Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Supporting the design of multimodal interactions: a case study in a 3D sculpture application

This paper explores the idea of developing a hybrid user interface that was conceived from splitting a previous single desktop application for 3D volume sculpture into three different interactive environments (Wimp, Augmented Reality and Head-Mounted Immersive Virtual Reality). To achieve such goal we illustrated how the OpenInterface platform can facilitate the development process in order to allow several modalities for user interaction within and along the environments. Components for user interaction such as speech recognition and 3D commands were inserted into the multimodal platform as well as components for handle fusion of modalities.
Event-Related potentials related to anxiety in emotion-attention interaction

To identify neurological characteristics in accordance with anxiety under the interaction between emotion and attention, this study examines major ERP components when participants identify a target number by inhibiting task-irrelevant emotional face distractors. Experiments were conducted once per day at the same time for two days with 19 healthy adult men and women as required to study emotion-attention interaction. In this study, a variety of ERP components such as P100, N200, and P300 during experiment are significant. The amplitude and latency of the N200 component reflect both state and trait anxiety at all positions. This characteristic specially is prominently featured at Cz. Also, the latency of the late P300 component reflects the trait anxiety rather than state anxiety. The result of this study can help our understanding of the neurological responses related to anxiety during attentional control.
Film blowing of PHBV blends and PHBV-based multilayers for the production of biodegradable packages

The authors acknowledge the European Commission for the financial support of the ECOefficient BIOdegradable Composite Advanced Packaging project (EcoBioCAP) within the Seventh Framework Programme (Contract-No. FP7-265669). This work was also supported by FEDER funds through the program COMPETE (project PTDC/AGR-ALI/122741/2010), by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PEst-C/CTM/LA0025/2013 - Projecto Estrategico - LA 25 - 2013-2014 - Strategic Project - LA 25 - 2013-2014) and by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (ON.2) through project "Matepro - Optimizing Materials and Processes", with reference NORTE-07-0124-FEDER-000037 FEDER COMPETE.
Aphid fitness on 13 grass species: a test of plant defence theory

The growth rate hypothesis, which states that fast-growing plants support more herbivores than slow-growing plants, was tested with 12 native and 1 naturalized British grasses using the grain aphid ( Sitobion avenae). Five aphids were enclosed with grasses for two weeks in a growth chamber. After 2 weeks, fast-growing plants had 38 aphids, whilst slow-growing plants had 6, which supports the growth-rate hypothesis. When aphid numbers were analysed on plants according to "CSR" theory (Grime 1977, 1979), ruderals (R) had 54, competitors (C) had 18, and stress tolerators (S) had 6. This supports the predictions of CSR theory. Furthermore, aphid numbers increased significantly with grass growth rates and a mollusc palatability index, although this largely resulted from a single outlier, Poa annua. Aphid number was not affected by hairs on grasses. Finally, the effect of aphid feeding on grasses was tested. Generally, the greatest change in total and aboveground biomass of the grasses was found in the ruderals, whilst stress tolerators had the least amount of change.
Fast GPU Accelerated Stereo Correspondence

Many surveillance applications could benefit from the use of stereo cameras for depth perception. While state-of-the-art methods provide high quality scene depth information, many of the methods are very time consuming and not suitable for real-time usage in limited embedded systems. This study was conducted to examine stereo correlation methods to find a suitable algorithm for real-time or near real-time depth perception through disparity maps in a stereo video surveillance camera with an embedded GPU. Moreover, novel refinements and alternations was investigated to further improve performance and quality. Quality tests were conducted in Octave while GPU suitability and performance tests were done in C++ with the OpenGL ES 2.0 library. The result is a local stereo correlation method using Normalized Cross Correlation together with sparse support windows and a suggested improvement for pixel-wise matching confidence. Applying sparse support windows increased frame rate by 35% with minimal quality penalty as compared to using full support windows.
Security System for Connected End-point Devices in a Smart Grid with Commodity Hardware

Security has an important bearing on achieving successful commercial deployment of smart grids. In particular, availability is accorded the highest priority in smart grids. For end-point devices, such as smart meters or concentrators, this must be true since they must always be working. We present LiSTEE Recovery, an architecture for a fault-tolerant system enabling end-point devices to monitor the status of the operating system and to recover even if they stop working owing to unexpected behavior or cyber-attacks, including zeroday attacks. LiSTEE Recovery provides further functions to prevent illegitimate memory modification and to notify a headend system once a security incident occurs. We demonstrate a full implementation of LiSTEE Recovery on a TrustZonecapable ARM-based processor. Our experiment shows that the performance degradation is sufficiently small to be ignored. Furthermore, we observed that the cost of production and maintenance can be minimized. Keywords-Smart Grid, Smart Meter, Concentrator, Security, High Availability, TrustZone
Green synthesis of silver nanoparticles using Barringtonia acutangula (L.) Gaertn leaf extract as reducing agent and their antibacterial and antioxidant activity

