Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CAS-PEAL Large-Scale Chinese Face Database and Evaluation Protocols

The ICT-ISVISION Joint Research & Development Laboratory (JDL) for Face Recognition has constructed the CAS-PEAL face database supported by the National Hi-Tech Program and ISVISION Technologies Co., Ltd. The goals to create the PEAL face database include (1) providing the worldwide researchers of FR community a large-scale face database for training and evaluating their algorithms; (2) facilitating the development of FR by providing large-scale face images with different sources of variations, especially Pose, Expression, Accessories, and Lighting (PEAL); (3) advancing the state-of-the-art face recognition technologies aiming at practical applications especially for the oriental. Currently, the CAS-PEAL face database contains 99,594 images of 1040 individuals (595 males and 445 females) with varying Pose, Expression, Accessory, and Lighting (PEAL). For each subject, 9 cameras spaced equally in a horizontal semicircular shelf are setup to simultaneously capture images across different poses in one shot. Each subject is also asked to look up and down to capture 18 images in another two shots. We also considered 5 kinds of expressions, 6 kinds accessories (3 glasses, and 3 caps), and 15 lighting directions. This face database is now partly made available (a subset named by CAS-PEAL-R1, contain 30,900 images of 1040 subjects) for research purpose only on a case-by-case basis only. JDL is serving as the technical agent for distribution of the database and reserves the copyright of all the images in the database.
Case Study for 2006 HDR THE SENEGAL RIVER CASE

Introduction This case study documents the cumbersome history of introducing commercial agriculture to the basin of the Senegal River, West Africa. This basin has been subjected to severe famines and an array of other, partly related development malaises during the past fifty years. The case study leans principally on the following documents: Varis & Fraboulet-Jussila (2002), Varis & Lahtela (2002) and Lahtela (2002, 2003).
Comparison of Two Techniques for Radiofrequency Hepatic Tumor Ablation through Numerical Simulation

We simulate the thermal and electrical processes, involved in the radio-frequency ablation procedure. In this study, we take into account the observed fact, that the electrical conductivity of the hepatic tissue varies during the procedure. With the increase of the tissue temperature to a certain level, a sudden drop of the electrical conductivity is observed. This variation was neglected in some previous studies. The mathematical model consists of two parts – electrical and thermal. The energy from the applied AC voltage is determined first, by solving the Laplace equation to find the potential distribution. After that, the electric field intensity and the current density are directly calculated. Finally, the heat transfer equation is solved to determine the temperature distribution. Heat loss due to blood perfusion is also accounted for. The simulations were performed on the IBM Blue Gene/P massively parallel computer.
TO LEAVE OR TO STAY? THE DECISION CONTEXT, SELF-IMAGE, AND OWNER-MANAGERS’ PERSISTENCE DECISIONS

Underperforming ventures are those whose performance falls short of the ownermanager’s expectations for a long period of time but whose future is not a clear failure. Persistence decisions about underperforming ventures are influenced by the environment and owner-managers’ individual characteristics. Previous research leaves two research gaps. First, our knowledge about which and how individual characteristics may affect owner-managers’ persistence decisions is still limited. Furthermore, owner-managers assume multiple roles in society and have opportunities to imagine a different future. Their decisions thus are affected by role demands and perceptions of the future. The growing interest in contextualizing entrepreneurship suggests the importance of putting persistence decisions in a broad social context and investigating the complexity of ownermanagers’ persistence decisions when owner-managers are facing multiple influences from the decision context. To fill in the above two research gaps, I put persistence decision making in a decision context consisting of venture attachment, family time pressure, social approval pressure, and personal options outside the venture. In this dissertation, I strive to address one research question: how do the decision context and two self-images—psychological capital and fear of failure—jointly influence owner-managers’ persistence decisions? I designed a metric conjoint experiment to answer this question. The experiment consists of 33 decision scenarios, each of which is a combination of a certain level of the abovementioned four decision context factors. Ninety owner-managers of smalland mediumsized enterprises participated in my study, and were asked to indicate the extent to which
Emulation-based Software Protection

