Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arbitrary Shape Text Detection via Segmentation With Probability Maps

Arbitrary shape text detection is a challenging task due to the significantly varied sizes and aspect ratios, arbitrary orientations or shapes, inaccurate annotations, etc. Due to the scalability of pixel-level prediction, segmentation-based methods can adapt to various shape texts and hence attracted considerable attention recently. However, accurate pixel-level annotations of texts are formidable, and the existing datasets for scene text detection only provide coarse-grained boundary annotations. Consequently, numerous misclassified text pixels or background pixels inside annotations always exist, degrading the performance of segmentation-based text detection methods. Generally speaking, whether a pixel belongs to text or not is highly related to the distance with the adjacent annotation boundary. With this observation, in this paper, we propose an innovative and robust segmentation-based detection method via probability maps for accurately detecting text instances. To be concrete, we adopt a Sigmoid Alpha Function (SAF) to transfer the distances between boundaries and their inside pixels to a probability map. However, one probability map can not cover complex probability distributions well because of the uncertainty of coarse-grained text boundary annotations. Therefore, we adopt a group of probability maps computed by a series of Sigmoid Alpha Functions to describe the possible probability distributions. In addition, we propose an iterative model to learn to predict and assimilate probability maps for providing enough information to reconstruct text instances. Finally, simple region growth algorithms are adopted to aggregate probability maps to complete text instances. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in terms of detection accuracy on several benchmarks. Notably, our method with Watershed Algorithm as post-processing achieves the best F-measure on Total-Text (88.79%), CTW1500 (85.75%), and MSRA-TD500 (88.93%). Besides, our method achieves promising performance on multi-oriented datasets (ICDAR2015) and multilingual datasets (ICDAR2017-MLT). Code is available at: https://github.com/GXYM/TextPMs.
Understanding the impacts of the travel behaviour and activity patterns of children on their physical activity and health

25-31 May 2008 This paper contains a description of methodological issues associated with the collection and analysis of data on the impacts of travel behaviour and activity patterns of children on their physical activity and health, based upon research carried out in two projects at University College London over the past seven years. These include issues associated with interdisciplinary working, ethical and other issues involved in working with children use of incentives, selection of the participants and use of the research instruments.
Intestinal parasites in the Neolithic population who built Stonehenge (Durrington Walls, 2500 BCE)

Abstract Abstract Durrington Walls was a large Neolithic settlement in Britain dating around 2500 BCE, located very close to Stonehenge and likely to be the campsite where its builders lived during its main stage of construction. Nineteen coprolites recovered from a midden and associated pits at Durrington Walls were analysed for intestinal parasite eggs using digital light microscopy. Five (26%) contained helminth eggs, 1 with those of fish tapeworm (likely Dibothriocephalus dendriticus) and 4 with those of capillariid nematodes. Analyses of bile acid and sterol from these 5 coprolites show 1 to be of likely human origin and the other 4 to likely derive from dogs. The presence of fish tapeworm reveals that the Neolithic people who gathered to feast at Durrington Walls were at risk of infection from eating raw or undercooked freshwater fish. When the eggs of capillariids are found in the feces of humans or dogs it normally indicates that the internal organs (liver, lung or intestines) of animals with capillariasis have been eaten, and eggs passed through the gut without causing disease. Their presence in multiple coprolites provides new evidence that internal organs of animals were consumed. These novel findings improve our understanding of both parasitic infection and dietary habits associated with this key Neolithic ceremonial site.
Relationships Between Aging Attitudes and Successful Aging Outcomes in Middle-age and Older Women.

OBJECTIVES This study aimed to explore the relationships between aging attitudes and the outcomes of successful aging, including whether aging attitudinal types moderate psychological adjustment in the context of medical and mental health diagnoses. METHODS In total, 409 community-dwelling women aged 40-79 years in Australia completed the Reactions to Aging Questionnaire (RAQ), Geriatric Depression Scale, Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, and Geriatric Anxiety Inventory. Information about medical and mental health diagnoses were collected. RESULTS Overall, aging attitudes and all three RAQ subscales were negatively correlated with scores on measures of depression and anxiety, and number of medical diagnoses. Attitudinal types toward aging were found to moderate the relationship between the number of mental health diagnoses and scores on the psychological measures of depression but not anxiety. Unique RAQ domain-specific relationships were found with the number of mental health diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS The findings support the link between aging attitudes and psychological outcomes, the potential clinical value of RAQ attitudinal typologies classification as well as a multidimensional conceptualization of aging attitudes. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS The findings reinforce the need for efforts to reduce ageism on a societal level, as well as informing clinical decision-making with older clients.
In vivo phenotyping of the microvasculature in necrotizing enterocolitis with multicontrast optical imaging

