Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A case study on multi-modal biometrics in the cloud

Cloud computing is particularly interesting for the area of biometric recognition, where scalability, availability and accessibility are important aspects. In this paper we try to evaluate different strategies for combining existing uni-modal (cloud-based) biometric experts into a multi-biometric cloud-service. We analyze several fusion strategies from the perspective of performance gains, training complexity and resource consumption and discuss the results of our analysis. The experimental evaluation is conducted based on two biometric cloud-services developed in the scope of the Competence Centere CLASS, a face recognition service and a ﬁngerprint recognition service, which are also brieﬂy described in the paper. The presented results are important to researchers and developers working in the area of biometric services for the cloud looking for easy solutions for improving the quality of their services.
A livelihood intervention to improve economic and psychosocial well-being in rural Uganda: Longitudinal pilot study

Abstract HIV and poverty are inextricably intertwined in sub-Saharan Africa. Economic and livelihood intervention strategies have been suggested to help mitigate the adverse economic effects of HIV, but few intervention studies have focused specifically on HIV-positive persons. We conducted three pilot studies to assess a livelihood intervention consisting of an initial orientation and loan package of chickens and associated implements to create poultry microenterprises. We enrolled 15 HIV-positive and 22 HIV-negative participants and followed them for up to 18 months. Over the course of follow-up, participants achieved high chicken survival and loan repayment rates. Median monthly income increased, and severe food insecurity declined, although these changes were not statistically significant (P-values ranged from 0.11 to 0.68). In-depth interviews with a purposive sample of three HIV-positive participants identified a constellation of economic and psychosocial benefits, including improved social integration and reduced stigma.
Incremental Clinical Utility of ADHD Assessment Measures With Latino Families

Objective: This study examined the incremental clinical utility of parent and teacher reports of ADHD symptomatology and functional impairment in Latino youth, as well as parent and teacher agreement with the final clinical judgment on a diagnostic structured interview. Method: Participants included 70 Latino youth (47 males, 23 females; M age = 8.13 years, SD = 2.51 years) and their parents and teachers; 60 participants were diagnosed with ADHD. Correlations, percent agreement, kappas, and regressions were utilized. Results: Results demonstrated that teachers agreed with the final clinical judgment more often than did parents. Results additionally demonstrated that functional impairment did not statistically significantly improve diagnostic models already including ADHD symptoms; follow-up analyses were run and are discussed. Finally, results demonstrated that teacher reports statistically significantly improved diagnostic models already including parent reports. Conclusion: The current findings suggest the importance of including both parent and teacher reports of both ADHD symptomatology and functional impairment when assessing ADHD in Latino youth.
Probiotic Lactobacillus gasseri SBT2055 improves glucose tolerance and reduces body weight gain in rats by stimulating energy expenditure

Abstract Probiotic Lactobacillus gasseri SBT2055 (LG2055) reduces postprandial TAG absorption and exerts anti-obesity effects in rats and humans; however, the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. In the present study, we addressed the mechanistic insights of the anti-obesity activity of LG2055 by feeding Sprague–Dawley rats diets containing skimmed milk fermented or not by LG2055 for 4 weeks and by analysing energy expenditure, glucose tolerance, the levels of SCFA in the caecum and serum inflammatory markers. Rats fed the LG2055-containing diet demonstrated significantly higher carbohydrate oxidation in the dark cycle (active phase for rats) compared with the control group, which resulted in a significant increase in energy expenditure. LG2055 significantly reduced cumulative blood glucose levels (AUC) compared with the control diet after 3 weeks and increased the molar ratio of butyrate:total SCFA in the caecum after 4 weeks. Furthermore, the LG2055-supplemented diet significantly reduced the levels of serum amyloid P component – an indicator of the inflammatory process. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that, in addition to the inhibition of dietary TAG absorption reported previously, the intake of probiotic LG2055 enhanced energy expenditure via carbohydrate oxidation, improved glucose tolerance and attenuated inflammation, suggesting multiple additive and/or synergistic actions underlying the anti-obesity effects exerted by LG2055.
College Students Rely on Mobile Internet Making Impact on Alienation:the Role of Society Supporting Systems

