Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparison of some audio watermarking methods

The variety of properties of different audio signals crucially affects the selection of suitable watermarking technology for satisfying the various requirements of copyright protection applications. However, comparison of audio watermarking methods has been widely ignored in the literature. In this paper, we compare the performance of three different audio watermarking methods: echo hiding, cepstrum domain, and patchwork algorithms. We investigate the no-attack situations, as well as cases when common signal processing or intentional attacks are imposed on the watermarked signal. By using modified parameters for these methods, we propose better results with respect to some previous research studies.
Effect of steel fibers on self-compacting concrete slump flow and compressive strength

Ever since Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC) was introduced, various attempts have been made to further enhance its quality and robustness. The addition of steel fibers into the SCC mix is found to have increased the hardened properties of concrete. However, it is also acknowledged that the addition of steel fibers into the fresh SCC mix poses a negative effect on the workability which may cause segregation and bleeding. Thus, some modifications are required on the mix proportions to obtain a good flowability without bleeding mixes. In this study, four types of mixes were prepared which comprising of normal concrete (NC), SCC and Self-Compacting Concrete with Steel Fibers (SCCSF) with two volume fractions of still fibers 0.5% and 1.0%. The results revealed that an increased amount of steel fibers in the SCC mix improve the compressive strength of concrete but reduced the slump flow of the fresh SCC.
Numerical Simulations of the MRI and Real Disks

Numerical MHD codes have become extraordinarily powerful tools with which to study accretion turbulence. They have been used primarily to extract values for the classical $\alpha$ parameter, and to follow complex evolutionary development. Energy transport, which is at the heart of classical disk theory, has yet to be explored in any detail. Further topics that should be explored by simulation include nonideal MHD, radiation physics, and outburst behavior related to the temperature sensitivity of the resistivity.
Discussion of the Three Problems in Genetic Algorithm with Chromosome Differentiation

Bandyopadhyay and Pal proposed an improved genetic search strategy, GACD (Genetic Algorithm with Chromosome Differentiation), involving partitioning the chromosomes into two classes, and defining a restricted form of the crossover operator between the two classes. The GACD can be applied to many multi-dimensional pattern recognition problems. However, their GACD suffered from three problems, i.e. “sampling-without-replacement”, “mating-with-best-chromosome” and “the-unreachable-result”.
Reproductive Biology of the Fossorial Snake Apostolepis gaboi (Elapomorphini): A Threatened and Poorly Known Species from the Caatinga Region

Abstract. Knowledge of reproductive biology is essential to understand the intrinsic traits of any species and to elaborate effective conservation strategies, particularly for threatened species. Despite recent advances, knowledge on the reproductive biology of snakes remains deficient for most species, especially for tropical fossorial taxa. Apostolepis gaboi is a psammophilous, fossorial, and threatened snake endemic of the Quaternary Sand Dunes of the São Francisco River, Caatinga domain. Here, we present information on its reproductive biology based on macroscopic and microscopic data obtained from the examination of all specimens preserved in Brazilian museums. Specifically, we addressed sexual maturity, sexual dimorphism, clutch size, timing of gametogenesis, activity of the sexual segment of the kidney (SSK), and female sperm storage. Apostolepis gaboi is one of the smallest species of the genus. Females attain sexual maturity at larger body sizes and grow larger than males. However, adult females have relatively shorter tails than males. We found no sexual dimorphism in body circumference and head size. Clutch size is small and averages 4.5 eggs. All males from the wet season showed testes in spermiogenesis, ductus deferentia packed of sperm, and SSK hypertrophied and secretory. Secondary vitellogenesis also occurs in the wet season. Moreover, females in early vitellogenesis from the wet season showed sperm stored in the posterior infundibulum. Mating occurs in the second half of the wet season, as suggested by the finding of aggregations of sperm in the uterine lumen of a female in early secondary vitellogenesis. Mating is associated with gonadal activity in males. Sperm storage confers flexibility for females to ovulate at the most suitable time in an unpredictable habitat such as the Caatinga. Apostolepis gaboi exhibits similarities (association between mating and spermiogenesis, small clutch) and differences (absence of sexual dimorphism in head size and stoutness) compared with another Elapomorphini species. Lastly, we argue that some of the intrinsic traits of A. gaboi (small clutch and small body size) may increase its vulnerability to extinction, raising additional concerns to its conservation.
Efficient Virtualization-Based Application Protection Against Untrusted Operating System

