Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural Biometric System based on Facial Features Comparison between 2 DPCA and 2 DLDA

In many practical applications such as surveillance, information security, bankcard identification and access control, face recognition systems from video sequences have recently received significant attention. These biometric systems are based on human face that consists of the same elements (eyes, nose, mouth and chin, etc.) which are specific to each person: the eyes can be round or thin and the nose can be large or small, pointed or blunted . So, contrary to the two-dimensional principal component analysis (2DPCA) and two-dimensional linear discriminant analysis (2DLDA) which were recently proposed for features extraction and applied on the whole face with a nearest neighbour classifier, we propose to compare these two methods by applying them on facial regions rather on the whole face and to integrate a MLP for classification task. The evaluation of simulation results is carried out by randomly partioning the face database into training set and a test set, each one of 200 images. Sixes times of random selections are performed and the final recognition rate is the average of all. Experimental comparison is in favour of neural 2DLDA.
Tumor Necrosis Factor and Anti-Tumor Necrosis Factor Therapies

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID). As a result, the inhibition of TNF is an important therapeutic avenue in the treatment of these pathophysiologically diverse disease states. This section discusses TNF, its receptors, and its role in immunoregulation and inflammation, as well as the currently available anti-TNF-based therapies.
African-American early childhood teachers' decisions to refer African-American students

Existing literature regarding European-American teachers' referrals of African-American students for special education programs is abundant. However, literature that explains African-American teachers' referrals of African-American students, in their own voices, is limited. This qualitative study examines the influences guiding African-American teachers' decisions to refer African-American students for special education programs. It uses, as a conceptual framework, several researchers' investigations of influences guiding teacher praxis. From these collective works, a conceptual model was developed as a ''teachers' decisions to refer'' perspective that served as a framework for examining influences that may have guided the participants' referral decisions. Findings revealed that African-American teachers have a collective teacher way of knowing and that socially constructed images of race and gender influenced their referral decisions. Additionally, participant interviews revealed that African-American teachers tended to refer based on the need to find assistance for students with special needs.
Invariant Means on Spaces of Continuous or Measurable Functions

1. Introduction. Invariant means on spaces of functions have been studied by von Neumann [ 7], Banach [ 2], Day [ 4], [5] and others. Day's Amenable semigroups [5] presents a comprehensive summary of the earlier work and many new results. Let 2 be an abstract group or semigroup and ret (2) the Banach space of all bounded real-valued functions on 2 with the supremum norm. A mean on rei(2) is a positive linear functional of norm one. Left and right translation operators, respectively denoted by
ComTouch: design of a vibrotactile communication device

We describe the design of ComTouch, a device that augments remote voice communication with touch, by converting hand pressure into vibrational intensity between users in real-time. The goal of this work is to enrich inter-personal communication by complementing voice with a tactile channel. We present preliminary user studies performed on 24 people to observe possible uses of the tactile channel when used in conjunction with audio. By recording and examining both audio and tactile data, we found strong relationships between the two communication channels. Our studies show that users developed an encoding system similar to that of Morse code, as well as three original uses: emphasis, mimicry, and turn-taking. We demonstrate the potential of the tactile channel to enhance the existing voice communication channel.
Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls

This article reviews and analyzes two national studies of the efficacy of treatment for war veterans suffering from post–traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A careful analysis of the studies conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) Northeast Program Evaluation Center (NEPEC) reveals conceptual, methodological, and design flaws in the research, which reports minimal treatment efficacy for PTSD. Based on this limited, if not biased, data, the results were used for policy purposes to dismantle inpatient PTSD hospital units and trauma-focus treatments. A critique is offered as a review to suggest how future studies might be conducted, designed, and evaluated, including the need for independent, “outside” peer reviews inasmuch as the issue of treatment outcomes generalizes to many nonmilitary populations.
Statistical Theory of Passive Location Systems

A derivation of the principal algorithms and an analysis of the performance of the two most important passive location systems for stationary transmitters, hyperbolic location systems and directionfinding location systems, are presented. The concentration ellipse, the circular error probability, and the geometric dilution of precision are defined and related to the location-system and received-signal characteristics. Doppler and other passive location systems are briefly discussed.
Factors affecting diagnostic accuracy of CT-guided coaxial cutting needle lung biopsy: retrospective analysis of 631 procedures.

