Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variable selection in expectile regression

ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider penalized linear expectile regression using SCAD penalty function. We prove that our estimator has not only consistency but also oracle properties. In order to perform a better statistical inference, we make a correction of our estimator. The performance of our proposed methods are investigated through simulation studies.
Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine Does Meditation Play an Integral Role in Achieving High-Level Wellness as Defined by Travis and Ryan ( 2004 ) ?

In the emerging discipline of wellness, Travis and Ryan (2004) develop a dynamic theory of wellness that while not explicitly stated takes a systems theory approach to health and wellness. As a result, their theory of wellness resonates with many of the concepts and ideals experienced through a meditation practice. It is with this congruence in mind that the current paper explores whether there is any relationship between meditation and high-level wellness and if meditation techniques play an integral role in helping to achieve enhanced levels of wellness. A wide range of research across disciplines is reviewed, and despite controversies in the methodology employed to test meditation’s efficacy, it is readily apparent that numerous benefits or wellness outcomes are derived from a meditation practice. However, it is doubtful that meditation is the only path to deliver high-level wellness, other means exist—some that may be a function of the natural human
ASSESSING CROP MONITORING POTENTIAL OF SENTINEL-2 IN A SPATIO-TEMPORAL SCALE

Abstract. Spatio-temporal variability of crop growth descriptors is of prime importance for crop risk assessment and yield gap analysis. The incorporation of three bands (viz., B5, B6, B7) in ‘red-edge’ position (i.e., 705 nm, 740 nm, 783 nm) in Sentinel-2 with 10–20 m spatial resolution images with five days revisit period have unfolded opportunity for meticulous crop monitoring. In the present study, the potential of Sentinel-2 have been appraised for monitoring phenological stages of potato over Bardhaman district in the state of West Bengal, India. Due to the competency of Vegetation indices (VI) to evaluate the status of crop growth; we have used the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GNDVI), and the Normalized Difference Index45 (NDI45) for crop monitoring. Time series analysis of the VIs exhibited increasing trend as the crop started approaching maturity and attained a maximum value during the tuber development stage and started decreasing as the crop advances to senescence. Inter-field variability of VIs highlighted the need of crop monitoring at high spatial resolution. Among the three vegetation indices, the GNDVI (r = 0.636), NDVI (r = 0.620) had the highest correlation with biomass and Plant Area Index (PAI), respectively. NDI45 had comparatively a lower correlation (r = 0.572 and 0.585 for PAI and biomass, respectively) with both parameters as compared to other two indices. It is interesting to note that the use of Sentinel-2 Green band (B3) instead of the Red band (B4) in GNDVI resulted in 2.5% increase of correlation with biomass. However, the improvement in correlations between NDI45 with crop biophysical parameters is not apparent in this particular study with the inclusion of the Vegetation Red Edge band (B5) in VI. Nevertheless, the strong correlation of VIs with biomass and PAI asserted proficiency of Sentinel-2 for crop monitoring and potential for crop biophysical parameter retrieval with optimum accuracy.
Report on the Cooperative Study of Intracranial Aneurysms and Subarachnoid Hemorrhage SECTION V , PART I Natural History of Subarachnoid Hemorrhage , Intracranial Aneurysms and Arteriovenous Malformations *

T HE true na tura l h is tory of a disease is notoriously difficult to delineate and in some respects exasperat ingly elusive. I t requires t h a t observations be made on a sufficiently large sample of the disease population to accommoda te na tura l variabil i ty, t ha t this sample be representat ive of the total populat ion of the disease and tha t the total disease populat ion can be numerical ly related to the populat ion-atlarge. The natural course of the disease is elusive because of an obstacle which in present-day medicine amounts to a contradict ion: the representat ive sample populat ion mus t come under close medical scrut iny and a t the same t ime not have its na tura l course modified by t reat men t ! Before the age of angiography, studies of the na tura l his tory of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and its various causes were necessarily founded on au topsy findings, and little could be done to establish the cause in those who lived. Angiography made possible
DETERMINATION OF CASEIN IN MILK