Commodity monolithic operating systems are abundant with vulnerabilities that lead to rootkit attacks. Once an operating system is subverted, the data and execution of user applications are fully exposed to the adversary, regardless whether they are designed and implemented with security considerations. Existing application protection schemes have various drawbacks, such as high performance overhead, large Trusted Computing Base (TCB), or hardware modification. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of AppShield, a hypervisor-based approach that reliably safeguards code, data and execution integrity of a critical application, in a more efficient way than existing systems. The protection overhead is localized to the protected application only, so that unprotected applications and the operating system run without any performance loss. In addition to the performance advantage, AppShield tackles several newly identified threats in this paper which are not systematically addressed previously. We build a prototype of AppShield with a tiny hypervisor, and experiment with AppShield by running several off-the-shelf applications on a Linux platform. The results testify to AppShield's low performance costs in terms of CPU computation, disk I/O and network I/O.
From a Formal Privacy Model to its Implementation

Privacy technologies are becoming more relevant, because individual privacy is at risk in the Global Information Society. In this paper, an updated version of a formal task-based privacy-model which can be used to technically enforce legal privacy requirements is presented. It is shown, how the privacy policy has been specified and implemented according to the Generalized Framework for Access Control (GFAC)approach.
AVIAN-INSPIRED GRASPING FOR QUADROTOR MICRO UAVS

Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have been used in a wide range of applications [1, 2, 3]. However, there are few papers addressing high-speed grasping and transportation of payloads using MAVs. Drawing inspiration from aerial hunting by birds of prey, we design and equip a quadrotor MAV with an actuated appendage enabling grasping and object retrieval at high speeds. We develop a nonlinear dynamic model of the system, demonstrate that the system is differentially flat, plan dynamic trajectories using the flatness property, and present experimental results with pick-up velocities at 2 m/s (6 body lengths / second) and 3 m/s (9 body lengths / second). Finally, the experimental results are compared with observations derived from video footage of a bald eagle swooping down and snatching a fish out of water. INTRODUCTION Predatory birds have the ability to swiftly swoop down from great heights and grasp prey, with high rates of success, from the ground, water, and air while flying at high speeds [5]. Although recent years have seen improvement in the capabilities of Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) [6, 7], such dynamic aerial manipulation, common in nature, has not been achieved using MAVs. The present state of the art in aerial manipulation ranges This work is supported in part by ONR Grant N00014-07-1-0829 and ARL Grant W911NF-08-2-0004. FIGURE 1. Video frames of an eagle grasping prey [4]. from using grippers for construction [1] to cable-suspended loads for dynamic transportation [2]. Acquiring, transporting and deploying payloads while maintaining a significant velocity are important since they would save MAVs time and energy by minimizing required flight time. For example, high-speed grasping could be used in rescue operations where speed and time are critical, and in operations requiring a MAV to quickly swoop down and pick up an object of interest. Additionally, the dynamic grasping functionality could be extended to achieve perching, which could be used to quickly escape high winds, achieve immediate silence in stealth operations, and improve mission duration by reducing hover time. With the recent increase in such MAV applications, there has also been a rising need for articulated appendages capable of interacting with the environment. Dollar et al. developed fin-
System/network design-space exploration based on TLM for networked embedded systems

This article presents a methodology for the design of Networked Embedded Systems (NESs), which extends Transaction Level Modeling (TLM) to perform system/network design-space exploration. As a result, a new design dimension is added to the traditional TLM refinement process to represent network configuration alternatives. Each network configuration can be used to drive both architecture exploration and system validation after each refinement step. A system/network simulation taxonomy is investigated aiming at precisely identifying the role of cosimulation in system/network design-space exploration. Furthermore, a general criterion to map functionalities to system and network models is presented. As a case study, the proposed methodology is applied to the design of a Voice-over-IP client.
Range-only SLAM with a mobile robot and a Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents the localization of a mobile robot while simultaneously mapping the position of the nodes of aWireless Sensor Network using only range measurements. The robot can estimate the distance to nearby nodes of the Wireless Sensor Network by measuring the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) of the received radio messages. The RSSI measure is very noisy, especially in an indoor environment due to interference and reflections of the radio signals. We adopted an Extended Kalman Filter SLAM algorithm to integrate RSSI measurements from the different nodes over time, while the robot moves in the environment. A simple pre-processing filter helps in reducing the RSSI variations due to interference and reflections. Successful experiments are reported in which an average localization error less than 1 m is obtained when the SLAM algorithm has no a priori knowledge on the wireless node positions, while a localization error less than 0.5 m can be achieved when the position of the node is initialized close to the their actual position. These results are obtained using a generic path loss model for the trasmission channel. Moreover, no internode communication is necessary in the WSN. This can save energy and enables to apply the proposed system also to fully disconnected networks
Load Balancing for QoS Enhancement in IEEE 802 . 11 e WLANs Using Cell Breathing Techniques

