Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new species of the genus Aphanius (Nardo, 1832) (Actinopterygii, Cyprinodontidae) from Algeria

A new species, Aphanius saourensis sp. nov., is described based on morphological and genetic characters. The new species comes from the Saoura Valley in northwestern Algeria. It differs from Aphanius iberus, in which the Saoura Valley populations have been included until now, by a combination of the following characters: 7–8 (9) branched rays in dorsal fin; greater preorbital length (PrOL/ED=0.9–1.3); and a narrower caudal peduncle (CPL/BLD=1.7–2.0). Body pigmentation in live males consists of a profusely mottled blue and silver pattern, without vertical bars. Females lack conspicuous black spots. The new species differs from both of its sister taxa (Aphanius iberus and A. baeticus) at 26 fixed nucleotide positions (molecular autapomorphies) in the cytochrome b gene. Genetic divergence between Aphanius iberus and Aphanius saourensis sp. nov. for the cytochrome b gene is 4.9–5.8 % and between Aphanius baeticus and Aphanius saourensis sp. nov. 6.3– 6.5 %.
Molecular evidence for multiple diversification patterns of alpine plants in Mediterranean Europe

Southern Europe encompasses elevated mountains that harbour alpine plants in the Mediterranean region. The highest European mountains, which are still in an uplifting process, are the result of the onset of the Alpine orogeny in Mesozoic-Cenozoic times (c. 65 Myr). Plate tectonic activity of microplates generated main movements during the latest uplifting periods in Mediterranean Europe: Betic range (Jurassic-Miocene), Cantabrian range and the Pyrenees (Paleocene-Eocene), Jura (Miocene-Pliocene), the Alps (Oligocene-Miocene), Apennines (Paleocene-Miocene), and the Balkan Peninsula (Paleocene-Pleistocene) (Ager, 1975). Important is that the present configuration of these mountains was established far earlier than differentiation of alpine species in Europe. Distribution and genetic structure of alpine plants have been ultimately molded by the geologic complexity of the European continent, coupled with Tertiary and Quaternary climatic episodes. The occurrence of the Mediterranean climate in the Pliocene (c. 3.2 Myr) caused seasonal rhythm and summer drought that became stable approximately 2.8 Myr ago (Suc, 1984). Accordingly, floras of mountain ranges may have also evolved during the Pliocene and Pleistocene (Stebbins, 1984), including surviving floras in high altitudes encircled by Mediterranean conditions. Glacial-interglacial cycles in the Pleistocene promoted isolation of alpine plants in high-altitude mountains of the Mediterranean Basin during warm (interglacial) periods. Conversely, plant populations from isolated mountain ranges were connected during long glacial stages. Most alpine plants that we find in southern European mountains are the result of migrations from lower altitudes after glacial periods or descendants of colonists from northern Europe (Stebbins, 1984). Molecular phylogenetics help infer historical biogeography and evolutionary patterns. Relationships among living populations of alpine plants in a phylogeographic context seems to be the most appropriate approach to address diversification patterns of alpine plants in Europe (Avise & al., 1987; Comes & Kadereit, 1998; Avise, 2000). Intraspecific phylogeography is concerned with the principles and processes governing the geographic distributions of genealogical lineages, especially those within and among closely related species (Avise, 2000). This approach has been successfully
Modeling Facial Geometry using Compositional

We propose a method for learning non-linear face geometry representations using deep generative models. Our model is a variational autoencoder with multiple levels of hidden variables where lower layers capture global geometry and higher ones encode more local deformations. Based on that, we propose a new parameterization of facial geometry that naturally decomposes the structure of the human face into a set of semantically meaningful levels of detail. This parameterization enables us to do model fitting while capturing varying level of detail under different types of geometrical constraints.
Definition, Treatment and Special Role of Catarrh in Perspective of Traditional Persian Medicine

Catarrh is a common problem everyone experiences many times in his lifetime. According to Traditional Persian Medicine (TPM), Catarrh is related to the terms:”Zokam” and “Nazleh”. Zokam is defined as drainage of secretions through the nasal passage and Nazleh is defined as flow of them into the posterior nasal space and the oropharynx; Nazleh flows can also spread to the lungs, esophagus, stomach and some other organs and cause various complaints. Medieval Iranian physicians had paid special attention to appropriate treatment of Nazleh because they believed it is the source for many chronic diseases. According to the organ affected by Nazleh various diseases was expected from head to toe. Despite the great advances in medical treatments in recent years, effective drugs are still needed to control the clinical manifestations of catarrh. Drug resistance and the complications of the drugs make this requirement more apparent. Some of the herbs that were prescribed by former physicians have indicated concomitant therapeutic effects in recent researches so it seems that some components of the herbs can be beneficial in producing new drugs. It is hoped that a review on therapeutic methods of TPM will prompt further clinical benefits. In this study, we reviewed several valuable TPM text books and collected the master viewpoints about etiology, semiology and treatment of Catarrh (Zokam and Nazleh), then we searched through some scientific databases including PubMed and Google Scholar to match the findings with the new research. The aim was to express the importance of these complaints and suggest convenient methods to treat them; considering that preventing and treating of some chronic diseases may relate to proper approach to Nazleh.
Engaging psychology students in clinical placements in dementia care

