Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality assessment of marketed eggs in Eastern Algeria

The objective of this study was to compare eggs quality between industrial and local chickens in four departments of Eastern Algeria (Bejaia, Jijel, Mila and Setif). A total of 4748 eggs were bought from three marketing channels as following : shops (1184), public markets (2757) and supermarkets (807). The percentage of stained eggs was significantly different (P 0.001) between industrial (15.25%) and local eggs (27.61%). A significant difference (P 0.05) was observed between industrial and (.)
A 3 D Interface to Explore and Manipulate multi-scale Virtual Scenes using the Leap Motion Controller

Gesture-based interaction models can be efficient and simpler to understand if designed to correspond to common user interactions with the physical world. This paper presents a 3D interface and its implementation to quickly perform navigation and manipulation tasks in multi-scale and multi-resolution 3D scenes using a low-cost consumer sensor: the Leap Motion controller. The developed system has the goal of exploring the potential of accurate hands and fingers tracking alongside mid-air 3D gestures, to investigate specific design advantages and issues they present in such complex environments.
Transcriptional Regulation by the Spalt Proteins: Filling Up the Gaps

Copyright: © 2017 de Celis JF, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Differential gene expression is the most versatile and employed mechanism to generate cell diversity during development [1]. There are many macromolecular complexes that impinge on transcription, including the general transcription machinery [2], chromatin modifying enzymes driving histone acetylation, methylation or phosphorylation [3], nucleosome remodelers [4] and sequence-specific Transcription Factors (TF; [5,6]. These last proteins provide specificity to the regulation of gene expression by binding to 6-10 bp DNA sequences present in the regulatory regions of their target genes, where they recruit other transcriptional activators or repressors [7]. There are many instances during development where TFs function in complex networks in which each TF is part of a combinatorial code regulating the expression of one or very few downstream genes present in a Gene Regulatory Networks, GRN) [8]. Perhaps the most paradigmatic example occurs during Drosophila embryonic segmentation, where a hierarchy of TFs generates progressively smaller and periodic domains of gene expression [9]. In segmentation, as in many other examples, TFs arranged in GRN contribute to generate ordered spatio-temporal transcriptional heterogeneities in a developing tissue [10]. The components, structure and regulatory logic of such networks can be dissected through the use of Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and genome-wide gene expression assays combined with genetic analyses and a variety of reporter expression experiments [9].
Design of a simple device for accurate measurement of human blood viscosity in oxygenated and deoxygenated conditions

Our client, Dr. George Lykotrafitis of the Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering Departments at the University of Connecticut, requested the design of a simple, portable, inexpensive device to measure whole blood viscosity (WBV) under oxygenated and deoxygenated conditions. WBV is affected by diseases such as sickle cell disease (SCD) and cardiovascular disease, conditions that can lead to serious or life­threatening conditions and largely affect individuals in areas with little access to healthcare [2][3][4][5]. While WBV is recognized as a point­of­care measurement for conditions such as SCD and cardiovascular disease, the use of conventional rheometers in areas without healthcare facilities is not practical as testing methods are expensive, time consuming, require large blood samples, and/or are not usable outside of a laboratory setting [5][6]. Here, a microfluidic rheometer is proposed for the measurement of WBV. The device employs capillary pressure to drive the flow of a reference fluid of known viscosity and a blood sample through a microfluidic array. The WBV of the blood sample is calculated using the known channel dimensions, capillary pressure, reference fluid viscosity, and sample fluid velocity. The microfluidic device will be fabricated using a wet chemical etching method and has a projected cost of approximately $1.40 per device if produced on a commercial scale. The proposed device is novel in that it requires a small blood sample, is portable, does not require power, and allows for measurement of WBV over a range of shear rates that are clinically meaningful. It overcomes the obstacles that limit the operation of currently available viscometers outside of a laboratory setting and meets the client specified objectives of portability, simplicity, and cost.
Dynamic portfolios interdependencies: new evidence from the Athens Stock Exchange

This paper examines volatility and error interdependence for portfolios that we created and based on the classification of Timeliness of Earnings regression on stock price returns. Data comprises 124 Greek companies from ASE (Athens Stock Exchange). This classification contains three portfolios of equities, the 18 highest, 36 middle and 70 smallest stocks, according to the R-squared values. We also compare the interdependence of the above portfolios with three original portfolio indices made by ASE authorities. We use two econometric approaches; a martingale one for the return equation and a nested one for the variance equation of the GARCH-BEKK model. We find that portfolios made by Timeliness of Earnings metric (created) are more ‘error spillover’ oriented with the martingale approach and more ‘volatility spillover’ oriented with the nested approach. In addition, the original portfolio indices give similar results with the two econometric approaches, however small differences do exist. In particular, we find that the original portfolios of equities are more ‘volatility oriented’ with the martingale approach. Thus, diversifying and focussing on Timeliness of Earnings portfolios, investors can make profits, if they follow an effective and alternative strategy with economic and financial potentiality for them. Finally, in ASE for different portfolios and methodologies both volatility and noise play substantial role in the process of integration and influence the decision of investors.
A Novel Musculoskeletal Imbalance Identification Mechanism for Lower Body Analyzing Gait Cycle by Motion Tracking

