Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toward Robust Detection of Puppet Attacks via Characterizing Fingertip-Touch Behaviors

Fingerprint authentication has gained increasing popularity on mobile devices in recent years. However, it is vulnerable to presentation attacks, which include that an attacker spoofs with an artificial replica. Many liveness detection solutions have been proposed to defeat such presentation attacks; however, they all fail to defend against a particular type of presentation attack, namely puppet attack, in which an attacker places an unwilling victim's finger on the fingerprint sensor. In this article, we propose FinAuth, an effective and efficient software-only solution, to complement fingerprint authentication by defeating both synthetic spoofs and puppet attacks using fingertip-touch characteristics. FinAuth characterizes intrinsic fingertip-touch behaviors including the acceleration and the rotation angle of mobile devices when a legitimate user authenticates. FinAuth only utilizes common sensors equipped on mobile devices and does not introduce extra usability burdens on users. To evaluate the effectiveness of FinAuth, we carried out experiments on datasets collected from 90 subjects after the IRB approval. The results show that FinAuth can achieve the average balanced accuracy of 96.04% with 5 training data points and 99.28% with 100 training data points. Security experiments also demonstrate that FinAuth is resilient against possible attacks. In addition, we report the usability analysis results of FinAuth, including user authentication delay and overhead.
The Impact of Road Parameters and the Surrounding Area on Traffic Accidents

The article analyses the data on road traffic accidents in Lithuanian main and interurban road networks in the years 2002–2006. The road network is divided into 341 road sections. The surrounding area and road parameters of each of the sections are measured. Then, the dependence of traffic accident rate on the parameters is studied and described using linear and multiple regressions. The equations are built using 90% of the available data and tested forecasting traffic accident rate for the rest of 10% of the data comparing the obtained results with the real data.
IMAGE DENOISING USING HARD THRESHOLD TECHNIQUES ON WAVELET TRANSFORM AND SHEARLET TRANSFORM

-In this data age century with increment in the modern technology there is a development in the theory of multidimensional data to provide the higher directional sensitivity in imaging. A numeric image is a portrayal of a real image which is taken as a set of numbers that can be gathered and picked up by a digital computer. In order to decode the image into numbers it is divided into small segments called pixels (picture elements). Whenever there is a transmission of images or due to some environment factor there is an addition of noise to the images takes place that ultimately results in the reduction of originality of the image. It is very important to remove the noise from the images so that it is safeguard. Shearlets are a multiscale foundation which authorize efficient encoding of anisotropic feature in multivariate problem classes. In this paper, we have set forth the noise removal transform by hard thresholding for denoising. We can denoise the noisy image by wiping out the fine details, to enhance the quality of the images.
Responses of eelgrass seed germination and seedling establishment to water depth, sediment type, and burial depth: implications for restoration

When seagrass beds are restored by seeding, many factors affect the transition of seeds to seedlings. In this study, the effects of water depth (light availability), sediment type, and burial depth on seed germination and seedling establishment of Zostera marina L. were tested through 2 in situ suspended culture experiments in Ailian Bay, China. In the first experiment, water depth (1, 3, and 6 m) had no significant effect on seed germination and seedling establishment, but did affect seedling survival. In the second experiment, seed burial depth (2, 5, and 10 cm) had significant effects on seed germination and seedling establishment. Seeds buried at shallow depths exhibited higher percentages of seed germination and seedling establishment, and maximum values (mean ±SD = 21.33 ± 9.30%) were recorded in seeds buried at 2 cm in 100% sand. There was no significant effect of sediment type on seed germination and seedling establishment at 2 cm (p > 0.05), but seeds buried at 5 cm were affected by sediment type, with seeds cultured in 100% sand exhibiting the highest percentages of seed germination (12.33 ± 4.51%) and seedling establishment (12.33 ± 4.51%). No seedlings or germinated seeds were found at 10 cm, regardless of sediment type. Once plants are established, sediment type and seed burial depth do not play a decisive role in plant growth, with plants performing equally in terms of shoot density (33−90 shoots per pot) and shoot height (20 ± 6 cm) in different sediment types and at different burial depths 1 yr after seedling establishment. Our findings help clarify the complex combined effects of sediment type and burial depth on seed germination and seedling establishment.
Commentary on the paper by Heimrich Kanis entitled: ‘Reliability and validity of findings in ergonomics research’

