Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CANDIDE-3 - An Updated Parameterised Face

During the last decade, C ANDIDE has been a popular face model in many research labs around the world. One reason has been that it is a very simple model, another that it is publically available. There are, however, drawbacks with the model, mostly due to its simplicity. Also, the emergence of the MPEG -4 standard for face animation has actual-ized the need of an update, making the model compatible with the facial animation and definition parameters ( FAP s and FDP s) defined in MPEG -4. This report documents an updated version of C ANDIDE , fulfilling the demands set by MPEG -4 and being somewhat less crude. The relation between the C ANDIDE entities (vertices, Action Units) and the MPEG -4 parameters are available in tables in the appen-dices.
The β subunit of soluble guanylyl cyclase GUCY1B3 exerts cardioprotective effects against ischemic injury via the PKCε/Akt pathway

The soluble form of guanylyl cyclase (sGC) is the main receptor for the signaling agent nitric oxide (NO), which regulates cardiomyocyte contractile function and attenuates cardiomyocyte hypertrophy. sGC catalyzes the formation of cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), a regulator of vascular tone, and cardiac NO‐sGC‐cGMP signaling modulates cardiac stress responses, including ischemia and reperfusion (IR) injury. Here, we investigated the role of GUCY1B3 (the β subunit of sGC) in cardiomyocyte IR injury and myocardial infarction (MI) in vitro and in vivo. GUCY1B3 was upregulated in neonatal rat ventricular myocytes in response to IR injury, and GUCY1B3 overexpression restored IR‐induced cell death and apoptosis. Treatment with specific inhibitors of PKCδ, PKCε, and Akt suggested that the protective effects of GUCY1B3 were mediated by PKCε/Akt signaling. In a mouse model of coronary artery ligation‐induced MI, GUCY1B3 silencing aggravated MI‐induced cardiac dysfunction and increased infarct size and exacerbated cardiomyocyte apoptosis in association with the inactivation of PKCε and Akt. Our results suggest that GUCY1B3 exerts cardioprotective effects through the modulation of the PKCε/Akt activity and identify a potential mechanism involved in NO‐sGC‐cGMP signaling in the heart.
An asymmetric collaborative system for architectural-scale space design

We present a system that facilitates asymmetric collaboration among users with two different viewpoints in the design of living or working spaces. One viewpoint is that of the space designers, who observe and alter the space from a top-down view using a large table-top interface. The other viewpoint is that of a space occupant, who observes the space through internal views using a head-mounted display. We conducted two studies to understand how our system support users in architectural-scale space design. One is about preliminary user study to observe general behavior to Dollhouse VR system, and the other one is a case study that users are actual employees of restaurant and discuss rearrangement of floor by moving tables and chairs in virtual environment. Results showed that the system supports a pair of interaction techniques that could facilitate communication between these two user viewpoints.
Factors Associated with Breast Cancer Screening among Korean American Women in California: Results from the California Health Interview Survey 2015–2016

Background: Few studies have examined preventive lifestyle behaviors and breast cancer (BC) screening behaviors simultaneously to determine whether BC screening behaviors are associated with preventive lifestyle behaviors. The purposes of this study are to (a) describe BC screening utilization and preventive lifestyle behaviors and (b) examine factors associated with BC utilization among Korean American (KA) women. Methods: Data from the 2015–2016 California Health Interview Survey were analyzed. Survey-weighted adjusted logistic regressions were used to determine whether preventive lifestyle behaviors and characteristics of KA women 50 years of age and older at the time of the survey were associated with obtaining mammograms. Results: Most participants were born outside of the US and had lived in the US for 15 years or more at the time of the survey. This study found that KA women who were 50–64 years old had 38 times greater odds of having ever had a mammogram and a 13 times greater odds of having a recent mammogram than those 65 and older. KA women who walked at least 10 minutes per week for transportation and leisure purposed were 61 times more likely to have ever had a mammogram than those who did not walk. Conclusion: This study provides important perspectives on associations of BC screening behaviors and preventive life-style behaviors, especially walking. Future research should be conducted to better understand the association between BC screening and preventive life-style behaviors and to develop feasible interventions to improve BC screening behaviors among KA women, particularly elderly and physically inactive ones.
Bringing Best Practices from Web Development Into the Vehicle