In order to explore the relationship between college students relying on the phone,real and Internet society support and alienation,the author used the charts of mobile addiction scale of college students,youth alienation scale,college students and teenagers Network Social Support Scale and Social Support Scale to measure442 college students. The results showed that:( 1) different mobile phone dependence levels are significantly different from alienation,and the higher the level is,the alienation is stronger;( 2) mobile dependence has a significantly positive predicting effect on alienation,while online society support and the real society support on alienation is a significantly negative predictor;( 3) the real society support has mediating and adjustable effects between mobile phone dependence and alienation,mobile phones rely on both the direct impact on the sense of alienation,but also by the real society support,and with the proportion of the total effect of the mediating effect being 17. 8%;( 4) both the real society support and Internet society have regulating effects on mobile phone dependence and alienation,which can cushion the impact of mobile phone dependence on alienation.
qPCR Detection of Early Life History Stage Chrysaora quinquecirrha (Sea Nettles) in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey

ABSTRACT Gaynor, J.J.; Bologna, P.A. X. ; Restaino, D.J., and Barry, C.L. , 2017. qPCR detection of early life history stage Chrysaora quinquecirrha (sea nettles) in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey. In: Buchanan, G.A. ; Belton, T.J., and Paudel, B. (eds.), A Comprehensive Assessment of Barnegat Bay–Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey. The sea nettle Chrysaora quinquecirrha has become abundant in the Barnegat Bay estuary and frequently blooms in warm summer months. Various factors have been attributed to the increasing localized appearance of sea nettles and other jellyfish including eutrophication, overfishing, global warming, construction, and species introduction. Despite its abundance and frequent distribution within estuarine systems, very little work has been done to detect and quantify the early life history stages of this organism. Free-swimming larval stages of C. quinquecirrha can be detected and quantified using a quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay specific for the C. quinquecirrha 16S ribosomal (r)DNA locus of the mitochondrial DNA. This assay is species specific, linear over a 9-log range, and can detect as few as 10 copies of 16S rDNA. Twenty-liter field samples were sequentially filtered through 500- and 100-μm mesh to separate ephyra from planula larvae and gametes, respectively. Quantifiable levels of C. quinquecirrha 16S rDNA were detected at all eight paired locations in Barnegat Bay, with levels varying on both spatial and temporal scales. This research is apparently the first comprehensive field-based survey mapping, both spatially and temporally, the early life history stages of a scyphozoan in a major estuary using environmental DNA. Quantitative molecular data on the distribution of early stage C. quinquecirrha may prove useful in both understanding and managing blooms of sea nettles in Barnegat Bay.
Experimental Platform for Intelligent Computing (EPIC)

This paper presents the architecture and user interface of a novel Experimental Platform for Intelligent Computing (EPIC). Unlike the two most popular platforms (WEKA and KEEL), the proposed EPIC tool has a very friendly user interface, and offers some advantages with respect to existing tools for Intelligent Computing experiments. In particular, EPIC handles mixed and incomplete data directly, without preprocessing, and its architecture supports multi-target supervised classification and regression. It also contains a module for two dimensional dataset visualization, which includes the visualization of the decision frontier for several supervised learning algorithms.
Seasonal Flow Reversals of Intermediate Waters in the Canary Current System East of the Canary Islands

Two 9-yr current-meter and salinity records, together with climatological data, reveal marked seasonal variability of the intermediate flow at a key location in the Canary Basin. The region is characterized by a summer (July–September) and early fall (October) northward progression of Antarctic Intermediate Water followed by a fall (November–December) intense flow reversal of Mediterranean Water. A Sverdrup-type model confirms that these movements are associated with stretching or shrinking of the intermediate water strata.
2D fuzzy spatial relations and their applications to DICOM medical images

