Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disentangled Representations for Sequence Data using Information Bottleneck Principle

We propose the factorizing variational autoencoder (FAVAE), a generative model for learning dis-entangled representations from sequential data via the information bottleneck principle without supervision. Real-world data are often generated by a few explanatory factors of variation, and disentangled representation learning obtains these factors from the data. We focus on the disen-tangled representation of sequential data which can be useful in a wide range of applications, such as video, speech, and stock markets. Factors in sequential data are categorized into dynamic and static ones: dynamic factors are time dependent, and static factors are time independent. Previous models disentangle between static and dynamic factors and between dynamic factors with different time dependencies by explicitly modeling the priors of latent variables. However, these models cannot disentangle representations between dynamic factors with the same time dependency, such as disentangling “picking up” and “throwing” in robotic tasks. On the other hand, FAVAE can disentangle multiple dynamic factors via the information bottleneck principle where it does not require modeling priors. We conducted experiments to show that FAVAE can extract disentangled dynamic factors on synthetic, video, and speech datasets.
Design of Bias Tee for an S Band Power Amplifier

A detailed design procedure for an S band bias tee used in a high power application is provided in this paper. A substrate with 3.66 relative permittivity and 0.762 mm in thickness is used. The proposed bias tee design utilizes an RF short-circuit in the form of a radial stub and a λ/4 transformer to implement the RF choke. A capacitor with appropriate specifications are used as the bias tee's DC block to complete the bias tee. To optimize the bias tee's form factor, a meandering approach with mitered lines are used. The resulting bias tee achieved RF - DC isolation, insertion loss, and return loss of better than -20 dB, -0.1 dB, and -24 dB respectively from 2.9 GHz to 3.5 GHz. Evidence of the realized bias tee's functionality is also provided in its utilization on an balanced S band power amplifier.
Large reorganizations in butterfly communities during an extreme weather event

Drought events are projected to increase in frequency and magnitude, which may alter the composition of ecological communities. Using a functional community metric that describes abundance, life history traits and conservation status, based upon Grime's CSR (Competitive-Stress tolerant-Ruderal) scheme, we investigated how British butterfly communities changed during an extreme drought in 1995. Throughout Britain, the total abundance of these insects had a significant tendency to increase, accompanied by substantial changes in community composition, particularly in more northerly, wetter sites. Communities tended to shift away from specialist, vulnerable species, and towards generalist, widespread species and, in the year following, communities had yet to return to equilibrium. Importantly, heterogeneity in surrounding landscapes mediated community responses to the drought event. Contrary to expectation, however, community shifts were more extreme in areas of greater topographic diversity, whilst land-cover diversity buffered community changes and limited declines in vulnerable specialist butterflies.
Cooperative Demand Response Framework for a Smart Community Targeting Renewables: Testbed Implementation and Performance Evaluation

Demand response (DR) is emerging as the workhorse of achieving energy efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint, which persists as a major challenge amongst all the different energy-chain players, i.e., the utility providers, policy makers, consumers, and the technology sector. For instance, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm and network-enabled appliances/devices have escalated the expectations of what technology could do for the acceptance of DR programs. In this work, we design, deploy on a scalable pilot testbed, and evaluate a collaboration-based approach to the demand-side management of a community of electricity consumers that jointly targets green consumption. The design of the framework architecture is centralized via the so-called aggregator, which optimizes the demand scheduled by consumers along with their time frame preferences towards the maximization of the consumption of renewables. On the pilot, we opt for lightweight, yet efficient platforms such as Raspberry Pi boards, and evaluate them over a series of network protocols, i.e., MQTT-TLS and CoAP-DTLS, paying special attention to the security and privacy of the communications over Z-Wave, ZigBee, and WiFi. The experiments conducted are configured using two active Living Labs datasets from which we extract three community scenarios that vary according to the flexibility or rigidity of the appliances’ operation time frame demand. During the performance evaluation, processing and communication overheads lie within feasible ranges, i.e., the aggregator requires less than 2 s to schedule a small consumer community with four appliances, whereas the latency of its link to households’ controllers adds less than 100 ms. In addition, we demonstrate that our implementations running over WiFi links and UDP sockets on Raspberry Pi 4 boards are fast, though insecure. By contrast, secure CoAP (with DTLS) offers data encryption, automatic key management, and integrity protection, as well as authentication with acceptable overheads.
University Training of Entomologists, Especially Taxonomists in Tropical Africa

