Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Construction and Application of SVM Model and Wavelet-PCA for Face Recognition

This work presents a method to increase the face recognition accuracy using a combination of Wavelet, PCA, and SVM. Pre-processing, feature extraction and classification rules are three crucial issues for face recognition. This paper presents a hybrid approach to employ these issues. For preprocessing and feature extraction steps, we apply a combination of wavelet transform and PCA. During the classification stage, SVMs incorporated with a binary tree recognition strategy are applied to tackle the multi-class face recognition problem to achieve a robust decision in presence of wide facial variations. The binary trees extend naturally, the pairwise discrimination capability of the SVMs to the multiclass scenario. Two face databases are used to evaluate the proposed method. The computational load of the proposed method is greatly reduced as comparing with the original PCA based method on the ORL and Compound face databases. Moreover, the accuracy of the proposed method is improved.
Trans-Boundary Edge Effects in the Western Carpathians: The Influence of Hunting on Large Carnivore Occupancy

The conservation and management of wolves Canis lupus in the periphery of their distribution is challenging. Edges of wolf distribution are characterized by very few and intermittent occurrences of individuals, which are modulated by multiple factors affecting the overall population such as human-caused mortality, management targets and food availability. The knowledge of population dynamics in the edges becomes crucial when hunting takes place nearby the edges, which may preclude population expansion. Here, using as example the occurrence of wolves in the Beskydy Mountains (Czech-Slovak border), which are the edge distribution of the wolf and Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx populations in the West Carpathians, we explored how food availability and hunting in the Slovakian core area affected the dynamics of wolves in the edges of this population. During 2003–2012, we monitored large carnivore occurrence by snow-tracking surveys and tested potential differences in the occurrence of these species in Beskydy Mountains and potential mechanisms behind detected patterns. Despite the proximity to the core area, with several wolf reproductions being confirmed at least in recent years, the wolf was a very rare species in Beskydy and was recorded 14 times less often than the lynx. The expected abundance of wolves in the Beskydy Mountains was inversely related to prey availability in the Slovakian core area. Wolf hunting the year before influenced the expected abundance of wolves in Beskydy area. We discuss how different life histories and legal status of both species probably account for most of the observed difference of occurrence at range margins.
Karojisatsu in Japan: Characteristics of 22 Cases of Work‐Related Suicide

Karojisatsu in Japan: Characteristics of 22 Cases of Work‐Related Suicide: Takashi Amagasa, et al. Mental Clinic Misato—With the rapidly increasing number of work‐related suicides in Japan (Karojisatsu, in Japanese), both applications for worker's compensation insurance and civil suits are proliferating. The phenomenon of work‐related suicide is examined along with the process and related factors. With informed consent from bereaved families, two certified psychiatrists independently reviewed and summarized 22 insurance and legal reports filed by psychiatrists on employee suicides that were related to heavy workloads. A clinical epidemiologist participated in discussions with psychiatrists to reach a consensus concerning the cause of the suicides. Only one case involved a female. Seventeen had experienced personnel changes, such as a promotion or transfer. Low social support was recognized in 18, high psychological demand in 18, low decision latitude in 17, and long working hours in 19 cases (more than 11 hours per day for 3 months or more, and without a day off in 9). The subjects had depressive episodes by the ICD‐10 criteria and showed suicidal signs. Ten of them saw a general practitioner because of unspecified somatic complaints, but no effective measures were taken. None of them had a history of psychiatric consultation or had received mental health education dealing with job stress management. Although causality cannot be made from this case series report, we hypothesize that long working hours, heavy workloads, and low social support may cause depression, which can lead to suicide. Appropriate countermeasures are urgently needed and the present findings suggest some of them are possible.
BCR‐bound antigen is targeted to exosomes in human follicular lymphoma B‐cells 1

Background information. Exosomes are small membrane vesicles secreted by several cell types during exocytic fusion of multivesicular bodies with the plasma membrane. Exosomes from tumour cells can transfer antigens from cell to cell, a property favouring antigen‐specific immune responses in vitro and in vivo, and are thus an interesting putative therapeutic tool in human cancers. Exosomes have been well studied in EBV (Epstein—Barr virus)‐transformed human B‐cell lines; however, biological stimuli regulating exosome secretion quantitatively and/or qualitatively still remain poorly defined.
Double resistance to ganciclovir and foscarnet of four human cytomegalovirus strains recovered from AIDS patients

