Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gabor feature based face recognition using kernel methods

A novel Gabor-kernel face recognition method is proposed in this paper. This involves convolving a face image with a series of Gabor wavelets at different scales, locations, and orientations. Kernel methods such as kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) and kernel discriminant analysis (KDA) are then applied to the feature vectors for dimension reduction as well as class separability enhancement. A database of 600 frontal-view face images from the FERET face database is used to test the method. Experimental results demonstrate the advantage of Kernel methods over classical principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Significant improvements are also observed when the Gabor filtered images are used for feature extraction instead of the original images. The Gabor + KDA method achieves 92% recognition accuracy using only 35 features of a face image.
Analysis of the Role of Interleukin 6 Receptor Haplotypes in the Regulation of Circulating Levels of Inflammatory Biomarkers and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease

Variants at the interleukin 6 receptor (IL6R) gene regulate inflammation and are associated with risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of IL6R haplotypes on circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers and risk of CHD. We performed a discovery analysis in SHEEP, a myocardial infarction (MI) case control study (n = 2,774) and replicated our results in two large, independent European populations, PROCARDIS, a CHD case control study (n = 7,998), and IMPROVE (n = 3,711) a prospective cardiovascular cohort study. Two major haplotype blocks (rs12083537A/G and rs4075015A/T—block 1; and rs8192282G/A, rs4553185T/C, rs8192284A/C, rs4240872T/C and rs7514452T/C—block 2) were identified in the IL6R gene. IL6R haplotype associations with C-reactive protein (CRP), fibrinogen, IL6, soluble IL6R (sIL6R), IL6, IL8 and TNF-α in SHEEP, CRP and fibrinogen in PROCARDIS and CRP in IMPROVE as well as association with risk of MI and CHD, were analyzed by THESIAS. Haplotypes in block 1 were associated neither with circulating inflammatory biomarkers nor with the MI/CHD risk. Haplotypes in block 2 were associated with circulating levels of CRP, in all three study populations, with fibrinogen in SHEEP and PROCARDIS, with IL8 and sIL6Rin SHEEP and with a modest, non significant, increase (7%) in MI/CHD risk in the three populations studied. Our results indicate that IL6R haplotypes regulate the circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers. Lack of association with the risk of CHD may be explained by the combined effect of SNPs with opposite effect on the CHD risk, the sample size as well as by structural changes affecting sIL6R stability in the circulation.
Proactive environmental strategy development: from laggard to eco-innovative firms

Purpose The environmental management literature has focussed on the analysis of the variety of strategic options with regards to environment protection, without providing an interesting detail of the transformation and change process between the different alternatives. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study pro-environmental change processes in firms, focussing on the width and the intensity of environmental measures implemented in a three-year period in different areas (productive process, product, management and supply chains). Design/methodology/approach Performing a cluster analysis based on a sample of 303 Spanish firms, the study finds four categories of pro-environmental change. Findings The comparative analysis of these categories leads the authors to describe the pro-environmental change process as one with four stages that firms can go through. The first pro-environmental stage focusses on process measures. The second stage focusses on the adoption of management measures together with process measures. In the third stage, the firm moves after including measures in the product and in the supply chains. Companies that wish to advance further in this process, reaching the fourth stage of pro-environmental change, do so by increasing the intensity of the different measures adopted in previous stages, and through eco-innovation. Research limitations/implications The main contribution of this paper relative to the previous literature is a more detailed vision of the strategic possibilities in environmental protection, providing information about the process of change and about how firms evolve to more advanced environmental strategy stages. Knowledge of this evolution process, little studied in the previous literature, helps us to understand the complexity and strategic significance of adopting environmental protection measures. This knowledge is useful for academics and for public and private managers responsible for designing and developing environmental strategy. Originality/value One of the most original findings of this paper points out that it is possible to identify a pattern of environmental change through which firms can evolve. In this change process, firms start by adopting process measures, while they adopt eco-innovation behaviour only in the most advanced stage of environmental proactivity.
Examining the racial-ethnic continuum and perceptions of police misconduct

ABSTRACT Some research suggests a racial-ethnic hierarchy exists as to perceptions of police, with African-Americans exhibiting the most negative attitudes, Whites the most positive, and Hispanics holding more intermediate attitudes. Other findings regarding Hispanics are less consistent and little study has been made of Asians. This study further tests the premise for such a hierarchy by examining the views of both Hispanics and Asians alongside those of African-Americans and Whites as they relate to police misconduct. Partial support for a hierarchy of attitudes was found, with Hispanics exhibiting the hypothesised intermediate attitudes. While race remained an important factor for explaining African-Americans’ attitudes, other factors ultimately better explained Hispanics’ attitudes. The attitudes of Asians were indistinguishable from those of Whites. These findings suggest the experiences of racial-ethnic groups widely vary and the premise of a racial-ethnic continuum may be too simplistic for understanding the attitudes of Asians and Hispanics.
Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Arctic: The Case of Nunavut, Canada

