Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gait recognition using Gait Entropy Image

Gait as a behavioural biometric is concerned with how people walk. However, most existing gait representations capture both motion and appearance information. They are thus sensitive to changes in various covariate conditions such as carrying and clothing. In this paper, a novel gait representation termed as Gait Entropy Image (GEnI) is proposed. Based on computing entropy, a GEnI encodes in a single image the randomness of pixel values in the silhouette images over a complete gait cycle. It thus captures mostly motion information and is robust to covariate condition changes that affect appearance. Extensive experiments on the USF HumanID dataset, CASIA dataset and the SOTON dataset have been carried out to demonstrate that the proposed gait representation outperforms existing methods, especially when there are significant appearance changes. Our experiments also show clear advantage of GEnI over the alternatives without the assumption on cooperative subjects, i.e. both the gallery and the probe sets consist of a mixture of gait sequences under different and unknown covariate conditions. (6 pages)
Cohomology of generalized supergrassmannians and character formulae for basic classical Lie superalgebras

We use geometrical methods adapted from Borel–Weil–Bott theory to compute the character of every finite‐dimensional simple module over a basic classical Lie superalgebra. The answer is given by a combinatorial algorithm in terms of weight and cap diagrams, which were defined by Brundan and Stroppel for the general linear superalgebra.
Towards decentralized management in United Arab Emirate (UAE) schools

The Ministry of Education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced that changes will be made in the ways in which its schools are managed. At present, most decisions are made centrally by the Ministry of Education, but moves have begun to decentralize some responsibilities and decisions to schools. The success of such reform is likely to be dependent on many complex issues, a major one of which is the willingness of staff members of schools to implement the changes. This study explores perceptions about decentralization that are held by teachers and principals of 6 schools in 1 city in the UAE. The findings will provide valuable assistance for policy-makers, the Ministry of Education, as well as schools and their communities as the decentralization of school management continues to be implemented.
Major depressive disorder: A loss of circadian synchrony?

Circadian rhythms in the sleep/wake cycle, along with a range of physiological measures, are severely disrupted in individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD). Moreover, several central circadian genes have been implicated as potential genetic factors underlying the illness through candidate gene studies and some genome wide association studies. However, investigations into the molecular underpinnings of circadian disturbances in the human brain have been quite challenging. In their recent publication, Li and colleagues have used a novel approach to determine the rhythmic patterns of circadian gene expression in several regions of the human brain, and how these patterns are disrupted in MDD. Their findings demonstrate that in healthy subjects, several brain regions outside the suprachiasmatic nucleus (the master clock) exhibit diurnal gene expression patterns that are disrupted in the brains of MDD subjects. These findings will provide the foundation for future studies of gene‐specific drug targets, and biomarkers for the disease.
Sensitive Spectrophotometric Assay of Isoniazid in Pharmaceuticals using Cerium ( IV ) and Two Acid Dyes

Two simple, rapid, selective and sensitive spectrophotometric methods are proposed for the assay of isoniazid (INH) in pure form and in tablets. The methods are based on the oxidation of INH by a measured excess of Ce(IV) in acid medium followed by determination of surplus oxidant by reacting with a fixed quantity of methyl orange (method A) or indigo carmine (method B) and measuring the absorbance at 520 or 610 nm. In both methods, the amount of Ce(IV) reacted corresponds to the amount of INH. The experimental parameters for the assay have been carefully optimized. In these methods, the absorbance is found to increase linearly with the concentration of INH at the respective wavelengths. Beer’s law is obeyed over the ranges 0.3–3.0 and 0.5–7.0 μg mL-1 for method A and method B respectively and the respective molar absorptivity values are 3.71×104 and 3.12×104 L mol-1 cm-1. The limits of detection and quantification are reported for both methods. The performance of the methods was validated according to the current ICH guidelines. The repeatability and intermediate precision, expressed as the RSD was less than 2%. The accuracy of the methods expressed as relative error was satisfactory. The proposed methods were applied to the analysis of tablet form of INH and the results agreed well with the label claim. No interference was observed from the common additives normally added to tablets. The results were statistically compared with those of an official method by applying the Student’s t-test and F-test. The accuracy and validity of the methods were further ascertained by performing recovery studies using spike method.
Cognition and psychopathy: identifying negative and positive schemas in general and forensic samples

