Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dorsal Hand Vein Analysis For Security Systems

: Biometric systems such as the fingerprint based, iris based or face recognition based are being widely used for personal verification and identification. The systems based on the vein pattern analysis is the most recent approach falling in this category. It uses the large network of blood vessels underneath the skin as the feature for identification. This system provides contactless image acquisition and the vein pattern details can’t be forged easily, thus making is better as compared to the other techniques. In the proposed system, the translational effects are minimized by taking the region of interest (ROI) at center of hand. This is done by detection of centroid. The key features used for matching purpose are the line segments extracted using Hough Transform. Finally, the authentication of the users is proved on the basis of the matching algorithm. Here the Modified Hausdorff Distance is used for the matching purpose which gives the False Acceptance Rate (FAR) of 0.2% and False Rejection Rate (FRR) of 0.1%. Analysis is performed on the images acquired from CIR biometrics database.
Nonconstrained Sleep Monitoring System and Algorithms Using Air-Mattress With Balancing Tube Method

We evaluated the performance of a bed-type sensor system using the air-mattress with balancing tube (AMBT) method to noninvasively monitor the signals of heartbeat, respiration, and events of snoring, sleep apnea and body movement of subject on the system. The proposed system consists of multiple cylindrical air cells, two sensor cells and 18 support cells, and the small physiological signals were measured by the changes in pressure difference between the sensor cells, and the dc component was removed by balancing tube that is connecting the sensor cells. Using newly developed AMBT method, heartbeat, respiration, snoring, and body movement signals were clearly measured. For the concept of a home healthcare system, two automatic processing algorithms were developed: one is to estimate the mean heart and respiration rates for every 30 s, and another one is to detect the snoring, sleep apnea, and body movement events from the measured signals. In the beat-to-beat heart rate and breath-by-breath respiration rate analyses, the correlation coefficients of the heart and respiration rates from the proposed AMBT method compared with reference methods, electrocardiogram, and respiration effort signal from piezoelectric belt, were 0.98 (p < 0.01) and 0.96 (p < 0.01), respectively. Sensitivity and positive predictive value (PPV) of the detection algorithm for snoring event were 93%, 96%, for sleep apnea event were 93%, 88%, and for body movement event were 86%, 100%, respectively. These findings support that ABMT method provides an accurate and reliable means to monitor heartbeat, respiration activities and the sleep events during sleep.
A profile of travelers--an analysis from a large swiss travel clinic.

BACKGROUND Globally, the Swiss have one of the highest proportions of the population traveling to tropical and subtropical countries. Large travel clinics serve an increasing number of customers with specific pre-travel needs including uncommon destinations and preexisting medical conditions. This study aims to identify health characteristics and travel patterns of travelers seeking advice in the largest Swiss travel clinic so that tailored advice can be delivered. METHODS A descriptive analysis was performed on pre-travel visits between July 2010 and August 2012 at the Travel Clinic of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland. RESULTS A total of 22,584 travelers sought pre-travel advice. Tourism was the main reason for travel (17,875, 81.5%), followed by visiting friends and relatives (VFRs; 1,715, 7.8%), traveling for business (1,223, 5.6%), and "other reasons" (ie, volunteer work, pilgrimage, study abroad, and emigration; 1,112, 5.1%). The main travel destination was Thailand. In the VFR group, the highest proportions of traveling children (258, 15.1%) and of pregnant or breastfeeding women (23, 3.9%) were observed. Mental disorders were more prominent in VFRs (93, 5.4%) and in travel for "other reasons" (63, 5.7%). The latter stayed for the longest periods abroad; 272 (24.9%) stayed longer than 6 months. VFR travelers received the highest percentage of yellow fever vaccinations (523, 30.5%); in contrast, rabies (269, 24.2%) and typhoid vaccinations (279, 25.1%) were given more often to the "other travel reasons" group. CONCLUSIONS New insights into the characteristics of a selected and large population of Swiss international travelers results in improved understanding of the special needs of an increasingly diverse population and, thus, in targeted preventive advice and interventions.
Internet Addiction and Depression, Anxiety and Stress

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between internet addiction and depression, anxiety, and stress. Participants were 300 university students who were enrolled in mid-size state University, in Turkey. In this study, the Online Cognition Scale and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale were used. In correlation analysis, internet addiction was found positively related to depression, anxiety, and stress. According to path analysis results, depression, anxiety, and stress were predicted positively by internet addiction. This research shows that internet addiction has a direct impact on depression, anxiety, and stress.
AGN Dusty Tori. I. Handling of Clumpy Media

