Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
View based approach to forensic face recognition

Face recognition is a challenging problem for surveillance view images commonly encountered in a forensic face recognition case. One approach to deal with a non-frontal test image is to synthesize the corresponding frontal view image and compare it with frontal view reference images. However, it is often difficult to synthesize a good quality frontal view image from a surveillance video because the test image is usually of low quality. In this paper, we investigate if it is useful to instead transform the reference images so that it matches the pose, illumination and camera of the surveillance view test image. This approach, also called the view based approach, ensures that a face recognition system always gets to compare images having a similar, not necessarily the frontal, view. Our results with surveillance view images captured 6 months apart (taken from the MultiPIE data set) and using five different face recognition systems show that improved recognition performance under surveillance conditions can be attained by exactly matching the pose, illumination and camera between the test and reference images.
Clinical Trial of Second Step Middle School Program: Impact on Bullying, Cyberbullying, Homophobic Teasing, and Sexual Harassment Perpetration

Abstract. Social–emotional learning programs are increasingly being implemented in U.S. schools to address a wide range of problematic behaviors (e.g., bullying, delinquency) and to promote academic success. The current study examined the direct and indirect impact of the Second Step Middle School Program (Committee for Children, 2008) on bullying, cyberbullying, homophobic name-calling, and sexual harassment perpetration over the course of a 3-year randomized clinical trial. Delinquency was examined as an intervening variable between treatment condition and aggression outcomes. Thirty-six schools in Kansas and Illinois were assigned to either a Second Step condition or a control condition, and 3,651 sixth-grade students completed self-reported surveys at four time points across 3 years. Students in the Second Step condition received a total of 41 lessons across the 3-year study. No direct intervention effects were found for multiple forms of aggression perpetration at the end of 3 years. However, as hypothesized, decreases in self-reported delinquency (intervening variable) over the first 2 years were significantly related to decreases in bullying, cyberbullying, and homophobic name-calling perpetration for Second Step schools across the 3-year study. Indirect effects of the Second Step program on bullying and aggressive behavior were statistically significant through reductions of delinquency.
Robust servo-system based on two-degree-of-freedom control with sliding mode

A robust-servo-system, based on a combination of disturbance observer and sliding mode control have been proposed. In this paper, disturbance observer is designed on the parametrization of two-degree-of-freedom control system. Through the simulations and experiments, it was proved that the introduction of nonlinear control (sliding mode) improves the disturbance suppression characteristics of a linear system with a disturbance observer. <<ETX>>
Machine Learning of Entity Recognizers for Modular Retargetable Natural Language Processing

This project will extend and generalise the current state-of-the-art in entity recognition so that it can become a reliable enabling technology for a wide range of applications and higher-level NLP tasks. Our goal is to develop the means to recognize and classify a much wider range of entities than are traditionally treated, and to develop techniques which can be applied in a wide range of text types. Rapid adaptation to new domains is a priority and this requires modularity in the processing pipeline as well as the innovative use of machine-learning techniques to enable the use of unnannotated corpora as training material wherever possible.
Towards a mashup-driven end-user programming of SOA-based applications

Recent technologies and standards in the field of Service-Orientated Architectures (SOA) have focused on Service-to-Service interaction and do not consider Service-to-User scenarios. This results in a lack of a service-consumer-orientation in order to empower the user to get easy access to the functionalities of services. The paper argues for the need of new concepts that extend existing mashup approaches to enable a more end-user driven application development. It presents an insight into existing mashup technologies and identifies shortcomings concerning the creation of more complex applications. The paper offers ways how to extend the existing concepts and shows their potential as a key technology for an end-user programming in the field of SOA. The empowerment of the actual service consumer can bridge the gap between the user and the service infrastructure.
The exocytotic fusion pore of small granules has a conductance similar to an ion channel

We measured capacitance changes in cell attached patches of human neutrophils using a high frequency lock-in method. With this technique the noise level is reduced to 0.025 fF such that capacitance steps of 0.1 fF are clearly detected corresponding to exo- and endocytosis of single 60 nm vesicles. It is thus possible to detect almost all known exocytotic and endocytotic processes including exocytosis of small neurotransmitter containing vesicles in most cell types as well as endocytosis of coated and uncoated pits. In neutrophils we demonstrate a stepwise capacitance decrease generated by 60-165 nm vesicles as expected for endocytosis of coated and non-coated pits. Following ionomycin stimulation a stepwise capacitance increase is observed consisting of 0.1-5 fF steps corresponding to the different granule types of human neutrophils from secretory vesicles to azurophil granules. The opening of individual fusion pores is resolved during exocytosis of 200 nm vesicles. The initial conductance has a mean value of 150 pS and can be as low as 35 pS which is similar to the conductance of many ion channels suggesting that the initial fusion pore is formed by a protein complex.
Effects of Adjuvant Chemoradiotherapy on the Frequency and Function of Regulatory T Cells in Patients with Head and Neck Cancer

