Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FAAST-R: Defining a Core Mechanic for Designing Gestural Interfaces

We present a syntax for representing human gestures using rule sets that correspond to the basic spatial and temporal components of an action. These individual rules form primitives that, although conceptually simple on their own, can be combined both simultaneously and in sequence to form sophisticated gestural interactions. Along with a graphical user interface for custom gesture creation, this approach was incorporated into the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit as a recognition module (FAAST-R). This toolkit can either be used to facilitate the development of motion-based user interfaces or to repurpose existing closed-source applications and games by mapping body motions to keyboard and mouse events. Thus, this work represents an important step towards making gestural interaction more accessible for practitioners, researchers, and hobbyists alike.
An enhanced fractal image compression integrating quantized quadtrees and entropy coding

Fractal compression is a lossy compression method for digital images based on fractals rather than pixels, which are best suited for textures and natural images. It works on self- similarity property in various fractions of images, relying on the fact that parts of an image often resemble other parts of the same image. It takes long encoding time and affects the image quality. This paper introduces an improved model integrating quantized quad trees and entropy coding used for fractal image compression. Quantized quad tree method divides the quantized original gray level image into various blocks depending on a threshold value besides the properties of the features presented in image. Entropy coding is applied for improving the compression quality. Simulation results show that the quantized quad trees and entropy coding improved compression ratios and quality derived from the fractal image compression with range block and iterations technique. Different quantitative measures can be found by passing images of different format and dimensions.
Ownership and Experience in Fix-Inducing Code

Software defects cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars annually [1]. Recent research indicates that “people” factors such as ownership, experience, organizational structure, and geographic distribution have a big impact on software quality. This paper considers the impact of code ownership and developer experience on software quality. In a large project, a file might be entirely owned by a single developer, or worked on by many. Some previous research indicates that more developers working on a file might lead to more defects. We examine this issue at a fine-grained level. Using version control history, we examine contributions to code fragments that are actually repaired to fix bugs. Are these “troubled” code fragments the result of contributions from many? or from one? Does experience matter? What type of experience? We find that fix-inducing code is more strongly associated with a single developer’s contribution; our findings also indicate that author’s specific experience in the target file is more important than general experience. Our findings suggest that quality control efforts could be profitably targeted at changes made by single developers with limited prior experience on that file.
An Empirical Inquiry into the Nature of Welfarism

A composite holding tool has a space in a rear barrel to be effectively used in order to expand a range of use of one composite holding tool. The composite holding tool includes a front barrel, a rear barrel rotatably connected to the front barrel, a plurality of holding bodies housed in the front barrel non-rotatably relative to the front barrel and movably in an axial direction, a cam cylinder that rotates integrally with the rear barrel, and can selectively hold any of the plurality of holding bodies, with a tip of the holding body protruding from a tip of the front barrel, by a relative rotation between the front barrel and the rear barrel, and a cartridge connected to the rear barrel or the cam cylinder and placed in the rear barrel. A tip of the cartridge projects from a rear end of the rear barrel
Data-driven single image depth estimation using weighted median statistics

In this paper, a data-driven approach is proposed for automatically estimating a plausible depth map from a single monocular image based on the weighted median statistics (WMS). Instead of using complicated parametric models for learning frameworks that are typically employed in existing methods, we cast the estimation as a simple yet effective statistical approach. It assigns perceptually proper depth values to an input image in accordance with a data-driven depth prior. Based on the assumption that similar scenes are likely to have similar depth structure, the depth prior is computed from the WMS of k-nearest neighbor 3D pairs in a large 3D image repository. We show that the WMS captures the underlying depth structure of the input image very well, even though the visual appearance of nearest neighbor images are not tightly aligned. The depth map is then inferred according to the depth prior by making use of the edge-aware image filtering technique, resulting in a discontinuity-preserving smooth depth map. Experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of both accuracy and efficiency.
Encoding functional brain interactions from computational visual features

Encoding and decoding in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are receiving increasing interest recently. In this paper, we propose an fMRI encoding model to predict the human brain's responses to free viewing of video clips. The novelty of our study is that we represent the stimuli using a variety of representative visual features, which can describe the global color distribution, local shape and spatial information contained in videos and they have been proven to be effective by computer vision studies. Our experimental results demonstrate that brain network responses during free viewing of videos can be robustly and accurately predicted by using visual features across subjects. Our study suggests the feasibility to exploring cognitive neuroscience studies by computational image/video analysis and provides a novel concept of using the brain encoding as a test-bed for evaluating visual feature extraction.
An anisotropy preserving metric for DTI processing