The current study examines positive and negative cognitive schemas and their association with psychopathy. Four studies are presented. Methods include interview, file review and cross-sectional surveys. Samples were acquired from the general population, secure psychiatric settings and prisons, resulting in 78 male forensic psychiatric patients, 268 male prisoners and 304 male students. Contrary to hypotheses, increased positive schema predicted increased psychopathy, as did negative schema. Similarities between populations were found, such as a shared schema structure evidenced via confirmatory factor analysis. The importance of accounting for positive schema is emphasised when formulating psychopathy, encouraging a move away from viewing it as solely related to negative characteristics. A refined means of measuring schemas across populations is presented. Increased research into the specific association between psychopathy and cognition is recommended.
Delivery of bioactive molecules to mitochondria in vivo

Mitochondrial dysfunction contributes to many human degenerative diseases but specific treatments are hampered by the difficulty of delivering bioactive molecules to mitochondria in vivo. To overcome this problem we developed a strategy to target bioactive molecules to mitochondria by attachment to the lipophilic triphenylphosphonium cation through an alkyl linker. These molecules rapidly permeate lipid bilayers and, because of the large mitochondrial membrane potential (negative inside), accumulate several hundredfold inside isolated mitochondria and within mitochondria in cultured cells. To determine whether this strategy could lead to the development of mitochondria-specific therapies, we investigated the administration and tissue distribution in mice of simple alkyltriphenylphosphonium cations and of mitochondria-targeted antioxidants comprising a triphenylphosphonium cation coupled to a coenzyme Q or vitamin E derivative. Significant doses of these compounds could be fed safely to mice over long periods, coming to steady-state distributions within the heart, brain, liver, and muscle. Therefore, mitochondria-targeted bioactive molecules can be administered orally, leading to their accumulation at potentially therapeutic concentrations in those tissues most affected by mitochondrial dysfunction. This finding opens the way to the testing of mitochondria-specific therapies in mouse models of human degenerative diseases.
The Impact of Effort and Strategy Use on Academic Performance: Student and Teacher Perceptions

This study was designed to examine academic self-perceptions in adolescents with learning disabilities as part of a two-year intervention project. The major objective was to compare students' perceptions with their teachers' judgments of their level of effort, strategy use, and academic performance in reading, writing, spelling, and math. The sample consisted of 308 students with learning disabilities, 355 average achievers, and their 57 teachers. Findings indicated that the students with learning disabilities viewed themselves as motivated, hard-working, appropriately strategic, and academically competent, thus reflecting positive academic self-concepts. Teachers' judgments were significantly more negative and they rated the overall group of students with learning disabilities as below average in their strategy use, academic performance, and organization. The most interesting finding occurred when the results were analyzed for students whose overall academic achievement was in the high-average range. Teachers rated the effort and strategy use of students with and without learning disabilities as above average, indicating that their perceptions were influenced by students' academic success and were not negatively impacted by the existence of a learning disability. In contrast, teachers judged low-achieving students with learning disabilities more negatively than their low-achieving peers without learning disabilities. Thus, teachers' perceptions of students' effort and strategy use were influenced by students' academic success and their learning disabilities did not interfere negatively with this perception. Lastly, findings indicated that hard work, in combination with efficient strategy use, can lead to success in the classroom.
The Use of Intangible Assets as Loan Collateral

Using a sample of secured syndicated loans, I explore the use of intangible assets as loan collateral and whether this credit practice was an innovation or a negative mutation in the corporate loan market. While intangible assets were not traditionally considered as eligible collateral, I find that twenty-one percent of U.S.-originated secured syndicated loans during 1996-2005 have been collateralized by intangibles, with intangible asset collateralization significantly increasing over this time period. I hypothesize and find that intangible redeployability and borrower reputation are positively related to the probability of using intangibles as loan collateral. I further hypothesize and find that collateralizing loans by intangibles significantly increases loan pricing and credit supply to firms. Finally, loans secured by intangibles perform no worse than other secured loans. Overall, I find evidence consistent with the fact that intangible asset collateralization was a credit market innovation that partially alleviated financing frictions.
Adaptive EDCF: enhanced service differentiation for IEEE 802.11 wireless ad-hoc networks

