Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive , Personalised “ in browser ” Audio Compression

Audio quality is very important to the BBC’s audience, and unwanted loudness variations reduce the quality of the listeners’ experience. Dynamic range control applied by the broadcaster can go some way to avoiding problems but, because the broadcaster cannot take into account each listener’s individual environment, needs, or preference, it cannot please everyone all the time. The listening conditions are a significant factor to be taken into account when dynamic range control is applied. The Web Audio API offers the possibility of performing dynamic range control under the control of the listener, tailoring it optimally for their individual situation. We have developed a system that demonstrates that this is achievable in a modern web browser. In it, a compressor is controlled automatically by the environmental noise level measured using the microphone present in most mobile device audio players.
POLYMORPHISMS OF PIK 3 CA AND AKT 3 GENES AND THEIR ASSOCIATION WITH GROWTH TRAITS OF RABBITS

The PI3K-AKT signaling pathway has an important role in cell growth and survival in a variety of tissues. In this study we investigated the polymorphisms of PIK3CA and AKT3 genes and their association with growth traits of rabbits (N=711). Six SNPs of PIK3CA and two SNPs of AKT3 are present in the genomic sequences. The polymorphism c.1213A>C of AKT3 was only found in the Kangda rabbit, and the AC and AA genotypes were associated significantly with higher body weight at every growth stage (P<0.05) compared to the CC genotype. For the PIK3CA:c.3068A>G polymorphism, the homozygous individuals for the G allele had the lowest weight at all growth stages in Fujian and Kangda rabbits. Our results indicated that the polymorphisms of both PIK3CA and AKT3 genes are associated significantly with production traits in rabbits, which can be taken advantage of in breeding programs with marker-assisted selection.
Clinical Evaluation of Osseointegration on Dental Implants with Resonance Frequency Analysis

Clinical examinations to monitor the osseointegration process were carried out using a new tool, the Low Resonance Frequency Analyzer (LRFA), designed to overcome the deficiencies of the Resonance Frequency Analyzer (RFA). The LRFA consists of two main elements: an accelerometer sensor as a vibration detector and a basic micro-system for controlling accelerometer sensor data, which is then forwarded to the computer. We compared osseointegration in dental implants using a RFA and a LRFA to determine if the LRFA accurately detected osseointegration. Submerged dental implants, obtained from 20 patients, were subjected to RFA and LRFA examinations. We evaluated osseointegration upon placement and after the third months. Upon placement, the mean Implant Stability Quotient (ISQ) obtained with RFA was 59.05 ± 3.72. It increased to 69.25 ± 2.77 at three months. Using LRFA, the mean ISQ was 0.06 ± 0.01 upon placement and increased to 110.11 ± 0.01 at three months. Both devices measured osseointegration accurately. RFA and LRFA are equivalent methods for measuring dental implant stability at three months post-placement. Clinical article (J Int Dent Med Res 2019; 12(2): 672-676)
INTERPRETING THE VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER : CATEGORIZATION BY GROUPS AND INDIVIDUALS *

Capturing the voice of the customer and translating customer needs into product features have become systematic steps in the product development process at thousands of firms worldwide. Some of the most popular techniques used to interpret the voice of the customer, such as customer sorts and affinity diagrams, are based on the process of categorization. The underlying assumption is that these techniques elicit the categorizers’ tacit knowledge and theories about the relationships among customers needs in an unbiased manner. Building on recent research on categorization, we question this assumption and test the effects of two moderating variables on the categorization of customer needs. First, we test whether participants categorize customer needs differently when working individually or as part of a group. Second, we test whether participants’ prior experience using a technique affects the way they categorize customer needs. Two experiments confirm that these moderators systematically contribute to variations in category structures: the breadth of categories created and relationships identified among categories.
Evaluation of Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm Compared to Genetic Algorithm , Dynamic Programming and Branch and Bound Algorithm Regarding Traveling Salesman Problem

