Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vehicle Detection Using Normalized Color and Edge Map

This paper presents a novel vehicle detection approach for detecting vehicles from static images using color and edges. Different from traditional methods, which use motion features to detect vehicles, this method introduces a new color transform model to find important "vehicle color" for quickly locating possible vehicle candidates. Since vehicles have various colors under different weather and lighting conditions, seldom works were proposed for the detection of vehicles using colors. The proposed new color transform model has excellent capabilities to identify vehicle pixels from background, even though the pixels are lighted under varying illuminations. After finding possible vehicle candidates, three important features, including corners, edge maps, and coefficients of wavelet transforms, are used for constructing a cascade multichannel classifier. According to this classifier, an effective scanning can be performed to verify all possible candidates quickly. The scanning process can be quickly achieved because most background pixels are eliminated in advance by the color feature. Experimental results show that the integration of global color features and local edge features is powerful in the detection of vehicles. The average accuracy rate of vehicle detection is 94.9%
The Effects of Oxidative Stress in Urinary Tract Infection During Pregnancy

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of urinary tract infection (UTI) on antioxidant systems and lipid peroxidation (LPO) levels during pregnancy. We also investigated if these antioxidant systems and LPO levels differed in each trimester. One hundred forty-three nonpregnant women, as a control group, and 77 pregnant women were included in the study. Urine cultures were performed according to standard techniques. Catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and LPO levels were measured using a spectrophotometer. UTI was observed in 14 of 77 pregnant women and the isolated microorganisms were Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Staphylococcus saprophyticus. CAT, SOD, and LPO levels were increased in pregnant women compared with nonpregnant women (P < .01). CAT, SOD activities, and LPO levels were increased from the first trimester to the third trimester in pregnancy without UTI. However, CAT and SOD activities were decreased, LPO levels were increased from the first trimester to the third trimester in pregnancy with UTI (P < .01). Pregnancy causes oxidative stress and also UTI during pregnancy may aggravate oxidative stress.
Chlortalidon versus Hydrochlorothiazid zur Behandlung der primären arteriellen Hypertonie

In einer pragmatischen Literaturrecherche in der größten medizinischen Datenbank Medline (PubMed; US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) wurden direkte Vergleichsstudien zwischen Hydrochlorothiazid (HCT) und Chlortalidon (CTDN) sowie Metaanalysen, systematische Übersichtsarbeiten und Kommentare/Editorials gesucht. HCT ist weltweit, auch in Deutschland, das am häufigsten verschriebene Diuretikum. Seine Wirksamkeit in der Behandlung der Hypertonie ist hinsichtlich Blutdrucksenkung und kardiovaskulärer Endpunkte gut belegt, aber die meisten Studien wurden mit einer weitaus höheren Dosis durchgeführt als heutzutage üblicherweise verschrieben wird. CTDN weist ebenfalls eine positive Studienlage hinsichtlich kardiovaskulärer Endpunkte und Blutdrucksenkung auf. Vor allem aufgrund der Daten aus der MRFIT-Studie wurde eine Überlegenheit von CTDN gegenüber HCT postuliert. In dieser Studie zeigten stationäre, mit CTDN behandelte Hypertonie-Patienten eine um 44% niedrigere Mortalität im Vergleich zu Patienten, die mit HCT behandelt wurden. Da es sich aber um eine post hoc definierte Subgruppenanalyse handelt, sind die Ergebnisse mit Vorsicht zu interpretieren. In einer im Jahr 2013 veröffentlichten retrospektiven Kohortenstudie konnten die MRFIT-Ergebnisse nicht bestätigt werden. Die mit CTDN behandelten Patienten wiesen ein höheres Risiko auf, wegen Elektrolytentgleisungen hospitalisiert zu werden. Nach einem kürzlich publizierten Cochrane Review wird die maximale Blutdrucksenkung bereits mit täglich 12,5–25 mg CTDN erreicht, während dafür etwa die dreifache Dosis HCT erforderlich ist. Vor allem bei Nierengesunden erscheint eine antihypertensive Initialtherapie mit 12,5 mg CTDN täglich sinnvoll. Zur abschließenden Klärung der klinischen Überlegenheit ist eine randomisiert kontrollierte Vergleichsstudie erforderlich.
Learning by doing: introducing version control as a way to manage student assignments

Professional software developers use version control systems to coordinate their work, and to provide an unwindable history of their project's evolution. In contrast, students in most programming courses use a homegrown electronic submission program to submit their work, and email to coordinate with partners when doing team projects. In May 2003, we began using CVS, a popular open source version control system, as an assignment submission system. Students receive starter code by checking out the assignment, use the version control system to manage their work, and submit their assignment by committing it to CVS. Teaching assistants grade assignments by checking out each student's repository, and committing the marks. Our experience to date shows that this is both a simpler and a more flexible way to manage student assignments, and also an excellent way to teach them how to use a fundamental software development tool.
Joint optimization of control performance and network resource utilization in homogeneous power networks

