Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A CNN BASED ROTATION INVARIANT FINGERPRINT RECOGNITION SYSTEM

This paper presents a Cellular Neural Networks (CNN) based rotation invariant fingerprint recognition system by keeping the hardware implementability in mind. Core point was used as a reference point and detection of the core point was implemented in the CNN framework. Proposed system consists of four stages: preprocessing, feature extraction, false feature elimination and matching. Preprocessing enhances the input fingerprint image. Feature extraction creates rotation invariant features by using core point as a reference point. False feature elimination increases the system performance by removing the false minutiae points. Matching stage compares extracted features and creates a matching score. Recognition performance of the proposed system has been tested by using high resolution PolyU HRF DBII database. The results are very encouraging for implementing a CNN based fully automatic rotation invariant fingerprint recognition system.
Primer Designing For Molecular Detection Of Salmonella Spp Based On Parc Gene

It has been reported the use of QRDR genes that improve taxonomical resolution among member of Salmonella. Higher taxonomical resolution was reportedly known by using four genetic markers for QRDR region, namely gyrA, gyrB, parC, and parE genes, respectively (Amarantini and Satwika, 2015). In this study, polymerase chain reaction primers, based on parC gene of Indonesian indigenous Samonella strains, were designed and used for further spesific detection of Salmonella spp. ClustalX, MEGA6, and GeneDoc were used as tools for designing the new primer. Two sets of novel PCR primers, namely parChF and parChR have been developed. The primer pair demonstrated the ability to amplify the targeted gene region. To validate the assay, genomic DNA from Salmonella strains isolated from iced tea, cow’s milk, and goat’s milk were subjected to PCR. The new primer reported here have high resolution, demonstrating its potential for separating Salmonella spp.
No 4 DISTRIBUTED-ORDER FRACTIONAL KINETICS ∗

Fractional diffusion equations are widely used to describe anomalous diffusion processes where the characteristic displacement scales as a power of time. For processes lacking such scaling the corresponding description may be given by distributed-order equations. In the present paper we consider different forms of distributed-order fractional kinetic equations and investigate the effects described by different classes of such equations. In particular, the equations describing accelerating and decelerating subdiffusion, as well as those describing accelerating and decelerating superdiffusion are presented.
Quantification of Profiles

The use of profiles to determine disease states, apprehend criminals, identify successful candidates for school or work, etc. has been a staple in many clinical and applied fields (e.g. medicine, psychology, college admissions, human resources). Regardless of discipline, multiple measures are taken and the pattern of scores on these measures is compared to a prototypical pattern, where the prototypical pattern shows the pattern of scores indicative of a particular classification or diagnosis. While the measures provide quantitative data, the final decision is often based on expert opinion regarding the closeness of an individual’s pattern of scores to that of the prototypical pattern. Thus, the final decision is oftentimes as much art as objective. This paper provides a procedure to quantify the match of score information for an individual with a prototypical pattern. In addition to matching a predetermined optimal pattern, we provide a two-step approach that first allows for identification of the optimal pattern, specified as a vector of contrast coefficients, and then provides quantification of the match to this optimal pattern. The procedure need not supplant clinical judgment, but can be used as one of the elements that enter into a clinician’s decision.
CLIMATE CHANGE ON REFERENCE EVAPOTRANSPIRATION

Changes in evapotranspiration demand due to global warming will have a profound impact on irrigation water demand and agricultural productivity. In this study, the effects of possible future anthropogenic climate change on reference evapotranspiration (ETo) were evaluated using the Penman-Monteith equation. The combined effect of temperature and elevated CO2 concentrations on ETo was the major focus of this study. The ETo under the General Circulation Model (GCM) projected climate change scenarios was estimated for a location in Colorado. Multi-model ensemble climate change scenarios were generated from 112 Bias Corrected and Spatially Disaggregated (BCSD) projections from the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) archive, which cover different levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Results showed a decrease in ETo demand with increases in CO2 levels, which greatly moderated the increase in ETo due to increasing temperature. The effect of increases in CO2 levels up to 450 ppm offset the effect of about 1°C rise in temperature. Simulation results with projected climate change scenarios, without considering the effects of CO2 levels, showed an 8.3%, 14.7% and 21.0% increase in annual ETo during the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s, respectively, when simulation was carried out using an ensemble of the 112 projections. When the effect of elevated CO2 levels was also considered in combination with projected changes in temperature, changes in annual ETo demand varied from -1.5% to 5.5%, -10.4% to 6.7%, and -19.7% to 6.6% during the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s, respectively, depending on the different climate change scenarios considered and the relationship or equation used for estimating the effect of elevated CO2 on stomatal resistance term in the Penman-Monteith equation.
Effects of electromyostimulation training on jumping and muscle strength in football players

