Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A symmetric transformation for LDA-based face verification

One of the major problems in face verification is to deal with a few numbers of images per person to train the system. A solution to that problem is to generate virtual samples from a unique image by doing simple geometric transformations such as translation, scale, rotation and vertical mirroring. In this paper, we propose to use a symmetric transformation to generate a new virtual sample. This symmetric virtual sample is obtained by computing the average between the original image and the vertical mirrored image. The face verification system is based on LDA feature extraction, successfully used in previous studies, and MLP for classification. Experiments were carried out on a difficult multi-modal database, namely BANCA. Results on this database show that our face verification system performs better that the state-of-the-art and also that the addition of the symmetric virtual sample improves the performance.
Assessment of proton radiation-induced charge transfer inefficiency in the CCD273 detector for the Euclid Dark Energy Mission

Euclid is a medium class mission selected for launch in 2019, with a primary goal to study the dark universe using the weak lensing and baryonic acoustic oscillations techniques. Weak lensing depends on accurate shape measurements, therefore it is beneficial that the effects of radiation-induced charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) in the Euclid CCD over the six year mission are understood and minimised. This paper describes the initial evaluation of the tolerance to radiation induced charge transfer inefficiency (CTI) of the CCD273 produced by e2v technologies plc, making comparisons with the previous CCD selected for Euclid the CCD203. The CCD273 benefits from the inclusion of a charge injection structure for trap suppression and a reduction in the register channel width. The improvement in tolerance to radiation induced serial CTI achieved by reducing the channel width from 50 μm to 20 μm was measured experimentally to be a factor of 1.7, which compares well to a factor of 1.9 found using a charge volume model
Up‐regulated TLR4 in cardiomyocytes exacerbates heart failure after long‐term myocardial infarction

It remains unclear whether and how cardiomyocytes contribute to the inflammation in chronic heart failure (CHF). We recently reviewed the capacity of cardiomyocytes to initiate inflammation, by means of expressing certain immune receptors such as toll‐like receptors (TLRs) that respond to pathogen‐ and damage‐associated molecular patterns (PAMP and DAMP). Previous studies observed TLR4‐mediated inflammation within days of myocardial infarction (MI). This study examined TLR4 expression and function in cardiomyocytes of failing hearts after 4 weeks of MI in rats. The increases of TLR4 mRNA and proteins, as well as inflammatory cytokine production, were observed in both the infarct and remote myocardium. Enhanced immunostaining for TLR4 was observed in cardiomyocytes but not infiltrating leucocytes. The injection of lentivirus shRNA against TLR4 into the infarcted heart decreased inflammatory cytokine production and improved heart function in vivo. Accordingly, in cardiomyocytes isolated from CHF hearts, increases of TLR4 mRNA and proteins were detected. More robust binding of TLR4 with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a PAMP ligand for TLR4, and heat shock protein 60 (HSP60), a DAMP ligand for TLR4, was observed in CHF cardiomyocytes under a confocal microscope. The maximum binding capacity (Bmax) of TLR4 was increased for LPS and HSP60, whereas the binding affinity (Kd) was not significantly changed. Furthermore, both LPS and HSP60 induced more robust production of inflammatory cytokines in CHF cardiomyocytes, which was reduced by TLR4‐blocking antibodies. We conclude that the expression, ligand‐binding capacity and pro‐inflammatory function of cardiomyocyte TLR4 are up‐regulated after long‐term MI, which promote inflammation and exacerbate heart failure.
Speech Based Command and Control System for Mobile Phones: Issues and Challenges

Speech provides a natural way of communication. Communicating with a device by talking to it provides a very comfortable interface, provided it understands your instructions well and performs action in time. But there are various challenges in doing so like memory, processing power, accuracy, timeliness, energy consumption, speaker dependency and many more. These challenges need to be considered before developing speech applications for mobile phones. PocketSphinx, Sphinx, Google API can be used for developing speech applications. Dragon Naturally speaking is a proprietary product which provides software for various speech applications.
Software Evolution Aided by Execution Trace Alignment

Several attempts to facilitate understanding the behavior of software systems have been proposed. Nonetheless, there is no widely accepted approach to facilitate understanding software systems with poor documentation with the goal that new developers could contribute with the evolution of these systems. The effort to understand complex systems may be a prohibitive factor in program comprehension tasks for many developers. This work proposes a new method based on the analysis of execution traces for locating points in the source code where changes that introduce new functionality should be performed. The proposed method was evaluated with a real world system, where new functionality were inserted with low effort.
Violence, silence, and health service provision in Mexico: An arrangement in parts

This article explores the journey of a doctoral student conducting field research in Mexico on how violence affects the provision of health care services and health. Mexico has seen a dramatic increase in violence caused by the Drug Wars in the last decade that has spread to many states throughout the country. Using translations, metaphors, and examples from my field research that refer to violence, I explore the complexity of inhabiting different cultures and languages simultaneously as well as my role as a researcher, translator, and interpreter of what remains hidden or silent. In the process, I am pulled in different directions as I learn to adapt in a reflexive process. I explore whether what I have learned in my academic journey is enough to study the relationship between violence and health care service provision. The journey is a reflection on what I have learned about breaking some of the silences around the topic. I discuss the tension of writing this article on a sensitive topic and my responsibility as a researcher, translator, and interpreter of lived experiences. The text is an arrangement, which can be interpreted as a whole (or in parts).
Heuristics for Recovery from Residual Ambiguity and Incongruity in the Semantic Interpretations of Texts

In this paper we present the heuristic algorithms at the core of a text meaning analyzer based on the ontological-semantic approach (e.g., Nirenburg and Raskin 2004). The full analyzer takes as input natural language texts and through many levels of analysis produces text meaning representations (TMRs) formulated in a specially developed ontology-based metalanguage that covers semantic as well as discourse and pragmatic information. We concentrate here on the process of deriving basic semantic " who-did-what-to-whom " dependency structure from a text. In presenting the material, we concentrate on the motivation for the introduction of specific algorithms (methods) and on their heuristic content.
A future radio-access framework

This paper discusses the requirements on future radio access and, based on the requirements, proposes a framework for such a system. The proposed system based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing supports very low latencies and data rates up to 100 Mb/s with wide area coverage and 1 Gb/s with local area coverage. Spectrum flexibility is identified as one main requirement for future systems, and the proposed framework can be deployed in a wide range of spectrum allocations with bandwidths ranging from 2.5 to 100 MHz. Multihop relaying, useful to extend the range for the high data rates, and multiple-antenna configurations are integral parts of the framework. A packet-centric approach is taken for the dataflow processing, implying that the scheduling mechanism and the retransmission protocol operate on complete packets rather than segments thereof, thus allowing for cross-layer optimization. Finally, numerical evaluations are provided, illustrating the feasibility of future very wideband radio access.
Fast Iris Boundary Location Based on Window Mapping Method

In recent years, iris recognition has become a hot research topic because it shows outstanding recognition accuracy. Iris boundary location is an essential part in iris recognition because it defines the effective image region used for feature extraction. A novel iris boundary location method based on window mapping is presented in this paper: First, it searches the pupil center by window mapping, and then locates the inter boundary of iris. Finally, a fast and precise refinement of the outer boundary of iris is carried out based on an improved Hough transform method. Compared with conventional methods, this novel method shows faster and robust properties in locating the iris boundaries.
To improve association rule mining using new technique: Multilevel relationship algorithm towards cooperative learning

Mining the Data is also known as Discovery of Knowledge in Databases. It is to get correlations, trends, patterns, anomalies from the databases which can help to build exact future decisions. No one can assure that the decision will lead to good quality results. It only helps experts to understand the data and show the way to good decisions. An objective is to make rules from given multiple sources of customer database transaction. It needs increasingly deepening knowledge mining process for finding refined knowledge from data. Earlier work is on mining association rules at one level. Though mining association rules at various levels is necessary. Finding of interesting association relationship among large amount of data will helpful to decision building, marketing, & business managing. For generating frequent item set we are using Apriori Algorithm in multiple levels so called Multilevel Relationship algorithm (MRA). MRA works in first two stages. In third stage of MRA uses Bayesian probability to find out the dependency & relationship among different shops, pattern of sales & generates the rule for learning. This paper gives detail idea about concepts of association mining, mathematical model development for Multilevel Relationship Algorithm (MRA) and Implementation & Result Analysis of MRA and performance comparison of MRA and Apriori algorithm.
Role of 5-HT3 Receptors in the Antidepressant Response

