Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Short Review of Methods for Face Detection and Multifractal Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to present short reviews the face detection techniques and to study the effect of Multifractal analysis in detecting facial features. In reviewing the existing techniques, we have compared the performance of Nilsson et al’s algorithm, Haar Training implemented within Open Source Computer Vision Library (OpenCV) and Keinzle’s algorithm in face detection. Then, we have produced some experimental results suggesting that the Multifractal approach would help to extract key facial features of a human face. We conclude the paper with some discussions on how the work can be taken further.
Como gerar valor para os clientes por meio dos Serviços de Atendimento ao Consumidor: o que mostram as pesquisas

During the 1990s, the number of Customer Service Departments (CSDs) in operation in Brazil grew significantly. Such departments have since been studied in researches that focused essentially two topics: customers satisfaction with the management of complaints and the performance of Customer Service Departments in the organization. The objective of this paper is to review the results of these studies seeking for recommendations that could help organizations in the management of CSDs. As a result, the paper suggests several aspects that should be taken in consideration in order to improve the relationship between the CSD, the customers and the firm and contribute for a more strategic use of this tool in the task of offering more value to customers.
Distributed-Actuation Mechanism for a Finger-Type Manipulator: Theory and Experiments

In this paper, a distributed-actuation method has been newly proposed based on a simple sliding-actuation mechanism for a finger-type manipulator design. Based on the spatially distributed force on the proposed sliding-actuation mechanism, it has been shown that the distributed actuation provides additional design freedom to optimize the manipulator performance. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we developed a finger-type manipulator, which consists of four links with three joints, and performed experiments. The experimental results show that the fingertip force of the developed manipulator can be effectively increased and easily managed by the distributed-actuation method.
Modeling Offenders' Decisions: A Framework for Research and Policy

Developments in a number of academic disciplines-the sociology of deviance, criminology, economics, psychology-suggest that it is useful to see criminal behavior not as the result of psychologically and socially determined dispositions to offend, but as the outcome of the offender's broadly rational choices and decisions. This perspective provides a basis for devising models of criminal behavior that (1) offer frameworks within which to locate existing research, (2) suggest directions for new research, (3) facilitate analysis of existing policy, and (4) help to identify potentially fruitful policy initiatives. Such models need not offer comprehensive explanations; they may be limited and incomplete, yet still be "good enough" to achieve these important policy and research purposes. To meet this criterion they need to be specific to particular forms of crime, and they need separately to describe both the processes of involvement in crime and the decisions surrounding the commission of the offense itself. Developing models that are crime specific and that take due account of rationality will also demand more knowledge about the ways in which offenders process and evaluate relevant information. Such a decision perspective appears to have most immediate payoff for crime control efforts aimed at reducing criminal opportunity.
Multimodal multiplayer tabletop gaming

There is a large disparity between the rich physical interfaces of co-located arcade games and the generic input devices seen in most home console systems. In this article we argue that a digital table is a conducive form factor for general co-located home gaming as it affords: (a) seating in collaboratively relevant positions that give all equal opportunity to reach into the surface and share a common view; (b) rich whole-handed gesture input usually seen only when handling physical objects; (c) the ability to monitor how others use space and access objects on the surface; and (d) the ability to communicate with each other and interact on top of the surface via gestures and verbal utterance. Our thesis is that multimodal gesture and speech input benefits collaborative interaction over such a digital table. To investigate this thesis, we designed a multimodal, multiplayer gaming environment that allows players to interact directly atop a digital table via speech and rich whole-hand gestures. We transform two commercial single-player computer games, representing a strategy and simulation game genre, to work within this setting.
The "motion silencing" illusion results from global motion and crowding.