This document provides an overview of two emulation-based software protection schemes which provide protection from reverse code engineering (RCE) and software exploitation using encrypted code execution and page-granularity code signing, respectively. The two protection mechanisms execute within trusted emulators while remaining out-of-band of untrusted systems being emulated. The integrity and reliability of the protection mechanisms depend upon attackers remaining sandboxed within the emulated environments. The three sections below provide an overview of emulation sandboxing, emulation-based encrypted code execution and emulation-based page granularity code signing.
Searching for similar code sequences in executable files based on the structural analysis of functions

This work is devoted to the development of a method of similar code sequences search in executable files, based on functions control flow graph analysis. This method is also based on featureless approach, where functions are represented by their relationships with predefined basis library functions. The results of experimental studies demonstrate the applicability of proposed method and its efficiency in comparison with another method of similar code sequences search.
Birth Order, Family Configuration and Verbal Achievement.

Two samples of National Merit Scholarship participants test in 1962 and the entire population of almost 800000 participants tested in 1965 were examined. Consistent effects in all 3 groups were observed with respect to both birth order and family size (1st born and those of smaller families scored higher). Control of both socioeconomic variables and maternal age by analysis of variance as well as by analysis of covariance failed to alter the relationships. Stepdown analyses suggested that the effects were due to a verbal component and that no differences were attributable to nonverbal factors. Mean test scores were computed for detailed sibship configurations based on birth order family size sibling spacing and sibling sex. (authors modified)
Résumé Les perceptions des patients concernant les soins individualisés : une évaluation des propriétés et des résultats psychométriques de l ’ échelle de soins individualisés

Les organisations de services de santé désirent offrir des soins centrés sur le patient. Toutefois, il reste difficile de mesurer cet aspect de la qualité des soins. Cette étude transversale a examiné la fiabilité et la validité de l’échelle bipartite de mesure des soins individualisés (ESI-A, ESI-B) (bipartite Individualized Care Scale [ICS-A, ICS-B] ) dans une population canadienne ayant subi une arthroplastie genou-hanche. La cohérence interne des ESI-A et ESI-B était élevée; cependant, la validité factorielle n’était pas entièrement étayée. Vingt-cinq pour cent des participantes et des participants ont fourni des commentaires additionnels ouverts afin de décrire leurs perceptions, leurs besoins et leurs suggestions, et noté que l’échelle de Likert les obligeait à regrouper leurs commentaires et ne leur permettait pas de communiquer leur perception de chaque membre du personnel infirmier. Les conclusions de l’étude indiquent que lorsqu’ils évaluent les soins infirmiers, les patientes et les patients trouvent important de pouvoir partager leur histoire personnelle. Les études qualitatives qui seront effectuées dans l’avenir devraient examiner ce que pense le personnel infirmier des soins centrés sur le patient, ainsi que comporter une investigation sur les systèmes et les aspects liés au processus qui favorisent ou gênent la prestation de soins plus individualisés.
New CrNi-Base Alloy for High-Temperature Applications Designed on the Basis of First Principles Calculations

We use ab initio calculations to analyze the influence of 4d and 5d transition metal alloying elements on cohesive properties of the bulk and a representative grain boundary in Cr within the framework of the Rice–Thomson–Wang approach. The results obtained for Cr are combined with the analogous results for Ni to select Ta and Nb as promising alloying additions to dual-phase (α/γ) Cr-Ni-base high-temperature alloys. Ta and Nb are added to the alloying system of an existing alloy I (Cr-Ni-W-V-Ti) in an attempt to design a chemical composition of a new alloy II (Cr-Ni-W-V-Ti) + (Ta-Nb). Investigation of the microstructure of the Ta-bearing Cr-Ni-alloy reveals a Ta enrichment of large γ-areas near GBs in α-matrix that we consider as potency to increase the cohesive strength of GBs and the cohesive energy of the bulk in γ-phase. Mechanical testing of alloys I and II demonstrates that the alloy II has improved tensile strength and creep resistance at high temperatures.
MULTI-CRITERIA EVALUATION OF A GIS ENVIRONMENT IN A FOREST FIRE HAZARD MAPPING FOR THE CORUMBATAÍ RIVER BASIN , SP , BRAZIL

