Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Brain MR Image Classification Using Superpixel-Based Deep Transfer Learning

Nowadays, brain MR (Magnetic Resonance) images are widely used by clinicians to examine the brain's anatomy to look into various pathological conditions like cerebrovascular incidents and neuro-degenerative diseases. Generally, these diseases can be identified with the MR images as “normal” and “abnormal” brains in a two-class classification problem or as disease-specific classes in a multi-class problem. This article presents an ensemble transfer learning-inspired deep architecture that uses the simple linear iterative clustering (SLIC)-based superpixel algorithm along with convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify the MR images as normal or abnormal. Superpixel algorithm segments the input MR images into clusters of regions defined by similarity measures using perceptual feature space. These superpixel images are beneficial as they can provide a compact and meaningful role in computationally demanding applications. The superpixel images are then fed to the deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify the images. Three brain MR image datasets, NITR-DHH, DS-75, and DS-160, are used to conduct the experimentation. Through the use of deep transfer learning, the model achieves performance accuracy of 88.15% (NITR-DHH), 98.15% (DS-160), and 98.33% (DS-75) even with the small-scale medical image dataset. The experimentally obtained results demonstrate that the proposed method is promising and efficient for clinical applications for diagnosing different brain diseases via MR images.
Perturbation growth in accreting filaments

We use smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulations to investigate the growth of perturbations in infinitely long filaments as they form and grow by accretion. The growth of these perturbations leads to filament fragmentation and the formation of cores. Most previous work on this subject has been confined to the growth and fragmentation of equilibrium filaments and has found that there exists a preferential fragmentation length-scale which is roughly four times the filament's diameter. Our results show a more complicated dispersion relation with a series of peaks linking perturbation wavelength and growth rate. These are due to gravo-acoustic oscillations along the longitudinal axis during the sub-critical phase of growth. The positions of the peaks in growth rate have a strong dependence on both the mass accretion rate onto the filament and the temperature of the gas. When seeded with a multiwavelength density power spectrum, there exists a clear preferred core separation equal to the largest peak in the dispersion relation. Our results allow one to estimate a minimum age for a filament which is breaking up into regularly spaced fragments, as well as an average accretion rate. We apply the model to observations of filaments in Taurus by Tafalla & Hacar and find accretion rates consistent with those estimated by Palmeirim et al.
In the parvocellular part of paraventricular nucleus, glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons mediate cardiovascular responses to AngII

Angiotensinergic, GABAergic, and glutamatergic neurons are present in the parvocellular region of the paraventricular nucleus (PVNp). It has been shown that microinjection of AngII into the PVNp increases arterial pressure (AP) and heart rate (HR). The presence of synapses between the angiotensinergic, GABAergic, and glutamatergic neurons has been shown in the PVNp. In this study, we investigated the possible interaction between these three systems of the PVNp for control of AP and HR.
Determination of shower central position in laterally segmented lead-fluoride electromagnetic calorimeters

The spatial resolution of laterally segmented electromagnetic calorimeters, built of lead fluoride material, is studied on the basis of Monte-Carlo simulations. Parametrization of the relative resolution on the shower position is proposed and optimized in terms of the energy of incoming particles and the elementary size of the calorimeter blocks. A new fit algorithm method is proposed that improves spatial resolution at high energies (> 5 GeV), and provides guidance for the design optimization of electromagnetic calorimeters.
Contribution of Tibetan Plateau ecosystems to local and remote precipitation through moisture recycling

The ecosystems of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) provide multiple important ecosystem services that benefit both local populations and those beyond, such as through climate regulation services on precipitation for East Asia and China. However, the precipitation regulation service of the TP ecosystems for supplying moisture and maintaining precipitation is yet to be evaluated. In this study, we used the moisture recycling framework and a moisture tracking model to quantify the precipitation regulation services of TP ecosystems for their contribution to precipitation. We found TP ecosystems contributed substantially to local and downwind precipitation, with a contribution of 221 mm/year for the TP and neighboring areas through evapotranspiration (ET) (104 mm/year through transpiration), declined to <10 mm/year for eastern China and other surrounding countries. Among ecosystem types, grassland contributed most to precipitation, followed by barren and snow lands, forests, and shrublands. In terms of seasonality, precipitation contribution from TP ecosystems was greater in summer months than in non‐summer months for western China, while the opposite was true for eastern China—although the magnitude was much smaller. Over the past two decades, the significant ET increases in TP translated to a widespread increase in precipitation contribution for TP and downwind beneficiary regions from 2000 to 2020. Our study provides a quantitative way to understand the precipitation regulation services of TP ecosystems through moisture recycling, substantiating their key role to maintain precipitation and the water cycle for downwind regions—effectively acting as an ecological safeguard that could be perceived by the public.
Differentiable SAR Renderer and Image-Based Target Reconstruction