This paper describes an adaptive service differentiation scheme for QoS enhancement in IEEE 802.11 wireless ad-hoc networks. Our approach, called adaptive enhanced distributed coordination function (AEDCF), is derived from the new EDCF introduced in the upcoming IEEE 802.11e standard. Our scheme aims to share the transmission channel efficiently. Relative priorities are provisioned by adjusting the size of the contention window (CW) of each traffic class taking into account both applications requirements and network conditions. We evaluate through simulations the performance of AEDCF and compare it with the EDCF scheme proposed in the 802.11e. Results show that AEDCF outperforms the basic EDCF, especially at high traffic load conditions. Indeed, our scheme increases the medium utilization ratio and reduces for more than 50% the collision rate. While achieving delay differentiation, the overall goodput obtained is up to 25% higher than EDCF. Moreover, the complexity of AEDCF remains similar to the EDCF scheme, enabling the design of cheap implementations.
A decision-making based feature for link prediction in signed social networks

We are interested in signed link prediction where relationships should be predicted as positive (friendship, fan, like, etc) or negative (opposition, anti-fan, dislike, etc). In this problem, feature extraction is an essential step to encode the information needed for prediction. While most current features are based on balance or status theory, we consider the problem of link prediction in the different view of decision-making theory. Our main contribution is a novel feature called Positive-Negative Ratio feature (PNR) which is the ratio between positive and negative links. Our PNR feature, which is based on the strong theory of decision-making, reveals many advantages compared to existing features. It uses a two-dimensional feature but can defeat existing methods at least 3% in classification accuracy and AUC in all three standard databases (Epinions, Slashdot and Wikipedia), even training and testing databases are different. Furthermore, PNR is 5, 1.3 and 1.5 times faster than the other methods in extraction, training and prediction steps, respectively.
Building Skills for School Success: Improving the Academic and Social Competence of Students

The focus of this article’s study was to evaluate the impact of the school counselor-led Student Success Skills program on the academic and social competence of students. A randomized comparison group design was used to measure treatment outcomes for students in grades 5, 6, 8, and 9 from six schools using state-mandated achievement tests in math and reading and a measure of social competence. Achievement outcomes were measured for comparison group students in schools matched for key demographics. An analysis of covariance was used for the analysis. Students who received the intervention scored significantly higher in math achievement and showed substantial improvement in behavior.
Model-Based Force Estimation for Intracardiac Catheters

The objectives of this paper are twofold: first, presenting an efficient quasi-static model for intracardiac catheters, and second, proposing a real-time approach for the estimation of the force at the tip using the proposed model. The force estimation approach has the potential to be used in conjunction with previously developed pose sensing technologies to provide a sense of the forces applied by the catheter to the heart tissue in cardiac ablation procedures. The catheter is modeled as a planar elastica, consisting of consecutive circular curves. The parameters of the model are obtained through experiments, leading to a precise description of the shape of the catheter for the given external forces. The approach incorporates modeling of the compound system (distal shaft and catheter body) with inhomogeneous mechanical properties. The force estimation approach is based on the pose measurement of the catheter tip along with the identified parameters of the catheter model. As a result of the low dimensionality of the proposed quasi-static model, the inverse problem can be efficiently solved for the estimation of the external forces. The experiments performed using electromagnetic sensors verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme in medical applications.
Congruence of Family and Organizational Values in Relation to Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

As a cluster of behaviours resulting in desired organizational outcomes, antecedents of organizational citizenship behaviours have long been searched. Based on the fact that the work and family domains of individuals closely interact and that harmony between values shared in organizations and the values adopted by individuals, called person–organization fit, have important consequences on the desired outcomes, the research conducted tries to identify the relationship between values existing in the individual's family and organization with organizational citizenship behaviour. The results of the research show that the congruence between the values of two domains has a significant relationship with the level of organizational citizenship behaviour.
Health practices in Ethiopian pre-urban communities.

A study of the health practices of the residents of a number of rural communities in Ethiopia was undertaken prior to the planned introduction of rural health centers into 4 of the communities. The objective of the current study was to establish benchmarks which would be useful in future quantitative assessments of the effectiveness of the heath centers in improving health practices. Data were collected both by ethnographic observation and household surveys. Three variables considered as potential sources for measuring future changes were 1) the use of drinking water sources 2) the degree to which inhabitants used soap and 3) hand washing practices. In regard to the 1st variable the purity of the water sources could be determined fairly accurately and the respondents were receptive toward questions concerning their sources of drinking water; however since most of the water sources in the area were unsafe the value of this variable as a possible measure of sanitation changes stemming from the educational impact of the health center will depend on the degree to which better sources of drinking water are made available to the villagers. Responses to the questions related to the use of soap were somewhat unreliable and those related to hand washing were highly unreliable; therefore their use in assessing quantitative changes in health practices will be of limited value. The reliability of the survey data was suspect due to the sensitive nature of some of the questions the tendency on the part of the respondents to give polite answers and variation in responses when questions were phrased differently. Ethnographic observations were helpful in assessing the reliability of the questionaire responses. Tables include 1) safety assessments of the water for each community and 2) the number and % of respondents in each community by soap using habits by hand washing habits and by handwashing habits when the questions were rephrased.
Towards Expeditious and Unswerving Routing to Corroborate Nascent Internet

