Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detection of yellow starthistle through band selection and feature extraction from hyperspectral imagery.

To effectively display hyperspectral imagery for visualization purposes, the three RGB channels should be selected or extracted from a hyperspectral image under the criteria of maximum information or maximum between-class separability. Seven band selection (OIF, SI, Cl, divergence, transformed divergence, B-distance, JM-distance) and five feature extraction (principal component analysis, linear discriminant analysis, class-based PCA, segmented PCT (SPCT), independent component analysis) methods and their variations are examined and compared using CASI hyperspectral imagery with the goal of detecting Centaurea solstitialis (yellow starthistle or YST), an invasive weed, in an annual grassland in California. Three indicators, information index (Infodex), separability index (Sepadex) and average correlation coefficient (ACC) are proposed to evaluate the quality of the generated images. The results suggest that both the combination of the three SPCT channels and the combination of the second PCA channel with the positive and negative of the first LDA channels (PCA2, LDA1, -LDA1) can enhance our ability to visualize the distribution of YST in contrast to the surrounding vegetation.
site : a comparision between México and U . S ”

Research on cultural differences has been based on disciplines such as anthropology, business or communication, focusing on cultural differences and the perception of the site, but always with a technical scheme. The cultural background in the development of the Website is important to avoid mistakes that may cause bad image to the customer. Nantel and Glaser (2008) have found that language, a major cultural factor, is less important when the quality of the offered products is attractive to the buyers. To see how the website is perceived by two different cultures a Website was made by Spanish speaking country (Mexico), but designed in English, trying to remove traces of the cultural background from the Mexican company that designed and implemented the website. The Website was designed and developed specifically for this research, using usability principles, trying to access to a multicultural buyers market, and simulating a real selling music site.
ITCH nuclear translocation and H1.2 polyubiquitination negatively regulate the DNA damage response

Abstract The downregulation of the DNA damage response (DDR) enables aggressive tumors to achieve uncontrolled proliferation against replication stress, but the mechanisms underlying this process in tumors are relatively complex. Here, we demonstrate a mechanism through which a distinct E3 ubiquitin ligase, ITCH, modulates DDR machinery in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). We found that expression of a nuclear form of ITCH was significantly increased in human TNBC cell lines and tumor specimens. Phosphorylation of ITCH at Ser257 by AKT led to the nuclear localization of ITCH and ubiquitination of H1.2. The ITCH-mediated polyubiquitination of H1.2 suppressed RNF8/RNF168-dependent formation of 53BP1 foci, which plays important roles in DDR. Consistent with these findings, impaired ITCH nuclear translocation and H1.2 polyubiquitination sensitized cells to replication stress and limited cell growth and migration. AKT activation of ITCH-H1.2 axis may confer TNBC cells with a DDR repression to counteract the replication stress and increase cancer cell survivorship and growth potential.
Critical Pedagogy in the Context of Iran: Exploring English Teachers’ Perceptions

Abstract: Three decades ago, the theory of education took a critical turn. From this perspective, classroom is no longer a public sphere of cultural assimilation but a site for identity struggle. The basic argument underlying such an approach is that education cannot be studied in isolation from an analysis of wider social and cultural influences. In such a context, this study investigated Iranian EFL teachers‟ perceptions of the basic tenets of critical pedagogy. To this end, a mixed method approach was adopted and the data were gathered through in–depth interviews and questionnaires developed by the researchers. The participants of this study included 21 Iranian EFL teachers at the qualitative phase and 127 teachers at the quantitative phase. Qualitative data analysis included in-depth content analysis of oral data obtained from semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data analysis involved descriptive statistics and independent sample t-tests. The results indicated that Iranian EFL teachers were supportive of the basic tenets of critical pedagogy altogether. Also, mixed findings were obtained concerning their views according to their level of education and field of expertise. Based on the findings, several suggestions are made for classroom management, materials development, and teacher training programs. تعلیم و تربیت انتقادی در ایران: کاوش دیدگاه های معلمان زبان انگلیسی چکیده سه دهه پیش، نظریه آموزشی نگرش انتقادی به خود گرفت. از این منظر، کلاس درس دیگر یک مکان عمومی تحصیل فرهنگ نیست بلکه میدانی است برای کشمکش میان هویت های مختلف . گفتمان اصلی ناظر بر چنین دیدگاهی بر این تفکر که نمی توان تعلیم و تربیت را جدای از تجزیه و تحلیل أثرات اجتماعی و فرهنگی گسترده تر مطالعه کرد مبتنی است. در چنین شرایطی، این مطالعه به درک معلمان زبان انگلیسی ایرانی از اصول اساسی تعلیم و تربیت انتقادی پرداخت. برای این منظور، یک رویکرد روش ترکیبی اتخاذ و داده ها از طریق مصاحبه های عمیق و پرسشنامه های تدوین شده توسط نگارندگان جمع آوری شد. شرکت کنندگان در این مطالعه شامل 21 معلم زبان انگلیسی در مرحله کیفی و 127 معلم در مرحله کمی بودند. تجزیه و تحلیل داده های کیفی شامل تجزیه و تحلیل محتوای عمیق اطلاعات شفاهی به دست آمده از مصاحبه های نیمه ساختار یافته می باشد، و تجزیه و تحلیل داده های کمی نیز شامل آمار توصیفی و آزمون تی مستقل می باشد. نتایج نشان داد که آنها در کل از اصول اساسی آن حمایت می کنند. همچنین، یافته های ناهمگونی در ارتباط با دیدگاه های معلمان بر اساس سطح دانش و حوزه تخصص به دست آمد. براساس یافته های پژوهش،پیشنهاداتی در زمینه اداره کلاس درس، طراحی و تولید مواد درسی، و برنامه های آموزش معلمان ارائه شده است. واژه های کلیدی: آموزش انتقادی، تعلیم و تربیت دموکراتیک، عدالت آموزشی، توانمندسازی آموزشی
Detection of Power Quality Disturbances Using Empirical Wavelet Transform and Hilbert Transform