In the coming decades, as the population ages, meeting the needs of people with dementia will present considerable challenges to the health and social sector in Australia. Currently, health workforce shortages, preferences to work with other patient populations, and limited attractive career pathways have resulted in problems with the quality of care for people with dementia, which will only worsen unless health professionals can be engaged to work in the sector. Initial attempts by an education provider to create clinical placement opportunities for psychology students had generated little interest with students. In an attempt to understand barriers to participation and improve student engagement, we undertook formative research utilising a social marketing approach to develop an understanding of how participation of students in an aged and dementia care placement could be improved.
OUTCOME OF ANTENATALLY REFERRED CONGENITAL SURGICAL ANOMALIES-A PEDIATRIC SURGEON ’ S PERSPECTIVE -

Antenatally diagnosed congenital surgical anomaly are usually first brought to the notice of the obstetrician who decides the fate of the foetus. Out of the 8,000 antenatal cases seen each year at the authors’ tertiary level care Hospital, about 5-6 % are found to have congenital anomalies. Of these 80 % are terminated at the level of the obstetrician. For surgically correctable congenital anomalies, the obstetrician may seek prenatal pediatric surgical consultation that may have a significant impact on the perinatal management of the fetus. Providing a valuable insight into the surgical management of anomalies allows fetal intervention when appropriate, delivery in an appropriate setting, by the safest mode of delivery, and at the gestational age appropriate to minimize effects of the anomaly [1]. The pediatric surgeon has to counsel the parents on his ability to successfully treat the identified anomaly [2]. Maternal Serum Alpha-fetoprotein (MSAFP) is now being carried out for all antenatal cases usually between15-17 weeks of gestation in most tertiary centres. A high MSAFP has an accuracy of diagnosing 85% of the open neural tube defects and 75% of ventral wall defects. A low MSAFP is found in cases of Down syndrome and Trisomy 18. The accuracy in Down syndrome is 80-90% in women over 36 years and 60-70 % in women under 36 years. The understanding of the natural history of many prenatally diagnosed surgical conditions has grown significantly in recent years. The purpose of this study was thus to evaluate the impact of pediatric surgical consultation on antenatally diagnosed congenital surgical anomalies and form guidelines on the antenatal advise to be given for the variety of anomalies diagnosed depending on the gestational age at presentation.
Evaluation of the effect of non-ergot dopamine agonists on left ventricular systolic function with speckle tracking echocardiography

Objective: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurological disorder, and ergot dopamine agonists (DAs) are no longer usually preferred in the treatment due to the increased risk of valvular heart disease. Some recent studies have shown that commonly used non-ergot DA also increases the risk of heart failure. On the other hand, there are studies showing conflicting data about this relationship. The aim of the present study was to investigate the cardiac effects of non-ergot DAs in patients with PD using echocardiography. Methods: Conventional echocardiography and two-dimensional (2D) speckle tracking strain echocardiography were performed to determine the possible systolic dysfunction prior to the development of apparent systolic heart failure. Ninety-one (55 male, 64±10 years) patients with PD were included in the study. Furthermore, 25 subjects with newly diagnosed PD and using no drug were enrolled as the control group. All patients were divided into groups according to their medication. Patients using levodopa were classified as Group 1 (36), levodopa+pramipexole as Group 2 (27), and levodopa+ropinirole as Group 3 (28). Results: Left ventricle dysfunction with non-ergot DA use in patients with PD was not established with conventional echocardiographic evaluation. For 2D strain analysis, global longitudinal strain values were obtained as −18.5%, −18.5%, and −18.9% in the groups, respectively. Strain and strain rate values of the left ventricle were not different between the groups (p=0.816 and p=0.881, respectively). Conclusion: There was no significant relationship between left ventricular dysfunction and use of non-ergot DA in patients with PD. Similar results were obtained in strain analysis showing left ventricular subclinical dysfunction. Our study appears to confirm the safety of non-ergot DA in the point of heart failure risk. To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the effect of this group of drugs on subclinical left ventricular systolic function.
Generation of Multiview Images Using Stereo and Time-of-Flight Depth Cameras