Kanis provides an interesting but prescriptive view on reliability and validity in human factors and ergonomics (HFE) research. For HFE recommendations to be implemented the research must communicate with and convince the target audience. To achieve this, researchers will continue to use a selection of analytical tools across both disciplines (and industrial sectors) and the methodological continuum. A major step forward in improving the quality (including reliability and validity) of evaluation research in HFE is the development and validation of mixed methods critical appraisal tools. Sponsors, funders and editors should encourage researchers and reviewers to take a more systematic approach to raise the quality of HFE research in practice and publication.
Challenges in teaching modern manufacturing technologies

Teaching of manufacturing courses for undergraduate engineering students has become a challenge due to industrial globalisation coupled with influx of new innovations, technologies, customer-driven products. This paper discusses development of a modern manufacturing course taught concurrently in three institutions where students collaborate in executing various projects. Lectures are developed to contain materials featuring advanced manufacturing technologies, R&D trends in manufacturing. Pre- and post-surveys were conducted by an external evaluator to assess the impact of the course on increase in student's knowledge of manufacturing; increase students’ preparedness and confidence in effective communication and; increase students’ interest in pursuing additional academic studies and/or a career path in manufacturing and high technology. The surveyed data indicate that the students perceived significant gains in manufacturing knowledge and preparedness in effective communication. The study also shows that implementation of a collaborative course within multiple institutions requires a robust and collective communication platform.
Investigating vegetable contamination in indigent communities by heavy metals: a case of food safety in Bushenyi, Uganda

ABSTRACT Food contamination by heavy metals is a health burden in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, we illustrate this burden by quantifying levels of Cd, Cr, Ni, Co, Pb, Fe, Cu and Zn in vegetables from Bushenyi District (Uganda). Results show that cabbage, scarlet eggplant, tomato and amaranth sold in Bushenyi, Ishaka, Kashenyi, Kizinda and Nyakabirizi open markets contain high levels of Zn and Fe. The uptake of metals overall appeared to be species-specific. Amaranth, for example, had more metals than scarlet eggplant, which in turn had more metals than tomato or cabbage. Within a species, cabbage from Ishaka and Kashenyi presented a combinatorial set of characteristics quite distinct from cabbage from other areas. Such differences arose perhaps from differential capacities to uptake/retain metals from soil or atmospheric particulates. More studies are needed to pinpoint sources of vegetable contamination in Bushenyi. Perhaps then remedial measures can be proposed.
A study on the thrust vector control using a bypass flow passage

Bypass actuators are both indispensable and critical components for thrust vector control of supersonic vehicles. Detailed flow features concerned with bypass flow play a key role in thrust vectoring systems. An analytical model was created in supersonic nozzle with bypass flow passage. Meanwhile, a computational fluid dynamics-based study was conducted for studying this phenomenon. To validate the analytical and numerical models, comparisons with experimental result were performed. Good agreement was observed in overall region. Analytical and numerical pressure distributions under different injection positions were compared. The distance between separation point and injection position becomes smaller as the secondary injection position moves upstream. This is because of the reducing of bypass flow rate. The effects of expanded ratio and mass flow rate were adequately researched and tested. Significant variation of system thrust ratio and specific impulse takes place in the over-expanded conditions. It is indicated that the secondary flow produces great effects for over-expanded conditions. The separation point of boundary layer moves upstream as bypass flow rate increases. System thrust ratio and specific impulse will reduce if bypass flow rate increases.
Screening And Bioactivity Profiling of Marine Bacillus Species Against Human Pathogens

