Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Online Handwritten Gurmukhi Character Recognition

Computers are greatly influencing the lives of human beings and their usage is increasing at a tremendous rate. The ease with which we can exchange information between user and computer is of immense importance today because input devices such as keyboard and mouse have limitations vis-a-vis input through natural handwriting. We can use the online handwriting recognition process for a quick and natural way of communication between computer and human beings. Handwriting recognition is in research for over four decades and has attracted many researchers across the world. Variations in handwriting are one prominent problem and achieving high degree of accuracy is a tedious task. The main goal of this thesis is to develop an online handwritten Gurmukhi character recognition system. Gurmukhi is the script of Punjabi language which is widely spoken across the globe. This thesis is divided into six chapters. A brief outline of each chapter is given in the following paragraphs. Chapter 1 includes three sections, namely, issues in online handwriting recognition system, literature review and overview of Gurmukhi script. Issues in online handwriting recognition system include: handwriting styles variations; constrained and unconstrained handwriting; personal, situational and material factors; writer dependent vs. writer independent recognition systems. In literature review, a detailed literature survey on each phase of established procedure of online handwriting recognition has been presented. The established procedure to recognize online handwriting includes data collection, preprocessing, feature extraction, segmentation, recognition and post-processing. We have also reviewed literature for different recognition methods. These recognition methods are statistical, syntactical and structural, neural network and elastic matching methods. In addition, we have also discussed some of the results reported in the literature of online handwriting recognition. This literature review covers different languages such as English, Chinese, Japanese, Urdu, Hindi, Bangali, Tamil and Telugu. In the overview of Gurmukhi script, we have included nature of handwriting in Gurmukhi script and different characters of Gurmukhi script. Chapter 2 contains the work carried out for three phases of online handwriting character recognition. These phases are data collection, preprocessing and feature extraction. These phases are discussed in three sections entitled data collection phase, preprocessing phase and computation of features phase. In data collection phase, input handwritten strokes are
Occurrence of rheumatoid arthritis is not increased in the first degree relatives of a population based inception cohort of inflammatory polyarthritis.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in first degree relatives of a true population based sample of probands with inflammatory polyarthritis. METHODS: In a case-control study, a two stage screening procedure was used to ascertain the prevalence of RA in 518 first degree relatives of 207 Norfolk Arthritis Register cases registered in 1990 and 414 first degree relatives of 180 local controls. An initial joint symptom and medical history questionnaire was followed by a physical examination, and serological and radiological evaluation of those with symptoms. RESULTS: The prevalence of RA in the first degree relatives of all the Norfolk Arthritis Register cases was 7.7/1000, compared with 4.8/1000 in the first degree relatives of the controls, with a risk ratio of 1.6 (95% confidence interval 0.3 to 8.7). This very modest increase was also seen when the analysis was restricted to the first degree relatives of Norfolk Arthritis Register cases who satisfied the American Rheumatism Association criteria for RA: prevalence rate 7.2/1000. CONCLUSION: There was no evidence of an important increased familial risk of RA in this community based sample. These data are compatible with others from immunogenetic studies showing only weak HLA associations with community ascertained RA.
A Doppler statistic for zero autocorrelation waveforms

There are several natural constructions of constant amplitude zero autocorrelation (off the DC-component) waveforms. We adopt a construction for waveforms of length K, where K is a non-square-free integer. This property of K is used in the derivation of a frequency shifting (Doppler) detection algorithm which we derive. There are number theoretic properties which account for the properties of this algorithm, as well as for analogous but different properties in the square-free case. A variety of relevant examples is given along with the technical rationale for the algorithm.
On goal-oriented business process simulation

Nowadays organizations are becoming even more focused on their business processes (BP) and in addition increasing interest in goal-oriented BP. Traditional BP simulation approaches consider BP as a pre-defined sequence of activities, limiting possibilities to adapt a process model to changes occurring in the business environment. To be able to use dynamic BP in simulation we need an approach, which enables us to use goal-oriented BP in simulation. In this paper, we present concept of a goal, goal-oriented approach and goal-oriented BP modeling. In addition, we presented the general way to describe simulation state and by doing that — describe the simulation goal. Moreover, we presented general ideas how simulation engine should select most beneficial activities during simulation runtime.
Childhood socioeconomic position and cognitive function in adulthood.