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) have become increasingly popular over the last number of years. During this time, user requirements have evolved, resulting in a more diverse mix of services being carried over the radio interface. In particular, delay sensitive real-time applications such as streaming multimedia and voice over wireless IP are growing in importance. The widely accepted IEEE 802.11b standard however, was not designed with such Quality of Service (QoS) constraints in mind. A new draft of the standard named 802.11e has been specified that deals with QoS issues for Wireless LANs. This work looks at this enhancement and will attempt to improve the quality that a user will receive by balancing the load between various access points while changing the coverage area of each access point, a technique commonly known as cell breathing.
Turbo Equalization of Binary Continuous Phase Modulation: Convergence Analysis

In this paper, the convergence behavior of a doubly-iterative receiver, proposed for joint turbo equalization, modulation and decoding of coded binary continuous-phase modulation (CPM), is analyzed by using extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts. The doubly-iterative receiver consists of a central soft-input soft-output (SISO) CPM demodulator coupled with a front-end soft information aided minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer and a back-end SISO channel decoder. The EXIT chart analysis shows that performing a few back-end demodulation/decoding iterations per each equalization iteration improves the a priori information for the front-end equalizer, and provides faster convergence to low bit-error rates (BERs) with less computational complexity, as also illustrated in the BER simulations.
Sexual and reproductive health in local mining contexts in Colombia

Background. Research on the relationship between mining and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is limited, almost exclusively concerned on the HIV spread in mining contexts. Colombia, like other Latin American and Caribbean countries, experienced an unprecedented mining boom since the mid-2000’s with insufficient evidence on its effects on SRH. This dissertation study examined the relationship between the gold-mining boom and fertility—as a comprehensive measure for SRH, in Colombian municipalities, between 2001 and 2015. Methods. I conducted a longitudinal ecological study using a multilevel model of change. I used data of gold-mining production and births of each of the 1112 municipalities of Colombia—excluding ten municipalities created after 2001. For the independent variable, I constructed the time-varying categorical variable Stages of gold-mining boom (SGMB). This variable represented the municipal status regarding a gold-mining boom at each year, by defining categories of pre-boom, boom—rapid increase (boom-up) and rapid decline (boom-down)—, and post-boom. For the dependent variable, I calculated general fertility rates (GFR), age-specific fertility rates (ASFR), and total fertility rates (TFR). I performed multilevel regression models of change to test the association between the stages of gold-mining boom and fertility change, controlling for socioeconomic confounders. I conducted a sensitivity analysis by including only the municipalities with acceptable live birth coverage by 2005 (N=191). Results. The results indicated a positive longitudinal association between the gold-mining boom and fertility, in Colombian municipalities, between 2001 and 2015. Fertility (GFR and TFR) increased in the boom-down and post-boom periods. Among different age-groups, fertility (ASFR) increased in the periods of boom-up (age group 10-14), boom-down (age groups in the range 15-25, and 35-39), and post-boom (age group 15-19). The sensitivity analysis indicated the results were robust. Conclusions. The rapid fertility change (including of adolescent fertility) observed in the short period of the boom stages suggests that SRH is deeply impacted in gold-mining boom contexts. This study provides a baseline for further global research on this critical but neglected topic of public health significance. New investigations must consider the gender dynamics triggered by a mining boom, which may configure contexts of unbalanced gendered power relations.
Paranormal Beliefs of Psychology Students

The present study investigated individual differences in beliefs in the paranormal phenomena. Paranormal belief has been investigated by the researchers with high school and college students in various countries, USA, Finland, Latvia and South Africa. Such studies explored regarding its connection with magical thinking, sexual differences, fantasy proneness and narcissism. Turkish version of the PBS was translated by Sen and Yesilyurt (2014) with college students enrolled in several departments. A Turkish version of the Paranormal Belief Scale (PBS) was implemented to 235 Turkish Psychology Students at a university in Turkey. Statistical analysis of the study was carried out by SPSS 24. Participants were undergraduate psychology students enrolled at a mid-size university in central Anatolia. Most of the students defined themselves as believers in some sort of higher power. The main purpose of the study was to uncover important aspects of paranormal activities related to gender and academic levels. In addition, factor analysis was conducted in order to find if any dimensions exist. Results of the study indicated some differences among the students regarding gender and year in college. Beliefs in paranormal activity among academic levels showed that there was no evidence for a relationship with them. However, surprisingly, six subscales of the PBS emerged instead of eight as expected based on the findings.
Among rewilding mountains: grassland conservation and abandoned settlements in the Northern Apennines

