Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparative performance evaluation of SVD and Schur Decompositions for Image Watermarking

In this paper, the performance of SVD and Schur decomposition is evaluated and compared for image copyright protection applications. The watermark image is embedded in the cover image by using Quantization Index Modulus Modulation (QIMM) and Quantization Index Modulation (QIM). Watermark image is embedded in the D matrix of Schur decomposition and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). Watermarking in SVD domain is highly flexible . This is due to the availability of three matrices for watermarking. Singular values in SVD and Schur decomposition are highly stable. Compared to Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), Schur decomposition is computationally faster and robust to image attacks. The proposed algorithms based on SVD and Schur decompositions are more secure and robust to various attacks, viz., rotation, low pass filtering, median filtering, resizing, salt & pepper noise. Superior experimental results are observed with the proposed algorithm over a recent scheme proposed by Chung et al. in terms of Normalized Cross correlation (NCC) and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR).
Concatenated codes with interleaver for digital transmission over mobile channels

We present a thorough comparison among three alternative solutions for the transmission of medium-high speed data over mobile telecommunication systems with high quality of service. They are based on concatenated codes with interleavers, the first two using the parallel concatenation known as turbo code, and the third the serial concatenation recently proposed. The comparison between the two alternatives has been based on the computation of the free distance of the resulting codes, and on extensive simulations over additive Gaussian noise (AWGN) and correlated multipath fading channels.
1 Nanoscale Metallo-Dielectric Coherent Light Sources

Compact photonic components are important for the design and fabrication of integrated optical devices and circuits. In the case of light sources, reducing the size can result in improved metrics such as higher packing density and reduced power consumption and also may enhance cavity–emitter interactions such as the Purcell effect. Until recently it was commonly known that the minimum size for a laser is ultimately determined by the free-space wavelength, λ0. For example, as the size of a conventional Fabry–Perot semiconductor laser is scaled down in all three dimensions toward λ0, three effects adversely influence the lasing process. Firstly, the roundtrip path of the optical wave in the gain medium is shortened. Secondly, radiative losses from the end mirrors have an increased effect. Thirdly, the lateral field confinement in the resonator waveguide is reduced, resulting in a smaller overlap of the optical mode with the gain medium. All these effects lead to a significant increase in the lasing threshold. As a result lasing cannot be achieved below a certain size limit. By allowing the laser size to increase in one or two dimensions, it is possible to reduce the physical size of the laser in the remaining dimension(s) to values below this limit. For example, the disk thickness in whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) lasers [1] can be reduced to a fraction of the free-space wavelength [2] but, to compensate for the small thickness, the disk diameter must be increased. It should be noted that, in addition to the optical mechanisms noted above, nonradiative surface recombination can have a non-negligible negative effect on the emitter efficiency and thus needs to be accounted for in the design and analysis of such sources. The ultimate challenge in this respect is concurrent reduction of the resonator size in all three dimensions, and, at the same time, satisfying the requirements for lasing action. The size of an optical cavity can be defined using different metrics, for example, the physical dimensions of the cavity or the size of the optical mode. However, if the goal of size reduction is to increase the integration density (for example, in a
Dancing with loneliness in later life: A pilot study mapping seasonal variations

Temporal variations in loneliness at the individual and population level have long been reported in longitudinal studies. Although the evidence is limited due to methodological distinctions among studies, we broadly know that loneliness as one ages is a dynamic experience with people becoming more or less lonely or staying the same over time. There is, however, less evidence to understand individual variations in loneliness over shorter periods of time. This paper reports on one element of a small mixed method pilot study to investigate seasonal variations in loneliness over the course of one year and to test the effectiveness of tools used to collect data at repeated short intervals. Our findings confirm that loneliness is dynamic even over shorter periods of time with participants reporting to be lonelier in the evenings, weekends and spring-summer period. Data measures were at times problematic due to language and/or interpretation and reinforce the relevance of reviewing the more common approaches to studying loneliness to more effectively capture the complex and individual nature of the experience.
An investigation into the effect of text-to-speech technology for people with acquired dyslexia