BACKGROUND Risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease is higher among adults with limited education, and the less educated perform poorer on cognitive function tests. This study determines whether the socioeconomic environment experienced during childhood has an impact on cognitive functioning in middle age. METHODS A population-based study of eastern Finnish men (n = 496) aged 58 and 64 for whom there were data on parent's socioeconomic position (SEP), their own education level, and performance on neuropsychological tests. Cognitive function was measured using the Trail Making Test, the Selective Reminding Test, the Verbal Fluency Test, the Visual Reproduction Test, and the Mini Mental State Exam. RESULTS We found a significant and graded association between parental SEP (combined as an index) and cognitive function both prior to and after adjustment for respondent's education. Those from more disadvantaged backgrounds exhibited the poorest performance. When the separate components of the parental SEP measure were used, father's occupation and mother's education were independently associated with the respondent's score for three and five of the tests, respectively (there was no association with father's education and mother's occupation). After adjustment for the respondent's education, father's occupation was no longer associated with respondent's test score, however, the results were essentially unchanged for mother's education. CONCLUSIONS Higher SEP during childhood and greater educational attainment are both associated with cognitive function in adulthood, with mothers and fathers each contributing to their offspring's formative cognitive development and later life cognitive ability (albeit in different ways). Improvements in both parental socioeconomic circumstances and the educational attainment of their offspring could possibly enhance cognitive function and decrease risk of dementia later in life.
Training Dependency Parser Using Light Feedback

We introduce lightly supervised learning for dependency parsing. In this paradigm, the algorithm is initiated with a parser, such as one that was built based on a very limited amount of fully annotated training data. Then, the algorithm iterates over unlabeled sentences and asks only for a single bit of feedback, rather than a full parse tree. Specifically, given an example the algorithm outputs two possible parse trees and receives only a single bit indicating which of the two alternatives has more correct edges. There is no direct information about the correctness of any edge. We show on dependency parsing tasks in 14 languages that with only 1% of fully labeled data, and light-feedback on the remaining 99% of the training data, our algorithm achieves, on average, only 5% lower performance than when training with fully annotated training set. We also evaluate the algorithm in different feedback settings and show its robustness to noise.
Relationship between self-reported low productivity and overtime working.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between overtime working and self-reported low productivity due to poor health over the course of 1 year. METHODS The subjects were 94 random-sampled workers at a Japanese manufacturing company. The data on sickness absence and low productivity due to poor health were collected by self-report questionnaires every month from October 1999 to September 2000. Seventy-four workers returned complete answers. The complete data on overtime hours of forty-nine of these employees were obtained from company records. RESULTS In those reporting low productivity, cold-like symptoms and sleep loss were given as the causes. Low productivity was closely linked to overtime worked, whereas sick leave tended to increase during periods of change in overtime working. CONCLUSION Our results suggest the possibility of a relationship between overtime working and self-reported low productivity.
Forty years of carabid beetle research in Europe – from taxonomy, biology, ecology and population studies to bioindication, habitat assessment and conservation

Abstract ‘Carabidologists do it all’ (Niemelä 1996a) is a phrase with which most European carabidologists are familiar. Indeed, during the last half a century, professional and amateur entomologists have contributed enormously to our understanding of the basic biology of carabid beetles. The success of the field is in no small part due to regular European Carabidologists’ Meetings, which started in 1969 in Wijster, the Netherlands, with the 14th meeting again held in the Netherlands in 2009, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first meeting and 50 years of long-term research in the Dwingelderveld. This paper offers a subjective summary of some of the major developments in carabidology since the 1960s. Taxonomy of the family Carabidae is now reasonably established, and the application of modern taxonomic tools has brought up several surprises like elsewhere in the animal kingdom. Progress has been made on the ultimate and proximate factors of seasonality and timing of reproduction, which only exceptionally show non-seasonality. Triggers can be linked to evolutionary events and plausibly explained by the “taxon cycle” theory. Fairly little is still known about certain feeding preferences, including granivory and ants, as well as unique life history strategies, such as ectoparasitism and predation on higher taxa. The study of carabids has been instrumental in developing metapopulation theory (even if it was termed differently). Dispersal is one of the areas intensively studied, and results show an intricate interaction between walking and flying as the major mechanisms. The ecological study of carabids is still hampered by some unresolved questions about sampling and data evaluation. It is recognised that knowledge is uneven, especially concerning larvae and species in tropical areas. By their abundance and wide distribution, carabid beetles can be useful in population studies, bioindication, conservation biology and landscape ecology. Indeed, 40 years of carabidological research have provided so much data and insights, that among insects - and arguably most other terrestrial organisms - carabid beetles are one of the most worthwhile model groups for biological studies.
Result-Biased Distributed-Arithmetic-Based Filter Architectures for Approximately Computing the DWT