Statistical analysis of Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) data requires a computational framework that is both numerically tractable (to account for the high dimensional nature of the data) and geometric (to account for the nonlinear nature of diffusion tensors). Building upon earlier studies that have shown that a Riemannian framework is appropriate to address these challenges, the present paper proposes a novel metric and an accompanying computational framework for DTI data processing. The proposed metric retains the geometry and the computational tractability of earlier methods grounded in the affine invariant metric. In addition, and in contrast to earlier methods, it provides an interpolation method which preserves anisotropy, a central information carried by diffusion tensor data.
Globalization and ‘Africanization’ of Contemporary Pop Music: Implications for History and Theory

Globalization is the essence of the contemporary world order. As a dynamic evolutionary process, globalization identifies both with homogenization and hybridization of cultures. The process of globalization has been associated with the paradoxes of globalism and localism: the global is getting rather localized while the local is becoming increasingly globalized. The impact of globalization on aspects of world’s civilizations has been tremendous. With reference to popular culture, the influence has been far-reaching. This influence has often been described as westernization in view of its western predilection. But whilst contemporary popular culture has been overly reflecting the dynamic of western cultural homogenization, its pop music component tends to have been corresponding to an ‘Africanized hybridization’. This has been exemplified in some inter-related tendencies, viz: (i) African artists are currently dominating the pop music art worldwide (ii) African sound-scapes feature very prominently and predominantly in the music (iii) African ethno-musicological heritage find copious and profound expression in the prevailing genres. The study thus explores how globalization tends to be transforming contemporary pop music into a sort of an Africanized pattern. Relying on a discursive descriptive analysis, the study problematizes this ‘Africanization’ tendency, drawing its implications for the history, theory, and praxis of cultural globalization. Capitalizing on the global exploits of Afro-pop, Reggae/Ragga and Hip-hop/Rap, the paper posits that the influence of globalization on contemporary African popular music is promising; adumbrating a prospect of an African cultural renaissance in the era.
An evolutionary approach for learning the weight of relations in linked data

In this paper we present an approach for improving a specific class of semantic annotation, that relates a term of the document with a (sub)tree of the ontology, instead of linking a term with a single concept of the ontology. An important part of this class of annotation is filtering the relevant (sub)nodes and relations, because the returned graph should only contain relevant information, that is, nodes that are truly related with the topics of the document. In addition, we consider that the relevance of nodes vary depending on if the node is a branch or a leaf, that is, if the node has links to other nodes or it is a text-based description. This paper focuses on the relevance of branch nodes, which is calculated from the relevance of its links, since leaf nodes relevance is usually estimated by similarity metrics. Specifically, our approach incises in learning (through a genetic algorithm) and assigning the most appropriate weights to these links in order to reduce the precision/recall curve of the annotation process. The results show that our solution is viable and outperforms the state of the art approaches.
Effect of nifedipine on alprazolam - induced anxiolysis and brain GABA level changes in albino rats.

OBJECTIVE The present study investigates the effects of alprazolam (ALP) and nifedipine alone or in combination on behavior and on g-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels, in discrete brain regions of albino rats. METHODS The anxiolytic effect was studied using a plus maze model and brain levels of GABA were measured using high performance liquid chromatography. Four acute treatment groups of rats were used. In the first they were treated with 1% Tween 80 (1ml/kg), in the second with nifedipine (10mg/kg), in the third with ALP (2mg/kg) and in the fourth with ALP in addition to nifedipine in the respective doses. The work was carried out at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Al-Fateh University, Tripoli, Libya in the first half of 2002. RESULTS The results indicate that the anxiolytic effect of ALP was not modified by nifedipine. Nifedipine by itself significantly decreased the motor activity (decrease in total lines crossed), this effect was apparently antagonized by ALP. Alprazolam administration produced an increase of GABA levels in cerebellum and striatum and a decrease in the brain stem. Nifedipine per-se had no effect on GABA levels in the brain stem but it partially antagonized ALP-induced inhibitory effect on GABA in this region. Alprazolam significantly increased GABA levels in the striatum, while nifedipine alone had no effect on neurotransmitter levels and did not modify the ALP effect in this brain region. Alprazolam or nifedipine had no significant effect on GABA levels in midbrain, cerebral cortex and whole brain. There were no significant changes in GABA levels in midbrain and whole brain with drug combination. However, the combination decreased GABA levels significantly in the cerebral cortex. CONCLUSION It may be concluded that, the anxiolytic effect of ALP possibly occurs through changes in brain GABA levels (an increase in cerebellum and striatum with a decrease in brain stem). The effect was not modified by nifedipine which per se had no affect on GABA levels in any brain area. The significant decrease in GABA levels in cerebral cortex by ALP-nifedipine combination may be due to the mutual closure of calcium channel (mentioned in literature) resulting in inhibition of the EAA-ergic input to GABA-ergic neuron.
The Impact of State Restructuring on Indonesia's Regional Economic Convergence