In this paper we propose a model of fuzzy spatial relations, which can be used to describe imprecise spatial data on 2D images. This model defines relations very similar to those existing in natural language and reasoning, like “on the left side of the image”, “in the center of the image”, “right/left of”, “above/below of”, “(very) close to”, “(very) far from”, “at distance of”, etc. Composition operators and, or, not and subtract are defined in order to combine these basic fuzzy spatial relations into more complex ones. In addition, formula for calculating membership value of imprecise region to fuzzy spatial relation is defined. Proposed model is verified through the example of practical application on DICOM medical images.
Heat Loss is Impaired in Older Men on the Day following Prolonged Work in the Heat.

PURPOSE Prolonged work in the heat may exacerbate the rise in core temperature on the next work day, especially in older workers who display impairments in whole-body heat loss that increase body heat storage and core temperature relative to young adults during heat stress. We therefore evaluated whether whole-body heat loss in older adults was impaired on the day following prolonged work in the heat. METHODS Whole-body heat exchange and heat storage were assessed in nine older (53-64 years) males during three, 30-min bouts of semi-recumbent cycling at fixed rates of metabolic heat production (150 (Ex1), 200 (Ex2), 250 Wm (Ex3)), each separated by 15-min recovery, in hot-dry conditions (40°C, 20% relative humidity), immediately prior to (Day 1), and on the day following (Day 2), a prolonged, work simulation (~7.5 h) involving moderate-intensity intermittent exercise in hot-dry conditions (38°C, 34% relative humidity). Total heat loss (evaporative ± dry heat exchange) and metabolic heat production were measured using direct and indirect calorimetry, respectively. Body heat storage was quantified as the temporal summation of heat production and loss. RESULTS Total heat loss (mean±SD) during Ex1 did not differ between Day 1 and 2 (151±15 and 147±14 Wm, respectively; P=0.27), but was attenuated on Day 2 during Ex2 (181±15 Wm) and Ex3 (218±16 Wm) relative to Day 1 (192±14 and 230±19 Wm, respectively; both P<0.01). Consequently, body heat storage throughout the protocol on Day 2 (276±114 kJ) was 31% greater than on Day 1 (191±87 kJ; P<0.01). CONCLUSION Prolonged work in the heat causes next-day impairments in whole-body heat loss, which exacerbate heat storage and may elevate the risk of heat-injury on the following day in older workers.
Lipopolysaccharide Modified Liposomes for Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis Therapy: Efficacy in SOD1 Mouse Model

Activation of microglia is a histological feature observed in neurodegenerative diseases like ALS. The oral administration of minocycline has been demonstrated to have minimal neuroprotection ability in the animal models and is also associated with inadvertent toxicity due to non-specific oral absorption of the drug. Nonetheless, the drug itself shows promise in a number of disease models suggesting it could be effective if delivered optimally. Thus, we utilized LPS modified liposomes to target TLR4 receptor on the microglia in SOD1G93A mice and compared its efficacy with non- targeted nanoliposomes. The in vitro results indicate that targeting the TLR4 receptor on microglia significantly increases (p G93A mouse model of ALS, targeted and non-targeted minocycline treatment significantly increased (p G93A mice, the non- targeted nanovesicles significantly increased the latency to rotarod failure and both targeted and non-targeted nanovesicles significantly delayed disease endpoints.
Nonparametric Bootstrap Test for Autoregressive Additive Models

Additive autoregressive models are commonly used to describe and simplify the behaviour of a nonlinear time series. When the additive structure is chosen, and the model estimated, it is important to evaluate if it is really suitable to describe the observed data since additivity represents a strong assumption. Although literature presents extensive developments on additive autoregressive models, few are the methods to test additivity which are generally applicable. In this paper a procedure for testing additivity in nonlinear time series analysis is provided. The method is based on: Generalized Likelihood Ratio, Volterra expansion and nonparametric conditional bootstrap (Jianqing and Qiwei, 2003). Investigation on performance (in terms of empirical size and power), and comparisons with other additivity tests proposed by Chen et al. (1995) are made recurring to Monte Carlo simulations.
Clinical and Hematological Effects of Dengue Viruses Infection