Forward modeling of wave scattering and radar imaging mechanisms is the key to information extraction from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Like inverse graphics in the optical domain, an inherently-integrated forward-inverse approach would be promising for SAR advanced information retrieval and target reconstruction. This paper presents such an attempt at inverse graphics for SAR imagery. A differentiable SAR renderer (DSR) is developed, which reformulates the mapping and projection algorithm of the SAR imaging mechanism in the differentiable form of probability maps. First-order gradients of the proposed DSR are then analytically derived, which can be back-propagated from rendered image/silhouette to the target geometry and scattering attributes. A 3D inverse target reconstruction algorithm from SAR images is devised. Several simulation and reconstruction experiments are conducted, including targets with and without background, using synthesized data or real measured inverse SAR (ISAR) data by ground radar. Results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed DSR and its inverse approach.
Default Mode Network Modulation by Psychedelics: A Systematic Review

Abstract Psychedelics are a unique class of drug that commonly produce vivid hallucinations as well as profound psychological and mystical experiences. A grouping of interconnected brain regions characterized by increased temporal coherence at rest have been termed the Default Mode Network (DMN). The DMN has been the focus of numerous studies assessing its role in self-referencing, mind wandering, and autobiographical memories. Altered connectivity in the DMN has been associated with a range of neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. To date, several studies have investigated how psychedelics modulate this network, but no comprehensive review, to our knowledge, has critically evaluated how major classical psychedelic agents—lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, and ayahuasca—modulate the DMN. Here we present a systematic review of the knowledge base. Across psychedelics there is consistent acute disruption in resting state connectivity within the DMN and increased functional connectivity between canonical resting-state networks. Various models have been proposed to explain the cognitive mechanisms of psychedelics, and in one model DMN modulation is a central axiom. Although the DMN is consistently implicated in psychedelic studies, it is unclear how central the DMN is to the therapeutic potential of classical psychedelic agents. This article aims to provide the field with a comprehensive overview that can propel future research in such a way as to elucidate the neurocognitive mechanisms of psychedelics.
Phosphodiesterase inhibitor, Vinpocetine, guards against doxorubicin induced cardiotoxicity via modulation of HIF/VEGF and cGMP/cAMP/SIRT signaling pathways

Purpose: Doxorubicin (DOX) is a widely used chemotherapeutic agent complicated with cardiotoxic adverse effects. Up till now, there are no researches discussing the role of vinpocetine (VIN) in DOX cardiotoxicity. Thus, the aim of our work was to study this effect and explore the different involved mechanisms. Methods: 50 male Wistar albino rats were subjected to DOX toxicity via administration of single i.p. Dose (15 mg/kg) on the 4th day with or without co-administration of VIN (10, 20, 30 mg/kg/day) orally for 5 days. Results: Our data revealed that VIN succeeded in protecting the heart against DOX induced damage as manifested by significant decrease of cardiac enzymes, hypoxia inducible factor alpha (HIF-1α), vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A), tissue malondialdehyde (MDA), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and caspase3 levels. Furthermore, VIN given group showed marked improvement of the histopathological changes of cardiac injury, total antioxidant capacity (TAC), elevation of reduced glutathione (GSH), cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and sirtuin-1 (SIRT-1). Conclusion: We concluded that VIN could ameliorate DOX induced cardiac damage and this effect may be attributed to modulation of HIF/VEGF signaling pathway, up-regulation of cGMP/cAMP/SIRT pathway, inhibition of phosphodiesterase enzyme, besides its anti-apoptotic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-oxidant properties.
LHC search for di-Higgs decays of stoponium and other scalars in events with two photons and two bottom jets

We study the prospects for LHC discovery of a narrow resonance that decays to two Higgs bosons, using the final state of two photons and two bottom jets. Our work is motivated in part by a scenario in which two-body flavor-preserving decays of the top squark are kinematically forbidden. Stoponium, a hadronic bound state of the top squark and its anti-particle, will then form, and may have a large branching fraction into the two Higgs boson final state. We estimate the cross-section needed for a 5-sigma discovery at the 14 TeV LHC for such a narrow di-Higgs resonance, using the invariant mass distributions of the final state bottom jets and photons, as a function of the integrated luminosity. The results are also applicable to any other di-Higgs resonance produced by gluon fusion.
ON THE LOCAL DARK MATTER DENSITY