In recent decades, the state restructuring of trade liberalisation and decentralisation has emerged globally as attempts to promote more equal economic growth. This staterestructuring also occurs in Indonesia following the Asia financial crisis in 1997. As a case study, Indonesia provides two important insights on the study of staterestructuring on regional convergence. First, Indonesia is a member of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) that its institutional arrangements emphasis on member countries freedom to determine their own trade liberalisation sectors and schedules. Second, Indonesia decentralisation is a rapid and significant shift of politico-economy and social. Second, there is a rapid and significant shift of politico-economy and social institutional arrangements from centralised to decentralisation regime. These external and internal state-restructuring are expected influence the variety of regional economic development and convergence. This study aims to analyse the impact of state restructuring on disparities at the district level for the period from 1993 to 2005. The study divides the period under observation into three sub periods, the pre-decentralisation, the decentralisation and the whole period. This research aims to achieve this objective with three empirical studies as follows, first, using economic indices, the thesis examine inequality level of district economic growth and industry concentration. Second, econometrics analysis explores the impact of trade openness and decentralisation on regional economic growth. Finally, this thesis adopts comparative political analysis by using the historical institutionalism approach to understand the variation of state restructuring impact. The main findings show that despite evidence of regional convergence, disparities are persistent and severe in the post state restructuring period. The quantitative analysis shows that AFTA has insignificant impact and decentralisation significantly contract regional economic growth. While qualitative case studies in the Batam and Bandung cities found that institutional history and path development strongly influence development progress and discourses. Politico-economy shocks only act as critical juncture that provides opportunity for the state and regions to create new development path. However, path dependence of institutional changes and economic development is bounded by the regions’ past institutional arrangements and knowledge. For Indonesia, a country with long history of authoritarian regime, the role of nation-state remains important to promote balance local development.
Vagal Withdrawal and Susceptibility to Cardiac Arrhythmias in Rats with High Trait Aggressiveness

Personality characteristics, e.g. aggressiveness, have long been associated with an increased risk of cardiac disease. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study we used a rodent model for characterizing cardiac autonomic modulation in rats that differ widely in their level of aggressive behavior. To reach this goal, high-aggressive (HA, n = 10) and non-aggressive (NA, n = 10) rats were selected from a population (n = 121) of adult male Wild-type Groningen rats on the basis of their latency time to attack (ALT, s) a male intruder in a resident-intruder test lasting 600 s. In order to obtain information on their cardiac autonomic modulation, ECG recordings were subsequently obtained via radiotelemetry at rest, during stressful stimuli and under autonomic pharmacological manipulations, and analyzed by means of time- and frequency-domain indexes of heart rate variability. During resting conditions, HA rats (ALT<90 s) displayed reduced heart rate variability, mostly in terms of lower vagal modulation compared to NA rats (ALT>600 s). Exposure to stressful stimuli (i.e. restraint and psychosocial stress) provoked similar tachycardic responses between the two groups. However, under stress conditions HA rats displayed a reduced vagal antagonism and an increased incidence of tachyarrhythmias compared to NA rats. In addition, beta-adrenergic pharmacological stimulation induced a much larger incidence of ventricular tachyarrhythmias in HA rats compared to NA counterparts. These findings are consistent with the view that high levels of aggressive behavior in rats are associated to signs of cardiac autonomic impairment and increased arrhythmogenic susceptibility that may predict vulnerability to cardiac morbidity and mortality.
Evaluation of Similarity metrics for translation retrieval in the Hindi-English Translation Memory

Abstract: This paper discusses the bigram model with 3-operation Edit Distance (Levenshtein Distance) String matching metrics for translation retrieval in Hindi-English Translation memory system. In this method we used the statistical language modeling (N-gram approach) to compute bigrams and then implemented the dynamic programming algorithm Levenshtein Distance to find the minimum number of edit operations required transforming one bigram to another and will act as a measure to provide extent for the matching of current input and the source in the TM. This measure will decide whether the translation retrieved correspondingly will be exact match or fuzzy match. Other string matching approaches are evaluated with Levenshtein Distance proving to be more effective comparatively. Keywords: String Matching, Bigram modelling, Levenshtein Distance, Hindi-English Translation memory (TM). 1. I NTRODUCTION A Translation memory (TM) [10] [12] technology is used as a translator’s aid for providing a good precision translation. Basically, a translation memory is a database that consists of Translation unit (TU) which constitutes the language pair of source and its translation. TM system matches the source language input to be translated with the source in the translation unit and retrieve the translation candidates in target language which may help human translator to either accept the translation, replace it with a fresh translation or modify the translation to fit into the new translation and update it in TM.TM system uses String similarity metrics
Neural responses to fearful eyes in children with conduct problems and varying levels of callous–unemotional traits

