Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lactobacillaceae and Cell Adhesion: Genomic and Functional Screening

The analysis of collections of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) from traditional fermented plant foods in tropical countries may enable the detection of LAB with interesting properties. Binding capacity is often the main criterion used to investigate the probiotic characteristics of bacteria. In this study, we focused on a collection of 163 Lactobacillaceace comprising 156 bacteria isolated from traditional amylaceous fermented foods and seven strains taken from a collection and used as controls. The collection had a series of analyses to assess binding potential for the selection of new probiotic candidates. The presence/absence of 14 genes involved in binding to the gastrointestinal tract was assessed. This enabled the detection of all the housekeeping genes (ef-Tu, eno, gap, groEl and srtA) in the entire collection, of some of the other genes (apf, cnb, fpbA, mapA, mub) in 86% to 100% of LAB, and of the other genes (cbsA, gtf, msa, slpA) in 0% to 8% of LAB. Most of the bacteria isolated from traditional fermented foods exhibited a genetic profile favorable for their binding to the gastrointestinal tract. We selected 30 strains with different genetic profiles to test their binding ability to non-mucus (HT29) and mucus secreting (HT29-MTX) cell lines as well as their ability to degrade mucus. Assays on both lines revealed high variability in binding properties among the LAB, depending on the cell model used. Finally, we investigated if their binding ability was linked to tighter cross-talk between bacteria and eukaryotic cells by measuring the expression of bacterial genes and of the eukaryotic MUC2 gene. Results showed that wild LAB from tropical amylaceous fermented food had a much higher binding capacity than the two LAB currently known to be probiotics. However their adhesion was not linked to any particular genetic equipment.
A real-time motion detection algorithm for traffic monitoring systems based on consecutive temporal difference

Moving objects detection is a basic task in video analysis and applications. Many algorithms have been proposed to detect moving objects under different situations in the past decades. In this paper, we propose a new method to detect moving objects in a non-stationary, complex background for an automatic traffic monitoring system. As a pre-treatment, the square neighborhood algorithm is adopted to compensate the disturbance caused by shaking of camera. Then, an improved temporal difference method is applied to obtain the moving areas. Some post-treatments are used to optimize the detection by eliminating noise from the moving areas. The proposed method is excellent in real-time performance because it requires only a little memory and computation. Experiment results show that this method can detect the moving objects efficiently and accurately form the video recorded by a shaking camera with changing background and noises.
Stable Distributions for Stream Computations : it ’ s as easyas 0 , 1 , 2

A surprising number of data stream problems are solved by methods involving computations with stable distributions . This paper will give a short summary of some of these problems, and how the best known solutions depend on use of stable distributions; it also lists some related open problems. St able distributions arise from seeking statistics with the pr operty that is distributed as . Here, are scalars, and are independent and identically distributed random variables. Such distributions 1 exist for all . Gaussian is stable with and Cauchy stable with . See the books [10, 11] for a statistical treatment of Stable Distributions. The principal application to a stream co ntext is to approximate of the norm of a stream of values defining a vector. That is, the computation of , where may be described in some arbitrary, incremental manner. This approach was pioneered by Indyk 2.
Audio-visual emotion challenge 2012: a simple approach

The paper presents a small empirical study into emotion and affect recognition based on auditory and visual features, which was performed in the context of the Audio-Visual Emotion Challenge (AVEC) 2012. The goal of this competition is to predict continuous-valued affect ratings based on the provided auditory and visual features, e.g., local binary pattern (LBP) features extracted from aligned face images, and spectral audio features. Empirically, we found that there are only very weak (linear) relations between the features and the continuous-valued ratings: our best linear regressors employ the offset-feature to exploit the fact that the ratings have a dominant direction (more increasing than decreasing). Much to our surprise, only exploitation of this bias already leads to results that improve over the baseline system presented in [10]. The best performance we obtained on the AVEC 2012 test set (averaged over the test set and over four affective dimensions) is a correlation between predicted and ground-truth ratings of 0.2255 when making continuous predictions, and 0.1920 when making word-level predictions.
Comparison of face image quality metrics: Electronic and legacy mug shots

Automated face recognition offers an effective method for identifying individuals. Face images have been used in a number of different applications, including driver's licenses, passports and identification cards. To provide some form of standardization for photographs in these applications, ISO / IEC JTC 1 SC 37 have developed standardized data interchange formats to promote interoperability. There are many different publically available face databases available to the research community that are used to advance the field of face recognition algorithms, amongst other uses. In this paper, we examine how an existing database that has been used extensively in research (FERET) compares with two operational data sets with respect to some of the metrics outlined in the standard ISO / IEC 19794-5. The goals of this research are to provide the community with a comparison of a baseline data set and to compare this baseline to a photographic data set that has been scanned in from mug-shot photographs, as well as a data set of digitally captured photographs. It is hoped that this information will provide Face Recognition System (FRS) developers some guidance on the characteristics of operationally collected data sets versus a controlled-collection database.
Situational and Age-Dependent Decision Making during Life Threatening Distress in Myotis macrodactylus

