Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Real-time Factored ConvNets: Extracting the X Factor in Human Parsing

© 2017. The copyright of this document resides with its authors. We propose a real-time and lightweight multi-task style ConvNet (termed a Factored ConvNet) for human body parsing in images or video. Factored ConvNets have isolated areas which perform known sub-tasks, such as object localization or edge detection. We call this area and sub-task pair an X factor. Unlike multi-task ConvNets which have independent tasks, the Factored ConvNet’s sub-task has direct effect on the main task outcome. In this paper we show how to isolate the X factor of foreground/background (f/b) subtraction from the main task of segmenting human body images into 31 different body part types. Knowledge of this X factor leads to a number of benefits for the Factored ConvNet: 1) Ease of network transfer to other image domains, 2) ability to personalize to humans in video and 3) easy model performance boosts. All achieved by either efficient network update or replacement of the X factor whilst avoiding catastrophic forgetting of previously learnt body part dependencies and structure. We show these benefits on a large dataset of images and also on YouTube videos.
Strong Chromatic Index of 2‐Degenerate Graphs

We prove that the strong chromatic index of a 2‐degenerate graph is linear in the maximum degree Δ. This includes the class of all chordless graphs (graphs in which every cycle is induced) which in turn includes graphs where the cycle lengths are multiples of four, and settles a problem by Faudree et al. (Ars Combin 29(B) (1990), 205–211). © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Graph Theory 73: 119–126, 2013
Protection of parallel passive filters against lightning surges

Without protection, over voltages of lightning cause to damage electrical equipments. Many lightning discharges occur in distribution lines therefore protection of parallel passive filter (PPF) used to decrease harmonic currents is necessary. This paper analyzes the behavior of the parallel passive filter used to filter harmonic currents, during travelling waves and presents a method to protect the power passive filter against lightning surges in harmonic conditions. Finally a simulation is carried out to verify the calculations.
Requirement of the Proteasome for the Trimming of Signal Peptide-derived Epitopes Presented by the Nonclassical Major Histocompatibility Complex Class I Molecule HLA-E*

The nonclassical major histocompatibility complex class I molecule HLA-E acts as a ligand for CD94/NKG2 receptors on the surface of natural killer cells and a subset of T cells. HLA-E presents closely related nonameric peptide epitopes derived from the highly conserved signal sequences of classical major histocompatibility complex class I molecules as well as HLA-G. Their generation requires cleavage of the signal sequence by signal peptidase followed by the intramembrane-cleaving aspartic protease, signal peptide peptidase. In this study, we have assessed the subsequent proteolytic requirements leading to generation of the nonameric HLA-E peptide epitopes. We show that proteasome activity is required for further processing of the peptide generated by signal peptide peptidase. This constitutes the first example of capture of a naturally derived short peptide by the proteasome, producing a class I peptide ligand.
Fetal motion estimation from noninvasive cardiac signal recordings

Fetal motility is a widely accepted indicator of the well-being of a fetus. In previous research, it has be shown that fetal motion (FM) is coherent with fetal heart rate accelerations and an indicator for active/rest cycles of the fetus. The most common approach for FM and fetal heart rate (FHR) assessment is by Doppler ultrasound (DUS). While DUS is the most common approach for studying the mechanical activities of the heart, noninvasive fetal electrocardiogram (ECG) and magnetocardiogram (MCG) recording and processing techniques have been considered as a possible competitor (or complement) for the DUS. In this study, a fully automatic and robust framework is proposed for the extraction, ranking and alignment of fetal QRS-complexes from noninvasive fetal ECG/MCG. Using notions from subspace tracking, two measures, namely the actogram and rotatogram, are defined for fetal motion tracking. The method is applied to four fetal ECG/MCG databases, including twin MCG recordings. By defining a novel measure of causality, it is shown that there is significant coherency and causal relationship between the actogram/rotatogram and FHR accelerations/decelerations. Using this measure, it is shown that in many cases, the actogram and rotatogram precede the FHR variations, which supports the idea of motion-induced FHR accelerations/decelerations for these cases and raises attention for the non-motion-induced FHR variations, which can be associated to the fetal central nervous system developments. The results of this study can lead to novel perspectives of the fetal sympathetic and parasympathetic brain systems and future requirements of fetal cardiac monitoring.
Clinical applications of recombinant virus-based cancer immunotherapy