Four human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) isolates from four different AIDS patients treated with both ganciclovir and foscarnet and not responding clinically to antiviral treatment, were studied in order to verify the occurrence of double resistance to both drugs, and to define whether single or multiple HCMV strains could be responsible for the double resistance. Peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL), the relevant conventional viral isolates, and plaque‐purified strains from all four patients were examined by antiviral drug susceptibility testing by an immediate‐early antigen plaque reduction assay and by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis using polymerase chain reaction (PCR)‐amplified multiple genome regions and endonucleases. All four HCMV strains had a high level of resistance to both ganciclovir and foscarnet. A single HCMV strain was shown to be responsible for the dual resistance in each patient. HCMV strain identity and uniqueness were shown for each of the four patients in blood samples, viral isolates, and plaque‐purified strains. In addition, in two patients the same single HCMV strain shifted progressively from drug sensitivity to ganciclovir and then to ganciclovir‐foscarnet resistance. These findings document that resistance to both ganciclovir and foscarnet of HCMV strains recovered from blood of AIDS patients represents an emerging problem. Although it is known that multiple HCMV strains may cocirculate in the blood of AIDS patients, single strains appear to be responsible for the dual resistance. Molecular mechanisms responsible for the double resistance of the four reported strains are under study. © Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Comparable Entity Mining From Comparative Question Archive

Comparing one thing with another is a typical part of human decision making process, especially during an online purchase scheme. Without comparing it is not fair to purchase a product, since it won’t give an ideal performance. To get rid of this difficulty, my paper presents an ideal way for automatically mine comparable entities from comparative questions that users posted online. It gives an opportunity to improve the search experience by automatically offering comparisons to user. A weekly supervised bootstrapping algorithm is employed here for comparative question identification and comparable entity extraction by collecting a large online question archive. It also provides users to add new attributes of their interest to the annotation form, so that the next search retrieves the provided new attribute information. This technique would outperform the existing system of online shopping. Keywords— Information extraction, Natural language processing, part of speech, Robust automated production of IER
A Compact and Low-Profile MIMO Antenna Using a Miniature Circular High-Impedance Surface for Wearable Applications

A new miniature circular high-impedance surface (HIS) is used to design a compact and low-profile multi-in multi-out (MIMO) antenna for wearable applications. The antenna is designed to operate from 2.4 to 2.49 GHz for wireless local area network application. By employing a pair of degenerated characteristic modes of a circular loop antenna, the MIMO antenna can achieve a good port-to-port isolation (>15 dB) without increasing its geometric size. A four-element HIS is chosen to match the antenna profile, and a 2 dBi antenna gain improvement is observed. The design was optimized considering the effect of packaging and then a prototype with the optimal parameters was fabricated and tested. Measurement results are in good agreement with simulation results. Furthermore, the loading effect due to lossy human tissue is also considered and the results show that the antenna has a robust performance against the human phantom and a low specific absorption rate can also be obtained.
Integrating Occlusion Culling and Levels of Detail through Hardly‐Visible Sets

Occlusion culling and level‐of‐detail rendering have become two powerful tools for accelerating the handling of very large models in real‐time visualization applications. We present a framework that combines both techniques to improve rendering times. Classical occlusion culling algorithms compute potentially visible sets (PVS), which are supersets of the sets of visible polygons. The novelty of our approach is to estimate the degree of visibility of each object of the PVS using synthesized coarse occluders. This allows to arrange the objects of each PVS into several Hardly‐Visible Sets (HVS) with similar occlusion degree. According to image accuracy and frame rate requirements, HVS provide a way to avoid sending to the graphics pipeline those objects whose pixel contribution is low due to partial occlusion. The image error can be bounded by the user at navigation time. On the other hand, as HVS offer a tighter estimation of the pixel contribution for each scene object, it can be used for a more convenient selection of the level‐of‐detail at which objects are rendered. In this paper, we describe the new framework technique, provide details of its implementation using a visibility octree as the chosen occlusion culling data structure and show some experimental results on the image quality.
An Exemplar-Based Approach to Frequency Warping for Voice Conversion

The voice conversion's task is to modify a source speaker's voice to sound like that of a target speaker. A conversion method is considered successful when the produced speech sounds natural and similar to the target speaker. This paper presents a new voice conversion framework in which we combine frequency warping and exemplar-based method for voice conversion. Our method maintains high-resolution details during conversion by directly applying frequency warping on the high-resolution spectrum to represent the target. The warping function is generated by a sparse interpolation from a dictionary of exemplar warping functions. As the generated warping function is dependent only on a very small set of exemplars, we do away with the statistical averaging effects inherited from Gaussian mixture models. To compensate for the conversion error, we also apply residual exemplars into the conversion process. Both objective and subjective evaluations on the VOICES database validated the effectiveness of the proposed voice conversion framework. We observed a significant improvement in speech quality over the state-of-the-art parametric methods.
The Effect of Fluid Periodization on Athletic Performance Outcomes in American Football Players

