Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smart Object Detection and Home Appliances Control System in Smart Cities

: During the last decade the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) based applications inspired the world by providing state of the art solutions to many common problems. From traffic management systems to urban cities planning and development, IoT based home monitoring systems, and many other smart applications. Regardless of these facilities, most of these IoT based solutions are data driven and results in small accuracy values for smaller datasets. In order to address this problem, this paper presents deep learning based hybrid approach for the development of an IoT-based intelligent home security and appliance control system in the smart cities. This hybrid model consists of; convolution neural network and binary long short term model for the object detection to ensure safety of the homes while IoT based hardware components like; Raspberry Pi, Amazon Web services cloud, and GSM modems for remotely accessing and controlling of the home appliances. An android application is developed and deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud for the remote monitoring of home appliances. A GSM device and Message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) are integrated for communicating with the connected IoT devices to ensure the online and offline communication. For object detection purposes a camera is connected to Raspberry Pi using the proposed hybrid neural network model. The applicability of the proposed model is tested by calculating results for the object at varying distance from the camera and for different intensity levels of the light. Besides many applications the proposed model promises for providing optimum results for the small amount of data and results in high recognition rates of 95.34% compared to the conventional recognition model (k nearest neighbours) recognition rate of 76%.
Homecoming without Nostalgia: Local Communities and the Reintroduction of the Wild Forest Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus sennicus) in Finland

Wildlife translocations often raise concerns about the purpose and impact among people living in target locations. We applied the integrated impact assessment in planning the reintroduction of wild forest reindeer in Finland. We investigated the variety of expected socioecological impacts, the relative importance of these impacts and local willingness to participate in local-level reintroduction activities. The reintroduction project organised interactive forums in 2013 and 2016 in each of the four regions suitable for wild forest reindeer. The variety of recognised potential impacts was high, but the relative importance given to the expected impacts varied relatively little from forum to forum. Importantly, we found a contextual and relational value of wild forest reindeer that extended beyond their intrinsic and instrumental value. The results indicate high local acceptance of reintroduction and willingness to participate in it.
Study of Persistent Pollution in Hefei during Winter Revealed by Ground-Based LiDAR and the CALIPSO Satellite

LiDAR and CALIPSO satellites are effective tools for detecting air pollution, and by employing PM2.5 observation data, ground-based LiDAR measurements, CALIPSO satellite data, meteorological data, and back-trajectory analysis, we analyzed the process of pollution (moderate pollution, heavy pollution, excellent weather, and dust transmission weather) in Hefei, China from 24 to 27 January 2019 and analyzed the meteorological conditions and pollutants causing heavy pollution. Observation data from the ground station showed that the concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 increased significantly on 25 January; the maximum value of PM10 was 175 µg/m3, and the maximum value of PM2.5 was 170 µg/m3. In this study, aerosol transboundary transport was observed using a combination of ground-based LiDAR and CALIPSO satellite observations. This method showed that aerosols were distributed at a height of 3–4 km over Hefei at 12:00 on 26 January, and it was found that the aerosols came from the desert region in northwest China. Moreover, we determined its transport pathway based on the backward trajectory, and the transportation of pollutants from the surrounding important industrial cities in central and eastern China led to severe pollution after aggregating and mixing with local aerosols in Hefei in the winter. Therefore, the method proposed in this paper can effectively monitor the optical properties and transportation process of aerosols, help to explore the causes of pollution under complex conditions, and improve environmental quality.
Study of the Stability and Hydrophilicity of Plasma‐Modified Microfluidic Materials

Polymers among new classes of materials such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), cyclic olefin copolymer (COC), Norland optical adhesive (NOA), and THV (fluoropolymer) were evaluated as surface-modified microfluidic materials, including investigating the incorporation of silica-like functional groups onto these surfaces. The functionalization of these materials was performed using a hybrid reactor equipped with magnetron sputtering using a silica target and with a PECVD apparatus starting from hexamethyldisiloxane as a chemical precursor. Coated microfluidic materials were then evaluated in terms of wettability, stability, composition, and structure. The deposited coatings were proved to be stable up to 2 month in air and water storage for these materials, with COC providing the most stable substrate.
Adulterated stingless bee honey identification using VIS-NIR spectroscopy technique

The objective of this study was to study the ability of the VIS-NIR spectroscopy to classify the pure and adulterated stingless bee honey across the wavelength range of 450– 969 nm using an optical spectrometer. The physicochemical properties such as soluble solid content (SSC) and moisture content (refractive index, RI) of pure and adulterated honey has also been investigated using a refractometer. The result showed that pure stingless bee honey has the highest transmittance rate, SSC and RI value compared to adulterated honey. There are significant differences (P < 0.0001) in the transmittance rate, SSC and RI of stingless bee honey over five different types of treatments. The results also showed that VIS-NIR data were good in classifying the samples into different treatments with 99.33% accuracy rate. About thirty-four wavelengths were found to be the most significant to discriminate the different treatments by principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) techniques.
Employees Retention Strategy and its Impact on Organizational Memory: An Exploratory Research for the opinion of Faculty Members at Private Colleges on Baghdad