Muscles in a human body consists of a pair. Musculoskeletal imbalances caused by repetitive usage of one part of the muscle in this pair and incorrect posture a human body takes on regular basis lead to severe injuries in terms of neuro musculoskeletal problems, hamstring strains, lower back tightness, repetitive stress injuries, altered movement patterns, postural dysfunctions, trapped nerves and etc. and both neurological and physical performances are severely affected when time progresses. In clinical domain, muscle imbalances are determined by gait and posture analysis, Movement analysis, Joint range of motion analysis and muscle length analysis which require expertise knowledge and experience. X-Rays and CT scans in the medical domain also require domain experts to interpret the results of a checkup. Kinect is a motion capturing device which is able to track human skeleton, its joints and body movements within its sensory range. The purpose of this research is to provide a mechanism to identify muscle imbalances based on gait analysis tracked via Kinect motion capture device by differentiate the deviation of healthy person’s gait patterns. Primarily, the outcome of this study will be a self-identification method of human skeletal imbalance.
Assessing the Benefits and Costs of the Urban Forest

With effective planning and management, urban trees and forests will provide a wide range of important benefits to urbanites. These include a more pleasant, healthful, and comfortable environment to live, work, and play in, savings in the costs of providing a wide range of urban services, and substantial improvements in individual and community wellbeing. Urban forestry plans should begin with consideration of the contribution that trees and forests can make to people's needs. Planning and management efforts should focus on how the forest can best meet those needs. Past planning and management efforts have not been as effective as they might have been because planners and managers have underestimated the potential benefits that urban trees and forests can provide, and have not understood the planning and management efforts needed to provide those benefits, particularly the linkages between benefits and characteristics of the urban forest and its management.
Phonemic Categorization of Eight-to-Ten Year Old Children with an Articulation Disorder

PHONEMIC CATEGORIZATION OF EIGHT-TO-TEN YEAR OLD CHILDREN WITH AN ARTICULATION DISORDER Marjorie A. Smith Department of Communication Disorders Master of Science Phonemic categorization is the ability to discriminate and organize speech sounds into categories. This ability begins soon after birth and continues to refine as an individual matures. An association between categorical labeling and phonological awareness has been reported. A strong link between perception and production has been established. The present study examined phonemic categorization of two groups of four listeners. Eight-to ten-year-old children with an articulation disorder were compared with typically speaking peers to determine if the two groups differed in their ability to categorize speech sounds. Behavioral and electrophysiological measures were used to ascertain if any differences existed. These measures were obtained in response to four stimulus pairs (/pɑ/-/tɑ/, /tɑ/-/kɑ/, /pɑ/-/kɑ/, /sɑ/-/ʃɑ/). Three of the pairs (/pɑ/-/tɑ/, /tɑ//kɑ/, /pɑ/-/kɑ/) differed by place of articulation only and the fourth pair (/sɑ/-/ʃɑ/) consisted of sounds that are more commonly found in error for the age group of the participants. Behavioral data showed differences in reaction time between the two groups as well as between correct and incorrect responses. Electrophysiological data including the mismatch negativity showed that both groups perceived a distinction between the stimuli presented, but the normal control group generally displayed a higher SD for peak latency and amplitude. The normal control group also generally displayed a higher mean amplitude. These results suggest a difference between the two groups in the underlying processes of phonemic categorization. Specifically, these results support that the normal control group’s ability to distinguish and categorize speech sounds is better established than that of their peers with an articulation disorder.
Cosmological test with the QSO Hubble diagram

A Hubble diagram (HD) has recently been constructed in the redshift range 0 99% C.L. The Quasi-Steady State Model is excluded at >95% C.L. The remaining four models (Lambda-CDM/wCDM, the R_h=ct Universe, the Friedmann open universe and a Static universe with a linear Hubble law) all pass the test. However, only Lambda-CDM/wCDM and $R_{\rm h}=ct$ also pass the Alcock-Paczynski (AP) test. The optimized parameters in Lambda-CDM/wCDM are Omega_m=0.20^{+0.24}_{-0.20} and w_{de}=-1.2^{+1.6}_{-infinity} (the dark-energy equation-of-state). Combined with the AP test, these values become Omega_m=0.38^{+0.20}_{-0.19} and w_{de}=-0.28^{+0.52}_{-0.40}. But whereas this optimization of parameters in Lambda-CDM/wCDM creates some tension with their concordance values, the $R_{\rm h}=ct$ Universe has the advantage of fitting the QSO and AP data without any free parameters.
USING EMBEDDED PROCESSORS IN HARDWARE MODELS OF ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