The internet is now-a-days experiencing a stress due to some inherent problems with the main interdomain routing protocol, boarder gateway protocol (BGP), the amount of time it takes to converge, number of update message exchanged followed by a failure to stabilize, the amount of time required to get a valid alternate path following the failure, the way size of routing table increasing, and security issues like integrity and privacy of routing tables and routing updates exchanged among the routers, are of our primary concern. In our proposed research work we plan to address aforementioned issues related to internet routing specially in boarder gateway protocol to enable BGP to offer expeditious unswerving routing to corroborate nascent internet. We plan to make some changes in the design of boarder gateway protocol and may introduce addition of extra features in BGP to help support above mentioned objective.
Real-Time Load Reduction in Multimedia Big Data for Mobile Internet

In the age of multimedia big data, the popularity of mobile devices has been in an unprecedented growth, the speed of data increasing is faster than ever before, and Internet traffic is rapidly increasing, not only in volume but also in heterogeneity. Therefore, data processing and network overload have become two urgent problems. To address these problems, extensive papers have been published on image analysis using deep learning, but only a few works have exploited this approach for video analysis. In this article, a hybrid-stream model is proposed to solve these problems for video analysis. Functionality of this model covers Data Preprocessing, Data Classification, and Data-Load-Reduction Processing. Specifically, an improved Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) classification algorithm is designed to evaluate the importance of each video frame and video clip to enhance classification precision. Then, a reliable keyframe extraction mechanism will recognize the importance of each frame or clip, and decide whether to abandon it automatically by a series of correlation operations. The model will reduce data load to a dynamic threshold changed by σ, control the input size of the video in mobile Internet, and thus reduce network overload. Through experimental simulations, we find that the size of processed video has been effectively reduced and the quality of experience (QoE) has not been lowered due to a suitably selected parameter η. The simulation also shows that the model has a steady performance and is powerful enough for continuously growing multimedia big data.
General framework for removal of clock network pessimism

The paper presents a simple yet powerful general theoretical framework and efficient implementation for removal of clock network timing pessimism. We address pessimism in static timing analysis (STA) tools caused by considering delay variation along common segments of clock paths. The STA tools compute setup (hold) timing slack based on conservative combinations of late (early) launching and early (late) capturing arrival times. To avoid exponential-time path-based analysis the STA tools use both early and late arrival times on gates common to both launching and capturing paths. It is impossible in a real circuit and is observed as the clock network pessimism in STA. Our approach supports any kind of delay variation though the typical causes of the pessimism are process, voltage, and temperature on-chip variation, and reconvergence in clock network. We propose a new theoretical framework that allows one to apply known graph algorithms instead of time consuming forward and backward multi-pass tracing algorithms and heuristics that are limited to some network topologies. The new graph-based framework supports clock networks of virtually any size and type, e.g., tree, mesh, hybrid, clock gating, chains of multipliers and dividers, loops in such chains, etc.
Evidence for Co-Evolution between Human MicroRNAs and Alu-Repeats

This paper connects Alu repeats, the most abundant repetitive elements in the human genome and microRNAs, small RNAs that alter gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. Base-pair complementarity could be demonstrated between the seed sequence of a subset of human microRNAs and Alu repeats that are integrated parallel (sense) in mRNAs. The most common target site coincides with the evolutionary most conserved part of Alu. A primate-specific gene cluster on chromosome 19 encodes the majority of miRNAs that target the most conserved sense Alu site. The individual miRNA genes within this cluster are flanked by an Alu-LINE signature, which has been duplicated with the clustered miRNA genes. Gene duplication events in this locus are supported by comparing repeat length variations of the LINE elements within the cluster with those in the rest of the chromosome. Thus, a dual relationship exists between an evolutionary young miRNA cluster and their Alu targets that may have evolved in the same time window. One hypothesis for this dual relationship is that these miRNAs could protect against too high rates of duplicative transposition, which would destroy the genome.