Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immersive Virtual Environment Technology to Supplement Environmental Perception, Preference and Behavior Research: A Review with Applications

Immersive virtual environment (IVE) technology offers a wide range of potential benefits to research focused on understanding how individuals perceive and respond to built and natural environments. In an effort to broaden awareness and use of IVE technology in perception, preference and behavior research, this review paper describes how IVE technology can be used to complement more traditional methods commonly applied in public health research. The paper also describes a relatively simple workflow for creating and displaying 360° virtual environments of built and natural settings and presents two freely-available and customizable applications that scientists from a variety of disciplines, including public health, can use to advance their research into human preferences, perceptions and behaviors related to built and natural settings.
Cooperative ground target tracking with input constraints

This paper considers the problem of cooperative target tracking with multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) subject to input constraints. Cooperation of multiple UAVs to track a moving target can provide better performance and enhance the robustness. However, the physical constraints of the UAVs pose a significant challenge on the UAV controller design. In this paper, the relative course rate controller for a single UAV is firstly developed based on a guidance vector field. Cooperative control strategy of multiple UAVs is studied and a variable airspeed controller is proposed to regulate temporal separation of UAVs. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
An Efficient Neural Network for Recognizing Gestural Hindi Digits

Handwritten Hindi digit recognition plays an import ant role in eastern Arab countries especially in th e courtesy amounts of Arab bank checks, recognizing numbers in car plates, or in postal code for mail so rting. In our study, we proposed an efficient Hindi Digit Recognition System drawn by the mouse and developed using Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP) with backpropagation. The system has been designed, implemented and tested successfully. Analysis has b een carried out to determine the number of hidden n odes that achieves high performance. The proposed system has been trained on samples of 800 images and tested on samples of 300 images written by different users se lected from different ages. An experimental result shows high accuracy of about 91% on the testing samples and very close to 100% on the training samples. Experiments showed that our result is high in comparison with o ther Hindi digit recognition systems especially if we consider the way of writing (mouse and children) in our trai ned and tested results.
Password Authentication and Key Exchange Protocol

In this short paper we introduce a bivariate symmetric polynomial-based password authentication and key establishment (exchange). We use the advantage of that such polynomial of degree t is secure for up to t+1 and provably secure for the 2-parties communication. Also, we consider the advantage of the computational feasibility of polynomial evaluation over a field F which is heavily used in our protocol.
Empathy Objects: Robotic Devices as Conversation Companions

We present the notion of Empathy Objects, ambient robotic devices accompanying human-human interaction. Empathy Objects respond to human behavior using physical gestures as nonverbal expressions of their "emotional states". The goal is to increase people's self-awareness to the emotional state of others, leading to behavior change. We demonstrate an Empathy Object prototype, Kip1, a conversation companion designed to promote non-aggressive conversation between people.
An optimized un-compressed video watermarking scheme based on SVD and DWT

In this paper, we presents a novel fast and robust video watermarking scheme for RGB uncompressed AVI video sequence in discrete wavelet transform (DWT) domain using singular value decomposition (SVD). For embedding scene change detection is performed. The singular values of a binary watermark are embedded within the singular values of the LL3 sub-band coefficients of the video frames. The resultant signed video exhibits good quality. To test the robustness of the proposed algorithm six different video processing operations are performed. The high computed PSNR values indicate that the visual quality of the signed and attacked video is good. The low bit error rate and high normalized cross correlation values indicate a high correlation between the extracted and embedded watermark. Time complexity analysis shows that the proposed scheme is suitable for real time application. It is concluded that the embedding and extraction of the proposed algorithm are well optimized. The algorithm is robust and shows an improvement over other similar reported methods.
Motives and Corresponding Behaviors in Reading Electronic Word of Mouth

With the growth of eWOM, researchers pay much attention to eWOM-related issues. In these studies, eWOM is viewed as a source of information or knowledge, and much attention is paid to eWOM creation and its types. Besides eWOM itself, users’ motives and corresponding behaviors are also potential issues in eWOM-related study. However, topics of users’ motives and corresponding behaviors, especially eWOM receivers’ motives and corresponding behaviors, have been ignored for a long time. In the present study, we try to interview several consumers to explore their original motives and corresponding behaviors of reading eWOM.
Content Immutable Storage : Truly Trustworthy and Cost-Effective Storage for Electronic Records