Suchow and Alvarez (2011) recently devised a striking illusion, where objects changing in color, luminance, size, or shape appear to stop changing when they move. They refer to the illusion as "motion silencing of awareness to visual change. " Here we present evidence that the illusion results from two perceptual processes: global motion and crowding. We adapted Suchow and Alvarez's stimulus to three concentric rings of dots, a central ring of "target dots" flanked on either side by similarly moving flanker dots. Subjects had to identify in which of two presentations the target dots were continuously changing (sinusoidally) in size, as distinct from the other interval in which size was constant. The results show: (a) Motion silencing depends on target speed, with a threshold around 0.2 rotations per second (corresponding to about 10°/s linear motion). (b) Silencing depends on both target-flanker spacing and eccentricity, with critical spacing about half eccentricity, consistent with Bouma's law. (c) The critical spacing was independent of stimulus size, again consistent with Bouma's law. (d) Critical spacing depended strongly on contrast polarity. All results imply that the "motion silencing" illusion may result from crowding.
Influência da hidrocinesioterapia no equilíbrio postural de idosas institucionalizadas

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the influence that a hydrokinetic therapy program in shallow water has on postural balance of institutionalized elderly women. In this study 8 institutionalized elderly, with a mean age of 62.95 ± 2.87 years participated. The postural balance was evaluated through the force platform. 3 attempts in each sensory organization test (SOT) previously and subsequently the intervention of hydrokinetic therapy in shallow water were made. The variables analyzed were: displacement amplitude of the pressure center (COP) in the anteroposterior, mediolateral direction and displacement speed of the COP. An improvement in postural control after the intervention was observed, where a decrease on the displacement of the pressure center happened, especially in the anteroposterior direction. For the group of institutionalized elderly participants in this study, hydrokinetic therapy performed in shallow water was able to improve postural balance.
Caco-2 cell permeability assays to measure drug absorption

Caco-2 cells are a human colon epithelial cancer cell line used as a model of human intestinal absorption of drugs and other compounds. When cultured as a monolayer, Caco-2 cells differentiate to form tight junctions between cells to serve as a model of paracellular movement of compounds across the monolayer. In addition, Caco-2 cells express transporter proteins, efflux proteins, and Phase II conjugation enzymes to model a variety of transcellular pathways as well as metabolic transformation of test substances. In many respects, the Caco-2 cell monolayer mimics the human intestinal epithelium. One of the functional differences between normal cells and Caco-2 cells is the lack of expression of the cytochrome P450 isozymes and in particular, CYP3A4, which is normally expressed at high levels in the intestine. However, Caco-2 cells may be induced to express higher levels of CYP3A4 by treatment with vitamin D3. Caco-2 cell monolayers are usually cultured on semipermeable plastic supports that may be fitted into the wells of multi-well culture plates. Test compounds are then added to either the apical or basolateral sides of the monolayer. After incubation for various lengths of time, aliquots of the buffer in opposite chambers are removed for the determination of the concentration of test compounds and the computation of the rates of permeability for each compound (called the apparent permeability coefficients). Although radiolabelled compounds were used in the original Caco-2 cells monolayer assays, radiolabelled compounds have been replaced in most laboratories by the use of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and LC-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS). Mass spectrometry not only eliminates the need for radiolabelled compounds, but permits the simultaneous measurement of multiple compounds. The measurement of multiple compounds per assay reduces the number of incubations that need to be carried out, thereby increasing the throughput of the experiments. Furthermore, LC-MS and LC-MS-MS add another dimension to Caco-2 assays by facilitating the investigation of the metabolism of compounds by Caco-2 cells.
Scheduling with message deadlines for hard real time SDL systems

Hard real-time system design requires both, a methodology that allows to control the increasing functional complexity and additionally an a-priori proof that all timing requirements will be met even in worst case situations. This work introduces message based earliest deadline first scheduling (MEDF scheduling) as a predictable model of computation for the "Specification and Description Language" SDL. Relying on this improved semantics, a real-time system's implementation and its worst case timing behaviour can be automatically derived on the basis of its SDL system specification by one strike.
A fast maximum-likelihood decoder for convolutional codes

The lazy Viterbi decoder is a maximum-likelihood decoder for block and stream convolutional codes. For many codes of practical interest, under reasonable noise conditions, the lazy decoder is much faster than the original Viterbi decoder. For a code of constraint length 6, the lazy algorithm is about 50% faster than an optimized implementation of the Viterbi decoder whenever SNR>6 dB. Moreover, while the running time of the Viterbi decoder grows exponentially with the constraint length, under reasonable noise conditions, the running time of the lazy algorithm is essentially independent of the constraint length. This paper introduces the lazy Viterbi decoder and shows how to make it efficient in practice.
Data Mining in Elite Sports: A Review and a Framework

