Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel face recognition system base on nonparametric discriminant analysis

Biometrics serves to identify the identity of an individual with the help of mathematical analysis of its biological features. In this paper, we propose a novel classification method based on kernel Nonparametric Discriminant Analysis (KNDA). We use the facial features extracted with Gabor descriptor and ordinal filter, which are encoded in local regions, as visual primitives. The different ordinal measures are derived from various kinds of components of Gabor images such as magnitude, phase, real and imaginary. Then, the statistical distributions of these primitives in face image blocks are concatenated to obtain a feature vector whose dimension is reduced using PCA and variance. Each feature vector is treated as a feature input for the proposed Multi-class KNDA classifier. The proposed method incorporates some near-global variations of the data provided by the KNDA. In fact, this latter is based on flexible non-linear separation between face database classes. Moreover, it relaxes the normality assumption of the Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). The proposed method is tested on the well-known ORL face database and the Yale face database. Then, it is evaluatedand compared with non-linear classifier (KFD) and linear classifier (LDA) in term ofclassification accuracy.
Bit-Parallel Finite Field Multiplier and Squarer Using Polynomial Basis

Bit-parallel finite field multiplication using polynomial basis can be realized in two steps: polynomial multiplication and reduction modulo the irreducible polynomial. In this article, we present an upper complexity bound for the modular polynomial reduction. When the field is generated with an irreducible trinomial, closed form expressions for the coefficients of the product are derived in term of the coefficients of the multiplicands. The complexity of the multiplier architectures and their critical path length are evaluated, and they are comparable to the previous proposals for the same class of fields. An analytical form for bit-parallel squaring operation is also presented. The complexities for bit-parallel squarer are also derived when an irreducible trinomial is used. Consequently, it is argued that to solve multiplicative inverse using polynomial basis can be at least as good as using a normal basis.
Oscillation and sequential behavior caused by interconnect opens in digital CMOS circuits

Shorts and opens are the most common types of defects in today's CMOS ICs. In this paper we show for the first time that an open in the interconnect wiring of a digital CMOS circuit can cause oscillation or sequential behavior. We also analyze and compare the factors affecting the probabilities for an interconnect open and a feedback bridging fault to oscillate or display sequential behavior.
Functional ion channels and cell proliferation in 3T3‐L1 preadipocytes

Mouse 3T3‐L1 preadipocytes are widely used for metabolic study of obesity; however, their cellular physiology is not fully understood. The present study investigates functional ion channels and their role in the regulation of cell proliferation using whole‐cell patch voltage‐clamp, RT‐PCR, Western blot, and cell proliferation assay in undifferentiated 3T3‐L1 preadipocytes. We found three types of ionic currents present in 3T3‐L1 preadipocytes, including an inwardly‐rectifying K+ current (IKir, recorded in 15% of cells) inhibited by Ba2+, a Ca2+‐activated intermediate K+ current (IKCa, recorded in 44% of cells) inhibited by clotrimazole (or TRAM‐34) as well as a chloride current (ICl) inhibited by 4,4′‐diisothiocyanatostilbene‐2,2′‐disulfonic acid (DIDS) in 12% of cells, which can be activated in all cells with hypotonic (0.8 T) insult, implicating a volume‐sensitive ICl (ICl.vol). RT‐PCR and Western blot analysis revealed the expression of KCa3.1 (for IKCa), Kir2.1 (for IKir), and Clcn3 (for ICl.vol). Blockade of IKCa with TRAM‐34 or ICl.vol with DIDS inhibited cell proliferation in a concentration‐dependent manner. Knockdown of KCa3.1 or Clcn3 with specific siRNAs also suppressed cell proliferation. Flow cytometry analysis showed that blockade or silencing of KCa3.1 or Clcn3 channels with corresponding blockers or siRNAs caused an accumulation of cells at the G0/G1 phase. These results demonstrate that three functional ion channel currents, IKCa, ICl.vol, and IKir, are heterogeneously present in 3T3‐L1 preadipocytes. IKCa and ICl.vol participate in the regulation of cell proliferation. J. Cell. Physiol. 227: 1972–1979, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
bcl-x exhibits regulated expression during B cell development and activation and modulates lymphocyte survival in transgenic mice