ABSTRACT Due to agricultural abandonment and the urban preference for ‘wilderness’ over ‘rural’ areas, abandoned settlements and rewilding grasslands are often the last traces of agriculture in today’s protected areas of the Northern Apennines. However, since the late 1990s, an increasing number of policy makers have appreciated these spatial manifestations of the nature/culture gestalt and developed projects to conserve the last grasslands in rewilding protected areas. Does the land cover reflect these changing attitudes? Using the Foreste Casentinesi National Park as our case in point, we aim to (1) detect land cover changes during 1990–2001 and 2001–2010; (2) analyse change trajectories; and (3) reveal potential discrepancies between the conservation of biodiversity and rural built heritage. Our results show that grassland loss dominated 1990–2001, whereas grassland maintenance/restoration can be observed for 2001–2010. However, the decadence of the rural built heritage seems to continue.
Investigating the role of the faculty advisor in doctoral students’ career trajectories

ABSTRACT During graduate school, students learn to navigate the workplace that many will seek to enter. For those pursuing an academic career, the faculty advisor is invaluable. Although research has revealed associations between advisor satisfaction and specific academic outcomes, the advisor’s role in students’ career prospects is unknown. Thus, the aim of this research was to investigate the advisor’s role in PhD students’ career trajectories, specifically their goals and outcomes on the job market. Online surveys were used in two studies: Study 1 explored the advisor’s role in the career trajectories of students recently on the job market, and Study 2 surveyed PhD students just entering the job market. Study 1 revealed that those who saw their advisor as a mentor and had greater mentoring satisfaction were more likely to accept tenure-track positions and were more satisfied with their job offer. Study 2 revealed that students who talked to their advisor, regardless of mentoring satisfaction, were more likely to apply to and prioritize tenure-track positions. Taken together, our findings suggest that by serving as mentors and talking to students about the job market, advisors may facilitate the successful pursuit of tenure-track positions; however, mentoring satisfaction may depend on career outcomes.
Design and implementation of map update mechanism in GIS

With the constant development of embedded computing, the traditional map format widely used on disks that based on variants of R-Tree index update mechanism is not fit to be used in an embedded environment, NAND Flash, and other new high-performance storage devices. RBD-Tree is a spatial index structure which is independent on storage device, and therefore the update method of the index tree based on the RBD-Tree according to read and write characteristics of NAND is optimized, and focuses on design and implementation of a new map format.
The influence of depression, level of functioning in everyday life, and illness acceptance on quality of life in patients with Parkinson’s disease: a preliminary study

Background Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s disease, and its incidence will increase as the global population ages. Due to the multitude of symptoms, this disease clearly has a significant impact on decreasing quality of life for those with PD. We aimed to evaluate the effect of selected variables on quality of life in people with idiopathic PD treated pharmacologically. Materials and methods This study was conducted among 50 patients with PD aged 47–85 years. The diagnostic survey method was applied to collect data with the use of the authors’ questionnaire and standardized questionnaires, including, Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire (PDQ), Beck Depression Inventory, Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale, and Acceptance of Illness Scale. The results were statistically analyzed. Results Analysis of the study material showed that people who were more self-reliant were characterized by lower intensity of depressive symptoms (ρ=−0.567, P=0), were more likely to accept their illness (ρ=0.611, P=0), and assessed quality of life better in each of the studied domains of the PDQ. Illness acceptance correlated with the occurrence of depressive symptoms (ρ=−0.567, P=0) and significantly affected quality of life. Conclusion Factors such as depression, disease acceptance, and functional capacity have a significant impact on the subjective assessment of quality of life in patients with PD. Evaluation of these factors should be taken into account in the therapeutic process, to minimize their negative impact on quality of life in patients with PD.
Sound spotting: a frame-based approach

We present a system for content-based retrieval of perceptually similar sound events in audio documents (‘sound spotting’, using a query by example. The system consists of three discrete stages: a front-end for feature extraction, a self-organizing map, and a pattern matching unit. Our paper introduces the approach, describes the separate modules and discusses some preliminary results and future research.
Stability Analysis of Kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis : Theory and Practice

Canonical Correlation Analysis is a technique for finding pairs of basis vectors that maximise the correlation of a set of paired variables, these pairs can be considered as two views of the same object. This paper provides a stability analysis of Canonical Correlation Analysis by defining a pattern function that captures the degree to which the features from the two views are similar. We analyse the stability using Rademacher complexity, hence deriving the error bound for new data. The analysis justifies the regularisation of kernel Canonical Correlation Analysis and is corroborated in experiments on real world data.