In the present study the precipitation of casein from the various milk samples such as cow milk, goat milk were studied. The technique of precipitation of casein is used to predict the protein content in the milk samples. It was found that the main components of casein have genetic variants that differ in several amino acid residues. These proteins have a molecular weight of about 20 thousand, an isoelectric point of about 4.7, contain an increased amount of proline (the polypeptide chain has a b-structure) and are resistant to denaturants.
Physicochemical and phytochemical standardization of berries of Myrtus communis Linn

Purpose: Herbal medicines are gaining more and more attention all over the world due to their long historical clinical practice and less side effects. The major limitation with herbal medicines is that the lack of standardization technique. Initially, the crude drugs were identified by comparison only with the standard description available. Materials and Methods: Standardization of drugs means confirmation of its identity and determination of its quality and purity. The quality control standards of various medicinal plants, used in indigenous system of medicine, are significant nowadays in view of commercialization of formulations based on medicinal plants. The quality of herbal drugs is the sum of all factors, which contribute directly or indirectly to the safety, effectiveness, and acceptability of the product. Lack of quality control can affect the efficacy and safety of drugs that may lead to health problems in the consumers. Standardization of drugs is needed to overcome the problems of adulteration and is most developing field of research now. Therefore, there is an urgent need of standardized drugs having consistent quality. Results: The drug showed the presence of phyto-chemical constituents. Powdered drug was treated with different reagents and examined under UV light. Different reagents showed different colors of the drug at 2 wavelengths. The percentage of physiological active compounds viz. total phenolics, tannins, volatile oil, fixed oil, and alkaloids were also observed. Conclusion: Myrtus communis L. (Family: Myrtaceae) is one of the important drug being used in Unani system of medicine for various therapeutic purposes. In this study, an attempt has been made to study berries of M. communis from physico-chemical and phytochemical standardization point of view.
Mechanical characterization and constitutive modeling of the coronary artery

Coronary heart disease is the most frequently occurring cardiovascular disease in Europe. The components of the arterial wall are strongly related to the arterial mechanical behavior, and the composition may change because of remodeling processes that take place in the arterial wall, upon disease or intervention. Accordingly, much interest lies in modeling the mechanical behavior of the coronary arterial wall. The main objective of the research described in this thesis is therefore to mechanically characterize the coronary artery and describe its behavior with a constitutive model. An in-vitro experimental model has been developed that enables measurement of the mechanical behavior of an artery under physiological conditions, through dynamic simultaneous measurement of pressure, internal diameter, and axial force. By analysis of the properties of a mixture of xanthan gum and normal culture medium, a new culture medium has been developed, which has blood mimicking rheological properties to induce physiological wall shear stresses at physiological flow rates. This blood-analog culture medium does not influence cell and tissue biology otherwise. To apply physiological loading to the coronary artery in this set-up, we have investigated a way to assess the physiological axial pre-stretch of the coronary artery. It has been validated that at the in-vivo pre-stretch, the axial force is relatively insensitive to changes in pressure. For the purpose of predicting the mechanical behavior of a specific coronary artery, we have derived a generic constitutive model, by providing it with a generic set of material and geometric parameters. This generic constitutive model is able to predict the pressure-inner radius and pressure-axial force change relations of a passive porcine coronary artery, by just measuring its radius at physiological loads and the corresponding pressure. When, instead of a generic, an artery-specific description of the coronary artery is desired and only in-vivo pressure-radius data are available, more structural information of the artery is desired. In this thesis it has been shown, by the analysis of the fitted material parameters, that the preferred material model fiber orientation at physiological loading is (36.6 ± 0.4)? for human as well as porcine coronary arteries. This finding can be used as an optimization constraint in fitting a constitutive model to the mechanical data available. Finally, a new model to describe the extra stress generated by maximally constricted smooth muscle cells, has been proposed. This model is well able to describe the extra smooth muscle stress generated in an arterial ring test, also beyond the physiological range, and has successfully been added to the generic constitutive model of the coronary artery.
Weak Labeling for Crowd Learning