Fire is one of the agents most used in the suppression of forest areas in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, and, when out of control, it can be responsible for the destruction of extensive ecosystems. In the case of the Corumbataí river basin, SP, fire is one of the main causes of forest fragmentation and degradation. The purpose of this study was to map forest fire hazard for the Corumbataí river basin, using multi-criteria evaluation (Ordered Weighted Average method) using a Geographic Information System. Factors considered important to the study were: slope; aspect; rainfall; proximity to roads; proximity to urban areas; proximity to water; forest fragment neighborhood; and wind exposure. The combination of these factors resulted in a regional fire hazard map for the river basin. The analysis of the area just surrounding the forest remnants (30m) made it possible to determine the fire hazard in each individual fragment. Such map was reclassified into three hazard levels: low, medium, and high. According to this map, approximately 20% of the native forest fragments are classified as high-hazard class; 55% as medium-hazard class; and 25% as low-hazard class. In the current situation of land use/land cover and management, the forest remnants of the Corumbataí River basin are seriously threatened by fire.
Labour Costs , and Vertically Differentiated Industries : A General Equilibrium Analysis 22 November 1999

The effect of labour costs on industry profits, employment and labour income is at the heart of the current European debate on industry competitiveness. High wages paid in European countries such as Germany are generally considered harmful for industry profitability. Though, high wages appear also to be associated with high labour skills and then with superior product quality. Similarly, a reduction in labour taxes is often invoked as a tool to improve industry profitability, but this argument hardly takes into account the demand effects of such a tax reform. In this paper we analyse the trade-off between labour costs and industry profits by means of a simple general equilibrium model where one industry is oligopolistic and vertically differentiated. The manufacturing of products of a higher quality requires the employment of a larger amount of skilled labour. Given an underlying skills distribution, the model determines profits, wages and aggregate income and welfare. Results show that high net wages due to a low skills endowment in the economy are typically associated with low profits. Labour taxation unambiguously raises gross wages, but has little effect on net wages. Depending on how the tax revenue is redistributed, higher taxation may either depress or boost industry profits. JEL classification: D4, D5, F1, F2, J2, L1
Spreading activation or spooky action at a distance

How do preexisting connections among a word's associates facilitate its cued recall and recognition? A spreading-activation model assumes activation spreads to, among, and from a studied word's associates, and that its return is what strengthens its representation. An activation-at-a-distance model assumes strengthening is produced by the synchronous activation of the word's associates. The spread model predicts that connections among the studied word's associates will have a greater effect on memory when more of its associates return activation. The distance model predicts that total connections are important, not their direction. The results of cued recall experiments supported the distance model in showing that that connections among the associates facilitated recall regardless of the number of returning connections.
Nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural Africa : concepts , dynamics , and policy implications

Asset, activity and income diversification lie at the heart of livelihood strategies in rural Africa. This paper introduces a special issue on the topic “Income Diversification and Livelihoods in Rural Africa: Cause and Consequence of Change. ” We concentrate on core conceptual issues that bedevil the literature on rural income diversification and the policy implications of the empirical evidence presented in this special issue.  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
The Relationship between Energy Consumption , Income , Foreign Direct Investment , and CO 2 Emissions : The Case of Turkey *

