Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feature Based Myanmar Fingerspelling Image Classification Using SIFT, SURF and BRIEF

Deaf people use Sign Language and Fingerspelling as a fundamental communication method. Fingerspelling or manual spelling is a method of spelling words using hand movements, and most often used to spell out names of people, places, organizations, books and other words for which no sign exists. In this experiment, the images for 31 static fingerspelling characters of Myanmar consonant are used as the input images. Three feature vectors extraction methods (SIFT, SURF, and BRIEF) were done separately on our collected Myanmar Sign Language (MSL) fingerspelling images. MSL fingerspelling data are classified with seven different approaches; Multilayer Perceptron, Gaussian Naïve Bays, Decision Tree, Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine and K-Nearest Neighbor. In this paper, we provide the performance results of different features on different classifiers and the highest classification rate is up to 97% with SURF feature and Random Forest classifier. Moreover, 10-fold cross validation was made in our experiment and we provide the classification results for each classifier.
CRISPR-Cas9 Mediated Epitope Tagging Provides Accurate and CRISPR-Cas9 Mediated Epitope Tagging Provides Accurate and Versatile Assessment of Myocardin--Brief Report Versatile Assessment of Myocardin--Brief Report

was used to engineer a carboxyl-terminal 3×FLAG or 3×HA epitope tag in mouse embryos. Western blotting with antibodies to each tag revealed a MYOCD protein product of ≈ 150 kDa, a size considerably larger than that reported in virtually all publications. MYOCD protein was most abundant in some adult smooth muscle-containing tissues with surprisingly low-level expression in the heart. Both alleles of Myocd are active in aorta because a 2-fold increase in protein was seen in mice homozygous versus heterozygous for FLAG-tagged Myocd . ChIP (chromatin immunoprecipitation)–quantitative polymerase chain reaction studies provide proof-of-principle data demonstrating the utility of this mouse line in conducting genome-wide ChIP-seq studies to ascertain the full complement of MYOCD-dependent target genes in vivo. Although FLAG-tagged MYOCD protein was undetectable in sections of adult mouse tissues, low-passaged vascular smooth muscle cells exhibited expected nuclear localization. Conclusions —This report validates new mouse models for analyzing MYOCD protein expression, localization, and binding activity in vivo and highlights the need for rigorous authentication of antibodies in biomedical research. Visual Overview —An online visual overview is available for this article. ( Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol . 2018;38:2184-2190.
Sustained during Chronic Infection T Cells to be + to Injury That Requires CD4 Alternative Activation Is an Innate Response

Alternatively activated macrophages (AAM (cid:2) ) are found in abundance during chronic Th2 inﬂammatory responses to metazoan parasites. Important roles for these macrophages are being deﬁned, particularly in the context of Th2-mediated pathology and ﬁbrosis. However, a full understanding of the requirements for alternative activation, particularly at the innate level, is lacking. We present evidence that alternative activation by the Th2 cytokines IL-4 and IL-13 is an innate and rapid response to tissue injury that takes place even in the absence of an infectious agent. This early response does not require CD4 (cid:1) Th2 cells because it occurred in RAG-deﬁcient mice. However, class II-restricted CD4 (cid:1) T cell help is essential to maintain AAM (cid:2) in response to infection, because AAM (cid:2) were absent in RAG-deﬁcient and MHC class II-deﬁcient, but not B cell-deﬁcient mice after chronic exposure to the nematode parasite, Brugia malayi . The absence of AAM (cid:2) was associated with increased neutrophilia and reduced eosinophilia, suggesting that AAM (cid:2) are involved in the clearance of neutrophils as well as the recruitment of eosinophils. Consistent with this hypothesis, AAM (cid:2) show enhanced phagocytosis of apoptotic neutrophils, but not latex beads. Our data demonstrate that alternative activation by type 2 cytokines is an innate response to injury that can occur in the absence of an adaptive response. However, analogous to classical activation by microbial pathogens, Th2 cells are required for maintenance and full activation during the ongoing response to metazoan parasites. The Journal of Immunology, 2007, 179: 3926–3936.
University of Birmingham Long Term Consequences of early fruit and vegetable feeding practices

