Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MULTI-MODAL HUMAN GESTURE RECOGNITION COMBINING DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING AND PROBABILISTIC METHODS

In this M. Sc. Thesis, we deal with the problem of Human Gesture Recognition using Human Behavior Analysis technologies. In particular, we apply the proposed methodologies in both health care and social applications. In these contexts, gestures are usually performed in a natural way, producing a high variability between the Human Poses that belong to them. This fact makes Human Gesture Recognition a very challenging task, as well as their generalization on developing technologies for Human Behavior Analysis. In order to tackle with the complete framework for Human Gesture Recognition, we split the process in three main goals: Computing multi-modal feature spaces, probabilistic modelling of gestures, and clustering of Human Poses for Sub-Gesture representation. Each of these goals implicitly includes different challenging problems, which are interconnected and faced by three presented approaches: Bag-of-Visual-and-Depth-Words, Probabilistic-Based Dynamic Time Warping, and Sub-Gesture Representation. The methodologies of each of these approaches are explained in detail in the next sections. We have validated the presented approaches on different public and designed data sets, showing high performance and the viability of using our methods for real Human Behavior Analysis systems and applications. Finally, we show a summary of different related applications currently in development, as well as both conclusions and future trends of research.
Evaluation and design of online cooperative feedback mechanisms for reputation management

This research evaluates and analyzes existing mechanisms of online reputation systems based on cooperative feedbacks of past transaction information. We find existing popular feedback systems do not provide sustained incentives for sellers to behave honestly over time. We propose a new design of reputation system based on exponential smoothing. This mechanism is shown to be more robust compared to the existing systems. We relax the assumption of a static product value and have implemented a two-level exponential smoothing policy to process and aggregate reputation information. The simulation results show that the policy can serve as a sustained incentive mechanism for the seller.
Challenging Depictions of Dependency

Abstract In the debate preceding welfare reform, a consensus emerged that welfare receipt promotes an unacceptable and unhealthy dependence while work in the formal economy leads to a preferable state of independence. Feminist welfare theorists have challenged this equation. This article presents three major findings from focus groups with welfare recipients that demonstrate that recipients are also engaged in challenging popular concepts of welfare dependency. Participants' perceptions were: (1) that welfare receipt does not imply total dependence, (2) that work does not guarantee independence, and (3) that there is an interdependence among recipients and the welfare state.
Neural correlates of deception in social contexts in normally developing children

Deception is related to the ability to inhibit prepotent responses and to engage in mental tasks such as anticipating responses and inferring what another person knows, especially in social contexts. However, the neural correlates of deception processing, which requires mentalizing, remain unclear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined the neural correlates of deception, including mentalization, in social contexts in normally developing children. Healthy right-handed children (aged 8–9 years) were scanned while performing interactive games involving deception. The games varied along two dimensions: the type of reply (deception and truth) and the type of context (social and less social). Participants were instructed to deceive a witch and to tell the truth to a girl. Under the social-context conditions, participants were asked to consider what they inferred about protagonists' preferences from their facial expressions when responding to questions. Under the less-social-context conditions, participants did not need to consider others' preferences. We found a significantly greater response in the right precuneus under the social-context than under less-social-context conditions. Additionally, we found marginally greater activation in the right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) under the deception than under the truth condition. These results suggest that deception in a social context requires not only inhibition of prepotent responses but also engagement in mentalizing processes. This study provides the first evidence of the neural correlates of the mentalizing processes involved in deception in normally developing children.
Early Nutritional Interventions for Brain and Cognitive Development in Preterm Infants: A Review of the Literature

Adequate nutrition is important for neurodevelopmental outcomes in preterm-born infants. In this review, we aim to summarize the current knowledge on nutritional interventions initiated during the hospital stay targeting brain and cognitive development benefits in preterm human infants. Studies can broadly be split in general dietary intervention studies and studies investigating specific nutrients or nutritional supplements. In general, mother’s breast milk was reported to be better for preterm infants’ neurodevelopment compared to infant formula. The differences in methodologies make it difficult to conclude any effects of interventions with individual nutrients. Only protein and iron level studies showed some consistent findings regarding optimal doses; however, confirmatory studies are needed. This review does not support some widely accepted associations, such as that between long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation and visual development. Clear nutritional recommendations cannot be made based on this review. However, the type of infant nutrition (i.e., breast milk versus formula or donor milk), the timing of the nutritional intervention, and the dose of the nutrient/supplement have been found to be relevant factors in determining the success of nutritional intervention studies in preterm infants.
Crime Hot-Spots Prediction Using Support Vector Machine