Artificial Neural Networks are applied for solving a wide variety of problems in several areas such as: robotics, image processing, and pattern recognition. Many applications demand a high computing power and the traditional software implementation are not sufficient. Hardware implementations of neural network algorithms are very interesting due their high performance. In this paper, an implementation that joins the software flexibility with the excellent hardware performance has been performed through the use of reconfigurable computing and embedded processors technologies. Keywords Neural Networks, MLP, FPGA, Reconfigurable Computing, Embedded Processors
Working Paper Bank Competition Eff iciency in Europe : A Frontier Approach

There are numerous ways to indicate the degree of banking competition across countries. Antitrust authorities rely on the structure-conduct-performance paradigm while academics prefer price mark-ups (Lerner index) or correlations of input costs with output prices (H-statistic). These measures are not always strongly correlated when contrasted across countries or positively correlated within countries over time. Frontier efficiency analysis is used to devise an alternative indicator of competition and rank European countries by their dispersion from a “competition frontier”. The frontier is determined by how well payment and other costs explain variations in loan-deposit rate spread and non-interest activity revenues.
Influence of Monomer Concentration on the Morphologies and Electrochemical Properties of PEDOT, PANI, and PPy Prepared from Aqueous Solution

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxyhiophene) (PEDOT), polyaniline (PANI), and polypyrrole (PPy) were prepared on indium tin oxide (ITO) substrate via potentiostatic from aqueous solutions containing monomer and lithium perchlorate. The concentration of monomers was varied between 1 and 10 mM. The effects of monomer concentration on the polymers formation were investigated and compared by using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), cyclic voltammetry (CV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements. FTIR and Raman spectra showed no changes in the peaks upon the increment of the concentration. Based on the SEM images, the increment in monomer concentration gives significant effect on morphologies and eventually affects the electrochemical properties. PEDOT electrodeposited from 10 mM solution showed excellent electrochemical properties with the highest specific capacitance value of 12.8 mF/cm2.
Apparent Survival of Snowy Plovers (Charadrius nivosus) Varies with Reproductive Effort and Year and between Sexes

Abstract. Life history theory predicts a tradeoff between reproductive effort and survival, which suggests that some management practices aimed at increasing productivity may compromise population growth. We analyzed a 10-year data set of 225 individually marked Snowy Plovers (Charadrius nivosus), a threatened shorebird, to determine whether individual reproductive effort was correlated with low apparent survival. Most adults resided in the population an average of 2 years (range: 1–10 years), during which females laid 3–60 eggs, and both males and females invested considerable time in incubation and brooding. Apparent survival varied annually and was higher for males than for females. Contrary to theory, we found no evidence that increased reproductive effort, either current or cumulative, compromised survival. Instead, apparent survival was correlated positively with incubation time, which may be related to either high-quality individuals having high reproductive rates and high survival or permanent emigration of failed breeders (who incubated for shorter intervals). Although our results suggest that some predator management practices (e.g., nest exclosures) aimed at increasing productivity will not compromise survival in a subsequent year, we caution that these same practices may have serious negative consequences for population growth if (1) reproductive effort does not translate into higher per capita fledging success and (2) direct mortality of adults results from the practice.
Multiple Mobile Robots Controlled by Artificial Neural Networks

Multiple small mobile robots have been created that were controlled by individual artificial neural networks. Each mobile robot was self-contained and capable of independent actions, as determined by the on-board artificial neural network. Information about the environment was collected from sensors mounted on each individual mobile robot chassis. Different sensors were available that were capable of providing information about different aspects of the environment. Currently there were sensors for detecting and following a black line as well as short range distance sensors for detecting and interacting with objects and other mobile robots. The artificial neural networks on the individual mobile robots were all provided with the same training data and a standard back-propagation training algorithm was used. However the randomised component of training the artificial neural networks did mean that there could have been subtle differences in the responses of individual mobile robots to the same sensor data. This effect was eliminated when needed by using an off-line training process and programming all the mobile robots with the same trained ANN. The small group of mobile robots was used to investigate two simple aspects of swarm behaviour; that of flocking and also of follow-my-leader, which are examples where the swarm appeared to operate with more intelligence than the individual members.
Burdigalian deposits of the Santa Cruz Formation in the Sierra Baguales, Austral (Magallanes) Basin: Age, depositional environment and vertebrate fossils

