Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A survey on Digital Image Watermarking

In this paper a survey on digital watermarking process, applications ,concept and its contributions in various fields is introduced. The digital watermarking is a field of hiding information which hides the crucial information in the original data for protection illegal duplication and distribution of multimedia data. Watermarking is an important application in the image processing . Watermarking is the process of inserting the watermarked message in a host document in some multimedia format. It is basically required to protect the information from the unauthorized access. The image watermarking techniques may divide on the basis of domain like spatial domain or transform domain or on the basis of wavelets. The copyright protection, capacity, security, robustness etc are some of the important factors that are taken in account while the watermarking system is designed.
Analysis of Controlled Auto-Ignition/HCCI Combustion in a Direct Injection Gasoline Engine with Single and Split Fuel Injections

A multi-cycle three-dimensional CFD engine simulation programme has been developed and applied to analyze the Controlled autoignition (CAI) combustion, also known as homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI), in a direct injection gasoline engine. CAI operation was achieved through the negative valve overlap method by means of a set of low lift camshafts. In the first part of the paper, the effect of single injection timing on combustion phasing and underlying physical and chemical processes involved was examined through a series of analytical studies using the multi-cycle 3D engine simulation programme. The analyses showed that early injection into the trapped burned gases of a lean-burn mixture during the negative valve overlap period had a large effect on combustion phasing, due to localized heat release and the production of chemically reactive species. As the injection was retarded to the intake stroke, the charge cooling effect tended to slow down the autoignition process. However, further retard of fuel injection to the compression stroke caused the earlier start of main combustion as fuel stratification was produced in the cylinder. In order to optimize the engine performance and engine-out emissions, double injection was investigated by injecting part of the fuel first in the negative valve overlap period and the rest of fuel during the intake or compression strokes. By varying the fueling of each injection, the best engine performance was obtained with the 50/50 fuel injection split ratio, while the lowest total NOx and soot emissions were seen with the optimal split injection ratio of 10/90.
Molecular characterization of soil fungal communities in paddy soils.

Soil fungal communities are important for soil ecosystem functioning. In particular, they are the most important group of organisms involved in decomposing organic matter, especially for resistant compounds such as lignin. Therefore, fungi have an important impact on the decomposition of straw in soil. In paddy soils, fungal communities are predominant only after drainage and during post-harvest fallow conditions as they need oxygen which is limited under flooded conditions. To investigate the influence of soil management practices on fungi in paddy soils, the period of drainage after flooding was simulated in soil microcosms. In addition, different rice straw applications were tested in an incubation experiment. Molecular analysis including DNA-extraction and PCR/DGGE-analysis was used to characterize the soil fungal communities in these experiments. The resulting dendrograms show clear shifts and correlations between the simulated water stages and rice straw applications.
A Survey on Privacy Protection in Personalized Web Search

: Web search engines are very important part in web life. Web search engines are built for all users and not for any individual user. Generic web search engines cannot identify the different needs of different customers, if user enter improper keyword, ambiguous keywords and lack of users ability to express what they need are some challenges faced by generic engines. We should personalize search results to address this issue. Personalized web search (PWS) is ability to identify different needs of different people who issue the same text query for web search and to carry out data retrieval for each and every user as a part of his interests. In Web searching, user profiles are main source for better retrieval effectiveness but using a user profile to find interest is violation of privacy. To overcome this problem privacy protection is required. Here, we have discussed existing methods for privacy protection and effectiveness in personalized web search.
A Methology for Improving the Performance of Paravirtual I / O Systems Based on Fast NVM Devices

Paravirtual I/O systems have been paid much attention to due to their reasonable performance levels. To increase these levels, Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) such as flash memory is considered and used as their storage media alternative to HDD. Although the storage media is fast, the performance of paravirtual I/O systems using the media is much lower than expected. The performance is lowered because the I/O process in the guest and host OSes is serialized and the OSes are run ignoring the processor affinity while the same software layers performing I/O are duplicated in the OSes. We present our methodology to employ towards optimizing the performance of NVM-based paravirtual I/O systems: the use of polling rather than interrupt, and parallel batching in order to maximize the parallelism in performing the sequence of I/O operations, and avoidance of context switches in order to consider the processor affinity. Our experiments with Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) [1] I/O systems using different NVM storage devices suggest that the use of the methodology can lead to enhancements in throughput by 50% to more than 80% while reducing CPU usage by up to 25% for a microbenchmark program and by up to 100% for workloads in mixed-read/write patterns.
Hierarchical Dictionary Learning and Sparse Coding for Static Signature Verification