PURPOSE To analyze variables affecting diagnostic accuracy of computed tomography (CT)-guided percutaneous coaxial cutting needle biopsy of lung lesions. MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective analysis of factors affecting diagnostic accuracy of CT-guided percutaneous coaxial cutting needle lung biopsy was performed in 631 consecutive procedures with confirmed final diagnoses. Benign and malignant needle biopsy results were cross-examined with correct and incorrect final outcomes to determine diagnostic accuracy. Factors affecting diagnostic accuracy were determined by multivariate logistic regression analysis of variables thought to affect diagnostic accuracy. A P value less than 0.05 was interpreted as statistically significant. RESULTS The overall diagnostic accuracy of CT-guided percutaneous coaxial cutting needle biopsy of lung lesions was 95% (95% CI: 92.7%-96.2%). Sensitivity was 93%, specificity 98%, negative predictive value 6%, positive predictive value 99%, false-positive rate 0.7%, and false-negative rate 15%. The factors affecting diagnostic accuracy were final diagnoses (benign, 86%; malignant, 99%; chi(2) test, P < 0.001) and lesion size (lesions <1.5 cm, 84%; lesions 1.5-5.0 cm, 96%; lesions >5 cm, 93%; chi(2) test, P = 0.06). CONCLUSION Benign lung lesions, lung lesions smaller than 1.5 cm (which pose technical difficulty), and lung lesions larger than 5 cm (which are associated with a higher necrosis rate) affect diagnostic accuracy of CT-guided percutaneous coaxial cutting needle biopsy of lung lesions.
UVA: Language Modeling Techniques for Web People Search

In this paper we describe our participation in the SemEval 2007 Web People Search task. Our main aim in participating was to adapt language modeling tools for the task, and to experiment with various document representations. Our main finding is that single pass clustering, using title, snippet and body to represent documents, is the most effective setting.
Language, Gender and Education: a critical review linking social justice and power

Abstract Since the mid‐1970s studies of language and gender have been increasingly concerned with social justice issues. One aim of these studies has been to identify the role that language plays in the location and maintenance of women in a disadvantageous position in society. This article looks at the role that education plays in creating unjust gender arrangements in society through its language policies and the discursive practices that it legitimates. It begins by critically reviewing many of the studies that have found differences in the respective discourses of men and women. It then reviews the smaller corpus of studies that describe differences in the discourse of preschool and school‐age girls and boys. It then reviews the language policies and discourse practices that schools often adopt which seem to create and reinforce disadvantages for girls and women, suggesting how unjust power is exercised through the medium of school discourse and through taken‐for‐granted school language policies. The .
A review on diabetes patient lifestyle management using mobile application

Diabetes is a silent-killer disease that highly demands proper patient care and sound self-management which is a major challenge for a patient. The advancement in ICT and the rapid increase of mobile phone users are showing that lifestyle management of a diabetes patient can be guided using mobile application. The objective of this review is to analyze the articles and the existing mobile apps that are currently available to support diabetes patient and based on the analysis to describe the opportunities for developing a mobile app integrating most of the common features required for the self-management of a diabetic patient. The review covers journal databases for articles and online markets for mobile app. Initially we found 273 articles from the journal databases and 1004 apps from the online markets out of which 29 articles and 43 apps satisfied our selection criteria. We successfully brought out five primary and seven secondary features which can efficiently handle the self-management system. The major features include blood glucose monitor, medication, diet plan, physical activity, automated transfer of blood glucose data, SMS based notification, weight management, communication etc. No app in our review is found satisfying all the features. Since all the primary and secondary features as a whole are very essential for an effective diabetes patient lifestyle management, but not available in a single app, so there is a potential scope to develop such an app integrating all the features very efficiently.
System Description of NiCT-ATR SMT for NTCIR-7

In this paper we propose a method to improve SMT based patent translatioin. This method first employs International Patent Classification to build class based models. Then, multiple models are interpolated by weighting method employing source side language models. We carried out experiments using data from the patent translation task of NTCIR-7 workshop. According to the experimental results, the proposed method improved the most of automatic scores, which were NIST, WER and PER. Experimental results also shows BLUE score degradation in the proposed method. However, statistical tests by bootstrapping does not show significance for the degradation.
The Child's Conception of Number

A stabilizing and support system for an augmenter cooling liner of a gas turbine engine is shown to include flange means which divide a cooling plenum formed between the cooling liner and an exhaust duct casing into a plurality of individual coolant chambers such that the pressure differential across the cooling liner can be closely controlled. The stabilizing and support system includes a plurality of stabilizers adapted to mount the cooling liner to the exhaust duct casing in such a manner as to define the cooling plenum therebetween. The stabilizers are captured on their outer ends by a stabilizer guide which permits relative thermal expansion to occur between the cooling liner and the exhaust duct casing, and each of the stabilizer guides is connected to a positioning band which is adapted to be mounted to the inside of the exhaust duct casing. In the preferred embodiment, the positioning band is provided with an integrally formed flange which defines a restricted inlet to each of the cooling chambers.
Possession as a clinical phenomenon: a critique of the medical model