Background: Dengue viruses infection is increasingly recognized as one of the world's emerging infectious diseases. Dengue usually presents with subclinical or mild infection to full blown dengue fever to dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome. Aim: To evaluate clinical features, disease severity, laboratory findings in serologically confirmed cases of dengue fever in Muhammad Saleh Basharahil Hospital, Madina Road, Omra Gadida, Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Methods: This study was conducted on 83 patients with clinically suspected dengue fever. Hematocrit, platelet counts and total leucocyte counts were done serially in all the cases until they normalized. Liver function tests, chest X-ray, ultrasound abdomen, RFT, CT scan. The serological assay for dengue were performed using standard kits, dengue IgG/IgM Rapid Test is a solid phase immunochromatographic assay for the rapid, qualitative and differential detection of IgG and IgM antibodies to dengue virus in human serum or plasma. Patients with positive result for IgM or IgG antibodies against dengue virus were considered suspected dengue-positive group and the samples were confirmed by RT-PCR in a higher center. Results: Among 83 patients, 32 were confimed dengue cases and the remaining 51 were considered as dengue negative and appropriate control. Among the positive dengue cases, 62.5(20/32) were male and 37.5(12/32) were female. Fever was present in all cases (100%) followed by myalgia in 93.75%. Macular, pruritic rashes was present in 28.125%. Abdominal pain was present in 25% of cases. Hemorrhagic manifestation in the form of petichae only was seen in 15.63%. Hepatomegaly was present in 12.5% and splenomegaly was present in 9.38. There was a significant difference in the total leucocyte count and platelets count, Significant differences were also seen in the liver function test and there was clear change in hematocrit value between dengue positive and dengue negative patients. Conclusion: Fever, myalgia and headache were the most common symptoms and hepatomegaly was the most common finding in the cases. Leucopenia, thrombocytopenia and hematocrit changes were significant features of dengue fever.
Netload-constrained Unit Commitment Considering Increasing Renewable Energy Penetration Levels: Impact of Generation Schedules and Operational Cost

In the context of low carbon power systems, the penetration levels of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) are expected to increase dramatically. In this regard, this paper investigates the maximum RES penetration level constrained by net load while considering an inflexible Unit Commitment (UC) model. To solve the UC problem, an enhanced priority list (EPL) based method is developed. In the proposed method, the plants were activated sequentially based on the operational price. The system constraint violations were repeatedly corrected until all system constraints (such as net load and spinning reserves) were satisfied. The proposed EPL method was efficient to achieve a near optimal solution under high shares of RES. Furthermore, the research work investigates three different scenarios representing penetration levels of 10% solar-only, 14.5% wind-only and 27.5% mixture of both solar and wind. The impact of each penetration level on the system scheduling and operational cost were analyzed in detail. The analysis presented shows that a potential operational cost savings of 21.6 $/MW, 20 $/MW and 11.1 $/MW is feasible under each of the represented scenarios, respectively.
Sea surface temperature variability in the subpolar Atlantic over the last two millennia

[1] A decadal resolution time series of sea surface temperature (SST) spanning the last two millennia is reconstructed by combining a proxy record from a new sediment sequence with previously published data from core MD99–2275, north of Iceland. The alkenone based SST reconstruction is validated with historic observational data and compared to a new similar temporal resolution reconstruction obtained from sediment core RAPiD21–3K, in the subpolar North Atlantic. The two SST paleorecords show consistent multidecadal scale coolings throughout the interval and similar expressions during the contrasted climatic periods ‘colloquially known’ as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA) and Little Ice Age (LIA). In order to further understand the temporal and spatial SST variations and investigate the influence of natural forcings on the observed SST changes during the last millennium, we compare our time series to simulations using the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace IPSLCM4-v2 climate model. This comparison highlights the potential importance of volcanism as a natural forcing driving coherent abrupt cooling events captured in the subpolar North Atlantic records.
Ghosting and popping detection for image-based rendering

