Digital Commons Network^™

Forged Text Detection In Video, Scene, And Document Images, Lokesh Nandanwar, Palaiahnakote Shivakumara, Prabir Mondal, Karpuravalli Srinivas, Raghunandan, Umapada Pal, Tong Lu, Daniel Lopresti

Journal Articles

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence have made it possible to produce forgeries good enough to fool an average user. As a result, there is growing interest in developing robust methods to counter such forgeries. This study presents a new Fourier spectrum-based method for detecting forged text in video images. The authors' premise is that brightness distribution and the spectrum shape exhibit irregular patterns (inconsistencies) for forged text, while appearing more regular for original text. The method divides the spectrum of an input image into sectors and tracks to highlight these effects. Specifically, positive and negative coefficients for sectors and tracks …

The Brief Case:, Eileen M Burd, Ahmed Babiker, Jessica K Fairley, Divya Bhamidipati, Laila E Woc-Colburn, Blaine A Mathison

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Inequality Measures: The Kolkata Index In Comparison With Other Measures, Suchismita Banerjee, Bikas K. Chakrabarti, Manipushpak Mitra, Suresh Mutuswami

Journal Articles

We provide a survey of the Kolkata index of social inequality, focusing in particular on income inequality. Based on the observation that inequality functions (such as the Lorenz function), giving the measures of income or wealth against that of the population, to be generally nonlinear, we show that the fixed point (like Kolkata index k) of such a nonlinear function (or related, like the complementary Lorenz function) offer better measure of inequality than the average quantities (like Gini index). Indeed the Kolkata index can be viewed as a generalized Hirsch index for a normalized inequality function and gives the fraction …

Clinical Prediction Of Coronavirus Disease-2019: How Accurate Can One Be?, Gabriel Aisenberg, Kevin O Hwang

Journal Articles

Background Some models based on clinical information have been reported to predict which patients have Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia but have failed so far to yield reliable results. We aimed to determine if physicians were able to accurately predict which patients, as described in clinical vignettes, had, or did not have this infection using their clinical acumen and epidemiological data. Methods Of 1177 patients under investigation for COVID-19 admitted, we selected 20 and presented them in a vignette form. We surveyed physicians from different levels of training (

Enhanced Gamma Band Mutual Information Is Associated With Impaired Consciousness During Temporal Lobe Seizures, Puneet Dheer, Sandipan Pati, Kalyan Kumar Chowdhury, Kaushik Kumar Majumdar

Journal Articles

Background: Epileptic seizures are characterized by aberrant synchronization. We hypothesized that higher synchronization across the seizure onset zone (SOZ) channels during a temporal lobe seizure contributes to impaired consciousness. New method: All symmetric bivariate synchronization measures were extended to multivariate measure by a principal component analysis (PCA) based technique. A novel nonparametric method has been proposed to test the statistical significance between increased synchronization across the seizure onset zone (SOZ) channels and reduced consciousness. Results: Increased synchronization in the gamma band towards seizure termination significantly contributes to impaired consciousness (p < 0.1). Synchronization reaches its peak in the extratemporal region (frontal lobe) ahead of the temporal region (p < 0.05). Synchronization is prominent in beta and gamma bands by most methods and it is more in the second half of seizure duration than in the first (p < 0.05). Conclusions: Mutual information is the only synchronization measure out of the six that we studied, whose increase can be associated with the loss of consciousness in a statistically significant way.

A Poll Tax By Another Name: Considering The Constitutionality Of Conditioning Naturalization And The “Right To Have Rights” On An Ability To Pay, John Harland Giammatteo

Journal Articles

Permanent residents must naturalize to enjoy full access to constitutional rights, particularly the right to vote. However, new regulations from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), finalized in early August and originally slated to go into effect one month before the 2020 election, would drastically increase the cost of naturalization, moving it out of reach for many otherwise-qualified permanent residents, while at the same time abolishing any meaningful fee waiver for low-income applicants. In doing so, USCIS has sought to condition naturalization and its attendant rights on an individual’s financial status. In this Essay, I juxtapose the new fee regulations …

Technologies Of Language Meet Ideologies Of Law, Anya Bernstein

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Laboratory Versus Daily Life Gait Characteristics In Patients With Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’S Disease, And Matched Controls, Vrutangkumar V. Shah, James Mcnames, Martina Mancini, Patricia Carlson-Kuhta, Rebecca I. Spain, John G. Nutt, Mahmoud El-Gohary, Carolin Curtze, Fay B. Horak

Journal Articles

Background and purpose

Recent findings suggest that a gait assessment at a discrete moment in a clinic or laboratory setting may not reflect functional, everyday mobility. As a step towards better understanding gait during daily life in neurological populations, we compared gait measures that best discriminated people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and people with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) from their respective, age-matched, healthy control subjects (MS-Ctl, PD-Ctl) in laboratory tests versus a week of daily life monitoring.