With the increasingly penetration of nonlinear loads in the power system, power quality (PQ) has become a significant issue for the power utilities and end users. In order to improve the PQ, the PQ detection is essential. In this paper, a new method for detecting the PQ disturbances via empirical wavelet transform (EWT) and Hilbert (HT) is proposed. Firstly, EWT is applied to the signal for obtaining different modes. Then the instantaneous amplitude and frequency of each mode are calculated by using the HT. By applying it to two stationary signals and two non-stationary signals, the efficiency of the proposed method is evaluated. With no frequency aliasing like the S transform (ST), the proposed method presents more accurate results than the ST.
Feature Extraction and Discovery of microRNAs Using Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

In this paper we consider a computational approach for feature extraction and discovery of microRNA (miRNA) sequences based on the hairpin precursors. We firstly computed the frequency of one nucleotide or one sub-sequence combined from several nucleotides in each hairpin precursor miRNA. Then we compared nonnegative matrix factorization and principal component analysis methods to decompose the frequency matrix for further analysis, such as miRNA gene discovery. Our experimental results on recently published miRNA sequences and the same number of random sequences demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed feature extraction method, and especially that nonnegative matrix factorization significantly outperforms principal component analysis in miRNA gene discovery.
Evaluation of facial soft tissue parameters for Northwestern students in Iran

I ntroduction: We studied and measured facial parameters of 160 students,aged 22-24 years attended at Sahand University of Technology in Northwest of Iran. Mat erial and Methods: In this paper, six linear and six angular facial parameters are measured. These parameters are measured in frontal and profile facial images. The measured values are the mean and standard deviation (SD) of distance between the two medial canthi, width of alar base, length of nose, width of mouth, length of upper lip, length of lower lip, interlabial gap, nasofrontal angle, nasofacial angle, nasomental angle, nasolabial angle, mentolabial angle, and throat angle. The mean (SD) of the above mentioned parameters were 33mm (3), 38mm (2), 49mm (2), 46mm (3), 16mm (3), 14mm (1), 4mm (0.75), 127° (3°), 31° (2°), 127° (3°), 112° (5°), 135° (3°), 124° (2°), respectively. Results: Most of the parameters we measured were comparable in men and women. When we compared our results with studies in South of Iran and elsewhere many differences were found and this shows that the measurement of the facial parameters in different races, ethnic groups, and regions of country is necessary. Conclusion: Measurement of these parameters is vital in facial surgeries especially in aesthetic, maxillofacial, rhinoplasty and orthognathic surgeries.
SIMULATION AND CALIBRATION OF RSSI BASED DISTANCE ESTIMATION FOR LOCALIZATION IN WSN

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are extensively being used in various environments to implement different monitoring tasks such as search, rescue, disaster relief, target tracking and a number of tasks in smart environments. Various applications of wireless sensor networks need information about the physical location of each sensor node. So therefore selforganisation and localisation capabilities are one of the most significant requirements in sensor networks. In this paper, we proposed a distance based cooperative localization algorithm called Curvilinear Component Analysis mapping (CCA-MAP) for nodes position estimation within a WSN. This algorithm is based on distance measurements using Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) technique. The performance of our approach is evaluated through simulations using MATLAB simulator and we also implemented it in a real system deployment in an indoor environment by performing an empirical measurement using Crossbow IRIS sensor motes. The simulation results obtained revealed that our approach delivers improved position accuracy.
A study of geographical neighborhood influence to business rating prediction

