LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Fuzzy Extractors for Minutiae-Based Fingerprint Authentication

We propose an authentication scheme using fingerprint biometrics, protected by a construct called a Fuzzy Extractor. We look at a new way of quantizing and digitally representing the minutiae measurements so that a construct called PinSketch can be applied to the minutiae. This is converted to a Fuzzy Extractor by tying some random information to the minutiae measurements. We run a matching algorithm at chosen quantization parameters and show that the authentication accuracy is within acceptable limits. We demonstrate that our authentication system succeeds in protecting the users’ identity.
Acupressure for smoking cessation – a pilot study

BACKGROUND
Tobacco smoking is a serious risk to health: several therapies are available to assist those who wish to stop. Smokers who approach publicly funded stop-smoking clinics in the UK are currently offered nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) or bupropion, and group behaviour therapy, for which there is evidence of effectiveness. Acupuncture and acupressure are also used to help smokers, though a systematic review of the evidence of their effectiveness was inconclusive. The aim of this pilot project was to determine the feasibility of a study to test acupressure as an adjunct to one anti-smoking treatment currently offered, and to inform the design of the study.


METHODS
An open randomised controlled pilot study was conducted within the six week group programme offered by the Smoking Advice Service in Plymouth, UK. All participants received the usual treatment with NRT and group behavioural therapy, and were randomised into three groups: group A with two auricular acupressure beads, group B with one bead, and group C with no additional therapy. Participants were taught to press the beads when they experienced cravings. Beads were worn in one ear for four weeks, being replaced as necessary. The main outcome measures assessed in the pilot were success at quitting (expired CO < or = 9 ppm), the dose of NRT used, and the rating of withdrawal symptoms using the Mood and Symptoms Scale.


RESULTS
From 49 smokers attending four clinics, 24 volunteered to participate, 19 attended at least once after quitting, and seven remained to the final week. Participants who dropped out reported significantly fewer previous quit attempts, but no other significant differences. Participants reported stimulating the beads as expected during the initial days after quitting, but most soon reduced the frequency of stimulation. The discomfort caused by the beads was minor, and there were no significant side effects. There were technical problems with adhesiveness of the dressing. Reporting of NRT consumption was poor, with much missing data, but reporting of ratings of withdrawal symptom scores was nearly complete. However, these showed no significant changes or differences between groups for any week.


CONCLUSION
Any effects of acupressure on smoking withdrawal, as an adjunct to the use of NRT and behavioural intervention, are unlikely to be detectable by the methods used here and further preliminary studies are required before the hypothesis can be tested.
Vaccinium arctostaphylos, a common herbal medicine in Iran: molecular and biochemical study of its antidiabetic effects on alloxan-diabetic Wistar rats.

AIM OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study was to define antidiabetic effects of fruit of Vaccinium arctostaphylos L. (Ericaceae) which is traditionally used in Iran for improving of health status of diabetic patients.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
Firstly, we examined the effect of ethanolic extract of Vaccinium arctostaphylos fruit on postprandial blood glucose (PBG) after 1, 3, 5, 8, and 24h following a single dose administration of the extract to alloxan-diabetic male Wistar rats. Also oral glucose tolerance test was carried out. Secondly, PBG was measured at the end of 1, 2 and 3 weeks following 3 weeks daily administration of the extract. At the end of treatment period the pancreatic INS and cardiac GLUT-4 mRNA expression and also the changes in the plasma lipid profiles and antioxidant enzymes activities were assessed. Finally, we examined the inhibitory activity of the extract against rat intestinal α-glucosidase.