Purpose: Electromyostimulation is a popular training to increase muscle strength during the last years. The aim of this study was to investigate effects of electromyostimulation training on jumping and muscle strength in football players. Material: Volunteered 23 football players between the ages of 18 to 24 were divided into experimental and control groups with simple random sampling. Both groups continued to regular training. Experimental group had additional electromyostimulation training for 6-week, 3-time a week, and 20min a day. Pre- and post-training squat and countermovement jumps, peak torques of dominant and non-dominant knee extensor and flexor muscles were tested. Angular velocities of isokinetic dynamometer were 60, 180, and 300ºs-1. Pre- and post-test comparisons within the groups were analyzed. Results: There were no significant differences between pre- and post-test for isokinetic knee strength parameters at all angular velocities of EG. However, control group had significant pre- and post-test differences in dominant and non-dominant knee extension and flexion peak torque values. Conclusions: EMS and regular training in-season had no effect on the isokinetic strength parameters. On the other hand, the regular training in-season has increased isokinetic strength. Electromyostimulation training additional to regular training may have detrimental effects on outcomes of concurrent training in football players.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CURRENT ASSETS MANAGEMENT AND FIRM’S MARKET VALUE: EVIDENCE FROM PAKISTAN

Business concerns must pay close attention to the management of current assets. This ensures a sufficient level of cash balances as well as other current assets, including stock (trade stock), and receivables. However, limited and/or overindulgence of current assets can cause serious threats to firms. Therefore, this study attempts to empirically test whether or not managing current assets influences the market value of firms with a sample of 59 firms from different industries listed at Karachi Stock exchange including textile, cement, chemical, sugar, fuel & energy and engineering industry. Data is gathered on quarterly basis from firms’ financial reports for the period of 8years (2008-2015). The GMM estimation technique is used to analyze the data. The analysis is conducted in 2 stages: firstly, separate industry to industry analysis is performed analyzing whether or not the association among the variables varies from industry to industry. Secondly a general estimation is performed to determine a general connection among the variables. The results indicate statistically significant connection of current asset management and firm’s market value; however, in some industries this relation is negative while in others it is positive. This leads to the conclusion that association between firm’s current assets management and market value depends on industry at which firm exists. Therefore, to augment the shareholder’s wealth, authorities and decision makers are needed to consider that how the management of current assets affects its market value.
Use of reorderable matrices and heatmaps to support data analysis of students transcripts

For a course coordinator, the analysis of several students’ transcripts to identify the situation of subjects or students is often an old-fashioned process executed through a textual and numerical approach. This work is part of a larger project aimed at choosing appropriate visual representations to help course coordinators to analyze sets of students transcripts. In this work, we developed a system that allows the visualization of student transcripts through a heatmap of student grades per subject. The heatmap represent grades based on a user-defined color scale. To assist in the analysis, it is possible to reorder subjects and students using the optimal leaf order algorithm, or even to reorder according to the grades of a specific subject or student. In addition, some features have been developed to meet visual guidelines, such as overview, zoom, filter and details-on-demand.
Teachers' Consideration in Technology-Integrated Lesson Design - A case of Indonesian EFL Teachers

Abstract— The ubiquity of technology offers promising benefits of its integration in educational sector. Yet, little is known about the rationale underlying teachers’ decisions concerning their educational uses within the constraints of daily classroom practice. This study aims at exploring teach-rs’ consideration in choosing certain technology tools in the context of technology-integrated lesson design activities. Data were obtained through a focus group discussion during the lesson design which was followed by a semi structured interview. Findings for this study have enhanced the under-standing of some aspects that teachers put into consideration while designing technology-integrated lessons; identifying goals, analyzing learners, planning instructional activities, and choosing the technology tools. In addition, the findings of this study also postulate that during the lesson design activities, teachers need to be triggered by some cognitive prompts in order to sup-port them making some decision on the learning objectives, the stag-es of activities, and the technology tools they need to integrate.
Progress in targeted therapies for cancer: overview

The explosion in knowledge about the molecular and cellular biology of cancer has led to the identification of many molecules or physiological processes that can be therapeutically exploited to treat cancer using so called ‘targeted therapies’. While the concept of targeted therapy is not a new one, it is only in the last decade that these agents have become established in standard clinical practice. An overview of progress in the development of targeted agents to date and challenges faced in the future application of targeted therapy to cancer treatment is provided in this article and is the subject of this issue of Cancer Forum.
Atomic absorption spectrometric determination of Fusidic Acid in bulk powder and in pharmaceutical dosage form