We have assessed during B cell development, the regulation and function of bcl-x, a member of the bcl-2 family of apoptosis regulatory genes. Here we show that Bcl-xL, a product of bcl-x, is expressed in pre-B cells but downregulated at the immature and mature stages of B cell development. Bcl-xL but not Bcl-2 is rapidly induced in peripheral B cells upon surface immunoglobulin M (IgM) cross-linking, CD40 signaling, or LPS stimulation. Transgenic mice that overexpressed Bcl- xL within the B cell lineage exhibited marked accumulation of peripheral B cells in lymphoid organs and enhanced survival of developing and mature B cells. B cell survival was further increased by simultaneous expression of bcl-xL and bcl-2 transgenes. These studies demonstrate that Bcl-2 and Bcl-xL are regulated differentially during B cell development and activation of mature B cells. Induction of Bcl-xL after signaling through surface IgM and CD40 appears to provide mature B cells with an additional protective mechanism against apoptotic signals associated with antigen-induced activation and proliferation.
PACE your network: Fair and controllable multi-tenant data center networks

Multi-tenant data centers host a high diversity of applications with continuously changing demands. Applications require response times ranging from a few microseconds to seconds. Therefore, network traffic within the data center needs to be managed in order to meet the requested SLAs. Current feedback congestion control protocols may be too slow to converge to a stable state under high congestion situations. Sudden bursts of traffic from heterogeneous sources may render any reactive control inefficient. In this paper, we propose PACE, a preventive explicit allocation congestion control protocol that controls resource allocations dynamically and efficiently. PACE specifically addresses Data Center requirements: efficient network usage, flow completion time guarantees, fairness in resource allocation, and scalability to hundreds of concurrent flows. PACE provides micro-allocation of network resources within dynamic periods, lossless communication, fine-grained prioritization of flows, and fast adaptation of allocations to the arrival of new flows. We simulate PACE and compare it with recent proposed protocols specially addressed to Data Centers. We demonstrate that PACE is fairer, in particular for short flows, flows with different RTTs and a higher number of concurrent flows. It also maintains high efficiency and controlled queue usage when exposed to sudden bursts.
Multicore implementation of EME2 AES disk encryption algorithm using OpenMP

Volume of digital data is increasing at a faster rate and the security of the data is at risk while being transit on a network as well as at rest. The execution time of full disk encryption in large servers is significant because of the computational complexity associated with disk encryption. Hence it is necessary to reduce the execution time of full disk encryption from the application point of view. In this work a full disk encryption algorithm namely EME2 AES (Encrypt Mix Encrypt V2 Advanced Encryption Standard) is analyzed. The execution speed of this algorithm is reduced by means of multicore compatible parallel implementation which makes use of available cores. Parallel implementation is executed on a multicore machine with 8 cores and speed up on the multicore implementation is measured. Results show that the multicore implementation of EME2 AES using OpenMP is up to 2.85 times faster than sequential execution for the chosen infrastructure and data range.
Sensory Gating-Out and Gating-In in Normal and Schizophrenic Participants

In contrast to sensory gating, the brain’s ability to re-respond to relevant stimuli and the potential differences between healthy and schizophrenic participants have not been studied in great detail. Here, we explore what auditory paradigms are useful to measure this re-responding ability. Evoked potentials (EPs) were obtained from the Cz channel using 3 paired stimulus paradigms (pairs with equal stimuli {PE}, the second stimulus being lower {PL} or higher {PH} in frequency) and 2 short-train paradigms in which 5 identical stimuli were followed by a lower frequency stimulus (train lower {TL}) or higher frequency stimulus (train higher {TH}). Data were collected from 17 healthy control participants (NC) and 17 age and gender-matched patients with schizophrenia (SZ). Up to 4 data sets obtained on 4 different days were available for each participant. Ensemble averages were computed for each session, from which the P50, N100, and P200 latencies and amplitudes were obtained. No significant differences in amplitude or latency of the various EP components were found between the responses to the second stimulus obtained with the 5 paradigms. Neither did the responses to the fifth and sixth stimuli differ for the TL and TH paradigm, with the exception of the N100 latency of the fifth stimulus, which was longer for TH than TL for NC. Healthy participants had larger amplitudes and shorter latencies than the patients with schizophrenia for the responses to the first stimuli, with the latency differences continuing for the fifth and sixth response. Also, the amplitude and latency of the first response was larger than for the second response in both populations. In conclusion, none of the paradigms studied here, with the employed parameters, are useful to measure the re-responding ability of the brain. Also, the shorter latencies for the repeated stimulus suggest that the neural mechanism underlying attenuation of repeated stimuli is of a facilitating nature.
Finger-Knuckle-Print recognition using BLPOC-based local block matching

This paper proposes a Finger-Knuckle-Print (FKP) recognition algorithm using Band-Limited Phase-Only Correlation (BLPOC)-based local block matching. The phase information obtained from 2D Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) of images contains important information of image representation. The phase-based image matching, especially BLPOC-based image matching is successfully applied to image recognition tasks for biometric authentication applications. To calculate the matching score, the proposed algorithm corrects the global and local distortion between FKP images using the BLPOC-based local block matching. Experimental evaluation using the PolyU FKP database demonstrates efficient recognition performance of the proposed algorithm compared with the conventional algorithms.
A 9-month follow-up of a 3-month web-based alcohol treatment program using intensive asynchronous therapeutic support

