Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
daptive spread transform QIM watermarking algorithm based on improved erceptual models

The quantization step is one of the most important factors which affect the performance of quantization watermarking used for image copyright protection. According to the characteristic of perceptual model and the specific attacks, improved perceptual model and different implementations of perceptual model eywords: uantization watermarking erceptual model pread transform uantization index modulation are proposed. They are incorporated into the spread transform quantization index modulation (ST-QIM) framework. The experimental results show that the four algorithms we proposed in this paper can reduce the noise attacks and facilitate common digital image processing operations. Among these, adaptive STQIM based on further modified Watson model (ST-QIM-fMW-SS) and adaptive ST-QIM based on modified sensitivity model (ST-QIM-MS-SS) have better performance. daptive quantization
A Novel Planar IPPCT Tree Structure and Characteristics Analysis

A novel planar IPPCT tree (PIPPCT) that holds higher data rate is presented based on analysis of main topologies characteristics of current dynamic graph watermarking system (DGW). Multiple dimensional IPPCT tree (MIPPCT) model and three ident ity vectors concerning it are constructed and presented, then the effect of these vectors on MIPPCT model is discussed in detail . The results proved that the data rate of MIPPCT tree will increase to a limit with its dimension number n increasing based on equal number of leaves and this limit is also computed. Moreover, it proved that there exists a two dimensional area HArea, when datarate is in this area, dynamic graph watermarking system will take on greater performance.
Tools for Design and Mapping of Portable Parallel Programs

In this paper, we study tools for design and mapping of portable parallel programs. An essential component of such a tool is a mapping algorithm which can map arbitrary program tasks onto arbitrary computer systems. A generic fast recursive mapping algorithm, which is part of the Cluster-M parallel programming tool, is presented. This algorithm is suitable for the task scheduling problem as well as the task allocation problem. Its performance is compared with other leading techniques. We show that Cluster-M produces better or similar results in signiicantly less time and using less or equal number of processors as compared to the other known methods. An eecient parallel algorithm designed for a parallel architecture includes a detailed outline of the accurate assignment of the concurrent computations onto processors, and data-transfers onto communication links, such that the overall execution time is minimized. This process may be complex depending on the application task and the underlying organization. Given the same application task, this process must be repeated for every diierent architecture. A remedy of this problem would be to design portable softwares which can be mapped onto any architecture or organization. Design of tools which can support such an environment is the focus of this paper. A number of programming tools have been developed which take a high-level program as the input and map it onto the underlying systems. Examples of these tools include Linda, Prep-P, Oregami, Hypertool and PYRROS 5, 1, 16, 18, 19]. Linda 5] deenes a logically shared memory mechanism called tuple space. Tuple space holds two kinds of tuples: process tuples which are under active evaluation and data tuples which are passive. Ordinarily , building a Linda program involves dropping a process tuple into tuple space spawning oo other process tuples. This pool of process tuples, all executing simultaneously, exchange data by generating , reading and consuming data tuples. Once a process tuple has nished executing, it turns into a data tuple indistinguishable from other data tu-ples. Linda requires large volumes of data to be exchanged to and from the shared memory. This may cause heavy congestion over available communication channels of a typical multiprocessor system. For this reason, Linda has been mostly used for coarse grain computations. Furthermore, it is very diicult to implement Linda on architectures not supporting the shared memory structure. Prep-P, Oregami, Hypertool and PYRROS all include a architecturally independent mapping component which can map …
1 Are Pro-Growth Policies Pro-Poor ? Evidence from Bangladesh

The characterization of pro-poor growth, including the sources through which the poor benefit from public interventions, remains a topic of debate in the current development literature. This paper examines the impact of a range of policies across villages in rural Bangladesh (spanning credit and infrastructure expansion, as well as agricultural output pricing) not only on different sources of income growth, but also on per capita expenditure and poverty to determine the veins through which households have benefited from such policies. Higher agricultural output prices and village electrification lead to substantial income gains, primarily through farm income, as well as poverty reduction across the distribution of households. In contrast, commercial bank expansion promotes farm and non-farm income growth, but does not lead to substantial poverty reduction. Policies that have limited distributional impact on household income have also led to substantial poverty reduction, such as microcredit (which enhances non-farm income for only low-income households) and paved road access (which enhances total income and farm income only for households at the highest end of the distribution). 1 The authors would like to thank Martin Ravallion, seminar participants at the Asian Development Bank, as well as conference participants at the GPED Conference in Vanderbilt University. Views expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the World Bank.
EPISODIC CHROMOSOMAL EVOLUTION IN PLANIPAPILLUS (ONYCHOPHORA: PERIPATOPSIDAE): A PHYLOGENETIC APPROACH TO EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS AND SPECIATION

