Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Awareness of human activities by detecting state change of room equipment

In order to realize a smart home to recognize human activities of daily living (ADL), it is necessary to develop a human activity recognition technology. This study proposes a method of awareness of human activities by detecting state change of room equipment, which includes doors, chairs, desks, a light and a fridge. A characteristic of the proposed method is an indirect recognition method in the sense that it does not employ the human motion data. In this study we deal with an action estimation and a movement locus estimation as the tasks on the awareness of human activities. Two simulation experiments have been done to evaluate the proposed method. As the results, we show that the proposed method can estimate human actions with a precision rate of 66.7% and with a recall rate of 72.7%. Also we show the movement locus of human in a room can be approximately estimated.
Heterogeneity in House Price Dynamics

To what extent do house price dynamics differ across market segments? And what determines this heterogeneity? We address these questions by analysing a data set of individual houses and mortgages, based on a survey of about 2,000 Dutch households over the period 2003-2011. We estimate a dynamic panel data model of house price dynamics by means of the Arellano-Bond estimator. Three main empirical results emerge. First, we generally find that house price dynamics imply a convergence towards their long-run equilibrium value, as indicated by a negative serial correlation coefficient and a positive estimated mean reversion coefficient. Second, there is evidence that the housing market in the Netherlands is inefficient. Third, there is important heterogeneity across different market segments. We document that the speed of convergence of house price dynamics and the efficiency of housing markets depends on the geographical location and degree of urbanization, the type and year of construction of a house, the type of mortgage financing and households' sentiment about the medium-term outlook for income.
Lipid accumulation product and waist-to-height ratio are predictors of the metabolic syndrome in a Nigerian male geriatric population.

Objective: The metabolic syndrome (MetS) describes a clinical constellation of distinct but interrelated abnormalities that have been linked to many cardio-metabolic diseases which result in increased morbidity and mortality. Several indices have been developed to predict cardio-metabolic diseases. This study evaluated the accuracy of such indices as the lipid accumulation product (LAP), visceral adiposity index (VAI), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), waist-to-hip ratio (WHpR) and body mass index (BMI) to predict the metabolic syndrome in a male geriatric population. Methods: Forty geriatric males (age range 65 to 84 years) were studied. Their fasting blood glucose levels, serum lipid profile, blood pressures and relevant anthropometric indices were determined using standard protocols. Validated and appropriate equations were used to derive the necessary indices. Results: Only LAP (p<0.001) and WHtR (p=0.022) were significantly higher in subjects with MetS relative to those without the syndrome. The ROC analyses showed that LAP [Area under the curve (AUC) = 0.937] and WHtR (AUC = 0.905) predicted the MetS, better than the other indices. A LAP threshold of 4.391 had a MetS predictive sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 81%, while a WHtR threshold of 0.61 had a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 78%. Conclusion: LAP and WHtR are associated with, and are sensitive and fairly specific predictors of, the MetS in this geriatric population.
Recycling policy in areas of low income and multi-storey housing

The paper considers the participation of households in recycling programmes in areas of multi-storey, low income housing which are often considered unattractivefor such programmes.A model of the material recycled is presented together with a review of socio-economic, housing, technological, policy and other factors influencing household recycling. This is followed by a case study of two areas in the city of Edinburgh. Results suggest that the level of recycling is influenced by collection methods, for all materials except glass, with half of the recyclers starting as a result of the introduction of kerbside collection. Housing characteristics such as the storey-level in buildings without lifts , household size and access to cars all influenced recycling participation rates. Housing tenure was not found to be significant. This suggests that well designed kerbside collection programmescan have a significant impact in areas with high levels of multi-storey dwellings, low income and public housing.
Organizational risk taking: adaptation versus variable risk preferences

The observed association between performance and organizational risk taking has usually been attributed to the influence of performance on risk preferences. Here I show how a simple model of adaptation, which only assumes that organizations avoid activities with poor past performance, can explain the empirically observed U-shaped association between risk and return. The model also makes novel predictions, which are shown to be consistent with the data. The findings suggest that risk taking may be a by-product of adaptation rather than a deliberate choice motivated by variable risk preferences.
A Critical Empirical Study of Three Electricity Spot Price Models

