Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Removal of haze and analysis of dehazing effects on image using median filters

Images are often degraded by atmospheric haze, a phenomenon due to the particles in the air that scatters light. Haze induces a loss of contrast, whose visual effect is blurring of distant objects. This paper makes an analysis of the dehazing effects on image which can be used for surveillance systems. The goal of this paper is to achieve good dehazed images at the receiver while sustaining low bitrates (using compression) in the transmission pipeline. A method for single-image dehazing is proposed in this paper, which is used for the analysis. It operates at a faster speed than current methods and can avoid halo effects by using the median operation. We then consider the dehazing effects on compression by analysing the coding artifacts and motion estimation in cases of applying any dehazing method before and after compression. Thus we conclude that better dehazing performance with fewer artifacts and better coding efficiency is achieved when the dehazing is applied before compression. Index Terms Atmospheric scattering, compression artifacts, contrast enhancement, dehaze, Dark channel prior (DCP), hazing, PSNR, Mean Square Error (MSE).
Olfactory Input to the Hypothalamus: Electrophysiological Evidence

Electrical stimulation of the rat's olfactory bulb or lateral olfactory tract elicited unit discharges in the region of the medial forebrain bundle of the lateral hypothalamus, with latencies of 4 to 25 milliseconds. Unit responses in this area were driven by odors in preparations that were paralyzed to prevent breathing artifacts.
Development of an epitope panel for consistent identification of antigen‐specific T‐cells in humans

We aimed to establish a panel of MHC–peptide multimers suitable as a positive control in the detection of HLA A*0201 restricted antigen specific T cells (ASTC) by flow cytometry. MHC Dextramers were loaded with HLA A*0201 binding peptides from viral antigens and melanoma targets identified from a literature search and in silico prediction. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from healthy donors were analysed with the MHC Dextramers using flow cytometry. The best performing epitopes were tested on PBMC from patients undergoing testing for Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection to assess the coverage of this epitope panel. Of 21 candidate epitopes, ASTC could be detected against 12 (57·1%) in at least one of 18 healthy blood donors. Reactivity to two or more epitopes was seen in 17 of the 18 donors (94·4%). We selected the six best‐performing epitopes and demonstrated a positive response in 42 (97·7%) of 43 patient samples (healthy, latent and active M. tuberculosis infection). The selected panel of six antigenic epitopes sufficed as a positive control in the detection of ASTC in HLA A*0201. Performance was robust in different stages of latent and active M. tuberculosis infection, indicating reliability also during infection.
Education of Phlebotomy Teams Improves Blood Volume in Blood Culture Bottles

ABSTRACT The volume of blood sampled for blood culture determines its sensitivity. We measured low mean blood volumes in submitted aerobic (8.38 ± 3.88 ml) and anaerobic (7.16 ± 3.83 ml) blood culture bottles. Educational seminars were held for phlebotomy teams, and renewed measurements thereafter revealed significantly higher blood volumes in submitted aerobic (9.77 ± 4.42 ml) and anaerobic (8.30 ± 3.64 ml) bottles. Education of phlebotomy teams improves the blood volume in blood culture bottles and should be part of quality control procedures.
Age of initiation, smoking patterns, and risk in a population of working adults.

BACKGROUND Early age of initiation is a significant risk factor for long-term dependent smoking and may also relate to other unhealthy behaviors and increased likelihood of illness, independent of duration of smoking. METHODS The current study assessed age of initiation in relation to cigarette dependence, interest in quitting, social environment pertaining to smoking, behavioral risk factors, and current health problems. Subjects were 2120 current daily smokers in 24 worksites in the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area. RESULTS Findings were surprisingly consistent with early age of initiation predicting more dependent smoking, less interest and confidence in ability to quit, poorer diet, less use of seat belts, more illness and hospitalization, and greater likelihood of smoking among partner/spouse, friends, and co-workers. CONCLUSIONS The overall strength of the findings was unexpected. Early initiation of regular smoking predicted a significant constellation of risk factors throughout adulthood. Interventions that significantly delay smoking onset, even in the absence of permanent prevention, could have important public health implications.
Pathogenic and mutualistic plant-bacteria interactions: ever increasing similarities