The green synthesis of nanoparticles has been proposed as a cost effective and environmentally benevolent alternative to chemical and physical methods. In this work, a synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) has been established using leaf extract of Barringtonia acutangula (L.) Gaertn to reduce an aqueous AgNO3 solution. The obtained samples were characterized by various techniques including ultraviolet visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and laser particle size analyzer (LPSA). UV-vis spectra showed maximum absorption peak at 416 nm, which represents the characteristic surface plasmon resonance of the nanosilver. The structure of the particles was spherical and ellipsoidal as observed in TEM. FTIR analysis was carried out to probe the possible functional groups involved in the synthesis of AgNPs. The mean particle size calculated using LPSA was 60 nm. In addition, the synthesized AgNPs were tested for their antibacterial activity against two human pathogens including Escherchia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. The obtained AgNPs showed higher inhibitory activity on both bacterial species than the plant extract and the bare AgNO3 solution. Moreover, the extract and the synthesized AgNPs were evaluated for the antiradical scavenging activity by 1,1-diphenyl-2picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) assay.
Diving behavior of immature Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus)

Understanding the ontogenetic relationship between juvenile Steller sea lions (Eumetopias jubatus) and their foraging habitat is key to understanding their relationship to available prey and ultimately their survival. We summarize dive and movement data from 13 young-of-the-year (YOY) and 12 yearling Steller sea lions equipped with satellite dive recorders in the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands (n=18), and Washington (n=7) from 1994 to 2000. A total of 1413 d of transmission (x =56.5 d, range: 14.5–104.1 d) were received. We recorded 222,073 dives, which had a mean depth of 18.4 m (range of means: 5.8−67.9 m; SD=16.4). Alaska YOY dived for shorter periods and at shallower depths (mean depth=7.7 m, mean duration=0.8 min, mean maximum depth=25.7 m, and maximum depth=252 m) than Alaska yearlings (x =16.6 m, 0=1.1 min, x = 63.4 m, 288 m), whereas Washington yearlings dived the longest and deepest (mean depth=39.4 m, mean duration=1.8 min, mean maximum depth=144.5 m, and maximum depth=328 m). Mean distance for 564 measured trips was 16.6 km; for sea lions ≤10 months of age, trip distance (7.0 km) was significantly less than for those >10 months of age (24.6 km). Mean trip duration for 10 of the 25 sea lions was 12.1 h; for sea lions ≤10 months of age, trip duration was 7.5 h and 18.1 h for those >10 months of age. We identified three movements types: long-range trips (>15 km and >20 h), short-range trips (<15 km and <20 h) during which the animals left and returned to the same site, and transits to other haul-out sites. Long-range trips started around 9 months of age and occurred most frequently around the assumed time of weaning, whereas short-range trips happened almost daily (0.9 trips/day, n=426 trips). Transits began as early as 7 months of age, occurred more often after 9 months of age, and ranged between 6.5 and 454 km. The change in dive characteristics coincided with the assumed onset of weaning. These yearling sea lion movement patterns and dive characteristics suggest that immature Steller sea lions are as capable of making the same types of movements as adults.
Effect of organic acids and probiotics on Salmonella enteritidis infection in broiler chickens

1 Abstract: The effect of an organic acid mixture (OA) and a Lactobacillus-based probiotic culture on Salmonella enteritidis (SE) infection in broiler chicks was evaluated. In exp. 1, chicks were challenged by oral gavage with SE, held in chick boxes for 2 h and randomly assigned to either untreated control or continuous OA treatment in the drinking water. Crop and cecal tonsils were cultured at 48 h and 5 d post-challenge for recovery of SE. Recovery of SE in the crop and cecal tonsils at 48 h was significantly (p<0.05) lower in the OA treated group as compared to control chickens but not different at 5d. In exps.2 and 3, chicks were SE challenged, held in chick boxes for 2 h and randomly assigned to either untreated control, probiotic, OA, or probiotic+OA. After 24 or 48 h, crop and cecal tonsils were cultured for the presence or absence of SE. After 24 h, probiotic or probiotic+OA significantly reduced SE recovery from the crop as compared to controls. All treatments reduced SE recovery from the cecal tonsils at 24 h. While no significant differences were observed in SE recovery from crop at 48 h, SE recovery from probiotic and or probiotic+OA groups was significantly lower than the controls in the cecal tonsils. These data suggest that combination treatment with the selected OA and Lactobacillus-based probiotic culture is more effective than individual treatment for Salmonella reduction in chicks.
How will SOA change in the future?

Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) plays a significant role in the Earth system by altering its radiative balance. Here we use an Earth system model coupled with an explicit SOA formation module to estimate the response of SOA concentrations to changes in climate, anthropogenic emissions, and human land use in the future. We find that climate change is the major driver for SOA change under the representative concentration pathways for the 8.5 future scenario. Climate change increases isoprene emission rate by 18% with the effect of temperature increases outweighing that of the CO2 inhibition effect. Annual mean global SOA mass is increased by 25% as a result of climate change. However, anthropogenic emissions and land use change decrease SOA. The net effect is that future global SOA burden in 2100 is nearly the same as that of the present day. The SOA concentrations over the Northern Hemisphere are predicted to decline in the future due to the control of sulfur emissions.
Improving navigability on the Kromme River Estuary: A choice experiment application

Navigation of estuaries is a vitally important aspect of boating recreation in South Africa and elsewhere. This paper uses a choice experiment to estimate recreation values of the Kromme River Estuary, a popular estuary along South Africa’s east coast. This valuation methodology allows for the identification of preferred management strategies through the trade-offs made by estuarine recreational users. It is found that the level of navigability is the most important predictor of user choice, and argued that more attention needs to be paid to options for improving navigability and methods to fund these interventions. It is concluded that an increase in licence fee of ZAR402 would improve recreational value. Keywords : estuary, recreational attributes, navigability, choice experiment, willingness-to-pay, conditional logit model, random parameters logit model
Government Expenditure and Economic Growth in Iran

This paper examines causal relationships between Government Recurrent Expenditure (GRE) and GDP for Iran using annual data over the period 1970-2010. The Gregory-Hansen (1996) cointegration technique, allowing for the presence of potential structural breaks in data, is applied to empirically examine the long-run co-movement between these variables. The results suggest that there is a long-run relationship between these variables. The Granger Causality test indicates strong unidirectional effects from GDP to GRE. But there is no evidence that TRE promotes long-term economic growth. Moreover, the main results in this paper confirm that there is an instantaneous as well as unidirectional causal link running from GDP to GRE. Based on the results, the policy makers should ensure that recurrent expenditures are properly managed to accelerate economic growth. Moreover, government should promote efficiency in the allocation of resources by encouraging more private sector participation to ensure productivity-intensive growth.
Changes in Interleukin-6 and Highly Sensitive C-Reactive Protein in Patients who Underwent Redo Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting

Background: Determination of biomarkers can assess cardiac injury induced by cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) during coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Open heart surgery initiates inflammatory reaction. Aim of this study was to compare the inflammatory response in patients undergoing first- and CABG-reoperation. Methods: Fifty-four patients (16% female, 84% male; 60.5 ± 6.5 vs. 66.2 ± 7.3 years) scheduled for elective cardiac surgery were divided into: Group 1, CABG primo-operation, and Group 2, CABG re-operation (redo CABG). The extent of inflammation was estimated by measuring interleukin (IL)-6 and highly sensitive C-reactive protein (hs- CRP) in plasma. Blood samples were collected: 24 hours prior, 6, and 24 hours after initiation of CPB. Demographic data, preoperative risk assessment Euro-score, laboratory values and clinical outcomes: atrial fibrillation rate, tracheal intubation time, revisions, blood loss, length of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and hospital stay were analyzed. Results: Baseline levels of IL-6 (p < 0.001) were significantly higher in re-operated patients. IL-6 increased significantly 6 hours after initiation of CPB in both groups (p < 0.0001). Day after surgery IL-6 (p = 0.472) and hs- CRP (p = 0.248) levels were similar in both groups. Although hs-CRP was higher in Group 1 (90.45 ± 46.67 vs. 72.91 ± 57.31 mg/L) this had no statistical significance. Clinical outcomes have been in positive correlations with inflammation, but statistically insignificant in both groups. Conclusion: Monitoring of IL-6 and hs-CRP during redo CABG has shown that CPB cause inflammatory reaction but repeated use does not cause extensive reaction potentially harmful for myocardium.
Advances in Radar Remote Sensing of Agricultural Crops: A Review

