Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
dcSR: practical video quality enhancement using data-centric super resolution

With the next generation immersive video applications, network capacity is becoming a growing bottleneck to deliver a high quality video to end-users. Recent advances to tackle this challenge introduced super-resolution (SR) for video quality enhancement through neural computations by leveraging client-side compute capacity. However, the existing SR models are bulky, compute-, and memory-expensive, which makes it difficult to deploy them in practice. In this work, we present dcSR, a lightweight data-centric SR approach that enables a practical neural quality enhancement for videos. On the server-side, dcSR constructs micro SR models trained on a few selected frames from each video through a data-centric paradigm by employing a long term video scene understanding mechanism. On the client-side, dcSR integrates the micro SR models into the regular video decoder and enhances the video quality in real-time without compromising on quality enhancement. We evaluate dcSR and show its benefits by comparing it with previous methods.
Explainable Search-Based Refactoring

—Refactoring is widely adopted nowadays in industry to restructure the code and meet high quality while preserving the external behavior. Many of the existing refactoring tools and research are based on search-based techniques to ﬁnd relevant recommendations by ﬁnding trade-offs between different quality attributes. While these techniques show promising results on open-source and industry projects, they lack explanations of the recommended changes which can impact their trustworthiness when adopted in practice by developers. Furthermore, most of the adopted search-based techniques are based on random population generation and random change operators (e.g. crossover and mutation). However, it is critical to understand which good refactoring patterns may exist when applying change operators to either keep them or exchange with other solutions rather than destroying them with random changes. In this paper, we propose knowledge-informed change operators and an improved seeding mechanism that we integrated in a multi-objective genetic algorithm. We also provide explanations for refactoring solutions. First, we generate association rules using the Apriori algorithm to ﬁnd relationships between applied refactorings in previous commits, their locations, and their rationale (quality improvements). Then, we use these rules to 1) initialize the population, 2) improve the change operators and seeding mechanisms of the multi-objective search in order to preserve and exchange good patterns in the refactoring solutions, and 3) explain how a sequence of refactorings collaborate in order to improve the quality of the system (e.g. ﬁtness functions). The validation on large open-source systems shows that X-SBR provides refactoring solutions of a better quality than those given by the state-of-the-art techniques in terms of reducing the invalid refactorings, improving the quality, and increasing trustworthiness of the developers in the suggested refactorings via the provided explanations.
Using ChatOps to Achieve Continuous Certification of Cloud Services

Continuous service certification (CSC) recently emerged as a promising means to provide ongoing as-surances and disrupt pertinent certification approaches. CSC involves the consistent gathering and assessing of certification-relevant data by certification authorities about service operation to validate on-going adherence to certification criteria. While research on CSC is increasing, practitioners still struggle in transferring researchers' suggestions and guidelines into practice. This study provides a tentative design and a prototype of a monitoring-based service certification (MSC) system based on the novel ChatOps approach. Iterative evaluations support our propositions that ChatOps' three key elements, a chat platform, chatbots, and third-party integrations, support the achievement of CSC. We contribute to research and practice by proving the technical feasibility of an MSC system, guiding future research and practitioners on achieving monitoring-based CSC, and validate the applicability and usefulness of extant guidelines on monitoring-based CSC proposed by prior research.
A model system for foam fractionation

A model system for theory and experiment that is relevant to foam fractionation consists of a column of foam moving through an inverted U-tube between two pools of surfactant solution. The foam drainage equation and its variants are used for a theoretical analysis of this process. In the limit in which the lengths of the two legs is large , exact analytic formulae may be derived for the key properties of the system. Numerical computations and experiments support these results.
EMPLOYEE COMMITMENT VARIANCES: “AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF INSURANCE INDUSTRY OF INDIA”

The study has been undertaken to investigate the employee commitment variances across demographic variables within insurance industry of India. Three-Component Commitment Model propounded by Allen & Meyers’ in (1997) has been used to measure the employee commitment over a sample of 663 on roll employees (i.e. working on permanent basis). Sample organizations include both public and private, life as well as non-life insurance organizations and were calculated by using Cochran’s sample size calculation technique. The data was analyzed through statistical techniques like Levene’s test for homogeneity of variances, T-test, ANOVA and Post Hoc test by using SPSS version 22. The results revealed that, the employee’s commitment vary significantly across the insurance industry of India in terms States, Nature, Designation and Work experience. This signifies lack of commitment among the employees working with this industry and remedial measures need to be taken to enhance the commitment level of employees.
Implementing Time-Based Spacing for Decelerating Approaches

