Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) - Performance of Automated Age Estimation Algorithms

Introduction Facial age estimation is an area of study new to the Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) with Still Facial Images Track. While peripheral to automated face recognition, it has become a growing area of research, given its potential use in various applications. The motivation for age estimation systems has grown in the last few decades, given the rise of the digital age and the increase in human-computer interaction. Age-based access control and verification (e.g., age verification for alcohol/tobacco purchases), age estimation in crime and mass disaster investigation (e.g., age determination of unknown human bodies at a crime scene to help with victim identification), age-adaptive targeted marketing (e.g., displaying age-specific advertisements from digital signage), age-invariant person identification (e.g., identifying missing children), and age-based indexing of face images are potential applications of automated facial age estimation. NIST performed a large scale empirical evaluation of facial age estimation algorithms, with participation from five commercial providers and one university, using three large operational datasets comprised of facial images from visas and law enforcement mughots, leveraging a combined corpus of over 7 million images. NIST employed a lights-out, black-box testing methodology designed to model operational reality where software is shipped and used " as-is " without algorithmic training. Core age estimation accuracy was baselined over a large homogeneous population, then assessed demographically by age group, gender, and ethnicity. The impact of input-driven variations, namely image quality and number of image samples per subject was captured, and assessments of age-verification accuracy and estimation accuracy in children were documented. Core Accuracy and Speed: Age estimation accuracy depends strongly on the provider of the core technology. Broadly, there is a twofold difference between the most accurate and the least accurate algorithm in terms of the percentage of images correctly classified to within five years and mean absolute error (MAE) 1. Using the most accurate age estimation algorithm, (i.e., B31D from Cognitec), the chance of accurately estimating the age of a person within five years of their actual age over an ethnically-homogeneous database of 6 million images is 67%, with an MAE of 4.3 years. All algorithms can perform age estimation on a single image in less than 0.15 seconds with one server-class processor. The most accurate algorithm, on average, performs estimation in 0.125 seconds. The main dataset used for overall accuracy assessment is comprised of 6 million ethnically-homogeneous images. Although image collection was subject to the guidelines …
Feature-rich PoS Tagging through Taggers Combination : Experience in Arabic

Since words can play different syntactic roles in different contexts, it is not trivial to assign the appropriate morphosyntactic category to each word according to the context. Part of Speech (PoS) tagging is the task which manage this issue. Several probabilistic methods have been adapted for PoS tagging such as Hidden Markov Models, Support Vector Machines, and Decision Tree. Based on these methods, language-independent PoS taggers have been developed such as TnT, SVMTool, and Treetagger. The main purpose of this work is to combine automatically the output of these standard PoS taggers and investigate several options for how to do this combination. The experiments are applied to one of the morphologically complex languages, Arabic. In this paper, we highlight the use of these taggers via various experiments. In fact, the evaluations involve several tests on both Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, trained/untrained and tagged/untagged data. Finally, a deeper investigation of Arabic PoS tagging through these language-independent taggers combination is performed.
Crystal structure of Hen Egg White Lysozyme in complex with I3C

Two commonly encountered bottlenecks in the structure determination of a protein by X-ray crystallography are screening for conditions that give high-quality crystals and, in the case of novel structures, finding derivatization conditions for experimental phasing. In this study, the phasing molecule 5-amino-2,4,6-triiodoisophthalic acid (I3C) was added to a random microseed matrix screen to generate high-quality crystals derivatized with I3C in a single optimization experiment. I3C, often referred to as the magic triangle, contains an aromatic ring scaffold with three bound I atoms. This approach was applied to efficiently phase the structures of hen egg-white lysozyme and the N-terminal domain of the Orf11 protein from Staphylococcus phage P68 (Orf11 NTD) using SAD phasing. The structure of Orf11 NTD suggests that it may play a role as a virion-associated lysin or endolysin.
Performance And Economic Viability Of Broiler Chickens Fed With Probiotic And Organic Acids In An Attempt To Replace Growth-Promoting Antibiotics