Location prediction is a special case of spatial data mining classification. For instance, in the public safety domain, it may be interesting to predict location(s) of crime hot spots. In this study, we present Support Vector Machine (SVM) based approach to predict the location as alternative to existing modeling approaches. SVM forms the new generation of machine learning techniques used to find optimal separability between classes within datasets. Experiments on two different spatial datasets show that SVMs gives reasonable results.
Quantifying International Production Sharing at the Bilateral and Sector Levels

This paper generalizes the gross exports accounting framework, initially proposed by Koopman, Wang, and Wei (2014) for a country’s aggregate exports, to one at the sector, bilateral, and bilateral-sector levels. Such a generalization requires a conceptual distinction between value added exports by forward and backward industrial linkages, and a non-trivial way to allocate bilateral intermediate trade flows into their final destinations of absorption. We present the disaggregated decomposition results among 40 trading nations in 35 sectors from 1995 to 2011 based on the World Input-Output Database and show how they help us to better understand the patterns of cross-country production sharing.
An online system for gathering image similarity judgements

We describe an online application that allows users to provide similarity judgements whilst browsing a collection of 60,000 photographs. One immediate goal is to modify the initial browsing structure in response to the feedback. We thus suggest a long-term relevance feedback technique that integrates user information over multiple sessions. The principal role of the system, however, is that of a tool for acquiring a rich dataset of similarity relationships between images which we plan to make available to the community and which can be used for training and evaluation purposes. Two particular ways of how to use the data will be described in detail.
Agent-Based Modelling of Decentralized Ant Behaviour using High Performance Computing

Ant colonies are complex biological systems that respond to changing conditions in nature by solving dynamic problems. Their ability of decentralized decision-making and their self-organized trail systems have inspired computer scientists since 1990s, and consequently initiated a class of heuristic search algorithms, known as ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithms. These have proven to be very effective in solving combinatorial optimisation problems, especially in the field of telecommunication. The major challenge in social insect research is understanding how colony-level behaviour emerges from individual interactions. Models to date focus on simple pheromone usage with mathematically devised behaviour, which deviates largely from the real ant behaviour. Furthermore, simulating large-scale behaviour at the individual level is a difficult computational challenge; hence models fail to simulate realistic colony sizes and dimensions for foraging environments. In this thesis, FLAME, an agent-based modelling (ABM) framework capable of producing parallelisable models, was used as the modelling platform and simulations were performed on a High Performance Computing (HPC) grid. This enabled large-scale simulations of complex models to be run in parallel on a grid, without compromising on the time taken to attain results. Furthermore, the advanced features of the framework, such as dynamic creation of agents during a simulation, provided realistic grounds for modelling pheromones and the environment. ABM approach through FLAME was utilized to improve existing models of the Pharaoh’s ants (Monomorium pharaonis) focusing on their foraging strategies. Based on related biological research, a number of hypotheses were further tested, which were: (i) the ability of the specialist ‘U-turner’ ants in trail maintenance, (ii) the trail choices performed at bifurcations, and (iii) the ability of ants to deposit increased concentrations of pheromones based on food quality. Heterogeneous colonies with 7% U-turner ant agents were further shown to perform significantly better in foraging compared to homogeneous colonies. Furthermore, laying pheromones with a higher intensity based on food quality was shown to be beneficial for the Pharaoh’s ant colonies in switching to more rewarding trails. The movement of the Pharaoh’s ants in unexplored areas (without pheromones) was also investigated by conducting biological experiments. Video tracking was used to extract movement vectors from the recordings of experiments and the data obtained was subject to statistical analysis in order to devise parameters for ant movement in the models developed. Overall, this research makes contributions to biology and computer science research by: (i) utilizing ABM and HPC via FLAME to reduce technological challenges, (ii) further validating existing hypotheses through realistic models, (iii) developing a video tracking system to acquire experimental data, and (iv) discussing potential applications to emergent telecommunication and networking problems.
Evaluating integrated graphics processors for data center workloads

More than 90% of consumer computers use integrated graphics processors. In these processors, the CPU and the GPU share the same physical memory. Due to high density, good power efficiency, and low cost, integrated graphics processors are promising candidates for next-generation micro-servers and, hence, data-center workloads. While discrete graphics processors have been extensively studied, there is very little work on characterizing integrated GPUs. This paper is a step towards understanding the power and performance of integrated GPUs. Our results reveal many architectural caveats that programmers need to be aware of to exploit integrated GPUs: memory contention between the CPU and GPU, workload dependent energy efficiency, and data transfer tradeoffs.
Statistical Stemming of Morphologically Rich Languages

