Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fusing Local Patterns of Gabor and Non-subsampled Contourlet Transform for Face Recognition

Gabor features have been demonstrated to be very effective for face representation. Recently, non-sub sampled contour let transform (NSCT), which is a newly developed multi-resolution analysis tool based on contour let transform, is also used in facial image processing. In fact, the two image decomposition methods are performed from two different angles. To exploit complementarity of these features, in this paper, we propose a new face representation based on fusing local patterns of Gabor and NSCT. Firstly, we decompose face images using Gabor and NSCT respectively. Then all decomposition images are encoded by local texture descriptors to combine. In order to extract efficient features for feature fusion, we propose local Gabor difference features (LGDF) and local contour let difference features (LCDF) to represent the texture of decomposition images. Thirdly, after fusing LGDF and LCDF, block-based Fisher's linear discriminant (BFLD) is utilized to further reduce the dimensionality and improve discriminative power of the proposed method. Experiments on public databases demonstrate that the proposed LGDF and LCDF are very effective and our approach outperforms many state-of-the-art methods.
System Identification of Legged Locomotion via Harmonic Transfer Functions and Piecewise LTI Approximation

In this study our goal is providing a formal system identification framework applicable to a class of legged locomotion models [2] and robotic systems [3]. Our approach to analyzing legged locomotion dynamics is based on considering the locomotion as a hybrid nonlinear dynamical system with stable periodic orbit (limit-cycle). We introduce a formulation that addresses the input–output system identification problem in frequency domain for hybrid legged locomotion models. Specifically based on some assumptions regarding the hybrid dynamics of the legged systems, we approximate the hybrid dynamics around the limit-cycle as a linear-time periodic system (LTP). However, this first LTP approximation is infinite dimensional, making parametric identification challenging. In order to limit the parametric degree of freedom of this LTP system we further approximate the dynamics with a piece-wise LTI system model (still LTP) which has finite degrees of freedom.
Pulsed RF oscillations on a nonlinear capacitive transmission line

A nonlinear lumped element transmission line (NLETL) that consists of a nonlinear LC ladder network whose capacitors are nonlinear and inductors are linear can be used to produce oscillating pulses. This article describes the implementation of an oscillating pulse generator based on such high voltage nonlinear capacitive lines (NLCL) using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. Instead of using complex pulse forming networks or pulse forming lines, a storage capacitor and a fast semiconductor switch are used to provide an input pulse onto the cascading LC-elements of the NLCL with good approximation of a rectangular pulse-shape. The design of the NLCL is based on the NLETL circuit model that was developed earlier in-house. Experimental results are compared with simulations predicted by this NLETL model. The voltage modulation and the frequency content of the output pulses are analyzed. The conventional single NLCL produces a signal with a DC offset and a decoupling capacitor is needed at the end of the line to extract the AC component before injecting onto a load such as an antenna. A novel method of directly extracting the AC component without the use of a decoupling capacitor is proposed and investigated. Results of this direct AC extraction, which show the possibility of better performance, are discussed. The frequency tunability of this nonlinear line was also demonstrated.
A new species of trypanosome, Trypanosoma desterrensis sp. n., isolated from South American bats

Trypanosomes isolated from South American bats include the human pathogen Trypanosoma cruzi. Other Trypanosoma spp. that have been found exclusively in bats are not well characterized at the DNA sequence level and we have therefore used the SL RNA gene to differentiate and characterize kinetoplastids isolated from bats in South America. A Trypanosoma sp. isolated from bats in southern Brazil was compared with the geographically diverse isolates T. cruzi marinkellei, T. vespertilionis, and T. dionisii. Analysis of the SL RNA gene repeats revealed size and sequence variability among these bat trypanosomes. We have developed hybridization probes to separate these bat isolates and have analysed the DNA sequence data to estimate their relatedness. A new species, Trypanosoma desterrensis sp. n. , is proposed, for which a 5S rRNA gene was also found within the SL RNA repeat.
And the house goes to - ethnic discrimination in the greek rental market