Plant-interacting bacteria can establish either mutualistic or pathogenic interactions that cause beneficial or detrimental effects respectively, to their hosts. In spite of the completely different outcomes, accumulating evidence indicates that similar molecular bases underlie the establishment of these two contrasting plant-bacteria associations. Recent findings observed in the mutualistic nitrogen-fixing Rhizobium-legume symbiosis add new elements to the increasing list of similarities. Amongst these, in this review we describe the role of plant resistance proteins in determining host specificity in the Rhizobium-legume symbiosis that resemble the gene-for-gene resistance of plant-pathogen interactions, and the production of antimicrobial peptides by certain legumes to control rhizobial proliferation within nodules. Amongst common bacterial strategies, cyclic diguanylate (c-di-GMP) appears to be a second messenger used by both pathogenic and mutualistic bacteria to regulate key features for interaction with their plant hosts.
Broadband Printed-Dipole Antenna and Its Arrays for 5G Applications

In this letter, we propose a broadband printed-dipole antenna and its arrays for fifth-generation (5G) wireless cellular networks. To realize a wide frequency range of operation, the proposed antenna is fed by an integrated balun, which consists of a folded microstrip line and a rectangular slot. For compactness, the printed dipole is angled at 45°. The single-element antenna yields an |<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$S$</tex-math> </inline-formula><sub>11</sub>| <−10-dB bandwidth of 36.2% (26.5–38.2 GHz) and a gain of 4.5–5.8 dBi. We insert a stub between two printed-dipole antennas and obtain a low mutual coupling of <−20 dB for a 4.8-mm center-to-center spacing (0.42–0.61 λ at 26–38 GHz). We demonstrate the usefulness of this antenna as a beamforming radiator by configuring 8-element linear arrays. Due to the presence of the stubs, the arrays resulted in a wider scanning angle, a higher gain, and a lower sidelobe level in the low-frequency region.
The Fate of Neutron Star Binary Mergers

Following merger, a neutron star (NS) binary can produce roughly one of three different outcomes: (1) a stable NS, (2) a black hole (BH), or (3) a supramassive, rotationally supported NS, which then collapses to a BH following angular momentum losses. Which of these fates occur and in what proportion has important implications for the electromagnetic transient associated with the mergers and the expected gravitational wave (GW) signatures, which in turn depend on the high density equation of state (EOS). Here we combine relativistic calculations of NS masses using realistic EOSs with Monte Carlo population synthesis based on the mass distribution of NS binaries in our Galaxy to predict the distribution of fates expected. For many EOSs, a significant fraction of the remnants are NSs or supramassive NSs. This lends support to scenarios in which a quickly spinning, highly magnetized NS may be powering an electromagnetic transient. This also indicates that it will be important for future GW observatories to focus on high frequencies to study the post-merger GW emission. Even in cases where individual GW events are too low in signal to noise to study the post merger signature in detail, the statistics of how many mergers produce NSs versus BHs can be compared with our work to constrain the EOS. To match short gamma-ray-burst (SGRB) X-ray afterglow statistics, we find that the stiffest EOSs are ruled out. Furthermore, many popular EOSs require a significant fraction of ∼60%–70% of SGRBs to be from NS–BH mergers rather than just binary NSs.
Motivational Interviewing (MI) to Change Type 2DM Self Care Behaviors: A Nursing Intervention.