We describe a joint control-communication optimization framework for network control of interactive power-electronic networks. The optimization framework includes two coupled blocks that in general do not operate cooperatively, one whose focus is on ensuring that the power network operates within its stability and performance bounds and the other, whose thrust is on optimizing the information flow in a communication network. Centralized and distributed implementation approaches for the joint-optimization framework are investigated. A case illustration of a homogeneous power network is provided to demonstrate the efficacy of the joint control-communication framework and comment on the implementation issues.
The cycling of organic nitrogen through the atmosphere

Atmospheric organic nitrogen (ON) appears to be a ubiquitous but poorly understood component of the atmospheric nitrogen deposition flux. Here, we focus on the ON components that dominate deposition and do not consider reactive atmospheric gases containing ON such as peroxyacyl nitrates that are important in atmospheric nitrogen transport, but are probably not particularly important in deposition. We first review the approaches to the analysis and characterization of atmospheric ON. We then briefly summarize the available data on the concentrations of ON in both aerosols and rainwater from around the world, and the limited information available on its chemical characterization. This evidence clearly shows that atmospheric aerosol and rainwater ON is a complex mixture of material from multiple sources. This synthesis of available information is then used to try and identify some of the important sources of this material, in particular, if it is of predominantly natural or anthropogenic origin. Finally, we suggest that the flux of ON is about 25 per cent of the total nitrogen deposition flux.
Swine Genome Science Comes of Age

Pigs were among the first animals to be domesticated and pork is one of the most widely eaten meats in the world today. The pig has also been an excellent biomedical model for understanding a variety of human health issues such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, female reproductive health, cardiovascular disease, and infectious diseases. Genome sequencing, mapping, expression and functional analyses have significantly advanced our ability to unravel the secrets of the pig. Therefore, this edition, with six reviews from leading scientists, offers the opportunity for all interested researchers and readers to see the big picture of porcine genomics.
EGR1 Functions as a Potent Repressor of MEF2 Transcriptional Activity

The myocyte enhancer factor 2 (MEF2) transcription factor requires interactions with co-factors for precise regulation of its target genes. Our lab previously reported that the mammalian MEF2A isoform regulates the cardiomyocyte costamere, a critical muscle-specific focal adhesion complex involved in contractility, through its transcriptional control of genes encoding proteins localized to this cytoskeletal structure. To further dissect the transcriptional mechanisms of costamere gene regulation and identify potential co-regulators of MEF2A, a bioinformatics analysis of transcription factor binding sites was performed using the proximal promoter regions of selected costamere genes. One of these predicted sites belongs to the early growth response (EGR) transcription factor family. The EGR1 isoform has been shown to be involved in a number of pathways in cardiovascular homeostasis and disease, making it an intriguing candidate MEF2 coregulator to further characterize. Here, we demonstrate that EGR1 interacts with MEF2A and is a potent and specific repressor of MEF2 transcriptional activity. Furthermore, we show that costamere gene expression in cardiomyocytes is dependent on EGR1 transcriptional activity. This study identifies a mechanism by which MEF2 activity can be modulated to ensure that costamere gene expression is maintained at levels commensurate with cardiomyocyte contractile activity.
Nutrition in Paediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Position Paper on Behalf of The Porto IBD Group of ESPGHAN.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS A growing body of evidence supports the need for detailed attention to nutrition and diet in children with IBD. We aimed to define the steps in instituting dietary or nutritional management in light of the current evidence and to offer a useful and practical guide to physicians and dieticians involved in the care of paediatric IBD patients. METHODS A group of 20 experts in paediatric IBD participated in an iterative consensus process including 2 face-to-face meetings, following an open call to ESPGHAN Porto, IBD Interest and Nutrition Committee. A list of 41 predefined questions was addressed by working subgroups based on a SR of the literature. RESULTS A total of 53 formal recommendations and 47 practice points were endorsed with a consensus rate of at least 80% on the following topics: nutritional assessment; nutrition as a primary therapy of paediatric IBD; macronutrients needs; trace Elements, minerals and vitamins; probiotics and prebiotics; specific dietary restrictions; dietary compounds and the risk of IBD. CONCLUSIONS This position paper represents a useful guide to help the clinicians in the management of nutrition issues in children with IBD.
Local Restoration With Multiple Spanning Trees in Metro Ethernet Networks