: Screening and characterization of the secondary metabolites from the marine microbial organisms helps in the identification of potential bioactive molecules with pharmaceutical importance. Hence, in the present study, a total of seven marine samples were collected from different sampling sites around Tamilnadu and Andaman, out of which 39 isolates were screened for antagonistic against five human pathogens. Among the isolates, two potent Bacillus strains (C5 & M6) exhibited antagonistic activity against pathogenic microorganisms. The maximum zone of inhibition was exhibited by C5 against Staphylococcus aureus (14.03±0.02mm), followed by Bacillus cereus (13.3±0.02mm), Pseudomonas aeuroginosa (11±0.08mm), Escherichia coli (9.03±0.01mm) and Streptococcus mutans (6.93±0.08mm). The strain M6 exhibited maximum zone of inhibition against Pseudomonas aeuroginosa (11.8±0.15mm) followed by Staphylococcus aureus (6.03±0.05mm), Bacillus cereus (5.03±0.05mm), Escherichia coli (4.9±0.01mm) and Streptococcus mutans (4.86±0.15mm). These organisms were identified as Bacillus marisflavi (C5) and Bacillus flexus (M6) by 16s rRNA gene sequencing. Comparatively, the strain C5 was more effective than M6. The bioactive components from culture broth were separated by Thin Layer Chromatography and the chemical constituents of the fractions were analyzed by Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. This revealed the presence of numerous bioactive compounds like Phenol, 2,5-bis(1,1-dimethylethyl), Cyclododecane, Hexadecanoic acid ethyl ester, Pentadecanoic acid ethyl ester, Octadecanoic acid ethyl ester from C5 and M6. The findings suggested that marine water samples have the potent source of bioactive compounds as a novel source for drug discovery. Further, structural prediction and characterization of the bioactive compounds may lead to the discovery of novel compounds for potential medicinal applications.
Cramér–Rao Bound Evaluations of Compton Imager Designs for Proton Beam Range Verification

Compton imaging is an attractive tool for range verification and dose estimation in proton therapy. To investigate the application of CdZnTe-based cameras for this task, we apply the uniform Cramér–Rao bound (UCRB) to dual-plane-based designs with various interplane spacings and evaluate their bias-variance tradeoff. The investigation focuses on the 718-keV and 4.4-MeV prompt gammas emitted from proton interactions with <sup>12</sup>C, and focuses on a detector geometry having two planes of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3 \times 3$ </tex-math></inline-formula> CdZnTe crystals with a volume of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2 \times 2 \times 1.5 \,\,\mathrm {cm}^{3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. When considering only interplane events, the improvement in minimum variance plateaus at 8 cm. However, when considering both intraplane and interplane events with an efficiency factor, the optimum spacing is calculated to be around 4 cm as larger spacings degrade the performance with poorer efficiency and a lower interplane to intraplane fraction. In addition, the study uses the modified UCRB based on a simulated distribution of prompt gamma rays expected from proton irradiation. The results show that the optimum spacing may be between 2 and 4 cm, depending on the specific bias-gradient norm.
SIMPLIFIED MODELLING STRATEGIES TO SIMULATE THE DYNAMIC BEHAVIOUR OF R/C WALLS

A continuous damage model and different simplified numerical strategies are proposed to simulate the behaviour of reinforced concrete (R/C) walls subjected to earthquake ground motions. For 2D modelling of R/C walls controlled primarily by bending, an Euler multilayered beam element is adopted. For 3D problems, a multifibre Timoshenko beam element having higher order interpolation functions has been developed. Finally, for walls with a small slenderness ratio we use the Equivalent Reinforced Concrete model. For each case, comparison with experimental results of R/C walls tested on shaking table or reaction wall shows the advantages but also the limitations of the approach.
Automatic Estimation of Gestational Age in Ultrasound Images Based on Direct Least‐Squares Fitting of Ellipse

