Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human age-estimation system based on double-level feature fusion of face and gait images

ABSTRACT Age estimation is one of the latest research topics nowadays in the field of image processing and computer vision with variety of commercial and security applications. To the best of our knowledge, no work has been done yet to estimate the age using fusion of two biometric traits. In this article, we propose a double-level feature fusion method to artificially estimate the age of a human being. In the first level fusion, features of several walking periods of Gait sample and features of several angles of a face sample are fused individually using averaging function. In the second-level fusion, these individually fused features of gait and face are combined to form a single-feature vector using concatenation. Information fusion from various sources increases the certainty in decision-making. Gait is a good feature to utilise as it captures the movement of the whole body and encodes both structural and transitional motion. The proposed double-level feature fusion approach improves the accuracy of the estimated age in comparison to the age estimated using single biometric trait. Further, robustness and applicability of the system for the main task of age estimation also improve to a noticeable extent.
Optical superimposed vortex beams generated by integrated holographic plates with blazed grating

In this paper, we demonstrate that the superposition of two vortex beams with controlled topological charges can be realized by integrating two holographic plates with blazed grating. First, the holographic plate with blazed grating was designed and fabricated by laser direct writing for generating well-separated vortex beam. Then, the relationship between the periods of blazed grating and the discrete angles of vortex beams was systemically investigated. Finally, through setting the discrete angle and different revolving direction of the holographic plates, the composite fork-shaped field was realized by the superposition of two vortex beams in a particular position. The topological charges of composite fork-shaped field (l = 1, 0, 3, and 4) depend on the topological charges of compositional vortex beams, which are well agreed with the theoretical simulation. The method opens up a wide range of opportunities and possibilities for applying in optical communication, optical manipulations, and photonic inte.
Time periodic solutions for the non-isentropic compressible quantum hydrodynamic equations with viscosity in R^3

This article concerns the existence and uniqueness of a time periodic solution for the non-isentropic quantum hydrodynamic equations with viscosity. By applying the Leray-Schauder theory, subtle energy estimates and a limiting method, we obtain the existence of time periodic solutions under some smallness assumptions on the time periodic external force in \(\mathbb{R}^3\). The uniqueness can be proved by similar energy estimates. In particular, the quantum effects and the energy equation are taken into account in this paper which play a significant role in the uniform (in the domain R and the positive constant \(\epsilon\)) estimates, especially in the selection of the norm. For more information see https://ejde.math.txstate.edu/Volumes/2020/103/abstr.html
Protistology 17 (1): 16–29 (2023)

Nitrate is one of the major sources of nitrogen for unicellular algae growth and development. To be used in the biosynthesis of amino acids, proteins, and other nitrogenous compounds, nitrate must be reduced to ammonium. Nitrate reduction to nitrite catalyzed by nitrate reductase (NR) is followed by nitrite reduction to ammonium. Nitrate reductase is the first enzyme of the nitrate assimilation in algae, yeasts, fungi and plants. Assimilatory NR is a soluble, multicenter redox enzyme belonging to sulfite oxidase family that catalyzes the two-electron reduction of nitrate to nitrite using pyridine nucleotide as the electron donor (Redinbaugh and Campbell, 1985). NADH NR is the most common form in higher plants and algae, some of which also contain NAD(P)H NR, while NADPH NR occurs in fungi. NR is a homodimer with each subunit composed of about 100 kDa polypeptide and three cofactors, FAD, iron-heme (heme-Fe) and molybdenum (Mo)pterin, in a 1:1:1 ratio (Crawford et al., 1988; Gowri and Campbell, 1989; Kinghorn and Campbell, 1989; Vaucheret et al., 1989). In photosynthetic organisms, NR is present in cytosol (Castaings et al., 2011) and is regulated by nitrate ions, light, growth conditions, hormones, reduced nitrogen metabolites as well as by phosphorylation (Kaiser and Huber, 2001; Garg, 2013; Nemie-Feyissa et al., 2013). Second nitrate reductase of Dunaliella salina: functional redundancy or greater?
Methodology for the standardization of terminological resources: design of TriMED database to support multi-register medical communication