We analyze current machine translation into Russian, a morphologically rich language, and present a technique for unsupervised statistical stemming. An initial pass is based on intuitions, and uses a CUDA kernel. As a later pass, we run EM. Since our model is relatively simple, the EM probabilities factorize into components that can be solved independently. While our results were not exactly grammatical, they appear to cluster grammatical classes, occasionally with some amount of lexicalization (extra characters preceding the word).
Membrane Trafficking of Death Receptors: Implications on Signalling

Death receptors were initially recognised as potent inducers of apoptotic cell death and soon ambitious attempts were made to exploit selective ignition of controlled cellular suicide as therapeutic strategy in malignant diseases. However, the complexity of death receptor signalling has increased substantially during recent years. Beyond activation of the apoptotic cascade, involvement in a variety of cellular processes including inflammation, proliferation and immune response was recognised. Mechanistically, these findings raised the question how multipurpose receptors can ensure selective activation of a particular pathway. A growing body of evidence points to an elegant spatiotemporal regulation of composition and assembly of the receptor-associated signalling complex. Upon ligand binding, receptor recruitment in specialized membrane compartments, formation of receptor-ligand clusters and internalisation processes constitute key regulatory elements. In this review, we will summarise the current concepts of death receptor trafficking and its implications on receptor-associated signalling events.
A Highly Flexible System for Smart Home Sensor Networks

With the rapidly growth of wireless sensor networks (WSN), more and more services provide people up-to-date information such as weather forecast, earthquake reports, fire alarm, even for the surveillance system, and so on. The raw data are usually hard to be understood by users. We had proposed an innovated sensor observation service with web-based and GIS-based architecture, which is named WSN Application Service Platform (WASP) [25]. WASP is a data management center, which designed with the concept of Services Oriented Application (SOA) as a Cloud Service. The raw data can be transferred into add-on valued data and shown on the web pages through WASP. Users can query and obtain the valuable information and realize the meanings of these data through web-based interfaces, which is defined in Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) by Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Based on WASP, we propose a flexible SWE-based Data Observation and Event Notification Framework on Social Networks for smart home applications. Data can be shown immediately on social networks (i.e. Face book) via the framework. All sensors and devices provide their location information to data center and form a community. The proposed framework provides remote control functions for WSN to increase the data retrieval efficiency based on OGC SWE Sensor Observation Service (SOS), Sensor Planning Service (SPS), and Sensor Alert Service (SAS). The proposed system is helpful and efficient for user to enjoy the smart home applications.
Evidence that Circuits Review for Spatial and Color Vision Segregate at the First Retinal Synapse

wavelengths extended into the surround. However, it decreased firing when middle wavelengths covered both center and surround. Complementary types were also found: centers tuned to middle wavelengths with Different psychophysical " channels " mediate our per-surrounds tuned to long wavelengths, and centers tuned ception of fine spatial patterns and color. The spatial to short wavelengths with surrounds tuned to middle channel compares the photon catch between adjacent and long wavelengths. Similar response types were cones, regardless of type, and thus supports perception found for retinal ganglion cells (de Monasterio, 1978a, of patterns as fine as the cone mosaic (Williams, 1986). 1978b). Color channels compare the photon catch between To explain these measurements, Wiesel and Hubel different cone types (Hurvich and Jameson, 1957; proposed a simple circuit: for the center, selective con-Krauskopf et al., 1982). The " blue/yellow " channel com-vergence of one cone type onto an excitatory neuron pares the catch in cones sensitive to short (S) wave-(bipolar cell); for the surround, selective convergence lengths with the catch in neighboring cones sensitive to of the opposing cone type(s) onto an inhibitory neuron middle (M) and long (L) wavelengths (Pugh and Mollon, (horizontal or amacrine cell; Figure 1C; also Reid and 1979). The " red/green " channel compares the photon Shapley, 1992). The P cell's extremely small center in catch in L and S cones with that in neighboring M cones the fovea was attributed to the private pathway from (Thornton and Pugh, 1983; Calkins et al., 1992). Each one cone to a " midget " bipolar cell and midget ganglion comparison is equivalent to a subtraction: for blue/yel-nels are rather coarse, with an acuity about one-third et al., 1994). The observation that some P cells are spec-that of the spatial channel (Anderson et al., 1991; Seki-trally opponent gradually led to a conviction that most guchi et al., 1993). P cells behave this way. Thus, Livingstone and Hubel What neural circuits serve the psychophysical chan-(1988) state: " About 90% of the cells in the parvocellular nels for spatial acuity and color? The standard view is layers of the geniculate are strikingly sensitive to differ-that messages for both channels are conveyed by one ences in wavelength. A typical parvo cell may, for type of ganglion cell, termed " P, " because it projects to example, receive excitatory inputs to its receptive field a parvocellular neuron in the lateral geniculate nucleus. center from …
Recent Advances in Multimedia Information System Security