We use ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems such as the traveling salesman problem. Some applications of ACO are: vehicle routing, sequential ordering, graph coloring, routing in communications networks, etc. In this paper, we compare the performance of ACO to that of a few other state-of-the-art algorithms currently in use and thus measure the effectiveness of ACO as one of the major optimization algorithms in regard with a few more algorithms. The performance of the algorithms is measured by observing their capacity to solve a traveling salesman problem (TSP). This paper will help to find the proper algorithm to be used for routing problems in different real-life situations.
Scalable Multivariate Histograms

We give a distributed variant of an adaptive histogram estimation procedure previously developed by the first author. The procedure is based on regular pavings and is known to have numerous appealing statistical and arithmetical properties. The distributed version makes it possible to process data sets significantly bigger than previously. We provide prototype implementation under a permissive license.
GUIDING FEATURE BASED SAR IMAGE ALIGNMENT USING BAG OF WORDS MODEL

Automatic SAR image alignment or registration is one of the fundamental preprocessing operations in several applications of computer vision, image processing, pattern recognition etc. Advances in feature extraction algorithms have led to the development of efficient alignment algorithms which offer invariance to deformations like scale, rotation, view angle etc. To further improve the performance of standard SAR image alignment, an iterative approach generating multiple synthetic views, known as view synthesis has been employed. State of art detectors like SIFT, SURF, Hessian Affine and MSER when used with view synthesis have been proved to be invariant to a wider range of deformations, however at the cost of additional memory and time to be spent on generation of views and feature extraction across all the views. Hence we studied if the characteristics of source and target SAR images to be aligned can be used to provide some knowledge and guide SAR image alignment approach. This paper focuses on identifying the possibility of aligning two SAR images and also predicts suitable alignment approach by building a predictive data mining model using classification based algorithms. The dataset of 540 Terra SAR X band images is tested and applied on various classification algorithms such as Naive Bayes, SVM, and J48 using attributes computed from Bag of Words model applied on feature detector and descriptor.
Is Augmented Reality in Denial of the Convention? Examining the Presence of Uncanny Valley in Augmented Reality

—Uncanny valley is a theorized psychological phenomenon, which captures a non-monotonic relationship between an entity’s anthropomorphic level and the shinwakan (afﬁnity) its viewers feel toward the entity [1]. According to the theory, viewers feel a stronger afﬁnity to an anthropomorphic entity as its level of human likeness increases until it reaches a certain point where that afﬁnity is brought to a sudden drop. This valley, although frequently observed, still remains not well understood or explained. That said, most studies purport to present an explanation to the valley in context of robotics or computer-generated images portrayed on 2D surfaces, but it is unclear whether these explanations are applicable to different platforms that offer a completely different user experience. Hence, this study attempts to explore the uncanny valley in context of the augmented reality. AR overlays texts and images on top of our visual feed to interactively blend the real and the virtual world. With its immersive and interactive nature, AR may potentially offer us a new perspective in understanding uncanny valley. The rules that we believed governed the uncanny valley in robotics and previous 2D platforms may no longer be applicable to AR. Consequently, this study observes a relational trend between entities uncanniness and human likeness using Microsoft Hololens via the user survey and biometrics data to offer viable explanations to how we should interpret the uncanny valley in AR setting.
Bandwidth Constrained Multipath Routing Protocol for QoS Provision in MANETs

Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) are composed of mobile nodes with limited resources and unpredictable node movement. With the on-going evolution in MANETs, provision of Quality of Service (QoS) has become a challenging task. In this paper, a node disjoint Bandwidth Constrained Multipath Routing (BCMR) protocol is proposed which considers bandwidth as the key factor to discover multiple paths for QoS provisioning. BCMR accommodates required bandwidth function in flooding route request packets. Extensive simulation study is carried out to investigate the performance of BCMR. Simulation results reveal that BCMR significantly reduces overheads, minimizes overall end to end delay and significantly improves packet delivery ratio.
Advance in differential proteomics research