The research aims to determine the impact of employees’ retention strategy on organizational memory. This research is historical, descriptive, and analytical. The sample consists of 158 faculty members in five private colleges in Baghdad. The technique used to analyze the data is SEM (Structural Equation Modeling), and SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). The research concludes that the employees retaining strategy plays a vital role in retaining employees and hence maintains organizational memory. The findings and recommendations of this research assure the administrations of private colleges that employees retention strategy play a vital role in retaining its employee and hence maintains organizational memory. This research differs from the previous researches in that it has not examined the reasons for leaving employees or the turnover, but looking for the reasons that inspire employees to remain in the organization. This research suggests that employees’ retention strategy helps the organization retain its employees, and as a consequence, maintaining organizational memory. Received: 21 September 2020 / Accepted: 1 November 2020 / Published: 17 January 2021
Salt stress in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings: Role of indoleamines in stress alleviation

Salinity is a major environmental stress in agriculture with significantly detrimental effects on crop productivity. The development of strategies to enhance salinity stress tolerance in plants is essential to ensure crop production in saline environments. Melatonin (Mel) and serotonin (Ser) accumulate in response to environmental stresses and are presumed to play protective roles and improve growth of tissues during recovery. In this study, the effects of Mel and Ser were investigated in Arabidopsis under NaCl stress. Exogenous Mel (10 µM) and Ser (10 µM) treatment significantly increased fresh weight, lateral root number, and shoot height in A. thaliana seedlings exposed to NaCl stress (25 mM and 50 mM) compared to the non-treated control seedlings. In order to understand the role of these indoleamines in alleviating salt stress, we investigated the effects of Mel and Ser treatments on the expression of salt stress responsive genes including, transcription factors involved in abscisic acid (ABA) signaling pathway, ABA-INSENSITIVE 3 (ABI3)and ABA-INSENSITIVE 5 (ABI5); ABA responsive gene, RESPONSIVE TO DESSICATION 29B (RD29B), ABA-independent gene, RESPONSIVE TO DESSICATION 29A (RD29A) and Arabidopsis trithorax-like gene (ATX1) which function in stress responses via ABA-dependent and ABA-independent manner. Other genes included, ROS-signaling transcription factor ZAT10 and ZAT12, and the genes encoding ion transporters crucial for maintaining ion homeostasis, HIGH AFFINITY K+ TRANSPORTER 5 (HAK5) and SALT OVERLY SENSITIVE 1 (SOS1). Mel (10 µM) pre-treatment for 24 hrs followed by 50 mM salt treatment up-regulated ABI3, RD29B, ZAT12 and HAK5. The Ser (10 µM) pre-treatment significantly up-regulated ZAT12.These results indicate that indoleamine pre-treatment improved plant growth under salt stress with Mel facilitating salt tolerance via upregulation of ABA responsive genes, mediation of antioxidant defense systems to counteract the salt-induced ROS overproduction as well as controlling ion homeostasis. Although Ser displayed no significant effects on ABA signaling, it was found to increase the expression of antioxidant defense gene, ZAT12. This study demonstrates the importance of indoleamine pathway in mediation of salt stress response and provides the first indication of the involvement of Ser in salt stress tolerance.
The Other as Categorical Imperative: Levinas's Reading of Kant

Abstract:For Kant and Levinas, the categorical imperative is the only possible formula for universalization. It has a structural necessity. Its claim is ultimate, valid without exception, and therefore reason-based. What differentiates Levinas from Kant is Kant's assumption that "pure reason, practical of itself" is "immediately lawgiving. " Levinas contradicted this form of reason legislating itself as an end in itself: according to Levinas, reason has no self-generated power. Although both agree that the achievement of an ethical insight depends on "passivity," in contrast to Kant Levinas does not consider this "passivity" to be part of a conceptual insight. Its place is outside the subject. Instead of an "archetype" that already exists in the subject, Levinas advocates the conception of a counter-image whose form is based on the face. This face is not speechless. His speech is based on a universalizable commandment, namely the commandment: You shall not kill me. In its full extent, this claim can only be understood via a body-based understanding of the categorical imperative.
Study on the Localization Method of Multi-Aperture Acoustic Array Based on TDOA

