Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Convolutional Neural Network Architecture for Plant Seedling Classification

Weed control is a challenging problem that may face crops productivity. Weeds are perceived as an important problem because they conduce to reduce crop yields due to the expanding competition for nutrients, water, and sunlight besides they serve as hosts for diseases and pests. Thus, it is crucial to identify weeds in early growth in order to avoid their side effects on crops growth. Previous conventional machine learning technologies exploited for discriminating crops and weeding species faced challenges of effectiveness and reliability of weed detection at preliminary stages of growth. This work proposes the application of deep learning technique for plant seedling classification. A new Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) architecture is designed to classify plant seedlings at their early growth stages. The presented technique is appraised using plant seedlings dataset. Average accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score are utilized as evaluation metrics. The results reveal the capability of the proposed technique in discriminating among 12 species (3 crops and 9 weeds). The system achieved 94.38% average classification accuracy. The proposed system is compared with existing plant seedling systems. The results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the existing methods.
Evaluation of Pre-processing in Road Pavement Image Analysis

This paper addresses the problem of automatic detection and classification of road pavement surface cracks by the analysis of images acquired during road pavement surface surveys. In particular, pre-processing techniques and their combination are discussed and evaluated. Local statistics, as the mean and standard deviation of pixel intensities, computed for non-overlapping image regions, are considered. The various preprocessing techniques are combined in different orders, to evaluate their impact in adequately modelling the feature space and thus leading to the best distress detection results. A set of well-know metrics is used for the evaluation, to conclude about the best pre-processing order.
Factors Associated with Successful Hispanic Students in Higher Education

The Hispanic population in the United States already constitutes the fastest growing minority group in the United States and by the year 2050 this group will constitute 24% of the total population and one fourth of the national workforce. Because this is a very young population whose median age is 27.2 years old, the education of this group is pivotal to the future of this nation. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived importance of personal and external factors found in the literature as significant in Hispanic college success for a sample of 137 Hispanic college seniors from four public higher education institutions in Florida. This mixed method study used an instrument containing 13 demographic variables, 61 quantitative items, and 5 qualitative questions. The information gathered from the demographic items revealed a relevant data characterizing the participants as first, second, and third generation immigrants or Hispanic Americans with a diverse Hispanic background. They also belonged to middle and upper income households with at least one college educated parent. The results from the descriptive analysis ofthe quantitative data from the survey indicated the students in the study had a strong desire to succeed, perceived a strong parental support and a supportive campus environment, and had a strong academic preparation to attend college. All these factors were conoborated by the qualitative results. The recommendations for future studies and practices should include a greater understanding of the important role a supportive family and institution play in the academic success of Hispanic students. More research is recommended on the familystudent relationship and its effect on students. Reaching out to Hispanic parents and families and ensuring their participation in campus events, as well as increasing institutional support with the outreach and hiring of Hispanic faculty are two specific recommendations worthy of consideration in the effort to ensure greater success for Hispanic students. X
1 EVERGREENING IN THE EURO AREA : FACTS AND EXPLANATION 1

Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007/8, new lending in the Euro-Area has slowed sharply and the old loans experienced “evergreening,” i.e. bad loans have been rolled over rather than being liquidated. Even though ameliorating evergreening is key to promote lending for new investment projects and growth, no systematic evergreening measures exist. In this paper, we propose a new cross-country evergreening index and develop a model to explain why evergreening may reflect the incentives of regulators to forebear. Our evergreening index is based on a survey we designed, and was administered by the ifo institute to about 1,000 experts in over 80 countries. We bring the model to the data using a heteroscedastic probit model and find that evergreening is higher in: (i) Euro-Area countries than in the rest of the world; (ii) in countries facing bank distress; and (iii) is highest in countries which experience banking distress and are members of the Euro Area. These results are consistent with our theoretical model.
HOW BODIES TALK