Rating prediction is to predict the preference rating of a user to an item that she has not rated before, and it is one of the most popular and fundamental problems in recommendation systems. Using the business review data from Yelp, we study the problem of business rating prediction in this thesis. A business here can be a restaurant, a shopping mall, a nightlife club or other kind of businesses. Different from most other types of items that have been studied in various recommender systems (e.g., movie, song, book), a business in Yelp physically exists at a geographical location, and most businesses have geographical neighbors within walking distance. When a user visits a business, there is a good chance that she walks by its neighbors. Through data analysis on Yelp, we find that there exists weak positive correlation between a business’s ratings and its neighbors’ ratings, and the positive correlation in ratings is independent of the categories of the businesses and/or their neighbors. Based on this observation, we assume that a user’s rating to a given business is determined by both the intrinsic characteristics of the business and the extrinsic characteristics of its geographical neighbors. Using the widely adopted latent factor model for rating prediction, in our proposed solution, we use two kinds of latent factors to model a business: one for its intrinsic characteristics and the other for its extrinsic characteristics. More specifically, the former encodes the intrinsic characteristics of a business (e.g., taste of food and quality of service) observable by users who have interacted with the business. The latter encodes the extrinsic characteristics of a business (e.g., hygiene standard) in influencing its geographical neighbors observable by the “pass-by” visitors. We conduct extensive experiments on the Yelp dataset to evaluate the proposed models, and compare the models with state-of-the-art baseline methods. We show that by incorporating geographical neighborhood influences, much lower prediction
Organizing the Innovation Process: Complementarities in Innovation Networking

This paper contributes to the developing literature on complementarities in organizational design. We test for the existence of complementarities in the use of external networking between stages of the innovation process in a sample of UK and German manufacturing plants. Our evidence suggests some differences between the UK and Germany in terms of the optimal combination of innovation activities in which to implement external networking. Broadly, there is more evidence of complementarities in the case of Germany, with the exception of the product engineering stage. By contrast, the UK exhibits generally strong evidence of substitutability in external networking in different stages, except between the identification of new products and product design and development stages. These findings suggest that previous studies indicating strong complementarity between internal and external knowledge sources have provided only part of the picture of the strategic dilemmas facing firms.
Warrant pricing with credit risk

The existing bibliography supports the notion that warrant prices depend on the credit risk of the warrant issuer. The purpose of this paper is to value warrants taking into account their issuer’s credit risk. We distinguish two types of warrants depending on whether the exercise of the warrant implies dilution of the firm’s equity. On the one hand, for pricing warrants with dilution, we extend Ukhov’s (2004) model. On the other hand, for valuing warrants without dilution we propose to apply the pricing model for vulnerable options developed in Hull and White (1995). Finally, in order to study the implementation of the expressions we propose, we apply them to price some warrants in the Spanish market.
A new spin-oriented nuclei facility: POLAREX

Using the On-Line Nuclear Orientation method, POLAREX (POLARization of EXotic nuclei) is a new facility allowing to study the anisotropic decay of spin-oriented nuclei. Based on the combination of on-line implantation of radioactive nuclei with Low Temperature Nuclear Orientation technique and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, POLAREX allows to measure nuclear electromagnetic moments and ground-state spins, in the aim to get information about the wave function composition of the nuclear state. Polarized nuclei can also be used to study fundamental interactions involving nuclear -decay asymmetries. The POLAREX infrastructure will be installed at Accelerateur Lineaire aupres du Tandem d’Orsay in order to study neutron-rich nuclei, some of which have not been studied yet. Will be presented here, all the possibilities of this new facility and a non exhaustive scientific program.
Metamaterials for Microwave Radomes and the Concept of a Metaradome: Review of the Literature

A radome is an integral part of almost every antenna system, protecting antennas and antenna electronics from hostile exterior conditions (humidity, heat, cold, etc.) and nearby personnel from rotating mechanical parts of antennas and streamlining antennas to reduce aerodynamic drag and to conceal antennas from public view. Metamaterials are artificial materials with a great potential for antenna design, and many studies explore applications of metamaterials to antennas but just a few to the design of radomes. This paper discusses the possibilities that metamaterials open up in the design of microwave radomes and introduces the concept of metaradomes. The use of metamaterials can improve or correct characteristics (gain, directivity, and bandwidth) of the enclosed antenna and add new features, like band-pass frequency behavior, polarization transformations, the ability to be switched on/off, and so forth. Examples of applications of metamaterials in the design of microwave radomes available in the literature as well as potential applications, advantages, drawbacks, and still open problems are described.
Characteristic Modeling and Control of Servo Systems with Backlash and Friction

A novel approach for modeling and control of servo systems with backlash and friction is proposed based on the characteristic model. Firstly, to deal with friction-induced nonlinearities, a smooth Stribeck friction model is introduced. The backlash is modeled by a continuous and derivable mathematical function. Secondly, a characteristic model in the form of a second-order slowly time-varying difference equation is established and verified by simulations. Thirdly, a composite controller including the golden-section adaptive control law and the integral control law is designed and the stability of the closed-loop system is analyzed. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed control scheme is effective and can improve the steady-state precision and the dynamic performance of the servo system with backlash and friction.
Effect of salinity and priming on seedling growth in rapeseed (Brassica napus var oleifera Del.)