Methods

We recruited 15 people with MS (age mean ± SD: 49 ± 10 years), 16 MS-Ctl (45 ± 11 years), 16 people with …

Enhanced Tensor Non-Gaussianities In Presence Of A Source, Abhishek Naskar, Supratik Pal

Journal Articles

We address the possibility of having an enhanced signal for tensor non-Gaussianities in presence of a source, as a signature of Primordial Gravitational Waves. We employ a nearly model-independent framework based on Effective Field Theory of inflation and compute tensor non-Gaussianities therefrom sourced by particle production during (p)reheating to arrive at an enhanced signal strength. We obtain the non-linearity parameters and also find that squeezed limit bispectra are more enhanced than equilateral limit.

Deep Invariant Texture Features For Water Image Classification, Minglong Xue, Palaiahnakote Shivakumara, Xuerong Wu, Tong Lu, Umapada Pal, Michael Blumenstein, Daniel Lopresti

Journal Articles

Detecting potential issues in naturally captured images of water is a challenging task due to visual similarities between clean and polluted water, as well as causes posed by image acquisition with different camera angles and placements. This paper presents novel deep invariant texture features along with a deep network for detecting clean and polluted water images. The proposed method first divides an input image into H, S and V components to extract finer details. For each of the color spaces, the proposed approach generates two directional coherence images based on Eigen value analysis and gradient distribution, which results in enhanced …

Binary Black Hole Information Loss Paradox And Future Prospects, Ayan Mitra, Pritam Chattopadhyay, Goutam Paul, Vasileios Zarikas

Journal Articles

Various techniques to tackle the black hole information paradox have been proposed. A new way out to tackle the paradox is via the use of a pseudo-density operator. This approach has successfully dealt with the problem with a two-qubit entangle system for a single black hole. In this paper, we present the interaction with a binary black hole system by using an arrangement of the three-qubit system of Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state. We show that our results are in excellent agreement with the theoretical value. We have also studied the interaction between the two black holes by considering the correlation between …

Gait And Balance Disturbances Are Common In Young Urbanites And Associated With Cognitive Impairment. Air Pollution And The Historical Development Of Alzheimer's Disease In The Young, Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, Ana Karen Torres-Solorio, Randy J. Kulesza, Ricardo Torres-Jardón, Luis Oscar González-González, Berenice García-Arreola, Diana A. Chávez-Franco, Samuel C. Luévano-Castro, Ariatna Hernández-Castillo, Esperanza Carlos-Hernández, Edelmira Solorio-López, Celia Nohemí Crespo-Cortés, Edgar García-Rojas, Partha S. Mukherjee, Martha Morales-Aguirre

Journal Articles

To determine whether gait and balance dysfunction are present in young urbanites exposed to fine particular matter PM2.5 ≥ annual USEPA standard, we tested gait and balance with Tinetti and Berg tests in 575 clinically healthy subjects, age 21.0 ± 5.7 y who were residents in Metropolitan Mexico City, Villahermosa and Reynosa. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment was also applied to an independent cohort n:76, age 23.3 ± 9.1 y. In the 575 cohort, 75.4% and 34.4% had abnormal total Tinetti and Berg scores and high risk of falls in 17.2% and 5.7% respectively. BMI impacted negatively Tinetti and Berg performance. …

C R Rao And Mahalanobis’ Distance, Probal Chaudhuri

Journal Articles

C R Rao has made seminal contributions in many areas in statistics. A review of some of his fundamental contributions towards the development of the theory and application of Mahalanobis distance in classification problems is presented here. The review is based on information provided in some of Rao’s famous research and autobiographical papers.