Terminology standardization reflects two different aspects involving the meaning of terms and the structure of terminological resources. In this paper, we focus on the structural aspect of standardization and we present the work of re-modeling TriMED, a multilingual terminological database conceived to support multi-register medical communication. In particular, we provide a general methodology to make the termbase compliant to three of the most 1 Pr ep int ve rsi on recent ISO/TC 37 standards. We focus on the definition of i) the structural meta-model of the resource, ii) the provided data categories and its Data Category Repository, and iii) the TBX format for its implementation.
BOARD CHARACTERISTICS AND FIRM SHARE VALUATION: EVIDENCE FROM LISTED INDUSTRIAL GOODS FIRMS IN NIGERIA

There are numerous empirical studies on corporate governance and firms’ performance. However few studies have been conducted on impact of corporate governance (Board Characteristics in specific) on firm’s shares valuation. This paper, therefore, looks into the impact of board characteristics on valuation of share prices of listed industrial goods firms in Nigeria. The paper used a sample of ten (10) out of 14 listed firms in the industrial goods sector with secondary data collected for six years period (2014 – 2019) which gives us 60 firms - year observations. Multiple regression model was used along side with descriptive statistics such mean and correlation statistics run using Stata software. Based on the data collected, analyzed and interpreted, the study concludes that board size plays vital roles on shares valuation. In view of these, the study recommends, among others, that the management of industrial goods firms in Nigeria should adhere strictly to the laid down rules in constituting board of directors with sufficient members relative to the firm’s size
Driving reconnection in sheared magnetic configurations with forced fluctuations

We investigate reconnection of magnetic field lines in sheared magnetic field configurations due to fluctuations driven by random forcing by means of numerical simulations. The simulations are performed with an incompressible, pseudo-spectral magnetohydrodynamics code in 2D where we take thick, resistively decaying, current-sheet like sheared magnetic configurations which do not reconnect spontaneously. We describe and test the forcing that is introduced in the momentum equation to drive fluctuations. It is found that the forcing does not change the rate of decay; however, it adds and removes energy faster in the presence of the magnetic shear structure compared to when it has decayed away. We observe that such a forcing can induce magnetic reconnection due to field line wandering leading to the formation of magnetic islands and O-points. These reconnecting field lines spread out as the current sheet decays with time. A semi-empirical formula is derived which reasonably explains the formation and spread o.
Counterfactual Explanations for Ranking Models

In recent years, many of the significant advances in artificial intelligence models have come at the cost of increased architectural complexity. Naturally, this complexity has jeopardized the inherent explainability of model decisions, and has inspired a line of work dedicated to the reverse engineering of such decisions, for otherwise uninterpretable models. Though several explainability methods have been adapted to the ranking problem, these solutions produce simple rankings of terms in a given document, scored by their influence on a model’s relevance judgement. However, these saliency approaches fail to identify terms vital to maintaining a positive relevance judgement. To this end, we propose the first application of counterfactual explainability to the ranking problem, in order to identify term subsets whose removal from a document results in a non-relevant judgement. We build upon the SEDC coun-terfactual explanation framework, and adapt novel solutions to accommodate the challenges of indexing, ranking, and efficient representation. We find that our explainability method consistently discovers succinct and pertinent explanations, and in many cases, is able to render them within several seconds. Despite our diverse evaluation, many choices specific to our implementation may influence performance, leaving room for future work to explore alternative indexing tools, ranking models, and datasets.
A SCRUTINY OF OSTEOLOGICAL ANALYSES OF MEDIEVAL POPULATIONS IN RURAL FLANDERS (BELGIUM), IN COMPARISON WITH NORTH-WESTERN EUROPEAN CASE STUDEIS, BASED ON THE OSTEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE SKELETAL REMAINS FROM MOORSEL & OOSTERWEEL