ABSTRACT Atomic absorption spectrometric method is based on precipitation of the ion associates formed from the reaction of fusidic acid with silver nitra e (procedure A), copper acetate (procedure B) or ferric chloride (procedure C) standard solutions . The formation and solubility of the solid complexes at the optimum conditions of pH and ionic strength values have been studied. The method depends on direct determination of the ions n the precipitate or indirect determination of the ions in the filtrate by atomic absorption sp ectroscopy. The optimum conditions for precipitation were carefully studied. Rectilinear c alibration graphs were obtained in the range of 20-100 ng ml -1 for the investigated drug. The molar ratios of the formed chelats were determined by Job's method and their association co nstants were also calculated. The developed method ( procedures I, II and III) were applied suc cessfully for the determination of the studied drug in its pharmaceutical dosage form with a good precision and accuracy compared to the reported method as revealed by t-and F-tests.
EFFECT OF GUAVA LEAVES ( Psidium Guajava L.) AS A SOURCE OF ANTIOXIDANTS ON HEPATOTOXIC RATS

The present work was designed to identify the total flavonoids content and the individual fractions. Also, to investigate the effect of different levels of Psidium Guajava L. , leaves (P.G.L., L.) on daily food intake, body weight gain and liver weight to body weight ratio in hepatotoxic rats. Serum lipid profile and liver function were also studied. Thirty male albino rats (Sprago Dawley Strain) were divided into two main groups. The first main group (n=6) was fed on basal diet (B.D.) and used as a control negative group. The second main group (24 rats) was subcutaneous injected with CCL4 in Paraffin oil (50% v/v 2 ml/kg bwt) twice a week for two weeks, to induce chronic damage in the liver. Then divided into four subgroups as the following: Group 1 received B.D. only as a positive control group. Groups 2, 3and 4 received B.D. containing different levels (3, 6 and 9%) P.G. L. , leaves, respectively. Hepatotoxic rats which fed on B.D. supplemented with (9%) P.G. L.L. resulted the best improvement of nutritional value in addition to the percent of liver weight/body weight. The mean value of serum cholesterol, triglycerides, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c), very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL-c), aspartate amino transferase (AST) and alanine amino transferase (ALT) decreased in groups treated with (3%, 6% and 9%) P.G. L. , L. as compared to the positive control group, while high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c) increased. The conclusion reached was that inclusion of P.G. L. , L in some stable food as bakery may help to improve liver function in hepatotoxic disease. The antioxidant power content of Psidium Guajava L. , Leaves is the bases for contribution of these actions.
Towards a PIM for virtual prototyping

We work on the way of modelling industrial machines for virtual prototyping. We use the OpenMASK environment as a tool for building the prototype. The whole virtual model of a machine is composed by the association of modular generic objects. The association of modular parts is considered from the geometrical and the behavioural points of view. In this article we present a solution for virtual prototyping based on the UML language and the MDA architecture. We present first the PSM ( Platform Specific Model) build with the Objecteering UML tool and then we describe the bases of the future PIM (Platform Independent Model). Key-words: UML 2.0, MDA, virtual prototyping, hybrid automaton, Openmask, Grafcet
Pakistan Economic and Social Review

The paper examines trade policy and economic growth for Bangladesh. The paper has employed cointegration and multivariate Granger Causality test developed by Toda and Yamamoto (1995) to study the long-run and short-run dynamics among exports growth, imports growth and real output growth over the period 1973 to 2002. Our results strongly support a long-run relationship among the three variables for Bangladesh. The results show feedback effects between exports and output growth and also between imports and output growth in the short-run. A strong feedback effects between import growth and export growth has also been established.
FASPell: A Fast, Adaptable, Simple, Powerful Chinese Spell Checker Based On DAE-Decoder Paradigm

We propose a Chinese spell checker – FASPell based on a new paradigm which consists of a denoising autoencoder (DAE) and a decoder. In comparison with previous state-of-the-art models, the new paradigm allows our spell checker to be Faster in computation, readily Adaptable to both simplified and traditional Chinese texts produced by either humans or machines, and to require much Simpler structure to be as much Powerful in both error detection and correction. These four achievements are made possible because the new paradigm circumvents two bottlenecks. First, the DAE curtails the amount of Chinese spell checking data needed for supervised learning (to <10k sentences) by leveraging the power of unsupervisedly pre-trained masked language model as in BERT, XLNet, MASS etc. Second, the decoder helps to eliminate the use of confusion set that is deficient in flexibility and sufficiency of utilizing the salient feature of Chinese character similarity.
Fostering Freedom: A Holistic Comparison of Karen Tuttle's Ideas with Body Mapping and the Alexander Technique