A field experiment was contacted in order to unbiased test whether female ethnic minorities; Albanians, face housing discrimination by owners when they seek to rent a unit in Greece three years after the national adoption of the European anti-discrimination legislation. Replicated the commonest process to rent a unit in Greece; telephone contact, we investigated a big sample represented by 122 areas. Rationally classified them in three status groups, according to their average rent levels, we found that discrimination increased monotonically with areas' status. The estimated probability of Albanians to receive an invitation to investigate a unit was lower by 0.231 in low status areas, followed by 0.324 in medium status areas, and by 0.419 in high status areas than that of Greeks. Adjusted for intra-class correlation the estimated differentials were found to be statistically significant. Similarly, we estimated an insignificant rent penalty against Albanians of 0.010 in low status areas, and significant penalties of 0.015 in medium status areas and of 0.023 in high status areas against Albanians. Consequently, a taste and/or statistical discrimination implied against Albanian seekers. Interestingly, the study enabled to estimate further that good rental housings are in significant degree unavailable to Albanians restricted their freedom in selecting a place to live. Specifically, Albanian seekers faced significantly less probabilities to investigate newer, busheled and units placed in floor than Greeks. Whilst, Albanians in order to have access to good units they had to pay more than Greeks. Finally, we estimated that female owners practiced significantly more availability constraints to Albanians than male owners. The current research contributes to two areas that have attracted scarce research attention in Greece: the experimental investigation of housing discrimination and discrimination by ethnicity. The results of this study have implications for understanding some of the enduring patterns of ethnic discrimination in the housing market.
Maximum Metric Score Training for Coreference Resolution

A large body of prior research on coreference resolution recasts the problem as a two-class classification problem. However, standard supervised machine learning algorithms that minimize classification errors on the training instances do not always lead to maximizing the F-measure of the chosen evaluation metric for coreference resolution. In this paper, we propose a novel approach comprising the use of instance weighting and beam search to maximize the evaluation metric score on the training corpus during training. Experimental results show that this approach achieves significant improvement over the state-of-the-art. We report results on standard benchmark corpora (two MUC corpora and three ACE corpora), when evaluated using the link-based MUC metric and the mention-based B-CUBED metric.
Prevalence of interferon type I signature in CD14 monocytes of patients with Sjögren's syndrome and association with disease activity and BAFF gene expression

Objective To determine the prevalence of upregulation of interferon (IFN) type I inducible genes, the so called ‘IFN type I signature’, in CD14 monocytes in 69 patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS) and 44 healthy controls (HC) and correlate it with disease manifestations and expression of B cell activating factor (BAFF). Methods Expression of IFI44L, IFI44, IFIT3, LY6E and MX1 was measured using real time quantitative PCR in monocytes. Expression values were used to calculate IFN type I scores for each subject. pSS patients positive for the IFN type I signature (IFN score≥10) and patients negative for the signature (IFN score<10) were then compared for clinical disease manifestations and BAFF expression. A bioassay using a monocytic cell line was performed to study whether BAFF mRNA expression was inducible by IFN type I activity in serum of patients with pSS. Results An IFN type I signature was present in 55% of patients with pSS compared with 4.5% of HC. Patients with the IFN type I signature showed: (a) higher EULAR Sjögren's Syndrome Disease Activity Index scores; higher anti-Ro52, anti-Ro60 and anti-La autoantibodies; higher rheumatoid factor; higher serum IgG; lower C3, lower absolute lymphocyte and neutrophil counts; (b)higher BAFF gene expression in monocytes. In addition, serum of signature-positive patients induced BAFF gene expression in monocytes. Conclusions The monocyte IFN type I signature identifies a subgroup of patients with pSS with a higher clinical disease activity together with higher BAFF mRNA expression. Such patients might benefit from treatment blocking IFN type I production or activity.
Cooling the Hot Sets: Improved Space Utilization in Large Caches via Dynamic Set Balancing