Codc: A Copula-Based Model To Identify Differential Coexpression, Sumanta Ray, Snehalika Lall, Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay

Journal Articles

Differential coexpression has recently emerged as a new way to establish a fundamental difference in expression pattern among a group of genes between two populations. Earlier methods used some scoring techniques to detect changes in correlation patterns of a gene pair in two conditions. However, modeling differential coexpression by means of finding differences in the dependence structure of the gene pair has hitherto not been carried out. We exploit a copula-based framework to model differential coexpression between gene pairs in two different conditions. The Copula is used to model the dependency between expression profiles of a gene pair. For a …

Birth Interval And Childhood Undernutrition: Evidence From A Large Scale Survey In India, Holendro Singh Chungkham, Harihar Sahoo, Strong P. Marbaniang

Journal Articles

Background: The study of birth interval is important for maternal and child health. The long birth interval is favorable for maternal, child health, and nutritional outcomes. The present study is an attempt to explore the relationship between birth intervals and poor nutritional condition of children under five years of age in India. Methods: The unit of analysis is children under five years of age in India. The data come from the fourth round of Indian National Family Health Survey, 2015–2016. Bivariate and logistic regression model were used to explore the relationship between birth intervals and the poor nutritional status of …

Application Of Random Forest And Data Integration Identifies Three Dysregulated Genes And Enrichment Of Central Carbon Metabolism Pathway In Oral Cancer, Srija Mukhopadhyay, Sahana Ghosh, Debodipta Das, P. Arun, Bidyut Roy, Nidhan K. Biswas, Arindam Maitra, Partha P. Majumder

Journal Articles

Background: Studies of epigenomic alterations associated with diseases primarily focus on methylation profiles of promoter regions of genes, but not of other genomic regions. In our past work (Das et al. 2019) on patients suffering from gingivo-buccal oral cancer – the most prevalent form of cancer among males in India – we have also focused on promoter methylation changes and resultant impact on transcription profiles. Here, we have investigated alterations in non-promoter (gene-body) methylation profiles and have carried out an integrative analysis of gene-body methylation and transcriptomic data of oral cancer patients. Methods: Tumor and adjacent normal tissue samples were …

Tracheostomy While On Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation: A Comparison Of Percutaneous And Open Procedures, Ismael A Salas De Armas, Kha Dinh, Bindu Akkanti, Pushan Jani, Reshma Hussain, Lisa Janowiak, Kayla Kutilek, Manish K Patel, Mehmet H Akay, Rahat Hussain, Jayeshkumar Patel, Chandni Patel, Yafen Liang, John Zaki, Biswajit Kar, Igor D Gregoric

Journal Articles

Although the ideal timing of tracheostomy for critically ill patients is controversial, transitioning from an endotracheal tube can be beneficial. Concerns arise for patients under extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support. Studies have described percutaneous and open tracheostomy approaches for critically ill patients but, to our knowledge, have not compared the two specifically in ECMO patients. This study analyzed safety and aimed to identify if there was a difference in major bleeding or other tracheostomy-associated complications. A single-center retrospective cohort study of all patients who received tracheostomy while on ECMO from July 2013 to May 2019 was completed. The primary endpoint …

The Correlation Between Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Safety Culture And Quality Of Care, Jochen Profit, Paul J Sharek, Xin Cui, Courtney C Nisbet, Eric J Thomas, Daniel S Tawfik, Henry C Lee, David Draper, J Bryan Sexton

Journal Articles

OBJECTIVES: Key validated clinical metrics are being used individually and in aggregate (Baby-MONITOR) to monitor the performance of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The degree to which perceptions of key components of safety culture, safety climate, and teamwork are related to aspects of NICU quality of care is poorly understood. The objective of this study was to test whether NICU performance on key clinical metrics correlates with caregiver perceptions of safety culture.

STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study of 6253 very low-birth-weight infants in 44 NICUs. We measured clinical quality via the Baby-MONITOR and its nine risk-adjusted and standardized subcomponents (antenatal corticosteroids, …

Dysbiotic Lesional Microbiome With Filaggrin Missense Variants Associate With Atopic Dermatitis In India, Shankha Nath, Naina Kumari, Debabrata Bandyopadhyay, Neloy Sinha, Partha P. Majumder, Rupak Mitra, Souvik Mukherjee

Journal Articles

Background: Atopic Dermatitis (AD) has been associated with the loss of function (LoF) mutations in Filaggrin (FLG) gene and increase in relative abundance of specific microbes in the lesional skin, predominantly in Caucasians. Our study aims to determine, in Indian AD patients, (a) the prevalence of FLG LoF and missense mutations, and (b) the nature and extent of dysbiosis and altered microbial pathways with and without mutations in FLG. AD patients (n = 34) and healthy controls (n = 54) were recruited from India in this study and shotgun sequencing was carried out in a subset of samples with adequate …

