Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Controllable Face Privacy

We present the novel concept of Controllable Face Privacy. Existing methods that alter face images to conceal identity inadvertently also destroy other facial attributes such as gender, race or age. This all-or-nothing approach is too harsh. Instead, we propose a flexible method that can independently control the amount of identity alteration while keeping unchanged other facial attributes. To achieve this flexibility, we apply a subspace decomposition onto our face encoding scheme, effectively decoupling facial attributes such as gender, race, age, and identity into mutually orthogonal subspaces, which in turn enables independent control of these attributes. Our method is thus useful for nuanced face de-identification, in which only facial identity is altered, but others, such gender, race and age, are retained. These altered face images protect identity privacy, and yet allow other computer vision analyses, such as gender detection, to proceed unimpeded. Controllable Face Privacy is therefore useful for reaping the benefits of surveillance cameras while preventing privacy abuse. Our proposal also permits privacy to be applied not just to identity, but also to other facial attributes as well. Furthermore, privacy-protection mechanisms, such as k-anonymity, L-diversity, and t-closeness, may be readily incorporated into our method. Extensive experiments with a commercial facial analysis software show that our alteration method is indeed effective.
Dual neurohormonal intervention in CV disease: angiotensin receptor and Neprilysin inhibition

Introduction: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 30% of all deaths, with elevated blood pressure probably the most important modifiable risk factor. Worldwide, elevated blood pressure is estimated to cause 7.5 million deaths, about 12.8% of the total of all annual deaths. New drugs with different efficacy and effectiveness to control cardiovascular and renal disease are always welcomed. Areas covered: Adequate control of arterial hypertension is needed in order to reduce the consequences of cardiovascular and renal disease. A novel compound, LCZ696, is currently in development based on the concept of comprising in the same entity a Neprilysin inhibitor, with a renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system inhibitor, in this case an angiotensin receptor blocker. This review, performed in PubMed including the last five years under the keywords cited below, presents the available data about LCZ696, the first-in-class angiotensin receptor Neprilysin inhibitor. Expert opinion: Available data show that positive efficacy and a good tolerability profile of LCZ696 in the treatment of arterial hypertension as well as preliminary data indicate that it can also be useful in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. These data are particularly promising in the treatment of arterial hypertension.
THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF TARIFFS IN THE 1930s IN AUSTRALIA: THE BRIGDEN REPORT RE‐EXAMINED*

In 1927, the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr S.M. Bruce, appointed a committee of economists to undertake an inquiry into the economic impact of the Australian tariffs. The Report of this committee, known as the Brigden Report, was published in July 1929. In assessing the impact of tariffs on the Australian economy, the committee concluded that the protective tariff has been an effective means of securing a higher standard of living for a larger population. The purpose of this paper is to examine this conclusion quantitatively by simulating a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the 1930s in Australia. The results support the above conclusion of the Brigden Committee if the demand for Australian primary exports were price inelastic. Copyright 1996 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd/University of Adelaide and Flinders University of South Australia
An integrated business improvement system (IBIS) for construction

Purpose – To review the key facets of a performance measurement system (PMS) and report on the development of a new model based on the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model.Design/methodology/approach – The research involved detailed literature reviews and action research within the case study organisation. It involved the design of an integrated business improvement system (IBIS) that enables proactive performance measurement within an organisation.Findings – Key performance indicators (KPIs) are now widely used in the construction industry but there is little evidence that they are being used as an integral and systematic part of an overall PMS. The approach proposed here and encapsulated in IBIS is intended to improve current practice.Practical implications – The research found that the active engagement of both senior management and potential end‐users is vital for the successful design and implementation of a PMS.Originality/value – The novelty of the paper lies in the det.
Phenolic Contribution of South African Herbal Teas to a Healthy Diet

South African herbal teas, rooibos and honeybush, are increasingly enjoyed as healthy alternatives to Camellia sinensis teas. They contribute to the diet with bioactive phytochemicals not commonly found in foods. Major compounds of rooibos are the unique dihydrochalcone, aspalathin, and its flavone isomers, orientin and isoorientin. Honeybush contributes the xanthones, mangiferin and isomangiferin and the flavanones, eriocitrin, narirutin and hesperidin. All these compounds are either C-glucosides or O-rhamnoglucosides, which are poorly absorbed. Phase II metabolism and degradation by intestinal bacteria are important factors in their absorption. Modulation of drug metabolising enzymes is indicated which not only could affect the therapeutic window of drugs, but also the bioavailability of other dietary flavonoids.
Stock Splits and Liquidity: The Case of the Nasdaq-100 Index Tracking Stock