Serotonin (5-HT)3 receptors are the only ligand-gated ion channel of the 5-HT receptors family. They are present both in the peripheral and central nervous system and are localized in several areas involved in mood regulation (e.g., hippocampus or prefrontal cortex). Moreover, they are involved in regulation of neurotransmitter systems implicated in the pathophysiology of major depression (e.g., dopamine or GABA). Clinical and preclinical studies have suggested that 5-HT3 receptors may be a relevant target in the treatment of affective disorders. 5-HT3 receptor agonists seem to counteract the effects of antidepressants in non-clinical models, whereas 5-HT3 receptor antagonists, such as ondansetron, present antidepressant-like activities. In addition, several antidepressants, such as mirtazapine, also target 5-HT3 receptors. In this review, we will report major advances in the research of 5-HT3 receptor's roles in neuropsychiatric disorders, with special emphasis on mood and anxiety disorders.
A new adaptive broadcasting approach for mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have been gaining tremendous attention owing to the advances in wireless technologies accompanied by many applications and implementations. However, there are still a number of issues in MANETs which require further investigations and efficient solutions. Out of these issues, broadcasting in MANETs has been a major problem for both industry and the research community. The broadcast communication is usually required to disseminate a message to all the nodes of a network. This operation is highly required in MANETs to distribute necessary information and ensure efficient control and coordination over the network nodes. However, broadcasting in MANETs is usually susceptible to several challenging communication issues, including, flooding, packets contentions and collisions, i.e., these problems all together are called the Broadcast Storm Problem (BSP). Despite a number of suggested solutions for BSP, the probabilistic scheme is considered the most promising solution due to its simplicity and suitability for MANETs. Under the umbrella of this scheme, many dynamic probabilistic broadcasting algorithms have been proposed in the literature to solve the BSP. However, most of them are not suitable for many applications including those real life scenarios as there are many limitations such as the probability of rebroadcasting operation and thresholds rebroadcasting permission, which is caused by collecting local neighbourhoods' connectivity by broadcasting HELLO packets. In an attempt to enhance and promote the quality of the probabilistic scheme, this paper proposes a new probabilistic approach to overcome these limitations. Our proposed approach is augmented with a well-know ad hoc routing protocols including Ad hoc On demand Distance Victor protocol (AODV). We have conducted intensive simulation experiments under different operating condition. The simulation results show that our proposed approach outperforms its counterparts including the well known blind flooding, fixed probabilistic and traditional dynamic probabilistic approaches.
Customer Satisfaction with Alpine Ski Areas: The Moderating Effects of Personal, Situational, and Product Factors

In highly competitive markets, customer satisfaction is a key driver of performance, making its measurement and management crucial. Most studies on customer satisfaction take an aggregate standpoint and do not consider segment-specific differences in attribute importance. In this article, the authors report on customer satisfaction with alpine ski resorts. They hypothesize that personal, situational, and product factors moderate the relationship between attribute performance and overall satisfaction. The results show that these factors indeed influence the attribute—performance—satisfaction relationship. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.
Early-Life Exposure to Perfluoroalkyl Substances and Childhood Metabolic Function

Background: Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) are synthetic chemicals that may persist in the environment and in humans. There is a possible association between early-life PFAS exposure and metabolic dysfunction in later life, but data are limited. Methods: We studied 665 mother–child pairs in Project Viva, a Boston, Massachusetts-area cohort recruited 1999–2002. We quantified concentrations of PFASs [perfluorooctanoate (PFOA), perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorononanoate (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS), and perfluorodecanoate (PFDeA)] in maternal plasma collected at the first prenatal visit (median, 9.6 weeks gestation) and in child plasma from the mid-childhood research visit (median, 7.7 years). We assessed leptin, adiponectin, and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) in mid-childhood. We fit covariate-adjusted linear regression models and conducted stratified analyses by child sex. Results: Children with higher PFAS concentrations had lower HOMA-IR [e.g., –10.1% (95% CI: –17.3, –2.3) per interquartile range increment in PFOA]. This inverse association between child PFAS and HOMA-IR was more pronounced in females [e.g., PFOA: –15.6% (95% CI: –25.4, –4.6) vs. –6.1% (95% CI: –16.2, 5.2) for males]. Child PFAS plasma concentrations were not associated with leptin or adiponectin. Prenatal PFAS plasma concentrations were not associated with leptin, adiponectin, or HOMA-IR in offspring. Conclusions: We found no evidence for an adverse effect of early-life PFAS exposure on metabolic function in mid-childhood. In fact, children with higher PFAS concentrations had lower insulin resistance. Citation: Fleisch AF, Rifas-Shiman SL, Mora AM, Calafat AM, Ye X, Luttmann-Gibson H, Gillman MW, Oken E, Sagiv SK. 2017. Early-life exposure to perfluoroalkyl substances and childhood metabolic function. Environ Health Perspect 125:481–487; http://dx.doi. org/10.1289/EHP303
A speech enhancement algorithm using computational auditory scene analysis with spectral subtraction

Computational auditory scene analysis (CASA) system is well used in speech enhancement area in recent years. We propose a new system that combines CASA and spectral subtraction to get better enhanced speech. The CASA part consists of the latest method deep neural networks (DNNs). The original way to reconstruct the denoise signal is to use the estimated masks with direct overlap-add method ignoring the information of noise within the frames. In our system, we estimate self-adapted thresholds for each channel by Gaussian Mixture Model from the estimated ratio masks (ERMs) to separate noise and speech of each channel. In this way, we make full use of the information within frames. The results show increase in both objective and subjective evaluation.
Pedestrian Tracking Using Online Boosted Random Ferns Learning in Far-Infrared Imagery for Safe Driving at Night

