the increase of substrate drug exposure. These functions of PTH are mediated through the PTH receptor (PTHR) signaling. Since PTHR exists in various organs, PTH may regulate other, still unspecified transporters or enzymes in the organs that express PTHR.
Consensus‐based European guidelines for treatment of atopic eczema (atopic dermatitis) in adults and children: part II

This guideline was developed as a joint interdisciplinary European project, including physicians from all relevant disciplines as well as patients. It is a consensus‐based guideline, taking available evidence from other guidelines, systematic reviews and published studies into account. This second part of the guideline covers antimicrobial therapy, systemic treatment, allergen‐specific immunotherapy, complementary medicine, psychosomatic counselling and educational interventions, whereas the first part covers methods, patient perspective, general measures and avoidance strategies, basic emollient treatment and bathing, dietary intervention, topical anti‐inflammatory therapy, phototherapy and antipruritic therapy. Management of AE must consider the individual clinical variability of the disease. Systemic immunosuppressive treatment with cyclosporine, methotrexate, azathioprine and mycophenolic acid is established option for severe refractory cases, and widely available. Biologicals targeting the T helper 2 pathway such as dupilumab may be a safe and effective, disease‐modifying alternative when available. Oral drugs such as JAK inhibitors and histamine 4 receptor antagonists are in development. Microbial colonization and superinfection may cause disease exacerbation and can require additional antimicrobial treatment. Allergen‐specific immunotherapy with aeroallergens may be considered in selected cases. Psychosomatic counselling is recommended especially in stress‐induced exacerbations. Therapeutic patient education (‘Eczema school’) is recommended for children and adult patients. General measures, basic emollient treatment, bathing, dietary intervention, topical anti‐inflammatory therapy, phototherapy and antipruritic therapy have been addressed in the first part of the guideline.
Musical dual-task training in patients with mild-to-moderate dementia: a randomized controlled trial

Background/aims Dual-task training may improve dual-task gait performance, balance, and cognition in older adults with and without cognitive impairment. Although music has been widely utilized in dementia management, there are no existing protocols for music-based dual-task training. This randomized controlled study developed a Musical Dual-Task Training (MDTT) protocol that patients with dementia can use to practice walking and making music simultaneously, to enhance attention control in patients during dual-tasking. Methods Twenty-eight adults diagnosed with mild-to-moderate dementia were assigned to the MDTT (n=15) or control groups (n=13). The MDTT group received MDTT, while the control group participated in non-musical cognitive and walking activities. The effects of MDTT were evaluated through the primary outcome of attention control, and secondary outcomes of dual-task performance, balance, falls efficacy, and agitation. Results The MDTT group showed a significant improvement in attention control, while the control group did not (P<0.001). A significant effect favored MDTT over control treatment for the secondary outcome of falls efficacy (P=0.02) and agitation (P<0.01). Conclusion MDTT, a music therapy intervention that demands a high level of cognitive processing, enhances attention control, falls efficacy, and helps alleviate agitation in patients with mild-to-moderate dementia.
Asthma among World Trade Center First Responders: A Qualitative Synthesis and Bias Assessment

The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster exposed the responders to several hazards. Three cohorts i.e., the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), the General Responder Cohort (GRC), and the WTC Health Registry (WTCHR) surveyed the exposed responder population. We searched Pubmed and Web of Science for literature on a well-published association between the WTC exposures and asthma, focusing on new-onset self-reported physician-diagnosed asthma. The resulting five articles were qualitatively assessed for potential biases. These papers were independently reviewed by the co-authors, and conclusions were derived after discussions. While, the cohorts had well-defined eligibility criteria, they lacked information about the entire exposed population. We conclude that selection and surveillance biases may have occurred in the GRC and WTCHR cohorts, but were likely to have been minimal in the FDNY cohort. Health care benefits available to responders may have increased the reporting of both exposure and outcome in the former, and decreased outcome reporting in the FDNY cohort. Irrespective of the biases, the studies showed similar findings, confirming the association between WTC exposure and self-reported physician-diagnosed asthma among responders. This suggests that health data gathered under great duress and for purposes other than epidemiology can yield sound conclusions. Potential biases can, however, be minimized by having validated survey instruments and worker registries in place before events occur.
Changes in Counseling Center Client Problems Across 13 Years