When the background noise is large or the sound source is far away from the microphone array, the localization accuracy of target sound sources will decrease dramatically. In order to solve this problem, a localization method of multi-aperture acoustic array based on time difference of arrival(TDOA) is proposed. The multi-aperture acoustic array is constructed by two small sub microphone arrays, which is supposed to surpass the performance of the equivalent large array composed of all microphones. The positions of the target sound source in two local coordinates are separately estimated by the two sub microphone arrays based on the generalized trust-region sub-problem in the modified polar representation (GTRS-MPR) method. Through the space coordinate transformation, the estimated two positions of the target sound source in the two local coordinates can be transferred into one global coordinate. To optimize the final estimated position of the target sound source by the multi-aperture acoustic array, two spatial lines are formed between the reference microphones of the two sub-arrays and the estimated two sources’ positions in the global coordinate, and a search algorithm of shortest distance point based on the least-square method is proposed to fuse the localization results of the two sub-arrays. A simulation and an experimental platform are set up to verify the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method has higher localization accuracy compared with the existing methods. Especially, the accuracy of range estimation is greatly improved, which will be more suitable for the far-field sound source localization.
Text vectorization via transformer-based language models and n-gram perplexities

As the probability (and thus perplexity) of a text is calculated based on the product of the probabilities of individual tokens, it may happen that one unlikely token significantly reduces the probability (i.e., increase the perplexity) of some otherwise highly probable input, while potentially representing a simple typographical error. Also, given that perplexity is a scalar value that refers to the entire input, information about the probability distribution within it is lost in the calculation (a relatively good text that has one unlikely token and another text in which each token is equally likely they can have the same perplexity value), especially for longer texts. As an alternative to scalar perplexity this research proposes a simple algorithm used to calculate vector values based on n-gram perplexities within the input. Such representations consider the previously mentioned aspects, and instead of a unique value, the relative perplexity of each text token is calculated, and these values are combined into a single vector representing the input.
Plant Parasitic Nematodes and their management in crop production: a review

Plant Parasitic Nematodes are small worm like transparent, bilateral symmetry, pseudocoelomate, multicellular, free living or parasitic microorganism which are predatory, aquatic, terrestrial, entopathogenic, ectoparasite, endoparasite, semi-endoparasite or sedentary. They cause substantial problems to major crops throughout the world, including vegetables, fruits, and grain crops. The root knot and cyst nematodes are economically important pests in numerous crops. Crop damage from nematodes is not readily apparent in most cases, and it often remains hidden by the many other factors limiting plant growth. In the past, the control of the nematodes has been based on the synthetic nematicides, the number of which has been drastically restricted in the EU because of their environmental side effects and subsequent restriction in European Union (EU) rules and regulations. Many other methods like cultural control, biological control, use of biotechnological tools and methods, use of resistant cultivars are tested and proven successful in controlling different species of nematodes all over the world. Alternatively, combinations of the different methods are proven to be highly effective both economically and environmentally.
A critical review on causation of migraine and its homoeopathic perspective

Introduction: Migraine a commonest Neurological disorder that often causes one-sided Headache associated with Nausea, vomiting, Irritability, Photophobia, and Phonophobia. According to the International Classification of Headache disorders, there are primarily two types of Migraine basing on the presence or absence of Aura. The disorder is more frequent among Women than Men, and attacks occur as early as in childhood too. Many factors cause migraine such as Environmental factors, Physical factors, Food factors, etc. and most importantly the psychological factors play an important role. Homeopathy is popular for its successful cures in Migraine disorder for the last many decades. This work is an attempt on a critical review of various Causative factors of Migraine and the most indicated Homoeopathic Remedies against them. Methodology: Common symptoms of the migraine cases were taken from various research articles, scientific literature, and the symptoms were repertorized in RADAR software using Synthesis Repertory and Murphy Repertory. The repertorization was done in 3 methods using all the Common symptoms of Migraine, Second only the causative factors of Migraine, and the third, using only Mind symptoms causing/associated with the attack.Results: After Repertorizing the common symptoms of Migraine, Phos, Silicea, Bryonia, Lachesis, Ignatia as the top five remedies, the second method showed Phos, Ign, Nux. V, Chin as the top-scoring Remedies and Ignatia, Phos, Nat. m in the third method of Repertorization.
Analysis and Design of Cubic Magnetic Coupler for High Distance-to-Diameter Ratio IPT Systems

This article proposes a kind of cubic-magnetic coupler (CMC) for inductive power transfer (IPT) system, which has huge application potential in the charging field of moving targets. The CMC can still maintain sufficient coupling coefficient when used for long-distance wireless power transfer, it also has great capability of misalignment tolerance. Distance-to-diameter ratio (DDR) is defined to eliminate the impact of coil size and make the comparison between different couplers fairer and easier. This article optimizes the parameters and shape of the CMC. Then, the proposed coupler is compared with several existing couplers employed in long-distance IPT systems. Double-sided LCC compensation topology is chosen to limit the current flowing through the coupling coils. A CMC with an outer size of 180×180×180 mm3 was made, based on which an IPT prototype was built. The superiorities of the proposed coupler were verified by a series of experiments. When the DDR equals 3, the coupling coefficient of the CMC is 0.00985, and the maximum dc–dc and ac–ac efficiencies are 64.9% and 72.8%, respectively.
An Efficient Viewport-Dependent 360 VR System Based on Adaptive Tiled Streaming