LIMITED DISTRIBUTION NOTICE: This report has been submitted for publication outside of IBM and will probably be copyrighted if accepted for publication. It has been issued as a Research Report for early dissemination of its contents. In view of the transfer of copyright to the outside publisher, its distribution outside of IBM prior to publication should be limited to peer communications and specific requests. After outside publication, requests should be filled only by reprints or legally obtained copies of the article (e.g. , payment of royalties). Copies may be requested from IBM T. J. Executive Summary Maintaining trustworthy records is essential for an organization to function effectively. In this white paper, we analyze what is required of the storage system to affordably enable trustworthy electronic record keeping. We note that the traditional approach of storing electronic records on WORM optical storage is no longer practical given the large and growing volume of records that have to be stored and managed today. Furthermore, the products that have recently been introduced to overcome the deficiencies of WORM optical storage fail to offer adequate protection against record tampering. Therefore, in this paper we introduce the concept of Content Immutable Storage (CIS), storage designed specifically to satisfy all of today's electronic record-keeping needs. CIS provides secure data immutability to robustly protect records from any modification, online or nearline accessibility to ensure that records can be stored and retrieved in a timely fashion, and a low total cost of ownership.
Direct Regulation of Striated Muscle Myosins by Nitric Oxide and Endogenous Nitrosothiols

Background Nitric oxide (NO) has long been recognized to affect muscle contraction [1], both through activation of guanylyl cyclase and through modification of cysteines in proteins to yield S-nitrosothiols. While NO affects the contractile apparatus directly, the identities of the target myofibrillar proteins remain unknown. Here we report that nitrogen oxides directly regulate striated muscle myosins. Principal Findings Exposure of skeletal and cardiac myosins to physiological concentrations of nitrogen oxides, including the endogenous nitrosothiol S-nitroso-L-cysteine, reduced the velocity of actin filaments over myosin in a dose-dependent and oxygen-dependent manner, caused a doubling of force as measured in a laser trap transducer, and caused S-nitrosylation of cysteines in the myosin heavy chain. These biomechanical effects were not observed in response to S-nitroso-D-cysteine, demonstrating specificity for the naturally occurring isomer. Both myosin heavy chain isoforms in rats and cardiac myosin heavy chain from human were S-nitrosylated in vivo. Significance These data show that nitrosylation signaling acts as a molecular “gear shift” for myosin—an altogether novel mechanism by which striated muscle and cellular biomechanics may be regulated.
A Model for Global Software Development with Cloud Platforms

Cloud Computing (CC) is a technological phenomenon that is becoming more and more important. Also Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can increase their competitiveness by taking advantage of CC. This new computing approach promises to provide many advantages, and many SMEs are encouraged to use it. However, CC is still in its early stage - for this reason we think that it is very important to study and assess its impact on SMEs' management processes. In this paper we propose a model for studying how Global Software Development can be facilitated using Cloud development environments, compared to a more traditional development environment. We use system dynamics to model and simulate how effective Cloud-based software development environments are for Global Software Development performed by a SMEs. Both studied environments assume a development process based on Scrum agile methodology. The proposed model could be used as a tool by the project managers to understand how Cloud Development Environments might facilitate Global Software Development.
Knowledge Discovery from Dynamically Evolving User Profiles

users play important role in all organizations. The users are software engineers, data entry or other kind. However having know how about the users is very useful as it helps in predicting their actions and finding whether they are compatible with their job profile, assisting them to do their job in better way and also detect adversaries or masqueraders. In this paper it analyzes computer user behavior based on the commands that they execute as part of their job profile. The commands are compared with sequence of commands associated with their profile in order to generate user behavior profiles. The profiles are evolved over a period of time and they are dynamic as the users get different positions in company and get associated with various job roles. For this reason the user behavior profiles are continually updated on order to ensure that they reflect the true knowledge of the behavior of users with respect to their job roles. It built a prototype application to demonstrate the efficiency of this approach. The empirical results revealed that this approach is useful in helping users and also monitoring their behavior in work environment and take necessary actions.
Finding Maximally Satisfiable Terminologies for the Description Logic ALC

For ontologies represented as Description Logic Tboxes, optimised DL reasoners are able to detect logical errors, but there is comparatively limited support for resolving such problems. One possible remedy is to weaken the available information to the extent that the errors disappear, but to limit the weakening process as much as possible. The most obvious way to do so is to remove just enough Tbox sentences to eliminate the errors. In this paper we propose a tableau-like procedure for finding maximally concept-satisfiable terminologies represented in the description logic ALC. We discuss some optimisation techniques, and report on preliminary, but encouraging, experimental results.
Stress for dehazing

Today, there are typically two main approaches for dehazing, that is, enhancing images taken in hazy or foggy conditions. The first method is based on general image enhancement techniques where algorithms such as histogram equalization or Retinex are often used. The second one, uses an image restoration approach through the building of a haze physical model. In this paper, we make the dehazing task with a new image enhancement framework named STRESS (Kol°as et al., JIST, 55(4), 2011) which has some specificities similar to the Retinex algorithm and we compare it with some of state-of-the-art dehazing algorithms. According to the experiment the approximation for certain images given by the haze physical model was not the most accurate one and STRESS model turned out to be better than almost any state-of-the-art algorithms in term of the quality of the images output, especially as far as homogeneous (dense) haze was taken into consideration.
Nonmuscle Tissues Contribution to Cancer Cachexia