AIMS This paper evaluates a novel nursing intervention designed to improve physical and psychological outcomes for adult patients with Type 2 DM. BACKGROUND Self care behaviors are an important component of diabetes treatment, yet for many reasons, patients do not adhere to suggested plans. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a patient centered strategy that helps overcome ambivalence to change. Nurses, who frequently educate patients with diabetes about self care, can use MI as a way to improve health behaviors. METHODS As a component of a large RCT, focus groups were used to evaluate the impact of an MI nursing intervention. Nineteen patients (8% of treatment group) participated in four different groups. IPA was used to explore patient response to the intervention. RESULTS/FINDINGS Patients were able to reflect on and identify responses to sessions with the study nurses that differed from "typical" health care provider visits. Many of their descriptions captured the essence of MI practice. CONCLUSION MI is a viable and useful technique for nurses to use in educating and caring for persons with Type 2 DM.
Text Input Techniques for Immersive Virtual Environments: An Empirical Comparison

Symbolic input, including text and numeric input, can be an important user task in applications of virtual environments (VEs). However, very little research has been performed to support this task in immersive VEs. This paper presents the results of an empirical evaluation of four text input techniques for immersive VEs. The techniques include the Pinch Keyboard (a typing emulation technique using pinch gloves), a one-hand chord keyboard, a soft keyboard using a pen & tablet, and speech. The experiment measured both task performance and usability characteristics of the four techniques. Results indicate that the speech technique is the fastest, while the pen & tablet keyboard produces the fewest errors. However, no single technique exhibited high levels of performance, usability and user satisfaction.
DESIGN OF AUTOMATIC GENERATION CONTROL

An H decentralized design is proposed for automatic generation control (AGC) of multi-area overlapping interconnected power systems. To derive the resulting controller, the Inclusion Principle and LMI algorithms are discussed in the H framework for the original and expanded systems. Taking a two-area overlapping interconnected power system AGC as an example, a simulation of responses to load step disturbances is used to illustrate the performance of the new H decentralized AGC design. Copyright©2002 IFAC
MicroRNAs and cancer: Profile, profile, profile

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) represent a new class of small noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs, RNAs that do not codify for proteins) that can regulate gene expression by targeting messenger RNAs of protein coding genes and other ncRNA transcripts. miRNAs were recently found to be involved in the pathophysiology of all types of analyzed human cancers mainly by aberrant gene expression. This is characterized by abnormal levels of expression for mature and/or precursor miRNA transcripts in comparison to the corresponding normal tissues. miRNA profiling has allowed the identification of signatures associated with diagnosis, prognosis and response to treatment of human tumors. Therefore, miRNAs fingerprinting represents a new addition to the tools to be used by medical oncologists. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Narrative in adolescent specific language impairment (SLI): a comparison with peers across two different narrative genres.

BACKGROUND Narrative may provide a useful way in which to assess the language ability of adolescents with specific language impairment and may be more ecologically valid than standardized tests. However, the language of this age group is seldom studied and, furthermore, the effect of narrative genre has not been explored in detail. METHODS & PROCEDURES A total of 99 typically developing adolescents and 19 peers with specific language impairment were given two different types of narrative task: a story-telling condition and a conversational condition. Four areas of narrative (productivity, syntactic complexity, syntactic errors and performance) were assessed. OUTCOMES & RESULTS The group with specific language impairment was poorer on most aspects of narrative confirming recent research that specific language impairment is a long-term disorder. A number of measures also showed interactions between group and genre, with story-telling proving to be a disproportionately more difficult task for the specific language impairment group. Error analysis also suggested that the specific language impairment group was making qualitatively different errors to the typically developing group, even within a genre. CONCLUSIONS Adolescents with specific language impairment are not only poorer at both types of narrative than peers, but also show different patterns of competence and error, and require more support from the narrative-partner. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS Assessments of adolescents are less frequent than at younger ages. This is partly because of the sparsity of tests available in this age range. Qualitative analysis of narrative might prove a useful alternative. The findings suggest that in every-day conversation, young people with specific language impairment manage their difficulties more discreetly and this might make them harder to identify in a mainstream setting.
Contributions to an analysis of the avian vitelline membrane's potential to promote outgrowth of the yolk sac‐serosal membrane