Every speech sound results directly from body movement. However, theories of speech have not always been grounded in biologically plausible theories of how bodies move. High-dimensional models of the body may promise valuable insights into speech, but introduce problems of computational tractability. The present paper outlines some of the phonetic insights we have gained through adopting an embodied framework to enable low-dimensional control of high-dimensional body structures. This framework introduces implications for many aspects of speech sound production, from phonetic universals and the emergence of speech movements to coarticulation and sound change. A key contribution of this work is that it provides a coherent functional unit (the “device”) linking biomechanics, perception, production, processing and control of speech sounds. Implications for speech emergence, coarticulation and variation are discussed.
Supplementation of broiler breeders with fat sources and vitamin e : carry over effect on performance , carcass yield , and meat quality offspring

The aim of this study was to evaluate two sources of oil (soybean and fish) and four additional levels of vitamin E (0, 150, 250 and 350mg/kg diet) in breeder diets between the 42nd and 56th week of age and its effect on performance and meat quality of offspring. The supplementation of fish oil in the maternal diet increased the deposition of DHA and CLA in egg yolk. From 1 to 35 days of age, intermediate levels of vitamin E resulted in lower weight gain and feed intake. To feed conversion, the best result was obtained supplementing the maternal diet with soybean oil, regardless of vitamin inclusion. In addition, the evaluation of meat quality, the fish oil-supplemented-diet resulted in lower moisture loss of the breast fillets. For maternal diet supplemented with fish oil, the inclusion of vitamin E resulted in a linear increase of the pH value of the meat. Greater levels of vitamin E in the maternal diet influenced the functional properties of meat according to the type of oil that was added to the diet. The deposition of different fatty acids in the embryonic egg yolk can directly influence the meat quality of offspring.
Application Dynamic library OPUS Linux Security Module / NetFilter System call actions Audit serviceCamFlow hook CamFlow relay service camflowd auditd Audit

System level provenance is of widespread interest for applications such as security enforcement and information protection. However, testing the correctness or completeness of provenance capture tools is challenging and currently done manually. In some cases there is not even a clear consensus about what behavior is correct. We present an automated tool, ProvMark, that uses an existing provenance system as a black box and reliably identifies the provenance graph structure recorded for a given activity, by a reduction to subgraph isomorphism problems handled by an external solver. ProvMark is a beginning step in themuch needed area of testing and comparing the expressiveness of provenance systems. We demonstrate ProvMark’s usefuless in comparing three capture systems with different architectures and distinct design philosophies. CCS Concepts • Applied computing → System forensics; • Software and its engineering→ Operating systems; Software verification and validation; •Computingmethodologies→ Logic programming and answer set programming.
The Impact of Comorbid Depression in Adult African Americans with Diabetes : A Systematic Review

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM2), often referred to as adult onset diabetes, is a metabolic disorder that causes an increase of sugar in the blood stream (NIH, 2017). About 90% of those who are diagnosed with diabetes in the United States have type 2 diabetes (NIH 2017). The 2015 national diabetes statistics indicate that 30.3 million Americans have diabetes, which is an increase from 29 million in 2014 (CDC 2017) [1]. It is estimated that approximately 7.2 million people or one in four (23%) persons with diabetes has been clinically diagnosed (CDC, 2017) [1]. Prevalence for diagnosed diabetes is highest among minority populations, including American Indians/Alaska Natives (15.1%), nonHispanic blacks (12.7%), and Hispanics (12.1%), compared to only 7.4% of non-Hispanic Whites (CDC 2017; Williams, Lynch, Knapp, & Egede, 2014) [1,2]. One third of the mortality rate differences between African Americans and Whites are due to cardiovascular diseases and diabetes (Crowley et al., 2013) [3].
Feature Extraction ( c ) Adjacency Estimation ( d ) Optimization ( a ) Detection 3