We conduct an empirical analysis of three recently proposed and widely used models for electricity spot price process. The first model, called the jump-diffusion model, was proposed by Cartea and Figueroa (2005), and is a one-factor mean-reversion jump-diffusion model, adjusted to incorporate the most important characteristics of electricity prices. The second model, called the threshold model, was proposed by Roncoroni (2002) and further developed by Geman and Roncoroni (2006), and is an exponential Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process driven by a Brownian motion and a state-dependent compound Poisson process. It is designed to capture both statistical and pathwise properties of electricity spot prices. The third model, called the factor model, was proposed by Benth et al. (2007). It is an additive linear model, where the price dynamics is a superposition of Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes driven by subordinators to ensure positivity of the prices. It separates the modelling of spikes and base components. We calibrate all three models to German spot price data. Besides employing techniques similar to those used in the original papers we adopt the prediction-based estimating function technique (Sorensen, 2000) and the filtering technique (Meyer-Brandis and Tankov, 2008). We critically compare the properties and the estimation of the three models and discuss several shortcomings and possible improvements. Besides analysing the spot price behaviour, we compute forward prices and risk premia for all three models for various German forward data and identify the key forward price drivers.
Detecting Anti Ad-blockers in the Wild

Abstract The rise of ad-blockers is viewed as an economic threat by online publishers who primarily rely on online advertising to monetize their services. To address this threat, publishers have started to retaliate by employing anti ad-blockers, which scout for ad-block users and react to them by pushing users to whitelist the website or disable ad-blockers altogether. The clash between ad-blockers and anti ad-blockers has resulted in a new arms race on the Web. In this paper, we present an automated machine learning based approach to identify anti ad-blockers that detect and react to ad-block users. The approach is promising with precision of 94.8% and recall of 93.1%. Our automated approach allows us to conduct a large-scale measurement study of anti ad-blockers on Alexa top-100K websites. We identify 686 websites that make visible changes to their page content in response to ad-block detection. We characterize the spectrum of different strategies used by anti ad-blockers. We find that a majority of publishers use fairly simple first-party anti ad-block scripts. However, we also note the use of third-party anti ad-block services that use more sophisticated tactics to detect and respond to ad-blockers.
Voice Authenticationa Study Of Polynomial Representation Of Speech Signals

A subset of speech recognition is the use of speech recognition techniques for voice authentication. Voice authentication is an alternative security application to the other biometric security measures such as the use of fingerprints or iris scans. Voice authentication has advantages over the other biometric measures in that it can be utilized remotely, via a device like a telephone. However, voice authentication has disadvantages in that the authentication system typically requires a large memory and processing time than do fingerprint or iris scanning systems. Also, voice authentication research has yet to provide an authentication system as reliable as the other biometric measures. Most voice recognition systems use Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) as their basic probabilistic framework. Also, most voice recognition systems use a frame based approach to analyze the voice features. An example of research which has been shown to provide more accurate results is the use of a segment based model. The HMMs impose a requirement that each frame has conditional independence from the next. However, at a fixed frame rate, typically 10 ms., the adjacent feature vectors might span the same phonetic segment and often exhibit smooth dynamics and are highly correlated. The relationship between features of different phonetic segments is much weaker. Therefore, the segment based approach makes fewer conditional independence assumptions which are also violated to a lesser degree than for the frame based approach. Thus, the HMMs using segmental based approaches are more accurate. The speech polynomials (feature vectors) used in the segmental model have been shown to be Chebychev polynomials. Use of the properties of these polynomials has made it possible to reduce the computation time for speech recognition systems. Also, representing the spoken word
Using Random Forests and Logistic Regression for Performance Prediction of Latin American ADRS and Banks

In the paper, random forests and logistic regressions’ support of financial analysis functions’ predictive tool to forecast corporate performance and rank accounting and corporate variables according to their impact on performance is demonstrated. Ten-fold cross-validation experiments are conducted on one sample each of Latin American depository receipts (ADRs) and Latin American banks. Random forests indicate that the most important variables that affect ADRs performance are size and the law-and-order tradition; the most important variables that affect banks are size, long-term assets to deposits, number of directors, and efficiency of the legal system. The interpretation of predictive models for a small sample improved when the capacity of random forests to rank and predict with the parameters of a logistic regression were combined.
Liver transplantation from non-heart beating donors in rats: influence of viscosity and temperature of initial flushing solutions on graft function.

BACKGROUND We evaluated the effect of warm (37 degrees C) versus cold (4 degrees C) solutions as the initial flush for liver preservation from non-heart beating donors in rats. METHODS An initial flush was performed just before donor hepatectomy with cold or warm University of Wisconsin solution (UW), UW without hydroxyethyl starch, sodium lactobionate sucrose solution, or lactated Ringer's solution as the control group. A separate group also used as control received no initial flushing. Liver transplantation was performed, and the graft function was determined by survival and assessment of enzyme release. The viscosity of each solution and the vascular resistance of the graft were measured. RESULTS The 7-day survival rate was 83% and 100% in the warm and cold sodium lactobionate sucrose solution groups and 60% and 50% in the warm and cold lactated Ringer's solution groups, respectively. In the no-initial-flush group, rats did not survive. The 7-day survival rate was 67% and 0% in the warm and cold UW groups, respectively. Eliminating the hydroxyethyl starch from the cold UW improved the survival to 67%. Serum alanine aminotransferase levels 1 day after transplantation in the no-initial-flush and the cold UW groups were significantly higher than those of the remaining groups. At 4 degrees C the viscosity was higher in the UW (86.2 cp) compared to hydroxyethyl starch-free UW solution (30.9 cp), lactated Ringer's solution (24.5 cp), and sodium lactobionate sucrose solution (32.7 cp). The viscosity of UW at 37 degrees C was 34.7 cp. Vascular resistance correlated well with the viscosity. Livers flushed with solutions with a low viscosity showed lower vascular resistance than those flushed with cold UW and led to better survival. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that the viscosity of the initial flushing solution may play an important role in determining the outcome of organ procurement from non-heart beating donors.
Adipose tissue metabolism, diabetes and vascular disease — lessons from in vivo studies

There is an epidemic of obesity, insulin resistance and cardiovascular disease. Adipose tissue plays a major metabolic role and produces hormones with important physiological effects. In vitro studies remove regulatory factors, such as blood flow, making results difficult to interpret, and animal studies cannot necessarily be extrapolated to humans. Fortunately, adipose tissue can be studied in vivo with microdialysis, adipose tissue vein cannulation, measurement of blood flow using 133Xenon washout, stable isotope tracers and biopsies. In vivo studies have shown that adipose tissue is an efficient buffer against the postprandial flux of non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA) in the circulation, protecting other tissues. When there is excess adipose tissue, this buffering effect may be impaired. The postprandial blood flow response is also reduced, potentially causing an atherogenic lipid profile and atheroma. A systems biology approach, combining in vivo techniques with genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, will clarify links between adipose tissue and vascular disease.
Fibulin 2, a Tyrosine O-Sulfated Protein, Is Up-regulated Following Retinal Detachment*

Background: Fibulin 2 is an ECM protein of basement membranes and elastic tissues. Results: Fibulin 2 is up-regulated during retinal detachment. Conclusion: Up-regulation of fibulin 2 following detachment points to its role in the adhesion of the RPE to the Bruch membrane and prevention of RPE migration. Significance: This is the first study addressing the role of fibulin 2 in retinal detachment. Retinal detachment is the physical separation of the retina from the retinal pigment epithelium. It occurs during aging, trauma, or during a variety of retinal disorders such as age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinopathy of prematurity, or as a complication following cataract surgery. This report investigates the role of fibulin 2, an extracellular component, in retinal detachment. A major mechanism for detachment resolution is enhancement of cellular adhesion between the retina and the retinal pigment epithelium and prevention of its cellular migration. This report shows that fibulin 2 is mainly present in the retinal pigment epithelium, Bruch membrane, choriocapillary, and to a lesser degree in the retina. In vitro studies revealed the presence of two isoforms for fibulin 2. The small isoform is located inside the cell, and the large isoform is present inside and outside the cells. Furthermore, fibulin 2 is post-translationally modified by tyrosine sulfation, and the sulfated isoform is present outside the cell, whereas the unsulfated pool is internally located. Interestingly, sulfated fibulin 2 significantly reduced the rate of cellular growth and migration. Finally, levels of fibulin 2 dramatically increased in the retinal pigment epithelium following retinal detachment, suggesting a direct role for fibulin 2 in the re-attachment of the retina to the retinal pigment epithelium. Understanding the role of fibulin 2 in enhancing retinal attachment is likely to help improve the current therapies or allow the development of new strategies for the treatment of this sight-threatening condition.
The chromosome complement of single-pronuclear haploid mouse embryos following activation by ethanol treatment.