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is the most prevalent gastrointestinal emergency in premature infants and is characterized by a dysfunctional gut microcirculation. Therefore, there is a dire need for in vivo methods to characterize NEC‐induced changes in the structure and function of the gut microcirculation, that is, its vascular phenotype. Since in vivo gut imaging methods are often slow and employ a single‐contrast mechanism, we developed a rapid multicontrast imaging technique and a novel analyses pipeline for phenotyping the gut microcirculation.
Are Your Participants Real? Dealing with Fraud in Recruiting Older Adults Online

The internet offers exciting opportunities for quick, cost-efficient, and widespread recruitment and data collection without face-to-face contact. Previous research has demonstrated success in reaching population subgroups not typically included in traditional recruitment methods, yet challenges in data quality protection remain paramount. This article describes using Amazon Mechanical Turk, Facebook groups, and email distribution lists to recruit older adults who live alone for a quantitative study using a cross-sectional online survey. Fraudulent survey takers became a major concern in this study, and a protocol was developed to identify and exclude suspicious data. Of 738 recorded participants, 117 responses were retained in the final sample. The majority of sham responses were collected from Facebook with the fewest number of issues identified in responses collected via targeted emailing. Implications for survey design, data analysis, and future research are discussed.
Surgical Repair of Stener-like Injuries of the Medial Collateral Ligament of the Knee in Professional Athletes

Background: A “Stener-like” lesion of the knee is defined as a distal avulsion of the superficial medial collateral ligament (sMCL) with interposition of the pes anserinus between the ligament and its tibial insertion—a displacement impeding anatomic healing. Because of the scarcity of these injuries, the literature is limited to case reports and small case series. Purpose: To assess the effect of surgical repair of acute Stener-like lesions of the sMCL on the following outcomes: return to preinjury level of sporting function; time to return to preinjury level of sporting function; functional performance; injury recurrence; and any other complications. Study Design: Case series: Level of evidence, 4. Methods: This prospective single–surgeon study included 23 elite athletes with a mean age of 27.2 years (range, 19-37 years). Of the participants, 20 were men (87%) and 3 were women (13%). The mean body mass index was 23.1 ± 2.3. A total of 16 athletes were soccer players (70%) and 7 were rugby players (30%), with isolated acute, traumatic Stener-like lesions of the sMCL of the knee confirmed on preoperative magnetic resonance imaging. Surgical repair was undertaken with primary suture anchor repair with ligament repair or reconstruction system (LARS) augmentation. Predefined outcomes were recorded at regular intervals after surgery. The minimum follow–up time was 24 months (range, 24-108 months) from the date of surgery. Results: The mean time from injury to surgical intervention was 9 days (range, 3-28 days). Overall, 15 (65%) athletes had isolated distal sMCL injuries requiring anatomic suture anchor repair at the distal tibial insertion site only, and 8 (35%) athletes had concomitant injuries of the proximal and distal sMCL and required anatomic suture anchor repair at the proximal and distal attachment sites. Ten athletes required LARS augmentation at the time of the index operation. All study patients returned to their preinjury level of sporting activity in professional soccer or rugby. The mean time from surgical intervention to return to full sporting activity was 16.8 ± 2.7 weeks. At 6 and 24 months’ follow–up, all patients had Tegner scores of 10. At a 2–year follow–up, all study patients were still participating at their preinjury level of sporting activity. Three patients developed complications around the LARS that required further surgery to remove synthetic material; however, this did not affect function. Conclusion: Surgical repair of acute Stener-like lesions of the sMCL is associated with a high return to preinjury level of sporting function, excellent functional performance, and a low risk of recurrence at short–term follow-up in elite athletes.
Predicting clinical trial outcomes using drug bioactivities through graph database integration and machine learning