The discrete wavelet transform is a fundamental block in several schemes for image compression. Its implementation relies on filters that usually require multiplications leading to a relevant hardware complexity. Distributed arithmetic is a general and effective technique to implement multiplierless filters and has been exploited in the past to implement the discrete wavelet transform as well. This work proposes a general method to implement a discrete wavelet transform architecture based on distributed arithmetic to produce approximate results. The novelty of the proposed method relies on the use of result-biasing techniques (inspired by the ones used in fixed-width multiplier architectures), which cause a very small loss of quality of the compressed image (average loss of 0.11 dB and 0.20 dB in terms of PSNR for the 9/7 and 10/18 wavelet filters, respectively). Compared with previously proposed distributed-arithmetic-based architectures for the computation of the discrete wavelet transform, this technique saves from about 20% to 25% of hardware complexity.
WCET TOOL CHALLENGE 2008: REPORT

Following the successful WCET Tool Challenge in 2006, the second event in this series was organized in 2008, again with support from the ARTIST2 Network of Excellence. The WCET Tool Challenge 2008 (WCC'08) provides benchmark programs and poses a number of “analysis problems” about the dynamic, run­time properties of these programs. The participants are challenged to solve these problems with their program­analysis tools. Two kinds of problems are defined: WCET problems, which ask for bounds on the execution time of chosen parts (sub­ programs) of the benchmarks, under given constraints on input data; and flow­analysis problems, which ask for bounds on the number of times certain parts of the benchmark can be executed, again under some constraints. We describe the organization of WCC'08, the benchmark programs, the participating tools, and the general results, successes, and failures. Most participants found WCC'08 to be a useful test of their tools. Unlike the 2006 Challenge, the WCC'08 participants include several tools for the same target (ARM7, LPC2138), and tools that combine measurements and static analysis, as well as pure static­analysis tools.
Engineering responses to pandemics

Focusing on pandemic influenza, this chapter approaches the planning for and response to such a major worldwide health event as a complex engineering systems problem. Action-oriented analysis of pandemics requires a broad inclusion of academic disciplines since no one domain can cover a significant fraction of the problem. Numerous research papers and action plans have treated pandemics as purely medical happenings, focusing on hospitals, health care professionals, creation and distribution of vaccines and anti-virals, etc. But human behavior with regard to hygiene and social distancing constitutes a first-order partial brake or control of the spread and intensity of infection. Such behavioral options are "non-pharmaceutical interventions. " (NPIs) The chapter employs simple mathematical models to study alternative controls of infection, addressing a well-known parameter in epidemiology, R0, the "reproductive number," defined as the mean number of new infections generated by an index case. Values of R0 greater than 1.0 usually indicate that the infection begins with exponential growth, the generation-to-generation growth rate being R0. R0 is broken down into constituent parts related to the frequency and intensity of human contacts, both partially under our control. It is suggested that any numerical value for R0 has little meaning outside the social context to which it pertains. Difference equation models are then employed to study the effects of heterogeneity of population social contact rates, the analysis showing that the disease tends to be driven by high frequency individuals. Related analyses show the futility of trying geographically to isolate the disease. Finally, the models are operated under a variety of assumptions related to social distancing and changes in hygienic behavior. The results are promising in terms of potentially reducing the total impact of the pandemic.
[Study on the genic polymorphism of HLA-DRB1 in a population in the north of China].