Multi-sensor perception is crucial to ensure the reliability and accuracy in autonomous driving system, while multiobject tracking (MOT) improves that by tracing sequential movement of dynamic objects. Most current approaches for multi-sensor multi-object tracking are either lack of reliability by tightly relying on a single input source (e.g., center camera), or not accurate enough by fusing the results from multiple sensors in post processing without fully exploiting the inherent information. In this study, we design a generic sensor-agnostic multi-modality MOT framework (mmMOT), where each modality (i.e., sensors) is capable of performing its role independently to preserve reliability, and could further improving its accuracy through a novel multi-modality fusion module. Our mmMOT can be trained in an end-to-end manner, enables joint optimization for the base feature extractor of each modality and an adjacency estimator for cross modality. Our mmMOT also makes the first attempt to encode deep representation of point cloud in data association process in MOT. We conduct extensive experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed framework on the challenging KITTI benchmark and report state-of-the-art performance. Code and models are available at https://github.com/ZwwWayne/mmMOT.
Direct-Path Signal Cross-Correlation Estimation for Sound Source Localization in Reverberation

Sound source localization (SSL) is challenging in presence of reverberation since the cross-correlation between the direct-path signals in different microphones, which indicates the spatial information of the sound source, is interfered by the reverberation signal components. A novel algorithm is proposed in this paper to estimate the cross-correlation of the direct-path speech signals, such that the robustness of SSL to reverberation can be improved. The proposed method follows a similar scheme to the multichannel linear prediction (MCLP), which is commonly used for speech dereverberation, while avoids the explicit estimation of the direct-path signal of each channel. This is achieved by revealing the relationship between the direct-path signal crosscorrelation (DPCC) and the MCLP coefficient vector, and finally deriving the DPCC by using only the multichannel reverberant signals. It is also shown that the pre-whitening operation, which is widely used for SSL, can be inherently integrated into the estimated DPCC. An adaptive method is further derived to facilitate online frame-level SSL. The proposed method can be easily applied to conventional cross-correlation based SSL methods by using the DPCC rather than the full cross-correlation. Experiments conducted in various reverberant conditions demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Preparation and Characterizations of Poly ( vinylidene fluoride ) ( PVDF ) / Ba 0 . 6 Sr 0 . 4 TiO 3 ( BST ) Nanocomposites

Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) / Barium Strontium Titanate (BST) nanocomposites with BST filler contents of 0– 20 vol% have been fabricated by using solution casting method. The structural and dielectric properties of PVDF/BST nanocomposites have been investigated. The structural properties of PVDF/BST nanocomposites have been studied using X-ray diffraction. The XRD results showed that the BST nanopowder obtained by hydrothermal method with a perovskite structure and the α and γPVDF crystalline phases appeared at pure PVDF and nanocomposites samples. The crystallite size was calculated using Scherrer and WilliamsonHall (W-H) equations and it is observed that the crystallite size increase as the content of BST filler increases from 5 to 20 vol%. The frequency dependency of dielectric constant, dielectric losses and AC conductivity of the PVDF/BST naocomposites with different volume fractions of BST filler in frequency range 50Hz–1MHz at room temperature were studied. The dielectric constant of the PVDF/BST nanocomposites increases from 17.5 to 26.3 (at 100 kHz) with BST filler increasing from 0 vol% (pure PVDF) to 20 vol%. The dielectric losses and AC conductivity of the PVDF/BST nanocomposites increase with BST filler increasing at the same frequency. The dielectric properties of PVDF were improved by increasing BST filler.
Impact of Visual Field Loss on Health Related Quality of Life in Glaucoma Participants. The Los Angeles Latino Eye Study (LALES)