According to unified schemes of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), the central engine is surrounded by dusty, optically thick clouds in a toroidal structure. We have recently developed a formalism that for the first time takes proper account of the clumpy nature of the AGN torus. We now provide a detailed report of our findings in a two-paper series. Here we present our general formalism for radiative transfer in clumpy media and construct its building blocks for the AGN problem—the source functions of individual dusty clouds heated by the AGN radiation field. We show that a fundamental difference from smooth density distributions is that in a clumpy medium, a large range of dust temperatures coexist at the same distance from the radiation central source. This distinct property explains the low dust temperatures found close to the nucleus of NGC 1068 in 10 μ m interferometric observations. We find that, irrespective of the overall geometry, a clumpy dust distribution shows only moderate variation in its spectral energy distribution, and the 10 μ m absorption feature is never deep. Furthermore, the X-ray attenuating column density is widely scattered around the column density that characterizes the IR emission. All of these properties are characteristic of AGN observations. The assembly of clouds into AGN tori and comparison with observations are presented in the companion paper.
Mandibular ramus: An indicator for sex determination - A digital radiographic study

Background: The identification of skeletal remains is of paramount importance in medico-legal investigations. The skeletal components most often investigated for gender determination are the pelvis and skull, with the mandible being a practical element to analyze sexual dimorphism in the fragmented bones. Presence of a dense layer of compact bone makes it very durable and well preserved than many other bones. Mandibular ramus can be used to differentiate between sexes and it also expresses strong univariate sexual dimorphism. When skeleton sex determination is considered, metric analyses on the radiographs are often found to be of superior value owing to their objectivity, accuracy, and reproducibility. Aims and Objectives: (1) To measure, compare, and evaluate the various measurements of mandibular ramus as observed on orthopantomographs. (2) To assess the usefulness of mandibular ramus as an aid in sex determination. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was conducted using orthopantomographs of 50 males and 50 females, which were taken using Kodak 8000C Digital Panoramic and Cephalometric System (73 kVp, 12 mA, 13.9 s). Mandibular ramus measurements were carried out using Master View 3.0 software. The measurements of the mandibular ramus were subjected to discriminant function analysis. Results: We observed each variable of the mandibular ramus to be a significant predictor in classifying a given sample (P < 0.001). Conclusion: This study on mandibular ramus measurements using orthopantomograph shows strong evidence suggesting that the ramus can be used for gender determination for forensic analysis.
Refined Lamellar Eutectic in Biomedical Zn–Al–Zr Alloys for Mechanical Reinforcement

Zn is recognized as a bone implant metallic material owing to its natural biodegradability and good biocompatibility. In this study, refined lamellar eutectic is constructed in Zn alloys by alloying with Al and Zr via selective laser melting, aiming to improve its mechanical strength. The results demonstrate that lamellar eutectic forms along the grain boundaries due to the alternating solidification of Zn‐ and Al‐enriched phases. The lamellar eutectic not only refine Zn grains but also provide numerous phase interfaces for dislocation pile‐up. More importantly, Al2ZnZr phase is also found in the alloys and acts as heterogeneous nucleation sites for Al‐enriched phase, which is beneficial for the formation of lamellar eutectic. With Zr content increasing to 0.2 wt%, the amount of Al2ZnZr phase increases, leading to more lamellar eutectic formation. This reduces the lamellar spacing to 0.34 ± 0.03 µm, providing more phase interfaces for slip interference. As a result, as compared with Zn, the Zn–7Al–0.2Zr alloy presents 179 ± 12% improvement in mechanical strength, which is comparable to the strength criteria for bone implants. In addition, the degradation rate increases from 0.08 ± 0.03 mm year−1 to 0.15 ± 0.03 mm year−1 due to the enhanced galvanic corrosion between Zn‐ and Al‐enriched phases. Cytocompatibility evaluation also indicates that the Zn–7Al–Zr alloys present good biocompatibility to MG‐63 cells.
PREDICTION MODEL OF BUS ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE TIMES USING AVL AND APC DATA

The emphasis of this research effort was on using automatic vehicle location (AVL) and Automatic Passenger Counter (APC) dynamic data to develop a bus travel time model capable of providing real time information on bus arrival and departure times to passengers and to transit controllers for the application of proactive control strategies. The developed model is comprised of two Kalman filter algorithms for the prediction of running times and dwell times alternately in an integrated framework. The AVL and APC data used were obtained for a specific bus route in downtown Toronto. The performance of the prediction model was tested using "hold out" data and other data from a microsimulation model representing different scenarios of bus operation along the investigated route using the VISSIM microsimulation software package. The Kalman filter-based model outperformed other conventional models in terms of accuracy, demonstrating the dynamic ability to update itself based on new data that reflected the changing characteristics of the transit operating environment.
Explaining Global Secularity: Existential Security or Education?