Building embedded systems is nothing like building desktop applications, as the hard real time requirements and relative harshness of the operating environment further constrains design choices to meet real world needs. Those familiar with mainframe or server farm hosted, high volume, wide bandwidth applications know similar harsh computing environments for application development. Given that more man-hours have been devoted to web application development over the past decade than have been devoted to embedded application development, there may be some valuable lessons to be learned that can be adopted by the embedded community for in-vehicle computing. The best web application development teams successfully apply the notions of Representational State Transformation (REST) and Resource Description Framework (RDF) to handle the increasing demands on their sites. We have taken these technologies and applied them to the smaller scale vehicle telematics platforms (PowerPC, ARM, and Atom) to test their viability. This paper describes how we approached the design decisions that enabled us to successfully wrap a commercial J1939 CAN bus with a miniature web server that provides a REST API for applications to interact with an engine control unit. The architecture has been successfully deployed for custom mining and construction equipment.
ANALISIS TINDAK TUTUR DI SERIAL TV: “GLEE” MUSIM KE-2

Speech acts can be studied in any media, including TV series. Speech acts have several types. They are locutionary, illocutionary and also perlocutionary acts. Locutionary act means the exact meaning of the peformed utterance. On the other hand, locutionary act can be part of illocutionary act if it forces the hearer to understand the hidden meaning or intention of the speaker. Perlocutionary act is the effect of the illocutionary act occured. However, Searle (1969) adds one more act that he argues is also important. That is a propositional act. It is an act of referring and predicating. For academic purposes, the writer is intrigued to study speech acts phenomena through TV series. This study has three problems to solve namely, 1) What are propositional acts found in the utterances of the selected episodes of Glee season 2? 2)What are illocutionary acts found in the utterances of the selected episodes of Glee season 2? 3)What are perlocutionary acts found in the utterances of the selected episodes of Glee season 2? The writer uses a qualitative research method in terms of content analysis. The content analysis is applied to analyze utterances that consist of speech acts (propositional, illocutionary, and perlocutionary) produced by Glee cast,specifically four main characters. The utterances are provided in the transcription of Glee’s four selected episodes. The writer finds 198 propositional acts out of 207 utterances. Not all utterances are propositional acts, because there are 9 predicating acts that stand alone. On the other hand, in illocutionary acts, representatives category stand out the most with 82 utterances. The least frequently used category in illocutionary acts is commissives. The writer only finds 23 types of commissives. The perlocutionary acts appears in most of utterances. Only 6 utterances do not consist of perlocutionary acts. The writer also recommends the future researchers to find other types of illocutionary acts that the writer can not find. Kata Kunci: tindak tutur, tindak lokusi, tindak proposisional, tindak ilokusi, tindak perlokusi, glee musim ke-2.
Media-aware and Quality-guaranteed Rate Adaptation Algorithm for Scalable Video Streaming

We propose a quality guaranteed scalable video streaming service over the Internet using a new rate adaptation algorithm. Because video data requires much more bandwidth rather than other types of service, therefore, quality of video streaming service should be guaranteed while providing friendliness with other service flows over the Internet. To successfully provide this, we propose a framework for providing quality-guaranteed streaming service using two-channel transport layer and rate adaptation of scalable video stream. In this framework, baseline layer for scalable video is transmitted using TCP transport for minimum qualify service. Enhancement layers are delivered using TFRC transport with layer adaptation algorithm. The proposed framework jointly uses the status of playout buffer in the client and the encoding rate of layers in media contents. Therefore, the proposed algorithm can remarkably guarantee minimum quality of streaming service rather than conventional approaches regardless of network congestion and the encoding rate variation of media content.
Design of an Intelligent Network for Classification of Data for Recruitment Using Neuro-Fuzzy Network

Student recruiting is one of the biggest issues in the industries and institutions that have direct impact on budget planning and education management. So selection of the right candidate for a particular organization is a typical task for HR manager. It consumes lot of time, efforts and investment for an organization. Initially the organization goes for the resume filtering or selection process for selecting the right candidate from many resumes. Candidates are filtered on some criteria. The main objective of this research is resume filtering or selecting candidate using (NeuroFuzzy) or Proposed method. The objective has been achieved by data collection from the engineering institute to support the research. The Data mining clustering [11][4] and classification techniques[3] such as fuzzy c-mean, artificial back propagation neural network(BPNN) and proposed method (Neuro-Fuzzy) have been applied to discover unknown knowledge. In experiment phase, we used selected classifier algorithm in order to propose the suitable classifier from student dataset. From comparative study it has been observed that proposed method (Neuro-Fuzzy) performs 4-5% better results than fuzzy c-mean and artificial neural network (BPNN) [6][10]. Index terms – Data mining, Fuzzy C-mean, Artificial Neural network, Clustering, Classifiers, BPNN
Implementation science: Epidemiology and feeding profiles of the Chagas vector Triatoma dimidiata prior to Ecohealth intervention for three locations in Central America