Background Children with conduct problems (CP) are a heterogeneous group. Those with high levels of callous–unemotional traits (CP/HCU) appear emotionally under-reactive at behavioural and neural levels whereas those with low levels of CU traits (CP/LCU) appear emotionally over-reactive, compared with typically developing (TD) controls. Investigating the degree to which these patterns of emotional reactivity are malleable may have important translational implications. Instructing participants with CP/HCU to focus on the eyes of fearful faces (i.e. the most salient feature) can ameliorate their fear-recognition deficits, but it is unknown whether this is mediated by amygdala response. It is also unknown whether focusing on fearful eyes is associated with increased amygdala reactivity in CP/LCU. Method Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure neural responses to fearful and calm faces in children with CP/HCU, CP/LCU and TD controls (n = 17 per group). On half of trials participants looked for a blue dot anywhere within target faces; on the other half, participants were directed to focus on the eye region. Results Reaction time (RT) data showed that CP/LCU were selectively slowed in the fear/eyes condition. For the same condition, CP/LCU also showed increased amygdala and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC)/orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) responses compared with TD controls. RT and amygdala response to fear/eyes were correlated in CP/LCU only. No effects of focusing on the eye region were observed in CP/HCU. Conclusions These data extend the evidence base suggesting that CU traits index meaningful heterogeneity in conduct problems. Focusing on regulating reactive emotional responses may be a fruitful strategy for children with CP/LCU.
De-anonymizing Genomic Databases Using Phenotypic Traits

Abstract People increasingly have their genomes sequenced and some of them share their genomic data online. They do so for various purposes, including to find relatives and to help advance genomic research. An individual’s genome carries very sensitive, private information such as its owner’s susceptibility to diseases, which could be used for discrimination. Therefore, genomic databases are often anonymized. However, an individual’s genotype is also linked to visible phenotypic traits, such as eye or hair color, which can be used to re-identify users in anonymized public genomic databases, thus raising severe privacy issues. For instance, an adversary can identify a target’s genome using known her phenotypic traits and subsequently infer her susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease. In this paper, we quantify, based on various phenotypic traits, the extent of this threat in several scenarios by implementing de-anonymization attacks on a genomic database of OpenSNP users sequenced by 23andMe. Our experimental results show that the proportion of correct matches reaches 23% with a supervised approach in a database of 50 participants. Our approach outperforms the baseline by a factor of four, in terms of the proportion of correct matches, in most scenarios. We also evaluate the adversary’s ability to predict individuals’ predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease, and we observe that the inference error can be halved compared to the baseline. We also analyze the effect of the number of known phenotypic traits on the success rate of the attack. As progress is made in genomic research, especially for genotype-phenotype associations, the threat presented in this paper will become more serious.
A Manual Categorization of Android App Development Issues on Stack Overflow

While many tutorials, code examples, and documentation about Android APIs exist, developers still face various problems with the implementation of Android Apps. Many of these issues are discussed on Q&A-sites, such as Stack Overflow. In this paper we present a manual categorization of 450 Android related posts of Stack Overflow concerning their question and problem types. The idea is to find dependencies between certain problems and question types to get better insights into issues of Android App development. The categorization is developed using card sorting with three experienced Android App developers. An initial approach to automate the classification of Stack Overflow posts using Lucene is also presented. The study highlights that the most common question types are 'How to? ' and 'What is the problem? '. The problems that are discussed most often are related to 'User Interface' and 'Core Elements'. In particular, the problem category 'Layout' is often related to 'What is the problem? ' and 'Frameworks' issues often come with 'Is it possible? ' questions.
The global competitiveness report 2000-2001

A guide mechanism for a sliding door for a motor vehicle such as a van. The guiding mechanism is characterized in that it includes a roller carriage along which the door slides. An element of a synthetic material or a plastic holds three sides of a rail which forms a bearing for the axle of a roller. This element acoustically and mechanically insulates the axle from other metal parts of the guide mechanism. This in turn will reduce the noise which is usually generated when the door is opened or closed.