Crowdsourcing has become very popular among the machine learning community as a way to obtain labels that allow a ground truth to be estimated for a given dataset. In most of the approaches that use crowdsourced labels, annotators are asked to provide, for each presented instance, a single class label. Such a request could be inefficient, that is, considering that the labelers may not be experts, that way to proceed could fail to take real advantage of the knowledge of the labelers. In this paper, the use of weak labeling for crowd learning is proposed, where the annotators may provide more than a single label per instance to try not to miss the real label. The main hypothesis is that, by allowing weak labeling, knowledge can be extracted from the labelers more efficiently by than in the standard crowd learning scenario. Empirical evidence which supports that hypothesis is presented.
A fuzzy heuristic algorithm for the flow shop scheduling problem

The two-machine flow shop problem with the objective of minimizing makespan that is known as Johnson problem is now standard fundamental in the theory of scheduling. We generalize Johnson’s results for more than two machine problems, using a fuzzy heuristic algorithm. Performance of the new algorithm is analyzed with some numerical examples. To evaluate the performance of the proposed heuristic, we have used it on some small size problems and the results are compared with optimum scheduling. Notice that scheduling the problems with large sizes, is NP hard.
Heat and Blur: An Effective and Fast Defense Against Adversarial Examples

The growing incorporation of artificial neural networks (NNs) into many fields, and especially into life-critical systems, is restrained by their vulnerability to adversarial examples (AEs). Some existing defense methods can increase NNs' robustness, but they often require special architecture or training procedures and are irrelevant to already trained models. In this paper, we propose a simple defense that combines feature visualization with input modification, and can, therefore, be applicable to various pre-trained networks. By reviewing several interpretability methods, we gain new insights regarding the influence of AEs on NNs' computation. Based on that, we hypothesize that information about the "true" object is preserved within the NN's activity, even when the input is adversarial, and present a feature visualization version that can extract that information in the form of relevance heatmaps. We then use these heatmaps as a basis for our defense, in which the adversarial effects are corrupted by massive blurring. We also provide a new evaluation metric that can capture the effects of both attacks and defenses more thoroughly and descriptively, and demonstrate the effectiveness of the defense and the utility of the suggested evaluation measurement with VGG19 results on the ImageNet dataset.
Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography: Principles and Application in Retinal Diseases

The non-invasive imaging technology of optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A), has been claimed to potentially revolutionize the management of patients suffering from retinal disease. Its use in retinal diseases such as diabetic retinopathy (DR), age related macular degeneration (AMD), and retinal vein occlusion (RVO) has been expanding significantly over the last years. However, as any other imaging technique, limitations and artifacts need to be considered for its correct interpretation. Further studies are needed to assess the diagnostic properties of OCT-A as a patient management tool for retinal diseases. To what extent the potential of OCT-A will translate into daily medical routine still needs to be established. Abstract exact same retinal area. It assesses changes within OCT signals (so called signal decorrelation) what allows to detect moving blood cells within a static background 13,14 . The flow of red blood cells in a vascular network is visualized by the analysis of the difference in the reflected OCT signal between static and non-static tissue from one scan to another 15 . Since OCT-A is based on the principle of multiple scans on the same retinal location, it requires high speed image acquisition processes. Various algorithms such as split spectrum amplitude decorrelation angiography (SSADA), optical microangiography (OMAG), OCT-A ratio analysis (OCTARA), and phase variance are available among OCT- A devices that allow the creation of motion contrast 11,12,16 . Acquisition protocols, acquisition speed, and segmentation techniques also vary in between manufacturers. The angiograms are usually obtained within three to six
Exaggerated Exercise Blood Pressure Response During Treadmill Testing as a Predictor of Future Hypertension in Men: A Longitudinal Study.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to evaluate receiver operating characteristic curves to identify optimal cutoff values of exercise systolic blood pressure (SBP) using both peak SBP and relative SBP (peak SBP minus resting SBP) as predictors of future hypertension (HTN). METHODS Participants were 3,742 healthy normotensive men who underwent symptom-limited treadmill testing at baseline. Incident HTN was defined as SBP/diastolic blood pressure greater than 140/90 mm Hg and/or diagnosed HTN by a physician. RESULTS During an average 5-year follow-up, 364 (9.7%) new cases of HTN were observed. The most discriminatory cutoff values for peak SBP and relative SBP for predicting incident HTN were 181 mm Hg (areas under the curve (AUC) = 0.644, sensitivity = 54%, and specificity = 69%) and 52 mm Hg (AUC = 0.549, sensitivity = 64.3%, and specificity = 44.6%), respectively. Participants with peak SBP greater than 181 mm Hg and relative SBP greater than 52 mm Hg had 1.54-fold (95% CI: 1.23-1.93) and 1.44-fold (95% CI: 1.16-1.80) risks of developing HTN after adjusting for potential confounding variables. When these 2 variables were entered simultaneously into the Cox proportional hazards regression model with adjustment for potential confounding variables, only peak SBP (relative risk: 1.39, 95% CI: 1.02-1.89) was a predictor of the development of HTN. CONCLUSIONS The most accurate discriminators for peak and relative SBP during treadmill exercise testing to predict incident HTN were greater than 181 and 52 mm Hg, respectively, in normotensive men. A peak SBP greater than 181 mm Hg during treadmill exercise testing may provide a useful predictor for the development of HTN in clinical practice.
Bayesian Spatial Models for Voxel-wise Prostate Cancer Classiﬁcation Using Multi-parametric MRI Data

Bayesian inference and classiﬁcation of the various models were implemented using MCMC algorithms via Gibbs sampler with a Metropolis-Hastings sampling step. The model parameters are estimated using data from all images, and the voxel-wise cancer status indicators for a new patient, { c N +1 ,j | j = 1 , . , n N +1 } are classiﬁed by treating them as unknown parameters and updating them along with the other model parameters. Derivation of the MCMC algorithm is based on the joint density: where W − 1 ( X | Ψ , υ ) indicates that X follows an inverse Wishart distribution with scale matrix Φ and degrees of freedom υ , π ( θ ) denotes the prior distribution of θ , and we assume a ﬂat prior on µ c ij ,r ij . Here, C i is a
Numerical Modeling and Experimental Verification on Sensitivity Properties of MHD Sensor

For the insight of MHD sensor’s transferring function, the time-varying laminar flow model of magnetohydrodynamic effect was established. In the physical model the inlet and outlet, which directly drive the flows of annulus, were substituted for external walls that drive them by viscous forces. Physical model was decomposed by finite element method and iteratively solved by the scheme of segregated steps. The prototype MHD sensor was designed, fabricated, and calibrated by rotational table. Sensitivity factors of magnitude-frequency characteristics between 5 and 500Hz from the model and the prototype were 44V/(rad/s) and 48V/(rad/s) respectively. The amplitude non-linearities of 0.02-0.10rad/s, derived from the model and the prototype, were about 2% and 5% each. The results show that sensitivity properties derived from the model are consistent with ones from the prototype sensor, which will provide a reference for improving the performance of MHD sensor.
Extraction of coastal raft cultivation area with heterogeneous water background by thresholding object-based visually salient NDVI from high spatial resolution imagery