Measurement of the fetal head biparietal diameter (BPD) and head circumference (HC) is crucial for estimation of fetal age. Due to the noisy nature of ultrasound images and variation in image acquisition and measurement techniques, manual measurements of these parameters are subject to inter‐ and intraobserver variability. In this study, we present an approach for estimation of gestational age in ultrasound images, based on direct least‐squares fitting of an ellipse. The process goes through three steps: image preprocessing, object extraction, and fitting an ellipse to the resultant shape and measuring its parameters. The proposed technique was tested and evaluated on 20 ultrasound images of fetal head. The images had a combination of noise and low contrast. Excellent linear correlation between manual and automatic measurement was obtained, which verifies the reliability of the proposed automatic approach. © 2010 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
CareFox: An Interactive Learning Application for Care-Students

Demographic transformation and medical-technical progress are generating new demands for standards and quality in professional caregiving. The job profile and especially the nature of care apprenticeships is changing significantly and use of digital media is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous and important aspect of the work. In this paper, we present a design case study that focuses on the development and evaluation of a multimedia learning application for and with care students. Adopting a user-centered design approach, we collected design requirements for the application in workshops and interviews with 23 care-students. The results show that it is important to create a structured approach to providing information and that social aspects such as chat allow for higher motivation and collaboration in learning. The findings also suggest that, by using game mechanisms such as a quizzes and difficulty levels, care-students can be further motivated to become more engaged with learning content.
Temporal Shift and Spatial Attention-Based Two-Stream Network for Traffic Risk Assessment

On-board vision based traffic risk assessment is a challenging task for intelligent driving systems, which has some special challenges including spatial-temporal feature extraction, different judgements of risks, real-time requirement, lacking data, etc. To overcome these difficulties, we propose a novel Temporal Shift and Spatial Attention based Two-stream Network (TSSAT-Net) for on-board vision based traffic risk assessment. Firstly, we build new judgement measures that integrate actual driving experience and scenario complexity, and release an on-board vision based traffic risk assessment dataset. Secondly, a novel weighted Temporal Shift Module (weighted-TSM) based two-stream network is proposed; unlike previous methods that rely on complex and time-consuming 3D CNN or LSTM calculation, the proposed two-stream network can effectively extract spatial-temporal features using a weighted temporal shift mechanism with just 2D CNN calculation requirement. Thirdly, a spatial and channel attention mechanism is proposed to make the TSSAT-Net more focus on the features closely related to traffic risks, avoiding redundant information in complex traffic scenarios. Experiments based on the released comprehensive dataset show that our method achieves the state-of-the-art classification accuracy in real-time.
An Investigation Into the Hydrodynamic Efficiency of an Oscillating Water Column

An oscillating water column device enables the conversion of wave energy into electrical energy via wave interaction with a semi-submerged chamber coupled with a turbine for power take off. This present work concentrates on the wave interaction with the semi-submerged chamber, whereby a shore based oscillating water column (OWC) is studied experimentally to examine energy efficiencies for power take-off. The wave environment considered comprises plane progressive waves of steepnesses ranging from kA=0.01 to 0.22 and water depth ratios varying from kh=0.30 to 3.72, where k, A, and h denote the wave number, wave amplitude, and water depth, respectively. The key feature of this experimental campaign is a focus on the influence of front wall geometry on the OWC’s performance. More specifically, this focus includes: front wall draught, thickness, and aperture shape of the submerged front wall. We make use of a two-dimensional inviscid theory for an OWC for comparative purposes and to explain trends noted in the experimental measurements. The work undertaken here has revealed a broad banded efficiency centered about the natural frequency of the OWC. The magnitude and shape of the efficiency curves are influenced by the geometry of the front wall. Typical peak magnitude resonant efficiencies are in the order of 70%.
Improvement of Educational Contents to Enhance the Efficiency of Construction Worksite Safety Training