Explanted blastoderms of freshly laid chicken eggs expand their area during the first 44–45 hours of incubation by a factor of at least 11 if they are placed with the epiblast on the inner surface of explanted fresh chick vitelline membrane and provided with chick egg extract. This expansion is due essentially to the spreading of the yolk sac‐serosal membrane. On turkey and duck membrane the expansion factor is about 6 and 3.8 respectively under otherwise identical conditions, but 1.9 only on a semisolid nutrient agar plate. Only the inner surface of the vitelline membrane has this growth‐promoting potential, which markedly and progressively declines during incubation in ovo because of systemic factors rather than because of a direct influence by the outgrowing yolk sac‐serosal membrane. Trypsinization of fresh chick vitelline membrane (1% trypsin 3 hours) reduces the growth‐promoting potential to about 40% of its normal strength. The outgrowth of the extraembryonic tissues on vitelline membrane is better supported in the presence of a species' own egg extract than by extract from another species.
Role of AA-NAT and TPH1 in the Ghrelin-Dependent Regulation of Melatonin Secretion in Sheep during Different Seasons: An In Vitro Study

Several studies suggests that ghrelin (GHRL) has neurobiological effects that extend beyond control of food intake. Our previous results confirmed that GHRL modulates the secretory activity of the pineal gland (PG) through nocturnal melatonin (MEL) secretion in sheep, the seasonally reproductive animals. Here we investigated the effects of GHRL (10 ng/ml) on the expression of enzymes limiting synthesis of MEL, including tryptophan 5-hydroxylase 1 (TPH1), serotonin N-acetyltransferase (AA-NAT) and its phosphorylated form p31T-AA-NAT in sheep PG explants (n = 72) during the 4-hour incubation in a gas-liquid interface, at a short (SD) and long (LD) photoperiods. After each hour of incubation selected explants were frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80°C for subsequent analysis (real-time PCR, western-blotting, ELISA). Results show that GHRL regulates nightly MEL secretion in a TPH1-independent manner. The factor modulating GHRL activity was photoperiod. During SD photoperiod GHRL significantly reduced the expression of p31T-AA-NAT, AA-NAT and inhibited MEL secretion from PG explants. Whereas, during LD photoperiod no effect of GHRL on MEL secretion and expression of examined enzymes was noted. Studies indicate that GHRL directly affects PG under in vitro conditions and causes MEL secretion in animals which exhibit seasonality in reproductive and metabolic processes.
On control of nD plant with 1D controller in a behavioral framework

In this paper, we address the control problems of an n-dimensional (the dynamics evolves with n independent variables, and which is abbreviated to as n-D) plant with a 1-D controller (the dynamics evolves with only the ordinary time) for a desired 1-D or n-D controlled behavior. From the theoretical points of view, such issues are concerned with the problem under what condition it is possible to interconnect two systems in the case in which the time axes (or independent variables) of them are different. From the practical points of view, there are many cases in which the dynamics of a plant evolving with not only the time but also the spacial coordinates, e.g., the heat transfer, the vibration of the elastic membrane, and so on, should be controlled by a controller described by the set of ordinary differential equations. As main results of this paper, we first present a necessary and sufficient condition for the desired 1-D controlled behavior to be implemented by a 1-D controller in the case in which the dynamics of a plant is n-D. We then also present a necessary and sufficient condition for the desired n-D controlled behavior to be implemented in the same situation. Finally, we also consider these problems in the linear time-invariant case.
Local Feature based Descriptors and their Applications

This paper presents a study on SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature transform) which is a method for extracting distinctive invariant features from images that can be used to perform reliable matching between different views of an object or scene. The features are invariant to image scaling, translation, and rotation, and partially invariant to illumination changes and affine or 3D projection and SURF (Speeded-up Robust features) which is speeded up the SIFT’s detection process without scarifying the quality of the detected points. SURF approximates or even outperforms previously proposed schemes with respect to repeatability, distinctiveness, and robustness, yet can be computed and compared much faster.
Accidental selection and intentional restoration of sporulation-deficient 2 mutants of Bacillus anthracis 3 Running title : “ Loss of sporulation in Bacillus anthracis ” 4 5