: Two osteological analyses, one of 103 individuals from the rural medieval graveyard in Moorsel, and one of 68 individuals from Oosterweel (both located in Belgium), were the start of a comprehensive study regarding rural medieval populations in north-west Europe. Despite a hiatus in the osteological research of both rural populations and those with a lower social status in most north-western European countries addressed in this study, palaeopathological data implied a higher frequency in (healed) trauma and musculoskeletal stress markers (MSM) for both sexes, plausibly due to heavier physical labour, and fewer infectious and deficiency diseases compared to the urban, and especially to the industrialised, environment. Moreover, palaeodemographic data suggested an equal ratio between male and female inhumations compared to skeletal remains excavated inside a church with a 2:1 male preponderance. Besides a similar average stature (with a slightly higher result for rural females), the macroscopic investigation suggested a general good health condition which was also attested in the selected rural case studies. However, taking into consideration the osteological paradox, we suggest biomolecular analyses for further investigation concerning infectious diseases.
Computing Dependencies Using Formal Concept Analysis

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Computing Dependencies Using Formal Concept Analysis Jaume Baixeries, Victor Codocedo, Mehdi Kaytoue, Amedeo Napoli
Web Appendix for Variety Effects in Mobile Advertising

F Web Appendix F: Robustness Checks for the Main Effects xii F.1 Robustness Checks with Logistic Regression . xii F.2 Robustness Checks with Additional Preand Post-Treatment Controls . xiii F.3 Robustness Check with Exact Matching of the Sequence of Ads . xvi F.4 Alternative Approaches to Dynamic Selection . xviii F.5 Clustering Adjustment in Standard Errors . xx F.6 Placebo Analysis . xxii
An Operational (Preasymptotic) Measure of Fat-tailedness

This note presents an operational measure of fat-tailedness for univariate probability distributions, in $[0,1]$ where 0 is maximally thin-tailed (Gaussian) and 1 is maximally fat-tailed. Among others,1) it helps assess the sample size needed to establish a comparative $n$ needed for statistical significance, 2) allows practical comparisons across classes of fat-tailed distributions, 3) helps understand some inconsistent attributes of the lognormal, pending on the parametrization of its scale parameter. The literature is rich for what concerns asymptotic behavior, but there is a large void for finite values of $n$, those needed for operational purposes. Conventional measures of fat-tailedness, namely 1) the tail index for the power law class, and 2) Kurtosis for finite moment distributions fail to apply to some distributions, and do not allow comparisons across classes and parametrization, that is between power laws outside the Levy-Stable basin, or power laws to distributions in other classes, or power laws for different number of summands. How can one compare a sum of 100 Student T distributed random variables with 3 degrees of freedom to one in a Levy-Stable or a Lognormal class? How can one compare a sum of 100 Student T with 3 degrees of freedom to a single Student T with 2 degrees of freedom? We propose an operational and heuristic measure that allow us to compare $n$-summed independent variables under all distributions with finite first moment. The method is based on the rate of convergence of the Law of Large numbers for finite sums, $n$-summands specifically. We get either explicit expressions or simulation results and bounds for the lognormal, exponential, Pareto, and the Student T distributions in their various calibrations --in addition to the general Pearson classes.
Wind Simulation for Extreme and Fatigue Loads