Differential proteomics is a major research area in proteomics era, which mainly aims to detect and confirm the different proteins caused by special stimulations between two or more group of samples. By analysis of the differentiae between samples, in reverse, we can deduce what induce the variety patterns of expression, hence it is useful in cancer pre-diagnosis, new drug development and cell regulation research. For differential proteomics research, samples should be carefully dealt with in order to get an accurate and reproducible result, therefore laser capture microdissection and some removing high-rebundant proteins techniques are used. Now the association of 2-DE separation and MS identification are primarily used in the field, but some new methods are appearing, for example, 2-DE DIGE, which overcome the demerit of it ancestor and suit this kind of experiments much better, those techniques other than 2-DE such as multidimension chromatogram, ICAT and protein chips have also been used, which can complement or substitute the conventional methods.
New Upper and Lower Bounds for Some Degree-based Graph Invariants

For a simple graph G with vertex set V (G) and edge set E(G), let deg(u) be the degree of the vertex u ∈ V (G). The forgotten index of G and its coindex are defined as F (G) = ∑ v∈V (G) deg 3(v) and F (G) = ∑ uv 6∈E(G) [ deg2(u) + deg2(v) ] . New bonds for the first Zagreb indexM1(G) = ∑ v∈V (G) deg(v)2, forgotten index, and its coindex are obtained.
Development of Fine-Scale Substance Transport Measurement System for Assessing the Effect of Resuspension Event of Sea Bottom Sediment on Marine Environment ( Abstract of the Final Report ) Contact person

[Abstract] Field measurement was carried out to elucidate fine sediment transport processes near the bed in Ariake Bay, Japan. Several acoustic velocimeters were deployed for the monitoring such as up-looking acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP), a downward-looking pulse coherent acoustic Doppler profiler (PC-ADP) and an acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV) for the bottom boundary layer study. Comparing the OBS data which are converted to suspended sediment concentration near the bed with the current field data, external force conditions for the resuspension event of bottom sediment was evaluated through the estimates of shear stress with measured velocity data. The critical force condition for resuspension of sediments was quantatively analyzed and the critical shear stress was estimated around 0.01 Pa. In addition to the measurement of physical parameters, as a preliminary study of examining how resuspension event affect on water quality change, eddy correlation method was applied in the field for in situ direct measurement of oxygen flux across the bed and our study successfully demonstrates a marked flux fluctuation (0.0–12.5 mmol O 2 m–2 h–1) within several hours and that the oxygen consumption fluxes increase with increasing horizontal velocity on flood tides. In the present study, in order to establish experiment method for elucidating resuspension process of muddy sediment under wave dominant environment, some experiments were also carried out with muddy sediment sampled from a field with a laboratory flume. The experiment with the sediment transplanted into the flume from the field successfully reproduced resuspension process under extreme wave force condition.
Bacterial community structure in the intestine of Exopalaemon carinicauda

[Objective] To study bacterial communities and diversity in shrimp (Exopalaemon carinicauda Holehuis) intestine. [Methods] 16S rRNA gene was amplified and a library was constructed by genomic DNA that was extracted from the bacteria in shrimp intestine. [Results] Different RFLP patterns of the clones were obtained from analysis with Hae and III Msp I. By comparing the obtained sequence with the published sequence in the GenBank database, 114 clones were obtained in the 16S rRNA clone library, and 11 different RFLP patterns of the clone were affirmed by Hae and III Msp I. There were 8 clone sequences in high identity with known bacteria sequence, respectively belonging to Pseudomonas (17.5%), Enterobater (21.1%), Frigoribacterium (8.8%), Phaeobacter (5.3%), Vibrio (10.5%), Erythrobacter (9.6%), Aeromona (4.4%), and Staphylococcus 沈辉等: 脊尾白虾肠道微生物菌群结构 1923 http://journals.im. ac.cn/wswxtbcn (2.6%). In addition, uncultured bacteria accounted for 19.3%. [Conclusion] This study discovered the bacterial communities in the intestine of Exopalaemon carinicauda Holehuis, and the results would enhance our understanding about the bacterial community composition in Exopalaemon carinicauda Holehuis intestine and provide valuable data for the development of disease prevention mechanisms for shrimp cultivation.
Accounting for Customer Relationship Changes-The Case of Arthur Andersen

This paper deals with connected relationship change s. The case under study is customer relationships of the audit firm Arthur Andersen, wh ere the triggering changes are the Enron scandal, its consequences for Arthur Andersen and D eloitte & Touche’s acquisition of Swedish Arthur Andersen. The paper targets connecte d changes on a company-to-company and on a person-to-company level for thirty-five cu stomer companies and illustrates how a connected change may affect several customer relati onsh ps simultaneously. The paper also introduces a method to map relationship changes der ived from accounting data. Results show that twelve of the thirty-five investi gated customer companies changed auditing firms during the years following the Enron scandal and Deloitte & Touche’s acquisition of Arthur Andersen. During the same time period, fourt een customer companies shifted auditors. A majority of those companies continuing to Deloitt e & Touche remained with their previous auditors. The results indicate that changes may hav e se ere effects on connected customer relationships, both on a company-to-company and on a person-to-company level. Compared to earlier research, the study indicates some surpr i ing results regarding personal ties; if the auditor decided to leave the acquiring party, custo mers that followed the auditor to a new audit firm soon shifted auditor.
EFFECT OF GROUND WATER QUALITY ON SOIL SALINITY AND CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF MUSTARD CROP OF GHARSANA TEHSIL, DISTRICT SRIGANGANAGAR, RAJASTHAN

The survey of ground water quality on soil salinity and chemical composition of mustard crop of Gharsana tehsil, district Sriganganagar, Rajasthan” was undertaken to assess the quality of ground water and its effect on physico-chemical properties of soils and chemical composition of mustard. Forty ground irrigation water samples along with their corresponding forty surface (0-15 cm depths) soil and mustard plant samples were collected from different villages of Gharsana tehsil. The quality of irrigation water were analyzed for physico-chemical characteristics such as pH, ECiw, SAR, RSC and potential salinity and it was found that majority of ground waters of the study area are not suitable for irrigation purposes. The effects of quality of irrigation water on the soil salinity were determined. The results showed that all irrigated fields have high salt concentration as indicated by pH2, EC2 and SAR2 values of soil samples. Saline water increased the soil salt. Thus, the salts accumulation in soil was closely related to the salt concentration of irrigation water, and there was a progressive and significant increase in soil salinity values as the potential salinity of irrigation water increases. Use of high ECiw (8.60 dS/m), pH (9.69), SARiw (18.61), RSCiw (12.30 me/L) and potential salinity (71.61 me/L) of ground water decreased the per cent K and Mg content in mustard plant leaves due to relative dominance of Na ion resulting increased Na and Ca content.
Evidence for combating malaria Malaria

Malaria With over half of the world at risk of the disease, malaria is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in much of the developing world. This is especially striking, as the disease is both preventable and treatable. In fact, the causal link between the use of anti-malarial services and improved health outcomes is well established. To date, however, the evidence on which service delivery channels are most effective and on individual preventive and treatment behavior can be affected is extremely limited. The World Bank, through its Malaria Control Booster Program, has joined an ambitious global campaign to control malaria. The Malaria Impact Evaluation Program is one of the ways the World Bank is contributing to better understand how innovations in service delivery, and subsidized provision of prevention and treatment impact health-seeking behavior, health status, school performance, labor productivity, and socio-economic status. Via impact evaluation, we learn how to enhance the delivery of key disease control and treatment services, and strengthen healthcare systems to maximize the benefits of interventions on health and welfare. Evaluation also helps us do this more cost-effectively and equitably. This note reviews current evidence from impact evaluation at the Bank and from other sources on some important questions that face programs in malaria.
Equity Premium Predictability: Combination Forecasts versus Multivariate Regression Predictions

This paper examines the combination forecast and multivariate regression approaches for equity premium predictability. We evaluate 27 specifications with a unique Canadian database to avoid the data mining inherent in using common U.S. data. We find significant predictive evidence for most models. In sample, multivariate regression predictions perform better than combination forecasts, although regression results display evidence of instability and overfitting. Out of sample, combination forecasts are superior when relying on many individual models, but imposing economic restrictions on multivariate regression predictions yields similar performance. Both approaches show that incorporating information from numerous variables improves forecasting precision and economic value. JEL Classifications: G11, G12, G14, C53
Brain–Computer Interfaces Handbook Technological and Theoretical Advances

There are still many obstacles that must be solved before brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) can advance out of controlled research settings and into real-world scenarios. Some of these obstacles arise because of a growing separation between neuroscience and neuroengineering. Much of modern neuroscience research operates at the cortical level, so it is difficult to leverage this basic science research in BCIs that use noninvasive recordings (e.g., electroencephalography or magnetoencephalography) because those BCI data are recorded from outside the head. A neuroimaging technique called “source imaging” may offer a way to alleviate this disconnect as it allows the estimation cortical activity (on the surface of the brain) from non-invasive data (recorded on or above the surface of the scalp). We start by explaining the fun-damentals of source imaging and then explore research using this technique to address two issues in BCI research. First, targeting brain activity from the most relevant cortical region can improve classification accuracy compared to the traditional approach. Second, source imaging was shown to improve transfer learning—an area of research aimed at reducing the 20-to 30-min calibration period required for most noninvasive BCIs. Overall, this chapter illustrates how tools and research findings from neuroscience can serve as a principled way to advance BCI methodology.
The color stability of esthetic brackets

Objective: To evaluate and compare the discoloration of the esthetic ceramic brackets after stimulating staining in vivid-colored food solutions and coffee. Materials and methods: 108 ceramic brackets from 4 brands (Inspire Ice, Radiance Plus, Clarity, and W&H) were immersed in 4 solutions (Tom-Yum-Goong, yellow curry, green curry, and coffee) at 37°C for 3 and 7 days. Distilled water was used as a solution in the control group. Color changes (∆E) were measured by a spectrophotometer for CIE L*, a* and b* system. Then, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) value was calculated. Statistical analysis was done using the Kruskal-Wallis test and the Mann-Whitney U Test (α = 0.05). Results: Immersed longer, there was a perceptible change of color in all ceramic brackets in Tom-Yum-Goong, yellow curry, and coffee, but no change was noticed in distilled water (∆E* < 3.7). The color alteration of brackets in green curry was found in Clarity and W&H brackets. Conclusion: Time, various vivid-colored food solutions, and coffee affect changes in the color of esthetic ceramic brackets. However, the same crystal formation, either monocrystalline or polycrystalline, does not follow the same pattern in color change, varying according to bracket manufacturing fabrication.
Microbiome and Diet Impact in Scalp Disorder : The Example of Alopecia Areata

Alopecia areata (AA) is a potentially reversible auto-immune non-scarring baldness on the scalp, which can be extended to the entire body. The impact of diet on hair growth disorder is well established as the influence of diet on gut microbiome. Poor information is still available as regards the link between microbiome, especially scalp microbiome and hair diseases. Here we reported a two case-reports study on patients affected by AA, with and without lactose intolerance, respectively, with the aim to underline how diet could emphasize microbiome changing related to scalp disease. Subjects were asked to fill out a 7-day dietary survey and scalp and oral swabs were collected. Data from the dietary survey, qRT-PCR on main bacterial strains inhabiting the scalp and 16S sequencing of the scalp and oral microbiome were matched and compared each other and with healthy and general AA population. Beyond diet well-known impact on general human health, our results highlighted the role of diet in modifying oral and scalp microbiome, which in turn seems to have an impact on AA evolution. Our results provide the first evidence of strict intercorrelation between microbial dysbiosis on the scalp of patients with AA and dietary habits.