The ability to estimate the probability of a drug to receive approval in clinical trials provides natural advantages to optimizing pharmaceutical research workflows. Success rates of clinical trials have deep implications for costs, duration of development, and under pressure due to stringent regulatory approval processes. We propose a machine learning approach that can predict the outcome of the trial with reliable accuracies, using biological activities, physicochemical properties of the compounds, target‐related features, and NLP‐based compound representation. In the above list, biological activities have never been used as an independent variable towards the prediction of clinical trial outcomes. We have extracted the drug–disease pair from clinical trials and mapped target(s) to that pair using multiple data sources. Empirical results demonstrate that ensemble learning outperforms independently trained, small‐data ML models. We report results and inferences derived from a Random forest classifier with an average accuracy of 93%, and an F1 score of 0.96 for the “Pass” class. “Pass” refers to one of the two classes (Pass/Fail) of all clinical trials, and the model performed well in predicting the “Pass” category. Through the analysis of feature contributions to predictive capability, we have demonstrated that bioactivity plays a statistically significant role in predicting clinical trial outcome. A significant effort has gone into the production of the dataset that, for the first time, integrates clinical trial information with protein targets. Cleaned, organized, integrated data and code to map these entities, created as a part of this work, are available open‐source. This reproducibility and the freely available code ensure that researchers with access to deep curated and proprietary clinical trial databases (we only use open‐source data in this study) can further expand the scope of the results.
Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Professionals Working in End-of-Life Care: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Objectives: The potential usefulness of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) is being investigated for healthcare staff burnout and associated problems, but empirical research on MBI's for end-of-life (EOL) professionals is still in its infancy. The aim of this review is to describe and evaluate the body of evidence-based research on the use of MBIs to support the psychological wellbeing of professional staff in EOL care settings. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted. Database records were extracted from ERIC, PsycInfo, EBSCO, PubMed Central (PMC) and Web of Science, using search terms to locate peer-reviewed studies on professional (not volunteer) staff in dedicated end-of-life settings, administering MBIs not embedded in more general therapeutic modalities (such as ACT or DBT). After removing duplicates, 8701 potential studies were identified: eliminating those that did not fit the eligibility criteria reduced the number of eligible studies to six. Results: A total of six empirical studies were identified and further evaluated. Interventions primarily focussed on reducing burnout symptoms, increasing self-care and self-compassion, and fostering mindfulness. Studies demonstrated very little overlap in treatment, methodology and measures. Only one study was a randomised control trial, which on application of the 3-item Jadad quality scoring, (evidence of randomisation, blinding of researcher to participants’ identity and accounts provided of all participants), achieved 1 out of 5 possible points. Furthermore, other concerns were identified as to the study's methodology. Conclusions: Results of this review point to significant gaps in the research on the potential of MBIs to improve the wellbeing of EOL professionals.
COVID-19 and erythrocrine function: The roller coaster and danger

Erythrocrine function refers to erythrocytes’ ability to synthesize and release active signaling molecules such as ATP and nitric oxide (NO). Erythrocyte NO regulates its deformability and increases its perfusion and circulation that prevent tissue hypoxia. Recently, there is a connotation between SARS-CoV-2 infection and erythrocrine function due to alteration in the release of NO and ATP from erythrocytes. SARS-CoV-2 binds erythrocyte band3 protein, which has a similar characteristic of ACE2, leading to alteration of erythrocyte physiology like oxygen transport with development of hypoxia. Similarly, SARS-CoV-2 infection activates erythrocyte protein kinase C alpha (PKC-α), causing significant changes in the erythrocyte functions. The erythrocytes can bind SARS-CoV-2 and its active particles with subsequent virus delivery to the liver and spleen macrophages. Thus, the erythrocytes act as elimination for SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19. Moreover, the erythrocyte stored, release sphingosine-1 phosphate (S1P) improves endothelial and regulates lymphocyte functions. SARS-CoV-2 ORF8 protein binds the porphyrin part of hemoglobin heme at the β1 chain, causing hemolysis and dysfunctional hemoglobin to reduce oxygen-carrying capacity. In conclusion, SARS-CoV-2 infection and associated pro-inflammatory disorders lead to abnormal erythrocrine function with subsequent inflammatory complications and endothelial dysfunction due to deficiency of protective released molecules (NO, G1P, and ATP) from functional erythrocytes. In vitro, preclinical, and clinical studies are mandatory in this regard.
Design and Construction of New Hybrid Solar Tracking System

We have designed and constructed a brand new of a dish solar tracking system. This hybrid system is composed of a sensor module and a local clock time equation systems, and they all work together whatever the weather conditions are. Experimental results from this system show that the tolerances of the azimuth and altitude angles are not over ±2º showing a high accuracy of the system when we have performed this system in Bangkok, Thailand. Moreover, the measured temperature from the solar receiver is 508.25K. This system is then expected to work well with the solar collector for the electric power conversion in future.
MicroRNA-744-5p suppresses tumorigenesis and metastasis of osteosarcoma through the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases pathway by targeting transforming growth factor-beta 1