Purpose—To examine the association between health-related quality of life (HRQOL) and visual field (VF) loss in participants with open-angle glaucoma (OAG) in the Los Angeles Latino Eye Study (LALES). Design—Population-based cross-sectional study. Participants—Two hundred thirteen participants with OAG and 2821 participants without glaucoma or VF loss. Methods—Participants in the LALES—a population-based prevalence study of eye disease in Latinos 40 years and older, residing in Los Angeles, California—underwent a detailed eye examination including an assessment of their VF using the Humphrey Automated Field Analyzer (Swedish interactive thresholding algorithm Standard 24-2). Open-angle glaucoma was determined by clinical examination. Mean deviation scores were used to assess severity of VF loss. Health-related QOL was assessed by the Medical Outcomes Study 12-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12) and 25-item National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire (NEIVFQ-25). Linear regression and analysis of covariance were used to assess the relationship between HRQOL scores and VF loss after adjusting for sociodemographic variables and visual acuity. Main Outcome Measures—The 25-item NEI-VFQ and SF-12 scores. Results—A trend of worse NEI-VFQ-25 scores for most subscales was observed with worse VF loss (using both monocular and calculated binocular data). Open-angle glaucoma participants with Correspondence and reprint requests to Rohit Varma, MD, MPH, Doheny Eye Institute, Department of Ophthalmology, 1450 San Pablo Street, Room 4900, Los Angeles, CA 90033. rvarma@usc.edu. *For Study Group members, see “Appendix” (available at http://aaojournal.org). No conflicting relationship exists for any author. HHS Public Access Author manuscript Ophthalmology. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2016 May 12. Published in final edited form as: Ophthalmology. 2008 June ; 115(6): 941–948.e1. doi:10.1016/j.ophtha. 2007.08. 037. A uhor M anscript
Increased Ratio of Matrix Metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9)/Tissue Inhibitor Metalloproteinase-1 from Alveolar Macrophages in Chronic Asthma with a Fast Decline in FEV1 at 5-Year Follow-up

Chronic asthma is associated with progressive airway remodeling, which may contribute to declining lung function. An increase in matrix metalloproteinases-9 (MMP-9)/tissue inhibitor metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) may indicate airway inflammation and bronchial injury. Bronchial biopsy specimens and alveolar macrophages (AMs) were obtained from patients with asthma under regular treatment with inhaled corticosteroids or combination therapy and normal subjects (n = 10). Asthmatics included those with a slow forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) decline (<30 mL/year, n = 13) and those with a fast FEV1 decline (≥30 mL/year, n = 8) in 5-year follow-up. Immunostaining expression of MMP-9 and TIMP-1 was detected in airway tissues. MMP-9 and TIMP-1 was measured from AMs cultured for 24 h. After the 5-year treatment, the methacholine airway hyperresponsiveness of the slow FEV1 decline group was decreased, but that of the fast FEV1 decline group was increased (PC20, provocative concentration causing a 20% decrease in FEV1, 3.12 ± 1.10 to 1.14 ± 0.34 mg/dL, p < 0.05). AMs of asthma with a fast FEV1 decline released a higher level of MMP-9 (8.52 ± 3.53 pg/mL, p < 0.05) than those of a slow FEV1 decline (0.99 ± 0.20 pg/mL). The MMP-9/TIMP ratio in the fast FEV1 decline group (0.089 ± 0.032) was higher than that of the slow FEV1 decline group (0.007 ± 0.001, p < 0.01). The annual FEV1 decline in 5 years was proportional to the level of MMP-9 (r = 57, p < 0.01) and MMP-9/TIMP-1 ratio (r = 0.58, p < 0.01). The airways of asthma with greater yearly decline in FEV1 showed an increased thickness of submucosa and strong expression of MMP-9. An increase in MMP-9 and MMP-9/TIMP-1 in airways or AMs could be indicators of chronic airway inflammation and contribute to a greater decline in lung function of patients with chronic asthma.
Title Polymorphic microsatellites in the human bloodfluke , Schistosoma japonicum , identified using a genomic resource Permalink

Re-emergence of schistosomiasis in regions of China where control programs have ceased requires development of molecular-genetic tools to track gene flow and assess genetic diversity of Schistosoma populations. We identified many microsatellite loci in the draft genome of Schistosoma japonicum using defined search criteria and selected a subset for further analysis. From an initial panel of 50 loci, 20 new microsatellites were selected for eventual optimization and application to a panel of worms from endemic areas. All but one of the selected microsatellites contain simple tri-nucleotide repeats. Moderate to high levels of polymorphism were detected. Numbers of alleles ranged from 6 to 14 and observed heterozygosity was always >0.6. The loci reported here will facilitate high resolution population-genetic studies on schistosomes in re-emergent foci.
An algebraic study of Lukasiewicz logic with hedges

In pragmatics, hedges are linguistic terms used to alter the impact of an utterance (see e.g. [7]). For an updated account of their study in the setting of fuzzy logic we refer the reader to [6], we shortly recall here some salient facts, for sake of completeness. The study of hedges in fuzzy logic can be dated back to Lakoff [11], although they were initially investigated with respect to their ability to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy [12]. The term hedge in fuzzy logic is currently defined [1] as “a particle, word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or a noun phrase in a set”. Typical examples are adjectives as in:
Le poids du cancer colorectal en France en 2005 : estimation de sa prévalence et du nombre de patients nécessitant des soins

Introduction L’objectif de ce travail était d’estimer, à côté des prévalences totale et partielle du cancer colorectal (CCR), la prévalence des patients nécessitant un suivi ou un traitement pour récidive. Méthodes Les données du Registre bourguignon des cancers digestifs (1976-2005) sur l’incidence, la survie, les récidives de CCR ont été utilisées. La guérison statistique a été définie comme le moment où le surrisque de décès lié au CCR disparaissait. Les taux de prévalence par tranche d’âge, appliqués à la population française, ont permis d’estimer le nombre national de cas prévalents. Résultats Les taux de prévalence totale étaient 244,9 pour 100 000 pour les hommes et 152,6 pour les femmes. Le nombre estimé de personnes atteintes d’un CCR en vie le 31 décembre 2005 était de 262 244 cas pour la France entière. Au cours des 30 dernières années, la prévalence partielle à 5 ans a augmenté de 8,0% [6,7-9,4] par période de 5 ans. L’incidence a augmenté de 1,2% [0,3-2,2] et les taux de survie relative de 15% par période de 5 ans. Parmi l’ensemble des décès en excès dus au CCR, 15,3% avaient lieu entre 5 ans de suivi et le délai de guérison statistique, estimé à 9,3 ans [8,3-10,4]. Ces résultats permettent d’estimer à 188 314 le nombre de patients nécessitant un suivi sur le plan national en 2005. Parmi eux, 5,4% étaient traités pour récidive. Conclusion L’amélioration de la survie explique en grande partie l’augmentation de la prévalence partielle à 5 ans des cancers colorectaux. Ces résultats suggèrent qu’un suivi clinique est nécessaire dans les 10 ans qui suivent le diagnostic. La prévalence des patients nécessitant un suivi ou un traitement pour reprise évolutive est d’un grand intérêt pour la mesure du poids du cancer colorectal. Burden of colorectal cancer in France in 2005: estimation of its prevalence and number of patients requiring care
Gene Mutations Associated with Hypercoagulopathy and Atherosclerosis in Young Adult Patients Presenting with Acute Coronary Syndromes

Objective: Acute coronary syndromes are usually the disease of people over 45 years old; however, a number of younger patients are also diagnosed with acute coronary syndrome. In this study, it was aimed to elucidate the relationship between genetic hypercoagulable and atherosclerotic states and acute coronary syndromes in the young adults. Material and Methods: Between January 2008 and June 2010, 68 young adult patients with acute coronary syndrome (62 men, mean age: 36.8±6.4) and 69 healthy individuals (56 men, mean age: 35.1±5.9) were recruited in this cross-sectional study. The diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome was based on the criteria of the European Society of Cardiology/American College of Cardiology Foundation/American Heart Association/Word Heart Federation Task Force the definition of MI definition. Blood samples were obtained during the first hour after admission to the Coronary Care Unit. Plasma samples were stored at -80°C until used. Polymerase chain reaction was used for the genotype analysis. Results: Statistically significant difference was found between groups for factor V Leiden and methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase gene mutation (for both mutation p:0.006); whereas there was no statistically significant difference for prothrombin gene mutation, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 4G/5G polymorphism and angiotensin converting enzyme I/D polymorphism (p:0.551, p:0.291 and p:0.469, respectively). The study group had significantly higher homocysteine levels than control group (14.45±5.50 μmol/L versus 11.17±3.79 μmol/L, p<0.001). Conclusion: Factor V Leiden and methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase gene mutations might play a part in the pathophysiology of acute coronary syndromes in the young adult patients. Also, it was found that Turkey looks like a factor V Leiden mutation region as opposite to known current literature in this study.