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the energy consumption, income, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, and CO2 emission in Turkey, for the period 1974-2011. For this purpose, Maki (2012) cointegration method and Granger causality analysis have been used. The cointegration method results indicate that there is a long term relationship among the variables. Results also show that, both in the short and long run, Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is supported in Turkey. In addition, the pollution halo hypothesis, meaning that FDI has positive effects on environment, is valid for Turkey in the short and long run since there is bilateral causality relationship between CO2 emission and FDI inflows, and also negative coefficients of FDI. According to Granger causality test, the growth hypothesis, which means there is a unilateral causality relation from energy consumption to economic growth, is also valid for Turkey.
Geoscientific Model Development Influence of the compiler on multi-CPU performance of WRFv 3

The Weather Research and Forecasting system version 3 (WRFv3) is an open source and state of the art numerical Regional Climate Model used in climate related sciences. These years the model has been successfully optimized on a wide variety of clustered compute nodes connected with high speed interconnects. This is currently the most used hardware architecture for high-performance computing (Shainer et al., 2009). As such, understanding the influence of hardware like the CPU, its interconnects, or the software on WRFs performance is crucial for saving computing time. This is important because computing time in general is rare, resource intensive, and hence very expensive. This paper evaluates the influence of different compilers on WRFs performance, which was found to differ up to 26 %. The paper also evaluates the performance of different Message Passing Interface library versions, a software which is needed for multi CPU runs, and of different WRF versions. Both showed no significant influence on the performance for this test case on the used High Performance Cluster (HPC) hardware. Emphasis is also laid on the applied non-standard method of performance measuring, which was required because of performance fluctuations between identical runs on the used HPC. Those are caused by contention for network resources, a phenomenon examined for many HPCs (Wright et al., 2009).
Effects of self-presentation on the phenomenal self.

We examined the effects of strategic self-enhancement or self-deprecation on private self-appraisal. Previous work (Jones, Rhodewalt, Berglas, & Skelton, 1981) indicated that self-perception variables (whether subjects self-referenced) best account for elevations in self-esteem after self-enhancing behavior, whereas cognitive dissonance variables (whether subjects were given a clear choice to engage in the behavior) best account for decreases in self-esteem after self-deprecating behavior. We proposed that these findings can be accommodated by a model that represents the phenomenal self as a latitude of acceptance that incorporates both positive and negative self-referent material, and as latitudes of rejection containing potential positive and negative material not currently stored in self-referent form. An individual-difference approach (level of depression) was taken in order to test the prediction that self-perception would account for positive and negative shifts in self-esteem within subjects' latitudes of acceptance, and cognitive dissonance would explain positive and negative shifts in self-esteem within subjects' latitudes of rejection. Accordingly, depressed and nondepressed subjects were instructed to self-reference or to role-play self-enhancement or self-deprecation during an interview while under highor low-choice instructions. In support of the model, the results indicated that self-perception processes mediated subsequent shifts in self-esteem for self-enhancing nondepressed and self-deprecating depressed subjects. Cognitive dissonance processes mediated subsequent shifts in self-esteem for selfdeprecating nondepressed and self-enhancing depressed subjects.
POWER EFFICIENT MULTICAST OPPORTUNISTIC ROUTING PROTOCOL ( PEMOR ) TO OPTIMIZE LIFETIME OF MANET

The main idea of this paper is to propose an opportunistic multicast routing protocol with awareness of energy to adopt with the highly dynamic environment of Mobile Adhoc Network. The nodes spread in MANET environment is divided into several multicasting regions based on the geographical location. Each and every node is present in any one of the multicasting region. Each region is assigned with group address. When the source node forwards the data to a multicast group, the source node forwards the data through the node with highest power among the neighbor so, the proposed multicast routing scheme optimizes the total power consumption and increase the lifetime of the network. The performance is evaluated by comparing the results with the traditional method MAODV. Index Terms Opportunistic routing, multicasting, MANET, AODV, geographical location
Learning spatio-temporal spike train encodings with ReSuMe, DelReSuMe, and Reward-modulated Spike-timing Dependent Plasticity in Spiking Neural Networks

