Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A New Method for Writer Identification and Verification Based on Farsi/Arabic Handwritten Texts

Most studies about writer identification are based on English documents and to our knowledge no research has been reported on Farsi or Arabic documents. In this paper, we have proposed a method for off-line writer identification and verification based on Farsi handwriting, which is text-dependent. Based on the idea that has been presented in the previous studies, here we assume handwriting as texture image and after normalization step, the Gabor filters are applied to image and then new features are extracted. Substantially, the property of proposed method is using of the bank of Gabor filters which is appropriate for the structure of Farsi handwritten texts and vision system. Also, a new method for feature extraction from output of Gabor filters is proposed which is based on moments and nonlinear transform. In this paper, with definition a confidence criterion, a new method for writer verification is proposed. Evaluation of other methods and proposed method demonstrates that proposed method achieves better performance on Farsi handwritten from 40 peoples.
Ime2p and Cdc28p: Co‐pilots driving meiotic development

Meiosis can be considered an elaboration of the cell division cycle in the sense that meiosis combines cell‐cycle processes with programs specific to meiosis. Each phase of the cell division cycle is driven forward by cell‐cycle kinases (Cdk) and coordinated with other phases of the cycle through checkpoint functions (Hartwell and Weinert [1989]: Science. 246:629–634). Meiotic differentiation is also controlled by these two types of regulation (Murakami and Nurse [2000]: Biochem J. 349:1–12; Roeder and Bailis [2000]: Trends Genet. 16:395–403); however, recent study in the budding yeast S. cerevisiae indicates that progression of meiosis is also controlled by a master regulator specific to meiosis, namely the Ime2p kinase (Benjamin et al. [2003]: Genes Dev. 17:1–16; Schindler et al. [2003]: Mol Cell Biol 23:8718–8728). Below, I describe the overlapping roles of Ime2p and Cdk during meiosis in yeast and speculate on how these two kinases cooperate to drive the progression of meiosis. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Orexin/hypocretin (Orx/Hcrt) transmission and drug-seeking behavior: is the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) part of the drug seeking circuitry?

The orexin/hypocretin (Orx/Hcrt) system has long been considered to regulate a wide range of physiological processes, including feeding, energy metabolism, and arousal. More recently, concordant observations have demonstrated an important role for these peptides in the reinforcing properties of most drugs of abuse. Orx/Hcrt neurons arise in the lateral hypothalamus (LH) and project to all brain structures implicated in the regulation of arousal, stress, and reward. Although Orx/Hcrt neurons have been shown to massively project to the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT), only recent evidence suggested that the PVT may be a key relay of Orx/Hcrt-coded reward-related communication between the LH and both the ventral and dorsal striatum. While this thalamic region was not thought to be part of the “drug addiction circuitry,” an increasing amount of evidence demonstrated that the PVT—particularly PVT Orx/Hcrt transmission—was implicated in the modulation of reward function in general and several aspects of drug-directed behaviors in particular. The present review discusses recent findings that suggest that maladaptive recruitment of PVT Orx/Hcrt signaling by drugs of abuse may promote persistent compulsive drug-seeking behavior following a period of protracted abstinence and as such may represent a relevant target for understanding the long-term vulnerability to drug relapse after withdrawal.
Mineral Admixtures in Cement and Concrete