An assortment of review papers as well as newly quoted literature indicates that usually, the most important link in the chain of designing signature verification systems (SV's) is the feature extraction one. These methods are divided in two main categories. The first one, includes handcrafted features which are methods smanually engineered by scientists to be optimal for certain type of information extraction-summarization from signature images. Examples of this kind include global-local and/or grid-texture oriented features. The second feature category addresses signature modeling and verification with the use of dedicated features, usually learned directly from raw signature image data. Typical representatives include Deep Learning (DL) as well as Bag of Visual Words (BoW) or Histogram of Templates (HOT). Recently, sparse representation (SR) methods (dictionary learning and coding) have been introduced for signature modeling and verification with promising results. In this paper, we propose an extension of the SR framework by introducing the idea of embedding the atoms of a dictionary in a directed tree. This is demonstrated with an l0 tree-structured sparse regularization norm. The efficiency of the proposed method is shown by conducting experiments with two popular datasets namely the CEDAR and MCYT-75.
GMD : Global Model Detection via Inlier Rate Estimation

This work presents a novel approach for detecting inliers in a given set of correspondences (matches). It does so without explicitly identifying any consensus set, based on a method for inlier rate estimation (IRE). Given such an estimator for the inlier rate, we also present an algorithm that detects a globally optimal transformation. We provide a theoretical analysis of the IRE method using a stochastic generative model on the continuous spaces of matches and transformations. This model allows rigorous investigation of the limits of our IRE method for the case of 2Dtranslation, further giving bounds and insights for the more general case. Our theoretical analysis is validated empirically and is shown to hold in practice for the more general case of 2D-affinities. In addition, we show that the combined framework works on challenging cases of 2Dhomography estimation, with very few and possibly noisy inliers, where RANSAC generally fails.
Mature aged "baby boomer" students' contributions to understanding nursing education

Background: Mature aged nursing students of the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation are important for health workforce retention and planning because once graduated, they are viewed as being more loyal to the profession and consequently likely to remain in the nursing workforce. A challenge though, related to this group is providing them with a fulfilling and worthwhile work integrated learning experience that enables them to engage with their new profession. Methods: An exploratory study was conducted using an online survey with open-ended questions to explore the supports for and barriers to the learning opportunities of “baby boomer” aged undergraduate-nursing students (n = 35) during their work integrated learning experience. The study sought to understand how these supports and barriers impact on their emergent Registered Nurse (RN) self-concept. Results: Four key themes emerged to explain the supports for and barriers to the development of the RN self-concept. These are: quality communication, feeling connected, role clarity, and feedback. Each theme was informed by several sub-themes that identified supports for and barriers to the development of the nurse self-concept in baby boomer undergraduate nursing students. The time era in which nursing students grow up has a significant impact on the way they learn as well as the way they expect to be taught. Understanding the fundamental differences between learners will help meet their needs more effectively. Attitudes deemed as supportive by ‘baby boomer’ students in this study are belongingness, supportiveness and appreciation of their role. ‘Baby boomer’ students indicated that it is important their facilitator or preceptor as well as ward staff demonstrate high levels of these attitudes. Many mature aged students may already have previous nursing experience (70% in this study). As such, it is imperative to take time to inquire about past experiences which contribute to learning new skills so as to ensure their past experience is not devalued. Besides the valuing of past experiences, ‘baby boomers’ appreciate immediate quality feedback and encouragement.
Stockholders ’ Unrealized Capital Gains Position and the Market Response to Earnings Announcements

I examine whether stockholders’ average unrealized capital gains position in the equity of a given firm affects their response to the firm’s quarterly earnings announcements. Stockholders’ unrealized capital gains can affect their individual trading decisions via the capital gains tax “lock-in effect” or the tax-irrational bias known as the “disposition effect. ” Prior literature is unclear about whether these two effects are significant determinants of the market reaction to earnings news. I design new tests that incorporate trade-by-trade data as well as quarterly institutional holdings data, and find robust evidence supporting the disposition effect. However, I also find that this announcement-window disposition effect is mitigated when tax incentives are stronger or more salient. Finally, I demonstrate that the disposition effect has important implications for measuring the degree to which the market incorporates earnings news. First, the disposition effect moderates the degree to which both opinion divergence and the differential precision of pre-announcement earnings information are reflected in abnormal trading volume. Second, the disposition effect diminishes the price adjustment to earnings news during the announcement window. This paper is based on my dissertation at Arizona State University. I am grateful for the guidance provided by my dissertation cochairs Steve Hillegeist and Dan Dhaliwal, and committee members Steve Kaplan and Mike Mikhail. I am also grateful for helpful comments from Katharine Drake, Miguel Minutti-Meza, Artur Hugon, Larry Brown, DJ Nanda, Andy Leone, Sundaresh Ramnath, two anonymous JATA Conference mini-reviews, and seminar participants at Arizona State University, UT Dallas, London Business School, The University of Miami, Singapore Management University, Georgia State University, The NYU Stern School of Business, and The University of Missouri.
The Multidimensional Positive Advection Transport Algorith Nonoscillatory Option