Echolocation and audiovocal communication have been studied extensively in bats. The manner in which these abilities are incorporated within escape behaviors during life-threatening distress is largely unknown. Here we tested the hypothesis that behavioral response profiles expressed during distress are relatively stereotypic given their evolutionary adaptations to avoid predators. We subjected juvenile and adult big-footed myotis (Myotis macrodactylus) to a sequence of three types of life threatening distress: 1) trapping them in a mist-net (environmental threat), 2) approaching them when trapped (predator threat), and 3) partially restraining their freedom to move (arrest), and recorded their escape behavior in each of the three conditions. Response profiles differed across individuals and with the context in which they were expressed. During environmental and predator threat, bats displayed significantly more biting and wing-flapping behaviors and emitted more echolocation pulses than during arrest. Response profiles also varied with age. During arrest, juveniles were more likely than adults to emit distress calls and vice-versa for biting and wing flapping during environmental and predator threat. Overall, individualized response profiles were classified into ten clusters that were aligned along two divergent response trajectories when viewed within two-dimensional, multifactorial decision space. Juvenile behaviors tended to follow a predominantly “social-dependence” trajectory, whereas adult behaviors were mostly aligned along a “self-reliance” trajectory. We conclude that bats modify their vocal behavior and make age-appropriate and contextually adaptive decisions when distressed. This decision-making ability is consistent with observations in other social species, including humans.
A qualitative study of sleep and the night-time in care homes for older people

Sleep is an essential contributor to health, well-being and quality of life. This thesis explores sleep and the night-time in care homes for older people. To date there has been a lack of qualitative research to explore what happens in a care home throughout the night and further our understanding of care home residents' experiences of sleep and the night-time. Forming part of the New Dynamics of Ageing funded Sleep in Ageing project, (www.somnia.surrev.ac.uk) the study aims to explore this previously under-researched area using qualitative methodology including interviews with 38 care home residents and 39 staff, together with observations in each home. The research findings from this study identify aspects of the social and physical environment of a care home which influence the experience of the night-time and the quality of residents' sleep, as perceived by both staff and residents. In particular, residents expressed difficulties exerting control over their sleep environment and lacked strategies and support to do this. Personal control over sleeping routines and bedroom privacy was found to be related to levels of physical and cognitive ability. The dominance in care homes of a risk-averse culture which focuses on the ageing body as the centre of risk, and organisational routines during the night-time, facilitated an environment where disturbed sleep becomes a normal part of the sleep experience and an accepted consequence of night-time care. This thesis concludes that the current model of 'care' within care homes is unable to provide individualised support to care home residents that makes possible choice and control over the night time sleep environment, and which does not contribute to the promotion of good quality sleep.
An architecture for stable, analyzable Internet routing

In today's Internet, individuals, campuses, and organizations obtain IP connectivity from transit providers. Internet interprovider routing is governed by bilateral traffic exchange agreements between providers. Such independently established policies can adversely impact the stability and analyzability of Internet routing. We describe an architecture for coordinating Internet routing policies. This architecture allows providers to publish high-level specifications of their policies, and to analyze the effects of their policies on Internet routing. Several pieces of the architecture have been implemented and are in production use; we also discuss the experiences gleaned from these deployments.
DUAL AND TRI-BAND-NOTCHED ULTRAWIDEBAND (UWB) ANTENNAS USING COMPACT COMPOSITE RESONATORS

An ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna with triple band- notched characteristics is presented in this paper. The triple-notched bands (5.15{5.35GHz and 5.725{5.825GHz for WLAN, 7.9{8.395GHz for X-band) are achieved by using only one novel composite resonator with multiple resonant characteristics. The resonator is placed on the back surface of the substrate and connected to the radiation patch through one via-hole. An equivalent circuit model is built for analyzing the band-notched characteristics. Moreover, the notched bands can be adjusted independently, and the resonator structure is very compact.
Fending finanicial transaction from phishing attack

Phishing is the criminal activity of enticing people into visiting websites that impersonate the real thing, to dupe them into revealing passwords and other credentials to carry out financial fraud. This less suspected and high profile attack lays a deceit trap to the unwitting and gullible customers to part with their sensitive credentials to unauthorized entities. The inherent suave and subtle vulnerabilities associated with the websites like flawed design, inconsistent software patches, incompatible hardware threats, cross site scripting, buffer overflow, cookie and session hijacking etc exacerbate the possibility of incidence of phishing. There are variants of phishing attack that target the personalized profiles of online banking community. Online banking (or Internet/Electronic banking) allows customers to conduct financial transactions on a secure website operated by their retail or virtual bank. The financial activities within bank can fall under three realms of Client to Client (C2C), Client to Bank to Client (C2B2C) and Bank to Bank (B2B). The proposed state of the art solution mechanism is to pre agree to a session specific key by name Transaction Enabling Key (TEK) on successful exchange of authentication token and authorization stamp between the client and bank server in the context of C2C or C2B2C. The B2B interaction requires a still sophisticated technique viz. like submitting the Service Right Certificate (SRC) possessed by each genuine bank website to the other counter party during the online financial transaction. The submission of faultless SRC by the corresponding entities ensures the integrity of the website and henceforth the credibility of financial transaction is upheld. These two proposed techniques help to alleviate the security apprehensions and trust breaches encountered in online financial scene.
Output regulation of uncertain nonlinear systems with nonlinear exosystems

An adaptive control algorithm is proposed for output regulation of uncertain nonlinear systems in output feedback form under disturbances generated from nonlinear exosystems. A new nonlinear internal model is proposed to generate the desired input term for suppression of the disturbances. The proposed internal model design is based on boundedness of the disturbance, high gain design and saturation. It is capable to tackle disturbances in any specified initial conditions. Some uncertainties in the systems are allowed, provided that they do not affect the desired feedforward control term, and they are tackled by using nonlinear dominant functions and an adaptive control coefficient. The proposed control algorithm ensures the global convergence of the state variables to the invariant manifold, which implies that the measurement or the tracking error approaches to zero asymptotically.
Refreshing Sleep and Sleep Continuity Determine Perceived Sleep Quality

Sleep quality is a construct often measured, employed as an outcome criterion for therapeutic success, but never defined. In two studies we examined appraised good and poor sleep quality in three groups: a control group, individuals with obstructive sleep apnea, and those with insomnia disorder. In Study 1 we used qualitative methodology to examine good and poor sleep quality in 121 individuals. In Study 2 we examined sleep quality in 171 individuals who had not participated in Study 1 and evaluated correlates and predictors of sleep quality. Across all six samples and both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, the daytime experience of feeling refreshed (nonrefreshed) in the morning and the nighttime experience of good (impaired) sleep continuity characterized perceived good and poor sleep. Our results clarify sleep quality as a construct and identify refreshing sleep and sleep continuity as potential clinical and research outcome measures.
Ju n 20 00 QED in Dispersing and Absorbing Media

After giving an outline of the quantization scheme based on the microscopic Hopfield model of a dielectric bulk material, we show how the classical phenomenological Maxwell equations of the electromagnetic field in the presence of dielectric matter of given spaceand frequency-dependent complex permittivity can be transferred to quantum theory. Including in the theory the interaction of the medium-assisted field with atomic systems, we present both the minimalcoupling Hamiltonian and the multipolar-coupling Hamiltonian in the Coulomb gauge. To illustrate the concept, we discuss the input–output relations of radiation and the transformation of radiation-field quantum states at absorbing four-port devices, and the spontaneous decay of an excited atom near the surface of an absorbing body and in a spherical micro-cavity with intrinsic material losses. Finally, we give an extension of the quantization scheme to other media such as amplifying media, magnetic media, and nonlinear media. In Coherence and Statistics of Photons and Atoms, edited by J. Peřina (Wiley, New York, 2001), p. 1.
On the Feature Selection Criterion Proposed in ‘ Gait Feature Subset Selection by Mutual Information

Abstract Recently, Guo and Nixon [1] proposed a feature selection method based on maximizing I(x; Y ), the multidimensional mutual information between feature vector x and class variable Y . Because computing I(x; Y ) can be difficult in practice, Guo and Nixon proposed an approximation of I(x; Y ) as the criterion for feature selection. We show that Guo and Nixon’s criterion originates from approximating the joint probability distributions in I(x; Y ) by second-order product distributions. We remark on the limitations of the approximation and discuss alternatives to compute I(x; Y ) without sacrificing computational economy.
Parallelized Online Regularized Least-Squares for Adaptive Embedded Systems

The authors introduce a machine learning approach based on parallel online regularized least-squares learning algorithm for parallel embedded hardware platforms. The system is suitable for use in real-time adaptive systems. Firstly, the system can learn in online fashion, a property required in real-life applications of embedded machine learning systems. Secondly, to guarantee real-time response in embedded multi-core computer architectures, the learning system is parallelized and able to operate with a limited amount of computational and memory resources. Thirdly, the system can predict several labels simultaneously. The authors evaluate the performance of the algorithm from three different perspectives. The prediction performance is evaluated on a hand-written digit recognition task. The computational speed is measured from 1 thread to 4 threads, in a quad-core platform. As a promising unconventional multi-core architecture, Network-on-Chip platform is studied for the algorithm. The authors construct a NoC consisting of a 4x4 mesh. The machine learning algorithm is implemented in this platform with up to 16 threads. It is shown that the memory consumption and cache efficiency can be considerably improved by optimizing the cache behavior of the system. The authors' results provide a guideline for designing future embedded multi-core machine learning devices.
OpenCogBot : Achieving Generally Intelligent Virtual Agent Control and Humanoid Robotics via Cognitive Synergy

We describe an integrative cognitive architecture for human-like, human-level, embodied general intelligence, founded on integrating the OpenCogPrime framework for cognition, language and high-level learning with a hierarchical temporal memory for lower-level perception and action. The core conceptual principle of the architecture is ”cognitive synergy”, wherein different components are specifically integrated in such a way as to compensate for each others scalability weaknesses. The current, preliminary implementation of the architecture to control a Nao robot is described, and contrasted with prior work using OpenCogPrime to control virtual agents in virtual worlds; and future plans for achieving greater intelligence via instructing the Nao in a ”robot preschool” context are reviewed.
Depth-based localization for robotic peg-in-tube assembly

Peg-in-tube assembly stands ahead of a more common benchmark task for industrial assembly, i.e., `pegin-hole'. The robot can easily be deceived to detect the actual hole while performing a `peg-in-tube' task as the tube has a surrounding pocket that cannot support the peg. The paper presents a thorough geometrical analysis of the `peg-in-tube' assembly process, and proposes a novel algorithm based on depth measurements of peg center to perform `peg-in-tube' task. The results are demonstrated on a KUKA KR5 Arc industrial robot with a chamferless cylindrical peg and a tube having a minimum clearance of 0.10 mm.
CONSTRAINING THE LUMINOUS RED GALAXY HALO OCCUPATION DISTRIBUTION USING COUNTS-IN-CYLINDERS

The low number density of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) luminous red galaxies (LRGs) suggests that LRGs occupying the same dark matter halo can be separated from pairs occupying distinct dark matter halos with high fidelity. We present a new technique, Counts-in-Cylinders (CiC), to constrain the parameters of the satellite contribution to the LRG halo occupation distribution once the parameters of the central galaxy contribution have been fixed. For a fiber-collision-corrected SDSS spectroscopic LRG subsample at 0.16 < z < 0.36, we find that the CiC multiplicity function is fitted by a halo model where the average number of satellites in a halo of mass M is = ((M − Mcut)/M1)α with Mcut = 5.0+1.5−1.3(+2.9−2.6) × 1013 M☉, M1 = 4.95+0.37−0.26(+0.79−0.53) × 1014 M☉, and α = 1.035+0.10−0.17(+0.24−0.31) at the 68% and 95% confidence levels using a WMAP3 cosmology and z = 0.2 halo catalog. Our method tightly constrains the fraction of LRGs that are satellite galaxies, 6.36+0.38−0.39%, and the combination Mcut/1014 M☉ + α = 1.53+0.08−0.09 at the 95% confidence level, though these constraints may be relaxed when cosmological parameters and the central galaxy parameters are allowed to vary simultaneously. We also find that mocks based on a halo catalog produced by a spherical overdensity finder reproduce both the measured CiC multiplicity function and the projected correlation function, while mocks based on a Friends-of-Friends halo catalog has a deficit of close pairs at ∼1 h−1 Mpc separations. Because the CiC method relies on higher order statistics of close pairs, it is robust to the choice of halo finder, and yields mock catalogs reproducing Finger-of-God (FOG) features in the observations probed by the CiC group multiplicity function. In a companion paper, we will apply this technique to optimize FOG compression to eliminate the one-halo contribution to the LRG power spectrum.
Comparison of switching and conducting performance of SiC-JFET and SiC-BJT with a state of the art IGBT

Silicon Carbide (SiC) power semiconductors being actually in development are promising devices for the future. To outline their characteristics the switching and conducting performance of a SiC-JFET and a SiC-BJT are investigated and compared to a state of the art Si-IGBT. The power losses, the switching times and the efforts for the driving circuits are investigated. The focus is put on the influence of the junction temperature on the power losses of the investigated devices. Therefore, 1200 V / 6 A devices have been used. The BJT and JFET show some advantages concerning their total losses and their temperature range.