Abstract Planipapillus, a clade of onychophorans from southeastern Australia, exhibits substantial chromosomal variation. In the context of a robust phylogeny based on nuclear and mitochondrial sequence data, we evaluate models of chromosomal evolution and speciation that differ in the roles assigned to selection, mutation, and drift. Permutation tests suggest that all chromosome rearrangements in the clade have been centric fusions and, on the basis of parsimony and maximum-likelihood methods with independent estimates of branch lengths, we conclude that at least 31 centric fusions have been fixed in Planipapillus. A likelihood-ratio test approach, which is independent of our point estimates of ancestral states, rejects an evolutionary model in which the mutation rate is constant and centric fusions are effectively neutral. In contrast to the nucleotide sequence data, which are consistent with neutrality and rate constancy, centric fusions in Planipapillus are underdominant, spontaneous fusion rates vary among lineages, or both. We predict an inverse relationship between rates of chromosomal evolution and historical population size. Chromosomal evolution may play a role in speciation in Planipapillus, both by interactions between centric fusions with monobrachial homology and by the accumulation of multiple weakly underdominant fusions. Corresponding Editor: J. Huelsenbeck
Water Management Practices Affect Arsenic and Cadmium Accumulation in Rice Grains

Cadmium (Cd) and arsenic (As) accumulation in rice grains is a great threat to its productivity, grain quality, and thus human health. Pot and field studies were carried out to unravel the effect of different water management practices (aerobic, aerobic-flooded, and flooded) on Cd and As accumulation in rice grains of two different varieties. In pot experiment, Cd or As was also added into the soil as treatment. Pots without Cd or As addition were maintained as control. Results indicated that water management practices significantly influenced the Cd and As concentration in rice grains and aerobic cultivation of rice furnished less As concentration in its grains. Nonetheless, Cd concentration in this treatment was higher than the grains of flooded rice. Likewise, in field study, aerobic and flooded rice cultivation recorded higher Cd and As concentration, respectively. However, growing of rice in aerobic-flooded conditions decreased the Cd concentration by 9.38 times on average basis as compared to aerobic rice. Furthermore, this treatment showed 28% less As concentration than that recorded in flooded rice cultivation. The results suggested that aerobic-flooded cultivation may be a promising strategy to reduce the Cd and As accumulations in rice grains simultaneously.
Current Sensor Fault Detection, Identification, and Reconfiguration for Doubly Fed Induction Generators

This work presents current sensor fault detection, identification and reconfiguration for a voltage oriented controlled doubly fed induction generator. The focus of this analysis is on the identification of the faulty sensor, and the actual reconfiguration. It is proposed to temporary switch from closed loop into open loop control to decouple the drive from faulty sensor readings. During a short period of open loop operation, the fault is identified. Then replacement signals from observers are used to reconfigure the drive and re-enter closed loop control. Measurement results are included to prove that the proposed concept leads to good results.
Exploring mobile commerce adoption using a new hybrid fuzzy MCDM model

As mobile commerce (m-commerce) has continued to grow via the advancement in wireless and mobile technology, the issue of m-commerce has become significant. To promote mcommerce adoption, companies should establish a perfect mcommerce environment and try to understand customers' needs. This paper proposes a m-commerce evaluation model that could explore m-commerce adoption for uncertain information environment. The model can address the interdependence and feedback effects between criteria and dimensions by using a new hybrid fuzzy MCDM model, which combining the fuzzy DEMATEL technique, fuzzy DANP and fuzzy VIKOR methods. Furthermore, an empirical case of evaluating m-commerce adoption is used to verify the proposed model.
Iloprost inhalation solution for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a condition that is characterised by increased pulmonary arterial pressure and vascular resistance that can lead to right ventricular failure and death. A variety of disturbances in pulmonary vascular endothelial and smooth muscle function are present in PAH, including reduced production of vasodilator and antiproliferative substances, such as nitric oxide and prostacyclin, and an overproduction of mitogens, such as endothelin. As a result of these observations, therapies have been developed for PAH that specifically target these pathogenic processes, including prostacyclin analogues and endothelin receptor antagonists. This article reviews iloprost inhalation solution, the most recently approved form of prostacyclin therapy that is delivered directly to the lungs by inhalation.
Acetylated Rhamnogalacturonans from Immature Fruits of Abelmoschus esculentus Inhibit the Adhesion of Helicobacter pylori to Human Gastric Cells by Interaction with Outer Membrane Proteins