ABSTRACT Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common malignant bone tumor in children and adolescents. Accumulating evidence has revealed that microRNAs (miRNAs) play a crucial role in the progression of OS. In this study, we found that miR-744-5p was the least expressed miRNA in patients with OS by analyzing GSE65071 from the GENE EXPRESSION OMNIBUS (GEO) database. Through real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR), western blotting, colony formation assay, 5-Ethynyl-2-Deoxyuridine (EdU) incorporation assay, transwell migration, and invasion assays, we demonstrated its ability to inhibit the proliferation, migration, and invasion of OS cells in vitro. According to the luciferase reporter assay, transforming growth factor-β1 (TGFB1) was negatively regulated by miR-744-5p and reversed the effects of miR-744-5p on OS. Subcutaneous tumor-forming animal models and tail vein injection lung metastatic models were used in animal experiments, and it was found that miR-744-5p negatively regulated tumor growth and metastasis in vivo. Furthermore, rescue assays verified that miR-744-5p regulates TGFB1 expression in OS. Further experiments revealed that the p38 MAPK signaling pathway is involved in the miR-744-5p/TGFB1 axis. Generally, this study suggests that miR-744-5p is a negative regulator of TGFB1 and suppresses OS progression and metastasis via the p38 MAPK signaling pathway. Graphical Abstract
Myeloid p38 activation maintains macrophage–liver crosstalk and BAT thermogenesis through IL‐12–FGF21 axis

Obesity features excessive fat accumulation in several body tissues and induces a state of chronic low‐grade inflammation that contributes to the development of diabetes, steatosis, and insulin resistance. Recent research has shown that this chronic inflammation is crucially dependent on p38 pathway activity in macrophages, suggesting p38 inhibition as a possible treatment for obesity comorbidities. Nevertheless, we report here that lack of p38 activation in myeloid cells worsens high‐fat diet–induced obesity, diabetes, and steatosis. Deficient p38 activation increases macrophage IL‐12 production, leading to inhibition of hepatic FGF21 and reduction of thermogenesis in the brown fat. The implication of FGF21 in the phenotype was confirmed by its specific deletion in hepatocytes. We also found that IL‐12 correlates with liver damage in human biopsies, indicating the translational potential of our results. Our findings suggest that myeloid p38 has a dual role in inflammation and that drugs targeting IL‐12 might improve the homeostatic regulation of energy balance in response to metabolic stress.
TARF: Technology-Agnostic RF Sensing for Human Activity Recognition

With the rapid development towards smart Internet of Things (IoT), detection of human activity has become essential in a variety of applications. Various radio-frequency (RF) sensing technologies, such as WiFi, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), and Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar, have been utilized for non-invasive human activity recognition (HAR). It will be highly desirable to develop a HAR solution that can work with different types of RF technologies, such that the cost and the barrier of wide deployment can both be greatly reduced, and more robust performance can be achieved by utilizing the complementary RF sensory data. In this paper, we propose a technology-agnostic approach for RF-based HAR, termed TARF, which works with several different RF sensing technologies. A novel data generalization technique is proposed to mitigate the disparity in measured data from different RF devices. A domain adversarial neural network is proposed to combat the interference from various RF sensing technologies. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated with experiments using four different RF sensing technologies. TARF is shown to outperform the state-of-the-art Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based solution with considerable gains.
Research on lithography based on the digital coding-mask technique

Digital coding-mask technique based on digital micro-mirror devices (DMD) is proposed in this paper. The fundamental rule of digital coding-mask technique is to modulate the incident light intensity by adjusting the transmittance of the units on the coding-mask. The transmittance is controlled by the apertures on the units of the coding-mask. Lohmann’s III coding method and error diffusion coding method are employed to coding mask, and wavelet transformation is used to suppress the background noise of the mask image. Real-time control on the image of the digital coding mask can be realized by loading the coded mask image to DMD, which is driven by a computer. Digital coding-mask technique gives full play of the advantages of DMD, such as real time and flexibility. In addition, the digital coding-mask technique is helpful to deal with the problem of mask aberration, which is caused by the nonlinear effect in the process of projection and exposure. This technique can also make use of optimization algorithm to suppress the background noise of the digital coding-mask images so that the quality of the relief structure of photoresist is improved.
A Guide to the Postmortem Investigation of Starvation in Adults

Abstract Starvation is a rare cause of death in developed countries and is a complex multifaceted pathological process. To complicate the forensic investigation of starvation further, many medical conditions independent of starvation may cause wasting. This article provides one of the first comprehensive guides to the postmortem investigation of starvation in adults, with reference tables on organ-specific macroscopic and microscopic features, as well as features for excluding alternative causes of wasting. The eclectic literature on this complex topic is summarized in an accessible and easily referenced format, including mechanisms of death and ancillary postmortem investigations.