People with aphasia may experience difficulties reading and understanding written material. Text-to-speech (TTS) software has the potential to provide assistance to people with aphasia with poor reading skills. It converts text displayed on a computer screen into synthesised speech, so that the user can both see text on the screen and listen to it. Research has suggested TTS can provide substantial benefit to people with learning difficulties, allowing them to 'read' faster and improve their comprehension. There has been limited research into how this technology can help compensate for acquired reading difficulties. This study investigated the effects of TTS on the reading skills of two people with acquired dyslexia, looking at any changes in reading rate, comprehension and levels of confidence. It also aimed to examine whether any effects of TTS were due to the simultaneous auditory and visual presentation of information or to auditory information alone. Participants' ability to read with and without TTS was compared across a number of tasks. Whilst results showed no significant difference in comprehension between TTS and unaided reading, one participant experienced considerable improvements in reading rate. Confidence ratings were not significantly different. However, reports from one of the participants suggested that outside the constraints of experimental conditions TTS provides substantial assistance for his reading. Results also suggested both participants may be relying largely on only one of the TTS modalities. It was also proposed that the nature and demands of the different tasks affected the results considerably. The results of this study add to our understanding of the potential benefits of TTS for people with aphasia. Further research is needed with larger numbers of participants to establish the extent of these benefits, as well as how much the precise nature of a person's reading impairment and concomitant difficulties determine the likelihood of any benefits.
Vendors' Perspectives of Coordination in the Information Technology Offshore Outsourcing Industry: An Exploratory Study from the Philippines

This study investigates how offshore information technology (IT) service providers (vendors) coordinate work with their clients (employers) in order to succeed in the global IT offshore outsourcing industry. We reviewed literature on coordination studies, interviewed offshore service providers in the Philippines, and used thematic analysis to analyse coordination practices from the point of view of these individual vendors in a newly industrialized country. We used Olson and Olson's framework on 'collaboration at a distance' as a lens to structure the results. The study provides an understanding of vendors' individual attitudes towards the coordination of distributed work and draws attention to how differences in power affect the work situation of vendors, and by implication all stakeholders. We offer this insight as a way to enhance existing CSCW frameworks, by imbuing them with the perspective of non-equal relationships. The study found that vendors were generally able to produce outputs that satisfy their clients, however these results were only achieved because individuals were willing to take risks and make sacrifices in their personal lives. The relationship was further characterised by a complex interplay between the client's control of the overall work arrangements and the vendors' ability to establish a level of autonomy in their work practices and their flexible use of coordination tools.
Title Y-like retinal ganglion cells innervate the dorsal raphe nucleus inthe

Background: The dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) of the mesencephalon is a complex multi-functional and multi-transmitter nucleus involved in a wide range of behavioral and physiological processes. The DRN receives a direct input from the retina. However little is known regarding the type of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) that innervates the DRN. We examined morphological characteristics and physiological properties of these DRN projecting ganglion cells. Methodology/Principal Findings: The Mongolian gerbils are highly visual rodents with a diurnal/crepuscular activity rhythm. It has been widely used as experimental animals of various studies including seasonal affective disorders and depression. Young adult gerbils were used in the present study. DRN-projecting RGCs were identified following retrograde tracer injection into the DRN, characterized physiologically by extracellular recording and morphologically after intracellular filling. The result shows that DRN-projecting RGCs exhibit morphological characteristics typical of alpha RGCs and physiological response properties of Y-cells. Melanopsin was not detected in these RGCs and they show no evidence of intrinsic photosensitivity. Conclusions/Significance: These findings suggest that RGCs with alpha-like morphology and Y-like physiology appear to perform a non-imaging forming function and thus may participate in the modulation of DRN activity which includes regulation of sleep and mood. Citation: Luan L, Ren C, Lau BW-M, Yang J, Pickard GE, et al. (2011) Y-Like Retinal Ganglion Cells Innervate the Dorsal Raphe Nucleus in the Mongolian Gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus). PLoS ONE 6(4): e18938. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0018938 Editor: Steven Barnes, Dalhousie University, Canada Received February 28, 2011; Accepted March 25, 2011; Published April 28, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Luan et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by National Science Foundation of China grants (30831160516 to M. Pu); Ministry of Science and Technology of China grants (2011CB510206 & 2009CB320900 to M. Pu); National Institutes of Health, USA grant R01 EY017809 (G.E. Pickard); NSFC/RGC Joint Research Scheme under the contract N_HKU750/08 (K-F. So), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (21609101, KF So); National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (2011CB707501, K-F. So). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: mpu@hsc.pku. edu.cn (MP); hrmaskf@hkucc.hku. hk (K-FS) . These authors contributed equally to this work.
The efficacy of adding dexketoprofen trometamol to tramadol with patient controlled analgesia technique in post-laparoscopic cholecystectomy pain treatment.

OBJECTIVES Pain treatment in laparoscopic cholecystectomy, which is performed in increasing numbers as an ambulatory procedure, is an important issue.Although laparoscopic cholecystectomy is regarded as an ambulatory procedure, patients are often hospitalized due to pain and this increases opioid consumption and side effects caused by opioids. This study aims at evaluating the efficacy of adding dexketoprofen trometamol to tramadol with patient controlled analgesia (PCA) in postlaparoscopic cholecystectomy pain treatment. METHODS 40 patients in ASA I-II risk groups aged between 18-65 years were enrolled in the study and were randomized using closed envelope method. In Group TD 600 mg tramadol and 100 mg dexketoprofen trometamol, in Group T 600 mg tramadol was added to 100 ml 0.9% normal saline for PCA. 8 mg lornoxicam iv was given if VAS >40 in the postoperative period. RESULTS There was no statistically significant difference in terms of adverse effects (hypotension, bradycardia, sedation) but in Group T 4 patients complained of nausea and 3 complained of vomiting. Opioid consumption was lower and patient satisfaction was higher in group TD. CONCLUSION This study has shown that adding dexketoprofen trometamol to tramadol in patient controlled analgesia following laparoscopic cholecystectomy lowers VAS scores, increases patient satisfaction and decreases opioid consumption.
SLUBM: An Extended LUBM Benchmark for Stream Reasoning

Stream reasoning is now emerging as a hot topic in the context of Semantic Web. As the number of data sources that continuously generates data streams emulating real-time events are increasing (and getting more diverse, i.e., from social networks to sensor networks), the task of exploiting the temporal aspects of these dynamic data becomes a real challenge. Stream reasoning is another form of the traditional reasoning, that works with streaming (dynamic, temporal) data over an underlying (static) ontology. There have been many existing reasoning systems (or newly proposed) trying to cope with the problems of stream reasoning but there is yet no standard to measure the performance and scalability of such systems. This paper proposes a benchmarking system, which is an extension to the well-known benchmark for traditional reasoning, Lehigh University Benchmark (LUBM), to make it work for stream-based experiments while retaining most of the LUBM's old standards.
Exploring Research Issues in Mining Medical Datasets

Mining medical datasets is a challenging problem before data mining researchers as these datasets have several hidden challenges compared to conventional datasets. Starting from the collection of samples through field experiments and clinical trials to performing classification, there are numerous challenges at every stage in the mining process. The preprocessing phase in the mining process itself is a challenging issue when, we work on medical datasets. The main contribution of this research includes the detailed survey carried out and brings out the discussion that is not initiated in research papers published in the fields of medical and health informatics. We made a sincere effort towards making this possible and aim to bring out the various research issues associated with the disease prediction from the perspective of data mining. We also discuss the nature of medical disease datasets before switching our attention towards prediction or classification.
Randomized algorithm for estimation of moving point position using single camera

Stochastic approximation algorithms (for example SPSA) provide a way to solve optimization problems in the presence of arbitrary but bounded disturbances. In this paper a problem of position estimation for a moving point using monocular projective observations is considered. We add random perturbations to camera position to produce an algorithm which makes estimates of point position demanding only that the point's velocity is bounded in time. This is superior to the methods currently available in the computer vision field which all consider very restricted cases of point movement (constant, movement in plane). We prove theoretical convergence of estimates and provide numerical simulation for the algorithm.
Greater occipital nerve block using local anaesthetics alone or with triamcinolone for transformed migraine: a randomised comparative study

Objective: To determine whether adding triamcinolone to local anaesthetics increased the efficacy of greater occipital nerve block (GONB) and trigger-point injections (TPIs) for transformed migraine (TM). Methods: Patients with TM were randomised to receive GONB and TPIs using lidocaine 2% and bupivacaine 0.5% + either saline or triamcinolone 40 mg. We assessed the severity of headache and associated symptoms before and 20 minutes after injection. Patients documented headache and severity of associated symptoms for 4 weeks after injections. Changes in symptom severity were compared between the two groups. Results: Thirty-seven patients were included. Twenty minutes after injection, mean headache severity decreased by 3.2 points in group A (p<0.01) and by 3.1 points in group B (p<0.01). Mean neck pain severity decreased by 1.5 points in group A (p<0.01) and by 1.7 points in group B (p<0.01). Mean duration of being headache-free was 2.7±3.8 days in group A and 1.0±1.1 days in group B (p = 0.67). None of the outcome measures differed significantly between the two groups. Both treatments were well tolerated. Conclusions: Adding triamcinolone to local anaesthetics when performing GONB and TPIs was not associated with improved outcome in this sample of patients with TM.
A Grid Programming Primer Programming ModelsWorking Group Global Grid Forum 1 , Amsterdam , Mar ch 4-7 , 2001 DRAFT 2 . 4

A grid computingenvironmentis inherentlyparallel, distributed,heterogeneousand dynamic,both in termsof the resourcesinvolvedand their performance. That is to say, grids will presenthierarchies of machines,data and networks that have associatedhierarchies of cycles, bandwidthsand latenciesthat are beyondthescopeof mostestablishedprogrammingtools.For this reason,effectivegrid programmingwill require capabilitiesand propertiesbeyond that of sequentialprogrammingor parallel and distributedprogramming. Hence, it will be necessaryto investigatewhat capabilitiesand propertiesa programming tool mustpossessto supporttheeffectivedevelopment of efficientgrid codes.Thispaperinvestigatesthoseproperties, briefly surveys current programmingparadigmsand tools, andexaminestheir suitability for grid programming. Suggestionsare madefor focusareasin which further work is mostlikely to yieldusefulresults.
Real-time activity recognition in mobile phones based on its accelerometer data

Context awareness is one of the important keys in a pervasive and ubiquitous environment. Activity recognition by utilizing accelerometer sensor is one of the context aware studies that has attracted many researchers, even up until today. Inspired by these researches, we came out with this presented study, which is a continuation of our previous workswhere we explore the possibility of using accelerometer embedded in smartphones in recognizing basic user activity through client/server architecture. In this paper, we present our work in exploring the influence of training data size on recognition accuracy in building classifier model by studying two algorithms, Naïve Bayes and Instance Based classifier (IBk, k=3). The result shows that 13 out of 18 possible combinations for both algorithms gave 90% training data size as the best accuracy, thus proving the assumption that bigger size of training data gives better classification accuracy compared to small sized training data, in most cases. Based on the outcome from the study, it is then implemented in Actiware, which is an activity aware application prototype that uses built in accelerometer sensor in smartphones to perform real-time/online activity recognition. The recognition process is done by utilizing available phone resources locally, without the involvement of any external server connection. ActiWare manages to exhibit encouraging result by recognizing basic user activities with relatively small confusion when tested.
Evaluation of Protein Dihedral Angle Prediction Methods

Tertiary structure prediction of a protein from its amino acid sequence is one of the major challenges in the field of bioinformatics. Hierarchical approach is one of the persuasive techniques used for predicting protein tertiary structure, especially in the absence of homologous protein structures. In hierarchical approach, intermediate states are predicted like secondary structure, dihedral angles, Cα-Cα distance bounds, etc. These intermediate states are used to restraint the protein backbone and assist its correct folding. In the recent years, several methods have been developed for predicting dihedral angles of a protein, but it is difficult to conclude which method is better than others. In this study, we benchmarked the performance of dihedral prediction methods ANGLOR and SPINE X on various datasets, including independent datasets. TANGLE dihedral prediction method was not benchmarked (due to unavailability of its standalone) and was compared with SPINE X and ANGLOR on only ANGLOR dataset on which TANGLE has reported its results. It was observed that SPINE X performed better than ANGLOR and TANGLE, especially in case of prediction of dihedral angles of glycine and proline residues. The analysis suggested that angle shifting was the foremost reason of better performance of SPINE X. We further evaluated the performance of the methods on independent ccPDB30 dataset and observed that SPINE X performed better than ANGLOR.
Object Shift and Specificity: Evidence from ko-phrases in Hindi

In the literature, at least two ways of marking specificity have been proposed either structurally by moving out of the VP (Diesing (1992)) or morphologically as in Turkish (Enç (1991)). We discuss data from Hindi which marks specificity in a way very similar to Turkish, by the postposition ko. We claim that while the presence of morphological marking of specificity is necessary, it is not sufficient. To be interpreted as specific, an NP/DP has to satisfy the structural condition and be morphologically marked. The crucial data supporting our claim come from double object constructions. These data suggest a very restrictive shortest-move-obeying view of scrambling. We discuss the nature of the specificity-induced movement and the nature of the site in which specificity is licensed. Finally, we also discuss a connected alternation seen with the verb ‘send’. We extend our analysis of the specificity-ko to handle the dative-ko.
A multi-channel Beacon Forwarding approach in dual radio Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

Dual radios in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETS) enable the usage of multiple communication chan- nels simultaneously. This results in a higher network capacity in contrast to single radio setups. However, using multiple channels simultaneously leads to Adjacent Channel Interference (ACI) by generating noise in nearby channels. This noise increases the packet loss probability and leads to highly unreliable communication channels. In dual radio setups the impact of ACI is significant e.g. if one radio is receiving on the control channel (CCH) while the other radio performs a transmission on a nearby service channel 2 (SCH2). To reduce ACI on CCH, we propose to use a decreased transmit power on SCH2. However, doing so SCH2 suffers from an increased packet loss probability in contrast to CCH and hence is considered to be a highly unreliable communication channel. To utilize SCH2 and even increase the level of awareness for safety critical applications, we introduce a novel multi channel communication approach using Selective Beacon Forwarding (SBF). Our approach is following the service announcement idea of IEEE 1609.3 [4] and applies forwarding of beacons on SCH2 upon request. We evaluate our scheme called Beacon Forwarding as a Service (BFaaS) based on simulations and show that it increases the level of awareness by up to 50% compared to common beaconing strategies.