Purpose: Regulatory T cells (Treg) accumulate in tumor tissues and the peripheral blood of cancer patients and may persist after therapies. This cross-sectional study examines effects of adjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CRT) on Treg numbers and function in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients. Experimental Design: The frequency and absolute numbers of CD4+, ATP-hydrolyzing CD4+CD39+ and CD8+ T cells, and expression levels of CD39, CD25, TGF-β–associated LAP and GARP on Treg were measured by flow cytometry in 40 healthy donors (NC) and 71 HNSCC patients [29 untreated with active disease (AD); 22 treated with surgery; 20 treated with CRT]. All treated subjects had no evident disease (NED) at the time of phlebotomy. In an additional cohort of 40 subjects with AD (n = 15), NED (n = 10), and NC (n = 15), in vitro sensitivity of CD4+ T-cell subsets to cisplatin and activation-induced cell death (AICD) was tested in Annexin V–binding assays. Results: CRT decreased the frequency of circulating CD4+ T cells (P < 0.002) but increased that of CD4+CD39+ Treg (P ≤ 0.001) compared with untreated or surgery-only patients. Treg frequency remained elevated for >3 years. CRT increased surface expression of LAP, GARP, and CD39 on Treg. In vitro Treg were resistant to AICD or cisplatin but conventional CD4+ T cells (Tconv) were not. CRT-induced Treg from AD or NC subjects upregulated prosurvival proteins whereas Tconv upregulated proapoptotic Bax. Conclusions: Highly suppressive, cisplatin-resistant Treg increase in frequency and persist after CRT and could be responsible for suppression of antitumor immune responses and recurrence in HNSCC. Clin Cancer Res; 19(23); 6585–96. ©2013 AACR.
Nonlinear Inverse Modeling of Synchronous Generator Based on Improved Resource Allocating Networks

Synchronous generator inverse modeling is the basis of inverse control, analysis and design in the power systems. According to the strong nonlinear characteristics of synchronous generator, an inverse modeling method based on improved resource allocating networks (RAN) is presented in this paper. In view of the existing disadvantages of traditional resource allocating networks, a design method for RAN based on rough set theory (RST) and orthogonal least square (OLS) was proposed. With the advantage of finding useful and minimal hidden patterns in data, RST is first applied to intelligent data analysis for extracting typical characteristics and underlying rules from the training samples, followed by a second stage mapping the condition components of the rules into network centers candidate. And then OLS algorithm was used to select best centers as the hidden layer nodes with novelty criterion. The simulation results showed that the presented inverse modeling method has the advantages of simple network structure, high convergence rate and better generalization ability, etc.
Skull-closed Autonomous Development : WWN-7 Dealing with Scales

The Where-What Networks (WWNs) consist of a series of embodiments of a general-purpose brain-inspired network called Developmental Network (DN). WWNs model the dorsal and ventral two-way streams that converge to, and also receive information from, specific motor areas in the frontal cortex. Both visual detection and visual recognition tasks were trained concurrently by such a single, highly integrated network, through autonomous development. By “autonomous development”, we mean that not only that the internal (inside the “skull”) self-organization is fully autonomous, but the developmental program that regulates the growth and adaptation of computational network is also task non-specific. This paper focused on the “skull-closed” WWN-7 in dealing with different object scales. By “skull-closed”, we mean that the brain inside the skull, except the brain’s sensory ends and motor ends, is off limit throughout development to all teachers in the external physical environment. The concurrent presence of multiple learned concepts from many object patches is an interesting issue for such developmental networks in dealing with objects of multiple scales. Moreover, we will show how the motor initiated expectations through top-down connections as temporal context assist the perception in a continuously changing physical world, with which the network interacts. The inputs to the network are drawn from continuous video taken from natural settings where, in general, everything is moving while the network is autonomously learning.
The HICO program - hyperspectral imaging of the coastal ocean from the International Space Station