Ethernet is becoming a preferred technology to be extended to metropolitan area networks (MANs) due to its low cost, simplicity, and ubiquity. However, current Ethernet lacks a fast failure recovery mechanism as it reconstructs the spanning tree after the failure is detected, which commonly requires tens of seconds. Some fast failure-handling methods based on multiple spanning trees have been proposed in the literature, but these approaches are either centralized or require periodic message broadcasting over the entire network. In this paper, we propose a local restoration mechanism for metro Ethernet using multiple spanning trees, which is distributed and fast and does not need failure notification. Upon failure of a single link, the upstream switch locally restores traffic to preconfigured backup spanning trees. We propose two restoration approaches, connection-based and destination-based, to select backup trees. We formulate the tree preconfiguration problem that includes working spanning tree assignment and backup spanning tree configuration. We prove that the preconfiguration problem is NP-complete and develop an integer linear programming model. We also develop heuristic algorithms for each restoration approach to reduce the computation complexity. To evaluate the effectiveness of our heuristic algorithms, we carry out the simulation on grid and random networks. The simulation results show that our heuristic algorithms have comparable performance close to the optimal solutions, and both restoration approaches can efficiently utilize the network bandwidth to handle single link failures.
Does the Recent Growth of Aquaculture Create Antibiotic Resistance Threats Different from those Associated with Land Animal Production in Agriculture?

Important antibiotics in human medicine have been used for many decades in animal agriculture for growth promotion and disease treatment. Several publications have linked antibiotic resistance development and spread with animal production. Aquaculture, the newest and fastest growing food production sector, may promote similar or new resistance mechanisms. This review of 650+ papers from diverse sources examines parallels and differences between land-based agriculture of swine, beef, and poultry and aquaculture. Among three key findings was, first, that of 51 antibiotics commonly used in aquaculture and agriculture, 39 (or 76%) are also of importance in human medicine; furthermore, six classes of antibiotics commonly used in both agriculture and aquaculture are also included on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) list of critically important/highly important/important antimicrobials. Second, various zoonotic pathogens isolated from meat and seafood were observed to feature resistance to multiple antibiotics on the WHO list, irrespective of their origin in either agriculture or aquaculture. Third, the data show that resistant bacteria isolated from both aquaculture and agriculture share the same resistance mechanisms, indicating that aquaculture is contributing to the same resistance issues established by terrestrial agriculture. More transparency in data collection and reporting is needed so the risks and benefits of antibiotic usage can be adequately assessed.
dentification of QTLs for eight agronomi ally important traits using an ultr-hig-density map based on SNPs generated from high-throughput sequencing in sorghum under contrasting photoperiods

In mammals, cadmium is widely considered as a non-genotoxic carcinogen acting through a methylation-dependent epigenetic mechanism. Here, the effects of Cd treatment on the DNA methylation patten are examined together with its effect on chromatin reconfiguration in Posidonia oceanica. DNA methylation level and pattern were analysed in actively growing organs, under short(6 h) and long(2 d or 4 d) term and low (10 mM) and high (50 mM) doses of Cd, through a Methylation-Sensitive Amplification Polymorphism technique and an immunocytological approach, respectively. The expression of one member of the CHROMOMETHYLASE (CMT) family, a DNA methyltransferase, was also assessed by qRT-PCR. Nuclear chromatin ultrastructure was investigated by transmission electron microscopy. Cd treatment induced a DNA hypermethylation, as well as an up-regulation of CMT, indicating that de novo methylation did indeed occur. Moreover, a high dose of Cd led to a progressive heterochromatinization of interphase nuclei and apoptotic figures were also observed after long-term treatment. The data demonstrate that Cd perturbs the DNA methylation status through the involvement of a specific methyltransferase. Such changes are linked to nuclear chromatin reconfiguration likely to establish a new balance of expressed/repressed chromatin. Overall, the data show an epigenetic basis to the mechanism underlying Cd toxicity in plants.
Process integration of 3D chip stack with vertical interconnection

We succeeded in developing high-speed electrodeposition and high-rate CMP processes that greatly reduced the cost of Cu through-via fabrication used for three-dimensional (3D) chip stacking. Thin-wafer-handling processes were integrated with the development of wafer bonding and debonding equipment and processes. The investigation of thermal characteristics revealed the important structural guidelines for heat dissipation. Finally, the difficult challenges of 3D chip stacking, cost issues, wafer-handling issues and thermal issues, as well as fine pitch interconnection and electrical performance evaluation, have been established. Part of the achievements were applied to practical use in a commercial application.
Quantifying Controversy in Social Media

Which topics spark the most heated debates in social media? Identifying these topics is a first step towards creating systems which pierce echo chambers. In this paper, we perform a systematic methodological study of controversy detection using social media network structure and content. Unlike previous work, rather than identifying controversy in a single hand-picked topic and use domain-specific knowledge, we focus on comparing topics in any domain. Our approach to quantifying controversy is a graph-based three-stage pipeline, which involves (i) building a conversation graph about a topic, which represents alignment of opinion among users; (ii) partitioning the conversation graph to identify potential sides of the controversy; and (iii)measuring the amount of controversy from characteristics of the~graph. We perform an extensive comparison of controversy measures, as well as graph building approaches and data sources. We use both controversial and non-controversial topics on Twitter, as well as other external datasets. We find that our new random-walk-based measure outperforms existing ones in capturing the intuitive notion of controversy, and show that content features are vastly less helpful in this task.
Synergistic effects of 2A-mediated polyproteins on the production of lignocellulose degradation enzymes in tobacco plants