We propose a multi-view image generation method using a low-resolution time-of-flight (TOF) depth camera and a stereoscopic camera. The TOF depth camera obtains the scene's range information in real-time using the emitted light signal. Then, it quantizes the measure range and provides depth images of the scene. However, the TOF depth camera has not only too small resolution but also noise and lens distortion. In order to utilize the TOF depth image with the high-resolution color images, we have to reduce noise and distortion, and also overcome the resolution difference. The proposed method generates disparity maps for a stereo color image using the TOF depth data. We reduce the noise and lens distortion in the TOF depth image and then warp the TOF depth values to the one color image position. The color image is segmented, and the warped TOF depth values are called the segmented regions as the disparity. After generating the disparity map for the other view, we obtain the multi-view image by synthesis of intermediate view images. Experimental results show the generated disparity maps and reconstructed virtual view images verify that the proposed method efficiently generate the disparity maps and the multi-view image. KeywordsDepth generation, Multi-view, ToF depth camera, 3DTV
Privacy Preserving Q-learning in the Analog Model for Secure Multiparty Computation

Many studies have been done with the security of cloud computing. Though data encryption is a typical approach, high computing complexity for encryption and decryption of data is needed. Therefore, safe system for distributed processing with secure data attracts attention, and a lot of studies have been done with them. SMC (Secure Multiparty Computation) is one of these methods. So far, most of works for ML (Machine Learning) with SMC are ones with supervised and unsupervised learning such as BP (Back Propagation) and K-means methods. Then, in the case where learning data does not exist explicitly like reinforcement learning (RL), how should it be done? We already proposed some algorithms of Q-learning and PS (Profit Sharing) learning for SMC in previous papers. However, they were methods using digital models. On the other hand, solutions for analog models are desired in the real world. In this paper, we propose SMC algorithms for Q-learning in the analog model and show their effectiveness. The idea is that in the digital model, only one behavior is selected at each time, whereas in the analog model it is decided as a combination of a plural of weighted actions.
Discrete gradient methods for solving variational image regularisation models

Discrete gradient methods are well-known methods of geometric numerical integration, which preserve the dissipation of gradient systems. In this paper we show that this property of discrete gradient methods can be interesting in the context of variational models for image processing, that is where the processed image is computed as a minimiser of an energy functional. Numerical schemes for computing minimisers of such energies are desired to inherit the dissipative property of the gradient system associated to the energy and consequently guarantee a monotonic decrease of the energy along iterations, avoiding situations in which more computational work might lead to less optimal solutions. Under appropriate smoothness assumptions on the energy functional we prove that discrete gradient methods guarantee a monotonic decrease of the energy towards stationary states, and we promote their use in image processing by exhibiting experiments with convex and non-convex variational models for image deblurring, denoising, and inpainting.
CONSUMER PREFERENCE FOR IMPORTED RICE IN NIGERIA — PERCEIVED QUALITY DIFFERENCES OR HABIT PERSISTENCE ?

CONSUMER PREFERENCE FOR IMPORTED RICE IN NIGERIA—PERCEIVED QUALITY DIFFERENCES OR HABIT PERSISTENCE? By Henry Ogadinma Akaeze Previous studies on rice in Nigeria have inter-alia focused on the constraints to local production and consumption, and the reasons for the growth in imported rice consumption. However, these studies have largely neglected the role of habit persistence and perceived quality differentials in explaining consumer preference for imported rice in Nigeria. Therefore, the goal of this research is to develop a theoretically consistent procedure for identifying and estimating the relative contributions of habit persistence and perceived quality differentials in explaining consumer preference for particular product varieties, and applies this procedure to demand for imported and domestically produced rice in Nigeria. Using annual time series data from 1961 to 2006, results indicate that habit persistence and perceived quality differences both play an important role in explaining consumer preference for imported rice in Nigeria. An important implication is that policies designed to encourage production of relatively high quality local rice, thereby replacing imported rice in consumption baskets, will face considerable inertia due to the persistence of consumer habits and mindset regarding purchase and consumption of imported rice, even if the locally produced rice is of comparable quality. Companion policies designed to shift consumer-buying habits and alter already established cultural mindset via advertising and promotion programs may be required to overcome this consumption inertia.
Accurate Causal Inference on Discrete Data

Additive Noise Models (ANMs) provide a theoretically sound approach to inferring the most likely causal direction between pairs of random variables given only a sample from their joint distribution. The key assumption is that the effect is a function of the cause, with additive noise that is independent of the cause. In many cases ANMs are identifiable. Their performance, however, hinges on the chosen dependence measure, the assumption we make on the true distribution. In this paper we propose to use Shannon entropy to measure the dependence within an ANM, which gives us a general approach by which we do not have to assume a true distribution, nor have to perform explicit significance tests during optimization. The information-theoretic formulation gives us a general, efficient, identifiable, and, as the experiments show, highly accurate method for causal inference on pairs of discrete variables—achieving (near) 100% accuracy on both synthetic and real data.
An Inductor Model for Analyzing the Performance of Printed Meander Line Antennas in Smart Structures