OF DISSERTATION THE EFFECT OF FLUID PERIODIZATION ON ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES IN AMERICAN FOOTBALL PLAYERS For decades strength and conditioning professionals have been seeking optimal training volumes and intensities to yield maximum performance outcomes without the onset of injury. Unfortunately, current studies apply experimental training techniques without considering the individuals’ response to the imposed training load. Due to the vast genetic variability and extraneous environmental factors that affect one’s ability to recover, results from such studies are controversial and inconclusive. Athlete monitoring systems offer an objective assessment that is purported to evaluate an individual’s physiological readiness to adapt to an overload stimulus and thus allow for daily manipulations in training loads (i.e., fluid periodization). However, little is known about the efficacy of this technology to enhance training outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of fluid periodization on performance outcomes in American football players. Sixty-one Division 1 collegiate American football players (Age: 19.7 ± 0.9 yr; Height: 1.88 ± 0.3 m; Mass: 107.3 ± 11.1 kg) participated in this study and were stratified into experimental (n=33) and control (n=28) groups. Performance outcomes were measured prior to and following the summer training program. Physiological readiness parameters (heart rate variability and direct current brain wave potential outcomes) were measured daily in the experimental group only with Omegawave technology prior to training sessions and adjustments in training volumes or intensity were made based upon physiological readiness outcomes. The control group trained according to the daily prescribed workout. The findings from this study indicate that the experimental group significantly improved in vertical jump, vertical power, aerobic efficiency and broad jump (P < 0.01) compared to the control group. Additionally, significant improvements and effect sizes between groups were noted for fat-free mass (relative improvement: 54%, effect size: 0.30), vertical jump (relative improvement: 157%, effect size: 1.02), vertical power (relative improvement: 94%, effect size: 0.86), broad jump (relative improvement: effect size: 592%, 0.81), triple broad jump (relative improvement: 338%, effect size: 0.63), aerobic efficiency (relative improvement: 154%, effect size: 1.02), and medicine ball overhead throw (relative improvement: 50%, effect size: 0.26). In addition, the experimental group achieved these improvements with less core (-9.5%) and accessory (-13.2%) training volume (P < 0.01). In conclusion, fluid periodization produced greater improvements in performance outcomes at a reduced training load compared to a similar unmodified periodization scheme. These findings highlight the importance of modifying training parameters based upon the daily physiological state of the athlete.
NDTC: A novel topology-based fingerprint matching algorithm using N-layer Delaunay triangulation net check

The problem of recognizing an individual using minutiae of fingerprints can be considered as a point matching problem. However, several factors such as the translation, rotation and deformation of the fingerprints as well as the presence of spurious minutiae and the absence of genuine minutiae, make it difficult to find correspondent minutia-pairs. In this paper, we proposed a novel topology-based fingerprint matching algorithm named N-layer Delaunay Triangulation Net Check (NDTC). This scheme fully utilizes the advantages of the special features of Delaunay triangulation net, e.g. local structural stability and global structural uniqueness, to tackle these problems, in order to provide reliable and robust minutiae matching. Our algorithm performance is evaluated on a public domain database FVC2002 DB2_A.
Cognitive and affective predictors of participation in rehabilitation after acquired brain injury

Objective: The present study aimed to investigate the factors relating to mood and cognition which influence a person’s ability to participate in rehabilitation after Acquired Brain Injury (ABI). It was hypothesised that impairment in cognition, including specific impairment in executive functioning and depression would be associated with poorer engagement in rehabilitation. Method: Twenty-nine patients undergoing rehabilitation following stroke (89.7%) or TBI (10.3%) participated. Individuals recruited completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale as a measure of mood and an executive functioning test battery. Data collection occurred over a two week period as concurrent ratings of participation were gathered from physiotherapists and occupational therapists using the Pittsburgh Rehabilitation Participation Scale. Results: In support of the hypotheses, correlation analysis showed a significant positive correlation between participation in rehabilitation with executive functioning (p < .05) and a significant negative correlation between participation in rehabilitation and low mood (p < .05). No association was found between general cognitive ability, functional disability, time since injury, age, gender and participation.
Genetic Control of Surface Curvature