The HICO (hyperspectral imager for the coastal ocean) program is a collaboration between the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Utah State University, and NovaSol Inc., to image the coastal ocean and reef systems from the International Space Station. The first phase of the program will install the NRL portable hyperspectral imager for low light spectroscopy (PHILLS) in the Station Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), which has a nadir-facing optical window. The PHILLS will image in 10 nm bands over the wavelength range 400 to 1000 nm, and is designed to provide a signal-to-noise greater than 200 to 1 when viewing the relatively dark coastal ocean, coral, or on-shore vegetation. These images and ground truth will be used to develop and verify algorithms for water optical properties, chlorophyll, CDOM, bathymetry, bottom type, coral reef status, and to classify on-shore vegetation. The second phase of the program will install the University of Hawai'i MAHI short wave infrared hyperspectral imager in the WORF. This paper introduces the HICO program, and discusses the PHILLS and its implementation for HICO
Drag force in a string model dual to large-N QCD

We compute the drag force exerted on a quark and a di-quark systems in a background dual to large-N QCD at finite temperature. We find that appears a drag force in the former setup with flow of energy proportional to the mass of the quark while in the latter there is no dragging as in other studies. We also review the screening length.
A distributed video share system based on Hadoop

The paper present a framework for video playing and video storage based on Hadoop. Our framework consist of 3 layers. CDN for receiving clinets' requests; CCN for connecting clients and sending data; Hadoop cluster for data storage. This kind of structure helps to provide high availablility services, which could support high concurrent access and play smooth streaming media in mobile terminals.
Serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) genotype moderates the longitudinal impact of early caregiving on externalizing behavior

Abstract We examined caregiver report of externalizing behavior from 12 to 54 months of age in 102 children randomized to care as usual in institutions or to newly created high-quality foster care. At baseline no differences by group or genotype in externalizing were found. However, changes in externalizing from baseline to 42 months of age were moderated by the serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region genotype and intervention group, where the slope for short–short (S/S) individuals differed as a function of intervention group. The slope for individuals carrying the long allele did not significantly differ between groups. At 54 months of age, S/S children in the foster care group had the lowest levels of externalizing behavior, while children with the S/S genotype in the care as usual group demonstrated the highest rates of externalizing behavior. No intervention group differences were found in externalizing behavior among children who carried the long allele. These findings, within a randomized controlled trial of foster care compared to continued care as usual, indicate that the serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region genotype moderates the relation between early caregiving environments to predict externalizing behavior in children exposed to early institutional care in a manner most consistent with differential susceptibility.
Hard Constraints for Grammatical Function Labelling

For languages with (semi-) free word order (such as German), labelling grammatical functions on top of phrase-structural constituent analyses is crucial for making them interpretable. Unfortunately, most statistical classifiers consider only local information for function labelling and fail to capture important restrictions on the distribution of core argument functions such as subject, object etc., namely that there is at most one subject (etc.) per clause. We augment a statistical classifier with an integer linear program imposing hard linguistic constraints on the solution space output by the classifier, capturing global distributional restrictions. We show that this improves labelling quality, in particular for argument grammatical functions, in an intrinsic evaluation, and, importantly, grammar coverage for treebank-based (Lexical-Functional) grammar acquisition and parsing, in an extrinsic evaluation.
Glycophenotype Evaluation in Cutaneous Tumors Using Lectins Labeled with Acridinium Ester

Background. Tumor cells show alterations in their glycosylation patterns when compared to normal cells. Lectins can be used to evaluate these glycocode changes. Chemiluminescence assay is an effective technique for quantitative analysis of proteins, nucleic acids, and carbohydrates due to its high sensitivity, specificity, and rapid testing. Objective. To use histochemiluminescence based on lectin conjugated to acridinium ester (AE) for the investigation of glycophenotype changes in cutaneous tumors. Methods. Concanavalin A (Con A), Peanut agglutinin (PNA), Ulex europaeus agglutinin-I (UEA-I), and Maackia amurensis agglutinin (MAA) were conjugated to acridinium ester. Biopsies of cutaneous tumors and normal skin were incubated with the lectins-AE, and chemiluminescence was quantified and expressed as Relative Light Units (RLU). Results. Actinic keratosis (AK), keratoacanthoma (KA), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and basal cell carcinoma (BCC) showed lower expression of α-D-glucose/mannose and α-L-fucose residues compared to normal tissue. Cutaneous tumors displayed higher expression of Gal-β(1-3)-GalNAc residues than normal tissue. AK and SCC exhibited higher expression of Neu5Ac-α(2,3)Gal residues than normal epidermis. KA and BCC showed equivalent RLU values compared to normal tissue. Conclusions. Lectin histochemiluminescence allowed quantitative assessment of the carbohydrate expression in cutaneous tissues, contributing to eliminate the subjectivity of conventional techniques used in the histopathological diagnosis.
The high-field Fermi surface of YbRh2Si2