Pulverized Fuel Ash Introduction Classification Physical Characteristics Chemical and Mineralogical Composition Characteristics of PFA Produced in Fluidized Bed Combustion Process Characteristics of PFA Produced after Co-Combustion of Bituminous Coal and Petcoke Leaching Characteristics Radioactivity, Toxicity, and Occupational Health Processing for Quality Improvement and Assurance Processing of Unusable PFA Quality Control Addition of PFA to Cement and Concrete Summary Blast Furnace Slag Introduction Granulation of BFS Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag Chemical and Mineralogical Composition of Cementitious BFS Quality Control Addition of BFS and GGBS to Cement and Concrete Quantitative Determination of Blast Furnace Slag in Cement Summary Silica Fume Introduction Types of Silica Fume Physical Characteristics Chemical and Mineralogical Composition Toxicity and Occupational Health Quality Control Addition of SF to Cement and Concrete Summary Rice Husk Ash Introduction Relevance of RHA for the Sustainability of Construction Industry Rice Husk Production Physical and Chemical Characteristics Addition of RHA to Cement and Concrete Summary Metakaolin Introduction Production Physical and Chemical Characteristics Quality Control Addition of Metakaolin to Cement and Concrete Summary Hydration Introduction Progress of Hydration with Time (Hydration Periods) Reactants in Hydration Process Voids in Hydrated Cement Paste Interrelation of the Hydration Properties of Cement and Concrete Properties of Concrete during Early Stages of Hydration Hydration Reactions and Changes in Early-Age Concrete Properties Summary Strength and Durability Introduction Designing Structures for Strength and Durability Concrete Strength Mechanisms, Models, Standards, and Mitigation of Concrete Deterioration Durability Indices for Performance Based Design of Structures Sustainable Cement and Concrete Summary New Mineral Admixtures Introduction Biomass Combustion Ash Calcined Wastepaper Sludge Electric-Arc Furnace Dust Sewage Sludge Ash Municipal Solid Waste Ash Summary References Index
Adaptive time segmentation of noisy speech for improved speech enhancement

Enhancement algorithms are widely used to overcome the degradation of noisy speech signals. Most enhancement algorithms require an estimate of the noise and noisy speech power spectra in order to compute the gain function used for the noise suppression. The variance of these power spectral estimates degrades the quality of the enhanced signal and smoothing techniques are therefore often used to decrease the variance. We present a method to determine the noisy speech power spectrum based on an adaptive time segmentation. More specifically, the proposed algorithm determines for each noisy frame which of the surrounding frames should contribute to the corresponding noisy power spectral estimate. Objective and subjective experiments show that an adaptive time segmentation leads to significant performance improvements, particularly in transitional speech regions.
Persistent Improvement After Coronary Bypass Surgery: Ergometric and Angiographic Correlations at 5 Years

Supported in part by a grant from the Medical Council of the Academy of Finland. Address for correpondence: M. Heikki Frick, M.D., First Departmentof Medicine, University Central Hospital, SF-00290 Helsinki 29, Finland. Received February 4, 1982; revision accepted September 28, 1982.
Energy functions for protein design I: Efficient and accurate continuum electrostatics and solvation

Electrostatics and solvation energies are important for defining protein stability, structural specificity, and molecular recognition. Because these energies are difficult to compute quickly and accurately, they are often ignored or modeled very crudely in computational protein design. To address this problem, we have developed a simple, fast, and accurate approximation for calculating Born radii in the context of protein design calculations. When these approximate Born radii are used with the generalized Born continuum dielectric model, energies calculated by the 106‐fold slower finite difference Poisson‐Boltzmann model are faithfully reproduced. A similar approach can be used for estimating solvent‐accessible surface areas (SASAs). As an independent test, we show that these approximations can be used to accurately predict the experimentally determined pKas of >200 ionizable groups from 15 proteins.
Tie Strength Distribution in Scientific Collaboration Networks

Science is increasingly dominated by teams. Understanding patterns of scientific collaboration and their impacts on the productivity and evolution of disciplines is crucial to understand scientific processes. Electronic bibliography offers a unique opportunity to map and investigate the nature of scientific collaboration. Recent studies have demonstrated a counterintuitive organizational pattern of scientific collaboration networks: densely interconnected local clusters consist of weak ties, whereas strong ties play the role of connecting different clusters. This pattern contrasts itself from many other types of networks where strong ties form communities while weak ties connect different communities. Although there are many models for collaboration networks, no model reproduces this pattern. In this paper, we present an evolution model of collaboration networks, which reproduces many properties of real-world collaboration networks, including the organization of tie strengths, skewed degree and weight distribution, high clustering, and assortative mixing.
Bainite in silicon steels: new composition–property approach Part 1

AbstractRecent work on the mechanism of the bainite transformation has shown that the extent of transformation to bainitic ferrite, and the carbon content of the remaining austenite, can be estimated thermodynamically. This paper is concerned with the application of this recent work to the development of a quantitative relationship between the composition and some important mechanical properties of silicon containing steels, which can be transformed isothermally to an aggregate of bainitic ferrite and carbon enriched retained austenite only. It is demonstrated that the method has predictive capabilities, and forms the basis of further work (Part 2 of this study) on the theoretical design, optimization, and testing of two promising steel compositions.
Ascorbate prevents the interaction of superoxide and nitric oxide only at very high physiological concentrations.

The bioactivity of nitric oxide (.NO) depends, in part, on its interaction with superoxide. Usually, superoxide dismutase (SOD) preserves . NO bioactivity by limiting the availability of superoxide. Ascorbic acid also effectively scavenges superoxide, but the extent to which this interaction is necessary for intact . NO bioactivity is not known. Therefore, the present study examined the effect of ascorbic acid on . NO bioactivity with isolated rabbit arterial segments. A steady flux of superoxide (1.15 to 2.3 micromol . L-1 . min-1) produced either by pyrogallol autoxidation or a hypoxanthine/xanthine oxidase system inhibited endothelium-derived . NO-mediated arterial relaxation elicited by acetylcholine. This effect of superoxide was completely blocked by SOD (300 IU/mL) and the manganese SOD mimic EUK-8 (300 micromol/L) and partially inhibited by ascorbic acid (10 mmol/L). Lower concentrations of ascorbic acid were ineffective despite scavenging >90% of superoxide. We increased the endogenous flux of superoxide (3.2+/-0.3-fold) by inhibiting vascular copper-zinc SOD with diethyldithiocarbamate. This increased endogenous flux of superoxide produced an impairment of . NO-mediated arterial relaxation that was reversed by EUK-8 (300 micromol/L) but not ascorbic acid (10 mmol/L) despite equivalent scavenging of the endogenous superoxide flux. We used 3-nitrotyrosine formation (from peroxynitrite) as an indicator of . NO interaction with superoxide and found that SOD and EUK-8 compete more effectively with . NO for superoxide than does ascorbic acid. These data indicate that preservation of . NO bioactivity by superoxide scavengers depends not only on superoxide scavenging activity, but also on the rate of superoxide scavenging. Normal extracellular concentrations of ascorbic acid (30 to 150 micromol/L) are not likely to prevent the interaction of . NO with superoxide under physiological conditions.
Bringing them all Together

[. ] No way to say warm in French. There was only hot and tepid. If there’s no word for it, how do you think about it? [. ] Imagine, in Spanish having to assign a gender to every object: dog, table, tree, can-opener. Imagine, in Hungarian, not being able to assign a gender to anything: he, she, it all the same word. Thou art my friend, but you are my king; thus the distinctions of Elizabeth the First’s English. But with some oriental languages, which all but dispense with gender and number, you are my friend, you are my parent, and YOU are my priest, and YOU are my king, and You are my servant, and You are my servant whom I’m going to fire tomorrow if You don’t watch it, and YOU are my king whose policies I totally disagree with and have sawdust in YOUR head instead of brains, YOUR highness, and YOU may be my friend, but I’m still gonna smack YOU up side the head if YOU ever say that to me again: and who the hell are you anyway. Babel-17 Samuel R. Delany
Algorithmic Approach to High-Throughput Molecular Screening for Alpha Interferon-Resistant Genotypes in Hepatitis C Patients

ABSTRACT This study was designed to analyze the feasibility and validity of using Cleavase Fragment Length Polymorphism (CFLP) analysis as an alternative to DNA sequencing for high-throughput screening of hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotypes in a high-volume molecular pathology laboratory setting. By using a 244-bp amplicon from the 5′ untranslated region of the HCV genome, 61 clinical samples received for HCV reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) were genotyped by this method. The genotype frequencies assigned by the CFLP method were 44.3% for type 1a, 26.2% for 1b, 13.1% for type 2b, and 5% type 3a. The results obtained by nucleotide sequence analysis provided 100% concordance with those obtained by CFLP analysis at the major genotype level, with resolvable differences as to subtype designations for five samples. CFLP analysis-derived HCV genotype frequencies also concurred with the national estimates (N. N. Zein et al., Ann. Intern. Med. 125:634–639, 1996). Reanalysis of 42 of these samples in parallel in a different research laboratory reproduced the CFLP fingerprints for 100% of the samples. Similarly, the major subtype designations for 19 samples subjected to different incubation temperature-time conditions were also 100% reproducible. Comparative cost analysis for genotyping of HCV by line probe assay, CFLP analysis, and automated DNA sequencing indicated that the average cost per amplicon was lowest for CFLP analysis, at $20 (direct costs). On the basis of these findings we propose that CFLP analysis is a robust, sensitive, specific, and an economical method for large-scale screening of HCV-infected patients for alpha interferon-resistant HCV genotypes. The paper describes an algorithm that uses as a reflex test the RT-PCR-based qualitative screening of samples for HCV detection and also addresses genotypes that are ambiguous.
A new algorithm for 3D object representation and its application for human face verification

There are many papers published on the use of 2D images for object representation. The fundamental issue with these approaches lies in the fact that a conventional image maps 3D real world objects into a 2D plane. This causes loss of 3D information - which means loss of 3D features as well for further analysis. There have been attempts using 3D and 2.5D scanners in order to access range data from objects for further analysis. However, these systems require special scanners and associated hardware, and many a times the complete information that is obtained from such systems is not required for further analysis. In this paper, we propose a simple system that projects a light beam over an object of interest and using a simple optical camera a video is recorded. This enables us to have 2D data as acquired from the camera along with the 3D data that is derived out of the deviations in the scan pattern because of the non-planarity of the object of interest. We have limited our research to using 3D features only for object representation and extended the same logic for face verification. The results that we have obtained show that in spite of using only 3D features, the system is able to verify faces with varied expressions correctly on 75% of the test data. The system is robust to slight tilt in head angle and normal human expressions like smile, frown, grin etc.
Clinical status of motoneuron disease does not correlate with serum neurotoxicity on cultured neurons

To test the hypothesis that a serum factor may be toxic to motoneurons in Motoneuron disease (MND), we evaluated neuronal survival in dissociated cultures from chick ciliary ganglia neurons in which MND or control sera were applied. No neurotoxic activity was found when comparing neuronal survival at 1 and 3 days in MND and control group. To examine the influence of the clinical MND status on neuronal survival, we used the following parameters: age at onset, sex, months from onset of disease to sera sampling, MND form, rhythm of progression, and scoring with Appel scale. No effect was noted for any of these factors. Sera from the same patient obtained at different clinical stages did not allow any conclusion of a fixed behavior for the same patient. Our findings argue against the existence of a cytotoxic factor in sera from MND patients.
Investigation of Estrogen Status and Increased Stroke Sensitivity on Cerebral Blood Flow after a Focal Ischemic Insult

Recently the authors have shown that female stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRSPs) in proestrus (high endogenous estrogen), sustain more than 20% smaller infarcts after middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) compared with SHRSPs in metestrus (low endogenous estrogen). Because estrogen has vasodilator properties, the authors investigated whether the estrous state influences cerebral blood flow (CBF) after MCAO. CBF was measured 2.5 hours after a distal MCAO by [14C]iodo-antipyrine autoradiography in conscious SHRSPs either in metestrus or in proestrus. There were no significant differences in CBF when analyzed either at predetermined anatomic regions or by cumulative distribution analysis of areas with flow <25 mL/100 g/min. As a positive internal control, the authors compared results in SHRSPs with those in their normotensive reference strain, Wistar Kyoto rat. SHRSPs displayed more severe and widespread ischemia than Wistar Kyoto rats. Thus, the absence of demonstrable CBF differences between estrous states appears to be unrelated to the CBF measurement paradigm. In conclusion, the smaller infarct size afforded in proestrus in SHRSPs is unlikely to be due to an influence on CBF.
PHY layer access misbehavior in WLAN networks: A game theoretical approach

This thesis investigates the possible exploitation of the standard channel access mechanism of IEEE 802.11a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). We argue that by modifying the Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) sensitivity level, a group of user can achieve higher throughput than other users in a system. The assumption is that all users have the perfect knowledge of the network condition. We model this competing scenario with the help of appropriate tools of Game Theory, to analyze users’ short term as well as long term gain and its impact on the system, focusing on efficient usage of the radio resource. At the same time, system stability and counter measures to dissuade the greedy users in operator’s point of view, is part of our study. Results have shown that in a single cell system, a group of user can achieve higher throughput than the rest of the users by adaptive modification of their CCA level, however, the overall system performance deteriorates. Therefore, a single cell system demands greater monitoring to dissuade any defection from the standard protocol. Multicell system throughput can be increased by around two times compare to the ideal system (following the standard protocol) by adaptive modification of the CCA level based on the network condition. The group formed by a smaller number of users achieve even better througput by adaptive modification, however, the overall system performance degrades. Users are more likely to cooperate in a multicell system.
A Laboratory Study of the Effectiveness of Various Additives on Moisture Susceptibility of Asphalt Mixtures

Antistripping additives are used routinely to improve water resistance of asphalt mixtures. Different additives have different improvement effectiveness in water resistance. In this study, the effects of various additives on the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixture are studied with the retained Marshall stability test, Lottman test, and immersion wheel tracking test. Asphalt mixtures were modified with Portland cement, hydrated lime, lime slurry, and liquid antistripping agents. The results show that the lime-slurry-treated asphalt mixtures have better resistance to moisture susceptibility than mixtures treated with other materials, and have better long-term moisture stability than the liquid antistripping agents. The liquid-antistripping-agent-treated asphalt mixtures have better resistance to moisture stability before long-term aging. Portland-cement-treated asphalt mixtures show slightly improved water resistance. Asphalt mixtures become more resistant to moisture damage through short-term aging. It was confirmed that the Lottman and the immersion tracking methods are better methods to evaluate moisture susceptibility than the retained Marshall stability methods.
Clinical Implications of Neuroscience Research in PTSD

Abstract: The research showing how exposure to extreme stress affects brain function is making important contributions to understanding the nature of traumatic stress. This includes the notion that traumatized individuals are vulnerable to react to sensory information with subcortically initiated responses that are irrelevant, and often harmful, in the present. Reminders of traumatic experiences activate brain regions that support intense emotions, and decrease activation in the central nervous system (CNS) regions involved in (a) the integration of sensory input with motor output, (b) the modulation of physiological arousal, and (c) the capacity to communicate experience in words. Failures of attention and memory in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) interfere with the capacity to engage in the present: traumatized individuals “lose their way in the world. ” This article discusses the implications of this research by suggesting that effective treatment needs to involve (a) learning to tolerate feelings and sensations by increasing the capacity for interoception, (b) learning to modulate arousal, and (c) learning that after confrontation with physical helplessness it is essential to engage in taking effective action.
Empirical correction of seven myths about schizophrenia with implications for treatment

This paper presents empirical evidence accumulated across the last two decades to challenge seven long‐held myths in psychiatry about schizophrenia which impinge upon the perception and thus the treatment of patients. Such myths have been perpetuated across generations of trainees in each of the mental health disciplines. These myths limit the scope and effectiveness of treatments offered. These myths maintain the pessimism about outcome for these patients thus significantly reducing their opportunities for improvement and/or recovery. Counter evidence is provided with implications for new treatment strategies.