Copyright And The Brain, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

This Article exploresthe intersection of copyright law, aesthetic theory, and neuroscience. The current test for copyright infringement requires a court or jury to assess whether the parties’ works are “substantially similar” from the vantage point of the “ordinary observer. ”Embedded within this test are several assumptions about audiences and art. Brain science calls these assumptions into question. The substantial similarity test posits that aesthetic reactions are unmeasurable and uniform. In actuality, they can be quantified and vary depending on audience and artistic medium. Neuroscience has already reconfigured the law in many areas, from tort damages to the death penalty. Now …

Impact Of Diabetes On The Gut And Salivary Iga Microbiomes, Eric L Brown, Heather T Essigmann, Kristi L Hoffman, Noah W Palm, Sarah M Gunter, Joel M Sederstrom, Joseph F Petrosino, Goo Jun, David Aguilar, William B Perkison, Craig L Hanis, Herbert L Dupont

Journal Articles

Mucosal surfaces like those present in the lung, gut, and mouth interface with distinct external environments. These mucosal gateways are not only portals of entry for potential pathogens but also homes to microbial communities that impact host health. Secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA) is the single most abundant acquired immune component secreted onto mucosal surfaces and, via the process of immune exclusion, shapes the architecture of these microbiomes. Not all microorganisms at mucosal surfaces are targeted by SIgA; therefore, a better understanding of the SIgA-coated fraction may identify the microbial constituents that stimulate host immune responses in the context of health …

Lung Nodule In A Patient With Multiple Myeloma, William C Harding, Mathieu Marcoux, Roberto F Casal, Lara Bashoura, John Stewart, Hans C Lee, Saadia A Faiz

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Echoes Of 9/11: Rhetorical Analysis Of Presidential Statements In The "War On Terror", Bruce Ching

Journal Articles

This article examines persuasive statements by Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump involving appeals to national identity as a rhetorical foundation for anti-terrorism policy since 9/11. Their specific rhetorical methods have included the use of memorable catchphrases, alliteration, metaphorical framing, and contrast between values of the United States and those of the terrorists. President Bush focused on rallying the nation’s response against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, identifying the U.S. with “freedom itself” and invoking the phrase “War on Terror.” President Obama emphasized the importance of the nation’s values while denouncing the Bush administration’s torture of …

A Genome-Wide Association Study Discovers 46 Loci Of The Human Metabolome In The Hispanic Community Health Study/Study Of Latinos, Elena V Feofanova, Han Chen, Yulin Dai, Peilin Jia, Megan L Grove, Alanna C Morrison, Qibin Qi, Martha Daviglus, Jianwen Cai, Kari E North, Cathy C Laurie, Robert C Kaplan, Eric Boerwinkle, Bing Yu

Journal Articles

Variation in levels of the human metabolome reflect changes in homeostasis, providing a window into health and disease. The genetic impact on circulating metabolites in Hispanics, a population with high cardiometabolic disease burden, is largely unknown. We conducted genome-wide association analyses on 640 circulating metabolites in 3,926 Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos participants. The estimated heritability for 640 metabolites ranged between 0%-54% with a median at 2.5%. We discovered 46 variant-metabolite pairs (p value < 1.2 × 10

Efficient Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman Computation At The 256-Bit Security Level, Kaushik Nath, Palash Sarkar

Journal Articles

In this study, the authors introduce new Montgomery and Edwards form elliptic curves targeted at the 256-bit security level. To this end, they work with three primes, namely p1:= 2506 − 45, p2:= 2510 − 75 and p3:= 2521 − 1. While p3 has been considered earlier in the literature, p1 and p2 are new. They define a pair of birationally equivalent Montgomery and Edwards form curves over all the three primes. Efficient 64-bit assembly implementations targeted at Skylake and later generation Intel processors have been made for the shared secret computation phase of the Diffie-Hellman key agreement protocol for …

Characterizations Of Sars-Cov-2 Mutational Profile, Spike Protein Stability And Viral Transmission, Sayantan Laha, Joyeeta Chakraborty, Shantanab Das, Soumen Kanti Manna, Sampa Biswas, Raghunath Chatterjee

Journal Articles

The recent pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 infection has affected more than 3.0 million people worldwide with more than 200 thousand reported deaths. The SARS-CoV-2 genome has the capability of gaining rapid mutations as the virus spreads. Whole-genome sequencing data offers a wide range of opportunities to study mutation dynamics. The advantage of an increasing amount of whole-genome sequence data of SARS-CoV-2 intrigued us to explore the mutation profile across the genome, to check the genome diversity, and to investigate the implications of those mutations in protein stability and viral transmission. We have identified frequently mutated residues by aligning ~660 SARS-CoV-2 genomes …