A technique in which mouse eggs are stimulated to develop parthenogenetically following their brief incubation in 7% ethanol in PBS is described. Very high rates of activation were achieved, and a detailed analysis presented of the class of parthenogenone which develops a single haploid pronucleus following second polar body extrusion. As preliminary studies on presumptive haploid morulae indicated that a proportion of the metaphase spreads examined had an aneuploid chromosome constitution, the incidence of aneuploidy at the first cleavage mitosis was investigated. In the control groups the level of aneuploidy was about 1%, whereas in the ethanol-treated series the incidence ranged from 13 . 6-18 . 8%. Additional pre-treatment of ethanol-activated oocytes in low osmolar medium raised the incidence of aneuploidy to 28 . 3%. Metaphase groups with 18, 19, 21 and 22 chromosomes present were observed in addition to groups with a normal complement of 20 chromosomes. The possible mode of action of ethanol in inducing parthenogenetic activation of mouse oocytes, and a high incidence of aneuploidy, is discussed in relation to previous knowledge of the action of this agent. Preliminary studies using G-banding indicate that the aneuploidy observed appears to arise as a result of non-disjunction which may involve any of the chromosomes of the complement.
Network effects and software development - implications for security

This survey of literature in software economics tries to find explanations for the vulnerabilities left in commercial software products and the lack of security considerations in software and information systems (IS) that are developed from components. An examination of the information economic environment where market-driven software development occurs, which is characterized by network effects and lock-in, suggests that the schedule and the budget constraints on secure software and IS development are outcomes of rational economic behaviour. The consequences for security of first-to-market competition (e.g. shortening development-cycle, release-oriented development, beta testing) and customer lock-in (e.g. into an insecure product) are considered from an economic point of view.
Reading the mind: The potential of electroencephalography in brain computer interfaces

Over the past 15 years the field of brain computer interfaces (BCI) has truly emerged. An increased understanding of the brain has combined with advances in hardware and software to allow us to decode brain activity in real time. This mind reading can be used to provide assistive technologies to restore motor function that has been lost, or even to augment the healthy. There are many different techniques to read brain activity, and this article will discuss the potential of electroencephalography (EEG) BCIs to move out of the lab and into the real world. The EEG signal is very noisy and difficult to analyse but many advances have recently been made in this area. Before the first devices can enter the homes of the disabled, many hardware and software limitations must be overcome via interdisciplinary collaboration. At the University of Auckland, EEG based BCIs have been under development for the past few years. Our laboratory has produced excellent results including an EEG controlled video game, and an EEG phone dialling system. Research is ongoing in this area, with new projects starting for control of prostheses or rehabilitation robots.
Development of a symptom severity index and a symptom impact index for stress incontinence in women

Stress incontinence is a common problem among women, yet there is no adequately validated instrument for measuring women's views of its severity (disease‐specific health status). The only instrument for measuring the impact or bothersomeness of symptoms (disease‐specific quality of life) has poor internal consistency. This paper describes the development and psychometric assessment of two new indexes, a Symptom Severity Index and a Symptom Impact Index. Following several qualitative enquiries, a questionnaire was developed and administered to 442 women undergoing stress incontinence surgery. The face and content validity of the items comprising the indexes was good. The Severity Index (0–20) showed good variability (median 14, interquartile range 6) and adequate internal consistency (alpha 0.76). The Impact Index (0–12) also had good variability (median 5, interquartile range 3.5) and internal consistency (alpha 0.80). Convergent and discriminant validity were demonstrated for both indexes. Test‐retest reliability was high. While responsiveness is still to be tested, the two indexes are psychometrically strong and can be used to measure the severity and impact of stress incontinence in women. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Enhancing Organizational Global Hegemony with Narrative Accounting Disclosures: An Early Example

Transnational corporations (TNCs) have been an important element in the development of globalisation practices. This paper explores politically related narrative accounting disclosures made by an early TNC (Shell), and analyses how these disclosures might have been used as part of a strategy aimed at protecting and enhancing the political and economic hegemony of Shell (and other oil industry TNCs) in relation to the power of nation states, at a time when Shell was transforming into a TNC. Using a theoretical framework drawn from classical political economy of accounting, it identifies patterns of disclosure consistent with a corporate strategy of protecting and advancing the power and wealth of capital in a global corporation with little regard to the impact this might have had on individual states.