Cancer immunotherapy looks back over one century of clinical applications. In spite of major advances in the comprehension of oncogenesis and treatment of cancer, malignant tumours remain a leading cause of disability and death worldwide. Since 1991, a breakthrough in immunology allowed the identification of tumour-associated antigens, opening the era of specific immunotherapy. On the other hand, recombinant virus are powerful vectors that are able to express various gene products in vivo, including cytokines and tumour antigens. Therefore, many groups have implemented clinical trials of active specific tumour immunotherapy. Phase I trials have demonstrated favourable safety profiles. However, major tumour responses remain anecdotal in heavily metastatic patients. This review will critically present and discuss the clinical achievements of recombinant virus-based cancer immunotherapy. This paper will attempt to shed some light on the perspectives opened by advanced cancer immunotherapy protocols, review the drawbacks of this approach and the reasons why it is believed that recombinant virus-based cancer immunotherapy may be of relevance in the treatment of human malignancies.
Enhanced dissolution rate of simvastatin using spherical crystallization technique

Simvastatin is a hypocholestrolemic drug that is insoluble in water. Its low water solubility rate limits the pharmacological effects. The aim of this study was to improve the dissolution rate of simvastatin using spherical crystallization method. The drug was dissolved in boiling dichloromethane as the good solvent. This solution was added to 5°C water as the non-solvent. After sedimentation, isopropyl acetate was added as the bridging solvent. At the end the crystals were collected and dried for 12 h in a 50°C oven. The FTIR and DSC results showed no change in the drug after crystallization process. XRPD studies showed the sharp peaks are present in the diffractograms of spherical crystals with minor reduction in height of the peaks. The particle size of spherical aggregates was about 37 μm and the dissolution efficiency of simvastatin up to 60 min increased to about 2-fold in phosphate buffer solution containing 0.5% sodium dodecyl sulfate (pH 7) using the rotating paddle method. Spherical crystals showed enhanced solubility than untreated powder possibly due to partial conversion to amorphous form. Their dissolution rate at 60 min was still 4-fold of untreated powder when stored at 25°C and 84% relative humidity for one month.
Benzodiazepin-Abhängigkeit: Ursachen und Behandlungsmöglichkeiten

Benzodiazepines are very often prescribed because of their anxiolytic, sedative and hypnotic properties. However, long term treatment is associated with development of benzodiazepine dependence. Besides development of physical dependence, which is linked to a typical benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome when drug intake is discontinued, also behavioural addiction to benzodiazepines has been described. Benzodiazepines are known to enhance GABAergic neurotransmission. Counter regulation of enhanced GABAergic neurotransmission by enhancement of glutamatergic neurotransmission is thought to be one reason underlying the typical symptoms of benzodiazepine withdrawal. Also alterations in the expression of neuropeptides like Corticotropin Releasing Hormone and Neuropeptide Y are thought to be involved in the development of benzodiazepine dependence. However, until today the knowledge of neural mechanisms underlying the development of benzodiazepine dependence remains incomplete. Because even long term treatment with small doses of benzodiazepines is associated with adverse reactions like cognitive dysfunctions withdrawal from benzodiazepines should be aimed. Anticonvulsants and antidepressants seem to reduce the intensity of benzodiazepine withdrawal and to enhance long term prognosis of dependence.
An Extensive Comparison of Metrics for Automatic Extraction of Key Terms

In this paper we compare twenty language independent statistical-based metrics for key term extraction from any document collection. While some of those metrics are widely used, others were recently created. Two different document representations are considered in our experiments. One is based on words and multi-words and the other is based on word prefixes of fixed length (5 characters for the experiments made) for handling morphologically rich languages, namely Portuguese and Czech. English is also experimented, as a non-morphologically rich language. Results are manually evaluated and agreement between evaluators is assessed using k-Statistics. The metrics based on Tf-Idf and Phi-square proved to have higher precision and recall. The use of prefix-based representation of documents enabled a significant improvement for documents written in Portuguese.
Izhikevich Neuron Model and its Application in Pattern Recognition

In this paper is shown how an Izhikevich neuron can be applied to solve different linear and non- linear pattern recognition problems. Given a set of input patterns belonging to K classes, each input pattern is transformed into an input signal, then the Izhikevich neuron is stimulated during T ms and finally the firing rate is computed. After adjusting the synaptic weights of the neural model, input patterns belonging to the same class will generate almost the same firing rate and input patterns belonging to different classes will generate firing rates different enough to discriminate among the different classes. At last, a comparison between a feed-forward neural network and the Izhikevich neural model is presented when they are applied to solve non-linear and real object recognition problems.
NEDD8 recruits E2‐ubiquitin to SCF E3 ligase