Meander line antenna has been considered desirable on flight vehicles to reduce drag and minimize aerodynamic disturbance; however, the antenna design and performance analysis have made mostly by trial-and-error. An inductor model by simulating the meander line sections as electrical inductors and the interconnecting radiation elements as a quasi-monopole antenna is developed to analyze the antenna performance. Experimental verifications of the printed meander line antennas embedded in composite laminated substrates show that the inductor model is effective to design and analyze. Of the 4 antennas tested, the discrepancy of resonant frequency in simulation and experiment is within 4.6%.
Internal and External Factors Affecting Learning English as a Foreign Language

This study investigated the effects of internal and external factors on learning English as a foreign language from Iranian EFL learners’ points of view. Copies of a 30-item Lickert-scale questionnaire, addressing internal and external factors or principle components, were distributed among about 140 postgraduate students of ELT in three universities in Iran. The collected data were then subjected to Principle Component Analysis (PCA). The findings revealed that while internal and external components are distinguishable, many of the variables do not heavily load on the principle component to which they theoretically belong. After separating the non-correlating variables it became clear that most of these variables are very important variables. Further analysis indicated that it is possible to divide internal variables to cognitive and affective and external variables to environmental and curricular. The conclusion reached was that the importance of variables should not be judged based on their nature but based on the importance accorded to them by the respondents. It was also concluded that extreme attention paid to internal variables should be balanced against external variables.
Against Secrecy: The Social Cost of International Dispute Settlement

Three decades ago Owen Fiss published a landmark article - Against Settlement - which argued that the rising popularity of pretrial settlement and alternative dispute resolution was an unwelcome trend. It sacrificed the public benefits of complete and transparent adjudication for the private expedience of settling disputes. In this Article, we propose that international law is on the cusp of its very own settlement crisis.As international governance is taking on increasingly more difficult and demanding topics, firms and governments have radically expanded the use of international courts to resolve complex legal disputes. In their effort to become more legitimate and effective, these bodies have adopted a wide array of reforms aimed at creating more systematic adherence to procedures as well as greater transparency - much as many national legal systems have undergone reform in response to Fiss-like concerns. Using a unique dataset on all investor-state arbitrations under the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), we show that those reforms are failing in part because parties have found ways to use pre-judgment or ‘out-of-court’ settlement to hide relevant information and halt inconvenient disputes. In fact, such settlements are the dominant means by which parties keep the outcomes of litigation secret.We show, statistically, which factors are associated with secret settlement of investor-state disputes. We also show that those factors are closely related to the same factors that legal scholars have identified theoretically and empirically as important explanators of settlement in national courts. Scholars and practitioners of international law have tended to view dispute resolution as an unalloyed good even when it is done in private—exactly the bias Fiss warned about long ago. We argue that investor-state disputes increasingly entrain issues that are important for public policy and not merely matters that should be resolved in private. Reforms, such as stronger disclosure rules and supervised settlements, will be needed to stem the settlement crisis in international law and yield a more consistent, coherent, and legitimate corpus of foreign investment law.
Do You Think Your Passwords Are Secure ? Analyzing the Security of Android Password-Managers

Many systems rely on passwords for authentication. Due to numerous accounts for different services, users have to choose and remember a significant number of passwords. Password-Manager applications address this issue by storing the user’s passwords. They are especially useful on mobile devices, because of the ubiquitous access to the account passwords. Password-Managers often use key derivation functions to convert a master password into a cryptographic key suitable for encrypting the list of passwords, thus protecting the passwords against unauthorized, off-line access. Therefore, design and implementation flaws in the key derivation function impact password security significantly. Design and implementation problems in the key derivation function can render the encryption on the password list useless, by for example allowing efficient bruteforce attacks, or – even worse – direct decryption of the stored passwords. In this paper, we analyze the key derivation functions of popular Android Password-Managers with often startling results. With this analysis, we want to raise the awareness of developers of security critical apps for security, and provide an overview about the current state of implementation security of security-critical applications.
VISUAL HOMING OF ROBOT HEADS WITHOUT ABSOLUTE SENSORS

With the increasing miniaturization of robotic devices, many actuators lack absolute position sensing. In these cases the initial position of the joints is unknown at startup. In this paper we present a vision based method for the automatic homing of serial kinematic structures composed of rotational joints, and having a perspective camera on the end-effector. Examples of such systems are pan-tilt surveillance cameras and most kinds of humanoid robot heads. The method is based on producing motions with known amplitude in one of the joints of the kinematic chain to induce image motion in the camera. The analysis of the induced homography allows the computation of the unknown angle of the other joint. The method can be iterated on more axes to calibrate longer serial chains. It requires calibrated cameras, static objects while homing and short links in the kinematics structure (or, equivalently, far away objects). We have implemented and validated the method in a small humanoid robot head.