There are enormous advantages of a review article in the field of emerging technology like radar remote sensing applications in agriculture. This paper aims to report select recent advancements in the field of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) remote sensing of crops. In order to make the paper comprehensive and more meaningful for the readers, an attempt has also been made to include discussion on various technologies of SAR sensors used for remote sensing of agricultural crops viz. basic SAR sensor, SAR interferometry (InSAR), SAR polarimetry (PolSAR) and polarimetric interferometry SAR (PolInSAR). The paper covers all the methodologies used for various agricultural applications like empirically based models, machine learning based models and radiative transfer theorem based models. A thorough literature review of more than 100 research papers indicates that SAR polarimetry can be used effectively for crop inventory and biophysical parameters estimation such are leaf area index, plant water content, and biomass but shown less sensitivity towards plant height as compared to SAR interferometry. Polarimetric SAR Interferometry is preferable for taking advantage of both SAR polarimetry and SAR interferometry. Numerous studies based upon multi-parametric SAR indicate that optimum selection of SAR sensor parameters enhances SAR sensitivity as a whole for various agricultural applications. It has been observed that researchers are widely using three models such are empirical, machine learning and radiative transfer theorem based models. Machine learning based models are identified as a better approach for crop monitoring using radar remote sensing data. It is expected that the review article will not only generate interest amongst the readers to explore and exploit radar remote sensing for various agricultural applications but also provide a ready reference to the researchers working in this field.
Side effects of collisions: Spin Rate Changes, Tumbling Rotation States, and Binary Asteroids

Energetic collisions in the asteroid belt produce several observable effects, altering their size distribution and rotational properties. Moreover, interesting objects or systems may be created: dynamical families, or binaries, and asteroids in unusual rotation states (fast rotators or tumbling bodies). While the evolution of the size distribution and properties of families as well as binaries are discussed in separate chapters, the other relevant effects of collisions will be dealt with here. During collisions, both the projectile and the target bring their own spin and orbital angular momenta to the system. In the collision the fragments may acquire a “breakup spin” connected to the breakup process. The “breakup spin” is related to the ejection velocity and size of the fragment; fast and small ejecta can achieve rapid spin rates. Usually, freshly created fragments leaving a collisional site do not spin around their axis of maximum momentum of inertia; thus, tumbling (observed also in laboratory experiments) is “natural. ” The presence of dissipative processes damps the wobbling, with a timescale that is usually short compared to the age of the solar system. Observations of main-belt asteroids suggest a lower limit of ~2 h to their spin periods. Very fast rotators, which must be monolithic bodies held together by internal strength, are present only among the smallest observed asteroids (all of which are NEAs, owing to obvious selection effects). Several asteroids have very long rotational periods, which remains puzzling. Theoretical arguments give preliminary and qualitative explanations for the observed properties. Asteroidal binary systems are an expected outcome from catastrophic collisions, through the effect of the mutual gravitational interaction or as a consequence of later bursting fission.
IFTE 2017 III International Forum on Teacher Education EDUCATIONAL GAME AS A TECHNOLOGY OF PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY MODELLING

The current stage of education development is characterized by the formation of new terms of training and its quality requirements. Effectiveness and impact on professional education is associated with the level of training in practice. Therefore, education is focused on the development of activity, initiative and independence of the student’s individuality. Educational game allows students to be included in practical implementation through the professional activity modelling. Game training gives an opportunity to demonstrate personal individuality and personal resources in the context of professional development. The problem of this study aims to determine the characteristics of educational game’s impact on the assimilation of educational material that is required for professional activity modelling. The aim of this study was experimental testing of the educational game technology in the modelling of students’ professional activity. The results of this study showed the effectiveness of using educational games in professional activity modelling and professional pedagogical realization of students. Qualitative analysis of the obtained data allowed to assert that students formed a positive attitude towards their future profession and commitment to the practical application of pedagogical skills. Consequently, the learning technology in the process of games’ activity is given as an integrated method of professional activity modelling of modern pedagogical specialists and personality's professional development. © 2017 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy. org.UK
Tectonic and environmental controls on Palaeozoic fluvial environments: reassessing the impacts of early land plants on sedimentation

The apparent increase in occurrence of meandering fluvial channel systems in the Middle Palaeozoic has long been related to the effects of land-plant colonization. However, evidence for meandering channels in non-vegetated settings is shown by pre-vegetation successions on Earth, from the prevalence of meandering channels on Mars, from physical modelling of meandering channels, and from non-vegetated channels in modern desert basins. In addition, early land plants had small dimensions, were limited in their occurrence, and were dependent on environmental factors. Here, we question the capacity of early land plants to impose the major impacts suggested by current models. We propose that the sudden widespread occurrence on Earth of fluvial deposits indicative of the accumulation of meandering river systems in the Middle Palaeozoic was primarily an effect of environmental and tectonic conditions that prevailed during this period. These conditions induced a worldwide increase in the proportion of meandering rivers, which in turn helped favour the appropriate environment for land-plant colonization of the continents. We propose that land plants opportunistically took advantage of an appropriate global environment, which enabled them to thrive in continental environments. Fluvial environments characterized by single-channel systems and stable floodplains facilitated the greening of the land.