The prevention of safety accidents can be achieved through Harvey’s 3E’s: Engineering, Enforcement, and Education. On construction sites, however, enforcement and engineering did not prove to be valid ways of reducing the number of safety accidents, as enforcement and engineering have failed to overcome and/or supplement the realistic limits regarding the relatively lower education levels of construction workers and the communication issues with foreign workers. On the other hand, safety education can enable the advancement of safety management by enhancing the educational contents and their methods of delivery. To improve the efficiency of safety education via educational contents, this research conducted a qualitative and quantitative analysis on the validity of the newly educational contents by overviewing possible accident types in different work phases. Of the accident types identified by the qualitative analysis, neither highly important nor insignificant accident types were found, yet all the suggested types are found to be required. In addition, this study did not find any significant differences in the occurrence probability of safety accidents related to the level of importance of each type of accident. The qualitative analysis in this research verified that the suggested accident types can be valid, educational material that can take into account future safety accidents.
SmartStep: A Fully Integrated, Low-Power Insole Monitor

Shoe-mounted wearable sensors can be used in applications, such as activity monitoring, gait analysis, post-stroke rehabilitation, body weight measurements and energy expenditure studies. Such wearable sensors typically require the modification or alteration of the shoe, which is not typically feasible for large populations without the direct involvement of shoe manufacturers. This article presents an insole-based wearable sensor (SmartStep) that has its electronics fully embedded into a generic insole, which is usable with a large variety of shoes and, thus, resolves the need for shoe modification. The SmartStep is an always-on electronic device that comprises a 3D accelerometer, a 3D gyroscope and resistive pressure sensors implemented around a CC2540 system-on-chip with an 8051 processor core, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) connectivity and flash memory buffer. The SmartStep is wirelessly interfaced to an Android smart phone application with data logging and visualization capabilities. This article focuses on low-power implementation methods and on the method developed for reliable data buffering, alleviating intermittent connectivity resulting from the user leaving the vicinity of the smart phone. The conducted tests illustrate the power consumption for several possible usage scenarios and the reliability of the data retention method. The trade-off between the power consumption and supported functionality is discussed, demonstrating that SmartStep can be worn for more than two days between battery recharges. The results of the mechanical reliability test on the SmartStep indicate that the pressure sensors in the SmartStep tolerated prolonged human wear. The SmartStep system collected more than 98.5% of the sensor data, in real usage scenarios, having intermittent connectivity with the smart phone.
Inpatient Unit Flexibility

Flexibility in health care design is typically addressed from an architectural perspective without a systematic understanding of its meaning from the end-user's viewpoint. Moreover, the architectural perspectives have been generally focused on expandability and convertibility. This study explored flexibility needs in adult medical-surgical inpatient care with the objective to understand its meaning from an end-user perspective and identify characteristics of the physical environment that promote or impede stakeholders' requirements. Semistructured interviews were conducted using a qualitative design with 48 stakeholders in nursing and nursing-support services at 6 hospitals across the United States. Data were collected during September–November 2006. Findings suggest that adaptability influences more aspects of unit operations than convertibility or expandability. Furthermore, physical design characteristics affect 9 critical operational issues where flexibility is required, spanning nursing, environmental services, materials management, dietary services, pharmacy, and respiratory therapy.
ANALYSIS OF POWER QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN GRID CONNECTED WIND DRIVEN INDUCTION GENERATOR AT VARIOUS LOAD CONDITIONS

As a promising renewable alternative, the wind powe r is one of the significant sources of generation. Reactive power compensation and harmonic reduction in a low voltage distributio n networks for integration of wind power to the gri d are the main issues addressed in this paper. This paper proposes a control scheme based on instaneous Pq theory for compensating the reactive power requirement of a three phase grid connected wind driven inducti on generator as well as the harmonics produced by t he non linear load connected to the PCC using STATCOM. The proposed control sche me is simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK. The Simulati on results are presented in this paper .