30/September/2018 Approved: 25/November/2018 ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to evaluate diets supplemented with probiotic ( Bacillus amyloliquefaciens) and organic acids (lactic, acetic and butyric acid) in attempt to replace the antibiotics and anticoccidial (avilamycin + sodium monensin) growth promoters on performance and economic viability of broilers challenged by Eimeria acervulina, E. maxima and E. tenella . A total of 900 male Cobb ® chickens, with a mean weight of 39.90g, were distributed in a completely randomized design in a 2 × 2 + 1 factorial arrangement: supplementation or not of probiotic and organic acids and a treatment with inclusion of antibiotics, comprising five treatments with six replicates. For the studied performance variables, there was no effect of the isolated additives and no interaction between them ( p> 0.05). Only the antibiotics promoted better results for weight gain (WG), feed intake (FI) and feed conversion rate (FCR). Therefore, the use of organic acids and probiotic, isolated or associated, provided lower performance to those receiving antibiotics, not improving the performance of chickens under the imposed challenge conditions. The highest revenues were generated with the use of antibiotics,
Implementation of Winnowing Algorithm Based K-Gram to Identify Plagiarism on File Text-Based Document

Plagiarism occurs when the students have tasks and pursued by the deadline. Plagiarism is considered as the fastest way to accomplish the tasks. This reason makes the author tried to build a plagiarism detection system with Winnowing algorithm as document similarity search algorithm. The documents that being tested are Indonesian journals with extension . doc, . docx, and/or . txt. Similarity calculation process through two stages, the first is the process of making a document fingerprint using Winnowing algorithm and the second is using Jaccard coefficient similarity. In order to develop this system, the author used iterative waterfall model approach. The main objective of this project is to determine the level of plagiarism. It is expected to prevent plagiarism either intentionally or unintentionally before our journal published by displaying the percentage of similarity in the journals that we make.
Dormancy dampens the microbial distance-decay relationship

Much of Earth’s biodiversity has the capacity to engage in dormancy whereby individuals enter a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity. By increasing resilience to unfavorable conditions, dormancy leads to the accumulation of “seed banks” that should diminish the influence of environmental filtering, while allowing passive dispersers to colonize new habitats. Although prevalent among single-celled organisms, evidence that dormancy influences patterns of microbial biodiversity and biogeography is lacking. We constructed geographical and environmental distance-decay relationships (DDRs) using 16S rRNA sequencing to characterize the total (DNA) and the active (RNA) bacterial communities in a regional survey of 49 forested ponds. As expected, the total community harbored greater diversity and exhibited weaker DDRs than the active portion of the community. These empirical observations were robust to different measures of community similarity and random resampling tests. Furthermore, findings from the field survey were reproduced by models that included aspects of dormancy along with the geographical coordinates and environmental characteristics of our study system. In addition to maintaining local diversity, our results support recent theoretical predictions that dormancy shapes geographical patterns of biodiversity.
Comparing traditional and modern methods of kākahi translocation: implications for ecological restoration

ABSTRACT Handling methods are an important determinant of translocation success. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, tangata whenua traditionally used insulated kete to translocate aquatic animals to new environments as part of ahumoana tawhito (ancient aquaculture). In this study we investigated the influence of three transport methods (traditional [flax kete], modern [bucket], and a hybrid of the two [bucket with flax support structures]) on the short-term performance (burrowing speed) of kākahi (freshwater mussels). We also tested whether assisted release (planting kākahi in the substrate) resulted in enhanced burrowing speeds. Kākahi that were transported using the traditional method were slower to begin probing the substrate, but there was no difference in overall burrowing speed. We also found that assisted release resulted in faster burrowing speeds. We conclude that handling and release procedures can influence the short-term performance of translocated kākahi, and we recommend procedures for future translocation projects, including transporting animals in immersion vessels where practical, and planting them at the release site
LRRK2 G2019S kinase activity triggers neurotoxic NSF aggregation

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by the progressive degeneration of dopaminergic neurons within the substantia nigra pars compacta and the presence of protein aggregates in surviving neurons. LRRK2 G2019S mutation is one of the major determinants of familial PD cases and leads to late-onset PD with pleomorphic pathology, including alpha-synuclein accumulation and deposition of protein inclusions. We demonstrated that LRRK2 phosphorylates N-ethylmaleimide sensitive factor (NSF). We observed aggregates containing NSF in basal ganglia specimens from G2019S carrier PD patients and in cellular and animal models expressing the LRRK2 G2019S variant. We found that LRRK2 G2019S kinase activity induces the accumulation of NSF in toxic aggregates. Noteworthy, the induction of autophagy cleared NSF aggregation and rescued motor and cognitive impairment observed in aged hG2019S BAC mice. We suggest that LRRK2 G2019S pathological phosphorylation hampers substrate catabolism, thus causing the formation of cytotoxic protein inclusions. Highlights LRRK2 phosphorylates NSF in vivo NSF aggregates in complementary LRRK2 G2019S models LRRK2 G2019S kinase activity induces NSF accumulation in toxic aggregates Autophagy induction rescues hG2019S BAC mice motor and cognitive impairment
Identification of the pathotype of
 Synchytrium endobioticum,
 causal agent of potato wart disease, present in Georgia

Potato wart is one of the most important quarantine diseases of potato in the world. In Georgia, symptoms of wart were first seen in 2009–2013 during observations on potato in home gardens in Khulo district, although they may have been present since 2006. However, potato wart presence was only confirmed by PCR in 2013. Isolates pw13N and pw13 of Synchytrium endobioticum collected from the infested area of the village Didadjara, Khulo municipality were tested using laboratories in Georgia and the Netherlands in the framework of collaboration between scientists of Batumi State University and the National Plant Protection organization of the Netherlands. Additionally, pot tests were carried out in Georgia. Based on the results obtained, the pathotype found in Georgia is not known from Europe, and based on its reactions this pathotype resembles pathotype 38 (Nevsehir) detected in (the non‐European part of) Turkey.
Novel tetraplex qPCR assays for simultaneous detection and identification of Xylella fastidiosa subspecies in plant tissues

Xylella fastidiosa is an insect-borne bacterium confined to the xylem vessels of plants. This plant pathogen has a broad host range estimated to 560 plant species. Five subspecies of the pathogen with different but overlapping host ranges have been described, but only three subspecies are widely accepted, namely subspecies fastidiosa, multiplex and pauca. Initially limited to the Americas, Xf has been detected in Europe since 2013. As management of X. fastidiosa outbreaks in Europe depends on the identification of the subspecies, accurate determination of the subspecies in infected plants as early as possible is of major interest. Thus, we developed various tetraplex and triplex qPCR assays for in planta X. fastidiosa detection and subspecies identification in a single reaction. We designed primers and probes using SkIf, a bioinformatics tool based on k-mers, to detect specific signatures of the species and subspecies from a dataset of 58 genome sequences representative of X. fastidiosa diversity. We tested the qPCR assays on 39 target and 30 non-target strains, as well as on 13 different plant species spiked with strains of the different subspecies of X. fastidiosa, and on samples from various environmental and inoculated host plants. Sensitivity of simplex assays was equal or slightly better than the reference protocol on purified DNA. Tetraplex qPCR assays had the same sensitivity than the reference protocol and allowed X. fastidiosa detection in all spiked matrices up to 103 cells.mL−1. Moreover, mix infections of two to three subspecies could be detected in the same sample with tetraplex assays. In environmental plant samples, the tetraplex qPCR assays allowed subspecies identification when the current method based on multilocus sequence typing failed. The qPCR assays described here are robust and modular tools that are efficient for differentiating X. fastidiosa subspecies directly in plant samples.
Dittrichia viscosa (Asterales: Asteraceae) as an Arthropod Reservoir in Olive Groves

Non-crop cultivated plants can provide agriculture with ecosystem services such as biological pest control and, a sound knowledge of the relationships between these plants and arthropod communities is important. Given its entomophilous characteristics, Dittrichia viscosa, a plant commonly found in the Mediterranean region, could potentially be used in integrated pest management systems. The aim of this study is to investigate arthropofauna associated with D. viscosa in olive groves during its preflowering, flowering and postflowering stages and to determine the possible relationships between different groups of arthropods. Using vacuum-sampling, the study was carried out on D. viscosa plants bordering and inside olive groves. The plants produced new leaves in April and flowered between August and October. Miridae, Aphididae, Hymenoptera parasitoids, Formicidae, Araneae and Aleyrodidae were the most abundant groups of arthropods collected during the preflowering and flowering stages. Plant phenology differentially influenced the arthropod populations of the different groups, with the Aleyrodidae family found to be more abundant during the preflowering stage, while Hymenoptera parasitoids were more numerous during the flowering stage. During the postflowering stage, the number of arthropods captured was very low. Numerous correlations between and within the different functional groups were observed throughout the life cycle of D. viscosa. Our results clearly show that D. viscosa plants in olive groves have great potential as a reservoir of different predators and Hymenoptera parasitoids and that these olive groves were not attacked by any D. viscosa-related phytophages.
Buckling instabilities and spatio-temporal dynamics of active elastic filaments

Biological filaments driven by molecular motors tend to experience tangential propulsive forces also known as active follower forces. When such a filament encounters an obstacle, it deforms, which reorients its follower forces and alters its entire motion. If the filament pushes a cargo, the friction on the cargo can be enough to deform the filament, thus affecting the transport properties of the cargo. Motivated by cytoskeletal filament motility assays, we study the dynamic buckling instabilities of a two-dimensional slender elastic filament driven through a dissipative medium by tangential propulsive forces in the presence of obstacles or cargo. We observe two distinct instabilities. When the filament’s head is pinned or experiences significant translational but little rotational drag from its cargo, it buckles into a steadily rotating coiled state. When it is clamped or experiences both significant translational and rotational drag from its cargo, it buckles into a periodically beating, overall translating state. Using minimal analytically tractable models, linear stability theory and fully nonlinear computations, we study the onset of each buckling instability, characterize each buckled state, and map out the phase diagram of the system. Finally, we use particle-based Brownian dynamics simulations to show our main results are robust to moderate noise and steric repulsion. Overall, our results provide a unified framework to understand the dynamics of tangentially propelled filaments and filament-cargo assemblies.
Sheep Image Segmentation and Contour Extraction of Multi-scale Watershed and Fuzzy C-Means Based on Graph Cuts

In order to realize the sheep body size measurement, the sheep image segmentation under real environment is studied. To reach this goal, Lazy Snapping interactive mode and Graph cuts frame are applied to the segmentation models, integrated with multi-scale watershed and fuzzy C-mean clustering algorithms to fulfill the sheep image segmentation. The followings are the procedure. Firstly, R, G, B components of color image were selected respectively and gray image were transformed. Minimal number of regions based on multi-scale watershed pre-segmentation determined the operation for original image. Then, these regions were viewed as the vertex of graph cut, and then the network graph was built through computing the boundary term and data term. Adopting max-flow/min-cut method the minimum energy function of image was got to reach the goal. Finally, by comparing with cloud model, GrabCut algorithm and GrowCut algorithm, the proposed method can segment the sheep images more accurately, and overcome the background noise and reduce the runtime. Its F-measure was around 0.96, slightly higher than that of GrowCut. In addition, the more complete and smooth contour extracted from results of segmentation image is applicable to subsequent extraction of sheep measure points.
The effect of economic variables on a bio‐refinery for biodiesel production using calcium oxide catalyst﻿