SNNs are referred to as the third generation of ANNs. Inspired from biological observations and recent advances in neuroscience, proposed methods increase the power of SNNs. Today, the main challenge is to discover efficient plasticity rules for SNNs. Our research aims are to explore/extend computational models of plasticity. We make various achievements using ReSuMe, DelReSuMe, and R-STDP based on the fundamental plasticity of STDP. The information in SNNs is encoded in the patterns of firing activities. For biological plausibility, it is necessary to use multi-spike learning instead of single-spike. Therefore, we focus on encoding inputs/outputs using multiple spikes. ReSuMe is capable of generating desired patterns with multiple spikes. The trained neuron in ReSuMe can fire at desired times in response to spatio-temporal inputs. We propose alternative architecture for ReSuMe dealing with heterogeneous synapses. It is demonstrated that the proposed topology exactly mimic the ReSuMe. A novel extension of ReSuMe, called DelReSuMe, has better accuracy using less iteration by using multi-delay plasticity in addition to weight learning under noiseless and noisy conditions. The proposed heterogeneous topology is also used for DelReSuMe. Another plasticity extension based on STDP takes into account reward to modulate synaptic strength named R-STDP. We use dopamine-inspired STDP in SNNs to demonstrate improvements in mapping spatio-temporal patterns of spike trains with the multi-delay mechanism versus single connection. From the viewpoint of Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning is outlined through a maze task in order to investigate the mechanisms of reward and eligibility trace which are the fundamental in R-STDP. To develop the approach we implement Temporal-Difference learning and novel knowledge-based RL techniques on the maze task. We develop rule extractions which are combined with RL and wall follower algorithms. We demonstrate the improvements on the exploration efficiency of TD learning for maze navigation tasks.
Tourism as a Tool of Sustainable Regional Development and the Importance of Clusters in Latvia : Example of Sigulda & Ventspils

The goal of this research is to evaluate the role o f tourism in sustainable regional development in Latvia. Authors have focused on the identification and mapping of spatial structures in Latvia, choosing the most popular tourist destinations Sigulda and Ventspils cities as textbook examples o f such territories. The concept of clusters has been chosen as the most app ropriate theory for tourism as a tool of urban development and evaluating the spat ial structure of tourism. The result of the research was the identification of a tourism cluster and mapped city influence zone in Sigulda and Ventspils, where spat ial processes have developed differently. This research has not only confirmed the advantage of a cluster – the ability to attract new business innovations despite the existing competition in the area, but it has also showed different character of urban development and integration with surrounding counties in accordance with sustainability principles.
Male orangutan bimaturism and reproductive success at Camp Leakey in Tanjung Puting National Park , Indonesia

Unlike most mammals, male orang-utans exhibit bimaturism, in that mature individuals express one of two distinct morphological forms. Socially subordinate, ‘unflanged’ males are comparable to females in their size and facial morphology, while socially dominant ‘flanged’ males exhibit extreme sexual dimorphism and secondary sexual characteristics, primarily in the form of cheek pads (‘flanges’). Although male ornaments in other species are often phenotypically plastic, such characteristics in orang-utans are irreversible—and, given that both morphs are sexually mature and can father offspring—their adaptive significance remains unclear. We determined paternity of orang-utans at Camp Leakey in Tanjung Puting National Park, within the home range of one long-term dominant male, Kusasi, before, during and after his period of dominance, in comparison with subordinate male conspecifics. We found that Kusasi fathered substantially more offspring conceived during his dominant period than any other male and that socially subordinate, unflanged males only fathered offspring during periods of rank instability. We conclude that orang-utan male bimaturism is consistent with an evolutionarily stable reproductive strategy and that reproduction within the range of a dominant, flanged male is highly skewed in his favour, while unflanged males may largely wait for reproductive opportunities.