We present quantum oscillation measurements of YbRh2Si2 at magnetic fields above the Kondo-suppression scale H0 ≈ 10 T. Comparison with electronic structure calculations is complicated because the "small" Fermi surface, where the Yb 4f-quasi-hole is not contributing to the Fermi volume, and "large" Fermi surface, where the Yb 4f-quasi-hole is contributing to the Fermi volume, are related by a rigid Fermi energy shift. This means that spin-split branches of the large Fermi surface can look like unsplit branches of the small surface, and vice-versa. Thus, although the high-field angle dependence of the experimentally-measured oscillation frequencies most resembles the electronic structure prediction for the small Fermi surface, this may instead be a branch of the spin-split large Fermi surface.
Symbolic Control of Stochastic Systems via Approximately Bisimilar Finite Abstractions

Symbolic approaches for control design construct finite-state abstract models that are related to the original systems, then use techniques from finite-state synthesis to compute controllers satisfying specifications given in a temporal logic, and finally translate the synthesized schemes back as controllers for the original systems. Such approaches have been successfully developed and implemented for the synthesis of controllers over non-probabilistic control systems. In this paper, we extend the technique to probabilistic control systems modelled by controlled stochastic differential equations. We show that for every stochastic control system satisfying a probabilistic variant of incremental input-to-state stability, and for every given precision ε > 0, a finite-state transition system can be constructed, which is ε-approximately bisimilar to the original stochastic control system. Moreover, we provide results relating stochastic control systems to their corresponding finite-state transition systems in terms of probabilistic bisimulation relations known in the literature. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the construction by synthesizing controllers for stochastic control systems over rich specifications expressed in linear temporal logic. Our technique enables automated, correct-by-construction, controller synthesis for stochastic control systems, which are common mathematical models employed in many safety critical systems subject to structured uncertainty.
Meta Ethics for the Metaverse: The Ethics of Virtual Worlds

After a brief introduction that sets out the overall argument of the paper in summary, the second part of the paper will offer a meta-ethical framework based on the moral theory of Alan Gewirth, necessary for determining what, if any, ought to be the ethics that guide the conduct of people participating in virtual worlds in their roles as designers, administrators and players or avatars. As virtual worlds and the World Wide Web generally, are global in scope, reach and use, Gewirth's theory, which offers a supreme principle of morality, the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC) that establishes universal rights for all persons always and everywhere, is particularly suitable for this task. The paper will show that persons both in the real world and in virtual worlds have rights to freedom and wellbeing. Strictly with regard to agency those rights are merely prima facie but with regard to personhood framed around the notion of self-respect those rights are absolute. The third and final part of the paper will examine in more practical detail and application why and how designers, administrators and avatars of virtual worlds are rationally committed on the basis of their own intrinsic purposive agency to ethical norms of conduct that require the universal respect of the rights of freedom and well-being of all agents, including their own. Using Alan Gewirth's argument for the Principle of Generic Consistency (Reason and Morality, 1978) and my expanded argument for the PGC in my Ethics Within Reason: A Neo-Gewirthian Approach (2006), the paper will specifically seek to demonstrate that insofar as avatars can be viewed as virtual representations or modes of presentations of real people (at least with regard to some virtual worlds in which the virtual agency of the avatar can be considered an extension of the agency of the person instantiating the avatar in the real world) and thus can and must be perceived as virtual purposive agents, then they have moral rights and obligations similar to those of their real counterparts. Finally, the paper will show how the rules of virtual worlds as instantiated by the designers' code and the administrators' end-user license agreement (EULA), must always be consistent with and comply with the requirements of universal morality as established on the basis of the PGC. When the two come into conflict, the PGC, as the supreme principle of morality, is always overriding.
African American Ebonics: Discourse & Discursive Practice—A Chicago Case Study of Historical Oppression

ABSTRACT The nature of inequality within African American communities is a well-studied phenomenon that continues to yield new insights into how human beings interact in broad terms. Work relations, housing inequity, occupational unevenness to discourse following the end of the “Race Era,” racism, and inequality have all encouraged numerous discussions about African Americans. The literature addressing African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and racial inequality does not focus on the way in which the use of dialect within AAVE reveals critical issues of power and oppression. In other words, scholars have not used dialect as a means of tracing historical oppression. Using principles of critical discourse analysis as a lens, this article outlines the way in which African American English as a communicative event gives insight into the socioeconomic, historical, cultural, and political context in which people and communities are situated. Using the Northern city of Chicago as a case study, I demonstrate that Blacks in the largest city in the Midwest use a rural Southern style dialect in the speech performance of AAVE because of historical social isolation and a legacy of segregation. The way in which people speak illumines a vast interconnectivity of history, culture, and politics.