Film sequences generated using image-based rendering techniques are commonly used in broadcasting, especially for sporting events. In many cases, however, image-based rending sequences contain artifacts, and these must be manually located. Here, we propose an algorithm to automatically detect not only the presence of the two most disturbing classes of artifact (popping and ghosting), but also the strength of each instance of an artifact. A simple perceptual evaluation of the technique shows that it performs well.
In fl uence of solvent selection and extraction temperature on yield and composition of lipids extracted from spent co ff ee grounds

Spent coffee grounds (SCG) are a potentially sustainable source of C16-C18 triglycerides. This study investigates known solvent extraction technologies with a wide range of solvents for lipid extraction from SCGs, and determines the effect of solvent selection and process temperature on the extraction efficiency and composition of the obtained oil. A correlation between increasing solvent boiling point, and therefore process temperature, and improved oil extraction efficiency was observed in Soxhlet extractions with a wide range of solvents. Experiments at elevated temperatures (up to 200 °C) were performed through Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE) and temperature increase initially improved the oil extraction efficiency when non-polar solvents were used, before decreasing it at higher temperatures. Utilization of ethanol resulted in the highest oil extraction ratio by ASE (at 165 °C), suggesting that temperature increase is more beneficial to the extraction efficiency of polar solvents. In addition, analysis of the oils was carried out to evaluate the composition of the oils extracted from SCGs using different solvents and extraction parameters. The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) results were in agreement with the values obtained from the titrimetric determination of the free fatty acid content (FFA) of the oils in terms of the comparative trends, and also tentatively suggest that some differences in the composition of the extracted oils might be related to the type of extraction solvent used.
An Integrative Pipeline for Multi-Modal Discovery of Disease Relationships

In the past decade there has been an explosion in genetic research that has resulted in the generation of enormous quantities of disease-related data. In the current study, we have compiled disease risk gene variant information and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) classification codes from various repositories for 305 diseases. Using such data, we developed a pipeline to test for clinical prevalence, gene-variant overlap, and literature presence for all 46,360 unique diseases pairs. To determine whether disease pairs were enriched we systematically employed both Fishers' Exact (medical and literature) and Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (genetics) methodologies to test for enrichment, defining statistical significance at a Bonferonni adjusted threshold of (p < 1 × 10(-6)) and weighted q < 0.05 accordingly. We hypothesize that disease pairs that are statistically enriched in medical and genetic spheres, but not so in the literature have the potential to reveal non-obvious connections between clinically disparate phenotypes. Using this pipeline, we identified 2,316 disease pairs that were significantly enriched within an EMR and 213 enriched genetically. Of these, 65 disease pairs were statistically enriched in both, 19 of which are believed to be novel. These identified non-obvious relationships between disease pairs are suggestive of a shared underlying etiology with clinical presentation. Further investigation of uncovered disease-pair relationships has the potential to provide insights into the architecture of complex diseases, and update existing knowledge of risk factors.
Design and development of a large vocabulary, continuous speech recognition system for Tamil

This paper presents our work on building a large vocabulary continuous speech recognition system for Tamil using deep neural networks (DNN). Well known techniques, namely, maximum likelihood linear transformation and speaker-adaptive training have been used to build our final deep neural network based speech recognition system. We have used 6.5 hours of Tamil speech recorded from 30 speakers covering a vocabulary of 13,026 words, of which 4.5 hours of data was used for training, 1 hour of data for testing and 1 hour of data for cross-validation. Two independent recognition systems were built, one for phone recognition (PR) and the other for continuous speech recognition (CSR) and they achieve phone error rate of 24.9% and word error rate of 3.5%, respectively. DNN-based triphone acoustic model shows an absolute improvement of about 1% and 23% over the monophone acoustic model for CSR and PR, respectively.