NEDD8/Rub1 is a ubiquitin (Ub)‐like post‐translational modifier that is covalently linked to cullin (Cul)‐family proteins in a manner analogous to ubiquitylation. NEDD8 is known to enhance the ubiquitylating activity of the SCF complex (composed of Skp1, Cul‐1, ROC1 and F‐box protein), but the mechanistic role is largely unknown. Using an in vitro reconstituted system, we report here that NEDD8 modification of Cul‐1 enhances recruitment of Ub‐conjugating enzyme Ubc4 (E2) to the SCF complex (E3). This recruitment requires thioester linkage of Ub to Ubc4. Our findings indicate that the NEDD8‐modifying system accelerates the formation of the E2–E3 complex, which stimulates protein polyubiquitylation.
Assessment of the patient flow at the infectious diseases institute out-patient clinic, Kampala, Uganda

Abstract In order to cope with the increasing patient load, a study was performed to identify bottlenecks in patient flow at the Infectious Diseases out-patient clinic in Kampala, Uganda on 10 January 2005. On a standardised questionnaire we recorded for all patients: the time they presented at reception, waiting times for different services and in- and out times for nursing, counselling and doctor visits. 250 patients visited the clinic the study day: 36 (20 per cent) were asymptomatic; 133 (75 per cent) symptomatic but not critically ill and 8 (4.5 per cent) severely ill; 63 (37.5 per cent) were on antiretroviral treatment. The median time spend at the clinic was 157 minutes (range 22–426). The median time from reception to the triage/vital-signs measuring unit was 34 minutes (range 3–92), from triage nurse to doctor 51 minutes (range 1–205), from doctor to pharmacy 24 minutes (range 5–292). The median waiting time at the pharmacy was 30 minutes (range 10–175). Based on these results, organisational changes were proposed. A similar methodology could be used to evaluate and compare health service delivery systems for persons with HIV infection in Africa in order to identify the most efficient models of care.
Reliability of delivery services in cloud data centers

The existing broadcast protocols that are used in switches and servers, mainly focused on the Internet. For develop a reliable broadcast communication among data center has been suggested to use RDCM - reliable multicast protocol for network data centers. It's designed for maximum control of the environment, abundant resources and features connections topology. The basis of the study protocol RDCM was taken standard reference data center topology and architecture modeling conducted on BCube. RDCM demonstrates the ability to quickly respond to the failure of connections and receivers and does not affect bandwidth applications.
Activity replay system using mixed reality technology for inspection of ways of group work on reminiscence therapy

The authors have researched a support system of the reminiscence and life review activity. In this life review therapy, it is important to review the sessions after the activity for an effective therapy. Moreover a record of the activities is made the best use for making progress of technique on progressing the sessions and bringing up young or new therapists on training. In this paper, we describe the replay system of an activity on the life review therapy using mixed reality technology, which can reproduce a situation during the executions of the reminiscence therapy at a difference place later.
Circuit implementation of Spike Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP) for artificial synapse

Synapses are crucial elements for computation and information storage in both human brain and artificial neural systems. This paper presents a compact implementation of synaptic strength modification circuit based on a resistive switching device. The circuit works according to a Spike Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP) rule, ensuring that the timing between pre and post synaptic spikes lead to the Long Term Potentiation (LTP) and the Long Term Depression (LTD), and the modification of resistance in resistive switching device, finally the strength of synaptic connections is modified. This circuit is designed under a 0.13um CMOS technology. The proposed circuit is suitable for CMOS implementation of neuromorphic architectures.
Oral minocycline for the treatment of diabetic macular edema (DME): results of a phase I/II clinical study.

PURPOSE Inflammation contributes significantly to the pathogenesis of diabetic macular edema (DME). In particular, retinal microglia demonstrate increased activation and aggregation in areas of DME. Study authors investigated the safety and potential efficacy of oral minocycline, a drug capable of inhibiting microglial activation, in the treatment of DME. METHODS A single-center, prospective, open-label phase I/II clinical trial enrolled five participants with fovea-involving DME who received oral minocycline 100 mg twice daily for 6 months. Main outcome measurements included best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), central retinal subfield thickness (CST), and central macular volume using spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and late leakage on fluorescein angiography (FA). RESULTS Findings indicated that the study drug was well tolerated and not associated with significant safety issues. In study eyes, mean BCVA improved continuously from baseline at 1, 2, 4, and 6 months by +1.0, +4.0, +4.0, and +5.8 letters, respectively, while mean retinal thickness (CST) on OCT decreased by -2.9%, -5.7%, -13.9, and -8.1% for the same time points. At month 6, mean area of late leakage on FA decreased by -34.4% in study eyes. Mean changes in contralateral fellow eyes also demonstrated similar trends. Improvements in outcome measures were not correlated with concurrent changes in systemic factors. CONCLUSIONS In this pilot proof-of-concept study of DME, minocycline as primary treatment was associated with improved visual function, central macular edema, and vascular leakage, comparing favorably with historical controls from previous studies. Microglial inhibition with oral minocycline may be a promising therapeutic strategy targeting the inflammatory etiology of DME. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01120899.).
Swelling studies of bovine corneal stroma without bounding membranes.