Polysaccharide containing extracts from immature fruits of okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) are known to exhibit antiadhesive effects against bacterial adhesion of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) to stomach tissue. The present study investigates structural and functional features of polymers responsible for this inhibition of bacterial attachment to host cells. Ammonium sulfate precipitation of an aqueous extract yielded two fractions at 60% and 90% saturation with significant antiadhesive effects against H. pylori, strain J99, (FE60% 68% ± 15%; FE90% 75% ± 11% inhibition rates) after preincubation of the bacteria at 1 mg/mL. Sequential extraction of okra fruits yielded hot buffer soluble solids (HBSS) with dose dependent antiadhesive effects against strain J99 and three clinical isolates. Preincubation of H. pylori with HBSS (1 mg/mL) led to reduced binding to 3ʹ-sialyl lactose, sialylated Lea and Lex. A reduction of bacterial binding to ligands complementary to BabA and SabA was observed when bacteria were pretreated with FE90%. Structural analysis of the antiadhesive polysaccharides (molecular weight, monomer composition, linkage analysis, stereochemistry, and acetylation) indicated the presence of acetylated rhamnogalacturonan-I polymers, decorated with short galactose side chains. Deacetylation of HBSS and FE90% resulted in loss of the antiadhesive activity, indicating esterification being a prerequisite for antiadhesive activity.
La zone de libre-change nord-amricain : trois stratgies pour un accord

Die nordamerikanische Freihandelszone: drei Strategien fur ein Abkommen ; Das nordamerikanische Freihandelsabkommen (Nafta) ist am 18. Dezember 1992 von Kanada, Mexiko und den Vereinigten Staaten unterzeichnet worden und soil nach der Ratifizierung durch die nationalen Parlamente am 1. Januar 1994 in Kraft treten. Den Vereinigten Staaten, die ihrer Handelspolitik eine neue Dynamik verleihen wollten, kamen bei den Verhandlungen die Rolle eines Motors zu. Hierbei wurden sie von Mexiko unterstutzt, das durch seinen Beitritt die seit 1982 eingeleiteten Wirtschaftsreformen konsolidiert. ; Fur die Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada wird das Abkommen sicherlich nur wenige Auswirkungen haben. Dagegen konnte es in Mexiko, dem Land, das sich so fur dessen AbschluB eingesetzt hat, mehr Umwalzungen bewirken: externe Schwâche sowie wirtschaftliche und soziale Anpassung.
Energy-Aware Secure Multicast Communication In Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

In this paper we address the problem of efficiently securing multicast communication in energy constrained wireless ad hoc networks. We show that existing scalable key distribution techniques that rely on logical hierarchies, are energy inefficient. We show that great energy savings can occur when physical location information is considered in the key distribution scheme construction. We also show that even greater energy savings occur when routing and physical layer information is exploited. We develop a location-aware key distribution scheme, with the use of an iterative clustering algorithm. We formulate an optimization problem for the key distribution tree construction and maintenance and show that any candidate optimal solution does not scale with group size. We alternatively propose a heuristic routing-aware algorithm for efficiently constructing and maintaining the key distribution tree. We further improve our algorithm by incorporating batch rekeying instead of individual rekeying after every membership change. We present simulation studies that illustrate the improvements achieved using our algorithms.
Prediction Rules for Exchangeable Sequences Related to Species Sampling 1 Prediction Rules for Exchangeable Sequences Related to Species Sampling

Suppose an exchangable sequence with values in a nice measurable space S admits a prediction rule of the following form: given the rst n terms of the sequence, the next term equals the jth distinct value observed so far with probability pj;n, for j = 1; 2; : : :, and otherwise is a new value with distribution for some probability measure on S with no atoms. Then the pj;n depend only on the partitition of the rst n integers induced by the rst n values of the sequence. All possible distributions for such an exchangeable sequence are characterized in terms of constraints on the pj;n and in terms of their de Finetti representations.
AGENT99 Trainer: Designing a Web-Based Multimedia Training System for Deception Detection Knowledge Transfer

Although detection of malicious deception is important to prevention of possible harm to individuals or organizations, human deception detection accuracy is poor (around 40%-60%) because people lack deception detection knowledge. Therefore it is important to create strategies and tools for making effective transfer of deception detection knowledge readily available to the masses. This paper describes our research efforts to design and implement a Web-based multimedia training system, Agent99 Trainer, to provide effective deception detection knowledge transfer. Agent99 Trainer captures experts’ knowledge on multimedia, presents it to learners through an integrated interface, provides practice opportunities by allowing viewing of real life examples, and gives immediate and elaborate feedback. Furthermore all the components of Agent99 Trainer are integrated together to achieve the best possible performance. Our initial experiment shows that training using Agent99 Trainer improves human deception detection accuracy and that the training is as effective as lecture-based training. In addition, our usability study shows that Agent99 Trainer is easy to use and supports the system design from a subjective perspective.
Efficient Learning for Crowdsourced Regression