Although curvature of biological surfaces has been considered from mathematical and biophysical perspectives, its molecular and developmental basis is unclear. We have studied the cinmutant of Antirrhinum, which has crinkly rather than flat leaves. Leaves of cin display excess growth in marginal regions, resulting in a gradual introduction of negative curvature during development. This reflects a change in the shape and the progression of a cell-cycle arrest front moving from the leaf tip toward the base. CIN encodes a TCP protein and is expressed downstream of the arrest front. We propose that CIN promotes zero curvature (flatness) by making cells more sensitive to an arrest signal, particularly in marginal regions.
Charge-spring model for predicting the piezoelectric response of dielectric materials: Considering tetragonality extends validity to ferroelectric crystals

In the 2014 Whitehead Memorial Lecture, a straight-forward charge-spring model was introduced and shown to yield estimates for the piezoelectric thickness coefficients of ferroelectric polymers such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and of polymer ferroelectrets such as cellular polypropylene or tubular-channel fluoroethylene-propylene copolymer systems. It was, however, observed that the predictions for ferroelectric perovskites such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT) led to a discrepancy of up to two orders of magnitude. Here, we try to resolve the mystery. In ferroelectric polymers, the relevant springs represent the soft amorphous phase between the crystalline dipole polarization. Consequently, the (secondary) piezoelectricity is mainly a dipole-density effect predicted from the rigid dipoles of the crystalline phase and the soft springs (elasticity) of the amorphous phase. In polymer ferroelectrets, the internally charged cavities are macroscopic dipoles and soft springs at the same time, and the (primary) piezoelectricity can be directly predicted from the charge densities and the elasticity in the cavities. In ferroelectric perovskites, the spontaneous polarization disappears when the tetragonal axis is compressed back into the cubic axis. Consequently, the tetragonality needs to be used for correcting the effective length of the relevant spring. With the corrected spring (or elasticity) constants, we find reasonable agreement between the predicted and the experimental values for the piezoelectric thickness coefficients also in perovskites.
Balancing exploration and exploitation in motion planning

Computationally efficient motion planning must avoid exhaustive exploration of configuration space. We argue that this can be accomplished most effectively by carefully balancing exploration and exploitation. Exploration seeks to understand configuration space, irrespective of the planning problem, while exploitation acts to solve the problem given the available information obtained by exploration. We present an exploring/exploiting tree (EET) planner that balances its exploration and exploitation behavior. The planner acquires workspace information and subsequently uses this information for exploitation in configuration space. If exploitation fails in difficult regions, the planner gradually shifts its behavior towards exploration. We present experimental results demonstrating that adaptive balancing of exploration and exploitation leads to significant performance improvements compared to other state-of-the-art sampling-based planners.
Handbook of dichotic listening: Theory, methods and research.

Part 1 Dichotic listening and cerebral asymmetry: an overview of the dichotic listening procedure and its relation to cerebral organization, M.P.Bryden monaural asymmetries, John L.Bradshaw and Norman C.Nettleton invariant properties of auditory perceptual asymmetry assessed by dichotic monitoring, Christopher R.Clark et al dichotic presentation as a method for single hemisphere stimulation studies, Bruce E.Wexler. Part 2 Anatomical and neurological considerations: dichotic listening and sodium amytal - functional and morphological aspects of hemispheric asymmetry, Esther Strauss anatomical correlates of paradoxic ear extinction, Paul J.Eslinger and Hanna Damasio dichotic listening after commissurotomy, John J.Sidtis. Part 3 Methodological, acoustic and phonetic considerations: statistical properties of dichotic listening scores, Charles E.Speaks can dichotic listening measure "degree of lateralization? ", Richard A.Harshman and Margaret E.Lundy acoustic and phonetic feature effects in dichotic listening, Vivien C.Tartter. Part 4 Non-verbal stimuli and affective processes: determinants of laterality for music - towards an information processing account, Isabelle Peretz and Jose Morais dichotic studies of the lateralization of affect in normal subjects, M.P.Bryden. Part 5 Electrophysiological and autonomic correlates: auditory evoked responses as an index of laterality - findings from studies of speech perception, Dennis L.Molfese and Christina L.Adams dichotic listening in the study of associative learning - the dichotic conditioning paradigms, Kenneth Hugdahl. Part 6 Children and reading disorders: dichotic listening in children, Merrill Hiscock and Matthew H.Decter dichotic listening - evidence from learning and reading disabled children, John E.Obrzut and Carol A.Boliek dichotic listening and reading (dis)ability, Dirk J.Bakker and E.Jan Kappers. Part 7 Psychopathology: dichotic listening in psychiatric patients, Gerard E.Bruder dichotic listening models of cerebral deficit in schizophrenia, Israel Nachshon. Part 8 Group and individual differences: dichotic listening assessment of group and individual differences - methodological and practical issues, Richard A.Harshman.