Are perceived increases in symptom severity in college counseling center clients real or imagined? Counseling center staff, retrospectively, reported that client problems are more severe now than in the past. Yet studies examining client distress levels at intake have found no significant increases. This study examined counseling center client problems across 13 years from the perspective of the treating therapist at the time of case closure. Increases were found for 14 of 19 client problem areas, whereas other areas retained stable levels, and 2 problem areas had a quadratic trend over time. These changes directly affect counseling service practices.
A novel GNSS based V2V cooperative localization to exclude multipath effect using consistency checks

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is essential for autonomous driving by providing absolute positioning solutions. However, the performance of GNSS measurement is significantly degraded in urban areas, due to the severe multipath and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) effects. To ensure the operation safety of autonomous driving applications, the GNSS localization performance is required to improve. In this study, a novel vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) based cooperative localization algorithm with double-layers of consistency check (CC) is developed. GNSS pseudorange measurements of the ego-vehicle and surrounding vehicles conduct the first-layer of CC independently to exclude the multipath-biased measurement and obtaining their absolute positions. Then, the survived GNSS measurement and the absolute positions of each vehicles are shared in between, and further applied with double difference (DD) technique to obtain an accurate relative position between the surrounding vehicles. The second-layer CC is conducted during the GNSS DD-based relative positioning, to exclude the multipath and NLOS effects more comprehensively. Finally, the absolute and relative positions of surrounding vehicles are cooperated to optimize the final position of all participating vehicles. By the both simulation and real experimental results, the proposed algorithm is able to mitigate the multipath effect and significantly improve the accuracy of GNSS localization solutions to fulfill the safety requirements for autonomous driving.
Multi-label Learning by Exploiting Label Correlations with LDA

In multi-label learning, each object is represented by a single instance while associated with a set of class labels, and labels often have correlations with each other. Exploiting label correlations can improve the performances of classifiers. Current multi-label classification methods mainly consider the correlations from label pairwise or label chain. In this paper, we propose a simple and efficient framework for multi-label classification, called Latent Dirichlet Allocation Multi-Label(LDAML), which aims at leaning the global correlations by using the topic model on the class labels. We regard the label set associated with each instance as a document and each class label in the label set as a word, then obtain the topic in the label space by topic model. The topics of label set which are introduced into feature space as the information of the correlations can improve the prediction. Extensive experiments clearly validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Urban rat races: spatial population genomics of brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) compared across multiple cities

Urbanization often substantially influences animal movement and gene flow. However, few studies to date have examined gene flow of the same species across multiple cities. In this study, we examine brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) to test hypotheses about the repeatability of neutral evolution across four cities: Salvador, Brazil; New Orleans, USA; Vancouver, Canada; and New York City, USA. At least 150 rats were sampled from each city and genotyped for a minimum of 15 000 genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms. Levels of genome-wide diversity were similar across cities, but varied across neighbourhoods within cities. All four populations exhibited high spatial autocorrelation at the shortest distance classes (less than 500 m) owing to limited dispersal. Coancestry and evolutionary clustering analyses identified genetic discontinuities within each city that coincided with a resource desert in New York City, major waterways in New Orleans, and roads in Salvador and Vancouver. Such replicated studies are crucial to assessing the generality of predictions from urban evolution, and have practical applications for pest management and public health. Future studies should include a range of global cities in different biomes, incorporate multiple species, and examine the impact of specific characteristics of the built environment and human socioeconomics on gene flow.
Modeling scanning tunneling spectra of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+d

Recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and neutron scattering data have provided ingredients for the interpretation of scanning tunneling spectra on ${\mathrm{Bi}}_{2}{\mathrm{Sr}}_{2}{\mathrm{CaCu}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{8+\ensuremath{\delta}}. $ We analyze the low-temperature tunneling spectra, from oxygen overdoped to underdoped samples, including details about the bilayer splitting and the neutron resonance peak. Two van Hove singularities are identified: the first is integrated in the coherence peaks, the second is heavily broadened at higher binding energy. The shape of the tunneling spectra suggests a strong coupling of the quasiparticles with a collective mode, and a comparison with photoemission shows that the scattering rate in tunneling is an order of magnitude smaller than in ARPES. Finally, the theoretical spectra calculated with an isotropic tunneling matrix element are in better agreement with the experimental data than those obtained with anisotropic matrix elements.
Coherence properties of light propagated through a scattering medium

Partially-coherent, quasi-monochromatic optical fields are fully described by their Mutual Optical Intensity (MOI) or the phase-space equivalent, the Generalised Radiance (GR). This paper reports on the application of a propagation-based phase-space tomographic technique for determining both the MOI and the GR of wavefields. This method is applied to the reconstruction of the MOI and the GR of an optical wavefield propagated through a suspension of \~10micrometre diameter polystyrene spheres.
A Highly Reconfigurable RF-DPLL Phase Modulator for Polar Transmitters in Cellular RFICs

A multirate fractional-N RF digital phase-locked loop (DPLL) phase modulator implementation for polar transmitter supporting cellular communication standards up to 4G LTE-A is demonstrated. The RF-DPLL integrates LC-tank-based digital-controlled oscillator (DCO) cores with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Sigma $ </tex-math></inline-formula>–<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta $ </tex-math></inline-formula>-noise shaping and fractional sample rate conversion to account for a broad range of frequency bands and spectral emission requirements. A two-point modulation with different sampling rates and signal scaling is applied to optimize the system for operation in narrow-band and wide-band phase modulation. DCO digital predistortion and DCO gain estimation in combination with open-loop gain auto adjustment and delay calibration are implemented to achieve sufficiently low-in-band distortion. Measurement results of the RF-DPLL system as part of a polar transmitter implemented in 28-nm CMOS are shown, fulfilling 3GPP specifications for 4G, LTE-A uplink and legacy cellular communication standards like 3G, UMTS/HSPA+ and 2G, GSM/EDGE.
On modelling and differential/algebraic systems

It is of a vital interest that software for model development and simulation supports models given as differential/algebraic equa tions (DAE), since many models for physical systems are naturally given as sets of ordinary differential and algebraic equations and since, as motivated in the report, the equation form is the only reasonable for model libraries. Unfortunately, most simulation packages of today do not allow models given as DAE systems, but require assignment statements for derivatives and algebraic variables. There are numerical solvers for DAE systems, but they are not as reliable and robust as numerical solvers for ordinary differential equations on state space form. Unfortunately, DAE systems may exhibit bad properties, which make them difficult to solve numerically today. The purpose of the paper is to give an over view of important properties of DAE systems, indicate possible ways to handle difficulties and to motivate others to do research in this area. By means of examples it is illustrated that even small, simple DAE systems can exhibit bad properties. The examples are by no means pathological. They arise naturally during model development. There are many open questions to answer. The questions cover a broad range from theoretical to practical problems. To en courage research in this area, interesting issues are listed.
Incident energy and polarization-dependent resonant inelastic x-ray scattering study of La2CuO4

We present a detailed Cu K-edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering RIXS study of the Mott insulator La2CuO4 in the 1 – 7 eV energy loss range. As initially found for the high-temperature superconductor HgBa2CuO4+, the spectra exhibit a multiplet of weakly dispersive electron-hole excitations, which are revealed by utilizing the subtle dependence of the cross section on the incident photon energy. The close similarity between the fine structures for in-plane and out-of-plane polarizations is indicative of the central role played by the 1s core hole in inducing charge excitations within the CuO2 planes. On the other hand, we observe a polarization dependence of the spectral weight, and careful analysis reveals two separate features near 2 eV that may be related to different charge-transfer processes. The polarization dependence indicates that the 4p electrons contribute significantly to the RIXS cross section. Third-order perturbation arguments and a shake-up of valence excitations are then applied to account for the final-energy resonance in the spectra. As an alternative scenario, we discuss fluorescence-like emission processes due to 1s → 4p transitions into a narrow continuum 4p band.
VISU 2018 1 VIP : système de visualisation de données patient VIP : A Patient Health Records Visualization System