Sophisticated data analytical methods such as data mining, where the focus is upon exploration and developing new insights, are becoming increasingly useful tools in analysing elite sports performance data and supporting decision making that is crucial to gaining success. In this article, we investigate the different data mining demands of elite sports with respect to a number of features that describe sport competitions. The aim is to more structurally connect the sports and data mining domains through: (a) describing a framework for categorizing elite sports, and (b) understanding the analytical demands of different performance analysis problems. Therefore, we review different aspects such as sport categories and performance analysis requirements that influence each stage in sports data mining. We also present a model bringing together performance analysis requirements, data mining methods, data mining techniques, and technique characteristics. This will assist both data scientists and sport professionals to more effectively collaborate and contribute to success in elite sport events.
Schooling and violence in South Africa: Creating a safer school

The legacy of the brutality of apartheid in South Africa is a violent social context characterized by high levels of unemployment, extremes of wealth and poverty, continuing racism, the easy availability of guns and patriarchal values and behaviours. Violent crime is widespread in South Africa and schools in disadvantaged areas suffer from serious problems of gang-related crime. This article discusses a pilot project with a cluster of three schools in Durban which investigated whether intervention and training coupled with mutual support between cooperating schools, and between schools and the police, can reduce incidents of crime and violence. The idea behind the project was to see whether a small-scale, simple and inexpensive intervention could help to improve security in a relatively short time span. The article describes the nature of the project, evaluates its outcomes and discusses emergent issues for South African education. The overall conclusion stemming from the project is that South African schools are not helpless in the face of an onslaught of crime and violence. While there is no complete and foolproof solution to the problem, schools can nevertheless be helped to find simple, relatively cheap and practical measures to reduce crime and violence.
‘I want them better than me’: Pedagogical strategies employed by four immigrant parents in the face of perceived forms of exclusion by school authorities

In Australia, students from Chinese and Arabic language backgrounds form the largest minority language groups in the New South Wales (NSW) public school system. Yet the mainstream academic performance of students from these two communities show marked differences in their levels of attainment. This article explores the home literacy practices of two immigrant families – one from a Chinese background and the other of Lebanese heritage – in order to obtain insights into how parents support their children in the acquisition of mainstream literacies. It documents parents’ perceptions of their interactions with school authorities in relation to their children’s educational needs. Findings indicate that despite a plethora of inclusive policies adopted by the children’s schools, the families in our study perceived school authorities as exclusionary in their practices. The article chronicles the sense of powerlessness and alienation experienced by both families when confronted with the rigidity of a school system they neither knew nor understood. Despite the similarities in their experiences, the Chinese family succeeded in the acquisition of mainstream literacies while the Lebanese family continues to struggle with the demands of the school curriculum. We present the contrasting solutions adopted by the two families to meet the educational needs of their children and indicate how their culturally derived responses go part way in explaining the different levels of school achievement experienced by the two families.
Preschoolers report misinformation despite accurate memory.

A model of long-term retention was used to eliminate problems in past studies regarding the effects postevent misinformation has on preschoolers' testimony and memory. Half of the 216 preschoolers received a single slide presentation and the remaining half received consecutive presentations until they learned the material to criterion. Children either did not receive postevent information or received either correct or misleading information, presented in narrative or questionnaire form, concerning event details 3 weeks after acquisition. Four weeks after acquisition, all of the children received 4 test trials without further study opportunity. When initial learning was controlled and appropriate measurement techniques were in place, exposure to misleading information encouraged preschoolers to report misinformation. However, the memory-impairing effects of misleading information on original memory were rare.
Symbolic security analysis of ruby-on-rails web applications

Many of today's web applications are built on frameworks that include sophisticated defenses against malicious adversaries. However, mistakes in the way developers deploy those defenses could leave applications open to attack. To address this issue, we introduce Rubyx, a symbolic executor that we use to analyze Ruby-on-Rails web applications for security vulnerabilities. Rubyx specifications can easily be adapted to variety of properties, since they are built from general assertions, assumptions, and object invariants. We show how to write Ruby specifications to detect susceptibility to cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery, insufficient authentication, leaks of secret information, insufficient access control, as well as application-specific security properties. We used Rubyx to check seven web applications from various sources against out specifications. We found many vulnerabilities, and each application was subject to at least one critical attack. Encouragingly, we also found that it was relatively easy to fix most vulnerabilities, and that Rubyx showed the absence of attacks after our fixes. Our results suggest that Rubyx is a promising new way to discover security vulnerabilities in Ruby-on-Rails web applications.
Childhood Abuse Types and Physical Health at the Age of 24: Testing Health Risk Behaviors and Psychological Distress as Mediators