The focus of this article is on the individual's specific experience of his personality being possessed, either partially or completely, momentarily or for an extended period of time, by evil spirits. It must be seen as necessary to supplement the narrow medical model for interpreting states of possession. The clinically interested psychologist of religion, in particular, needs consider aspects of the phenomenology of religion and clinical psychology in order to gain a broader understanding of this phenomenon. To declare that possession experiences are "nothing but psychosis, mania, epilepsy or schizophrenia, are examples of this type of over-simplification. The structure of possession can above all be understood as an interaction between a cognitive, linguistic level, and an emotional, affective level. Only if one unites these two levels can one attain a deeper understanding of the individual's possession experience. It is, in other words, important to remember that to increase understanding of the structure of possession, we must relate the individual's (bio-chemically conditioned) intensive feeling experience to the surrounding subculture's way of defining these intensive feelings. Religious language provides one way of dealing verbally with the unstructured and terrifying aspects of a developing psychosis. It is, for example, possible to describe the personal transformation as a dynamic relationship between the verbal representatives for evil or the Evil One in the world of mythological language, and the intrapsychic, anxiety-filled emotive state, regardless of whether this inner state is considered to be the result of neurosis, psycho-sis, or the consequence of intensive suggestion.
Technology‐enhanced learning: An Irish industry perspective

Purpose – The focus of this paper is to highlight the issues impacting technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) in an industrial setting in Ireland. The paper uses the output from a community of practice (CoP) set up to identify and discuss these issues. Seven companies participated in the CoP. Their experiences represented the full spectrum of industrial experience of TEL in Ireland. The aim of the paper was to highlight the key areas where Irish companies experience issues with regard to the implementation of TEL programmes. The results of the study show that many of the issues highlighted by past literature still remain.Design/methodology/approach – The research presented in this paper is output from a CoP set up to discuss TEL within industry. Within the CoP discussion groups were created to highlight the relevant issues.Findings – The main issues highlighted by the CoP members ranged from strategic, content, learner and technology‐related issues. One key finding of the CoP is that holistic approaches to im.
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning Decolonizing Cyberspace: Online Support for the Nunavut MEd

extent in short, intensive, face-to-face courses, the program also made extensive use of online supports. This paper outlines the design challenges – geographical, technological, pedagogical, and cultural – that faced the development and delivery of the online portion of the program. It highlights the intersection of the design decisions with the decolonizing principles that framed the program as a whole, the various and varying roles played by the online environment over the course of the program, and the program’s contribution to student success.
Bistatic Doppler Frequency Estimation with Asynchronous Moving Devices for Integrated Sensing and Communications

In this letter, we present for the first time a method to estimate the bistatic Doppler frequency of a target with clock asynchronous and mobile Integrated Sensing And Communication (ISAC) devices. Existing approaches have separately tackled the presence of phase offsets due to clock asynchrony or the additional Doppler shift due to device movement. However, in real ISAC scenarios, these two sources of phase nuisance are concurrently present, making the estimation of the target's Doppler frequency particularly challenging. Our method solves the problem using the sole wireless signal at the receiver, by computing Channel Impulse Response (CIR) phase differences across different multipath components and subsequent time instants. In this way, we cancel out phase offsets. Then, we construct a system of equations that allows disentangling the target's Doppler frequency from that of the moving device. The proposed method is validated via simulation, exploring the impact of different system parameters. Numerical results show that our approach is a viable way of estimating Doppler frequency in bistatic asynchronous ISAC scenarios with mobile devices.
Students’ Well-being: Impacts of studying out-EU and perceived autonomy on the Psychological Quality of Life

Background. Well-being of university students plays an essential role in the success of a master’s degree and future career. The Luxembourgish government helps students with a financial aid attributed independently of their socioeconomic status. Some choose to study abroad. What relationships exist between their Psychological Quality of Life (Psy-QoL), career goals, perceived autonomy and the country of their university (Luxembourg, European Union, Out-EU)? Method. An online questionnaire was sent to all students who received financial aid. Psy-Qol, career goals, autonomy and study country were assessed. A multiple linear regression was used. Findings. 526 students participated (55% women, age 27.1±6.0). Psy-Qol was 72.4/100. Participants who studied out-EU had higher Psy-Qol and higher autonomy than those who stayed in border universities (France Belgium or Germany; p=0.033* and p=0.016* respectively). Psy-Qol was mostly impacted by perceived autonomy (β=0.45***) and study country (β=0.07 (adjusted R²=0.213). Discussion. Students with a better psychological quality of life mobilized their capabilities to study out of their country, which is related with better autonomy. Implementing workshops to increase individual skills may improve and/or maintain well-being and limit social inequalities.
Correlation of natriuretic peptides and inferior vena cava size in patients with congestive heart failure