Résumé – VIP est un système de visualisation de données patient développé pour deux cas d’usage : la consultation, et les réunions de comité, où les médecins discutent de chaque cas pour décider de la suite des traitements à donner. Il offre un accès complet à un cas patient, ainsi qu’une représentation graphique interactive de son historique, permettant, même sur des dossiers comprenant des centaines de rapports médicaux, de produire une représentation synthétique du dossier, que les médecins utilisent pour acquérir visuellement la situation du patient. Nous présentons le cas d’usage, les contraintes et les choix de représentation réalisés pour la mise en œuvre effective de ce système.
Induction of rule-based scoring functions

We consider the problem that many portfolio managers face of selecting, on a regular basis, stocks for investment and recommendation to clients. In typical solution strategies, binary rules are developed to classify stocks as strong or weak performers based on technical indicators. Strategies based on binary classification rules have been shown to be very effective at maximizing the total profitability of the stocks that are selected. Having a fixed number of target stocks is important for portfolio maintenance and for client choice, however, and so the selection problem also engenders the additional constraint of limiting the total number of stocks selected. Binary classification rule strategies do not address this constraint. In this paper we investigate the use of scoring functions, which have the advantage of allowing one to rank order the population based on profitability, as an alternative to binary classification rules. A key feature of this work is that we develop the scoring functions by incorporating binary classification rules. In particular, we induce the score model by assigning optimal weights to sets of implicit positive binary classification rules. We use a genetic algorithm with supervised batch learning to evolve classification rules. Fitness of a rule set is evaluated based on the success of the scoring function that it induces. We report on the relative empirical performance of this method on several large historical data sets.
Expansins Abundant in Secondary Xylem Belong to Subgroup A of the α-Expansin Gene Family1[w]

Differentiation of xylem cells in dicotyledonous plants involves expansion of the radial primary cell walls and intrusive tip growth of cambial derivative cells prior to the deposition of a thick secondary wall essential for xylem function. Expansins are cell wall-residing proteins that have an ability to plasticize the cellulose-hemicellulose network of primary walls. We found expansin activity in proteins extracted from the cambial region of mature stems in a model tree species hybrid aspen (Populus tremula × Populus tremuloides Michx). We identified three α-expansin genes (PttEXP1, PttEXP2, and PttEXP8) and one β-expansin gene (PttEXPB1) in a cambial region expressed sequence tag library, among which PttEXP1 was most abundantly represented. Northern-blot analyses in aspen vegetative organs and tissues showed that PttEXP1 was specifically expressed in mature stems exhibiting secondary growth, where it was present in the cambium and in the radial expansion zone. By contrast, PttEXP2 was mostly expressed in developing leaves. In situ reverse transcription-PCR provided evidence for accumulation of mRNA of PttEXP1 along with ribosomal rRNA at the tips of intrusively growing xylem fibers, suggesting that PttEXP1 protein has a role in intrusive tip growth. An examination of tension wood and leaf cDNA libraries identified another expansin, PttEXP5, very similar to PttEXP1, as the major expansin in developing tension wood, while PttEXP3 was the major expansin expressed in developing leaves. Comparative analysis of expansins expressed in woody stems in aspen, Arabidopsis, and pine showed that the most abundantly expressed expansins share sequence similarities, belonging to the subfamily A of α-expansins and having two conserved motifs at the beginning and end of the mature protein, RIPVG and KNFRV, respectively. This conservation suggests that these genes may share a specialized, not yet identified function.