At the time of data analysis for this report there were 193 countries in the world. Various institutions – the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the CIA, the World Values Survey, Gallup, and many others – have performed sophisticated statistical analyses on cross-national data. The present investigation demonstrates that valid and reliable data concerning religiosity and secularity exist for most countries and that these data are comparable. Cross-national data relating to social, political, economic and cultural aspects of life were tested for correlation with religiosity/secularity. In contrast to the most widely accepted general account of secularity, the Existential Security Framework (ESF; Norris & Inglehart, 2004), secularity was not most highly related to material security, though these were highly related. Rather, secularity was most strongly related to the degree of formal education attained. Material security explained no significant variance beyond education. Thus, religion’s primary function in the world today is being replaced, not so much by the pseudo-materialistic supplication for better living conditions as posited by the ESF, but by contemporary education – extensive knowledge of contemporary cultures, philosophy, modes of thought or processes of reasoning.
Overlay cognitive radio OFDM system for 4G cellular networks

In this study, we integrate overlay cognitive radio technology into 4G cellular networks for the sharing of TV spectrum. On one hand, OFDM is a promising technique for high-speed data transmission over multipath fading channels and has been considered to be the best candidate for 4G mobile networks. On another hand, the overlay cognitive radio model makes it possible to have two concurrent transmissions in a given interference region, where conventionally only one communication takes place at a given time. We investigate different service provision scenarios and propose both time domain and frequency domain overlay cognitive radio OFDM systems for next generation cellular networks. Numerical results show our proposed schemes can achieve satisfying performance in different use cases.
Replica Control in MIo-NFS

MIo-NFS aims at providing disconnected operation for NFS-based ﬁle systems. It uses a token-based replica control mechanism that prevents write sharing conﬂicts though allowing mobile clients to modify their ﬁles while disconnected. Files are pre-fetched into the mobile host and, by default, tokens are passed to it on disconnection and given back to the server on connection. The user can override this behaviour with a per-object proﬁle. There is also a weak connection mode that supports low-bandwidth, high-latency lines
X-ray absorption spectra and self-bias ferromagnetic resonance of FeCoB films prepared by composition gradient sputtering

In this study, Fe0.7Co0. 3-B SMFs were prepared by CGS method, where B as a doping element distributes in sample with a gradient content increasing from 24.41 to 30.85 at . % for the test positions n from one terminal to the other, undergoing CB=22.8+1.61×n (at .%) . X-ray absorption spectra, shown in Fig . 1, demonstrates that the B doping atoms hybridize with Fe atoms, instead of alloying, as a result, with the increase of B content, Fe3+ atomic ratio increases considerably, leading to a decrease of saturation magnetization 4πMS from 16 . 3 to 13 . 5 kG (Fig . 2a) . However, the uniaxial magnetic anisotropy fields HK of the SMFs dramatically increase from 180.6 to 295.5 Oe, as a result, the ferromagnetic resonance frequency fFMR is driven from 4 . 82 to 5 . 62 GHz (Fig . 2b) . Figure 2b reveals that the ferromagnetic resonance is dominated by magnetic anisotropy field HK . Acknowledgments This work was financially supported by NSFC 11074040 and ZR2012FZ006 . The XAS was detected at BL08U1A beam station of Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility .
Laser Pointers as Collaborative Pointing Devices

Single Display Groupware (SDG) is a research area that focuses on providing collaborative computing environments. Traditionally, most hardware platforms for SDG support only one person interacting at any given time, which limits collaboration. In this paper, we present laser pointers as input devices that can provide concurrent input streams ideally required to the SDG environment. First, we discuss several issues related to utilization of laser pointers and present the new concept of computer controlled laser pointers. Then we briefly present a performance evaluation of laser pointers as input devices and a baseline comparison with the mouse according to the ISO 9241-9 standard. Finally, we describe a new system that uses multiple computer controlled laser pointers as interaction devices for one or more displays. Several alternatives for distinguishing between different laser pointers are presented, and an implementation of one of them is demonstrated with SDG applications.
A Latent Class Analysis of Childhood Maltreatment: Identifying Abuse Typologies

Multiple forms of abuse may co-occur, resulting in specific abuse typologies. A stratified random probability survey was conducted in Denmark with 4,718 participants, aged 24, from the 1984 birth cohort. A total of 2,980 interviews were successfully conducted. Latent class analysis was implemented using 20 categorical abuse experience items across four domains of childhood maltreatment. Logistic regression was conducted to ascertain whether abuse typologies could be differentiated by child protection status and gender. Four distinct abuse typologies were revealed: a non-abused group, a psychologically maltreated group, a sexually abused group, and a group experiencing multiple abuse types. Child protection status and female gender were predictive of group membership in certain abused groups compared to a non-abused group.
The Influence of Video Games on Social, Cognitive, and Affective Information Processing

Introduction Computer and console-based video games represent a pervasive form of leisure activity in industrialized nations beginning in early to middle childhood and continuing through adulthood. A recent representative sample of U.S. teens found that 99% of boys and 94% of girls had played video games example, a survey of over 600 eighth and ninth grade students found that boys averaged 13 hours per week and girls averaged 5 hours per week (Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004). In addition to the entertainment value of video games, evidence from a growing number of studies demonstrates that video games can produce positive pedagogical outcomes related to the development of health-related knowledge and Widespread use of video games begs the question of what intended and unintended effects they may produce. There is not a simple answer to this question. For instance, exposure to a specific type of game (e.g., violent action games) might have multiple effects (e.g., increases in aggression (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) and improvements in visuospatial attention (Green & Bavalier, 2003)). Because games differ on a range of dimensions, and engage various cognitive, affective, and behavioral systems, it is reasonable to expect that they will influence multiple information processing systems (Gentile & Gentile, 2008). Indeed, there is growing evidence for a wide range of video game effects that influence social and antisocial behaviors, cognitive styles, and affective processing (Barlett et al., 2009). Furthermore, some of these effects Video Games 3 may be moderated by personal characteristics (e.g., gender) or by social circumstances (e.g., parental involvement). Thus, the potential positive or negative effects of video game experience must be considered within the socio-cognitive-cultural context where the individual is embedded. With this in mind, the goals of the current chapter were twofold. First, we provide a review of the literature examining the effects of video games from the perspective of social, cognitive, affective, and education science. Second, we briefly consider how knowledge from social and cognitive neuroscience may serve to enhance our understanding of the effects of video game experience. Social Science Building on a nearly 50 year tradition considering the effects of violence in television and film, the last decade has witnessed the blossoming of research examining the impact of video game violence (VGV) on aggression. At least some of this interest seems to be motivated by the commonly observed association between high levels of consumption of VGV and violent crime …
Pathophysiological Role of Purines and Pyrimidines in Neurodevelopment: Unveiling New Pharmacological Approaches to Congenital Brain Diseases

In recent years, a substantial body of evidence has emerged demonstrating that purine and pyrimidine synthesis and metabolism play major roles in controlling embryonic and fetal development and organogenesis. Dynamic and time-dependent changes in the expression of purine metabolizing enzymes (such as ectonucleotidases and adenosine deaminase) represent a key checkpoint for the correct sequential generation of the different signaling molecules, that in turn activate their specific membrane receptors. In neurodevelopment, Ca2+ release from radial glia mediated by P2Y1 purinergic receptors is fundamental to allow neuroblast migration along radial glia processes, and their correct positioning in the different layers of the developing neocortex. Moreover, ATP is involved in the development of synaptic transmission and contributes to the establishment of functional neuronal networks in the developing brain. Additionally, several purinergic receptors (spanning from adenosine to P2X and P2Y receptor subtypes) are differentially expressed by neural stem cells, depending on their maturation stage, and their activation tightly regulates cell proliferation and differentiation to either neurons or glial cells, as well as their correct colonization of the developing telencephalon. The purinergic control of neurodevelopment is not limited to prenatal life, but is maintained in postnatal life, when it plays fundamental roles in controlling oligodendrocyte maturation from precursors and their terminal differentiation to fully myelinating cells. Based on the above-mentioned and other literature evidence, it is now increasingly clear that any defect altering the tight regulation of purinergic transmission and of purine and pyrimidine metabolism during pre- and post-natal brain development may translate into functional deficits, which could be at the basis of severe pathologies characterized by mental retardation or other disturbances. This can occur either at the level of the recruitment and/or signaling of specific nucleotide or nucleoside receptors or through genetic alterations in key steps of the purine salvage pathway. In this review, we have provided a critical analysis of what is currently known on the pathophysiological role of purines and pyrimidines during brain development with the aim of unveiling new future strategies for pharmacological intervention in different neurodevelopmental disorders.
A Stakeholder–Human Capital Perspective on the Link between Social Performance and Executive Compensation

ABSTRACT: The link between firm corporate social performance (CSP) and executive compensation could be driven by a sorting effect (a firm’s CSP is related to the initial levels of compensation of newly hired executives), or by an incentive effect (incumbent executives are rewarded for past firm CSP). Existing empirical work focuses exclusively on the incentive effect. In contrast, in this paper we explore the sorting effect of firm CSP on the initial compensation of newly hired executives. In doing so, we develop a novel theoretical approach based on an integration of stakeholder theory and human capital theory, suggesting a positive association between the initial compensation of executives and firm CSP strengths and concerns. It also suggests that the strength of this relationship varies between different executive roles (as a function of stakeholder-management responsibilities). We find support for this theoretical framework in a large sample of newly-hired executives employed by Standard & Poor 1500 firms.