Abstract Background: Web-based alcohol interventions have demonstrated efficacy in randomized controlled trials. However, most studies have involved self-help interventions without therapeutic support. Objectives: To examine the results of a 3-month web-based alcohol treatment program using intensive, asynchronous (non-simultaneous) therapeutic support (www.alcoholdebaas.nl) at 9-month follow-up assessment. Methods: This study reports the follow-up results of 144 problem drinking participants who received a web-based alcohol treatment program. We investigated whether the intervention effects at treatment completion (3 months) continued to exist at 6 and 9 months of follow-up. The primary outcome measure was weekly alcohol consumption. Repeated measures analysis with a mixed model approach was used to address loss to follow-up. Results: Weekly alcohol consumption significantly improved between baseline and 9 months (F(1,74) = 85.6, p < 0.001). Post-hoc tests revealed that the reduction occurred during the first 3 months (from 39.9–11.4 standard units a week). Although alcohol consumption had risen to 19.5 units per week at 9 months, it still decreased by more than 20 units compared to baseline drinking. Significant improvements with medium to large effect sizes were found on the secondary outcomes (depression, general health, and quality of life) at 9 months. Conclusion: The web-based alcohol treatment with intensive asynchronous therapeutic support has been shown to be effective in reducing alcohol consumption and improving health status at post treatment assessments. The present study showed that most of these improvements were sustained after 9 months. Despite the lack of a control group and the high dropout rate, our findings suggest that web-based treatment can achieve relevant health gains in the long term.
Factor : Estimation and Performance Analysis

In wireless communications, the relative strength of the direct and scattered components of the received signal, as expressed by the Ricean factor, provides an indication of link quality. Accordingly, efficient and accurate methods for estimating are of considerable interest. In this paper, we propose a general class of moment-based estimators which use the signal envelope. This class of estimators unifies many of the previous estimators, and introduces new ones. We derive, for the first time, the asymptotic variance of these estimators and compare with the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB). We then tackle the problem of estimating from the in-phase and quadrature-phase (I/Q) components of the received signal, and illustrate the improvement in performance, as compared to the envelope-based estimators. We derive the CRBs for the I/Q data model, which, unlike the envelope CRB, is tractable for correlated samples. Furthermore, we introduce a novel estimator that relies on the I/Q components, and derive its asymptotic variance even when the channel samples are correlated. We corroborate our analytical findings by simulations. Original version was submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications Dec. 24, 2001, revised August 23, 2002. Parts of this work have been presented [24] and [25]. This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, through the Career grant No. CCR-0133841 (first author), and the Wireless Initiative Program, Grant No. 9970443 (third author).
Natural stimuli improve auditory BCIs with respect to ergonomics and performance

Moving from well-controlled, brisk artificial stimuli to natural and less-controlled stimuli seems counter-intuitive for event-related potential (ERP) studies. As natural stimuli typically contain a richer internal structure, they might introduce higher levels of variance and jitter in the ERP responses. Both characteristics are unfavorable for a good single-trial classification of ERPs in the context of a multi-class brain–computer interface (BCI) system, where the class-discriminant information between target stimuli and non-target stimuli must be maximized. For the application in an auditory BCI system, however, the transition from simple artificial tones to natural syllables can be useful despite the variance introduced. In the presented study, healthy users (N = 9) participated in an offline auditory nine-class BCI experiment with artificial and natural stimuli. It is shown that the use of syllables as natural stimuli does not only improve the users’ ergonomic ratings; also the classification performance is increased. Moreover, natural stimuli obtain a better balance in multi-class decisions, such that the number of systematic confusions between the nine classes is reduced. Hopefully, our findings may contribute to make auditory BCI paradigms more user friendly and applicable for patients.
INTEGRATED REGISTRATION OF RANGE IMAGES FROM TERRESTRIAL LIDAR