University training of entomologists, especially taxonomists in tropical Africa is examined. It is concluded that generally the education of entomologists in the subregion is very poor. Teachers with correct training and orientation are either lacking or when available do not receive the necessary incentives for effective teaching. Supporting facilities for academic work are either missing or where present have deteriorated to the extent of being almost useless. The situation is thought unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future. It has been suggested that international institutions in Africa concerned with the proper progress and development of Insect Science should take steps to organize a comprehensive master’s degree programme in entomology along the Rivers State University of Science and Technology curriculum pattern. Alternatively, the duration of the Ph.D. course work may be increased to 9 months as suggested in the paper. This should help to produce at least some educated entomologists and hopefully some taxonomists for the continent. RésuméLa formation universitaire d’entomologistes, en particulier, des taxonomistes en Afrique tropicale est étudiee. On a constate qu’en général l’éducation d’entomologistes dans la sous-region est très insuffisante. Soit qu’il mangue des professeurs ayant la formation et l’orientation adequates, ou qu’il manque a ces professeurs lorsqu’ils sont disponsibles, l’encouragement nécessaire pour un enseignement efficace.II manque des facilités de soutien pour un travail académique. Même lorsque ces facilités sont la, elles auraient détériore au point d’ être presque inutiles.Nous pensons que la situation resterait le même pour un proche avenir.On a suggéré aux institutions internationales chargées du veritable progrès et du développement de la science entomologique, qu’elles prennent des mesures visant a organiser un programme compréhensif de maîtrise en entomologie, selon le modele du programme d’études, de l’Université de science et de technologie de l’Etat des Rivières. Alternativement, on pourrait prolonger par neuf mois, la durée du programme de doctorat, ainsi qu’il a été suggéré dans l’étude. Au moins, cela aiderait à produire pour le continent quelques entomologistes qualifiés et, nous l’espérons, quelques taxonomistes.
Comparative Life-Cycle Analysis of Two Repair Measures for Chloride Contaminated Concrete Structures

Often the mere mention of the word “Sustainability” leads to the reflection of the effect of our actions on environment and future generations. Especially the application of reinforced concrete as the most used construction material has a huge impact on a society being sustainable. Thus, the construction industry focuses on the design of environmentallyand resource-friendly buildings. However, due to our aging infrastructure and expected high demand of maintenance and repair in future, a further look on the sustainability of different repair measures for reinforced concrete structures has been neglected in the past. This paper presents a comparative case study of the life-cycle analysis of two different repair measures for reinforced concrete affected by chloride-induced corrosion. The selected repair measures – removal of the chloride-contaminated concrete and cathodic protection – are the most common repair measures in Germany. In future way concrete repair measure could be selected not only by the costs but as well by their environmental impact. This paper provides first information to achieve this target.
Fingerprint positioning of users devices in long term evolution cellular network using K nearest neighbour algorithm

The rapid exponential growth in wireless technologies and the need for public safety has led to increasing demand for location-based services. Terrestrial cellular networks can offer acceptable position estimation for users that can meet the statutory requirements set by the Federal Communications Commission in case of network-based positioning, for safety regulations. In this study, the proposed radio frequency pattern matching (RFPM) method is implemented and tested to determine a user’s location effectively. The RFPM method has been tested and validated in two different environment. The evaluations show remarkable results especially in the Micro cell scenario, at 67% of positioning error 15m and at 90% 31.78m for Micro cell scenario, with results of 75.66m at 67% and 141.4m at 90% for Macro cell scenario.
A Hermite–Gaussian based exoplanet radial velocity estimation method

As the first successful technique used to detect exoplanets orbiting distant stars, the Radial Velocity Method aims to detect a periodic Doppler shift in a stellar spectrum due to the star’s motion along the line sight. We introduce a new, mathematically rigorous, approach to detect such a signal that accounts for the smooth functional relationship of neighboring wavelengths in the spectrum, minimizes the role of wavelength interpolation, accounts for heteroskedastic noise, and easily allows for accurate calculation of the estimated radial velocity standard error. Using Hermite-Gaussian functions, we show that the problem of detecting a Doppler shift in the spectrum can be reduced to linear regression in many settings. A simulation study demonstrates that the proposed method is able to accurately estimate an individual spectrum’s radial velocity with precision below 0.3 m s−1, corresponding to a Doppler shift much smaller than the size of a spectral pixel. Furthermore, the new method outperforms the traditional Cross-Correlation Function approach for estimating the radial velocity by reducing the root mean squared error up to 15 cm s−1. The proposed method is also demonstrated on a new set of observations from the EXtreme PREcision Spectrometer (EXPRES) for the host star 51 Pegasi, and successfully recovers estimates of the planetary companion’s parameters that agree well with previous studies. The method is implemented in the R package rvmethod and supplemental Python code is also available.
An Empirical Evaluation of the Relationship between Technical Debt and Software Security

