LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
A review of biometric technology along with trends and prospects

Identity management through biometrics offer potential advantages over knowledge and possession based methods. A wide variety of biometric modalities have been tested so far but several factors paralyse the accuracy of mono modal biometric systems. Usually, the analysis of multiple modalities offers better accuracy. An extensive review of biometric technology is presented here. Besides the mono modal systems, the article also discusses multi modal biometric systems along with their architecture and information fusion levels. The paper along with the exemplary evidences highlights the potential for biometric technology, market value and prospects. Keywords— Biometrics, Fingerprint, Face, Iris, Retina, Behavioral biometrics, Gait, Voice, Soft biometrics, Multi-modal biometrics.
Meeting Report: Atmospheric Pollution and Human Reproduction

BACKGROUND
There is a growing body of epidemiologic literature reporting associations between atmospheric pollutants and reproductive outcomes, particularly birth weight and gestational duration.


OBJECTIVES
The objectives of our international workshop were to discuss the current evidence, to identify the strengths and weaknesses of published epidemiologic studies, and to suggest future directions for research.


DISCUSSION
Participants identified promising exposure assessment tools, including exposure models with fine spatial and temporal resolution that take into account time-activity patterns. More knowledge on factors correlated with exposure to air pollution, such as other environmental pollutants with similar temporal variations, and assessment of nutritional factors possibly influencing birth outcomes would help evaluate importance of residual confounding. Participants proposed a list of points to report in future publications on this topic to facilitate research syntheses. Nested case-control studies analyzed using two-phase statistical techniques and development of cohorts with extensive information on pregnancy behaviors and biological samples are promising study designs. Issues related to the identification of critical exposure windows and potential biological mechanisms through which air pollutants may lead to intrauterine growth restriction and premature birth were reviewed.


CONCLUSIONS
To make progress, this research field needs input from toxicology, exposure assessment, and clinical research, especially to aid in the identification and exposure assessment of feto-toxic agents in ambient air, in the development of early markers of adverse reproductive outcomes, and of relevant biological pathways. In particular, additional research using animal models would help better delineate the biological mechanisms underpinning the associations reported in human studies.
LEARNING AND TEACHING LANGUAGES ONLINE: A CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH

The recent advances in technology have necessitated first new approaches and then new methodologies in the area of foreign language learning and thoroughly teaching. The Internet and the virtual learning environments have diversified the opportunities for school teachers, instructional designers as well as learners by varying and broadening the alternatives for learning and teaching of languages. Employing tools and applications, other than classroom and course books, in the learning of foreign languages requires reconsidering the pedagogy, methodology, applications, teacher roles, interaction types, and teaching environment itself. And also multiple selections of channels, through which the teaching materials can be implemented mandate the revision of traditional one way communication between the teachers and the learners. An acknowledgement is brought about by the constructivist approach with its assumptions about learning and knowledge, multiple perspectives and modes of learning and the complexity of learning environments. Constructivist approach is promising at promoting learners’ language and communicative skills as well as at fostering their autonomy, social and interactive skills contributing to their development into more confident, pro-active and responsible individuals by supporting incentives on diverse media in language learning and teaching.
Description and consequences of prescribing off-label antiretrovirals in the Madrid Cohort of HIV-infected children over a quarter of a century (1988-2012).

BACKGROUND
Licensing data for paediatric dosing is often sparse and subsequent studies may result in changes to recommended doses. We measured the extent and consequences of off-label antiretroviral (ARV) use in an HIV-infected paediatric cohort.


METHODS
In this multicentre cohort study involving 318 HIV-infected children and adolescents from the Madrid Cohort, all off-label prescriptions from March 1988 to March 2012 were recorded from the clinical records. The reasons for prescribing ARV off-label, the side effects and the consequences of incorrect dosing of ARVs are discussed.


RESULTS
Among the 318 patients of the cohort, 221 (69%) received off-label ARVs according to EMA licensing at the time of prescription, representing 23% (540) of the 2,353 prescribed ARVs. The main reason for starting an off-label drug was treatment failure. Adverse events led to treatment discontinuation in 12% of the prescriptions. Problems taking the drug led to withdrawal in 5%, more likely when formulation was not suitable for age (P<0.05). Up to 10% were overdosed and 10% underdosed, defined as 25% above or below the current recommended dose, respectively. Treatment failure occurred significantly more frequently among underdosed compared to overdosed patients (50% versus 26%; P<0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
Off-label use of ARVs was common in our HIV-1 paediatric patients. Adverse events were common but rarely led to withdrawal. Suitable formulation is important in younger children. Pharmacokinetic studies are needed as frequent incorrect dosing may occur when prescribing off-label and underdosing may lead to treatment failure.
Origin, Basic Design Philosophy and Evolution

Background to the Design Development of the Hawker Siddeley 748 leading to the Series 2 aircraft, with an Outline of its Principal Features. TO build and produce an aircraft which is cheaper than its competitors, has higher performance and sufficient market appeal to enable it to sell in large quantities, was the aim stated in the directive which heralded A. V. Roe's re‐entry into the field of civil aviation. For many years the Company (now the Avro Whitworth Division of Hawker Siddeley Aviation) had concentrated on military types of aeroplanes, but when the Sandys White Paper on Defence appeared in 1957, with its forecast of no more manned military aircraft, the Avro design team began to examine the possibility of building a civil transport.
The neuroanatomical and functional organization of speech perception

A striking property of speech perception is its resilience in the face of acoustic variability (among speech sounds produced by different speakers at different times, for example). The robustness of speech perception might, in part, result from multiple, complementary representations of the input, which operate in both acoustic-phonetic feature-based and articulatory-gestural domains. Recent studies of the anatomical and functional organization of the non-human primate auditory cortical system point to multiple, parallel, hierarchically organized processing pathways that involve the temporal, parietal and frontal cortices. Functional neuroimaging evidence indicates that a similar organization might underlie speech perception in humans. These parallel, hierarchical processing 'streams', both within and across hemispheres, might operate on distinguishable, complementary types of representations and subserve complementary types of processing. Two long-opposing views of speech perception have posited a basis either in acoustic feature processing or in gestural motor processing; the view put forward here might help reconcile these positions.
Positive externality, increasing returns, and the rise in cybercrimes

Introduction
 The meteoric rise in cybercrime has been an issue of pressing concern to our society. According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), nine out of 10 U.S. companies experienced computer security incidents in 2005 which led to a loss of $67.2 billion. A survey conducted by IBM found that U.S. businesses worry more about cybercrimes than about physical crimes. Internet-related frauds accounted for 46% of consumer complaints made to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2005. Total losses of Internet fraud victims reporting to FTC increased from $205 million in 2003 to $336 million in 2005. In a July 2007 interview with USA Today, McAfee CEO reported that his company received 3,000--5,000 threat submissions per day from customers and 10% of them were new.
 This paper offers an economic analysis to explain cybercrimes' escalation. We define cybercrimes as criminal activities in which computers or computer networks are the principal means of committing an offense. Examples include cyber-theft, cyber-trespass, cyber-obscenity, critical infrastructure attacks and cyber-extortions.6 The most notable features of the cybercrime environment include newness, technology and skill-intensiveness, and a high degree of globalization. Factors such as a wide online availability of hacking tools, information sharing in the cyber-criminal community, availability of experienced hackers' help to less skillful criminals and congestion in law enforcement systems produce externality effects within the cyber-criminal community as well as across society and businesses.
 We focus on three positive or self-reinforcing feedback systems to examine increasing returns in cybercrime related activities. In this article, we first provide an overview of the positive feedback loops that reinforce cyber-criminals' behavior. Then, we describe mechanisms associated with externality in cybercrime related activities.
The developing role of prosody in novel word interpretation.

This study examined whether children use prosodic correlates to word meaning when interpreting novel words. For example, do children infer that a word spoken in a deep, slow, loud voice refers to something larger than a word spoken in a high, fast, quiet voice? Participants were 4- and 5-year-olds who viewed picture pairs that varied along a single dimension (e.g., big vs. small flower) and heard a recorded voice asking them, for example, "Can you get the blicket one?" spoken with either meaningful or neutral prosody. The 4-year-olds failed to map prosodic cues to their corresponding meaning, whereas the 5-year-olds succeeded (Experiment 1). However, 4-year-olds successfully mapped prosodic cues to word meaning following a training phase that reinforced children's attention to prosodic information (Experiment 2). These studies constitute the first empirical demonstration that young children are able to use prosody-to-meaning correlates as a cue to novel word interpretation.
Effectiveness of a multi-level asthma intervention in increasing controller medication use: a randomized control trial.

INTRODUCTION
Poor self-management by families is an important factor in explaining high rates of asthma morbidity in Puerto Rico, and for this reason we previously tested a family intervention called CALMA that was found effective in improving most asthma outcomes, but not effective in increasing the use of controller medications. CALMA-plus was developed to address this issue by adding to CALMA, components of provider training and screening for asthma in clinics.


METHODS
Study participants were selected from claims Medicaid data in San Juan, Puerto Rico. After screening, 404 children in eight clinics were selected after forming pairs of clinics and randomizing the clinics) to CALMA-only or CALMA-plus.


RESULTS
For all three primary outcomes at 12 months, the mean differences between treatment arms were small but in the predicted direction. However, after adjusting for clinic variation, the study failed to demonstrate that the CALMA-plus intervention was more efficacious than the CALMA-only intervention for increasing controller medication use, or decreasing asthma symptoms. Both groups had lower rates of asthma symptoms and service utilization, consistent with previous results of the CALMA-only intervention.


CONCLUSIONS
Compliance of providers with the intervention and training, small number of clinics available and the multiple barriers experienced by providers for medicating may have been related to the lack of difference observed between the groups. Future interventions should respond to the limitations of the present study design and provide more resources to providers that will increase provider participation in training and implementation of the intervention.
Don't hide in the crowd!: increasing social transparency between peer workers improves crowdsourcing outcomes

This paper studied how social transparency and different peer-dependent reward schemes (i.e., individual, teamwork, and competition) affect the outcomes of crowdsourcing. The results showed that when social transparency was increased by asking otherwise anonymous workers to share their demographic information (e.g., name, nationality) to the paired worker, they performed significantly better. A more detailed analysis showed that in a teamwork reward scheme, in which the reward of the paired workers depended only on the collective outcomes, increasing social transparency could offset effects of social loafing by making them more accountable to their teammates. In a competition reward scheme, in which workers competed against each other and the reward depended on how much they outperformed their opponent, increasing social transparency could augment effects of social facilitation by providing more incentives for them to outperform their opponent. The results suggested that a careful combination of methods that increase social transparency and different reward schemes can significantly improve crowdsourcing outcomes.
A Reinforcement Learning Theory for Homeostatic Regulation

Reinforcement learning models address animal’s behavioral adaptation to its changing “external” environment, and are based on the assumption that Pavlovian, habitual and goal-directed responses seek to maximize reward acquisition. Negative-feedback models of homeostatic regulation, on the other hand, are concerned with behavioral adaptation in response to the “internal” state of the animal, and assume that animals’ behavioral objective is to minimize deviations of some key physiological variables from their hypothetical setpoints. Building upon the drive-reduction theory of reward, we propose a new analytical framework that integrates learning and regulatory systems, such that the two seemingly unrelated objectives of reward maximization and physiological-stability prove to be identical. The proposed theory shows behavioral adaptation to both internal and external states in a disciplined way. We further show that the proposed framework allows for a unified explanation of some behavioral pattern like motivational sensitivity of different associative learning mechanism, anticipatory responses, interaction among competing motivational systems, and risk aversion.
Deep Neural Networks in Machine Translation: An Overview

Deep neural networks (DNNs) are widely used in machine translation (MT). This article gives an overview of DNN applications in various aspects of MT.
Meibomian gland diagnostic expressibility: correlation with dry eye symptoms and gland location.

PURPOSE
To determine (1) if the number of meibomian glands yielding liquid secretion (MGYLS) is correlated with dry eye symptoms and (2) the mean number of MGYLS in the nasal, central, and temporal regions of the lower eyelid in a random clinical sample.


METHODS
Subjects presenting for routine eye examinations were recruited (n = 133; 90 females, 43 males; mean age = 50.3 +/- 14.7 years). The sample included symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals using the Standard Patient Evaluation of Eye Dryness questionnaire. Meibomian gland evaluations were performed using a standardized technique and diagnostic instrument.


RESULTS
The mean number of MGYLS in the lower eyelid correlated with dry eye symptoms, p = 0.0002. The mean numbers of MGYLS in each third of the lower eyelid were significantly different, p <or= 0.0001: temporal = 0.27 +/- 0.06, central = 2.14 +/- 0.13, and nasal = 3.10 +/- 0.15. The temporal third of the lower lid was 14 times as likely as the nasal third to have zero MGYLS; 86% of temporal versus 6% of nasal thirds had zero MGYLS.


CONCLUSIONS
This is the first report to document the following: (1) a correlation between the number of MGYLS in the lower eyelid and dry eye symptoms; (2) the number of MGYLS varies significantly across the lower eyelid, with the highest number of MGYLS in the nasal third and the lowest number of MGYLS in the temporal third of the lower eyelid; and (3) instrumentation to standardize diagnostic meibomian gland expression is desirable if not mandatory for the evaluation of meibomian gland function.
Effect of device-guided breathing exercises on blood pressure in patients with hypertension: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE
Hypertension is a chronic disorder with a high prevalence worldwide. Despite considerable efforts, it is sometimes hard to reach treatment goals for blood pressure (BP) with classical treatment options. Reducing breathing frequency has been advocated as a method to reduce BP.


METHODS
A randomized, single-blind, controlled trial was conducted in 30 non-diabetic patients with hypertension over a period of 9 weeks to evaluate the effect of a device that helps to slow breathing (Resperate) on BP and quality of life (QoL). The control group listened to music and used no other therapeutic device.


RESULTS
There was no significant difference in change in BP between intervention and control; BP -4.2 mmHg (95% CI -12.4 to 3.9)/-2.6 mmHg (95% CI -8.4 to 3.3). This result did not alter in post hoc analyses, when patients not achieving target breathing frequency (<10 breaths/min) or non-compliant patients were excluded. QoL did not change over time.


CONCLUSIONS
We found no effect of the Resperate on BP or QoL compared with the control group. We conclude that, at this moment, this device has no added value in the treatment of hypertension.
Exploring consumers acceptance of mobile payments - an empirical study

With the growing impetus of wireless revolution and rapid increase of mobile devices, it is evident that mobile commerce and payment are becoming a critical component of the new digital economy. Mobile devices are being transformed from simple communication devices to payments platforms. This paper looks into the status of mobile payment in Saudi Arabia in term of consumers’ acceptance and concerns towards mobile payments. This study showed that there is a bright future for m-payment in Saudi Arabia as majority of respondents showed their willingness to participate in such an activity. Security of mobile payment transactions and the unauthorised use of mobile phones to make a payment are great concerns to the mobile phone users. Spinning out from the survey results, a list of recommendations is provided that would be of importance to the mobile industry stakeholders in Saudi Arabia and other countries with similar market and consumer characteristics.
A Wideband Frequency Tunable Optoelectronic Oscillator Incorporating a Tunable Microwave Photonic Filter Based on Phase-Modulation to Intensity-Modulation Conversion Using a Phase-Shifted Fiber Bragg Grating

An optically tunable optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) with a wide frequency tunable range incorporating a tunable microwave photonic filter implemented based on phase-modulation to intensity-modulation conversion using a phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating (PS-FBG) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The PS-FBG in conjunction with two optical phase modulators in the OEO loop form a high-Q, wideband and frequency-tunable microwave photonic bandpass filter, to achieve simultaneously single-frequency selection and frequency tuning. Since the tuning of the microwave filter is achieved by tuning the wavelength of the incident light wave, the tunability can be easily realized at a high speed. A theoretical analysis is performed, which is verified by an experiment. A microwave signal with a frequency tunable from 3 GHz to 28 GHz is generated. To the best of our knowledge, this is the widest frequency tunable range ever achieved by an OEO. The phase noise performance of the OEO is also investigated.
Mindfulness, self-compassion, and happiness in non-meditators: A theoretical and empirical examination

This study examined relationships between mindfulness and indices of happiness and explored a fivefactor model of mindfulness. Previous research using this mindfulness model has shown that several facets predicted psychological well-being (PWB) in meditating and non-meditating individuals. The current study tested the hypothesis that the prediction of PWB by mindfulness would be augmented and partially mediated by self-compassion. Participants were 27 men and 96 women (mean age = 20.9 years). All completed self-report measures of mindfulness, PWB, personality traits (NEO-PI-R), and self-compassion. Results show that mindfulness is related to psychologically adaptive variables and that self-compassion is a crucial attitudinal factor in the mindfulness–happiness relationship. Findings are interpreted from the humanistic perspective of a healthy personality. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Second Use of Transportation Batteries: Maximizing the Value of Batteries for Transportation and Grid Services

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) are expected to gain significant market share in the next few decades. The economic viability for such vehicles is contingent upon the availability of cost-effective batteries with high power and energy density. For initial commercial success, government subsidies will be instrumental in allowing PHEVs and EVs to gain a foothold. However, in the long term, for electric vehicles to be commercially viable, the economics have to be self-sustaining. Toward the end of the battery life in the vehicle, the energy capacity left in the battery is not sufficient to provide the designed range for the vehicle. Typically, the automotive manufacturers recommend battery replacement when the remaining energy capacity reaches 70%-80%. There is still sufficient power (kilowatts) and energy capacity (kilowatthour) left in the battery to support various grid ancillary services such as balancing, spinning reserve, and load following. As renewable energy penetration increases, the need for such balancing services is expected to increase. This work explores optimality for the replacement of transportation batteries to be subsequently used for grid services. This analysis maximizes the value of an electric vehicle battery to be used as a transportation battery (in its first life) and, then, as a resource for providing grid services (in its second life). The results are presented across a range of key parameters, such as depth of discharge (DOD), number of batteries used over the life of the vehicle, battery life in the vehicle, battery state of health (SOH) at the end of life in the vehicle, and ancillary services rate. The results provide valuable insights for the automotive industry into maximizing the utility and the value of the vehicle batteries in an effort to either reduce the selling price of EVs and PHEVs or maximize the profitability of the emerging electrification of transportation.