OBJECTIVE To investigate at the DNA level the polymorphism of HLA-DRB1 gene in Han population in Beijing of China. METHODS This study was conducted in the Hans in Beijing. A total of 2810 normal and unrelated neonates were analyzed and subjected to HLA-DRB1 low resolution typing, and from among them 217 neonates were randomly selected for DRB1 high resolution typing by polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific primers technique. RESULTS Fourteen HLA-DRB1 specificity and 39 alleles were found with HLA-DRB1 *09012, *1501, *07011, *08032 as the most common genes. Their gene frequencies and allelic distributions were compared to those observed in other ethnic populations. CONCLUSION The results showed the characteristic of HLA-DRB1 distribution, and provided more comprehensive and accurate gene data that may serve as normal reference values for the population in Beijing, China.
Biomedical Exploitation of Chitin and Chitosan via Mechano-Chemical Disassembly, Electrospinning, Dissolution in Imidazolium Ionic Liquids, and Supercritical Drying

Recently developed technology permits to optimize simultaneously surface area, porosity, density, rigidity and surface morphology of chitin-derived materials of biomedical interest. Safe and ecofriendly disassembly of chitin has superseded the dangerous acid hydrolysis and provides higher yields and scaling-up possibilities: the chitosan nanofibrils are finding applications in reinforced bone scaffolds and composite dressings for dermal wounds. Electrospun chitosan nanofibers, in the form of biocompatible thin mats and non-wovens, are being actively studied: composites of gelatin + chitosan + polyurethane have been proposed for cardiac valves and for nerve conduits; fibers are also manufactured from electrospun particles that self-assemble during subsequent freeze-drying. Ionic liquids (salts of alkylated imidazolium) are suitable as non-aqueous solvents that permit desirable reactions to occur for drug delivery purposes. Gel drying with supercritical CO2 leads to structures most similar to the extracellular matrix, even when the chitosan is crosslinked, or in combination with metal oxides of interest in orthopedics.
Robust superresolution of multiangle-multispectral remote sensing images based on rank minimization

In this paper, a unified superresolution framework, which simultaneously integrates image reconstruction and image registration, is proposed for multiangle-multispectral remote sensing images. With the strong correlation of different angle images, the low-rank structure of multiangle image is explored by lexicographically ordering the 3-D data cube into a 2-D matrix. Based on this property, the observed images is decomposed to a background image and a foreground image. Considering the high relationship between each band of the multispectral image, a multichannel total variation (MTV) constraint was applied on the target high resolution background image. Therefore, a robust superresolution model of multiangle-multispectral remote sensing image based on rank minimization (RSRRM) is proposed to register the low resolution multi-angle images and reconstruct high-resolution image. This method can achieve image registration and superresolution at the same time. Several experiments are conducted to illustrate the performance of the method.
The 2012 social event detection dataset

This paper presents the 2012 Social Event Detection dataset (SED2012). The dataset constitutes a challenging benchmark for methods that detect social events in large collections of multimedia items. More specifically, the dataset comprises more than 160 thousands of Flickr photos and their accompanying metadata, as well as a list of 149 manually selected and annotated target events, each of which is defined as a set of relevant photos. This paper discusses the challenges defined as part of SED 2012, the data collection process, the dataset and its basic statistics, the ground truth creation and the suggested evaluation methodology.
A study about psychophysiological measures in user experience monitoring and evaluation

User experience (UX) has received increased attention in last years, in a reality of mobile applications and internet of things. In order to increase competitiveness, companies have been invested in understand user's emotions during the experience. However, this is still a challenge for HCI researchers. This article presents an investigation, as a part of a major research, based on 14 studies, about use of psychophysiological measures in HCI research. We found 1) that psychophysiological measures are still difficult to apply, once sensors are still invasive and difficult to understand and use; 2) each psychophysiological measure represents various emotions, and each emotion is measured by various psychophysiological measures; and 3) it is necessary to explore and discover more solutions to user's emotion measurement. This scenario shows an opportunity for UX evaluation methods, once a future work considers the use of psychophysiological measures.
Maximization of energy efficiency in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks with SERENA

In wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, an analysis of the node energy consumption distribution shows that the largest part is due to the time spent in the idle state. This result is at the origin of SERENA, an algorithm to SchEdule RoutEr Nodes Activity. SERENA allows router nodes to sleep, while ensuring end-to-end communication in the wireless network. It is a localized and decentralized algorithm assigning time slots to nodes. Any node stays awake only during its slot and the slots assigned to its neighbors, it sleeps the remaining time. Simulation results show that SERENA enables us to maximize network lifetime while increasing the number of user messages delivered. SERENA is based on a two-hop coloring algorithm, whose complexity in terms of colors and rounds is evaluated. We then quantify the slot reuse. Finally, we show how SERENA improves the node energy consumption distribution and maximizes the energy efficiency of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. We compare SERENA with classical TDMA and optimized variants such as USAP in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks.