Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Understanding user perspectives on biometric technology

Biometrics has been used for centuries to identify individuals by their own unique physical characteristics. Historically, the fingerprint has served as the most common method of identification. But other properties, which vary in their exactness and in users’ comfort, are also candidates for widespread usage. Today, an increasing number of biometric companies are offering new products to be considered for general deployment beyond security identification systems. Some application objectives for these products include: associating computer users with their computer behavior, linking employees to their workstation performance, managing user-resource usage and activity, and e-commerce. By far, these biometric products have been aimed mostly at providing authentication for an individual to gain access to sensitive information and resources. Biometric technologies are not without problems and come with their fair share of concerns. Some of these concerns are technical in nature, e.g., degradation of biometric features over time, variance in recorded and actual biometric characteristics, and threshold values for authentication. As the technology matures, however, the technical issues will be eventually overcome. On the other hand, many of the technology’s obstacles are based on attitudes and behaviors, related to user acceptance, trust, habits, etc., ultimately presenting a greater challenge for implementation. Previous research found that some of the issues include the domains of privacy, storage and safeguarding of personal identification information, fear of intrusion into an individual’s daily life, as well as concerns related to the relinquishing of personal information.
Dermal fillers in aesthetics: an overview of adverse events and treatment approaches

Background The ever-expanding range of dermal filler products for aesthetic soft tissue augmentation is of benefit for patients and physicians, but as indications and the number of procedures performed increase, the number of complications will likely also increase. Objective To describe potential adverse events associated with dermal fillers and to provide structured and clear guidance on their treatment and avoidance. Methods Reports of dermal filler complications in the medical literature were reviewed and, based on the publications retrieved and the authors’ extensive experience, recommendations for avoiding and managing complications are provided. Results Different dermal fillers have widely varying properties, associated risks, and injection requirements. All dermal fillers have the potential to cause complications. Most are related to volume and technique, though some are associated with the material itself. The majority of adverse reactions are mild and transient, such as bruising and trauma-related edema. Serious adverse events are rare, and most are avoidable with proper planning and technique. Conclusion For optimum outcomes, aesthetic physicians should have a detailed understanding of facial anatomy; the individual characteristics of available fillers; their indications, contraindications, benefits, and drawbacks; and ways to prevent and avoid potential complications.
A priority based job scheduling algorithm using IBA and EASY algorithm for cloud metaschedular

Job scheduling (JS) is one of the most important issues in a Cloud system. The objective of job schedulers in cloud computing is to meet users' requirements and optimize the utilization of cloud resources. To achieve better QoS with high resource utilization in a cloud environment, an improved backfill algorithm (IBA) using balanced spiral (BS) method can be used. Results show that IBA minimizes resource idleness up to a great extent. However, IBA does not provide support for handling job priority and QoS. We need an algorithm to maximize the resource utilization while considering priority.
Numerical methods for stochastic simulation of biochemical systems

Stochastic simulation of complex biochemical networks is a topic of current interest, in spite of the importance of the Gillespie algorithm it requires substantial amount of computational effort to simulate a complex system, Many algorithms are available now to control the two most important parameters in simulation: speed and accuracy. It can be proved that the stochastic modelling approach provide a conceptual bridge between stochastic chemical kinetics (the CME and SSA) and conventional deterministic chemical kinetics (the RRE).
How do Ethnic Militias Perpetuate in Nigeria? A Micro-Level Perspective on the Oodua People’s Congress

The paper discusses the recently promoted view that organized insurgent violence should either be conducted by activists bonded together by social capital ties or self-interested quasi-mercenaries, depending on the type of financial resources available to the group. We contrast this perspective with the study of an ethnic Nigerian militia, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC). It appears that the success of this militia over time was jointly sustained by important preexisting social connections and numerous opportunities for economic gains. The perpetuation of OPC, we argue, is ensured by a ‘moral economy’ whose members enjoy selfinsurance in an environment perceived as unsafe.
Masking by Inaudible Sounds and the Linearity of Temporal Summation

Many natural sounds, including speech and animal vocalizations, involve rapid sequences that vary in spectrum and amplitude. Each sound within a sequence has the potential to affect the audibility of subsequent sounds in a process known as forward masking. Little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying forward masking, particularly in more realistic situations in which multiple sounds follow each other in rapid succession. A parsimonious hypothesis is that the effects of consecutive sounds combine linearly, so that the total masking effect is a simple sum of the contributions from the individual maskers. The experiment reported here tests a counterintuitive prediction of this linear-summation hypothesis, namely that a sound that itself is inaudible should, under certain circumstances, affect the audibility of subsequent sounds. The results show that, when two forward maskers are combined, the second of the two maskers can continue to produce substantial masking, even when it is completely masked by the first masker. Thus, inaudible sounds can affect the perception of subsequent sounds. A model incorporating instantaneous compression (reflecting the nonlinear response of the basilar membrane in the cochlea), followed by linear summation of the effects of the maskers, provides a good account of the data. Despite the presence of multiple sources of nonlinearity in the auditory system, masking effects by sequential sounds combine in a manner that is well captured by a time-invariant linear system.
CTCF binds the proximal exonic region of hTERT and inhibits its transcription