Multi-megabyte on-chip last-level caches are commonplace in high-end computing platforms. Even though these caches are often designed to have very high associativity, they suffer from non-uniform utilization of the sets leading to a high volume of conflict misses. Clustering of physical addresses to a few hot sets happens partly due to poor locality in the access stream and partly due to a mismatch in the access pattern and the virtual address to physical address translation algorithm. In this paper, we propose the first fully dynamic mechanism to improve the utilization of sets by adaptively migrating data blocks from hot sets to the relatively cold sets. We present robust and scalable algorithms for identifying the hot sets and suitable cold sets for holding the migrated data blocks that flow from the hot regions. We discuss a number of optimizations on the basic design to address different aspects of such a mechanism, thereby progressively improving the performance. Our detailed execution-driven simulation results show that with just 5.5% extra book-keeping overhead in a 2 MB 16-way set-associative L2 cache, the dynamic block migration mechanism reduces execution time by 12% on average (geometric mean) for nine memory-intensive applications selected from the SPEC 2000 and SPEC 2006 benchmark suites. Further, when applied to an eight-core chip-multiprocessor with a shared 4 MB 16-way set-associative L2 cache, our technique reduces execution time by 18.1% on average (geometric mean) for a set of multi-threaded kernels and applications. We also present a thorough energy analysis of the proposed cache architecture and a quantitative evaluation of how it interacts with an aggressive multi-stream stride prefetcher.
Voice Conversion Using HMM combined with GMM

According to HMM's strong representation capability of speech signal and GMM's better transformation effect, a method for LSF conversion using HMM combined with GMM is proposed. The theoretical derivation and flow diagram of this algorithm are offered, and gauss model is introduced to achieve the prosodic features transformation. The experiment is applied on two segment speech, and the result reveals that the converted speech has good naturalness. The ABX test indicates that converted speech is 90.2% similar to the target speaker’s.
Dried distiller’s grains with solubles in steam-flaked or dry-rolled corn diets with reduced roughage levels

Distiller’s grains have been used extensively in the U.S. Corn Belt, where producers commonly feed dry-rolled or highmoisture corn. Fuel ethanol production is expanding into the High Plains, where most feedlots flake grain. Compared with dryrolled corn, steam-flaked corn usually increases or has no change in average daily gain, yields lower dry matter intake and results in 12 to 16% improvement in efficiency. Previous research at Kansas State University and elsewhere suggests that the value of distiller’s grains is different in flaked grain diets than in dry-rolled diets. We think this might be due to lower rumen pH when flaked grains are fed, perhaps reducing digestibility of the diet, especially the fibrous components. Because distiller’s grains contain considerable amounts of fiber, it might be possible to add less roughage to finishing diets that contain distiller’s grains, and doing so, improve efficiency.
Large system analysis of beamforming for MIMO systems with limited training

We consider multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems exploiting the full diversity order of a MIMO fading channel via optimal beamforming and combining. Specifically, an analytical characterization of the transient regime of a training-based MIMO system over arbitrarily correlated channels is presented. No channel state information is assumed to be available at either the transmitter or the receiver side, so that the design of the optimal transmit and receive beamformers is necessarily based on a finite collection of samples observed during a training phase. The focus is on practical scenarios where the length of the training sequence is comparable in magnitude to the system size. In these situations, the performance of the MIMO system can be expected to suffer from a considerable degradation. In order to characterize the actual performance under the previous realistic conditions, a large-system performance analysis is proposed that builds upon some new results on the convergence of the eigenvectors of large information-plus-noise covariance matrices.
Nonlinear adaptive control using neural networks and multiple models