In the domain of music education, and particularly the field of upper string instrument pedagogy, the teaching world has seen gradually increasing depth by way of efficiency, comprehensiveness, accessibility, and communicability over the past century. With these developments, there is a notable accompanying demand for synthesis and distinction of varied ideas, which can yield, in turn, new avenues for deeper exploration by string teachers. While several other orchestral instruments have pedagogy resources that have been in existence for centuries, resources for viola pedagogy have only recently been available via text-based resources. As such, this paper highlights several fundamental parallels between the teaching philosophies of a revered viola pedagogue, Karen Tuttle, and those who work in the field of somatics, particularly the Alexander Technique and Body Mapping. Literature thus far has attempted to apply the concepts of Body Mapping and Alexander Technique to various violin pedagogies, but the author in this case gives attention to individual aspects of Tuttle's idea of "Coordination," and compares Tuttle's respective ideas and language usage with somatics research, in the hopes of uncovering some potential positive overlaps, or discrepancies, which may be useful information for shoulder-instrument string musicians in both teaching and performing contexts. iii
Needle sticks and sharps injuries experienced by staff nurses and nursing students and their prevention

The object of this study was to determine the frequency of needle sticks and sharps injuries (NSIs), to assess and compare the reasons and factors affecting NSIs experienced by staff nurses and nursing students and to define how they were informed about notification and prevention of NSIs. In 2010 staff nurses and nursing students performing invasive injections at the Republic Hospital of Kaunas participated in the survey. Two hundred fifty questionnaires were distributed, of which 196 were returned giving a response rate of 78.4%. During the 12-month study period, NSIs were experienced by 38.5% of staff nurses and 78% of nursing students. Activities occurring in procedure rooms presented the highest risk of experiencing a needle stick or sharps injury. For nurses, fifty-one percent (51%) sustained their injuries when putting a case on a used needle (recapping). Forty-nine percent (49%) of the nursing students experienced an injury when breaking an ampoule. Prevailing reasons for injuries were inattentiveness, being in a hurry and work overload. More of the staff nurses (96.9%) than the nursing students (40%) were familiar with the rules of NSIs notification, registration, observation and prevention. Among staff nurses, 45.9% of the occurrences were unreported while for nursing students 92.0% were unreported. Only 16.9% of staff nurses and 11% of nursing students were vaccinated with three doses of HBV vaccine.This study showed that more attention should be given to notification of needle stick and sharps injuries among nursing students. Immunization of staff nurses and nursing students with hepatitis B vaccine should also be encourage and recommended.
Attitudes of Culturally Diverse Parents and Their Beliefs about the Role They Play in Their Children's Education

This study examined parental involvement in early childhood programs through a combined lens of anthropology, sociology, and pedagogy seeking to understand the intentional and unintentional behaviors of teachers that may create barriers for parental involvement. The study gave voice to parents from culturally diverse backgrounds that are often overlooked. The study recognized the disparity and disconnectedness that seems to exist in communication between the child's most important caregivers, their parents and their teachers. The findings lead to an understanding that over the popular belief that parents are not involved in the education of their children, the lack of participation in the schools' attempts to bridge a gap, the miscommunication occurs across the two cultures, the schools and the families. We teach our son to be good and listen to the teachers. We want our son to speak Spanish, English and Cajumbal, and we also want our son to maintain the culture that is us. We want him to dress in traditional Guatemalan clothing as well as to appreciate all the nationalities that make up the people of this paradise The voice of a parent (2001)
Separation techniques for errors-in-variables parameter estimation

Errors-in-variables models are statistical models in which not only dependent (output) but also independent (input) variables are observed with error, i.e. they exhibit a symmetrical model structure in terms of errors. The application field for these models is diverse including speech and audio processing, signal processing, system identification, econometrics and time series analysis. Without explicit information on the ratio of input and output noise, however, it is in general not possible to identify a dynamic errors-in-variables system, i.e. to derive unique model parameter estimates. In this paper, we explore separation techniques that partition observations into characteristically different sets. Comparing model parameter estimates over the separated sets, it is possible to infer noise parameter estimates, resolving the unidentifiability issue.
Design and Analysis of Blow Fish and AES algorithm using VHDL

Cryptography plays a major role in the network security. In order to secure your data one must do encryption of the original message. In this paper we show the result of our analysis work of comparison between symmetric encryption standard algorithms AES and Blow Fish on XILINX ISE10.1i simulator using VHDL coding, and based on our analysis result, we conclude which algorithm is best suitable for encryption code developers/writers for the purpose of security of data communication.