Cachexia is a syndrome associated with cancer, characterized by body weight loss, muscle and adipose tissue wasting, and inflammation, being often associated with anorexia. In spite of the fact that muscle tissue represents more than 40% of body weight and seems to be the main tissue involved in the wasting that occurs during cachexia, recent developments suggest that tissues/organs such as adipose (both brown and white), brain, liver, gut, and heart are directly involved in the cachectic process and may be responsible for muscle wasting. This suggests that cachexia is indeed a multiorgan syndrome. Bearing all this in mind, the aim of the present review is to examine the impact of nonmuscle tissues in cancer cachexia.
Prospective trial of intense pulsed light for the treatment of meibomian gland dysfunction.

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of intense pulsed light (IPL) applied to the periocular area for meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) in a prospective, double-masked, placebo-controlled, paired-eye study. METHODS Twenty-eight participants underwent IPL treatment, with homogeneously sequenced light pulses delivered to one eye and placebo treatment to the partner control eye at 1, 15, and 45 days following baseline (BL) evaluation. Lipid layer grade (LLG), noninvasive tear break-up time (NIBUT), tear evaporation rate (TER), tear meniscus height (TMH), and subjective symptom score using visual analogue scales (VAS) were compared with BL and control values at each visit. RESULTS Lipid layer grade improved significantly from BL to Day (D) 45 in the treated eye (P < 0.001), but not the control eye (P = 0.714), with 82% of treated eyes improving by at least one LLG. Noninvasive tear break-up time also improved significantly from BL to D45 in the treated (P < 0.001) but not in the control eye (P = 0.056) and was significantly longer than in the treated eye at D45 (14.1 ± 9.8 seconds versus 8.6 ± 8.2 seconds, P < 0.001). The tear evaporation rate was not different in the treated eye compared with the control eye at any visit. Tear meniscus height did not change from BL in either eye (P > 0.05). Visual analog scale symptom scores improved from BL in the treated (P = 0.015), but not the control eye (P = 0.245), with 86% of participants noting reduced symptoms in the treated eye by D45. CONCLUSIONS Intense pulsed light with multiple sculpted pulses shows therapeutic potential for MGD, improving tear film quality and reducing symptoms of dry eye. ( https://www.anzctr.org.au number, ACTRN12614000162617.).
Performance evaluation of routing algorithms for distributed key-value store based on order preserving linear hashing and Skip graph

In this paper, routing algorithms for the distributed key-value store based on order preserving linear hashing and Skip Graph are evaluated. In this system, data are divided by linear hashing and Skip Graph is used for overlay network. The routing table of this system is very uniform. Then, short detours can exist in the route of forwarding. In this paper, by comparison with an exact shortest route, it proved that the routing algorithm using detour is effective.
Classical Cepheid pulsation models - XI. Effects of convection and chemical composition on the period-luminosity and period-Wesenheit relations

In spite of the relevance of classical Cepheids as primary distance indicators, a general consensus on the dependence of the period-luminosity ( PL ) relation on the Cepheid chemical composition has not yet been achieved. From the theoretical point of view, our previous investigations were able to reproduce some empirical tests for suitable assumptions on the helium-to-metal relative enrichment, but these results relied on specific assumptions concerning the mass-luminosity relation and the efficiency of the convective transfer in the pulsating envelopes. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the assumed value of the mixing-length parameter $l/H_{\rm p}$ on the pulsation properties and we release the assumption of a fixed mass-luminosity relation. To this purpose, new nonlinear convective fundamental pulsation models have been computed for various chemical compositions ($Z=0.004$, 0.008, 0.01 and 0.02) and adopting $l/H_{\rm p}=1.7{-}1.8$, which is larger than that (1.5) used in our previous papers. From the extended model set, synthetic PL relations in the various photometric bands are derived using the predicted instability strip together with recent evolutionary tracks. We show that as the $l/H_{\rm p}$ value increases the pulsation region gets narrower, mostly due to the blueward shift of the red edge for fundamental pulsation, with the effect becoming stronger at the higher metal contents ($Z\ge 0.01$). However, the comparison of the new models with previously computed models shows that the $l/H_{\rm p}$ variation has no consequence on the predicted period-Wesenheit ( PW ) relations, which instead are influenced by the pulsator metal content. On this basis, we present a straightforward way to infer the distance and metal content of variables with observed BVI or BVK magnitudes. As for the PL relations, we show that either the zero-point and the slope are very slightly modified by the $l/H_{\rm p}$ variation, at constant chemical composition. We also confirm that: (1) moving from visual to longer wavelengths, the predicted period-magnitude distribution for a given metal content becomes narrower and its slope becomes steeper; (2) decreasing the metal content, the PL relations become steeper and brighter, with the amount of this metallicity effect decreasing from optical to near-infrared bands. Overall, we show that our pulsation relations appear fully consistent with the observed properties of Galactic and Magellanic Cloud Cepheids, supporting the predicted steepening and brightening of the PL relations when moving from metal-rich to metal-poor variables. Moreover, we show that the distances inferred by the predicted PW relations agree with recently measured trigonometric parallaxes, whereas they suggest a correction to the values based on the Infrared Surface Brightness technique, as already found from an independent method. Finally, also the pulsation metal contents suggested by the predicted PW relations appear in statistical agreement with spectroscopic [Fe/H] measurements.
EKF-based SLAM fusing heterogeneous landmarks