This study examines whether adult psychological distress and health risk behaviors mediate the relationship between childhood abuse and physical health in adulthood. A randomly selected population-based sample, with oversampling to include a one-third subgroup of former child protection cases, completed a structured interview. Questions pertained to childhood exposure to abuse, adult psychological distress, physical health, and health risk behaviors. Previous research using this sample had identified three abuse typologies: emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and polyvictimization (physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect). All three typologies were significantly associated with poorer self-reported physical health. Psychological distress and health risk behaviors partially mediated the relationship between nonabuse, sexual abuse, polyvictimization, and physical health, and fully mediated the relationship between emotional abuse and physical health. The results of this study indicate that health risk behaviors and symptoms of psychological distress could contribute to some of the long-lasting consequences of childhood abuse on adult physical health.
Large Datasets Lead to Overly Complex Models: An Explanation and a Solution

This paper explores unexpected results that lie at the intersection of two common themes in the KDD community: large datasets and the goal of building compact models. Experiments with many different datasets and several model construction algorithms (including tree learning algorithms such as c4.5 with three different pruning methods, and rule learning algorithms such as C4.5 RULES and RIPPER) show that increasing the amount of data used to build a model often results in a linear increase in model size, even when that additional complexity results in no significant increase in model accuracy. Despite the promise of better parameter estimation held out by large datasets, as a practical matter, models built with large amounts of data are often needlessly complex and cumbersome. In the case of decision trees, the cause of this pathology is identified as a bias inherent in several common pruning techniques. Pruning errors made low in the tree, where there is insufficient data to make accurate parameter estimates, are propagated and magnified higher in the tree, working against the accurate parameter estimates that are made possible there by abundant data. We propose a general solution to this problem based on a statistical technique known as randomization testing, and empirically evaluate its utility.
“A Port in a Storm”: Client Perceptions of Substance Abuse Treatment Outreach in a Soup Kitchen

ABSTRACT Substance use is associated with many problems, including homelessness, mental illness, isolation, and poverty, yet ambivalence about change leads many affected individuals to defer treatment or drop out prematurely. This paper describes a manualized, time-limited, low-threshold group model for treatment outreach to residentially unstable drug and alcohol users who, though wanting help, are not yet committed to ending or reducing substance use. The model is based on principles of group work, motivational enhancement, and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Findings from a qualitative analysis of progress notes, illustrated with case studies, tie participant goals to strategies of the treatment model and participant perceptions of the change process.
Simulation for Wireless Sensor Networks with Intelligent Nodes

Purpose of simulations is mostly to prove correctness of system behavior by execution of a simulation model. Here we bring an approach how the simulation can be useful in the process of realization of systems with intelligent sensor nodes. To make models of these systems we adapted idea of distributed multi-agent system with particular demands that overcomes ordinary multi-agent systems. The work is focused onto mobility, agent size and interoperability. We bring experiences with implementation of agents for sensors with programmable ATMEL microcontrollers and usage of simulation in the process of realization of this type of networks.
Robust Visual Person Tracking for Interactive Displays

We present an approach to real-time person tracking in crowded and/or unknown environments using integration of multiple visual modalities. We combine stereo, color, and face detection modules into a single robust system, and show an initial application in an interactive, faceresponsive display. Dense, real-time stereo processing is used to isolate users from other objects and people in the background. Skin-hue classification identifies and tracks likely body parts within the silhouette of a user. Face pattern detection discriminates and localizes the face within the identified body parts. Faces and bodies of users are tracked over several temporal scales: short-term (user stays within the field of view), medium-term (user exits/reenters within minutes), and long term (user returns after hours or days). Short-term tracking is performed using simple region position and size correspondences, while medium and longterm tracking are based on statistics of user appearance. This is a short version of the report in [1].