The three-degree decelerating approach is a promising noise abatement procedure shown to significantly reduce noise impact on communities surrounding airports. However, a limitation to a widespread implementation of this and other noise abatement procedures is that runway capacity is compromised. The reason for this is that air traffic controllers increase spacing between in-trail aircraft to compensate for the uncertainties in the descent trajectory. The research presented in this paper focuses on simplifying the task of the controller by requiring aircraft to accurately hit a required time of arrival over the runway. A key component in the development of the associated pilot support interface necessary to help pilots in their new task is a wind profile prediction algorithm that estimates the actual wind profile and predicts how it will evolve in time along the descent trajectory. Rather than using a boundary layer model for estimating the wind profile, the wind prediction algorithm uses historical wind measurement data from preceding aircraft. By incorporating the wind prediction algorithm in an advanced flap scheduler algorithm, accurate time-to-fly estimates can be made for the three-degree decelerating approach. Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to test the robustness of the algorithm and analyze the control space for various wind conditions. Maximum feasible deviations in terms of time while satisfying noise goals are shown to be between 8 and 30 s. The pilot support interface was designed and tested in a piloted experiment Performance in terms of noise and time goals as well as workload is consistent and significantly better with respect to the nonsupported condition, for all wind conditions, but, in particular, for more complex wind conditions.
Identification of Cognitive Distraction Using Physiological Features for Adaptive Driving Safety Supporting System

It was identified that traffic accidents relate closely to the driver’s mental and physical states immediately before the accident by our questionnaire survey. Distraction is one of the key human factors involved in traffic accidents. We reproduced driver’s cognitive distraction on a driving simulator by means of imposing cognitive loads such as doing arithmetic and having conversation while driving. Visual features such as test subjects’ gaze direction, pupil diameter, and head orientation, together with heart rate from ECG, were used in this study to detect the cognitive distraction. We improved detection accuracy obtained from earlier studies by using the AdaBoost. This paper also suggests a multiclass identification using Error-Correcting Output Coding, which can identify the degree of cognitive load. Finally, we verified the effectiveness of the multiclass identification by conducting a series of experiments. All these aimed at developing a constituent technology of a driver monitoring system that is expected to create adaptive driving safety supporting system to lower the number of traffic accidents.
Expecting the Unexpected: A Study of Interactive Driving Behaviour at Intersections

Given the high number of encounters in traffic and the low number of accidents in which these result, it can be concluded that road users are quite good at interacting safely. To achieve a better understanding of this interactive behaviour, this thesis focused on road users' expectancies. In an explorative study, the aspects road users mention in their expectancies of interaction situations in traffic were studied. The mentioned aspects were distinguished into three categories: references to 1) right of way, 2) other road users and 3) the location of other road users (past, present and future). Subsequently, two experiments were conducted using linked driving simulators, which allowed for the study of interaction behaviour between two real people, rather than between a real and a pre-programmed road user. In the experiments, participants were confronted with expected and unexpected behaviour of a road user coming from an intersecting road. Additionally. in the second experiment, the interaction space was increased (by adjusting the infrastructure and providing information). The results showed that participants tended to take right of way when they were entitled to it, but also when they were confronted with another road user slowing down. Unexpected behaviour does not necessarily lead to a critically unsafe situation. The available interaction space is initially used to safely settle the interaction situation; additional interaction space is used to increase efficiency. It can be concluded that car drivers are quite capable of dealing with situations in which the behaviour of other car drivers is in conflict with the priority regulation if the interaction space allows for it.
Factors Affecting Customer Intention to Adopt a Mobile Chronic Disease Management Service: Differentiating Age Effect From Experiential Distance Perspective

The Mobile Chronic Disease Management Service (MCDMS) is an emerging medical service for chronic disease prevention and treatment, but limited attention has been paid to the factors that affect users’ intention to adopt the service. Based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 and the protection motivation theory, the authors built an MCDMS adoption model. The authors also verified the differentiating age effect on the service adoption intention from experiential distance perspective of the construal level theory. Empirical results showed that the young group focused more on the impact of effort expectancy, whereas the elderly group focused more on performance expectancy, imitating others, and perceived severity. Furthermore, the young group, however, focused more on the impact of perceived vulnerability, and offline medical habits showed no significant influence on either group’s intention to adopt, which were not consistent with the original hypotheses. The findings can aid MCDMS providers in selecting marketing strategies targeted toward different age groups.
Comparison of Genetic tool of Dermatoglyphic Patterns in Diabetic and Non- Diabetic Individuals

Dermatoglyphics has proved to be very useful tool used for identification of many gene-linked abnormalities and diseases. The aim of this study was to compare the differences in the finger print patterns in type II diabetic mellitus with non-diabetic control group. This study included totally 400 patients of both sex normal and type II diabetic mellitus patients. All the patients were asked and got their palmer dermatoglyphic impression on plain white A4 paper used the ink method . The result obtained from the diabetic and non diabetic patients was more commonly founded in the loop pattern. For that Loop pattern correlated with radial and ulnar loop of non -diabetic males subjects were 45 % found to have radial loop, 21.5% were found to have ulnar loop, and the females non diabetic subjects were 28.6% found to have radial loop, 21.3% were found in ulnar loop. Radial loops were found the predominant digital pattern in nondiabetic males as well as females. Diabetic patients loop pattern correlated with radial and ulnar loop of males subjects were 19.41% found to have radial loop ,42.4% were found to have ulnar loop, and the female diabetic subjects were 24.05% found to have radial loop ,32.6% were found to have ulnar loop. In both sex diabetic subjects ulnar loop were found to the predominant. Dermatoglyphics provide a simple, inexpensive, anatomical, and non-invasive means of determining the diseases which have a strong hereditary basis and can be employed as a method of screening for diabetes mellitus of highrisk population on early detection, thus reducing the morbidity and mortality.
Using Data Mining to Refine Digital Behavior Change Interventions

Do Something Different (DSD) behaviour change interventions are digitally delivered programmes designed to help people improve their health and wellbeing by adopting healthier habits. In addi-tion to content addressing specific issues, such as diet, smoking and stress reduction, DSD interventions contain a core component promoting behavioural flexibility. This component helps people practice behaving in ways they currently do not, such as assertively, proactively or spontaneously, and is based on a model developed by psychologists researching the connections between behavioural flexibility and wellbeing. This paper describes how we have used data mining techniques to optimise the design of DSD interventions, in particular the be-havioural flexibility component. We present correlation networks and regression models obtained using pre-and post-intervention questionnaire data from 15,550 people who have participated in a DSD intervention delivered by email, SMS or smartphone app. We explain how these results led us to a clearer understanding of the connections between behaviour and wellbeing, using which we have optimised DSD interventions, ensuring that participants concentrate on developing the behaviours that are likely to benefit them the most. Additionally, we have used logistic regression to fit a propensity score model, which models how likely it is that each person in the dataset will complete the post-intervention questionnaire, based on their pre-intervention questionnaire data. When we stratify our dataset using these propensity scores, we find that the kind of people who are the least likely to tell us they have completed the intervention, by answering the post-intervention questionnaire, are also the kind of people who will experience the biggest increase in wellbeing from a completed programme.
Fighting for a Cause: How Conflict Can Produce Interdependence

Interdependence theory (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978) illustrates the impact of partners’ behaviors as relational outcomes are dependent on such behavior. This thesis project aimed to contribute to interdependence theory by considering the influence conflict could have on its development in romantic relationships. Using a longitudinal design, the goal was to examine the change of interdependence factors (i.e., commitment, satisfaction, CLalt, power mutuality) by specific conflict variables like intensity and management responses (i.e., exit-voice-loyalty-neglect model). Time 1 (N = 135) indicated that satisfaction and the CLalt are significant predictors of commitment , which supports past research (Le & Agnew, 2003; Rusbult et al., 1998; Rusbult & Van Lange, 2003). Time 2 (N = 52) analyses demonstrated that exit behaviors and conflict intensity can produce significant changes in interdependence factors. Significant findings offer further implications for how the transformation of motivation (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Rusbult & Buunk, 1993) can influence interdependence in established romantic relationships. Null findings offer interesting areas of future work on conflict in romantic relationships and theoretical development for interdependence theory.
Financial Development and Economic Growth in Kenya: Granger Causality Approach

During the last two decades, there has been a large amount of empirical work examining the relationship between financial development and economic growth. However, the findings of these studies indicate that there is no consensus on the effect of financial development on economic growth. In the empirical literature, some argue that an efficient financial sector leads to economic growth while others maintain that it is growth that leads to financial development. Others provide evidence that there is a two way causality between financial sector development and economic growth while others find no relationship between financial development and economic growth. This study was therefore to determine the causal link between financial sector development and economic growth in order to establish if it is supply leading hypothesis or demand leading hypothesis in Kenya using Ganger Cauaslity approach for the period 1970 to 2020. The results of this study revealed that financial development exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth in Kenya hence confirming supply leading hypothesis. From policy perspective, the policy makers need to formulate financial sector reform policies to ensure a well functioning financial system that promotes domestic credit especially to productive sectors of the economy.
ICA, LDA, and Gabor Jets for Robust Ear Recognition, and Jet Space Similarity for Ear Detection

Abstract Fully automatic and robust ear recognition systems that use only 2D grayscale still images are presented. To exploit robustness against pose variation, changes in lighting, and hair occlusions, we thoroughly examined the techniques: linear discriminant analysis (LDA), independent component analysis (ICA), and Gabor jets. We obtained a 93.3% rank-one recognition rate on a dataset of 121 subjects in 4 image sets taken on various days from the public face database XM2VTS, where 47.0% of the images show hair occlusion, pose variation, and jagged images. To fully automate the recognition algorithm, we developed an ear detection algorithm that uses Gabor jets subjected to training using principal components analysis. A 1.0% equal error rate was obtained in experiments on the XM2VTS database. Our experiments provide evidence that ear biometrics has the potential for use in real-world applications for identifying individuals by their ears.
LOW ENERGY OPTICAL EXCITATIONS

‡International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Strada Costiera 11, Trieste 34151, Italy §SISSA-Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, via Bonomea 265, Trieste 34136, Italy ¶Physics and accelerators school, NSTRI, AEOI, P. O. Box 14395-836, Tehran, Iran Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3RA, United Kingdom Department of Physics, Kim Il Sung University, RyongNam Dong, TaeSong District, Pyongyang, D.P.R. , Korea ∗E-mail: ahassana@ictp.it, gsk20@cam.ac. uk
A Theoretical Analysis of Floating Bush Journal Bearing With Axial Oil Film Rupture Being Considered

A new modified Reynolds equation is derived with centrifugal force acting on the hydrodynamic oil film being considered. This equation, together with a cavitation model, is used to obtain the steady-state equilibrium and calculate the rotordynamic coefficients of lightly loaded floating bush journal bearings operating at very high shaft speeds. The bush-to-shaft speed ratio and the linear cross-coupling spring coefficients of the inner oil film is found to decrease with the increase in shaft speed as the axial oil film rupture develops in the inner oil film. The present model can give reasonable explanation to the steady-state behavior and the stability behavior of the bearing observed in actual machines.
PTS Method with Combined Partitioning Schemes for Improved PAPR Reduction in OFDM System

Although orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an efficient wireless transmission system, it suffers from a crucial drawback namely high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) that limits transmitter power efficiency. Thus, different PAPR reduction algorithms have been introduced. Partial transmit sequence (PTS) is the most attractive solution which can provide good PAPR reduction performance without distortion. In any PTS system, partitioning of the OFDM frame into disjoint sub-blocks is a significant step. Out of the existing partitioning techniques, adjacent partitioning (AP) is a fairly simple partitioning scheme achieving efficient PAPR reduction performance. This paper presents an enhanced PTS approach that combines two PTS partitioning schemes, adjacent and interleaved partitioning, in order to effectively reduce the PAPR of OFDM systems. With an aim of determining the effects of length variability of adjacent partitions, we performed an investigation into the performances of a variable length adjacent partitioning (VL-AP) and fixed length adjacent partitioning in comparison with the enhanced PTS scheme.
Social networking sites use addiction and its relationship with social alienation among university students . ( the facebook as a model ) ( A field study on a sample of Ghardaia University students

This study aimed to reveal the nature of the relationship between social networking sites use addiction,the facebook use as a model,and social alienation,and the level of both facebook use addiction and social alienation among a sample of 210 students of Ghardaia University users of facebook,chosen by snow ball sampling method.It was used Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS), and Travis’s Alienation Scale (1993). The study results have shown that there is a positive correlation between facebook use addiction and social alienation,a high level of facebook use addiction and an average level of social alienation.
Risks from Natural Radionuclides in Surface Soil of Agbara Industrial Area , Ogun State , Nigeria ADEMOLA

Measurement of natural radioactivity in soil samples from the Agbara Industrial area, Nigeria, was measured using gamma-ray spectrometry with NaI (Tl) detector. The concentration of U ranged from 10.21±3.50 to 67.41±18.2 Bqkg, from 26.43±10.8 to 96.24±18.81 for Th and from298.65±60.70 to 840.52±150.25 Bqkg for K. Their means were, respectively, 28.69±11.00, 45.86±10.25, and 481.22±106.17 Bqkg. Annual effective varies from 0.08 to 0.16 mSv y with a mean of 0.11 mSv y. The mean contamination factor was 0.87 for Ra, 1.02 for Th and, 1.15 for K.The soil is moderately polluted with Th and K. The Pollution Level Index indicates a drop in soil quality in about 50% of the areas covered. The mean cancer risk (0.4 x 10) obtained in this study is above the World Health Organization limit, indicating a high probability for inhabitants to develop lung cancer in the long term when a lifetime is spent in this area under study. DOI:https://dx.doi. org/10.4314/jasem.v25i5. 7 Copyright: Copyright © 2021 Ademola. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCL), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Dates: Received: 20 March 2021; Revised: 27 April 2021; Accepted: 07 May 2021