Objective: To describe fruit and vegetable (FV) feeding practices at 6 months, and to examine whether these practices predict children’s FV intake at 7 years of age. Design: A prospective, longitudinal design was adopted. The mothers completed self-reported questionnaires at 6 months and 7 years postpartum, containing questions about their child’s FV intake. Setting: The study was carried out on a geographically representative population of infants born in Avon, UK, from 1991 to 1992, as part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Subjects: Information was collected from 7866 mothers of infants. Results: Hierarchical linear regressions were used to predict FV consumption at 7 years from the early feeding variables. Children who were given home-cooked fruit or vegetables more often at 6 months were more likely to be eating a higher proportion of FV at 7 years, than those who were given home-cooked FV less often. There was no positive difference found in consumption of FV at 7 years according to how often ready-prepared fruits or vegetables were given at 6 months. The age of introduction to home-cooked vegetables moderated the relationship between frequency of consumption at 6 months and 7 years. Conclusions: The ﬁndings support the concept that exposure to FV is important in the early weaning period. The ﬁnding that consumption of ready-prepared FV was not positively associated with later FV consumption needs to be further investigated, with reference to theories of exposure, modelling and parental food choices. If vegetables are introduced later in weaning, they need to be fed frequently, to ensure adequate exposure.
between Co-infection and Kaposi Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) Seropositivity in a Population-based Study in between Co-infection and Kaposi Sarcoma-associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) Seropositivity in a Population-based Study in Rural Uganda.

Summary KSHV seroprevalence is very high in rural Uganda. Malaria infection and anaemia are the risk factors associated with KSHV seroprevalence and antibody levels in this study. These factors might cause reactivation of the virus and hence lead to increased transmission. Abstract We examined anaemia and malaria as risk factors for KSHV seropositivity and antibody levels in a long-standing rural Ugandan cohort, in which KSHV is prevalent. Samples from 4134 children, aged 1-17 years, with a sex ratio of 1:1 and 3149 adults aged 18-103 years, 41% of whom were males, were analysed. Among children, malaria infection was associated with higher KSHV prevalence (61% versus 41% prevalence among malaria
Noise prevents in(cid:133)nite stretching of the passive (cid:133)eld in a stochastic vector advection equation

A linear stochastic vector advection equation is considered; the equation may model a passive magnetic (cid:133)eld in a random (cid:135)uid. When the driving velocity (cid:133)eld is rough but deterministic, in particular just H(cid:246)lder continuous and bounded, one can construct ex-amples of in(cid:133)nite stretching of the passive (cid:133)eld, arising from smooth initial conditions. The purpose of the paper is to prove that in(cid:133)nite stretching is prevented if the driving velocity (cid:133)eld contains in addition a white noise component.
Discovery and Characterization of Mammalian Endogenous Parvoviruses (cid:1) †

Public databases of nucleotide sequences contain exponentially increasing amounts of sequence data from mammalian genomes. Through the use of large-scale bioinformatic screening for sequences homologous to exogenous mammalian viruses, we found several sequences related to human and animal parvoviruses (PVs) in the Parvovirus and Dependovirus genera within genomes of several mammals, including rats, wallabies, opossums, guinea pigs, hedgehogs, African elephants, and European rabbits. However, phylogenetic analysis of these endogenous parvovirus (EnPV) sequences demonstrated substantial genetic divergence from exogenous mammalian PVs characterized to date. Entire nonstructural and capsid gene sequences of a novel EnPV were ampliﬁed and genetically characterized from rat ( Rattus norvegicus ) genomic DNA. Rat EnPV sequences were most closely related to members of the genus Parvovirus , with >70% and 65% amino acid identities to nonstructural and capsid proteins of canine parvovirus, respectively. Integration of EnPV into chromosome 5 of rats was conﬁrmed by PCR cloning and sequence analysis of the viral and chromosomal junctions. Using inverse PCR, we determined that the rat genome contains a single copy of rat EnPV. Considering mammalian phylogeny, we estimate that EnPV integrated into the rat genome less than 30 million years ago. Comparative phylogenetic analysis done using all known representative exogenous parvovirus (ExPV) and EnPV sequences showed two major genetic groups of EnPVs, one genetically more similar to genus Parvovirus and the other genetically more similar
Marufu, Takawira C. and Ahankari, Anand S. and Coleman, Tim and Lewis, Sarah (2015) Maternal smoking and the risk of still birth: systematic review