A multimedia communication system enables multimedia data's generation, storage, management, distribution, receiving, consuming, editing, sharing, and so on. In such systems, there are various security issues, which must be considered such as eavesdropping, intrusion, forgery, piracy and privacy, etc. Until now, various security solutions for multimedia communication systems have been reported, while few works have surveyed the latest research advances. This paper gives a thorough review to multimedia information system security. It introduces a general architecture of multimedia information system, and investigates some security issues in multimedia information systems. It reviews the latest security solutions such as Digital Rights Management (DRM), confidentiality protection, ownership protection, traitor tracing, secure multimedia distribution based on watermarking, forgery detection, copy detection, privacy-preserving data mining, secure user interface, intrusion detection and prevention. Moreover, the paper presents some hot research topics such as Trusted Computing, steganography, security in network or service convergence, security of content sharing in social networks, privacy-preserving data processing, multimedia forensics and intelligent surveillance in multimedia information system security. It is expected to benefit readers by providing the latest research progress, advising some research directions and giving a list of references about multimedia system security.
Compressive sensing MIMO radar imaging based on inverse scattering model

From the view of inverse scattering imaging, the paper gives basic principle of MIMO radar imaging, then applies compressive sensing (CS) to two methods. The first method is sampling and receiving echoes randomly in both frequencies and channels. The second method is sampling echoes randomly only in frequencies, and controllable space intersection is done in channels to increase the practicability. Both methods can achieve high image resolution using few echo samples. The first method has better imaging quality, but the second method is more controllable. Ulteriorly, the simulation gives detailed analysis of imaging quality and reconstruction successful probability, which is beneficial to applications of CS to MIMO radar imaging.
Object Relational Modeling Cot/4-04-v1.0 Centre for Object Technology Centre for Object Technology

In the database area, there has been some pressure to support richer semantic models than the now classical relational model. The pressure has been to support the object-oriented model. However, the larger market has not been willing to adopt a pure object-oriented model, but some of the major producers of database management systems have introduced systems which they call object-relational, trying to combine relational and object oriented technologies. This report embraces that approach, and takes the perspective that relations are a natural thing in modeling reality. Our notion of object-relational modeling is borrowed from Rumbaugh. The report describes the fundamentals of the model, it reports on experiments in implementing it in both an object-oriented language (Smalltalk), and a modern object-relational database (Oracle 8). It gives a brief outline on some preliminary experiences from a concrete modeling case, the rule-checker of the STADS system, and it points to some new directions which must be investigated. The Centre for Object Technology (COT) is a three year project concerned with research, application and implementation of object technology in Danish companies. The project is financially supported by The Centre of IT-Research (CIT) and the Danish Ministry of Industry.
Absolute palaeointensity of Oligocene (28-30 Ma) lava flows from the Kerguelen Archipelago (southern Indian Ocean)

We report palaeointensity estimates obtained from three Oligocene volcanic sections from the Kerguelen Archipelago (Mont des Ruches, Mont des Tempetes, and Mont Rabouillere). Of 402 available samples, 102 were suitable for a palaeofield strength determination after a preliminary selection, among which 49 provide a reliable estimate. Application of strict a posteriori criteria make us confident about the quality of the 12 new mean-flow determinations, which are the first reliable data available for the Kerguelen Archipelago. The Virtual Dipole Moments (VDM) calculated for these flows vary from 2.78 to 9.47 10 2 2 Am 2 with an arithmetic mean value of 6.15 ′ 2.1 10 2 2 Am 2 . Compilation of these results with a selection of the 2002 updated IAGA palaeointensity database lead to a higher (5.4 ′ 2.3 10 2 2 Am 2 ) Oligocene mean VDM than previously reported (Goguitchaichvili et al. 2001; Riisager 1999), identical to the 5.5 ′ 2.4 10 2 2 Am 2 mean VDM obtained for the 0.3-5 Ma time window. However, these Kerguelen palaeointensity estimates represent half of the reliable Oligocene determinations and thus a bias toward higher values. Nonetheless, the new estimates reported here strengthen the conclusion that the recent geomagnetic field strength is anomalously high compared to that older than 0.3 Ma.
Northern Ireland: A personal perspective

Reading is a hobby to open the knowledge windows. Besides, it can provide the inspiration and spirit to face this life. By this way, concomitant with the technology development, many companies serve the e-book or book in soft file. The system of this book of course will be much easier. No worry to forget bringing the northern ireland a personal perspective book. You can open the device and get the book by on-line.