An analysis of the kinematics of 412 stars at 1–4 kpc from the Galactic midplane by Moni Bidin et al. has claimed to derive a local density of dark matter that is an order of magnitude below standard expectations. We show that this result is incorrect and that it arises from the assumption that the mean azimuthal velocity of the stellar tracers is independent of Galactocentric radius at all heights. We substitute the assumption, supported by data, that the circular speed is independent of radius in the midplane. We demonstrate that the assumption of constant mean azimuthal velocity is implausible by showing that it requires the circular velocity to drop more steeply than allowed by any plausible mass model, with or without dark matter, at large heights above the midplane. Using the approximation that the circular-velocity curve is flat in the midplane, we find that the data imply a local dark matter density of 0.008 ± 0.003 M☉ pc−3 = 0.3 ± 0.1 GeV cm−3, fully consistent with standard estimates of this quantity. This is the most robust direct measurement of the local dark matter density to date.
Accessible PDFs: Applying Artificial Intelligence for Automated Remediation of STEM PDFs

People with visual impairments use assistive technology, e.g., screen readers, to navigate and read PDFs. However, such screen readers need extra information about the logical structure of the PDF, such as the reading order, header levels, and mathematical formulas, described in readable form to navigate the document in a meaningful way. This logical structure can be added to a PDF with tags. Creating tags for a PDF is time-consuming, and requires awareness and expert knowledge. Hence, most PDFs are left untagged, and as a result, they are poorly readable or unreadable for people who rely on screen readers. STEM documents are particularly problematic with their complex document structure and complicated mathematical formulae. These inaccessible PDFs present a major barrier for people with visual impairments wishing to pursue studies or careers in STEM fields, who cannot easily read studies and publications from their field. The goal of this Ph.D. is to apply artificial intelligence for document analysis to reasonably automate the remediation process of PDFs and present a solution for large mathematical formulae accessibility in PDFs. With these new methods, the Ph.D. research aims to lower barriers to creating accessible scientific PDFs, by reducing the time, effort, and expertise necessary to do so, ultimately facilitating greater access to scientific documents for people with visual impairments.
Supporting Physical Activity in Later Life: Perspectives from Older Adults

The older population, especially those living alone, is less likely to meet recommended physical activity levels than other age groups and deserves more attention in this era of population ageing. However, existing technologies for supporting physical activity have been generally poorly aligned with the needs of older adults. Reasons for such problem are manifold, including the lack of involving older adults in design and evaluation, prevalent technology-driven perspectives, and the complexity of designing behavior change technology. Therefore, this research project aims to investigate how to better design behavior change technology to support the needs of older adults living alone for physical activity, which will address four main aspects: meeting user needs, investigating the rationale of technology design, improving co-design practice, and evaluating designed technology. To this end, this project will employ a human-centered iterative design methodology and actively involve the target group in the design process to let their voices heard and incorporated in design. This research will not only contribute to a deeper understanding towards the needs and preferences of this insufficiently studied group, but also identify implications for improving co-design practices as well as design opportunities for future behavior change technology.
Animations at Your Fingertips: Using a Refreshable Tactile Display to Convey Motion Graphics for People who are Blind or have Low Vision

People who are blind rely on touch and hearing to understand the world around them, however it is extremely difficult to understand movement through these modes. The advent of refreshable tactile displays (RTDs) offers the potential for blind people to access tactile animations for the very first time. A survey of touch readers and vision accessibility experts revealed a high level of enthusiasm for tactile animations, particularly those relating to education, mapping and concept development. Based on these suggestions, a range of tactile animations were developed and four were presented to 12 touch readers. The RTD held advantages over traditional tactile graphics for conveying movement, depth and height, however there were trade-offs in terms of resolution and textural properties. This work offers a first glimpse into how refreshable tactile displays can best be utilised to convey animated graphics for people who are blind.
Improving Image Accessibility by Combining Haptic and Auditory Feedback

Advancements in accessibility have led to mobile applications that help blind or low vision people (BLV) access surrounding information independently. Unfortunately, accessibility of visual information such as images remains limited. Previous research demonstrated that spatial interaction can help BLV users build a mental model of the relative locations of image objects. As haptics has recently become a core component of modern smartphones, we extend this prior research by designing three prototypes that use haptic feedback to reveal object location in images. We evaluate these techniques in terms of experience and ability of BLV users to locate multiple objects in images. Evaluation results in a preliminary study with seven BLV users suggest that the proposed haptic feedback prototype with auditory notifications to identify people and auditory caption can provide a more accessible and engaging image experience.
On Asymptotic Expansion and CLT of Linear Eigenvalue Statistics for Sample Covariance Matrices When N/M → 0