Visual SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping from Vision) concerns both the spatial and temporal fusion of sensory data in a map when moving a camera in an unknown environment. This paper concerns the construction of landmarks-based stochastic map, using Extended Kalman Filtering in order to fuse new observations in the map, when considering heterogeneous landmarks. It is evaluated how this combination allows to improve the accuracy both on the map and on the camera localization, depending on the parametrization selected for points and straight lines. It is analyzed using a simulated environment, so knowing perfectly the ground truth, what are the better landmark representations. Experiments on image sequences acquired from a camera mounted on a mobile robot, were already presented: it is detailed here a new front end where segment matching has been improved.
Mode Water Variability in a Model of the Subtropical Gyre: Response to Anomalous Forcing

Abstract The response of mode water formation to typical atmospheric forcing anomalies is studied as a possible mechanism for generating the observed interannual to decadal variability in mode water. An isopycnal model of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre, coupled to a mixed layer model, is used for this purpose. Geometry and forcing are idealized. The control run shows that mode water is a well-ventilated water mass. Formation rates up to 200 m yr−1 are found at the outcrop of the mode water layer. In a series of experiments the sensitivity to the position of the anomalous forcing and to the timescale of the forcing is examined. The anomalous forcing has a dipole pattern that mimics the spatial structure of the North Atlantic oscillation. Anomalous cooling induces a positive thickness anomaly in the mode water layer at the center of the gyre and a negative anomaly at the eastern side of the gyre. The response to anomalous heat flux forcing appears to be sensitive to the position of the forcing anomaly .
Harnessing the Therapeutic Potential of Capsaicin and Its Analogues in Pain and Other Diseases

Capsaicin is the most predominant and naturally occurring alkamide found in Capsicum fruits. Since its discovery in the 19th century, the therapeutic roles of capsaicin have been well characterized. The potential applications of capsaicin range from food flavorings to therapeutics. Indeed, capsaicin and few of its analogues have featured in clinical research covered by more than a thousand patents. Previous records suggest pleiotropic pharmacological activities of capsaicin such as an analgesic, anti-obesity, anti-pruritic, anti-inflammatory, anti-apoptotic, anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, and neuro-protective functions. Moreover, emerging data indicate its clinical significance in treating vascular-related diseases, metabolic syndrome, and gastro-protective effects. The dearth of potent drugs for management of such disorders necessitates the urge for further research into the pharmacological aspects of capsaicin. This review summarizes the historical background, source, structure and analogues of capsaicin, and capsaicin-triggered TRPV1 signaling and desensitization processes. In particular, we will focus on the therapeutic roles of capsaicin and its analogues in both normal and pathophysiological conditions.
Distributed STBC for single carrier relay-assisted transmissions over frequency-selective channels

In this paper, we design and analyse a distributed time-reversal space-time block code (D-TR-STBC) that can achieve significant power gain and optimum diversity order in a relay-assisted transmission for single-carrier frequency-selective channels. The idea behind distributed space-time block coding (D-STBC) is to have the relays cooperate in such a way that the signal at the destination is a space-time code, so as to obtain full diversity. In contrast to the literature, we show that the orthogonality of D-TR-STBC can be preserved at the destination by including the signals received via the direct link (from the source to the destination) at the first half of the signalling interval along with the space-time block coded signal received at the second half of the signalling interval. The pairwise error probability (PEP) derivation shows that the proposed scheme achieves the optimum diversity order. Moreover, the symbol error rate (SER) performance of the proposed scheme and competing scheme using different equalization techniques and signal to noise ratios (SNRs) in the source to relay link shows that the proposed protocol outperforms the other by an SNR margin of 2-5 dB.