—Technical Debt (TD) is commonly used in practice as a measure of software quality. Due to the potential overlap between software quality and software security, an interesting topic is to investigate whether TD can be used as a software security indicator as well. However, although some software-related factors (e.g. software metrics) have been studied for their ability to indicate security risk in software products, no research attempts exist speciﬁcally focusing on TD. To this end, in the present study, we empirically evaluate the ability of TD to indicate security risks in software products. For this purpose, a relatively large code repository comprising 50 open-source software applications was constructed and analyzed using popular open-source static analysis tools, in order to calculate their TD and security level (i.e. vulnerability density). Subsequently, statistical analysis was employed, to assess the relationship between TD and software security. The results of the empirical study revealed a statistically signiﬁcant positive and strong correlation between the TD and the vulnerability densities of the studied software products. This provides preliminary evidence for the ability of TD to be used as an indicator of software security. To the best of our knowledge, this is the ﬁrst study that empirically evaluates the relationship between TD and software security.
Molecular Evidence That the Bonin Islands "Honeyeater" Is a White-eye

Since 1958, Apalopteron familiare has been placed in the Meliphagidae and called the Bonin Islands Honeyeater or Ogasawara Honeyeater. Previously it had been treated as a bulbul, a babbler, a sylviid warbler and a white-eye. Here we present 12S rRNA sequence evidence that shows that Apalopteron is a member of the white-eye family Zosteropidae, closely-related to the Golden White-eye (Cleptornis marchei) of the southern Mariana Islands, which was also misidentified as a honeyeater until its true affinities were revealed by field observations and DNA-DNA hybridization. The ecology and behavior of Apalopteron and Zosterops are compared and reviewed. The English name Bonin Islands White-eye is proposed for Apalopteron familiare.
An Efficient Model for Mining Outlier Opinions

In the internet era, opinion mining became a critical technique used in many applications. The internet offers a featured chance for users to express and share their views and experiences anywhere and at any time through various methods as online reviews, personal blogs, Facebook, Twitter and companies’ websites. Such treasure of online data generated by users play an essential role in decision-making process and have the ability to make radical changes in several fields. Although the opinionated text can provide significantly invaluable information for the wide community either are individuals, business, or government, the outlier or anomaly opinions could have the same impact but in opposite manner which harm these fields. Consequently, there is an urge to develop techniques to detect the outlier opinions and avoid their negative impacts on several application domains which rely on opinion mining. In this paper, an efficient model for mining outlier opinions has been proposed. The proposed MOoM model, stands for Mining Outlier Opinion Model, offers for the first time the ability to mine outlier opinions from product’s free-text reviews. Accordingly, it can help the decision makers to improve the overall sentiment analysis process and perform further analysis on the outlier opinions to get better understanding for them and avoid their negative impact. The proposed model consists of three modules; Data preprocessing module, Opinion mining module and outlier opinions detection module. The proposed model utilizes the lexicon-based approach to extract sentiment polarity from each review in the dataset. Also, it uses the Distance-based outlier detection algorithm to produce a graded list of review holders with outlier opinions. Experimental study is presented to evaluate the proposed model and the results proved the model’s ability to detect outlier opinions in the product reviews effectively. The model is adaptable to be used in other fields rather than product’s reviews by customizing its modules’ layers. Keywords—Opinion mining; sentiment analysis; anomaly detection; outliers; reviews; text analysis; natural language processing; rapidminer
Biología de Anopheles (Kerteszia) neivai H., D. & K., 1913 (Diptera: Culicidae) en la Costa Pacifica de Colombia: IV - Estructura etárea y transmisión de malaria

With the aim of determining the dynamics of malaria transmission in the village of Charambira (Choco), Colombia, studies on the age structure of Anopheles neivai (a known vector on the Pacific Coast) were undertaken, based on its gonadotrophic status. Mosquitoes were captured indoors at sunset using human bait and bucal aspirators and then maintained in cylindrical cardboard boxes, with damp paper and feeding dispensaries, until dissection on the following day. Of the 200 specimens dissected during September-October 1986, 68 (34%) showed traces of less than two ovipositions, while the rest (66%) evidenced at least three ovipositions. The difference between the first group considered as "non-infective" and the second group considered as "potentially infective" was highly significant (X2 = 10.68; P = 0.001). The study showed that 1.5% of the dissected A. neivai had traces of ten ovipositions demonstrating high longevity and multiple bloodfeedings. The results suggest that there is a considerable risk of contracting malaria in Charambira at dusk.
Estimation of Growth and Mortality Parameters of the Silver Sillago(Sillago sihama) in Beibu Gulf