The principal contribution described here is concerned with combining linear and nonlinear models to improve the performance of essentially nonlinear dynamical systems even while assuring their stability. The system under consideration is defined, and some preliminaries about neural networks and growth rates of signals are given, which is central to the proof of stability. Following this, the well-known results in robust linear adaptive control are reproduced for easy reference. The key result of stability analysis when multiple models are used is presented. This is a very general result, and the special case when some of the models are actually neural networks is included.
Finger vein biometric system with type-2 fuzzy enhancement and minutiae matching

Finger vein recognition is a smart and consistent biometrics which makes use of the uniqueness of the vein patterns of human finger for personal identification in security systems. Interval type-2 fuzzy theory is applied in this paper for enhancing the finger vein biometric images in a unique way. Membership function aggregate for the required fuzzy set is calculated using Einstein T co-norm. Minutiae features are extracted using crossing number and Euclidean distance is used for feature matching. The proposed method shows superior enhancement and accurate matching results.
Growth behaviour of a spore forming probiotic strain in the gastrointestinal tract of broiler chicken and piglets

The growth behaviour of the probiotic strain Bacillus cereus var. toyoi in the gastrointestinal tract of broiler chicken and suckling piglets was evaluated. The strain germinated rapidly in intestinal samples from both animal species. Less than 10% of spores were recovered from the chicken crop and piglet stomach, respectively. Lumen samples and mucosal tissues from the hind gut of piglets displayed increasing colonization of the probiotic strain throughout the trial period. After oral administration of vegetative cells to broiler chicken and weaned piglets, sporulation was detected in all intestinal samples. The distribution of spore CFU indicated repeated germination and sporulation during the intestinal passage in piglets. B. cereus var. toyoi was not able to colonize the intestinal tract of both animal species. However, the probiotic strain was detected in suckling piglets before uptake of B. cereus var. toyoi supplemented feed. It is concluded that B. cereus var. toyoi germinates rapidly in broiler chicken and piglets, which is a necessary prerequisite for its possible probiotic effects. Germination and in vivo sporulation of vegetative cells indicated that the probiotic strain was metabolically active in the intestine of both animal species.
Endothelin, a peptide inhibitor of Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase in intact renaltubular epithelial cells.

Endothelin, a potent vasoconstrictor released by vascular endothelial cells, can induce natriuresis in vivo. These studies examined the regulation of Na+ transport by endothelin in suspensions of rabbit proximal tubule (PT) and inner medullary collecting duct (IMCD) cells. Endothelin reduced oxygen consumption (QO2) by 18 +/- 1% in IMCD cells but did not alter QO2 in PT cells. In IMCD cells, endothelin inhibited QO2 half maximally at approximately 5 x 10(-12) M. Several lines of evidence indicate that endothelin reduces QO2 by inhibiting the Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase. 1) Endothelin gave no further inhibition of QO2 after ouabain and blunted the stimulatory effect of amphotericin B on QO2 (+29 +/- 4% in absence of endothelin, 0 +/- 5% in presence of endothelin; n = 6 preparations, P less than 0.001). 2) Endothelin inhibited ouabain-sensitive 86Rb+ uptake by 46.6 +/- 8.6% at 10 s and by 35.4 +/- 5.3% at 30 s without altering uptake at 60 min. 3) Addition of endothelin to IMCD cells induced a net K+ efflux with an initial rate of 32.2 +/- 4.8 nmol.min-1.mg protein-1, consistent with inhibition of the Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase. In contrast to the response observed in intact cells, in permeabilized IMCD cells endothelin did not inhibit ouabain-sensitive ATPase. Several observations indicated that prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) mediates endothelin inhibition of Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase activity. 1) The response to endothelin was blocked by ibuprofen in assays of QO2, net K+ flux, and 86Rb+ uptake. 2) Endothelin and PGE2 gave equivalent, nonadditive inhibition of ouabain-sensitive 86Rb+ uptake. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Improved Detection of Nasopharyngeal Cocolonization by Multiple Pneumococcal Serotypes by Use of Latex Agglutination or Molecular Serotyping by Microarray

ABSTRACT Identification of Streptococcus pneumoniae in the nasopharynx is critical for an understanding of transmission, estimates of vaccine efficacy, and possible replacement disease. Conventional nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) culture and serotyping (the WHO protocol) is likely to underestimate multiple-serotype carriage. We compared the WHO protocol with methods aimed at improving cocolonization detection. One hundred twenty-five NPSs from an infant pneumococcal-carriage study, containing ≥1 serotype by WHO culture, were recultured in duplicate. A sweep of colonies from one plate culture was serotyped by latex agglutination. DNA extracted from the second plate was analyzed by S. pneumoniae molecular-serotyping microarray. Multiple serotypes were detected in 11.2% of the swabs by WHO culture, 43.2% by sweep serotyping, and 48.8% by microarray. Sweep and microarray were more likely to detect multiple serotypes than WHO culture (P < 0.0001). Cocolonization detection rates were similar between microarray and sweep, but the microarray identified the greatest number of serotypes. A common serogroup type was identified in 95.2% of swabs by all methods. WHO methodology significantly underestimates multiple-serotype carriage compared to these alternate methods. Sweep serotyping is cost-effective and field deployable but may fail to detect serotypes at low abundance, whereas microarray serotyping is more costly and technology dependent but may detect these additional minor carried serotypes.
Equivalence Arguments for Complex Systems Simulations – A Case-Study

Complex systems are often simulated to provide a basis for research or analysis. However, complex systems simulation often fails to properly demonstrate that the constructed simulation is an adequate tool to support investigation of the system under study. To address this issue we adopt and adapt argumentation techniques traditionally used for safety critical systems (SCS). Here we present part of an on-going case-study in which these techniques are used to demonstrate that two diﬀerent implementations of a complex system simulation are adequately equivalent. This is a ﬁrst step in producing further simulations of the system under study, which will be shown to be valid models on which to explore particular ecological phenomena.
Residential alternatives to acute in-patient care in England: satisfaction, ward atmosphere and service user experiences

Background Alternatives to traditional in-patient services may be associated with a better experience of admission. Aims To compare patient satisfaction, ward atmosphere and perceived coercion in the two types of service, using validated measures. Method The experience of 314 patients in four residential alternatives and four standard services were compared using the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ), the Service Satisfaction Scale – Residential form (SSS–Res), the Ward Atmosphere Scale (WAS) and the Admission Experience Scale (AES). Results Compared with standard wards, service users from alternative services reported greater levels of satisfaction (mean difference CSQ 3.3, 95% CI 1.8 to 4.9; SSS–Res 11.4, 95% CI 5.0 to 17.7). On the AES, service users in alternatives perceived less coercion (mean difference –1.3, 95% CI –1.8 to –0.8) and having more ‘voice’ (mean difference 0.9, 95% CI 0.6 to 1.2). Greater autonomy, more support and less anger and aggression were revealed by WAS scores. Differences in CSQ and AES scores remained significant after multivariable adjustment, but SSS–Res results were attenuated, mainly by detention status. Conclusions Community alternatives were associated with greater service user satisfaction and less negative experiences. Some but not all of these differences were explained by differences in the two populations, particularly in involuntary admission.
Employers' Recruitment Behaviour: An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Personnel Management Attitudes*

The practical importance of recruitment is witnessed by the existence of specific personnel management functions within firms. The aim of the paper is to investigate the importance of firms' personnel management attitudes for recruitment procedures. We focus on the choice of the first search channel and on the subsequent search spell. The model is empirically estimated by using a data set on recruitment behaviour of Dutch firms. The results show that personnel management considerations are important for the choice of the recruitment channel. It appears that advertisement is preferred to the informal channel in that employers believe it is faster and generates applicants who better comply with the hiring standards. Furthermore, employers turn out to prefer mainly the informal channel when recruitment costs are considered important. Copyright Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1997.