There are generally two kinds of LIDAR, airborne and terrestrial. Terrestrial LIDAR is outstanding for its high accuracy, hyper speed and high density. A single range image of terrestrial LIDAR usually could not cover the whole object due to its multi aspects. The range images from different aspects of object can be registered into a unified point cloud model of object. The accuracy of resulted point cloud model is affected by registration accuracy directly. There are two kinds of registration. One is based on range images and another on extracted features. The former computes the distance errors of overlap part to align the range images. The other uses some frameworks or abstracted features as constraints to register the range images into a unified coordinate system. The combination of two methods can also make good results.For the methods above, neighbor range images are registered one by one. This procedure will evoke error accumulation. To solve the problem, an integrated registration method is put forward in this paper. All range images are registered and transformed to a unified coordinate system simultaneously. Parameter adjustment method is used in the new arithmetic. The spatial transformation parameters and constraint parameters are regarded as unknowns to be solved simultaneously. Integrated algorithm is actually a least square adjustment method, which assures the error distribution more rational.Point, line and plane are three feature types used as registration constraints in this paper. The point used for registration is called tic. The center point of circle or of sphere, the intersection point of two spatial lines or of three spatial planes are all points can be used for registration. Spatial transformation equation is always used as constraint of tic. Tics are the main constraints in range image registration. Line features and plane features are important registration constraints. If there are blunders in the range images, parameters of each range image will be polluted with them. Blunders are removed with comprehensive error analysis, which makes the algorithm more robust. The procedure of integrated registration can be divided into three steps: feature extract, one by one image registration and integrated registration. Feature extract procedure is to extract point, line and/or plane features from range images. The parameters of extracted feature are obtained and can be regarded as observations in constraint equation. One by one image registration is to roughly register the involved range images and get approximates of unknowns. Integrated registration is to solve all unknowns of constraints with least square adjustment method. Blunders are removed at first and second steps.The new algorithm is realized into software. The data of the Gate of Supreme Harmony in Forbidden City are registered with the new method. The precisions from old method and new method are compared. The result proves that error accumulation is efficiently prevented. The precision is distinctly improved.
The Design of Eiffel Programs: Quantitative Evaluation Using the MOOD Metrics

The main mechanisms of the Object-Oriented paradigm are supposed to help produce better and cheaper software. As with other things, their usage is more or less intensive, depending mostly on the designer knowledge, experience and ability. This paper reviews a set of metrics called MOOD, suited for evaluating the use of those mechanisms. A MOOD-to-Eiffel binding is introduced. Some code fragments are presented to illustrate the concepts and to clarify the measurement process. A sample of Eiffel libraries is used to collect these metrics. Statistical analysis is performed on the sample and some hypotheses are drawn and discussed. Some preliminary heuristics that can be used during the design process are then derived. Those heuristics can be of some help to designers, mainly if embedded in CASE tools.
SpEED: fast computation of sensitive spaced seeds

SUMMARY Multiple spaced seeds represent the current state-of-the-art for similarity search in bioinformatics, with applications in various areas such as sequence alignment, read mapping, oligonucleotide design, etc. We present SpEED, a software program that computes highly sensitive multiple spaced seeds. SpEED can be several orders of magnitude faster and computes better seeds than the existing leading software programs. AVAILABILITY The source code of SpEED is freely available at www.csd.uwo.ca/~ilie/SpEED/ CONTACT: ilie@csd.uwo.ca SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Certicloud: A Novel TPM-based Approach to Ensure Cloud IaaS Security

The security issues raised by the Cloud paradigm are not always tackled from the user point of view. For instance, considering an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Cloud, it is currently impossible for a user to certify in a reliable and secure way that the environment he deployed (typically a Virtual Machine(VM)) has not been corrupted, whether by malicious acts or not. Yet having this functionality would enhance the confidence on the IaaS provider and therefore attract new customers. This paper fills this need by proposing CERTICLOUD, a novel approach for the protection of IaaS platforms that relies on the concepts developed in the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) together with hardware elements, i.e., Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to offer a secured and reassuring environment. Those aspects are guaranteed by two protocols: TCRR and Verify MyVM. When the first one asserts the integrity of a remote resource and permits to exchange a private symmetric key, the second authorizes the user to detect trustfully and on demand any tampering attempt on its running VM. These protocols being key components in the proposed framework, we take very seriously their analysis against known cryptanalytic attacks. This is testified by their successful validation by AVISPA and Scyther, two reference tools for the automatic verification of security protocols. The CERTICLOUD proposal is then detailed: relying on the above protocols, this platform provides the secure storage of users environments and their safe deployment onto a virtualization framework. While the physical resources are checked by TCRR, the user can execute on demand the Verify MyVM protocol to certify the integrity of its deployed environment. Experimental results operated on a first prototype of CERTICLOUD demonstrate the feasibility and the low overhead of the approach, together with its easy implementation on recent commodity machines.
Research methods in law

Introduction 1. Doctrinal Research Researching the Jury, Terry Hutchinson 2. Socio-Legal Studies: A Challenge to the Doctrinal Approach, Fiona Cownie and Anthony Bradney 3. Doing Empirical Research: Exploring the Decision Making of Magistrates and Juries, Mandy Burton 4. Legal Research in the Humanities, Dawn Watkins and Steven Cammiss 5. Legal History, Philip Handler 6. Comparative Law and its Methodology, Geoffrey Samuel 7. Critical Legal 'Method' as Attitude, Panu Minkkinen