The growth and mortality of the silver sillago(Sillago sihama) has been primarily studied according to the commercial catch sample caught in bottom trawls and gill nets in Beibu Gulf from March to September 2008,and the status of the silver sillago has been evaluated using the yield per recruitment model.The result shows that the dominant length of Sillago sihama ranges from 100 mm to 130 mm,accounting for 60.71 percent of the total;the dominant weight is between 5 g and 25 g,accounting for 83.96 percent of the total.The mean length of the female Sillago sihama is larger than that of the male.The female is less than the male in population,by the sex rate of 1:136.The estimated parameters for von Bertalanffy growth function of the stock are L∞=188.6 mm,K=0.51 and t0=-0.32 respectively.The turning point in body weight growth curve of the stock is situated at the age of 1.86. The instantaneous rates of total mortality,natural mortality and fishing mortality are respectively 2.58,1.217 and 1.36. The fishery biological reference points F0.1 and Fmax are 0.34 and 0.50,re-spectively.The silver sillago fishery has been overfished.
Women on the Move? A Report on the Status of Women in Policing

olice Foundation research on women in policing in the early 1970s, along with changes in federal civil rights legislation and emerging case law, made a pivotal contribution to policing. The research found that women could effectively perform patrol duties from which they had been excluded because of their gender; changes in the law were designed to eliminate such discrimination. How much actual progress has been made since then? According to our latest research, which follows a similar study in 1978, a variety of strategies, not the least of which is affirmative action, in combination with the evolving body of law, has fostered substantial growth in the ranks of women in policing. The police and the public have gained by this opening of opportunity. It has given us a broader range of qualified applicants for police jobs and thus enhanced our ability to protect and provide services to the community. Moreover, our police forces have come to reflect more broadly both the composition and the values of our society. And yet, with all this, there are compelling reasons not to become complacent. Our research shows that while the percentage of women in policing has risen considerably, the overall picture is less than sanguine. Despite the barriers we have overcome, women still comprise under ten percent of all police officers. Their representation in the supervisory and managerial ranks is even lower. There is considerable evidence that affirmative action programs, both voluntary and court-ordered, have had a positive impact on recruiting women into the field. In order to extend the gains we have made thus far, the profession must continue to make special efforts to recruit women. We must also be certain that our policies and procedures, e.g., those on parental leave, do not encourage women to leave the field at a greater rate than men—which seems to be the case at present. The research findings presented in this report are part of a larger study being conducted by the Police Foundation with funding support of The Ford Foundation. We are confident that the results will add not only to our knowledge about the numbers of women in policing, but to our understanding of what those numbers mean and to our strategies for correcting the imbalances that still exist.
Genetic and morphometric comparison of two isolated populations of Barilius bendelisis (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae) from the Indian Himalayas Comparación genética y morfométrica de dos poblaciones aisladas de Barilius bendelisis (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae) de los Himalayas indios

Barilius bendelisis (Hamilton) inhabits cold water drainages of the Himalayan region, occurring near the stream banks. It is an important component of the diet of rural population of Uttarakhand and Jammu. Despite the aquaculture importance of B. bendelisis, no extensive molecular characterization from two geographically isolated rivers, Alaknanda and Chenab, has been conducted. In order to study those aspects, 567 samples of B. bendelisis were analysed and collected from these tributaries of two geographically isolated rivers between March of 2015 and April 2017. The morphometric data were analysed by means of truss analysis using tpsDig2 and PAST, whereas the genetic characterization was performed using the COI gene. In truss analysis 14 landmarks resulting in 90 measurements were studied from the digitized images of the sampled specimens. In total 23 measurements exhibited significant differences among the populations of B. bendelisis. The principal component analysis (PCA) generated seven components explaining93.15 % of total variance. Discriminant function analysis (DFA) revealed that 83.8 % of the specimens were classified into their original populations. Truss based morphometry and Maximum likelihood type of phylogenetic tree revealed heterogenicity between the two geographically isolated populations of B. bendelisis.
SURVEY ON FACIAL RECOGNITIONS TECHNIQUES

— Automatic recognition facial expressions and analysis of it has been an active topic for over decades. Different features extraction from salient features patches play a vital role in recognition of facial expression effectively. The critical step for recognition of facial expression recognition is to extract emotions features accurately. Facial expression recognition approaches consist of two main categories which are based on the type of features used in geometry-based features and appearance-based features. This paper shows the comparison in the performance of FER by automatically capturing facial movement features in static images based on distance features and expression recognition by using appearance features of selected facial patches.