The Ecohealth strategy is a multidisciplinary data-driven approach used to improve the quality of people’s lives in Chagas disease endemic areas, such as regions of Central America. Chagas is a vector-borne disease caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. In Central America, the main vector is Triatoma dimidiata. Because successful implementation of the Ecohealth approach reduced home infestation in Jutiapa department, Guatemala, it was scaled-up to three localities, one in each of three Central American countries (Texistepeque, El Salvador; San Marcos de la Sierra, Honduras and Olopa, Guatemala). As a basis for the house improvement phase of the Ecohealth program, we determined if the localities differ in the role of sylvatic, synanthropic and domestic animals in the Chagas transmission cycle by measuring entomological indices, blood meal sources and parasite infection from vectors collected in and around houses. The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) with taxa specific primers to detect both, blood sources and parasite infection, was used to assess 71 T. dimidiata from Texistepeque, 84 from San Marcos de la Sierra and 568 from Olopa. Our results show that infestation (12.98%) and colonization (8.95%) indices were highest in Olopa; whereas T. cruzi prevalence was higher in Texistepeque and San Marcos de la Sierra (>40%) than Olopa (8%). The blood meal source profiles showed that in Olopa, opossum might be important in linking the sylvatic and domestic Chagas transmission cycle, whereas in San Marcos de la Sierra dogs play a major role in maintaining domestic transmission. For Texistepeque, bird was the major blood meal source followed by human. When examining the different life stages, we found that in Olopa, the proportion bugs infected with T. cruzi is higher in adults than nymphs. These findings highlight the importance of location-based recommendations for decreasing human-vector contact in the control of Chagas disease.
Effective Biodegradation of Aflatoxin B1 Using the Bacillus licheniformis (BL010) Strain

Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), a pollutant of agricultural products, has attracted considerable attention in recent years, due to its potential impact on health. In the present study, Bacillus licheniformis (BL010) was demonstrated to efficiently degrade AFB1, reducing over 89.1% of the toxin content within 120 h. A crude enzyme solution of BL010 exhibited the highest degradation level (97.3%) after three induction periods. However, uninduced BL010 bacteria was not capable of reducing AFB1. Furthermore, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis showed that while a cell-free extract caused a significant decrease in AFB1 content (93.6%, p < 0.05), cell culture fluid treatment did not significantly degrade AFB1. The biotransformation products of AFB1 were detected and further identified by quadrupole time-of-flight liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF/MS); these corresponded to a molecular formula of C12H14O4. A sequence analysis of whole BL010 genes with a bioinformatics approach identified the secondary structures of two degrading enzymes (Chia010 and Lac010), providing an important basis for subsequent homology modeling and functional predictions.
Physicians' career building and their shortage in some specialities

Physicians have built their careers based on a network composed of a division of schools of medicine to which physicians belong (called Ikyoku in Japanese) and sitz hospitals which are closely tied to the Ikyoku in the supply of physicians. They enhance their treatment skills by gathering work experience in many hospitals and moving from one to another nearly every five years. The network benefits both the Ikyoku and the sitz hospitals. However, the network has come to play a smaller role for physicians’ career building since the postgraduate clinical training system was introduced in 2004, because more than half of the graduates take courses provided by non-university hospitals rather than university hospitals. This new training system has nothing to do with the shortage of physicians or their misallocation among specialties or workplaces. Decline of physicians’ wages and low rates of return of being a physician means no shortage of physicians. The misallocation is partly caused by preferences for female physicians in some specialties and clinics.
A Literature Analysis of Themes in Paediatric Cochlear Implant Research

Research on children with cochlear implants (CI) has documented positive outcomes, but also that many still experience language delays. The aim of this article is to explore how research on children with cochlear implants cover topics of early language development compared to research on children with typical hearing and children with hearing impairment without CI. Published research in the period 1990-2013 on language development was analysed with respect to frequency of selected search terms reflecting different language acquisition themes among children with typical hearing, children with hearing impairment without CI, and children with CI, respectively. Results showed a relatively lower number of articles which included themes such as pre-verbal language (imitation, joint attention and gestures), extra lingual abilities (social interaction), and later language skills (semantic, syntactic, grammar and pragmatic) in research on children with cochlear implants compared to research in children with typical hearing. A need for more research with focus on pre-lingual themes in language acquisition is discussed.
Global-to-local generative model for 3D shapes

We introduce a generative model for 3D man-made shapes. The presented method takes a global-to-local (G2L) approach. An adversarial network (GAN) is built first to construct the overall structure of the shape, segmented and labeled into parts. A novel conditional auto-encoder (AE) is then augmented to act as a part-level refiner. The GAN, associated with additional local discriminators and quality losses, synthesizes a voxel-based model, and assigns the voxels with part labels that are represented in separate channels. The AE is trained to amend the initial synthesis of the parts, yielding more plausible part geometries. We also introduce new means to measure and evaluate the performance of an adversarial generative model. We demonstrate that our global-to-local generative model produces significantly better results than a plain three-dimensional GAN, in terms of both their shape variety and the distribution with respect to the training data.
Dynamic testing and diagnostics of A/D converters