Background: Smoking in pregnancy is known to be associated with a range of adverse pregnancy outcomes, yet there is a high prevalence of smoking among pregnant women in many countries, and it remains a major public health concern. We have conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to provide contemporary estimates of the association between maternal smoking in pregnancy and the risk of stillbirth. Methods: We searched four databases namely MEDLINE, EMBASE, Psych Info and Web of Science for all relevant original studies published until 31 December 2012. We included observational studies that measured the association between maternal smoking during pregnancy and the risk of stillbirth. Results: 1766 studies were screened for title analysis, of which 34 papers (21 cohorts, 8 case controls and 5 cross sectional studies) met the inclusion criteria. In meta-analysis smoking during pregnancy was significantly associated with a 47% increase in the odds of stillbirth (OR 1.47, 95% CI 1.37, 1.57, p < 0.0001). In subgroup analysis, smoking 1-9 cig/day and ≥10 cig/day was associated with an 9% and 52% increase in the odds of stillbirth respectively. Subsequently, studies defining stillbirth at ≥ 20 weeks demonstrated a 43% increase in odds for smoking mothers compared to mothers who do not smoke, (OR 1.43, 95% CI 1.32, 1.54, p < 0.0001), whereas studies with stillbirth defined at ≥ 24 weeks and ≥ 28 weeks showed 58% and 33% increase in the odds of stillbirth respectively. Conclusion: Our review confirms a dose-response effect of maternal smoking in pregnancy on risk of stillbirth. To minimise the risk of stillbirth, reducing current smoking prevalence in pregnancy should continue to be a key public health high priority.
A Bounded Intensity Process for the Reliability of Repairable Equipment

In the failure pattern of repairable equipment subjected to reliability deterioration with operating time, the repeated application of the repair actions sometimes produces a finite bound for the increasing failure intensity. In this paper, a non-homogeneous Poisson process for which the failure intensity is an increasing bounded function is proposed. The characteristics of the proposed model and the physical meaning of its parameters are discussed. It is shown that the proposed model evolves initially as the power law process with shape parameter equal to 2, and then converges asymptotically to the homogeneous Poisson process, the latter being a limiting form of the proposed bounded intensity model. Maximum likelihood estimates and approximate confidence intervals for the model parameters are given as well as a testing procedure for a time trend. Percentile points of the test statistic are computed by simulation for failure truncated samples, and the power of the proposed testing procedure is evaluated and compared to that of two commonly used tests. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the proposed model and related inference and testing procedures.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRE-OPERATIVE BODY MASS INDEX AND LENGTH OF OPERATION OF LAPAROSCOPIC SLEEVE GASTRECTOMY

: Background: The BMI has been investigated as one of risk factors of perioperative and postoperative complications. However, the BMI effect on intraoperative and duration of laparoscopic Sleeve gastrectomy had not been addressed in literature. Methods: This study is a part of retrospective cohort conducted in (), correlation analysis was used to detect the relationship between duration of LSG and BMI. We used Kendall’s tau correlation for the relationship between two non-normally distributed variables, otherwise the Pearson’s correlation was used. A significant correlation is considered when P-value is less than 0.05. For pair wise comparisons of continuous variable, Mann Whitney test was used for non-parametric data otherwise, t-test was used to detect the difference between two groups. Results: Based on our results, there was no significant relationship between the BMI and length of the operation (P-value = 0.85) or whether long or short surgery based on BMI (P-value = 0.58). Furthermore, no difference in BMI between those who had intraoperative complications and those who had not (P-value = 0.57). Conclusion: The Body Mass Index (BMI) did not have effect on the duration of LSG and intraoperative complications.
Toll-Like Receptor 2 Deﬁciency Is Associated with Enhanced Severity of Group B Streptococcal Disease (cid:1)

Group B streptococcus (GBS) has been recognized as an ever-growing cause of serious invasive infections in nonpregnant adults, in particular, in association with severe underlying diseases. The most common manifestations include primary bacteremia, urinary tract infections, pneumonia, meningitis, peritonitis, and osteoarticular infections. Toll-like receptor-2 (TLR2) mediates host responses to gram-positive bacteria. TLR2 function was investigated in murine GBS-induced sepsis and arthritis in wild-type (wt) and TLR2-deﬁcient (TLR2 (cid:1) / (cid:1) ) mice. Mice were infected with different doses of GBS (10 7 , 5 (cid:2) 10 6 , or 10 6 CFU per mouse). Mortality, appearance of arthritis, GBS growth in the organs, and local and systemic cytokine and chemokine production were examined. TLR2 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice showed earlier and higher mortality rates and increased incidence and severity of arthritis than wt mice at all the infecting doses employed. Histopathological analysis of the joints conﬁrmed clinical observations. TLR2 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice exhibited a higher microbial load in blood, kidneys, and joints than wt animals. In vitro experiments performed with peritoneal polymorphonuclear cells and macro- phages showed a signiﬁcantly lower bactericidal ability of cells from TLR2 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice. Increased systemic and local levels of interleukin-1 (cid:3) (IL-1 (cid:3) ), IL-6, tumor necrosis factor alpha, macrophage inﬂammatory protein-1 (cid:4) (MIP-1 (cid:4) ), and MIP-2 accompanied the more severe development of sepsis and arthritis in TLR2 (cid:1) / (cid:1) mice. In conclusion, the lack of TLR2 was associated with an impaired host resistance to GBS infection, likely due to a diminished bacterial clearing and a consequent enhanced inﬂammatory response.
Real-Time Big Data Analytics for Traffic Monitoring and Management for Pedestrian and Cyclist Safety

— In this study, we design and develop an end-to-end system based on data analytics and deep learning methods to monitor, count, and manage traffic, particularly, pedestrians and bicyclists in real-time. The main objective of this research is to improve the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists, by applying self-sensed and intelligent systems to control and monitor the flow of pedestrians/bicyclists particularly at intersections. This paper proposes an effective end-to-end system for traffic vision, detection, and counting on real-time traffic videos. The developed system is evaluated on 12 hours of real video streams captured from actual traffic cameras in the city of Los Angeles. According to the results, the developed system can count the pedestrians with less than 2% error.
Investigation of V2I Channel Transitions in Urban Environment

This paper investigates the behaviour of Vehicleto-Infrastructure (V2I) channels when propagation conditions transition from Line-of-Sight (LoS) to Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) and when the vehicle is approaching an open square from a narrow street. The measurement data used is obtained from a channel sounding campaign at 2.53 GHz center frequency in the city of Bonn, Germany. The channel is investigated in terms of average receive power separated into coand crosspolar components. Furthermore, second order statistics such as delay and angular spreads are analysed. We observe a similar behaviour when links transition between LoS and NLoS and between open square and narrow street. In both cases power decreases and spreads increase. A transition area can be identified that starts/ends well before/after the actual LoS area or open square indicating the necessity of proper modelling of such areas.
Photosynthesis and Photorespiration-I. Their roles in Yield and of Stress Resistance of C 3 Crop Plants Whole Plant Physiology 26-35

The quantitative and functional relationships between Photosynthesis ( P ) and Photorespiration ( PR ) are illustrated from the data and the modelling of exchanges obtained by mass spectrometry techniques and 18 O 2 labelling. A brief history of oxygen and the roles of PR on plant evolution and at the present time, is reviewed. The function of a ‘mirror effect’ in the regulation between carboxylation and oxygenation cycles is underlined, in particular to mimic the effect of stomata and mesophyll regulation. Another function of regulation, under saturated light is underlined. The fitting of P and PR exchanges by a simple model allows the definition of the Plant Specificity factor for CO 2 ( Sp ), directly determining the photosynthetic yield and the response of P and PR to CO 2 and O 2 concentrations. It is the sum of the biochemical Rubisco specificity and a biophysical specificity related to the conductances to CO 2 diffusion. Their relative importance in the photosynthetic yield is emphasized. The constancy of Sp under different photosynthetic regimes implies a regulation of internal CO 2 maintaining a constant ratio P / PR .
When Comments and Code Diverge

In large software development projects the majority of code comments are written at the beginning of the project and tend to not be updated when the code is rewritten. This commonly results in code with incorrect comments or no comments at all. This study intends to answer whether incorrect comments can mislead programmers and if well written comments assist programmers in interpreting new code. Furthermore, the attitudes towards code comments are investigated. The research questions were answered with data from forms and code tests run on 35 engineering students. For the code tests eye trackers were used to provide a clear picture of how much the participants read the code and the associated comments. A majority of the test subjects agreed that comments are important whilst 8% considered comments to be unnecessary. 50% of the test subjects expressed positive feelings towards writing comments. The data from the eye tracker showed that the test subjects read comments and code equally. The study found that incorrect comments in many cases lead to misconceptions. Correct comments were shown to assist the programmer if the code contained library functions that the programmer was not familiar with. Regarding correct comments versus no comments at all there was no difference in readability if the code did not contain any library functions.
Community-based and pro-poor tourism: Initial assessment of their relation to community development Initial

Alternative forms of tourism development from its conventional approach such as community-based tourism (CBT) and pro-poor tourism (PPT) are proposed to be specifically relevant to alleviate poverty and facilitate the development of disadvantaged community members. The intention of this review paper is to show, despite an apparent similarity, that there are indeed substantial differences between CBT and PPT. While CBT is an alternative to conventional mass tourism and it prioritises control by disadvantaged community members and the benefits of the tourism sector within a social justice perspective with redistributive aims, PPT originated, sustained and is sustained by the neoliberal system and its work does not offer great possibilities of changing the status quo . This, in effect, increases the inequality gap. The paper concludes that the tourism sector properly and holistically fosters social justice and redistributive measures to decrease the inequality gap and further proposes PPT strategies needed to take a CBT direction guiding the tourism sector as a whole. greater understanding of the correlation between tourism, development theories and community
Analysis of a hybrid Android system for fall detection

Universidad de Malaga, Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucia Tech. This work was supported by European FEDER funds and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant TEC2013-42711-R] (URL: http://www.mineco.gob.es/portal/site/mineco/)
Chained Anomaly Detection Models for Federated Learning: An Intrusion Detection Case Study

The adoption of machine learning and deep learning is on the rise in the cybersecurity domain where these AI methods help strengthen traditional system monitoring and threat detection solutions. However, adversaries too are becoming more effective in concealing malicious behavior amongst large amounts of benign behavior data. To address the increasing time-to-detection of these stealthy attacks, interconnected and federated learning systems can improve the detection of malicious behavior by joining forces and pooling together monitoring data. The major challenge that we address in this work is that in a federated learning setup, an adversary has many more opportunities to poison one of the local machine learning models with malicious training samples, thereby influencing the outcome of the federated learning and evading detection. We present a solution where contributing parties in federated learning can be held accountable and have their model updates audited. We describe a permissioned blockchain-based federated learning method where incremental updates to an anomaly detection machine learning model are chained together on the distributed ledger. By integrating federated learning with blockchain technology, our solution supports the auditing of machine learning models without the necessity to centralize the training data. Experiments with a realistic intrusion detection use case and an autoencoder for anomaly detection illustrate that the increased complexity caused by blockchain technology has a limited performance impact on the federated learning, varying between 5 and 15%, while providing full transparency over the distributed training process of the neural network. Furthermore, our blockchain-based federated learning solution can be generalized and applied to more sophisticated neural network architectures and other use cases.