Målinger af atmosfærisk turbulens afviger fra en Gaussisk proces, specielt hvad ang̊ar hastighedsændringer over sm̊a tidsskridt, hvor halerne p̊a sandsynlighedsfordelingen snarere er ekspotentielle end Gaussiske. Tælleprincipperne for ekstreme hændelser og eksistensen af kaskader af hændelser gennemg̊as. Empiriske ekstremstatistikker findes i overensstemmelse med Rices overskridelsesteori, n̊ar fordelingerne af hastighedsfluktuationer og deres tidsafledede antages at være uafhængige. Forudsigelser baseret p̊a antagelsen om at turbulensen er en Gaussisk proces vil dog undervurdere forekomsten af ekstremværdier med adskillige størrelsesordner, p̊a grund af afvigelsen fra den sande sandsynlighedsfordeling. Der er udviklet metoder til at simulere turbulenssignaler of visse forbedringer af beregningseffektiviteten. Metoderne kan anvendes til koblede processer med individuelle spektralog sandsynlighedsfordelinger. Ikke-Gaussiske processer simuleres med en en transformation fra de Gaussiake tilfælde under hensyntagen til forvrængningen af korrelationsfunktionen; ikke-stationære processer opn̊as med Bezier interpolation mellem stationære simuleringer med identiske pseudotilfældige tal; mens simulering af systemer, hvor enkelte signaler er kendte, muliggøres med betingede sandsynlighedsfordelinger. Der er udviklet en alsidig metode til at simulere ekstreme hændelser. Denne metode kan generere vindstød, vindspring, ekstreme hastighedsgradienter, og pludselige vindretningsskift. Der kan foreskrives en ønsket ensemble-middel form af de simulerede hændelser, og metode kan bruges til at find den kritiske hændelse for en given konstruktion. Opgaven formuleres som et variationsproblem, hvor man finder den mest sandsynlige justering af en sædvanlig simulering af en stationær Gaussisk process underlagt den relevante ekstremværdibetingelse, der formuleres som en linearkombination af værdier i processen. Metoden generaliseres til flere korrelerede processer, flere samvirkende betingelser, og tredimesionale felter. Der præsenteres generaliseringer for en enkelt ikke-Gaussisk proces underlagt simple betingelser, og der foresl̊as yderligere generaliseringer for korrelerede ikke-Gaussiske proceser. This work is a joint effort of Risø National Laboratory, the Technical University of Denmark, and NEG-Micon A/S, as part of the EFP-2001(Wind) programme sponsored by the Danish Energy Agency, contract no. 1363/01-0005. ISBN 87–550–3281–8(Internet) ISSN 0106–2840
Zeroth-Order Optimization and Its Application to Adversarial Machine Learning

—Many big data problems deal with complex data generating processes that cannot be described by analytical forms but can provide function evaluations, such as measurements from physical environments or predictions from deployed machine learning models. These types of problems fall into zeroth-order (gradient-free) optimization with respect to black-box models. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive introduction to recent advances in zeroth-order (ZO) optimization methods in both theory and applications. On the theory side, we will elaborate on ZO gradient estimation and the convergence rate of various ZO algorithms. The existing studies suggest that ZO algorithms typically agree with the iteration complexity of ﬁrst-order algorithms up to a small-degree polynomial of the problem size. On the application side, we will delve into applications of ZO algorithms on studying the robustness of deep neural networks against adversarial perturbations. In particular, we will illustrate how to formulate the design of black-box adversarial attacks as a ZO optimization problem and how adversarial attacks can beneﬁt from advanced ZO optimization techniques, such as providing query-efﬁcient approaches to generating adversarial examples from a black-box image classiﬁer.
Field monitoring of pore water pressure in fully and partly saturated debris flows at Ohya landslide scar, Japan