RESULTS
The obtained results showed mild acute (18%) and also significant chronic (35%) decrease in the PBG, significant reduction in triglyceride (47%) and notable rising of the erythrocyte superoxide dismutase (57%), glutathione peroxidase (35%) and catalase (19%) activities due to treatment with the extract. Also we observed increased expression of GLUT-4 and INS genes in plant extract treated Wistar rats. Furthermore, in vitro studies displayed 47% and 56% inhibitory effects of the extract on activity of intestinal maltase and sucrase enzymes, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
Findings of this study allow us to establish scientifically Vaccinium arctostaphylos fruit as a potent antidiabetic agent with antihyperglycemic, antioxidant and triglyceride lowering effects.
Dense interest features for video processing

We propose two novel feature detection methods for action recognition, based on the dense interest points described by Tuytelaars [1]. The first one is an extension of dense interest points to three dimensions. In the second one, trajectories are constructed starting from dense interest points. We present an analysis of the properties of these methods and conclude that both give higher classification accuracies than dense sampling when less features are used.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE IN OLYMPIC CHAMPIONS 3 A Grounded Theory of Psychological Resilience in Olympic Champions

1 Objective: Although it is well-established that the ability to manage stress is a prerequisite of 2 sporting excellence, the construct of psychological resilience has yet to be systematically 3 examined in athletic performers. The study reported here sought to explore and explain the 4 relationship between psychological resilience and optimal sport performance. 5 Design and Method: Twelve Olympic champions (8 men and 4 women) from a range of sports 6 were interviewed regarding their experiences of withstanding pressure during their sporting 7 careers. A grounded theory approach was employed throughout the data collection and 8 analysis, and interview transcripts were analyzed using open, axial and selective coding. 9 Methodological rigor was established by incorporating various verification strategies into the 10 research process, and the resultant grounded theory was also judged using the quality criteria of 11 fit, work, relevance, and modifiability. 12 Results and Conclusions: Results indicate that numerous psychological factors (relating to a 13 positive personality, motivation, confidence, focus, and perceived social support) protect the 14 world’s best athletes from the potential negative effect of stressors by influencing their 15 challenge appraisal and meta-cognitions. These processes promote facilitative responses that 16 precede optimal sport performance. The emergent theory provides sport psychologists, coaches 17 and national sport organizations with an understanding of the role of resilience in athletes’ lives 18 and the attainment of optimal sport performance. 19
Games as neurofeedback training for children with FASD

Biofeedback games help people maintain specific mental or physical states and are useful to help children with cognitive impairments learn to self-regulate their brain function. However, biofeedback games are expensive and difficult to create and are not sufficiently appealing to hold a child's interest over the long term needed for effective biofeedback training. We present a system that turns off-the-shelf computer games into biofeedback games. Our approach uses texture-based graphical overlays that vary in their obfuscation of underlying screen elements based on the sensed physiological state of the child. The textures can be visually customized so that they appear to be integrated with the underlying game. Through a 12-week deployment, with 16 children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, we show that our solution can hold a child's interest over a long term, and balances the competing needs of maintaining the fun of playing, while providing effective biofeedback training.
Overview of the NTCIR-7 ACLIA IR4QA Task

This paper presents an overview of the IR4QA (Information Retrieval for Question Answering) Task of the NTCIR-7 ACLIA (Advanced Cross-lingual Information Access) Task Cluster. IR4QA evaluates traditional ranked retrieval of documents using wellstudied metrics such as Average Precision, but the retrieval task is embedded in the context of cross-lingual question answering. That is, document retrieval is treated as a component of the entire question answering system. This paper concentrates on how relevance assessments for the Simpified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Japanese IR4QA test collections were obtained, and the outcome of the formal IR4QA evaluation using the three collections. For the relationship between IR4QA and the entire ACLIA task cluster, we refer the reader to the overview paper of ACLIA [17]. For details of the individual IR4QA systems, we refer the reader to the participants’ reports.
Identification of Multiple Ingredients for a Traditional Chinese Medicine Preparation (Bu-yang-huan-wu-tang) by Liquid Chromatography Coupled with Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Bu-yang-huan-wu-tang (BYHWT) is a popular Traditional Chinese Medicine formula consisting of seven herbal medicines (Astragalus membranaceus, Angelica sinensis, Paeonia lactiflora, Ligusticum chuanxiong, Carthamus tinctorius, Amygdalus persica and Pheretima aspergillum), that has been used in China for centuries to overcome stroke-induced disability. To ensure the consistency of quality, a reliable analytical method is required, therefore, we developed a liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method for quantitative analysis of the major constituents in BYHWT. The herbal ingredients consisting of the cycloartane-type triterpene glycosides of astragaloside I, astragaloside II and astragaloside IV; isoflavones of formononetin, ononin calycosin, calycosin-7-O-β-d-glucoside; ligustilide and paeoniflorin were separated on a C18 column with gradient elution of methanol/10 mM ammonium acetate buffer-formic acid (100:0.1, v/v). This study was performed by a mass spectrometer using electrospray ionization (ESI) with positive ionization ions monitored in the multiple reaction-monitoring (MRM) mode. The linearity, accuracy, precision, limit of detection (LOD) and lower limit of quantification (LLOQ) were validated for this quantification method, and the sensitivity, reliability and reproducibility were all confirmed. The experiments provided a good method for analyzing BYHWT extracts. This study also quantitated the active components in various brands of commercially available products. The results indicated that the pharmaceutical industrial products of BYHWT exhibited considerable variation in their contents of the herbal compounds.
Relationship between blood pressure and outdoor temperature in a large sample of elderly individuals: the Three-City study.

BACKGROUND
Seasonal variations of blood pressure-related diseases have been described in several populations. However, few studies have examined the seasonal variations of blood pressure in the elderly, a segment of the population particularly exposed to vascular diseases. The association of blood pressure with season and outdoor temperature was examined in 8801 subjects 65 years or older from the Three-City study, a population-based longitudinal study.


METHODS
Blood pressure was measured at baseline and 2-year follow-up examinations. Daily outdoor temperature measured at 11 am was provided by the local meteorological offices.


RESULTS
Both systolic and diastolic blood pressure values differed significantly across the 4 seasons and across the quintiles of the distribution of outdoor temperature. Systolic blood pressure decreased with increasing temperature, with an 8.0-mm Hg decrease between the lowest (< 7.9 degrees C) and the highest (> or = 21.2 degrees C) temperature quintile. Intraindividual differences in blood pressure between follow-up and baseline examinations were strongly correlated with differences in outdoor temperature. The higher the temperature at follow-up compared with baseline, the greater the decrease in blood pressure. Longitudinal changes in blood pressure according to difference in outdoor temperature were larger in subjects 80 years or older than in younger participants.


CONCLUSIONS
Outdoor temperature and blood pressure are strongly correlated in the elderly, especially in those 80 years or older. During periods of extreme temperatures, a careful monitoring of blood pressure and antihypertensive treatment could contribute to reducing the consequences of blood pressure variations in the elderly.
Structured self-monitoring of blood glucose regimens improve glycemic control in poorly controlled Chinese patients on insulin therapy: Results from COMPASS.

BACKGROUND
The use of self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) among patients with insulin-treated, type 2 diabetes (T2DM) in China is suboptimal. Herein we evaluated the effectiveness of structured SMBG for improving glycemic control and increasing the frequency of SMBG.


METHODS
Insulin-treated (>3 months) T2DM patients aged ≥18 years with HbA1c >8.0 % (64 mmol/mol) were recruited to the study. They received SMBG materials and were advised on a structured SMBG regimen for their insulin therapy. Patients were trained to self-adjust insulin dosage according to SMBG readings and were seen by physicians at Months 3 and 6. Endpoints included changes in HbA1c, SMBG frequency, and hypoglycemia frequency.


RESULTS
The study enrolled 820 patients, with mean (± SD) age 55.1 ± 9.8 years, body mass index 24.9 ± 3.6 kg/m2 , HbA1c 9.7 ± 1.6 % (83 mmol/mol), and diabetes duration 9.8 ± 7.1 years, with median insulin therapy of 30.3 (3.0-274.1) months, from 19 Chinese clinics. By Month 3, 99.9 % of patients performed daily SMBG. At Months 3 and 6, HbA1c had decreased from baseline (-1.81 % and -1.73 %, respective; P < 0.0001 for both), with reduced hypoglycemia. In addition, 36.2 % and 39.9 % of patients achieved HbA1c <7.0 % (53 mmol/mol) at Months 3 and 6, respectively. The largest HbA1c improvements were for patients with a shorter duration of diabetes and insulin therapy.


CONCLUSIONS
A structured SMBG regimen, with training on interpretation of and responses to SMBG readings, increased SMBG frequency and improved HbA1c and the management of insulin-treated T2DM.
Beyond Conceptual Dualism: Ontology of Consciousness, Mental Causation, and Holism in John R. Searle’s Philosophy of Mind

Francesc Forn I ARGIMON: Editorial Foreword: Special Series in Cognitive Science John R. SEARLE: Guest Foreword Preface Introduction One: Problems and Theories: The Mind-Body Problem in Contemporary Philosophical Debate Two: Biological Naturalism: A Naturalistic and Non-Reductive Ontology of Consciousness Three: Functionalistic Models of Consciousness: Dennett, Chalmers, and the Desubstantialization of Mind Four: Holism and Mental Causation in the Theory of Intentionality Five: John Searle and Contemporary Neuroscience. Holism, Mental Causation, and the Roots of Subjectivity Conclusion Works Cited About the Author Index
The neuroprotective effects of bilingualism upon the inferior parietal lobule: A Structural Neuroimaging Study in Aging Chinese Bilinguals

It is a timely issue to understand the impact of bilingualism upon brain structure in healthy aging and upon cognitive decline given evidence of its neuroprotective effects. Plastic changes induced by bilingualism were reported in young adults in the left inferior parietal lobule (LIPL) and its right counterpart (RIPL) (Mechelli et al., 2004). Moreover, both age of second language (L2) acquisition and L2 proficiency correlated with increased grey matter (GM) in the LIPL/RIPL. However it is unknown whether such findings replicate in older bilinguals. We examined this question in an aging bilingual population from Hong Kong. Results from our Voxel Based Morphometry study show that elderly bilinguals relative to a matched monolingual control group also have increased GM volumes in the inferior parietal lobules underlining the neuroprotective effect of bilingualism. However, unlike younger adults, age of L2 acquisition did not predict GM volumes. Instead, LIPL and RIPL appear differentially sensitive to the effects of L2 proficiency and L2 exposure with LIPL more sensitive to the former and RIPL more sensitive to the latter. Our data also intimate that such * Corresponding author. University Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Via Olgettina 58, 20132 Milan, Italy. Tel.: þ39 0226434888. E-mail addresses: abutalebi.jubin@hsr.it, jubin@hku.hk (J. Abutalebi).
A Stochastic Arabic Diacritizer Based on a Hybrid of Factorized and Unfactorized Textual Features

This paper introduces a large-scale dual-mode stochastic system to automatically diacritize raw Arabic text. The first of these modes determines the most likely diacritics by choosing the sequence of full-form Arabic word diacritizations with maximum marginal probability via A^ lattice search and long-horizon n-grams probability estimation. When full-form words are OOV, the system switches to the second mode which factorizes each Arabic word into all its possible morphological constituents, then uses also the same techniques used by the first mode to get the most likely sequence of morphemes, hence the most likely diacritization. While the second mode achieves a far better coverage of the highly derivative and inflective Arabic language, the first mode is faster to learn, i.e., yields better disambiguation results for the same size of training corpora, especially for inferring syntactical (case-ending) diacritics. Our presented hybrid system that benefits from the advantages of both modes has experimentally been found superior to the best performing reported systems of Habash and Rambow, and of Zitouni, using the same training and test corpus for the sake of fair comparison. The word error rates of (morphological diacritization, overall diacritization including the case endings) for the three systems are, respectively, as follows (3.1%, 12.5%), (5.5%, 14.9%), and (7.9%, 18%). The hybrid architecture of language factorizing and unfactorizing components may be inspiring to other NLP/HLT problems in analogous situations.
The Age of Travel

‘We need tourists, of course. But we had two hundred thousand last year. We could double that figure, no doubt.’
Ethics of brain emulations

Ethics of brain emulations Whole brain emulation attempts to achieve software intelligence by copying the function of biological nervous systems into software. This paper aims at giving an overview of the ethical issues of the brain emulation approach, and analyse how they should affect responsible policy for developing the field. Animal emulations have uncertain moral status, and a principle of analogy is proposed for judging treatment of virtual animals. Various considerations of developing and using human brain emulations are discussed. Introduction Whole brain emulation (WBE) is an approach to achieve software intelligence by copying the functional structure of biological nervous systems into software. Rather than attempting to understand the high-level processes underlying perception, action, emotions and intelligence, the approach assumes that they would emerge from a sufficiently close imitation of the low-level neural functions, even if this is done through a software process. (Sandberg 2013) of brain emulations have been discussed, little analysis of the ethics of the project so far has been done. The main questions of this paper are to what extent brain emulations are moral patients, and what new ethical concerns are introduced as a result of brain emulation technology. The basic idea is to take a particular brain, scan its structure in detail at some resolution, construct a software model of the physiology that is so faithful to the original that, when run on appropriate hardware, it will have an internal causal structure that is essentially the same as the original brain. All relevant functions on some level of description are present, and higher level functions supervene from these. While at present an unfeasibly ambitious challenge, the necessary computing power and various scanning methods are rapidly developing. Large scale computational brain models are a very active research area, at present reaching the size of mammalian nervous systems. al. 2012) WBE can be viewed as the logical endpoint of current trends in computational neuroscience and systems biology. Obviously the eventual feasibility depends on a number of philosophical issues (physicalism, functionalism, non-organicism) and empirical facts (computability, scale separation, detectability, scanning and simulation tractability) that cannot be predicted beforehand; WBE can be viewed as a program trying to test them empirically. (Sandberg 2013) Early projects are likely to merge data from multiple brains and studies, attempting to show that this can produce a sufficiently rich model to produce nontrivial behaviour but not attempting to emulate any particular individual. However, …
Correlation between Business Process Management and Organizational Performance : A Study of Bank X

Business process management is multidimensional tool which utilizes several methods to examine processes from a holistic perspective, transcending the narrow borders of specific functions. It undertakes fundamental reconsideration and radical redesign of organizational processes in order to achieve drastic improvement of current performance in terms of cost, service and speed. Business process management tries to encourage a radical change rather than an incremental change. An analytical approach has been applied for the current study. For this study, the case of Bank X, which is a leading public sector bank operating in the state, has been taken into consideration. A sample of 250 customers was selected randomly from Alwar, Dausa and Bharatpur districts. For policy framework, corporate headquarters were consulted. For the research a self-designed survey instrument, looking for information from the customers on several parameters like cost, quality, services and performance, was used. This article tries to take a critical account of existent business process management in Bank X and to study the relationship between business process management and organizational performance. The data has been tested by correlation analysis. The findings of the study show that business process management exists in the Bank X and there is a significant relationship between business process management and organizational performance. Keywords-Business Process Management; Business Process Reengineering; Organizational Performance
Heart disease and stroke statistics--2013 update: a report from the American Heart Association.

on behalf of the American Heart Association Statistics Committee and Stroke Statistics Virani, Nathan D. Wong, Daniel Woo and Melanie B. Turner Nina P. Paynter, Pamela J. Schreiner, Paul D. Sorlie, Joel Stein, Tanya N. Turan, Salim S. Darren K. McGuire, Emile R. Mohler, Claudia S. Moy, Michael E. Mussolino, Graham Nichol, Lynda D. Lisabeth, David Magid, Gregory M. Marcus, Ariane Marelli, David B. Matchar, Mark D. Huffman, Brett M. Kissela, Steven J. Kittner, Daniel T. Lackland, Judith H. Lichtman, Heather J. Fullerton, Cathleen Gillespie, Susan M. Hailpern, John A. Heit, Virginia J. Howard, Franco, William B. Borden, Dawn M. Bravata, Shifan Dai, Earl S. Ford, Caroline S. Fox, Sheila Alan S. Go, Dariush Mozaffarian, Véronique L. Roger, Emelia J. Benjamin, Jarett D. Berry, Association 2013 Update : A Report From the American Heart −− Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics