Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic Detection of Bangla Characters in Bangladeshi Car Registration Plates

This paper presents a technique that intends to recognize bangla characters from Bangladeshi automobile registration plates. Even though the recognition of characters from registration plates are nothing new but the conditions and circumstances surrounding the recognition process that is going to be discussed in due course of this paper is something i.e. worth looking into. In this paper we are dividing the whole process into three major parts. The first being isolation of the registration plate, the second being the segmentation of each character from the plate and finally recognizing each character. All the results generated in this paper are done with the help of MATLAB.
The Characteristic Straight Line Method for Soil Displacement Monitoring

In this paper, topometric observations have been used to study and to analyze the mechanical behaviour of the landslide. The soil is considered as a mosaic of rigid blocks. The “Characteristic Straight Line Method” defining its movement has been constructed from precise topometric observations. This method is slightly more convenient than the “Characteristic Circle Method”. It permits to evaluate a displacement of very small magnitude even when the displacement is of an infinitesimal quantity. The inclination of the landslide is given by the inverse of the distance reference point O to the “Characteristic Straight Line”. Its direction is given by the bearing of the normal directed from O to the Characteristic Straight Line. Precise topometric observations were used to measure the elevation of points carefully selected, before and after the deformation. Gross errors have been eliminated by statistical analyses and by comparing the heights within local neighbourhoods. The results of a test using an area where very interesting land surface deformation occurs are reported. Monitoring with different options and qualitative comparison of results based on a sufficient number of checkpoints are presented. Keywords—Terrain deformation, Characteristic Straight Line method, Inclination, Landslides, Redundant measurements, AmmanJarash highway.
Quantifying Side-Channel Information Leakage from Web Applications

Recent research has shown that many popular web applications are vulnerable to side-channel attacks on encrypted streams of network data produced by the interaction of a user with an application. As a result, private user data is susceptible to being recovered by a side-channel adversary. A recent focus has been on the development of tools for the detection and quantification of side-channel information leaks from such web applications. In this work we describe a model for these web applications, analyse the effectiveness of previous approaches for the quantification of information leaks, and describe a robust, effective and generically applicable metric based on a statistical estimation of the mutual information between the user inputs made in the application and subsequent observable side-channel information. We use our proposed metric to construct a test capable of analysing sampled traces of packets to detect information leaks, and demonstrate the application of our test on a real-world web application.
“Everybody in the world is my friend” hypersociability in young children with Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder involving a characteristic cardiac defect, typical facial appearance, and an uneven profile of cognitive strengths and weaknesses. WS is caused by a hemizygous deletion in chromosome band 7q11.23, including the gene for elastin (ELN). Typically, individuals with WS seem driven to greet and interact with strangers. The goal of the present study was to investigate age‐related changes in the expression of hypersociability in WS. Parents of 64 children with WS, 31 children with Down syndrome (DS), and 27 normal controls (NC) provided data concerning specific aspects of their children's social behavior using the Salk Institute Sociability Questionnaire (SISQ). Children ranged in age from 1 year, 1 month to 12 years, 10 months. Consistent with earlier findings, whole group analyses showed the WS group to be significantly higher on all aspects of sociability studied. Comparisons among the groups at different ages revealed that hypersociability is evident even among very young children with WS, and, significantly, children with WS exceed children with DS with respect to Global Sociability and Approach Strangers in every age group. The findings from children who have the typical deletion for WS are contrasted with data obtained from a young child with WS who has a smaller deletion and many physical features of WS, but who does not demonstrate hypersociability, providing intriguing clues to a genetic basis of social behavior in this syndrome. These data suggest the involvement of a genetic predisposition in the expression of hypersociability in WS. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Neutralization of Human Cytomegalovirus by Human CD13-Specific Antibodies

Abstract The mechanisms of inhibition of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection by human CD13 (aminopeptidase N)-specific antibodies were studied. These antibodies protect CD13-negative and -positive cells from CMV infection only if incubated with the virus inoculum, suggesting they bind to CMV virions. The association of a CD13-like molecule with virions was further supported by the transfer of CD13 immunoreactivity to the surface of CD13-negative cells upon binding of CMV; the binding of CD13-specific antibodies directly to the surface of CMV virions; and the presence of anti-CD13 immunoreactive bands, including one with mobility similar to that of native cellular CD13 on immunoblots of proteins of purified CMV particles. Importantly, CD13-specific antibodies neutralize CMV in urine of neonates with congenital CMV, indicating that the CD13-like molecule is associated with natural CMV and not acquired in vitro. These studies demonstrate that a CD13-like molecule is associated with CMV particles and may be important in CMV pathogenesis.
A novel anonymous authenticated key agreement protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks

Privacy in Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) is one of the most important issues to attract users to this new technology. In this paper we propose a novel protocol that allows vehicles using the same application in a VANET to agree on an encryption key to exchange confidential data while preserving the privacy. We do this by combining the Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption Scheme (ECIES) with ring signatures and we evaluate the protocol with respect to the privacy of the vehicle. These results clearly demonstrate that the privacy of vehicles can be preserved while reducing considerably the number of necessary pseudonyms in comparison to exploiting ECIES only.
Abnormal Pre-Attentive Arousal in Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Contributes to Their Atypical Auditory Behavior: An ERP Study

Auditory sensory modulation difficulties and problems with automatic re-orienting to sound are well documented in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Abnormal preattentive arousal processes may contribute to these deficits. In this study, we investigated components of the cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) reflecting preattentive arousal in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children aged 3-8 years. Pairs of clicks (‘S1’ and ‘S2’) separated by a 1 sec S1-S2 interstimulus interval (ISI) and much longer (8-10 sec) S1-S1 ISIs were presented monaurally to either the left or right ear. In TD children, the P50, P100 and N1c CAEP components were strongly influenced by temporal novelty of clicks and were much greater in response to the S1 than the S2 click. Irrespective of the stimulation side, the ‘tangential’ P100 component was rightward lateralized in TD children, whereas the ‘radial’ N1c component had higher amplitude contralaterally to the stimulated ear. Compared to the TD children, children with ASD demonstrated 1) reduced amplitude of the P100 component under the condition of temporal novelty (S1) and 2) an attenuated P100 repetition suppression effect. The abnormalities were lateralized and depended on the presentation side. They were evident in the case of the left but not the right ear stimulation. The P100 abnormalities in ASD correlated with the degree of developmental delay and with the severity of auditory sensory modulation difficulties observed in early life. The results suggest that some rightward-lateralized brain networks that are crucially important for arousal and attention re-orienting are compromised in children with ASD and that this deficit contributes to sensory modulation difficulties and possibly even other behavioral deficits in ASD.
Customized Core Layout: A Case Study on Dual-Core Dynamic Binary Translation System

High efficient hardware accelerators are customized to improve the performance of applications from special domains. In this paper, we try to answer the question of where should we integrate a customized processor core to accelerate an application via comparing the performance on different multi-core platforms. We select dynamic binary translation as example application. First, we establish a performance model for software DBT system and describe its design space. Then, we build an abstract architecture of dual-core DBT system, and list three possible locations to integrate a customized accelerator. Finally, we did simulation on the three platforms with the customized DBT core integrated in the different locations, and discussed the result. By the result of the simulation, we have proved that the DBT can be speedup by the dual-core platform, and the platform 2 with a customized core on DIMM shows the best performance (about 48% compared with the single core DBT).
A Study on EMG-Based Control of Exoskeleton Robots for Human Lower-limb Motion Assist

An exoskeleton robot is an external structural mechanism with joints and links corresponding to those of the human body. When it is worn, it transmits torques from actuators through rigid exoskeletal links to the human joints. We have been developing exoskeleton robots for assisting the motions of physically weak persons such as elderly or disabled in daily life. In this paper, we propose an electromyogram (EMG) based control (i.e., control based on the skin surface EMG signals of the user) for the exoskeleton robot to assist physically weak person's lower-limb motions. The skin surface EMG signals are mainly used as the input information for the controller. In order to generate flexible and smooth motions and take into account the changing EMG signal levels according to the physical and psychological conditions of the user, fuzzy-neuro control method has been applied for the controller. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the designed EMG-based controller for the power-assist.
Noise Models in Feature-based Stereo Visual Odometry

Feature-based visual structure and motion reconstruction pipelines, common in visual odometry and large-scale reconstruction from photos, use the location of corresponding features in different images to determine the 3D structure of the scene, as well as the camera parameters associated with each image. The noise model, which defines the likelihood of the location of each feature in each image, is a key factor in the accuracy of such pipelines, alongside optimization strategy. Many different noise models have been proposed in the literature; in this paper we investigate the performance of several. We evaluate these models specifically w.r. t. stereo visual odometry, as this task is both simple (camera intrinsics are constant and known; geometry can be initialized reliably) and has datasets with ground truth readily available (KITTI Odometry and New Tsukuba Stereo Dataset). Our evaluation shows that noise models which are more adaptable to the varying nature of noise generally perform better.
Inhibition of Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Activity by Flavonoids: Structure-Activity Relationship Studies

Previous studies have demonstrated that certain flavonoids can have an inhibitory effect on angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) activity, which plays a key role in the regulation of arterial blood pressure. In the present study, 17 flavonoids belonging to five structural subtypes were evaluated in vitro for their ability to inhibit ACE in order to establish the structural basis of their bioactivity. The ACE inhibitory (ACEI) activity of these 17 flavonoids was determined by fluorimetric method at two concentrations (500 µM and 100 µM). Their inhibitory potencies ranged from 17 to 95% at 500 µM and from 0 to 57% at 100 µM. In both cases, the highest ACEI activity was obtained for luteolin. Following the determination of ACEI activity, the flavonoids with higher ACEI activity (i.e., ACEI >60% at 500 µM) were selected for further IC50 determination. The IC50 values for luteolin, quercetin, rutin, kaempferol, rhoifolin and apigenin K were 23, 43, 64, 178, 183 and 196 µM, respectively. Our results suggest that flavonoids are an excellent source of functional antihypertensive products. Furthermore, our structure-activity relationship studies show that the combination of sub-structures on the flavonoid skeleton that increase ACEI activity is made up of the following elements: (a) the catechol group in the B-ring, (b) the double bond between C2 and C3 at the C-ring, and (c) the cetone group in C4 at the C-ring. Protein-ligand docking studies are used to understand the molecular basis for these results.
Does the Admission Blood Pressure Associate with Short- and Long Term Outcome in Stroke Patients Treated with Thrombolysis? A Single Centre Study

Background. The association between outcome and elevated admission blood pressure (BP) remains uncertain in acute stroke patients. The aim of the present study was to examine the association between admission blood pressure and outcome in ischemic stroke patients treated with tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). Method. This study included patients treated with tPA within 4.5 hours after symptom onset. Four quartiles based on the admission BP values were defined. BP development of the first 12 hours was compared to outcome parameters defined as NIHSS 24 hours after tPA and mRS after 3 months. Results. 265 patients were included. A trend with worse short- and long-term outcome was present in the quartiles with the lowest and highest admission BP compared to the quartile with admission values at 140–160 mm Hg systolic. BP in quartile 1 was insignificantly decreased after 12 hours while the BP in quartiles 3 and 4 remained above recommended levels. Conclusion. Admission BP is associated with short- and long-term outcome after stroke. Low- or high-admission BP indicates cardiac comorbidity or preexisting hypertension, where close monitoring and further examinations are requested to prevent poorer outcome.
Analysis of Memristor Behavior in Presence of Harmonics

Memristor is the fourth basic passive circuit element after resistor, capacitor and inductor. It was proposed in 1971 by Leon Chua using symmetry arguments but was clearly experimentally demonstrated in 2008. Since then a number of models for the device have been proposed, this paper reviews two of these models namely Numerical Model and Fully Symbolic Homotopy based Model. Further, these two models are used to analyze the behavior of Memristor in presence of voltage and current time harmonics in addition to the fundamental component.
The changing intra-household resource allocation in Russia

The Changing Intra-Household Resource Allocation in Russia During the transition toward a market economy, Russian workers have had to face important structural changes in the labour market as well as dramatic changes in their real earnings. In the process, the wage gap between men and women has varied wildly over that period. In recent years, young women have embraced professional careers, are more mobile on the labour market, and tend to delay the birth of their first child. All these trends are likely to influence intra-household relations and consequently the family decision process. To investigate this matter, we estimate a household collective labour supply model. We generalize the specification so as to allow the sharing rule to change in a discrete manner between the pre and post 1998 financial crisis periods. The parameters of the sharing-rule indicate that the households have shifted to a new equilibrium in the post-1998 period. Indeed, husbands have become more egotistic and wives more altruistic: An increase in their relative wage translates into a smaller/larger transfer to their spouse. JEL Classification: D1, J22, C5
Auditory Processing in Children with Specific Language Impairments: Are there Deficits in Frequency Discrimination, Temporal Auditory Processing or General Auditory Processing?

Background/Aims: Specific language impairment (SLI) is believed to be associated with nonverbal auditory (NVA) deficits. It remains unclear, however, whether children with SLI show deficits in auditory time processing, time processing in general, frequency discrimination (FD), or NVA processing in general. Patients and Methods: Twenty-seven children (aged 8–11) with SLI and 27 control children (CG), matched for age and gender, were retrospectively compared with regard to their performance on five NVA skills in terms of just noticeable differences (JND) and time order judgments (TOJ). JND was used for FD, intensity discrimination, and gap detection, while TOJ was used for FD and clicks. Results: Children with SLI performed significantly worse than the CG only on the FD tasks (JND and TOJ). The other nonverbal tasks showed no significant intergroup differences. Additionally, moderate associations were found between the FD tasks and phonological skills, as well as between FD tasks and language scores. Conclusion: Children with SLI appear to have restricted FD skills compared to controls, but there was no evidence for a common NVA deficit or reduced temporal auditory abilities.
The Effects of Tourism on Development

Tourism has strongly contributed to the economic growth of developing countries during these past years but is it a factor of development ? An initial response needs to identify the different forms of tourism and the dynamics of global tourism in the « post-September 11 » context. Indeed, tourism appears to be a simple way of accumulating wealth, but the analysis of the concomitant risks provides some paths to reflection on ensuring that it does not become a factor of imbalances.
Landscape of Fluid Sets of Hairpin-Derived 21-/24-nt-Long Small RNAs at Seed Set Uncovers Special Epigenetic Features in Picea glauca

Conifers’ exceptionally large genome (20–30 Gb) is scattered with 60% retrotransposon (RT) components and we have little knowledge on their origin and evolutionary implications. RTs may impede the expression of flanking genes and provide sources of the formation of novel small RNA (sRNAs) populations to constrain events of transposon (TE) proliferation/transposition. Here we show a declining expression of 24-nt-long sRNAs and low expression levels of their key processing gene, pgRTL2 (RNASE THREE LIKE 2) at seed set in Picea glauca. The sRNAs in 24-nt size class are significantly less enriched in type and read number than 21-nt sRNAs and have not been documented in other species. The architecture of MIR loci generating highly expressed 24-/21-nt sRNAs is featured by long terminal repeat—retrotransposons (LTR-RTs) in families of Ty3/Gypsy and Ty1/Copia elements. This implies that the production of sRNAs may be predominantly originated from TE fragments on chromosomes. Furthermore, a large proportion of highly expressed 24-nt sRNAs does not have predictable targets against unique genes in Picea, suggestive of their potential pathway in DNA methylation modifications on, for instance, TEs. Additionally, the classification of computationally predicted sRNAs suggests that 24-nt sRNA targets may bear particular functions in metabolic processes while 21-nt sRNAs target genes involved in many different biological processes. This study, therefore, directs our attention to a possible extrapolation that lacking of 24-nt sRNAs at the late conifer seed developmental phase may result in less constraints in TE activities, thus contributing to the massive expansion of genome size.
Chinese Word Frequency Approximation Based on Multitype Corpora

Abstract Due to the nature of Chinese, a perfect word-segmented Chinese corpus that is ideal for the task of word frequency estimation may never exist. Therefore, a reliable estimation for Chinese word frequencies remains a challenge. Currently, three types of corpora can be considered for this purpose: raw corpora, automatically word-segmented corpora, and manually word-segmented corpora. As each type has its own advantages and drawbacks, none of them is sufficient alone. In this article, we propose a hybrid scheme which utilizes existing corpora of different types for word frequency approximation. Experiments have been performed from statistical and application-oriented perspectives. We demonstrate that, compared with other schemes, the proposed scheme is the most effective one and leads to better word frequency approximation results.
State Aid and Tacit Collusion

Both literature and policy debate on State aid or government subsidies have focused on the trade-off between the potential ine¢ ciencies caused by state intervention (inefficient allocation of resources, moral hazard) and the potential gains from intervention (whether related to the resolution of market failures or to the achievement of some dimension of social equity). The debate however has ignored another important negative e¤ect of State aid: governments, by setting up aid schemes to ailing firms, may increase the likelihood of (tacit) collusion in an industry characterised by idiosyncratic shocks. Indeed, in a repeated-game setting, a systematic bailout regime increases the expected profits of a firm from cooperation and simultaneously raises the probability that competitors will still be in business to carry out punishment against cheaters. Despite the generality of the model and of its key insight, we study this problem through an application to the banking sector, as it has recently been subject of much attention within the context of the ongoing economic crisis.
Effect of unreliable nodes on QoS routing

A number of QoS routing algorithms have been proposed to address the dual objective of selecting feasible paths through the network with enough resources to satisfy a connections' QoS request, while simultaneously utilizing network resources efficiently. However, these routing algorithms and the guarantees they provide do not consider the possibility of node and link failures. The failure of a node or a link along a path can disrupt the continuity of an on-going session and potentially terminate the session. Hence the problem of QoS routing should be extended to incorporate reliability and fault-tolerance requirements. We study the impact of unreliable nodes on QoS routing. We describe a scheme to restore the flows that are disrupted due to node failures to alternate paths. Two prioritized restoration policies, one to maximize the number of disrupted flows that can be restored, and the other to maximize the disrupted demand that can be restored are also presented. We conduct extensive simulations to evaluate the routing performance in the presence of node failures and repairs, as well as the performance of the restoration scheme. Our results indicate: (i) when the availability of the nodes is beyond a certain threshold, the routing as well as the restoration performance is comparable where the number of failures in one is twice the number of failures in the other; (ii) the percentage of the disrupted flows and the percentage of the disrupted demand that can be restored successfully increase with decreasing network load; and (iii) prioritized restoration policies are effective under heavy network load conditions, and their effectiveness decreases with decreasing network load.