Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison between Auditory and Visual Simple Reaction Times

Objective: The purpose of this study was to find out whether the simple reaction time was faster for auditory or visual stimulus and the factors responsible for improving the performance of the athlete. Methodology: 14 subjects were as- signed randomly into groups consisting of 2 members. Both the members from each group performed both the visual and auditory tests. The tests were taken from the DirectRT software program from a laptop. The DirectRT software consists of Testlabvisual and Testlabsounds to test the reaction times to visual and auditory stimuli. The 2 members from each group completed both the visual and auditory reaction times, the data was taken and the mean reaction time was calculated excluding the first and last values. Results: The results show that the mean visual reaction time is around 331 milliseconds as compared to the mean auditory reaction time of around 284 milliseconds. Conclusion: This shows that the auditory reaction time is faster than the visual reaction time. And also males have faster reaction times when compared to females for both auditory as well as visual stimuli.
Survey of the ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) of the Greek Thrace

The ant fauna of Greece has been an object of investigations for almost two centuries, but most of the contributions were restricted to particular parts or regions of the country. The first comprehensive checklist, comprising the past studies on Greek ants, was done only recently by Legakis (2011). In the last few years, the ant fauna of Greece was more intensively studied as part of the inventory of the ants of the Mediterranean region (Borowiec and Salata 2012, Borowiec and Salata 2013, Borowiec and Salata 2014b, Borowiec and Salata 2014a, Salata and Borowiec 2015a, Salata and Borowiec 2015b, Salata and Borowiec 2015c). Based on the above mentioned studies, it turned out that the Greek ant fauna is probably the richest in Europe, with about 280 recorded species including almost 20 endemic to this country. Among the geographic regions of Greece, Macedonia has richest ant fauna with at least 158 species recorded, followed by Dodecanese (111), Ionian Islands (107), East Aegean Islands (106), Peloponnese (102), Crete (98), Sterea Ellas (72), Thessaly (67), Cyclades (46), and Epirus (42) respectively (Borowiec & Salata unpublished data). The ants of Greek Thrace have been more or less neglected so far. This region has not been studied in recent years, while older data are very scarce. As a result, only 12 species were mentioned from this region (Legakis 2011). Greek Thrace (or Western Thrace) is one of the geographic and historical regions of Greece. It is the eastern-most mainland part of the country, bordered by Greek Macedonia to the west, Bulgaria to the north (the southern part of Bulgaria is also known as the Bulgarian or Northern Thrace), Turkish (or Eastern) Thrace to the east and the Aegean Sea to the south. Most of the northern part of Greek Thrace is occupied by the Rhodope Mountains. Larger plains are situated especially in the south-western, central and north-eastern part of the region. A Mediterranean climate prevails in the southern part of Thrace and is modified by continental influences in the Rhodope Mountains (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2015). To improve the knowledge on Thracian ants, we conducted two field trips, in spring 2014 and in summer 2015, and included some previously collected unpublished material. Altogether, we compiled the samples from more than 70 localities throughout the region. As a result we present a check-list of all ant species recorded so far in Greek Thrace with comments on the taxonomy and distribution of poorly known or unnamed species.
Dynamical structure analysis of sparsity and minimality heuristics for reconstruction of biochemical networks

Network reconstruction, i.e. obtaining network structure from input-output information, is a central theme in systems biology. A variety of approaches aim to obtaining structural information from available data. Previous work has introduced dynamical structure functions as a tool for posing and solving the network reconstruction problem. Even for linear time invariant systems, reconstruction requires specific additional information not generated in the typical system identification process. This paper demonstrates that such extra information can be obtained through a limited sequence of system identification experiments on structurally modified systems, analogous to gene silencing and overexpression experiments. In the absence of such extra information, we discuss whether combined assumptions of network sparsity and minimality contribute to the recovery of the network dynamical structure. We provide sufficient conditions for a transfer function to have a completely decoupled minimal realization, and demonstrate that every transfer function is arbitrarily close to one that admits a perfectly decoupled minimal realization. This indicates that the assumptions of sparsity and minimality alone do not lend insight into the network structure.
A metric of identification performance of biometrics based on information content

We propose the minimum distance entropy (MDE) as a metric of biométrie information content. The MDE is the probability that two biométrie samples correspond exactly expressed in information content and can be calculated through the experiment for interpersonal matching using a set of biométrie samples. This metric makes it possible for certain biometrics not only to be compared with other biometrics but also to be partially compared with personal authentication using passwords, PIN, or other methods in regard to the identification performance or the security. In this paper, we discuss the metric in terms of information theory and show how to evaluate it. Then, as an example, we apply it to a fingerprint system and evaluate fingerprint information content through simulations.
Equity Portfolio Return Enhancement Relative to a Custom Benchmark The Characteristic Portfolio Approach