1. The swelling characteristics of demembranated bovine corneal stroma were studied as a function of time and of the pH and ionic strength of the bathing solution. 2. Compared with other pH values, the stroma swelled least near pH 4. 3. In the pH range 6‐‐10, increasing the pH resulted in an increase both in the rate of swelling and in the hydration reached in a given time. 4. At pH 2 and 4, a final constant value of hydration was attained. At higher pH values no such equilibrium was attained when the hydration of the tissue was followed for at least 100 hr. 5. The swelling at high pH values was consistent with the hypothesis that the Donnan‐osmotic contribution is the major component of the swelling pressure. 6. The ionic strength dependence was complex. There was a general decrease of swelling with increase in the ionic strength (mu) until around mu = 0.1. The swelling at mu = 0.15 was greater than at mu = 0.1 and mu = 0.25. 7. The results were interpreted on the assumption that the Donnan‐osmotic effect is the major component of the swelling pressure.
Optimizing Facial Landmark Detection by Facial Attribute Learning

Instead of treating the facial landmark detection task as a single and independent problem, we investigate the possibility of improving detection robustness through multi-task learning. Specifically, we wish to optimize facial landmark detection together with multiple facial attributes learning. This is non-trivial since different tasks have different learning difficulties and convergence rates. To address this problem, we formulate a novel tasks-constrained deep model, with task-wise early stopping to facilitate learning convergence. Extensive evaluations show that the proposed task-constrained learning (i) outperforms existing methods, especially in dealing with faces with severe occlusion and pose variation, and (ii) reduces model complexity drastically compared to the state-of-the-art method based on cascaded deep model [5]. 1
Wrinkly Skin Syndrome: Ultrastructural Alterations of the Elastic Fibers

We report the clinical and pathologic features of a patient with wrinkly skin syndrome. The essential clinical features were wrinkly skin with poor elasticity over the abdomen and on the dorsum of the hands and feet, increased palmar and plantar creases, and a prominent venous pattern over the chest. On light microscopy, histopathologic findings included appreciable heterogeneity in the structure, amount, and distribution pattern of elastic fibers. Agglutination and fragmentation of the microfibrillar component and a remarkable decrease in elastin were the major ultrastructural features. The differential diagnosis with other connective tissue disorders is discussed.
Measuring the Utilization of On-Page Search Engine Optimization in Selected Domain

Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques involve „on-page“ and „off-page“ actions taken by web developers and SEO specialists with aim to increase the ranking of web pages in search engine results pages (SERP) by following recommendations from major search engine companies. In this paper we explore the possibility of creating a metric for evaluating on-page SEO of a website. A novel „k-rank“ metric is proposed which takes into account not only the presence of certain tags in HTML of a page, but how those tags are used with selected keywords in selected domain. The „k-rank“ is tested in domain of education by inspecting 20 university websites and comparing them with expert scores. The overview of results showed that „k-rank“ can be used as a metric for on-page SEO.
The effect of different stretching techniques on ankle joint range of motion and dynamic postural stability after landing.

BACKGROUND Stretching improves the flexibility of skeletal muscles, increases the range of motion (ROM) of joints. Stretching is important in prevention of sport-related injuries and influences muscle strength and performance. The effects of Static Stretching (SS) and Cyclic Stretching (CS) have been assessed by examining ROM, muscle power, vertical jump performance. However, the effects on postural control after CS compared with SS does not provide evidence for postural control after landing. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of stretching on the range of motion (ROM) of the ankle joint and dynamic postural stability upon landing on one leg. METHODS Twenty healthy subjects participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to SS, CS, and control conditions. The ankle was stretched in each condition for two minutes in a standing position. In the assessment of dynamic postural stability, the participant jumped and landed on one leg onto a force platform and the Dynamic Postural Stability Index (DPSI) was measured. Stability indices including those for medial-lateral, anterior-posterior, and vertical stability were calculated. The data were compared among 3 conditions with repeated measures ANOVA and the correlation between ankle range of motion (ROM), DPSI and the maximum vertical ground reaction force (vGRF max) were calculated. RESULTS The results indicated that the ROM was significantly greater after SS and CS compared with the control condition. A signiﬁcant improvement in DPSI was observed after CS. CONCLUSIONS We showed that 2 minutes of CS had a positive influence on dynamic postural stability after landing on a single leg. Furthermore, CS may improve balance by increasing postural stability.