Pedestrian-vehicle accidents that occur at night are a major social problem worldwide. Advanced driver assistance systems that are equipped with cameras have been designed to automatically prevent such accidents. Among the various types of cameras used in such systems, far-infrared (FIR) cameras are favorable because they are invariant to illumination changes. Therefore, this paper focuses on a pedestrian nighttime tracking system with an FIR camera that is able to discern thermal energy and is mounted on the forward roof part of a vehicle. Since the temperature difference between the pedestrian and background depends on the season and the weather, we therefore propose two models to detect pedestrians according to the season and the weather, which are determined using Weber-Fechner's law. For tracking pedestrians, we perform real-time online learning to track pedestrians using boosted random ferns and update the trackers at each frame. In particular, we link detection responses to trajectories based on similarities in position, size, and appearance. There is no standard data set for evaluating the tracking performance using an FIR camera; thus, we created the Keimyung University tracking data set (KMUTD) by combining the KMU sudden pedestrian crossing (SPC) data set [21] for summer nights with additional tracking data for winter nights. The KMUTD contains video sequences involving a moving camera, moving pedestrians, sudden shape deformations, unexpected motion changes, and partial or full occlusions between pedestrians at night. The proposed algorithm is successfully applied to various pedestrian video sequences of the KMUTD; specifically, the proposed algorithm yields more accurate tracking performance than other existing methods.
What Triggers Galaxy Transformations? The Environments of Poststarburst Galaxies

There are good observational reasons to believe that the progenitors of these red galaxies have undergone starbursts, followed by a poststarburst phase. Poststarburst ("K+A" or "E+A") galaxies appear in the SDSS visible spectroscopic data by showing an excess of A-star light but relatively little Hα emission. We investigate the environments of these galaxies by measuring (1) number densities in 8 h-1 Mpc radius comoving spheres, (2) transverse distances to nearest Virgo-like galaxy clusters, and (3) transverse distances to nearest luminous-galaxy neighbors. We compare the poststarburst galaxies to currently star-forming galaxies identified solely by A-star excess or Hα emission. We find that poststarburst galaxies are in the same kinds of environments as star-forming galaxies; this is our "null hypothesis. " More importantly, we find that at each value of the A-star excess, the star-forming and poststarburst galaxies lie in very similar distributions of environment. Other studies finding similar results have argued that galaxy transformations occur slowly (timescales >1 Gyr), but this is at odds with the evidence that red galaxies are formed via starbursts. The only deviations from our null hypothesis are barely significant: a slight deficit of poststarburst galaxies (relative to the star-forming population) in very low-density regions, a small excess inside the virial radii of clusters, and a slight excess with nearby neighbors. None of these effects is strong enough to make the poststarburst galaxies a high-density phenomenon, or to argue that the starburst events are primarily triggered by external tidal impulses from close passages. The small excess inside cluster virial radii suggests that some poststarbursts are triggered by interactions with the intracluster medium, but this represents a very small fraction of all poststarburst galaxies.
1-2008 Graph Cuts via l 1 Norm Minimization

Graph cuts have become an increasingly important tool for solving a number of energy minimization problems in computer vision and other fields. In this paper, the graph cut problem is reformulated as an unconstrained l1 norm minimization that can be solved effectively using interior point methods. This reformulation exposes connections between graph cuts and other related continuous optimization problems. Eventually, the problem is reduced to solving a sequence of sparse linear systems involving the Laplacian of the underlying graph. The proposed procedure exploits the structure of these linear systems in a manner that is easily amenable to parallel implementations. Experimental results obtained by applying the procedure to graphs derived from image processing problems are provided.
Deep echelle spectrophotometry of S 311, a Galactic H ii region located outside the solar circle

We present echelle spectrophotometry of the Galactic H II region S 311. The data have been taken with the Very Large Telescope Ultraviolet-Visual Echelle Spectrograph in the 3100‐ 10 400 A range. We have measured the intensities of 263 emission lines; 178 are permitted lines of H 0 ,D 0 (deuterium), He 0 ,C 0 ,C + ,N 0 ,N + ,O 0 ,O + ,S + ,S i 0 ,S i + ,A r 0 and Fe 0 ; some of them are produced by recombination and others mainly by fluorescence. Physical conditions have been derived using different continuum- and line-intensity ratios. We have derived He + , C ++ and O ++ ionic abundances from pure recombination lines as well as abundances from collisionally excited lines for a large number of ions of different elements. We have obtained consistent estimations of t 2 applying different methods. We have found that the temperature fluctuations paradigm is consistent with the T e(He I )v ersus T e(H I) relation for H II regions, in contrast with what has been found for planetary nebulae. We report the detection of deuterium Balmer lines up to Dδ in the blue wings of the hydrogen lines, whose excitation mechanism seems to be continuum fluorescence. Ke yw ords: ISM: abundances ‐ H II regions ‐ ISM: individual: S 311.