ABSTRACT The development of high spatial resolution satellite imaging has enabled the acquisition of mariculture area information. This data could play an important role in mariculture investigations, ocean disaster evaluations, and coastal management. Because chlorophyll is concentrated in the widely distributed raft culture (a major kind of mariculture), the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) can be used for extraction. However, extensive coastal raft culture is easily confused with the heterogeneous water background. This results in unsatisfactory extraction when surveying a large water area with heterogeneous water background. By combining object-based image analysis and the centre-surround mechanism of a visual attention model, we propose an object-based visually salient NDVI (OBVS-NDVI) feature. Comparison experiments using Gaofen-2 spectral imagery of Luoyuan Bay, Fuzhou, China, indicate that OBVS-NDVI can effectively discriminate raft cultivation areas over large areas with a heterogeneous water background.
Micro‐inertia origin of instabilities in granular materials

Within the framework of the second‐order work theory, the onset of instabilities is explored numerically in loose granular materials through three‐dimensional DEM simulations. Stress controlled directional analysis are performed in Rendulic's plane, and a particular attention is paid to transient evolutions at the microscale. Thanks to a micromechanical analysis, the onset and development of transient mechanical instabilities is explored. It is shown that these instabilities result from the unjamming and bending of a few force chains associated with a local burst of kinetic energy. This burst of kinetic energy propagates to the whole sample and provokes a generalized unjamming of force chains. As force chains buckle, a phase transition from a quasi‐static to an inertial regime is observed. At the macroscopic scale, this results in a transient softening and a loss of controllability. After the collapse of existing force chains, the development of plastic strain is eventually stopped as new stable force chains are built.
Fibrés vectoriels spéciaux

RÉSUMÉ. — On définit et on étudie un analogue de l'application d'Abel-Jacobi pour les fibres vectoriels de rang n sur une surface de Riemann compacte. En particulier on calcule l'image directe du faisceau constant C par cette application d'Abel-Jacobi généralisée. ABSTRACT. — We define and study an analog of thé Abel-Jacobi morphism for rank n vector bundies on a compact Riemann surface. In particular, we compute thé direct image of thé constant sheaf C by this generalized Abel-Jacobi morphism.
The importance of mineral determinations to PROFILE base 1 cation weathering release rates : A case study 2

Sophie Casetou-Gustafson, Cecilia Akselsson, Stephen Hillier1,, Bengt A. Olsson, 3 4 Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, (SLU), P.O. Box 7044, SE-750 07 5 Uppsala, Sweden 6 Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, Sölvegatan 12, SE-223 62 Lund, 7 Sweden 8 The James Hutton Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen AB15 8QH, United Kingdom 9 10 Correspondence to: Sophie Casetou-Gustafson (Sophie.Casetou@slu.se) 11 12 13
Accelerating Surface Tension Calculation in SPH via Particle Classification and Monte Carlo Integration

Surface tension has a strong influence on the shape of fluid interfaces. We propose a method to calculate the corresponding forces efficiently. In contrast to several previous approaches, we discriminate to this end between surface and non-surface SPH particles. Our method effectively smooths the fluid interface, minimizing its curvature. We make use of an approach inspired by Monte Carlo integration to estimate local normals as well as curvatures, based on which the force can be calculated. We compare different sampling schemes for the Monte Carlo approach, for which a Halton sequence performed best. Our overall technique is applicable, but not limited to 2D and 3D simulations, and can be coupled with any common SPH formulation. It outperforms prior approaches with regard to total computation time per time step in dynamic scenes. Additionally, it is adjustable for higher quality in small scale scenes with dominant surface tension effects.
Convolutional Kernel Networks for Graph-Structured Data

This appendix provides both theoretical and experimental material and is organized as follows: Appendix A presents a classical result, allowing us to characterize the RKHS of the graph kernels we introduce. Appendix B provides additional experimental details that are useful to reproduce our results and additional experimental results. Then, Appendix C explains how to accelerate the computation of GCKN when using walks instead of paths (at the cost of lower expressiveness), and Appendix D presents a proof of Theorem 1 on the expressiveness of WL and walk kernels.