In an attempt to disentangle the signaling effect from the liquidity effect of stock splits, I examine the liquidity changes following the two-for-one split of the Nasdaq-100 Index Tracking Stock. Since there can be no signaling with an index stock split, any difference between pre- and postsplit trading may be driven by liquidity but not signaling effects. I find that though the postsplit relative bid-ask spread is higher and daily turnover is unchanged, the frequency, share volume, and dollar-volume of small trades all increased after the split, indicating that the split improved liquidity for small trade-sizes. Copyright 2003 by the Eastern Finance Association.
Do Family Owners Use Firm Hedging Policy to Hedge Personal Undiversified Wealth Risk

type="main"> We examine whether family ownership affects the value impact of the operational and financial dimensions of firms’ hedging policies. We show that family firms’ market valuations are higher than those of non-family firms, consistent with the view that family firms benefit from family owners’ long-term perspectives and ability to monitor managers. In addition, while both operational and financial hedging policies per se are valuable in non-family firms, they do not create any value in family firms. These results support the notion that the founding families’ need to hedge the risk of their undiversified personal wealth portfolio leads to suboptimal risk management decisions.
Autonomics: An Autonomous and Intelligent Economic Platform and Next Generation Money Tool

We propose a high level network architecture for an economic system that integrates money, governance and reputation. We introduce a method for issuing, and redeeming a digital coin using a mechanism to create a sustainable global economy and a free market. To maintain a currency's value over time, and therefore be money proper, we claim it must be issued by the buyer and backed for value by the seller, exchanging the products of labour, in a free market. We also claim that a free market and sustainable economy cannot be maintained using economically arbitrary creation and allocation of money. Nakamoto, with Bitcoin, introduced a new technology called the cryptographic blockchain to operate a decentralised and distributed accounts ledger without the need for an untrusted third party. This blockchain technology creates and allocates new digital currency as a reward for "proof-of-work", to secure the network. However, no currency, digital or otherwise, has solved how to create and allocate money in an economically non-arbitrary way, or how to govern and trust a world-scale free enterprise money system. We propose an "Ontologically Networked Exchange" (ONE), with purpose as its highest order domain. Each purpose is defined in a contract, and the entire economy of contracts is structured in a unified ontology. We claim to secure the ONE network using economically non-arbitrary methodologies and economically incented human behaviour. Decisions influenced by reputation help to secure the network without an untrusted third party. The stack of contracts, organised in a unified ontology, functions as a super recursive algorithm, with individual use programming the algorithm, acting as the "oracle". The state of the algorithm becomes the "memory" of a scalable and trustable artificial intelligence (AI). This AI offers a new platform for what we call the "Autonomy-of-Things" (AoT).
CRF-based Named Entity Recognition @ICON 2013

This paper describes performance of CRF based systems for Named Entity Recognition (NER) in Indian language as a part of ICON 2013 shared task. In this task we have considered a set of language independent features for all the languages. Only for English a language specific feature, i.e. capitalization, has been added. Next the use of gazetteer is explored for Bengali, Hindi and English. The gazetteers are built from Wikipedia and other sources. Test results show that the system achieves the highest F measure of 88% for English and the lowest F measure of 69% for both Tamil and Telugu. Note that for the least performing two languages no gazetteer was used. NER in Bengali and Hindi finds accuracy (F measure) of 87% and 79%, respectively.
OBSERVATIONS OF MCG–5-23-16 WITH SUZAKU, XMM-NEWTON AND NUSTAR: DISK TOMOGRAPHY AND COMPTON HUMP REVERBERATION

MCG–5-23-16 is one of the first active galactic nuclei (AGNs) where relativistic reverberation in the iron K line originating in the vicinity of the supermassive black hole was found, based on a short XMM-Newton observation. In this work, we present the results from long X-ray observations using Suzaku, XMM-Newton, and NuSTAR designed to map the emission region using X-ray reverberation. A relativistic iron line is detected in the lag spectra on three different timescales, allowing the emission from different regions around the black hole to be separated. Using NuSTAR coverage of energies above 10 keV reveals a lag between these energies and the primary continuum, which is detected for the first time in an AGN. This lag is a result of the Compton reflection hump responding to changes in the primary source in a manner similar to the response of the relativistic iron K line.
Dynamic Traffic Offloading and Transmit Point Muting for Energy and Cost Efficiency in Virtualized Radio Access Networks