The expression of the catalytic subunit (hTERT) represents the limiting factor for telomerase activity. Previously, we detected a transcriptional repressor effect of the proximal exonic region (first two exons) of the hTERT gene. To better understand the mechanism involved and to identify a potential repressor, we further characterized this region. The addition of the hTERT proximal exonic region downstream of the hTERT minimal promoter strongly reduced promoter transcriptional activity in all cells tested (tumor, normal and immortalized). This exonic region also significantly inhibited the transcriptional activity of the CMV and CDKN2A promoters, regardless of the cell type. Therefore, the repressor effect of hTERT exonic region is neither cell nor promoter-dependent. However, the distance between the promoter and the exonic region can modulate this repressor effect, suggesting that nucleosome positioning plays a role in transcriptional repression. We showed by electrophoretic mobility shift assay that CCCTC-binding factor (CTCF) binds to the proximal exonic region of hTERT. Chromatin immunoprecipitaion assays confirmed the binding of CTCF to this region. CTCF is bound to hTERT in cells in which hTERT is not expressed, but not in telomerase-positive ones. Moreover, the transcriptional downregulation of CTCF by RNA interference derepressed hTERT gene expression in normal telomerase-negative cells. Our results suggest that CTCF participates in key cellular mechanisms underlying immortality by regulating hTERT gene expression.
Maximum Likelihood and Least Squares Estimation of Nominal Direction of Arrival and Angular Spread Using an Array of Sensors T~ Onu Trump

The problem of estimating nominal direction of arrival and angular spread of a source surrounded by a large number of local scatterers using a uniform linear array of sensors is addressed. The maximum likelihood estimator is considered together with computationally simpler estimators, based on least squares ts of sample covariance to theoretical covariance matrix derived from a parametric model of the situation. Analysis of the the least squares based algorithms is carried out and based on this analysis an optimally weighted least squares algorithm is proposed. Asymptotic e ciency of the weighted least squares algorithm is proved. Results of numerical experiments are presented to indicate small sample performances of the estimators. Finally the methods are applied to experimental data. 1
Efficient speech emotion recognition using binary support vector machines & multiclass SVM

This paper presents the construction of Binary Support Vector Machines and its significance for efficient Speech Emotion Recognition (SER). German Emotional Speech Corpus EmoDB has been used in this study. Seven Binary Support Vector Machines (SVMs) corresponding to each of the seven emotions in the EmoDB, namely Anger-Not Anger, Boredom-Not Boredom, Disgust-Not Disgust, Fear-Not Fear, Happy-Not Happy, Sad-Not Sad and Neutral-Not Neutral are constructed. Features are selected for these seven Binary SVMs using Correlation Based Feature Selection (CFS) with Sequential Forward Selection (SFS). One Multiclass SVM is also constructed. Ten fold cross validation has been used and achieved an average accuracy of 95.32% for the Binary SVMs and 62.85% for the Multiclass SVM. The seven Binary SVMs and the Multiclass SVM are fused together using a combinator algorithm. All the SVMs are run in parallel by giving the SVM specific features as input. Fused model produced an average accuracy of 92.25% for the Binary SVMs and 77.07% for the Multiclass SVM on the test set. On the same test set using the combinator algorithm, the fused model has achieved an overall accuracy of 87.86% which is a significant improvement over the accuracies achieved in the previous studies.
Exception handling in large Ada systems

Introduction is by now a truism that the need for reliable softw~e is increasing as software is more frequently used in systems where failure could result in substantial loss of life and property or a significant compromise of national security. The error-handling component of a software system is that portion responsible for the detection and response to error conditions during execution, so it is critical to the reliability of the software. However, it is extremely difficult to achieve complete confidence in the error handling of a large system. Some key reasons for this difficulty include the unanticipated interaction among system components when errors are encountered and the fact that error handling is dispersed throughout the implementation.
Exploration of factors driving incorporation of unnatural dNTPS into DNA by Klenow fragment (DNA polymerase I) and DNA polymerase α