This paper presents a nonoscillatory option (i.e., free of dispersive ripples) of the advection algorithm described previously in J. Conzput. Ph~s. (54 (1984), 325; 67 (1986), 396). The approach adopted merges the flux-corrected transport methodology with the iterative formalism of the algorithm. Further discussion of the algorithm’s accuracy is included. Theoretical considerations are illustrated through numerica! tests and examples of applications to atmospheric tiuid dynamics problems. T, 1990 4cadsmic ? RSS IX.
AI-Survey for Self-Flying Vehicles: Exploring the Challenges of Deep Learning

Everyone is talking about intuitive and automated transportation. An important 1 and very challenging part of this research field are autonomous unmanned aerial 2 vehicles (UAV) such as automated air taxis with a vertical take-off and landing 3 (VTOL) capability. On one hand autonomous VTOLs will redesign our personal 4 understanding of urban mobility, on the other hand automated UAVs will drastically 5 change any kind of delivery or transportation services and much more. However, 6 when studying computer vision and machine learning problems for UAVs or VTOLs 7 it becomes increasingly difficult to stay up-to-date. We provide a survey for the 8 topic of automated flights focusing on challenging Deep Learning problems with 9 a state-of-the-art overview. We give an outline of possible sensor set-ups and AI 10 based pipelines with leading results on established data sets. Finally we point out 11 currently missing investigations. 12
Synthesis and Characterization of Multifunctional Chiral and Photoactive Organic-Inorganic Block Copolymers of Poly(methylphenylsilane) with (R)-N-(1-phenylethyl)methacrylamide, Disperse Red 1 Methacrylate and Their optical and Photophysical Properties

Now-a-days, the thrust area of materials’ research is to develop multifunctional materials, which have multiple properties in a single functional material. We are interested to develop multifunctional polysilanes having special functional properties such as optical activity and photoluminescence (PL) properties. In this investigation, poly(methyl phenyl silane) (PMPS) was integrated with a chiral unit and a photoactive unit by in situ photopolymerization of (R)-N-(1-phenyl ethyl) methacrylamide (R-NPEMAM) and disperse red 1 methacrylate (DR1MA) monomer in the presence of PMPS. PMPS acted as a macrophotoinitiator and by UV exposure it produced macroradicals which initiated polymerization of chiral and photoactive monomers. Thus a block copolymer of PMPS-b-(R-NPEMAM-ran-DR1MA) was synthesized.The synthesized multifunctional organic inorganic hybrid polymer samples were characterized by FTIR and NMR spectroscopy. The molecular weights of the samples were measured by GPC analysis. The optical, chiroptical and photoluminescence properties were studied. The narrow band at about 1638 cm-1 is due to C=O stretching vibration of -CONH- of the chiral unit. A wide absorption peaks at 3444 cm-1 is the characteristic of NH trans stretching vibration of secondary amide group. The asymmetric stretching of NO2 group appeared at 1481 cm-1 and the characteristic peak at 1427 cm-1 was observed due to azo (-N=N-) group stretching of DR1MA unit. The Si-Si band of PMPS appeared at about 462 cm-1 in FTIR spectra. The optical absorbance observed at 272 nm is due to π-π* transition of aromatic ring and at 330 nm corresponds to σ-σ* transition of Si-Si bond. The other electronic absorption observed in the visible region at 475 nm corresponds to the combined contribution of n-π* and π-π* transition of DR1MA unit. The photoluminescence properties of such polymers were studied for the variation of concentration of the polymer solution and variation with excitation energy such as 275 nm, 325 nm and 475 nm in THF solvent. Such synthesized multifunctional photoactive organic-inorganic polymers having unusual optical, chiroptical and photoluminescence property may find novel optoelectronic (friend foe identification and secretive code identification) applications.
Whole genome transcriptional profiling of the mouse frontal cortex following repeated acamprosate administration

Acamprosate (calcium acetylhomotaurinate) has been used for the treatment of alcoholism for over 20 years, and while early evidence suggested it modulates the function of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptor subtype, its precise mechanism of action has yet to be determined. In order to further understand how acamprosate acts within the central nervous system, we conducted a whole genome microarray study of the mouse frontal cortex following repeated administration of saline or acamprosate (200 mg/kg i.p.) twice daily for 5 days. Differental gene expression analysis revealed that the expression of a total of 113 genes was changed as a result of acamprosate treatment (53 up-regulated, 60 down-regulated, p<0.01 for each gene). Changes were observed in genes encoding proteins involved in regulation of transcription, post-translational modification, cellular metabolism, neurotransmission, cell-cell communication, lipid signaling, protein phosphorylation, immune cell function, structural function, and appetite regulation. These findings indicate that acamprosate induces changes in the expression of numerous genes in the frontal cortex, and further investigation is needed into which of these gene or genes contribute to its mechanism of action.
Late quaternary slip-rate variations along the Warm Springs Valley fault system, northern Walker Lane, California-Nevada border