Experiments were performed to examine the effect of salt stress and GA3-priming on initial growth of two rapeseed cultivars, one tolerant and one sensitive to salt stress during germination. Seedlings from seeds germinated in salty (as NaCl) and non salty substrate were grown in salty and non salty hydroponics. Salt stress reduced seedling growth of the two genotypes consistently with their degree of stress tolerance during germination. Seedlings from stress sensitive seeds germinated under high salinity showed a rapid recover of growth in non stressing conditions. The effect of salt stress on shoot/root ratio was controversial, increased for lab and decreased for greenhouse experiments, probably due to different timing of stress application and additional experimental conditions. Salt stress decreased leaf photosynthesis and increased thermal dissipation in sensitive seedlings (decrease of ΦPSII and qP, increase of NPQ). The GA3-priming did not affect seedling growth of the stress sensitive cultivar subjected to stress, while it greatly improved the performance of the stress tolerant cultivar.
Island vs. countryside biogeography: an examination of how Amazonian birds respond to forest clearing and fragmentation

Avian diversity in fragmented Amazonian landscapes depends on a balance between extinction and colonization in cleared and disturbed areas. Regenerating forest facilitates bird dispersal within degraded Amazonian landscapes and may tip the balance in favor of persistence in habitat patches. Determining the response of Amazonian birds to fragmentation may be hindered because many species use adjacent second growth matrices thereby limiting the applicability of island biogeography to predict species loss; alternatively, a countryside biogeographic framework to evaluate the value of regenerating forest may be more appropriate. Here, we used point-count and capture data to compare Amazonian bird communities among continuous forest, 100 ha forest fragments with adjacent second growth, young and older second growth plots, and 100 ha forested islands bounded by water, to test the applicability of island biogeography on the mainland and to assess the ecological value of a regenerating matrix. Among foraging guild.
A Corrected Reanalysis of the Two Swimmers Problem, as Frequent Model of Michelson’s Interferometric Experiment.

The article initially reviews various works describing the physical model (PM) of Michelson’s interferometric experiment (ME) represented by the race between two swimmers Sw1, Sw2 (or boats, or planes, or sound signals etc.). The two swimmers must each swim the same distance, but Sw1 will go downstream the river flow, and Sw2 will go perpendicularly to this direction. In all such works, it is considered that Sw2’s path will require less time and that it will reach the first the start point. However, it is found that, in order to make this possible, Sw2 must not observe the orthogonality rule of his start direction, an action which is actually a deceit of the arbiters, and, hence, this will be a non-fair-play action towards Sw1. The article proves by calculus that if the fair-play rules are observed, then the correct crosswise path is a right triangle instead of isosceles triangle considered by Michelson. And as consequence the two times shall be perfectly equal and the race ends in a tie, and the Sw2 myth of race winner shall be dashed to the ground. Note that the same result shall also be applicable to Michelson’s interferometric experiment (ME) as well as to any similar experiment. As consequence, utilising the isosceles triangle for transversal path in PM and also in ME is an error.
School Teachers' Intention to Use E-Learning Systems in Sri Lanka: A Modified TAM Approach

Rapid expansion of Internet technology has made the human life much easier and efficient and also heavily influence in any business activity; education sector is not an exception to this. Governments of all countries have now started to pay attention to deliver education at more convenient method; one of them is the use of technology called e-learning (electronic learning). Success of such effort by such governments and educational institutions are very much dependent on the acceptance of the system by its direct users. When it comes to the acceptance of technology, maturing stage is seen in developed countries to study the factors influencing such acceptance however a little is known about developing countries, in the case of Sri Lanka little. This study aims to address this gap by delineating the factors influencing teachers’ intention to use e-learning systems in Sri Lankan school. This study deployed Technology Adoption Model (TAM) and did an amendment to fit Sri Lankan context and found that Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and Facilitating Condition are positively and significantly influencing such intention. Keywords : E-Learning, Intention to Use, Teachers, Technology Acceptance Model, Sri Lanka
A Contextual Image Descriptor for Scene Classification

Image representation is an important issue for many visual computing tasks such as image classification, understanding, feature extraction and retrieval. This paper presents a new image descriptor for scenes classification, called CMCT (Contextual Mean Census Transform), that combines distribution of local structures with contextual information. Experimental results on commonly used datasets demonstrate that the proposed method could achieve competitive performance against previous methods. Keywords-visual descriptor; scene classification; contextual information; census transform;