A virtualized radio access network (VRAN) is envisaged in next generation wireless networks. Therein, users experience a seamless ubiquitous service without cell-specific signaling through transparent grouping of densely deployed transmit points (TPs) and helping UEs. Aiming at reducing the Carbon footprint as well as the operational expenditure while maintaining users' QoS, we propose an energy/cost-aware dynamic wideband muting and traffic offloading scheme for the VRAN. The proposed scheme favors muting hypotheses with greater energy/cost savings from TPs with relatively light traffic loads. Such loads are opportunistically offloaded to adjacent TPs to improve their energy efficiency. This is achieved by employing a low-complexity joint wideband muting and multi-point scheduling algorithm optimizing a novel energy-aware utility. The utility accounts for the power consumption models of different TPs, the current cost per unit energy and the TP's predicted 'Soft Loading Ratio'. Operator controls the energy savings-performance tradeoff in individual network regions regardless of the topology. Simulation results show significant energy efficiency and system capacity gains.
Splanchnic Circulation During Nitrous Oxide Anesthesia and Hypocarbia in Normal Man

Circulatory effects of nitrous oxide-d-tubocurarine anesthesia with hyperventilation were studied in healthy, young men. Cardiac output, mean arterial blood pressure, and splanchnic blood flow were measured. During anesthesia and hyperventilation with normal Pco2 (CO2 added to the inspired gases), splanchnic vascular resistance was elevated significantly and the blood flow reduced, but oxygen consumption was unaltered from control values. Cardiac output and total peripheral resistance were unchanged. When Paco2 was not maintained at the normal level, total peripheral resistance and splanchnic vascular resistance were reduced and the respective blood flows augmented compared with the normocarbic period. However, the demand of the splanchnic viscera for oxygen was increased out of proportion to the increase in flow. It is suggested that the nitrous oxide-curarehyperventilation technique may be a poor choice for patients with marginal levels of splanchnic blood flow.
University patents, R&D competition, and social welfare

Although university patenting has increased dramatically over the past three decades, debates persist regarding the broad economic implications of the phenomenon. This article examines the social welfare implications of university patenting in a model of R&D competition in which firms develop innovations on the basis of the disclosure of a university invention. When such disclosure does not preempt the patenting of downstream innovations, university patenting enhances social welfare only if a regime of open access to university inventions is characterized by excessive aggregate R&D from the viewpoint of social welfare. When the university invention disclosure preempts patenting on firms’ innovations, the nature of the open access equilibrium in the R&D market depends on the threat of imitation ex post. Only when the threat of imitation is sufficiently strong firms will not invest in downstream R&D in the open access regime. In this case, university patenting promotes R&D investment and increases social welfare.
Year One Implications of a Teacher Performance Assessment's Impact on Multicultural Education across a Secondary Education Teacher Preparation Program

This case study examines the impact of the 1-year implementation of a state-mandated, standardized teacher performance assessment (TPA) on a faculty's infusion of multicultural education across a secondary education teacher preparation program. Findings show that faculty and teacher candidate (TC) perceptions predominantly concluded that the TPA supported multicultural education infusion by preparing TCs to teach academic language and connect curricula to student background yet hindered critical, in-depth reflection vital to preparing TCs to teach diverse populations. The program's cohort learning communities cultivated TC reflection on background, bias, and inequity, mitigating these limitations. Is it possible for TPAs to serve as a unifying standard for teacher preparation reform while engaging TCs in authentic, in-depth inquiry on diversity and inequity, or should certain aspects of this sensitive work be left for programs to address more carefully in their unique contexts? How faculty respond to TPA-related challenges is central to this question.
Blue Light Inhibits Mycotoxin Production and Increases Total Lipids and Pigmentation in Alternaria alternata

Light inhibits production of the mycotoxins alternariol and alternariol monomethyl ether, both polyketids produced by Alternaria alternata. This effect seems to be general because seven isolates of A. alternata with different alternariol- and alternariol monomethyl ether-producing abilities all respond to continuous light with reduced levels of alternariol and alternariol monomethyl ether when the mycotoxins were calculated on a microgram-per-milligram (dry weight) basis. Blue light inhibited alternariol and alternariol monomethyl ether production 69 and 77%, respectively. Red light gave no reduction of toxin levels. Total lipids were increased 25% when mycelium was grown in blue light as compared with red light or darkness. In white or blue light, but not in red light or darkness, a red-brown pigment accumulated by the mycelium.
Ping Pong: competing leadership for reform in EU higher education 1998–2006

How effective is EU cooperation in higher education? This article treats the issue as one of effectiveness in policy-making. What are the policy ideas which the EU wishes to feed into a policy domain where it has to operate largely through political cooperation and a modest degree of incentive funding? What outcomes are possible? The question is of interest since Europe has two processes which aim for a better regional integration of higher education in order to boost the quality of European higher education and to make a global impact. These are the world- famous Bologna Process and the EU process to drive Europe's universities to make better use of their interlinked roles of education, research and innovation, part of a larger strategy (EU 2020, Lisbon) for European Union growth to support employment, productivity and social cohesion. Building on the theoretical insights of an institutionalist literature concerned with the dynamics of European policy-making in the knowledge domain (Maassen & Olsen, 2007; Gornitzka, 2006, 2010) and complementary theories of historical institutionalism (Pierson, 2003, Thelen, 2003) and agenda setting (Kingdon, 1995), this article examines policy-making on higher education cooperation in the European arena since the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992. It seeks answers to two questions. Why did the Bologna Process dominate the agenda from 1999 to 2004? How did the European Commission acquire the power to shape the issue of European higher education cooperation? Rejecting simple spillover explanations, it theorises in terms of policy entrepreneurship why the EU has latterly been effective in shaping European cooperation in higher education.
Memory processes in learning disability subtypes of children born preterm

The purpose of this study was to evaluate immediate auditory and visual memory processes in learning disability subtypes of 40 children born preterm. Three subgroups of children were examined: (a) primary language disability group (n = 13), (b) perceptual-motor disability group (n = 14), and (c) no learning disability diagnosis group without identified language or perceptual-motor learning disability (n = 13). Between-group comparisons indicate no significant differences in immediate auditory or visual memory performances between language and perceptual-motor learning disability groups. Within-group comparisons revealed that both learning disability groups performed significantly lower on a task of immediate memory when the mode of stimulus presentation and mode of response were visual.
The germinal centre artificial immune system

This thesis deals with the development and evaluation of the Germinal centre artificial immune system (GC-AIS) which is a novel artificial immune system based on advancements in the understanding of the germinal centre reaction of the immune system. The key research questions addressed in this thesis are: can an artificial immune system (AIS) be designed by taking inspiration from recent developments in immunology to tackle multi-objective optimisation problems? How can we incorporate desirable features of the immune system like diversity, parallelism and memory into this proposed AIS? How does the proposed AIS compare with other state of the art techniques in the field of multi-objective optimisation problems? How can we incorporate the learning component of the immune system into the algorithm and investigate the usefulness of memory in dynamic scenarios? The main contributions of the thesis are: • Understanding the behaviour and performance of the proposed GC-AIS on multiobjective optimisation problems and explaining its benefits and drawbacks, by comparing it with simple baseline and state of the art algorithms. • Improving the performance of GC-AIS by incorporating a popular technique from multi-objective optimisation. By overcoming its weaknesses the capability of the improved variant to compete with the state of the art algorithms is evaluated. • Answering key questions on the usefulness of incorporating memory in GC-AIS in a dynamic scenario.
ROI is MIA: why are hoteliers failing to demand the ROI of training?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the approaches used by leading lodging properties to assess the costs and contributions of training. The study also investigates the barriers to collecting data required for the calculation of return on investment (ROI) and begs the question, “when are hotel companies going to design a system that tracks the value of employee development? ” Design/methodology/approach – This study uses a purposeful sampling method and focuses on a small number of hotel companies rather than a large sample. The interview questions were developed through an extensive literature and are based upon Kirkpatrick and Phillips' framework. The qualitative method employed for this study uses Littrell and Dickson's adaptation of Marshall and Rossman's qualitative research cycle. Findings – The paper reveals the haphazard approach to corporate spending and tracking training, one of the major expenses in the lodging industry. It explores the failure of hoteliers to expect accountability for the investment into employee development. Research limitations/implications – This study is exploratory and therefore may not be generalized to the entire population of human resources and training departments within the hotel industry. Practical implications – This exploratory study identifies the barriers of calculating the ROI of training. It also suggests strategies human resource managers can use to develop ROI for training programs and access employee development programs and budgets. Originality/value – This paper explores the unique perspective held by lodging managers on the issue of ROI in training. Very little research has been done on this aspect of ROI in training in the hotel industry.
FES based tremor suppression using repetitive control

Tremor is a neurological condition present in half of all multiple sclerosis and Parkinson cases, resulting in involuntary, debilitating movement oscillations. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) can be used to suppress tremor, but current approaches using classical control methods have shown significant limitations. This paper establishes the feasibility of using repetitive control (RC), giving rise to the first FES control structure that embeds learning from experience for the purpose of suppressing tremor. The paradigm is applied to suppress tremor at the wrist via FES regulated co-contraction of wrist extensors/flexors. Experimental evaluation is performed using a validated wrist-rig and results are compared against classical feedback control design to establish the efficacy of the approach.