Previous research provides evidence that much of the cross-sectional variation in equity returns can be explained by firm characteristics such as market capitalization, price-to-earnings ratios, change in operating earnings, and book-to-market ratios. This study demonstrates that equity portfolio return enhancement is possible when portfolio optimization techniques are employed on subsets of a broader population of stocks that are grouped according to similar characteristics. Specifically, ex ante optimization over portfolios formed on the basis of decile classifications of market capitalization, price-to-earnings ratios, change in operating earnings, and book-to-market ratios demonstrates significant potential for enhancing overall equity portfolio returns relative to value-weighted and equal-weighted benchmark portfolios constructed from the population of stocks from which the characteristic portfolios are formed. Equity Portfolio Return Enhancement Relative to a Custom Benchmark The Characteristic Portfolio Approach A primary objective of both active equity portfolio management and enhanced return equity portfolio management strategies is to improve managed portfolio returns relative to a benchmark or index portfolio. As Fabozzi (1999) notes, “ The distinction between active strategies and enhanced indexing is the degree of risk control. In enhanced indexing, the focus is on risk control. The bets that are made by an enhanced indexer do not cause the portfolio’s characteristics to depart materially from the benchmark. On the other hand, an active manager’s portfolio can deviate materially from the characteristics of the benchmark. ” While equity portfolio return enhancement mandates that an ex ante portfolio composition of securities be modified relative to the benchmark portfolio, financial theory does not specify the use of any one specific modification strategy. A proliferation of research has been published that provides considerable evidence that the cross-sectional patterns among stock returns can be explained by characteristics such as market capitalization, operating earnings, book-to-market, and price-to-earnings ratios. For example, the market capitalization anomaly is documented by Banz (1981), Reinganum (1983), and Keim (1983), change in operating earnings effects by Freeman and Larsen (1995), book-to-market effects by Stattman (1980) Rosenberg, Reid, and Lanstein (1985), and price-toearnings effects by Basu (1977, 1983) and Reinganum (1981). When Fama and French (1992, 1996) examine many of these variables simultaneously, they conclude that two factors, specifically, size and book-to-market, explain the majority of the cross-sectional variation in
Localized Key Finding from Audio Using Nonnegative Matrix Factorization for Segmentation

A model for localized key finding from audio is proposed. Besides being able to estimate the key in which a piece starts, the model can also identify points of modulation and label multiple sections with their key names throughout a single piece. The front-end employs an adaptive tuning stage prior to spectral analysis and calculation of chroma features. The segmentation stage uses groups of contiguous chroma vectors as input and identifies sections that are candidates for unique local keys in relation to their neighboring key centers. Nonnegative matrix factorization with additional sparsity constraints and additive updates is used for segmentation. The use of segmentation is demonstrated for single and multiple key estimation problems. A correlational model of key finding is applied to the candidate segments to estimate the local keys. Evaluation is given on three different data sets and a range of analysis parameters.
PS Advances in Seismic Fault Interpretation Automation

A pipe racking system is shown of the type having a vertical track, a lifting assembly adapted for vertical movement along the track, a horizontal beam for supporting the vertical track, and a movable carriage connecting the vertical track to the horizontal beam. The lifting assembly is supported by a wire rope running from the lifting assembly inside the vertical track and outside the carriage to a source of lifting power. A fixed guide sheave mounted in the carriage serves as a first point of contact for the wire rope running from the lifting head to the carriage. A rotatable guide sheave mounted in the carriage serves as a second point of contact for the wire rope. The rotatable guide sheave is rotatable by the wire rope in response to movement of the carriage, vertical track, and horizontal beam to center the wire rope in the guide wheel grooves of the guide sheaves during racking operations.
Area efficient, high speed VLSI design for BPC coder in JPEG 2000

JPEG 2000 is an international standard for still images intended to overcome the shortcomings of the existing JPEG standard. Compared to JPEG image compression techniques, JPEG 2000 standard has not only better compression ratios, but it also offers some exciting features. As it's hard to meet the real-time requirement of image compression systems by software, it is necessary to implement compression system by hardware. In this paper we proposed an optimized architecture of bit plane coder for Embedded Block Coding with Optimal Truncation (EBCOT) algorithm. The proposed design is implemented on an FPGA platform. EBCOT is very important in the compression process of the JPEG 2000 standard. The proposed architecture is on four coding operations which are pipelined. The proposed architecture is implemented in a causal mode.
GPU implementation for hyperspectral image analysis using Recursive Hierarchical Segmentation

Graphics processing units (GPUs) have recently emerged as a promising parallel architecture considering the rapid growth of its computational power in comparison with uniprocessors. In this paper, we investigate a GPU parallel implementation of Recursive Hierarchical Segmentation technique (RHSEG). RHSEG is an object-based image analysis (OBIA) segmentation technique which involves region growing and spectral clustering (non-adjacent region growing). OBIA is becoming more popular compared to traditional pixel-based image analysis because of its efficiency with high spatial resolution images. The proposed parallel RHSEG algorithm was implemented using NVidia's compute device unified architecture (CUDA). The experiments conducted show that the parallel GPU RHSEG achieved an average processing speedup of 3.5 times over the sequential CPU implementation.
Drosophila CtBP: a Hairy‐interacting protein required for embryonic segmentation and Hairy‐mediated transcriptional repression

hairy is a Drosophila pair‐rule segmentation gene that functions genetically as a repressor. To isolate protein components of Hairy‐mediated repression, we used a yeast interaction screen and identified a Hairy‐interacting protein, the Drosophila homolog of the human C‐terminal‐binding protein (CtBP). Human CtBP is a cellular phosphoprotein that interacts with the C‐terminus of the adenovirus E1a oncoprotein and functions as a tumor suppressor. dCtBP also interacts with E1a in a directed yeast two‐hybrid assay. We show that dCtBP interacts specifically and directly with a small, previously uncharacterized C‐terminal region of Hairy. dCtBP activity appears to be specific to Hairy of the Hairy/Enhancer of split [E(spl)]/Dpn basic helix–loop–helix protein class. We identified a P‐element insertion within the dCtBP transcription unit that fails to complement alleles of a known locus, l(3)87De. We demonstrate that dCtBP is essential for proper embryonic segmentation by analyzing embryos lacking maternal dCtBP activity. While Hairy is probably not the only segmentation gene interacting with dCtBP, we show dose‐sensitive genetic interactions between dCtBP and hairy mutations.
Probabilistic search of nonbinary LDPC codes for distributed video coding

This paper examines the applicability of the genetic algorithm (GA) to generation of nonbinary low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes over GF(q) which is suitable for distributed video coding (DVC). Error probability distribution in side-information of the DVC is approximated by Gaussian and Laplace distributions, and then a fitness of an LDPC matrix is defined under this approximation. The GA is designed to avoid LDPC matrices having small girth in the Tanner graph and to obtain column vectors with appropriate Hamming weight. This paper also outlines a parallel computation system using a cluster of personal computers to implement the proposed GA with reasonable cost. Evaluation shows that the decoded symbol error rate (SER) of the generated LDPC code is lower than that of randomly constructed LDPC code with the minimum girth of six. For example, in a 256-ary channel of Gaussian error distribution with standard deviation δ = 3.00, the decoded SER of a rate-1/2 code generated by the GA is 3.0 × 10−4, while that of a randomly constructed code is 4.4 × 10−1.
Tetrodotoxin and Its Analogues in the Pufferfish Arothron hispidus and A. nigropunctatus from the Solomon Islands: A Comparison of Their Toxin Profiles with the Same Species from Okinawa, Japan

Pufferfish poisoning has not been well documented in the South Pacific, although fish and other seafood are sources of protein in these island nations. In this study, tetrodotoxin (TTX) and its analogues in each organ of the pufferfish Arothron hispidus and A. nigropunctatus collected in the Solomon Islands were investigated using high resolution LC-MS. The toxin profiles of the same two species of pufferfish from Okinawa, Japan were also examined for comparison. TTXs concentrations were higher in the skin of both species from both regions, and relatively lower in the liver, ovary, testis, stomach, intestine, and flesh. Due to higher TTX concentrations (51.0 and 28.7 µg/g at highest) detected in the skin of the two species from the Solomon Islands (saxitoxin was <0.02 µg/g), these species should be banned from consumption. Similar results were obtained from fish collected in Okinawa, Japan: TTX in the skin of A. hispidus and A. nigropunctatus were 12.7 and 255 µg/g, respectively, at highest, and saxitoxin was also detected in the skin (2.80 µg/g at highest) and ovary of A. hispidus. TTX, 5,6,11-trideoxyTTX (with its 4-epi form), and its anhydro forms were the most abundant, and 11-oxoTTX was commonly detected in the skin.
An ATM based protocol for Wireless LANs

This paper presents a solution to the problem of connectivity of portables to an ATM wired network in the local area environment. A compatible ATM approach is used to provide support for multi-media traffic. Spatial re-use of a single frequency with a large number of small cells is used to increase the aggregate throughput. An experimental system based on low-cost fixed ATM switches and software controlled base stations has been developed.
THE IMPACT OF MONEY MARKET OPERATIONS ON THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF NIGERIA ( 1981 – 2013

The study examined the impact of money market operation on the economic growth of Nigeria. In the model specified Gross Domestic Product is used as the constant (Dependent variable) while money market interest rate, ratio of loan to deposit, commercial bank deposit, credit to private sector are the independent variable. Data was collected from the CBN statistical Bulletin for the period between 1981 – 2013. The statistical techniques used for the analysis is the ordinary least square techniques with the aid of SPSS 16.0 software package. The research indicated that money market interest rate and ratio of loan to deposit in Nigeria within the period under study have a negative relationship with the GDP. While commercial bank deposit has a positive relationship with the GDP but does not have significant effect on the economic growth and credit to private sector also has a positive relationship with the GDP. To help increase the performance of the variables, government should increase money market interest rate MMI so that it can induce investment in the money market instruments. The Ratio of Loans to Deposit RLD should also be increased to help boost economic growth.
Explorations of the practical issues of learning prediction-control tasks using temporal difference learning methods

Abstract : There has been recent interest in using a class of incremental learning algorithms called temporal difference learning methods to attack problems of prediction. These algorithms have been brought to bear on various prediction problems in the past, but have remained poorly understood. It is the purpose of this thesis to further explore this class of algorithms, particularly the TD (lambda) algorithm. A number of practical issues are raised and discussed from a general theoretical perspective and then explored in the context of several case studies. the thesis presents a framework for viewing these algorithms independent of the particular task at hand and uses this framework to explore not only tasks of prediction, but also prediction tasks that require control, whether complete or partial. This includes applying the TD (Lambda) algorithm to two tasks: (1) learning to play tic-tac-toe from the outcome of self-play and the outcome of play against a perfectly-playing opponent and (2) learning two simple one-dimensional image segmentation tasks.
Master Thesis: Applying EM to Compute Document Relevance from Crowdsourced Pair Preferences

Traditional Information Retrieval (IR) systems evaluate over absolute relevance judgments or multigrade judgments by hiring expert assessors. More recently there has been considerable interest in inferring document relevance, for which no true relevance labels are available, based on noisy crowdsourcing data. We introduce an algorithm that, using Expectation Maximization (EM) and the Elo Rating System on pairwise preference judgments, acquires document relevance from crowdsourced data only. We collect pairwise ternary judgments from workers with unknown accuracy, calculate the pairwise probabilities of each document pair, and transform them into document relevance probabilities. Each judgment is presented in the form, given query q, document a is more relevant to q than document b, or document b is more relevant than document a, otherwise they tie. We hypothesize that it is easier for the crowd workers to make preference judgments than absolute judgments, and preference judgments may offer more accurate relevance assessment. We use EM to calculate the accuracy of the crowd workers, estimate document preference probabilities, and to provide input to the Elo Rating System which produces a ranked document list.
Educational Living Labs: A Novel Internet-of-Things Based Approach to Teaching and Research

This paper explores some a novel approaches to harnessing the Internet-of-Things (IoT) as a teaching and research vehicle in education. For teaching we argue that the Internet-of-Things provides a highly motivating topic to capture students' imaginations, and a perfect platform for teaching computer science. In addition, we explain the potential for entire campuses or buildings to be constructed from Internet-of-Things technologies and the potential for this infrastructure to act as a teaching platform. This proposition is perfectly captured by the axiom "The college building (or campus) is the lab". This philosophy is part of a wider movement that started in the EU, called Living Labs. In achieving these aims, our work seeks to combine a number of concepts, first we utilise the Internet-of-Things, second we incorporate Living Labs ideas, third we harness the iCampus vision, forth we use the 'Smart Box' concept and finally we implement the Pervasive-interactive-Programming (PiP) paradigm. We contend this approach can be used in various mixes to produce highly motivating and effective educational environments. We illustrate this work by describing the application of these ideas to a real-world venture, the Harlow UTC (in the UK). The main focus of this paper concerns the use of PiP, together with the Internet-of-Things, to teach elementary programming skills. In in support of this we present results of an evaluation of PiP with 18 participants (students and staff) of varied age and gender. The main conclusions of these evaluations were that PiP enabled students and staff, with diverse backgrounds, to quickly master the programming skills involved. The paper concludes by describing our future plans for this work.
Transparency of law making and fiscal democracy in the Middle East

Fiscal democracy is the capacity of the legislature to make budgetary choices in response to the emerging needs of citizens. This study indicates that, in Middle Eastern countries, there are specific limitations to fiscal democracy in the process of law-making: most notably the lack of attention to financial impact assessments (FIAs). Without systematic FIAs, mandatory out-of-budget allocations are inadvertently included in public spending, as they do not require parliamentary approval within the regular budgeting process. The low level of effective citizensâ€™ engagement in the process of law-making worsens the situation. Budgetary decisions are not well informed by national priorities and preferences. This study utilizes the dataset of the Open Budget Index (OBI) to measure the quality of the law-making process of the budget law in a sample of Middle Eastern countries. The study concludes with recommendations on mapping the law-making process to increase budget transparency.