A method is derived to measure the integral and differential nonlinearity of an ADC using a sinewave with unknown amplitude and offset. The uncertainty of the measurement is also estimated. In a second phase, the integral nonlinearity is analyzed, using Walsh Transforms, to identify the nonlinearity at the bit level of the ADC.
Data Aggregation Scheduling in Wireless Networks

Data aggregation is one of the most essential data gathering operations in wireless networks. It is an efficient strategy to alleviate energy consumption and reduce medium access contention. In this dissertation, the data aggregation scheduling problem in different wireless networks is investigated. Since Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are one of the most important types of wireless networks and data aggregation plays a vital role in WSNs, the minimum latency data aggregation scheduling problem for multi-regional queries in WSNs is first studied. A scheduling algorithm is proposed with comprehensive theoretical and simulation analysis regarding time efficiency. Second, with the increasing popularity of Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), data aggregation scheduling in CRNs is studied. Considering the precious spectrum opportunity in CRNs, a routing hierarchy, which allows a secondary user to seek a transmission opportunity among a group of receivers, is introduced. Several scheduling algorithms are proposed for both the Unit Disk Graph (UDG) interference model and the Physical Interference Model (PhIM), followed by performance evaluation through simulations. Third, the data aggregation scheduling problem in wireless networks with cognitive radio capability is investigated. Under the defined network model, besides a default working spectrum, users can access extra available spectrum through a cognitive radio. The problem is formalized as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem and solved through an optimization method in the beginning. The simulation results show that the ILP based method has a good performance. Although, it is difficult to evaluate the solution theoretically. A heuristic scheduling algorithm with guaranteed latency bound is presented in our further investigation. Finally, we investigate how to make use of cognitive radio capability to accelerate data aggregation in probabilistic wireless networks with lossy links. Lossy links introduce retransmissions that occurs more energy consumption and transmission delay. A two-phase scheduling algorithm is proposed, and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified through both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. INDEX WORDS: Data aggregation, Scheduling, Connected dominate set, Delay analysis, Wireless sensor network, Cognitive radio network, Probabilistic wireless networks DATA AGGREGATION SCHEDULING IN WIRELESS NETWORKS
Cyclobenzaprine hydrochloride effect on skeletal muscle spasm in the lumbar region and neck: two double-blind controlled clinical and laboratory studies.

: A new drug, Cyclobenzaprine hydrochloride (Flexeril), was compared with diazepam (Valium) and placebo in double-blind trials for efficacy in treating spasms and pain in the neck and low back. Complex recording methods involving clinical evaluations (graded), patient self-ratings, goniometry, motion analysis by computer, electromyography of controlled motions and detailed statistical analysis were used. Clinical improvement over two weeks was statistically significant in all treatment groups with a statistically significant preference for Cyclobenzaprine hydrochloride. The most striking improvements recorded were in the electromyographic findings, which showed statistically significant changes for the Cyclobenzaprine group. Clinical muscle spasms are not accompanied by increased myoelectric activity; the reverse is true. With improvement, myoelectric activity in back muscles is augmented during prescribed stressful movements as measured by electromyography and computer analysis combined with complex electrogoniometry.
Behavioural mechanisms of sexual isolation involving multiple modalities and their inheritance

Speciation research dissects the genetics and evolution of reproductive barriers between parental species. Hybrids are the “gatekeepers” of gene flow, so it is also important to understand the behavioural mechanisms and genetics of any potential isolation from their parental species. We tested the role of multiple behavioural barriers in reproductive isolation among closely related field crickets and their hybrids (Teleogryllus oceanicus and Teleogryllus commodus). These species hybridize in the laboratory, but the behaviour of hybrids is unusual and there is little evidence for gene flow in the wild. We found that heterospecific pairs exhibited reduced rates of courtship behaviour due to discrimination by both sexes, and that this behavioural isolation was symmetrical. However, hybrids were not sexually selected against and exhibited high rates of courtship behaviour even though hybrid females are sterile. Using reciprocal hybrid crosses, we characterized patterns of interspecific divergence and inheritance in key sexual traits that might underlie the mating patterns we found: calling song, courtship song and cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs). Song traits exhibited both sex linkage and transgressive segregation, whereas CHCs exhibited only the latter. Calculations of the strength of isolation exerted by these sexual traits suggest that close‐range signals are as important as long‐distance signals in contributing to interspecific sexual isolation. The surprisingly weak mating barriers observed between hybrids and parental species highlight the need to examine reproductive isolating mechanisms and their genetic bases across different potential stages of introgressive hybridization.