Recent advances in 360 video streaming technologies have enhanced the immersive experience of video streaming services. Particularly, there is immense potential for the application of 360 video encoding formats to achieve highly immersive virtual reality (VR) systems. However, 360 video streaming requires considerable bandwidth, and its performance depends on several factors. Consequently, the optimization of 360 video bitstreams according to viewport texture is crucial. Therefore, we propose an adaptive solution for VR systems using viewport-dependent tiled 360 video streaming. To increase the degrees of freedom of users, the moving picture experts group (MPEG) recently defined three degrees plus of freedom (3DoF+) and six degrees of freedom (6DoF) to support free user movement within camera-captured scenes. The proposed method supports 6DoF to allow users to move their heads freely. Herein, we propose viewport-dependent tiled 360 video streaming based on users’ head movements. The proposed system generates an adaptive bitstream using tile sets that are selected according to a parameter set of user’s viewport area. This extracted bitstream is then transmitted to the user’s computer. After decoding, the user’s viewport is generated and rendered on VR head-mounted display (HMD). Furthermore, we introduce certain approaches to reduce the motion-to-photon latency. The experimental results demonstrated that, in contrast with non-tiled streaming, the proposed method achieved high-performance 360 video streaming for VR systems, with a 25.89% BD-rate saving for Y-PSNR and 61.16% for decoding time.
The Impact of Covid-19 on Saudi Arabian Female Students: An Application of the CES-D Depression Scale

SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2) is a new beta coronavirus that was identified as the trigger of COVID-19 disease in early 2020. Our study designed to survey the female undergraduate students at a private university in Saudi Arabia to assess the degree of psychological impact during the initial stages of the lockdown. During the first weeks of the outbreak in Saudi Arabia and the government-initiated lockdown, we conducted an online survey with 400 female undergraduate students in Saudi Arabia. The psychological impact was assessed by using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Our study shows that over the four weeks students showed clearly a change in the overall mental health and mood of our students. Received: 24 September 2020 / Accepted: 23 December 2020 / Published: 17 January 2021
Towards many body physics with ultracold NaK molecules

This thesis reports on the construction of a novel experimental apparatus to create an ultracold sample of chemical stable $^{23}\rm{Na}^{40}\rm{K}$ polar molecules at their absolute ground states. The long range nature of the dipolar interactions between the ground state molecules, is expected to facilitate to observe new quantum many-body states and to simulate prototypical lattice spin models for exploring quantum magnetism and high $T_c$ superconductivity. The experimental procedures are presented in this thesis including: trapping and cooling $^{23}\rm{Na}$ and $ ^{40}\rm{K}$ atoms to quantum degeneracy, associating weakly bound state molecules with Feshbach resonances, and transferring the Feshbach molecules to the rovibrational ground states via stimulated Raman adiabatic passage. As a result, successful transfer has been demonstrated in our experiment with a single-path transfer efficiency $\simeq 60\%$ via a hyperfine non-resolved intermediate state $\vert d^{3}\Pi, \nu=5, J=1, \Omega=1 \rangle$. In addition, a perturbative theoretical study on the Fermi liquid properties of a single-component weakly-interacting two dimensional dipolar fermions with dipole moments $d$ oriented perpendicularly to the plane of their translational motion is presented in the thesis. When the dipole moments are tilted with respect to the translational plane, the effect of anisotropic interaction appears, and collective excitations in the collisionless regime are studied in this configuration. Furthermore, stable dilute supersolid states with two-dimensional bosonic dipoles are predicted to exist with an additional three-body repulsive contact interaction. These novel quantum effects should be accessible experimentally once the $\rm{Na}\rm{K}$ ground state molecules reach quantum degeneracy by further evaporative cooling.
Water Audit Study for East Tambaram

Water auditing is a system to overwhelm the drought related issues, water losses, leakage etc. It plays the significant role in conservation measures to minimize the water loss which increase the efficiency of Urban Local Bodies and reduce the need to search for additional water sources. The main aim of the water audit study is to compute the amount of water that is being supplied by a water system, that is not being distributed or billed to customers. However, for the effective use of this system is to identify losses in the sums, the ULBs must first employ water auditing as a routine business practice. The various associations, such as IWA and AWWA which initiated a large-scale effort to assess the reduction of water related problems with the help of audit. Hence, a detail study on water audit is explored on the areas were water is being used in a system, identifying the sources of lost water, and an action plan is also developed to control or reduce water losses.