19 We demonstrate the frequent accidental enrichment of spontaneous sporulation-deficient mutants 20 of Bacillus anthracis on solid medium and identify contributing factors. Mutations in spo0A, 21 encoding the master regulator of sporulation initiation, were found in 38 of 53 mutants. 22 Transductions using bacteriophage CP51 propagated on sporogenic bacteria allowed restoration 23 of sporulation phenotypes. 24 on N ovem er 2, 2017 by gest ht://aem . sm . rg/ D ow nladed fom
Cryptococcus interactions with macrophages: evasion and manipulation of the phagosome by a fungal pathogen

Cryptococcus is a potentially fatal fungal pathogen and a leading cause of death in immunocompromised patients. As an opportunistic and facultative intracellular pathogen of humans, Cryptococcus exhibits a complex set of interactions with the host immune system in general, and macrophages in particular. Cryptococcus is resistant to phagocytosis but is also able to survive and proliferate within the mature phagolysosome. It can cause the lysis of host cells, can be transferred between macrophages or exit non‐lytically via vomocytosis. Efficient phagocytosis is reliant on opsonization and Cryptococcus has a number of anti‐phagocytic strategies including formation of titan cells and a thick polysaccharide capsule. Following uptake, phagosome maturation appears to occur normally, but the internalized pathogen is able to survive and replicate. Here we review the interactions and host manipulation processes that occur within cryptococcal‐infected macrophages and highlight areas for future research.
Risk factors for cutaneous malignant melanoma among aircrews and a random sample of the population

Aims: To evaluate whether a difference in the prevalence of risk factors for malignant melanoma in a random sample of the population and among pilots and cabin attendants could explain the increased incidence of malignant melanoma which had been found in previous studies of aircrews. Methods: A questionnaire was used to collect information on hair colour, eye colour, freckles, number of naevi, family history of skin cancer and naevi, skin type, history of sunburn, sunbed, all sunscreen use, and number of sunny vacations. Results: The 239 pilots were all males and there were 856 female cabin attendants, which were compared with 454 males and 1464 females of the same age drawn randomly from the general population. The difference in constitutional and behavioural risk factors for malignant melanoma between the aircrews and the population sample was not substantial. The aircrews had more often used sunscreen and had taken more sunny vacations than the other men and women. The predictive values for use of sunscreen were 0.88 for pilots and 0.85 for cabin attendants and the predictive values for sunny vacation were 1.36 and 1.34 respectively. Conclusion: There was no substantial difference between the aircrew and the random sample of the population with respect to prevalence of risk factors for malignant melanoma. Thus it is unlikely that the increased incidence of malignant melanoma found in previous studies of pilots and cabin attendants can be solely explained by excessive sun exposure.
Effect of Carbon Source on Size and Associated Properties of Bacillus megaterium Spores

The size of the spores produced by Bacillus megaterium ATCC 19213 depended upon the nature of the carbon source present in the defined medium in which they were produced. Homogeneous preparations of small (0.38 μm3), nearly spherical spores were produced after batch culture in the presence of 2.8 mm citrate, and large (1.17 μm3), oblong spores were produced by replacement culture in the presence of 7.35 mm acetate. Large and small spores had approximately the same deoxyribonucleic acid content, density, and heat resistance. Large spores contained about 2.5 times the dipicolinic acid, glucosamine, ribonucleic acid, Mn2+, and lipid and about 1.5 times the Mg2+, Fe2+, Ca2+, and dry weight of small spores. Large spores were especially enriched in Zn2+ (4.5-fold). More protein (1.5-fold) was extracted from small spores with 1 n NaOH than from large spores, possibly indicating a difference in the spore coats, but large spores contained about twice the Kjeldahl nitrogen of small spores. A difference in the coats may account for the fact that, unlike small spores, large spores showed improved germination with increased times and temperature of heat shocking. The possibility of determining the location of some of these substances within the spore by comparing the compositional ratios with estimated volumes of specific spore layers is discussed.