This study investigates the effect of market variables on biodiesel production and considers a calcium oxide catalyzed transesterification process. A conceptual process simulation of a plant using Super Pro software was used to vary the economic scenarios and to evaluate the effects of selected variables such as prices of biodiesel, glycerol, oil, alcohol, catalyst, equipment maintenance, labor, and tax variation. Changing the values of these variables led to large effects on the overall economics of the production process. Oil purchasing cost exerted a larger influence on the economic outcome, with an approximately 73% decrease in net present value (NPV) for a 22% increase in the oil purchasing cost. Under optimum conditions the process would be profitable for oil costs below 590US$ ton−1. Varying the equipment maintenance costs produced a smaller effect, which could allow the amount of cost allocated for routine maintenance activities to be increased to sustain the productivity of the process. The study could also provide cutoff values for each variable for economic feasibility of the process at the given market scenario. © 2019 The Authors. Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining published by Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Genetic diversity as revealed by RAPD analysis among chickpea genotypes.

The objectives of this study were to estimate the genetic diversity and to evaluate the relationship between eight chickpea genotypes that is the valuable source for breeding. Chickpea seed is a good source of carbohydrates and proteins, constituting 80% of the total dry seed weight. The variable response of chickpea genotypes were characterized by using the 15 RAPD primers. The total numbers of amplification products generated were 915, and among them 898 were found to be polymorphic. The number of amplification products ranged from 28-81 from 15 arbitrary primers. The molecular weight of the generated bands in the present study ranged from 100-2968 bp. Primers BG-30, C and OPA-02 generated the maximum number of amplified products. Minimum number of 28 RAPD products were obtained with OPA-04. 16 RAPD products were recorded as unique or species specific and resulted in 98.1% of polymorphism.
Abundance and Growth Parameter of Mangrove Crab (Scylla serrata) in Estuary Water of Karang Gading, District Deli Serdang

Research about the abundance and growth parameter of mangrove crab Scylla serrata in the estuary water of Karang Gading, District Deli Serdang has been done. The aims of this research are to analyze the abundance, frequency distribution of wide carapace, and growth parameter of mangrove crab. This research use purposive sampling methods. Sampling of mangrove crab use bubu, and data analysis use the equation according to Bengen and Fish Stock Assesment Tool (FISAT II). The study obtained 146 individu of male crabs and 192 individu of female crabs. The abundance of male mangrove crabs is 88 ind m3-1 and female crabs 116 ind m3-1 . The highest value of mangrove crab abundance was found at station 4 of 68 ind m3-1 consisting of 17 male crabs and 51 female crabs, and the lowest in station 1 was 37 ind m3-1 consisting of 23 male crabs and 14 female crabs. Distribution of mud crab is included in the group distribution pattern. The male crabs takes 4 month to reach maximum carapace width, and female crab takes 5 month.
Anti-allergic activity of lotus root (Nelumbo nucifera) powder in TDI-sensitized nasal allergy model mice

ABSTRACT Lotus root (Nelumbo nucifera) is a popular food in Japan and southeast Asia. It is reported that lotus root includes dietary fiber, vitamin C, and abundant polyphenolic compounds. In Chinese medicine, lotus powder is also utilized in anti-tussive or anti-inflammatory drugs. In this study, we focused on the effects of lotus root powder on allergy symptoms in mice. First, we assessed nasal allergy symptoms in 2,4-diisocyanic acid toluene (TDI)-sensitized nasal allergy model mice. We found that lotus root powder alleviated nasal allergy symptoms in the mice. In addition, we estimated serum inflammatory parameters such as serum total IgE, histamine, and leukotriene B4. Lotus root powder intake significantly decreased serum total IgE and leukotriene B4 compared with standard food intake. We suggest that lotus root powder intake may alleviate allergic symptoms.