Allogeneic Mesenchymal Cell Therapy In Anthracycline-Induced Cardiomyopathy Heart Failure Patients: The Cctrn Seneca Trial., Roberto Bolli, Emerson C Perin, James T Willerson, Phillip C Yang, Jay H Traverse, Timothy D Henry, Carl J Pepine, Raul D Mitrani, Joshua M Hare, Michael P Murphy, Keith L March, Sohail Ikram, David P Lee, Connor O'Brien, Jean-Bernard Durand, Kathy Miller, Joao A Lima, Mohammad R Ostovaneh, Bharath Ambale-Venkatesh, Adrian P Gee, Sara Richman, Doris A Taylor, Shelly L Sayre, Judy Bettencourt, Rachel W Vojvodic, Michelle L Cohen, Lara M Simpson, Dejian Lai, David Aguilar, Catalin Loghin, Lem Moyé, Ray F Ebert, Barry R Davis, Robert D Simari

Journal Articles

BACKGROUND: Anthracycline-induced cardiomyopathy (AIC) may be irreversible with a poor prognosis, disproportionately affecting women and young adults. Administration of allogeneic bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (allo-MSCs) is a promising approach to heart failure (HF) treatment.

OBJECTIVES: SENECA (Stem Cell Injection in Cancer Survivors) was a phase 1 study of allo-MSCs in AIC.

METHODS: Cancer survivors with chronic AIC (mean age 56.6 years; 68% women; NT-proBNP 1,426 pg/ml; 6 enrolled in an open-label, lead-in phase and 31 subjects randomized 1:1) received 1 × 10

RESULTS: A total of 97% of subjects underwent successful study product injections; all allo-MSC-assigned subjects received the …

Differences Between Joint-Space And Musculoskeletal Estimations Of Metabolic Rate Time Profiles, Arash Mohammadzadeh Gonabadi, Prokopios Antonellis, Philippe Malcolm

Journal Articles

Motion capture laboratories can measure multiple variables at high frame rates, but we can only measure the average metabolic rate of a stride using respiratory measurements. Biomechanical simulations with equations for calculating metabolic rate can estimate the time profile of metabolic rate within the stride cycle. A variety of methods and metabolic equations have been proposed, including metabolic time profile estimations based on joint parameters. It is unclear whether differences in estimations are due to differences in experimental data or due to methodological differences. This study aimed to compare two methods for estimating the time profile of metabolic rate, within …

Association Of Visceral Adipose Tissue And Subclinical Atherosclerosis In Us-Born Mexican Americans But Not First Generation Immigrants, Clarence Gill, Miryoung Lee, Kristina P Vatcheva, Nahid Rianon, Beverly Smulevitz, David D Mcpherson, Joseph B Mccormick, Susan P Fisher-Hoch, Susan T Laing

Journal Articles

Background Excess visceral adipose tissue (VAT) is a primary driver for the cardiometabolic complications of obesity; VAT-associated cardiovascular disease risk varies by race, but most studies have been done on Non-Hispanics. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical and metabolic correlates of VAT, its association with subclinical atherosclerosis, and the factors affecting this association in Mexican Americans. Methods and Results Participants (n=527) were drawn from the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort (CCHC), on whom a carotid ultrasound to assess carotid intima media thickness and a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scan to assess for VAT were obtained. Those in the highest quartiles of …

Stochastic Resonance Reduces Sway And Gait Variability In Individuals With Unilateral Transtibial Amputation: A Pilot Study, Aaron Likens, Jenny A. Kent, C. Ian Sloan, Shane R. Wurdeman, Nicholas Stergiou

Journal Articles

Sub-threshold (imperceptible) vibration, applied to parts of the body, impacts how people move and perceive our world. Could this idea help someone who has lost part of their limb? Sub-threshold vibration was applied to the thigh of the affected limb of 20 people with unilateral transtibial amputation. Vibration conditions tested included two noise structures: pink and white. Center of pressure (COP) excursion (range and root-mean-square displacements) during quiet standing, and speed and spatial stride measures (mean and standard deviations of step length and width) during walking were assessed. Pink noise vibration decreased COP displacements in standing, and white noise vibration …