Background The inferior vena cava (IVC) diameter and degree of inspiratory collapse are used as echocardiographic indices in the estimation of right atrial pressure. Brain-natriuretic peptides (BNPs) are established biomarkers of myocardial wall stress. There is no information available regarding the association between the IVC diameter and BNPs in patients with heart failure and various degrees of systolic performance. The purpose of this investigation is to quantify the degree to which natriuretic peptides (BNP and N-terminal pro-B natriuretic peptide [NT-ProBNP]) and echocardiographic-derived indices of right atrial pressure correlate in this patient population. Methods We examined 77 patients (mean age 61 ± 17 years, 44% male) with decompensated heart failure who underwent transthoracic echocardiography and, within a timeframe of 24 hours, determination of BNP and NT-ProBNP levels in venous blood. BNP and NT-ProBNP were analyzed after log transformation. The degree of association was measured by the correlation coefficient using the Pearson’s method. Results The mean ejection fraction was 50% ± 20%, and 33% of the study cohort had a remote history of heart failure. The mean IVC diameter was 1.85 cm ± 0.5, the mean BNP was 274 pg/mL, the confidence interval (CI) was 95% (95% CI: 197–382), and the mean NT-ProBNP was 1994 pg/mL (95% CI: 1331–2989). There was a positive, albeit small, association between IVC diameter and BNP (r = 0.24, 95% CI: 0.01–0.44; P = 0.03) and NT-ProBNP (r = 0.27, 95% CI: 0.05–0.47; P = 0.01). Among patients with different degrees of IVC collapse in response to inspiration, values for BNP and NT-ProBNP did not differ substantially (P = 0.36 and 0.46 for BNP and NT-ProBNP, respectively). Conclusion Natriuretic peptides correlate weakly with IVC size and do not predict changes in response to intrathoracic pressure.
The Influence of Background Stimuli on Summation in Autoshaping

Five experiments examined the factors that determine whether or nor summation will occur when experimental stimuli are presented on a television screen for autoshaping with pigeons. In Experiment 1 there were periods when the television screen was illuminated white and periods when it was dark. When conditioning was conducted during the white periods, then summation was observed if the test trials were conducted with a white screen during the intertrial interval. Summation was not found when conditioning was conducted during the dark periods, no matter how testing was conducted. The remaining experiments demonstrated that summation will occur if at least some of the conditioning trials are conducted with the experimental stimuli being accompanied by white illumination in the remainder of the television screen. It was not necessary for this illumination to persist into the interval between trials. These findings indicate that summation is influenced by the similarity of the patterns of stimulation that are used for training and testing.
Optimal Multi-Agent Scheduling with Constraint Programming

We consider the problem of computing optimal schedules in multi-agent systems. In these problems, actions of one agent can influence the actions of other agents, while the objective is to maximize the total 'quality' of the schedule. More specifically, we focus on multi-agent scheduling problems with time windows, hard and soft precedence relations, and a nonlinear objective function. We show how we can model and efficiently solve these problems with constraint programming technology. Elements of our proposed method include constraint-based reasoning, search strategies, problem decomposition, scheduling algorithms, and a linear programming relaxation. We present experimental results on realistic problem instances to display the different elements of the solution process.
A New Eecient Caching Policy for the World Wide Web

Nicolas Niclausse , Zhen Liu, Philippe Nain INRIA Centre Sophia Antipolis 2004 Route des Lucioles B.P. 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis France E-mail: {Zhen.Liu, Philippe.Nain, Nicolas.Niclausse}@sophia.inria. fr July 1997 Abstract With the increasing popularity of the World Wide Web, the amount of information available and the use of Web servers are growing exponentially. In order to reduce the overhead induced by frequent requests to the same documents by local users, client caching and, more generally, proxy-caching have been proposed and are now widely used. Most implementations use traditional memory paging policies, like the Least Recently Used (LRU) policy. However, due to the heterogeneity of the requests of Web tra c, both in the size of the documents and in the network transfer delays, such caching policies are not very e cient. In this work, we propose a new caching policy which takes into account the network latency, the size of the documents, their access frequencies, and the time elapsed since the last reference to documents in the cache. Through trace-driven simulations and for various standard cost criteria (request hit rate, byte hit rate and latency ratio) we show that our policy performs better than several policies proposed in the literature.