Cost-effective bioethanol production requires a supply of various low-cost enzymes that can hydrolyse lignocellulosic materials consisting of multiple polymers. Because plant-based enzyme expression systems offer low-cost and large-scale production, this study simultaneously expressed β-glucosidase (BglB), xylanase (XylII), exoglucanase (E3), and endoglucanase (Cel5A) in tobacco plants, which were individually fused with chloroplast-targeting transit peptides and linked via the 2A self-cleaving oligopeptideex from foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) as follows: [RsBglB-2A-RaCel5A], [RsXylII-2A-RaCel5A], and [RsE3-2A-RaCel5A]. The enzymes were targeted to chloroplasts in tobacco cells and their activities were confirmed. Similarly to the results of a transient assay using Arabidopsis thaliana protoplasts, when XylII was placed upstream of the 2A sequence, the [RsXylII-2A-RaCel5A] transgenic tobacco plant had a more positive influence on expression of the protein placed downstream. The [RsBglB-2A-RaCel5A] and [RsE3-2A-RaCel5A] transgenic lines displayed higher activities towards carboxylmethylcellulose (CMC) compared to those in the [RsXylII-2A-RaCel5A] transgenic line. This higher activity was attributable to the synergistic effects of the different cellulases used. The [RsBglB-2A-RaCel5A] lines exhibited greater efficiency (35–74% increase) of CMC hydrolysis when the exoglucanase CBHII was added. Among the various exoglucanases, E3 showed higher activity with the crude extract of the [RsBglB-2A-RaCel5A] transgenic line. Transgenic expression of 2A-mediated multiple enzymes induced synergistic effects and led to more efficient hydrolysis of lignocellulosic materials for bioethanol production.
Emotion recognition of affective speech based on multiple classifiers using acoustic-prosodic information and semantic labels (Extended abstract)

This work presents an approach to emotion recognition of affective speech based on multiple classifiers using acoustic-prosodic information (AP) and semantic labels (SLs). For AP-based recognition, acoustic and prosodic features are extracted from the detected emotional salient segments of the input speech. Three types of models GMMs, SVMs, and MLPs are adopted as the base-level classifiers. A Meta Decision Tree (MDT) is then employed for classifier fusion to obtain the AP-based emotion recognition confidence. For SL-based recognition, semantic labels are used to automatically extract Emotion Association Rules (EARs) from the recognized word sequence of the affective speech. The maximum entropy model (MaxEnt) is thereafter utilized to characterize the relationship between emotional states and EARs for emotion recognition. Finally, a weighted product fusion method is used to integrate the AP-based and SL-based recognition results for final emotion decision. For evaluation, 2,033 utterances for four emotional states were collected. The experimental results reveal that the emotion recognition performance for AP-based recognition using MDT achieved 80.00%. On the other hand, an average recognition accuracy of 80.92% was obtained for SL-based recognition. Finally, combining AP information and SLs achieved 83.55% accuracy for emotion recognition.
Automatic verification of finite-state concurrent systems using temporal logic specifications

We give an efficient procedure for verifying that a finite-state concurrent system meets a specification expressed in a (propositional, branching-time) temporal logic. Our algorithm has complexity linear in both the size of the specification and the size of the global state graph for the concurrent system. We also show how this approach can be adapted to handle fairness. We argue that our technique can provide a practical alternative to manual proof construction or use of a mechanical theorem prover for verifying many finite-state concurrent systems. Experimental results show that state machines with several hundred states can be checked in a matter of seconds.
Fifth workshop on exploiting semantic annotations in information retrieval: ESAIR''12)

There is an increasing amount of structure on the Web as a result of modern Web languages, user tagging and annotation, emerging robust NLP tools, and an ever growing volume of linked data. These meaningful, semantic, annotations hold the promise to significantly enhance information access, by enhancing the depth of analysis of today's systems. Currently, we have only started exploring the possibilities and only begin to understand how these valuable semantic cues can be put to fruitful use. To complicate matters, standard text search excels at shallow information needs expressed by short keyword queries, and here semantic annotation contributes very little, if anything. The main questions for the workshop are how to leverage the rich context currently available, especially in a mobile search scenario, giving powerful new handles to exploit semantic annotations. And how can we fruitfully combine information retrieval and semantic web approaches, and for the first time work actively toward a unified view on exploiting semantic annotations.