Abstract. The characteristics of debris flows (e.g., mobility, sediment concentration, erosion, and deposition of sediment) are dependent on the pore water pressure in the flows. Therefore, understanding the magnitude of pore water pressure in debris flows is essential for improving debris flow mitigation measures. Notably, the pore water pressure in a partly saturated flow, which contains an unsaturated layer in its upper part, has not been previously understood due to a lack of data. The monitoring performed in Ohya landslide scar, central Japan, allowed us to obtain the data on the pore water pressure in fully and partly saturated flows during four debris flow events. In some partly and fully saturated debris flows, the pore water pressure at the channel bed exceeded the hydrostatic pressure of clean water. The depth gradient of the pore water pressure in the lower part of the flow, monitored using water pressure sensors at multiple depths, was generally higher than the depth-averaged gradient of the pore water pressure from the channel bed to the surface of the flow. The low gradient of the pore water pressure in the upper part of partly saturated debris flows may be affected by the low hydrostatic pressure due to unsaturation of the flow. Bagnold number, Savage number, and friction number indicated that frictional force dominated in the partly saturated debris flows. Excess pore water pressure was observed in the lower part of partly saturated surges. The excess pore water pressure may have been generated by the contraction of interstitial water and have been maintained due to low hydraulic diffusivity in debris flows. The pore water pressure at the channel bed of fully saturated flow was generally similar to the hydrostatic pressure of clean water, while some saturated surges portrayed higher pore water pressure than the hydrostatic pressure. The travel distance of debris flows, investigated by the structure-from-motion technique using uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV-SfM) and the monitoring of time-lapse cameras, was long during a rainfall event with high intensity even though the pore water pressure in the flow was not significantly high. We conclude that the excess pore water pressure is present in many debris flow surges and an important mechanism in debris flow surge behaviors.
Method Development and Validation of Herbals: A Review

: The assurance of the safety, quality, and efficacy of medicinal plants and herbal products is turning into a vital issue as the demand for and commercial value of herbal medicines is rising dramatically. The development of a systematic strategy and thoughtful methodology for the standardisation of herbal raw materials and herbal formulations is urgently required. Standardization methods should take into consideration all aspects contributing to the quality of the herbal drugs. Herbal medicines are quite variable because they are made up of numerous ingredients. Hence, it is essential to create reliable chromatographic and spectroscopic fingerprints that represent the chemically unique and pharmacologically active components of herbal medicine. The data produced based on this chromatographic pattern may be used to identify genuine medications, weed out adulterants, and preserve the potency and consistency of the medication. This paper deals with the advanced chromatographic as well as spectroscopic techniques with the help of which qualitative and quantitative evaluation of Herbal Medicines and formulations can be carried out.
A Prospective Study of Congestive Heart Failure and its Prognosis Using the 3C: Reactive Protein as A Measure of Disease Severity

Aim: The aim of this study to evaluate the cardiac failure and its prognostication with 3C: Reactive protein as a marker of severity. Methods: The cross-sectional analytical study was conducted in the Department of General Medicine, Nalanda Medical College and Hospital, Patna, Bihar, India, , after taking the approval of the protocol review committee and institutional ethics committee. The non probabilistic sample was composed of 90 non consecutive patients of both sexes. Chagas disease was confirmed by 3 serological tests: direct agglutination, immunofluorescence, and enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA), according to previously established protocols, and patients with 2 or more positive assays were accepted as positive. Results: The average age of the participants was 51.4±2.7 years for the population of healthy volunteers and 63.2±1.7 years for seropositive patients. The average age of patients according to phase of Chagas disease was as follows: Phase I, 57.9±3.0; Phase II, 63.7±2.7, and Phase III, 69.3±2.2 years, respectively, with a significant difference observed in Phase II and III patients versus the control group and Phase I patients. In the means calculated for the echocardiographic parameters, in particular, left ventricular end-diastolic diameter, left ventricular end-systolic diameter, left atrial diastolic diameter, right ventricular diastolic diameter which indicate chamber dilation, significant quantitative increases were confirmed with respect to the degree of the disease ( P <.05). An assessment of left ventricular end-diastolic volume and left ventricular end-systolic volume showed a significant increase ( P <.05) as the disease progressed. Mean absolute CRP values in the study group showed a significant progressive increase ( P <.005) in Phase I (0.3±0.06 mg/dL), Phase II (0.7±0.3 mg/dL), and Phase III (4.2±1.4 mg/dL), respectively, with a substantial, significant difference in serum values between patients with Phase III Chagas disease and those with Phases I or II. The control group expressed similar mean values (0.21±0.05) to those of Phase I patients. Conclusion: Elevated IL-6 concentrations were related to the phase of Chagas disease, indicating that once these patients have progressed beyond the acute phase, they experience a chronic inflammatory process, which becomes more severe with progression to Phase III status .