Crowdsourcing platforms emerged as popular venues for purchasing human intelligence at low cost for large volume of tasks. As many low-paid workers are prone to give noisy answers, one of the fundamental questions is how to identify more reliable workers and exploit this heterogeneity to infer the true answers. Despite significant research efforts for classification tasks with discrete answers, little attention has been paid to regression tasks where the answers take continuous values. We consider the task of recovering the position of target objects, and introduce a new probabilistic model capturing the heterogeneity of the workers. We propose the belief propagation (BP) algorithm for inferring the positions and prove that it achieves optimal mean squared error by comparing its performance to that of an oracle estimator. Our experimental results on synthetic datasets confirm our theoretical predictions. We further emulate a crowdsourcing system using PASCAL visual object classes datasets and show that de-noising the crowdsourced data using BP can significantly improve the performance for the downstream vision task.
Great apes can defer exchange: a replication with different results suggesting future oriented behavior

The topic of cognitive foresight in non-human animals has received considerable attention in the last decade. The main questions concern whether the animals can prepare for upcoming situations which are, to various degrees, contextually or sensorially detached from the situation in which the preparations are made. Studies on great apes have focused on tool-related tasks, e.g., the ability to select a tool which is functional only in the future. Dufour and Sterck (2008), however, investigated whether chimpanzees were also able to prepare for a future exchange with a human: an object exchanged for a food item. The study included extensive training on the exchangeable item, which is traditionally not compatible with methods for studying planning abilities, as associative learning cannot be precluded. Nevertheless, despite this training, the chimpanzees could not solve the deferred exchange task. Given that great apes can plan for tool use, these results are puzzling. In addition, claims that great ape foresight is highly limited has been based on this study (Suddendorf and Corballis, 2010). Here we partly replicated Dufour and Sterck's study to discern whether temporally deferred and spatially displaced exchange tasks are beyond the capabilities of great apes. In addition to chimpanzees we tested orangutans. One condition followed the one used by Dufour and Sterck, in which the exchange items, functional only in the future, are placed at a location that freely allows for selections by the subjects. In order to test the possibility that the choice set-up could explain the negative results in Dufour and Sterck's study, our second condition followed a method used in the planning study by Osvath and Osvath (2008), where the subjects make a forced one-item-choice from a tray. We found that it is within the capabilities of chimpanzees and orangutans to perform deferred exchange in both conditions.
Exploring Demand and Provision in English Child Protection Services

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study linking the national data-sets for all children in need and child protection services in England. The study was informed by an emerging literature on systems thinking in public services, and aimed to examine variations and patterns of response in local authorities to demand for child welfare services in their area. One hundred and fifty-two local authority census returns and other statistical indicators covering up to a thirteen-year period were combined into a single data-set. Statistical analysis was undertaken to explore the characteristics of demand, workload and workforce, trends over time and variations between local authorities. The results showed that the overall system has become increasingly geared towards protective interventions, especially since the Baby P scandal of 2008. Deprivation levels continue to be the key driver of referrals and other categories of demand, and are strongly associated with variations in service response, particularly in the initial stages of referral and assessment. Implications are considered for the current organisation of child welfare services in light of recent reviews and reforms.
Young People’s Engagement of Social Media for Social Transformation: Study of Nigerian University Students

This study using a sample size of 400 for survey and 12 focus group participants drawn from the population of a federal University in Nigeria, investigates the practicality of thinking about social media as online public sphere that offers Nigerian youth opportunity for such meaningful civic engagement and agenda setting. It investigates the level of access and social media literacy inherent in these youth, the uses they make of it, the extent of exposure and use and whether these translate into a culture of social transformation among these youth. Using the Uses-and-gratifications and public sphere theories, the study combined the use of survey and focus group discussions. The study finds that the level of awareness, exposure and use of Facebook among these youth is quite high. It is however found that the youth tend to make more personal, trivial and entertaining use of Facebook. The youth’s social media usage thus disengages rather than makes for active engagement with their expected role in social transformation and development. The youth, with reasons, have never used Facebook or indeed any other social media to advocate or win support for a cause geared towards social change or social development of the society. It is concluded that Nigerian youth should be challenged to embrace serious online activism through the positive, prudent, informed, literate, and better appropriated use of the social media as both a socialisation and an empowering tool.