We study the renormalized real sample covariance matrixH = XX/ √ MN− √ M/N with N/M → 0 as N,M → ∞ in this paper. And we always assume M = M(N). Here X = [Xjk]M×N is an M × N real random matrix with i.i. d entries, and we assume E|X11| < ∞ with some small positive δ. The Stieltjes transform mN (z) = NTr(H − z) and the linear eigenvalue statistics of H are considered. We mainly focus on the asymptotic expansion of E{mN(z)} in this paper. Then for some fine test function, a central limit theorem for the linear eigenvalue statistics of H is established. We show that the variance of the limiting normal distribution coincides with the case of a real Wigner matrix with Gaussian entries.
Vibrotactile Navigation for Visually Impaired People

One of the largest impediments to autonomous grocery shopping for blind people is navigation. In a still ongoing multi-year research process we followed a user centred approach to explore how visually impaired people can be supported in indoor navigational issues, whether vibrotactiles are the right channel for this, where the actuators should sit on the body, whether the hardware solution would be acceptable for people to use on a daily basis in public and how they feel about the system after three weeks of usage.
Understanding the Role of Socio-Technical Infrastructures on the Organization of Access for the Mixed-Ability Collaborators

Positioning disabled people as deficient, dysfunctional, and locating the ’problem’ of disability within the individual, the over-medicalized, individualistic, and not equity-oriented perspectives of disability have led to oppression, discrimination, and exclusion of disabled people from important parts of public life. The global politics of disability rights and disability movements have brought thorny questions regarding the nature of dominant explanations. Equity-oriented perspectives and collaborative approaches regarding organization and distribution of access started to gain visibility. HCI research has a vital potential to contribute to this by providing related tools and technologies for integrating equal access in the collaborative organization of access. Considering the existing literature, the question of how access is collaboratively organized, negotiated, distributed and scaled through socio-technical mechanisms especially at an institutional level, as well as how mixed-ability groups reorganize access by interacting with institutional socio-technical structures remains open. In this research, I aim to extend the body of literature in collaborative access by presenting the importance of socio-technical perspectives for designing collaborative technologies to support equal distribution of access. My research is about the significance of equity perspectives in access and interaction. Specifically, this research focuses on understanding the role of socio-technical infrastructures for the organization and distribution of access by mixed-ability collaborators and developing design insights for socio-technical mechanisms to support equal distribution of access for people with disabilities.
CodeWalk: Facilitating Shared Awareness in Mixed-Ability Collaborative Software Development

COVID-19 accelerated the trend toward remote software development, increasing the need for tightly-coupled synchronous collaboration. Existing tools and practices impose high coordination overhead on blind or visually impaired (BVI) developers, impeding their abilities to collaborate effectively, compromising their agency, and limiting their contribution. To make remote collaboration more accessible, we created CodeWalk, a set of features added to Microsoft’s Live Share VS Code extension, for synchronous code review and refactoring. We chose design criteria to ease the coordination burden felt by BVI developers by conveying sighted colleagues’ navigation and edit actions via sound effects and speech. We evaluated our design in a within-subjects experiment with 10 BVI developers. Our results show that CodeWalk streamlines the dialogue required to refer to shared workspace locations, enabling participants to spend more time contributing to coding tasks. This design offers a path towards enabling BVI and sighted developers to collaborate on more equal terms.
Exploring Motor-impaired Programmers’ Use of Speech Recognition

Typing programs can be difficult or impossible for programmers with motor impairments. Programming by voice can be a promising alternative. In this research, we explored the perceptions of motor-impaired programmers with regard to programming by voice. We learned that leveraging existing voice-based programming platforms to speak code can be more complicated than it needs to be. The interviewees expressed their frustration with long hours of memorizing unnatural commands in order to enter code by voice. In addition, we found a preference for being able to speak code in a flexible manner without requiring strict adherence to a grammar.
The bandwidth of perceptual awareness is constrained by specific high-level visual features

When observers glance at a natural scene, which aspects of that scene ultimately 1 reach perceptual awareness? To answer this question, we showed observers images 2 of scenes that had been altered in numerous ways in the periphery (e.g., scrambling, 3 rotating, filtering, etc.) and measured how often these different alterations were 4 noticed in an inattentional blindness paradigm. Then, we screened a wide range 5 of deep convolutional neural network architectures and asked which layers and 6 features best predict the rates at which observers noticed these alterations. We found 7 that features in the higher (but not earlier) layers predicted how often observers 8 noticed different alterations with extremely high accuracy (at the estimated noise 9 ceiling). Surprisingly, the model prediction accuracy was driven by a very small 10 fraction of features that were both necessary and sufficient to predict the observed 11 behavior, which we could easily visualize. Together these results indicate that 12 human perceptual awareness is limited by high-level visual features that we can 13 estimate using computational methods. 14