In order to further understand how DNA polymerases discriminate against incorrect dNTPs, we synthesized two sets of dNTP analogues and tested them as substrates for DNA polymerase α (pol α) and Klenow fragment (exo−) of DNA polymerase I (Escherichia coli). One set of analogues was designed to test the importance of the electronic nature of the base. The bases consisted of a benzimidazole ring with one or two exocyclic substituent(s) that are either electron-donating (methyl and methoxy) or electron-withdrawing (trifluoromethyl and dinitro). Both pol α and Klenow fragment exhibit a remarkable inability to discriminate against these analogues as compared to their ability to discriminate against incorrect natural dNTPs. Neither polymerase shows any distinct electronic or steric preferences for analogue incorporation. The other set of analogues, designed to examine the importance of hydrophobicity in dNTP incorporation, consists of a set of four regioisomers of trifluoromethyl benzimidazole. Whereas pol α and Klenow fragment exhibited minimal discrimination against the 5- and 6-regioisomers, they discriminated much more effectively against the 4- and 7-regioisomers. Since all four of these analogues will have similar hydrophobicity and stacking ability, these data indicate that hydrophobicity and stacking ability alone cannot account for the inability of pol α and Klenow fragment to discriminate against unnatural bases. After incorporation, however, both sets of analogues were not efficiently elongated. These results suggest that factors other than hydrophobicity, sterics and electronics govern the incorporation of dNTPs into DNA by pol α and Klenow fragment.
IRIS COLLARETTE BOUNDARY LOCALIZATION USING 2-D DFT FOR IRIS BASED BIOMETRIC SYSTEM

There has been a rapid increase in the need of accurate and reliable personal identification infrastructure in recent years, and biometrics has become an important technology for security. Iris recognition is seen as a highly reliable biometric technology. The performance of iris recognition is severely impacted when encountering poor quality images. The selection of the features subset and the classification is an important issue for iris biometrics. The iris recognition system consists of four- process: image acquisition, pre processing, feature extraction and identification or verification. In this paper, the proposed method is for localizing the iris area between the inner boundary and the collarette boundary, to remove unnecessary areas and to increase the rate in recognition. For finding the collarette boundary 2-D DFT is used. After that the image is sharpen using high pass butter worth filter. The Zigzag collarette boundary is located using canny edge detection method. This shows that the iris localization by the proposed methods improves the recognition rate.
Testing the validity and reliability of forensic voice comparison based on reassigned time-frequency representations of Chinese /iau/

Time-frequency reassigned representations of vowel segments have repeatedly been proposed as features for performing forensic voice comparison (FVC). Combined with a thresholding on the second-order mixed partial derivative of the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) phase to reduce artifacts and noise (pruning) such representations offer a sharpened representation of AM/FM components in the speech signal. We test the validity and reliability of FVC systems based on pruned reassigned time-frequency representations extracted from manually labeled /iau/ segments from a database of voice recordings of 60 female Chinese speakers. Logistic-regression fusion was used to combine the systems with a baseline MFCC GMM-UBM system. Performance was assessed as degree of improvement over the baseline system. Three recording channel conditions were tested: high-quality v high-quality, mobile-to-landline v mobile-to-landline, and mobile-to-landline v high-quality. For the latter two conditions improvements over the baseline system were observed in terms of validity, but with decreases in reliability.
Chandra Observations of the Disruption of the Cool Core in A133

We present the analysis of a Chandra observation of the galaxy cluster A133, which has a cooling flow core, a central radio source, and a diffuse, filamentary radio source that has been classified as a radio relic. The X-ray image shows that the core has a complex structure. The most prominent feature is a "tongue" of emission that extends from the central cD galaxy to the northwest and partly overlaps the radio relic. Spectral analysis shows that the emission from the tongue is thermal emission from relatively cool gas at a temperature of ~1.3 keV. One possibility is that this tongue is produced by Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instabilities through the interaction between the cold gas around the cD galaxy and hot intracluster medium. We estimate the critical velocity and timescale for the KH instability to be effective for the cold core around the cD galaxy. We find that the KH instability can disrupt the cold core if the relative velocity is ≳400 km s-1. We compare the results with those of clusters in which sharp, undisrupted cold fronts have been observed; in these clusters, the low-temperature gas in their central regions has a more regular distribution. In contrast to A133, these cluster cores have longer timescales for the disruption of the core by the KH instability when they are normalized to the timescale of the cD galaxy motion. Thus, the other cores are less vulnerable to KH instability. Another possible origin of the tongue is that it is gas that has been uplifted by a buoyant bubble of nonthermal plasma that we identify with the observed radio relic. From the position of the bubble and the radio estimate of the age of the relic source, we estimate a velocity of ~700 km s-1 for the bubble. The structure of the bubble and this velocity are consistent with numerical models for such buoyant bubbles. The energy dissipated by the moving bubble may affect the cooling flow in A133. The combination of the radio and X-ray observations of the radio relic suggest that it is a relic radio lobe formerly energized by the central cD rather than a merger shock-generated cluster radio relic. The lobe may have been displaced from the central cD galaxy by the motion of the cD galaxy or by the buoyancy of the lobe.
Adversarial Input in Games and Markets