The extent to which faults exhibit temporally varying slip rates has important consequences for models of fault mechanics and probabilistic seismic hazard. Here, we explore the temporal behavior of the dextral‐slip Warm Springs Valley fault system, which is part of a network of closely spaced (10–20 km) faults in the northern Walker Lane (California–Nevada border). We develop a late Quaternary slip record for the fault using Quaternary mapping and high‐resolution topographic data from airborne Light Distance and Ranging (LiDAR). The faulted Fort Sage alluvial fan (40.06° N, 119.99° W) is dextrally displaced ! [Graphic][1] , and we estimate the age of the alluvial fan to be ! [Graphic][2] to 55.7±9.2 ka, based on a terrestrial cosmogenic ! [Graphic][3] depth profile and ! [Graphic][4] analyses on basalt boulders, respectively. The displacement and age constraints for the fan yield a slip rate of ! [Graphic][5] to ! [Graphic][6] (2 σ ) along the northern Warm Springs Valley fault system for the past 41.4–55.7 ka. In contrast to this longer‐term slip rate, shorelines associated with the Sehoo highstand of Lake Lahontan (∼15.8 ka) adjacent to the Fort Sage fan are dextrally faulted at most 3 m, which limits a maximum post‐15.8 ka slip rate to 0.2 mm/yr. These relations indicate that the post‐Lahontan slip rate on the fault is only about one‐tenth the longer‐term (41–56 ka) average slip rate. This apparent slip‐rate variation may be related to co‐dependent interaction with the nearby Honey Lake fault system, which shows evidence of an accelerated period of mid‐Holocene earthquakes. [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif [2]: /embed/inline-graphic-2.gif [3]: /embed/inline-graphic-3.gif [4]: /embed/inline-graphic-4.gif [5]: /embed/inline-graphic-5.gif [6]: /embed/inline-graphic-6.gif
Identifying deprivation profiles in Spain: a new approach

Usually, an indirect approach for measuring deprivation or poverty is used with poverty lines. However, some studies have used a direct approach to measure deprivation or poverty. The aim of this study is improving the identification of the poor people. The central point of the concept of deprivation used is related to the opportunity to have or do something. Therefore, deprivation means an inability to get the goods, facilities and opportunities, which are usual in the household environment. Since all of the needed variables are categorical, the latent class model is used to solve this problem because it is the best model to achieve this objective.
Conservative esthetic treatment of a discoloured calcified permanent tooth: five-year clinical evaluation

Objective: Pulp calcification can compromise toothcolor and negatively affect esthetics. Definitivetreatment for discolored anterior teeth withcalcification is usually provided by endodontictreatment with the use of internal and externalbleaching agents, as necessary. This article presentsthe conservative management of a vital tooth withan obliterated pulp chamber that led to changes intooth color. The benefits and limitations of the use ofin-office and home supervised bleaching techniquesare discussed. Keywords Tooth bleaching; Dental pulp calcification.
Work incentive and productivity in Spain

Work incentives are closely related to production performance. This paper presents evidence that the value added of a firm increases when relative labor costs rise, or the level of unemployment increases. Both circumstances imply evidence in favor of the efficiency wage model. This theory is consistent with the views of many managers and personal administrators, who tend to ascribe primary importance to wage setting as an incentive to increase effort. We use a micro panel data set of Spanish manufacturing firms, during the period 2004–2009, to simultaneously estimate a stochastic frontier of a firm’s value added and the inefficiency determinants. The data source is published in the Spanish Industrial Survey on Business Strategies (Encuesta sobre Estrategias Empresariales, ESEE), collected by the Fundacion SEPI.
A Driftless Estimation of Orthogonal Magnetic Flux Linkages in Sensorless Electrical Drives

Estimations of magnetic flux linkages, either between the stationary windings of the stator for the DTC, or between the stationary windings and the rotor for the sensorless FOC, are based on integration of corresponding voltages. Integration of voltages with offsets that come from improperly calibrated measurements as well as from transient states generally produces unwanted drifts in the resulting magnetic flux linkages, which when used within any type of control of sensorless electrical drives results in instability. This paper addresses that problem and proposes a simple self-contained solution based on orthogonal properties of waveforms of input voltages and resulting magnetic flux linkages in the frame of reference fixed to the geometry of the stator. The proposed solution requires only two periodic orthogonal input waveforms with a distinct common fundamental harmonic, which as such is independent of the type and parameters of the used machine. The idea of the proposed solution is presented analytically, its stability is proven by means of the quadratic Lyapunov theory, and its functionality is demonstrated by standalone simulations and experiments within the sensorless FOC of a PMSM.