Research conducted with the communities of Arctic Bay and Igloolik in Nunavut identified key areas where policy can help Inuit reduce their vulnerability to climate change, focusing on the renewable resource harvesting sector. The policy responses are based on an understanding of policy development and decision making and on an understanding of the processes that shape vulnerability, which in Nunavut comprise the erosion of traditional Inuit knowledge and land-based skills, the weakening of social networks, and a reduction in harvesting flexibility. Policies relating to cultural preservation, wildlife comanagement, and harvester support can serve as entry points for influencing these processes. Our recommendations fall within the mandates of the Government of Nunavut and the institutions created under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, and they have been identified as policy priorities by communities and Inuit organizations.
Emotion Recognition in the Wild with Feature Fusion and Multiple Kernel Learning

This paper presents our proposed approach for the second Emotion Recognition in The Wild Challenge. We propose a new feature descriptor called Histogram of Oriented Gradients from Three Orthogonal Planes (HOG_TOP) to represent facial expressions. We also explore the properties of visual features and audio features, and adopt Multiple Kernel Learning (MKL) to find an optimal feature fusion. An SVM with multiple kernels is trained for the facial expression classification. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves a promising performance. The overall classification accuracy on the validation set and test set are 40.21% and 45.21%, respectively.
Unemployment Benefits as a Substitute for a Conservative Central Banker

In the many years since their introduction, positive theories of inflation have rarely been tested. This paper documents a negative relationship between inflation and the welfare state (proxied by the parameters of the unemployment benefit program) that is to be expected in such theories. Because unemployment benefits make the monetary authority less concerned about the plight of the unemployed, building a welfare state has a similar effect to appointing a conservative central banker. The relationship holds in a panel of 20 OECD countries over the period 19611992, a region where Romer finds no evidence of commitment problems. It holds controlling for country and time fixed effects, country specific time trends, other covariates, and using a decadal panel. Interpreted as causal, the estimated effect is economically large: a 1-standard deviation decrease in benefit duration is predicted to add 1.4 percentage points onto inflation, or 31 of the standard deviation in inflation.
Factores moduladores de resiliencia y sobrecarga en cuidadores principales de pacientes oncológicos avanzados

Fundamento: el cuidador juega un rol fundamental en la ayuda y apoyo a la persona con cancer, pero a la vez sufre la importante carga emocional y de trabajo que supone este cuidado. Objetivo: determinar factores moduladores de la resiliencia y grado de sobrecarga en cuidadores principales de pacientes oncologicos avanzados. Metodo: se realizo un estudio descriptivo, en el Policlinico Area lll de Cienfuegos en el periodo diciembre 2012- marzo 2013. El universo estuvo constituido por los 25 cuidadores primarios de pacientes en etapa avanzada de su enfermedad. Las variables estudiadas fueron: sexo, edad, nivel de escolaridad, ocupacion, estado civil, parentesco, tiempo al cuidado del paciente, nivel de autoestima, optimismo, inteligencia emocional y sobrecarga. Las tecnicas utilizadas fueron: cuestionario y test de inteligencia emocional, cuestionario de optimismo, inventario de autoestima de Coopersmith, escala de sobrecarga del cuidador de Zarit. Resultados: predominaron las edades entre 51 y 72 anos, para un 48 %, el 88 % eran del sexo femenino, 40 % de nivel primario y 48 % casadas, el 72 % eran amas de casa, 44 % eran conyuges de los pacientes, 52 % tenian menos de 1 ano al cuidado. El 60 % tuvo sobrecarga intensa, 48 % nivel bajo de autoestima y el 84 % eran optimistas. El 83,3 % con autoestima baja y sobrecarga intensa. El 58,3 % de los cuidadores con inteligencia emocional baja presentaron sobrecarga intensa. Conclusiones: los moduladores de la resiliencia, autoestima e inteligencia emocional determinan el grado de sobrecarga sufrida por los cuidadores principales de pacientes oncologicos avanzados.
Detecting and diagnosing anomalies in cellular networks using Random Neural Networks

Despite a large body of literature and methods devoted to the analysis of network traffic, the automatic detection and classification of network traffic anomalies still represents a major issue for network operators. The problem becomes even more challenging for cellular ISPs, both due to the ever growing number of connected devices and to the constant deployment of new applications and services prone to performance issues. In this paper we tackle this problem using Machine Learning (ML) approaches: in particular, we devise a system based on Neural Networks to unveil the relations between several monitored traffic features and network anomalies impacting a large number of customers in an operational cellular network. By training a model based on Random Neural Networks (RNN), we provide a fast and accurate anomaly detector and classifier, capable to pinpoint anomalies without assuming any specific traffic model or particular network behavior. The proposed solution is evaluated using synthetically generated data from an operational cellular ISP, drawn from real traffic statistics to resemble the real cellular network traffic. Our RNN model is capable to detect and classify different classes of anomalies with high accuracy and low false alarm rates, even when the volume of such anomalies is small.
REFUSALS IN THE PRODUCTION OF SERBIAN ESP LEARNERS

Pragmatics plays a very important role in the process of communication, and the speech act of refusal is performed on a daily basis and in a variety of situations, which is why it has been one of the key topics in discourse pragmatic research over the past several decades. The present paper is aimed at establishing which pragmatic strategies Serbian ESP learners use in producing refusals, depending on the social status of the interlocutors. To this end, twenty B1-B2 level ESP students aged between 20 and 22, majoring in Information Science or Mathematics were randomly selected. The research is based on a survey consisting of twelve discourse completion tasks (DCTs), involving the communication situations of refusing a request, an invitation, an offer and a suggestion (of which only the former two are analysed here). The data obtained are classified, analyzed and interpreted based on a modified version of Beebe, Takahashi and Uliss-Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal strategies. The overall results of the research show that the production of the ESP learners tested significantly differs from native speakers' production of refusals. The largest differences are observed with respect to the frequency of usage of direct refusals, providing excuses, reasons and explanations, as well as with respect to adding statements of alternative.
The importance of technological progress for the wealth and long-term growth of nations

This paper discusses theoretically the different incentives of managers versus firm owners to invest in innovative activities. There are opposing effects concerning R&D intensity in the manager-controlled firm. Our study on the determinants of R&D intensity presents empirical results concerning this question. A sample of German firms with 3,978 observations is used and it turns out that the owner-led firms invest less into R&D than the managerial firms. With respect to the managerled firms, expenditures on R&D depend on the control exerted. If capital shares are widely dispersed and managers are thus only controlled a little by owners, they invest more into R&D. Owner-led firms and managers who are strongly controlled have a very similar R&D intensity.
A Computational Model for Episodic Memory Inspired by the Brain

Memory is a pillar of intelligence, and to think like us, it may be that artificial systems must remember like us. This dissertation introduces a computational model for episodic memory that is inspired by functions of the hippocampus and its interaction with the cortex. The model has two distinct components: a recurrent neural network in which experienced episodes are represented by attracting dynamical trajectories, and a deep autoencoder that both compresses high-dimensional sensory inputs and reconstructs sensory experiences from lower-dimensional stored trajectories. The model is founded on neuroscientific research which suggests that the hippocampus acts as an associative memory system, and that hippocampal traces are unfolded in the cortex. In order to realize associative memory function, a new algorithm for the construction of recurrent neural networks has been developed. This algorithm allows recurrent networks to be trained to approximate, arbitrarily well, any prescribed dynamical system. Additionally, we present a method by which arbitrary dynamical systems of attractors can be constructed by smoothing collections of vector fields. Together, these two methods provide a mathematically rigorous, end-to-end pipeline for the construction of complex attractor networks. The power of this pipeline is demonstrated with a host of examples. Our episodic memory model is demonstrated through the storage and retrieval of movie- like visual episodes. These episodes are retrieved automatically from partial inputs that represent related or analogous experiences.
An orexinergic projection from perifornical hypothalamus to raphe pallidus increases rat brown adipose tissue thermogenesis

Orexin (hypocretin) neurons, located exclusively in the PeF-LH, which includes the perifornical area (PeF), the lateral hypothalamus (LH), and lateral portions of the medial hypothalamus, have widespread projections and influence many physiological functions, including the autonomic regulation of body temperature and energy metabolism. Narcolepsy is characterized by the loss of orexin neurons and by disrupted sleep, but also by dysregulation of body temperature and by a strong tendency for obesity. Heat production (thermogenesis) in brown adipose tissue (BAT) contributes to the maintenance of body temperature and, through energy consumption, to body weight regulation. We identified a neural substrate for the influence of orexin neurons on BAT thermogenesis in rat. Nanoinjection of orexin-A (12 pmol) into the rostral raphe pallidus (rRPa), the site of BAT sympathetic premotor neurons, produced large, sustained increases in BAT sympathetic outflow and in BAT thermogenesis. Activation of neurons in the PeF-LH also enhanced BAT thermogenesis over a long time course. Combining viral retrograde tracing from BAT, or cholera toxin subunit b tracing from rRPa, with orexin immunohistochemistry revealed synaptic connections to BAT from orexin neurons in PeF-LH and from rRPa neurons with closely apposed, varicose orexin fibers, as well as a direct, orexinergic projection from PeF-LH to rRPa. These results indicate a potent modulation of BAT thermogenesis by orexin released from the terminals of orexin neurons in PeF-LH directly into the rRPa and provide a potential mechanism contributing to the disrupted regulation of body temperature and energy metabolism in the absence of orexin.
Öğrencilerin Kariyer Planlama Tutumlarının Demografik Faktörler Açısından Değerlendirilmesi: Karabük Üniversitesi İşletme Fakültesi Öğrencileri Üzerine Bir Araştırma

Bu calisma, universite ogrencilerinin kariyerlerine iliskin gerceklestirdikleri planlamaya bakis acilarini degerlendirmeye odaklanmaktadir. Calismanin amaci, kariyer gelecegi olcegi basligi altinda; ogrencilerin kariyer uyumlulugu algisinin, kariyer iyimserligi algisinin ve is piyasasina iliskin bilginin demografik degiskenler acisindan farklilasip farklilasmadigini belirleyebilmektir. Bu amacla Karabuk Universitesi Isletme Fakultesi'nin farkli bolumlerinde (isletme, girisimcilik, aktuerya ve risk yonetimi) ogrenim goren 247 ogrenciden anket yontemi kullanilarak veriler elde edilmistir. Verilerin analizinde t-testi ve ANOVA analizinden yararlanilmistir. Calismanin ve yapilan analizlerin sonucunda is piyasasina iliskin bilgide cinsiyet acisindan, kariyer uyumlulugu ve kariyer iyimserligi algisinda ise bolum acisindan farkliliklar bulundugu belirlenmistir. Incelenen diger degiskenler acisindan ise herhangi bir farklilik tespit edilmemistir.
Kaluza-Klein bundles and manifolds of exceptional holonomy

We show how in the presence of RR two-form field strength the conditions for preserving supersymmetry on six- and seven-dimensional manifolds lead to certain generalizations of monopole equations. For six dimensions the string frame metric is Kahler with the complex structure that descends from the octonions if in addition we assume F(1,1) = 0. The susy generator is a gauge covariantly constant spinor. For seven dimensions the string frame metric is conformal to a G2 metric if in addition we assume the field strength to obey a self-duality constraint. Solutions to these equations lift to geometries of G2 and Spin(7) holonomy respectively.
Instrumental variable estimation based on grouped data

The paper considers the estimation of the coefficients of a single equation in the presence of dummy intruments. We derive pseudo ML and GMM estimators based on moment restrictions induced either by the structural form or by the reduced form of the model. The performance of the estimators is evaluated for the non‐Gaussian case. We allow for heteroscedasticity. The asymptotic distributions are based on parameter sequences where the number of instruments increases at the same rate as the sample size. Relaxing the usual Gaussian assumption is shown to affect the normal asymptotic distributions. As a result also recently suggested new specification tests for the validity of instruments depend on Gaussianity. Monte Carlo simulations confirm the accuracy of the asymptotic approach.
Caring is not enough: the importance of Internet skills for online privacy protection

ABSTRACT This article explains Internet users’ self-help activities in protecting their privacy online using structural equation modeling. Based on a representative survey of Swiss Internet users, it reveals past experiences with privacy breaches as a strong predictor of current protective behavior. Further, in line with the ‘privacy paradox’ argument, caring about privacy (privacy attitudes) alone does not necessarily result in substantial self-protection. Most strikingly, however, general Internet skills are key in explaining users’ privacy behavior. These skills enable users to reduce risks of privacy loss while obtaining the benefits from online activities that increasingly depend on the revelation of personal data. Consequently, Internet skills are an essential starting point for public policies regarding users’ self-help in privacy protection.
Ideals in a perfect closure, linear growth of primary decompositions, and tight closure

This paper is concerned with tight closure in a commutative Noetherian ring R of prime characteristic p, and is motivated by an argument of K. E. Smith and I. Swanson that shows that, if the sequence of Frobenius powers of a proper ideal a of R has linear growth of primary decompositions, then tight closure (of a) 'commutes with localization at the powers of a single element'. It is shown in this paper that, provided R has a weak test element, linear growth of primary decompositions for other sequences of ideals of R that approximate, in a certain sense, the sequence of Frobenius powers of a would not only be just as good in this context, but, in the presence of a certain additional finiteness property, would actually imply that tight closure (of a) commutes with localization at an arbitrary multiplicatively closed subset of R. Work of M. Katzman on the localization problem for tight closure raised the question as to whether the union of the associated primes of the tight closures of the Frobenius powers of a has only finitely many maximal members. This paper develops, through a careful analysis of the ideal theory of the perfect closure of R, strategies for showing that tight closure (of a specified ideal a of R) commutes with localization at an arbitrary multiplicatively closed subset of R and for showing that the union of the associated primes of the tight closures of the Frobenius powers of a is actually a finite set. Several applications of the strategies are presented; in most of them it was already known that tight closure commutes with localization, but the resulting affirmative answers to Katzman's question in the various situations considered are believed to be new.