 Head of the Distributed Computing Group at ETH Zurich, established in 2001.  Unusual blend of basic and applied research, proving theorems on the one hand, and building practical systems on the other. More details on our research can be found on the group web page www.disco. ethz.ch.  More than 300 peer-reviewed publications in different areas: Distributed Computing (e.g. PODC, SPAA, DISC), Systems & Networking (e.g. SIGCOMM, OSDI, MobiCom, MobiHoc, SenSys, IPSN, HotNets, IPTPS), or Theory of Computer Science (e.g. STOC, FOCS, SODA, ICALP).  Members of our group have won several best paper awards at top conferences such as PODC, SPAA, DISC, or MobiCom. For more details, please visit www.disco. ethz.ch/publications.html.  Winning Prize for Innovations in Distributed Computing in 2012, for “extensive contributions to the study of distributed approximation”.  Some projects turned into startup companies, e.g. Wuala, StreamForge, BitSplitters.  Several projects have been covered by popular media and blogs, e.g. Gizmodo, Lifehacker, New York Times, NBC News, NZZ, PC World Magazing, Red Herring, Technology Review.
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION TECHNIQUE IN IMPROVING THE LISTENING SKILL

This paper is aimed at proving “The effectiveness of an orthographic transcription technique in improving the listening skill” in a foreign language. This study was intended to know whether there was any significant difference in listening comprehension skill of the student before and after being taught employing orthographic transcription technique. Experimental research was carried out using a quasi experimental design, using SPSS program to analyze the data using independent and paired sample t-test.The population of this study were students in the sixth semester students in STMIK Widya Pratama Pekalongan with the total population of 378 randomly sampled out 66 studentsfor the control group and 66 students for the experiment group. The result shows that the significant value of analysis using paired sample t-test in the experimental group was 0,000 whereas the significant value of analysis using paired sample t-test in the control group was 0,010. It means there was significant difference between pre-test and post-test in both experimental and control group. However, the mean score of experimental group is higher than that of the control group. Thus, the orthographic transcription technique is proven to be more effective to improve student’s listening skill. Hence the technique may be the alternative to improve the listening skill. Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk membuktikan “Efektifitas Teknik Transkripsi Ortografik untuk meningkatkan kemampuan listening” dalam bahasa asing. Penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mengetahui apakah terdapat perbedaan signifikan dalam kemampuan listening mahasiswa sebelum dan sesudah pembelajaran menggunakan Teknik Transkipsi Ortografik. Penelitian eksperimental dilakukan menggunakan model quasi eksperimental, dengan menggunakan program SPSS untuk menganalisa data menggunakan independent dan paired sample t-test. Populasi penelitian ini adalah mahasiswa semester 6 STMIK Widya Pratama Pekalongan dengan total populasi 378 dan diambil sampel secara acak menjadi 66 mahasiswa kontrol grup dan 66 mahasiswa untuk eksperimental grup. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa nilai signifikan dalam analisis menggunakan paired sample t-test dalam eksperimental grup adalah 0,000 sementara nilai signifikan dari analisis pada kontrol grup adalah 0,010, artinya terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan antara pre-test and post-test baik pada eksperimental grup maupun kontrol grup. Meski demikian, signifikansi skor pada eksperimental grup lebih tinggi dari kontrol grup. Dengan demikian, Teknik Transkripsi Ortografik terbukti efektif dalam meningkatkan kemampuan listening mahasiswa. Karena itu teknik ini dapat menjadi alternatif dalam pembelajaran untuk meningkatkan kemampuan listening.
Scalability options for future SRAM memories

As CMOS technology approaches the limits of scaling, device dimensions become similar in magnitude to the discrete structures and components of the device itself. Random process variations quickly are becoming a major limitation to limiting manufacturing yields. The 6T-SRAM cell has become the first casualty to these scaling effects, and has increased in size relative to larger logic components in recent technology nodes. Physical and electrical modifications to the SRAM cell and peripheral circuits can provide additional tolerance and allow continued scaling into the foreseeable future. This paper examines this issue and suggests some alternative structures that have been demonstrated to provide improvements
Chapter 1 Recent Advances in Plant Transformation

Plant genetic engineering has become one of the most important molecular tools in the modern molecular breeding of crops. Over the last decade, significant progress has been made in the development of new and efficient transformation methods in plants. Despite a variety of available DNA delivery methods, Agrobacteriumand biolistic-mediated transformation remain the two predominantly employed approaches. In particular, progress in Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of cereals and other recalcitrant dicot species has been quite remarkable. In the meantime, other transgenic-enabling technologies have emerged, including generation of marker-free transgenics, gene targeting, and chromosomal engineering. Although transformation of some plant species or elite germplasm remains a challenge, further advancement in transformation technology is expected because the mechanisms of governing the regeneration and transformation processes are now better understood and are being creatively applied to designing improved transformation methods or to developing new enabling technologies.