A succession of marine and continental strata on the southern flank of Cerro Cono in the Sierra Baguales, northeast of Torres del Paine, can be correlated with stratigraphic units exposed along the southern border of the Lago Argentino region in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. These include the Estancia 25 de Mayo Formation and the basal part of the Santa Cruz Formation. The lithological correlation is also confirmed by detrital zircon ages (maximum age of 18.23±0.26 Ma) and a rich assemblage of terrestrial vertebrate fossils, biostratigraphically equivalent to a post-Colhuehuapian, pre-Santacrucian South American Land Mammal Age (SALMA) fauna, suggesting a range of 19 to 17.8 Ma. Similar ages have been obtained from the basal part of the Santa Cruz Formation at Estancia Quien Sabe in southwestern Argentina, supporting the assumption of a regional continuity between these deposits. A measured lithostratigraphic column is presented and the depositional environment is interpreted as a coastal plain with small, meandering rivers and ephemeral floodplain lakes. The sedimentation coincides with intensified uplift of the Patagonian Andes during the ‘Quechua Phase’ of Andean tectonism, which is reflected by a change in paleocurrent directions from northwest to east-northeast.
Remaining Useful Life Prediction Method of Rolling Bearings Based on Pchip-EEMD-GM(1, 1) Model

A trend prediction method based on the Pchip-EEMD-GM(1,1) to predict the remaining useful life (RUL) of rolling bearings was proposed in this paper. Firstly, the dimension of the extracted features was reduced by the KPCA dimensionality reduction method, and the WPHM model parameters were estimated via the kernel principal components. Secondly, the hazard rate was calculated at each time, and the Pchip interpolation method was used to obtain the uniformly spaced interpolation data series. Then the main trend of signal was obtained through the EEMD method to fit the GM(1,1) prediction model. Finally, the GM (1,1) method was used to predict the remaining life of the rolling bearing. The full life test of rolling bearing was provided to demonstrate that the method predicting the hazard data directly has the higher accuracy compared with predicting the covariates, and the results verified the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method for predicting the remaining life.
Loadbalancing and Maintaining the QoS On Cloud Computing

Loadbalancing is the key of cloudcomputing environment.Loadbalancing main function is solving the unbalance or overload problem.Now a days many algorithm using for solve this problem. In this project we introduce load balancer concept.The cloud sever transfer all load to the load balancer.Load balancer concerned with the number of strong nodes and weak nodes.Strong nodes represent the normal load and weak nodes represent the heavy load or overload.Strong nodes and weak nodes denoted green and yellow colour respectively.Loadbalancer split the load among these node and also intimate the normal and overload node.The yellow colour or overload node loads are charged by neighbour node in cyclic manner using this algorithm and also make quick recovery of overload node.Loadbalncer maintain the index for server loading process and create database backup on server when any malicious attack the server.Main objective of this paper is solve the overload problem and make efficient searching process on cloud environment.
Experimental models for Murray’s law

Transport networks are ubiquitous in multicellular organisms and include leaf veins, fungal mycelia and blood vessels. While transport of materials and signals through the network plays a crucial role in maintaining the living system, the transport capacity of the network can best be understood in terms of hydrodynamics. We report here that plasmodium from the large, single-celled amoeboid Physarum was able to construct a hydrodynamically optimized vein-network when evacuating biomass from confined arenas of various shapes through a narrow exit. Increasingly thick veins developed towards the exit, and the network spanned the arena via repetitive bifurcations to give a branching tree. The Hausdorff distance from all parts of the plasmodium to the vein network was kept low, whilst the hydrodynamic conductivity from distal parts of the network to the exit was equivalent, irrespective of the arena shape. This combination of spatial patterning and differential vein thickening served to evacuate biomass at an equivalent rate across the entire arena. The scaling relationship at the vein branches was determined experimentally to be 2.53–3.29, consistent with predictions from Murray’s law. Furthermore, we show that mathematical models for self-organised, adaptive transport in Physarum simulate the experimental network organisation well if the scaling coefficient of the current-reinforcement rule is set to 3. In simulations, this resulted in rapid development of an optimal network that minimised the combined volume and frictional energy in comparison with other scaling coefficients. This would predict that the boundary shear forces within each vein are constant throughout the network, and would be consistent with a feedback mechanism based on a sensing a threshold shear at the vein wall.
Feelable User Interfaces: An Exploration of Non-Visual Tangible User Interfaces

Tangible User Interfaces (TUIs) allow the representation of digital information via a number of sensory modalities including the haptic, visual and auditory senses. In this paper we suggest that the visual component of many TUIs dominates over the physical, to a detriment in the quality of the physical interaction. In order to investigate the possibilities of interacting with a less visually biased TUI we explore the extreme case of an almost entirely non-visual interface.