Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient multimodal fusion for person authentication combining three biometric modalities

Fusion of multiple biometric modalities for person authentication can compensate for the limitations in performance of each individual biometric system. This paper proposed an efficient person authentication method based on multimodal biometric fusion at the matching score level. For score level fusion, MPM (minimax probability machine) based fusion rule is applied to combine multiple matching scores, respectively from iris, facer and palmprint, to generate a single scalar score which is used to make the final decision. Experimental results show that the performance of the proposed method can bring obvious improvement comparing to the previous multimodal methods.
High-Throughput Measurements of Stem Characteristics to Estimate Ear Density and Above-Ground Biomass

Total above-ground biomass at harvest and ear density are two important traits that characterize wheat genotypes. Two experiments were carried out in two different sites where several genotypes were grown under contrasted irrigation and nitrogen treatments. A high spatial resolution RGB camera was used to capture the residual stems standing straight after the cutting by the combine machine during harvest. It provided a ground spatial resolution better than 0.2 mm. A Faster Regional Convolutional Neural Network (Faster-RCNN) deep-learning model was first trained to identify the stems cross section. Results showed that the identification provided precision and recall close to 95%. Further, the balance between precision and recall allowed getting accurate estimates of the stem density with a relative RMSE close to 7% and robustness across the two experimental sites. The estimated stem density was also compared with the ear density measured in the field with traditional methods. A very high correlation was found with almost no bias, indicating that the stem density could be a good proxy of the ear density. The heritability/repeatability evaluated over 16 genotypes in one of the two experiments was slightly higher (80%) than that of the ear density (78%). The diameter of each stem was computed from the profile of gray values in the extracts of the stem cross section. Results show that the stem diameters follow a gamma distribution over each microplot with an average diameter close to 2.0 mm. Finally, the biovolume computed as the product of the average stem diameter, the stem density, and plant height is closely related to the above-ground biomass at harvest with a relative RMSE of 6%. Possible limitations of the findings and future applications are finally discussed.
HIV Treatment Cascades that Leak: Correlates of Drop-off from the HIV Care Continuum among Men who have Sex with Men Worldwide

Objectives: The health and prevention benefits of antiretroviral therapies (ART), delivered as part of comprehensive HIV care programs remain unrealized for men who have sex with men (MSM). This multilevel study explores the correlates of drop-off from the HIV care continuum in an international study of MSM, taking into account individual and regional differences in access to and utilization of care. Methods: We conducted a study of the continuum of HIV diagnosis and care among 6095 MSM using data collected from an international online survey of MSM conducted in 2012. In this model of the HIV treatment cascade, we treated each point along the continuum as an outcome variable. We then investigated the relationships between clinical care outcomes and a set of demographic and psychosocial factors that were hypothesized to correlate with the outcomes using bivariate and multivariable statistical techniques. Results: Among MSM living with HIV for longer than 12 months (n=632), 50%(n=319) were virologically suppressed. Among MSM recently infected with HIV (n=91), the proportion was relatively smaller at 33%. Significant correlates of being on ART and retained in care included: accessibility of HIV treatment; comfort with a healthcare provider; and engagement in a gay community. Perceptions of homophobia were negatively associated with being on ART and being retained in care. Conclusions: These findings underscore the need for service delivery models that sensitively address HIV among MSM. Public health officials should adopt comprehensive HIV programs that include mutually reinforcing components and that address varying needs of MSM newly diagnosed and living with HIV. Comprehensive HIV programs must also support the critical role communities play in linking and retaining MSM into HIV services. Further studies validating the findings in country-specific contexts are warranted.
On-Line Noise Suppression for Enhancing Speech Recognition

An experimental setup has been designed that makes possible a real-time noise reduction and an increase of automatic word recognition rate. The applied algorithm uses a dynamical filtering method for investigated time-series and has been implemented in Spartan 3 FPGA evaluation board RC10 made by Celoxica. We show that our approach increases the number of correctly recognized words in the commercial speech recognition program ViaVoice 10.
Genetic Relatedness among Date Palm Cultivars in Jordan Using Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) Markers

Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (AFLP) technique was used to study the genetic variations among fifteen Date Palm cultivars grown in Jordan. Nine primer pair combinations were used in the selective amplification and the amplified fragments were detected using 6% of polyacrylamid gel electrophoresis. The best results were obtained with five primer combinations that yielded 215 polymorphic bands of a total of 433, with an average of 52% of polymorphism. The highest similarity (28%) was observed between Ahmer Talal and Anbarah (grown in King Abdullah farm), while no similarity was found among Tabarzal, Fakher, Mekfazy and Deglet Noor and between Haiani and Deglet Noor, Barhee and Deglet Noor and Halawy and Mekfazy. The used AFLP markers have the ability to detect genetic variations among date palm cultivars and can be used for confirming true types issued from micro-propagation.
How Does an Initial Expectation Bias Influence Auditors' Application and Performance of Analytical Procedures?

ABSTRACT : Prior research demonstrates that knowledge of unaudited balances biases auditors' expectations during analytical procedures. What is less understood is how these biases affect auditors' subsequent investigations and their conclusions about the reasonableness of a particular balance. We employ the selective accessibility model to examine the differences in analytical procedure performance when auditor expectations are formed with versus without knowledge of the client's unaudited financial statement balances. In an experimental setting, we found that auditors with knowledge of unaudited balances favored hypotheses and supporting information indicating that the client's balance was reasonably stated. Auditors who formed expectations without current-year figures were more willing to evaluate competing alternatives, could better identify the most pertinent information, and were significantly more likely to identify a material misstatement using an analytical procedure. Data Availability: Data are .
Attentional bias and emotion in older adults: Age-related differences in responses to an emotional Stroop task

The purpose of the study was to examine whether older adults show an emotional interference effect in a Stroop task, and whether their RTs differ with regard to age, gender and tendencies of mood regulation (to improvement and/or deterioration). The sample consisted of 60 participants at the age from 65 to 85. Emotional version of Stroop task and the Mood Regulation Scales were used. The results showed no significant differences in RTs to emotional and neutral words. Unexpectedly, a speeding effect was observed with the age of women. It appeared also that the effect of mood regulation tendencies was not significant for RTs. The last two effects are not consistent with the literature on cognitive and emotional aging.
Drug diffusion behaviours of biomaterials derived from tea fibre and chitosan

ABSTRACT There is a strong linkage between the waste tea fibre and chitosan, because of being used as wound treating materials separately for years. The waste tea fibre and chitosan including biomaterials were developed due to being renewable sources, biodegradable, hygienic and harmless materials. Waste natural fibres were pre-treated with different chemicals in order to improve the compatibility of the fibre and the polymer. The effect of treatment type and additives were examined by using X-ray diffraction patterns and SEM images. Drug delivery behaviours were determined by calculating the diffusion coefficients of biomaterial-drug systems with a selected model drug, ciprofloxacin. The diffusion phenomenon was affected by both the treatment type and the additives. The findings of the structural and morphological examinations indicated that the association of the tea waste fibre and chitosan may be a promising biomaterial for wound dressing applications.
Effect of Electrolyte Concentration on the Surface Properties of Nanoporous TiO 2 Layers Formed on Micro-roughened Titanium

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of electrolyte concentration on the surface morphology, surface topography, wettability and surface roughness of nanoporous titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) layers. Titanium (Ti) samples were treated by sandblasting and acid-etching processes. TiO 2 layers were formed on sandblasted/acid-etched titanium in electrolytes containing different HF concentration (% 0.25-2). The samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The surface roughness and the wettability of the samples were measured using proilometry and a contact angle measurement system. The samples, which were anodized after sandblasting/acid-etching treatment had amorphous structure and peaks from the substrate were observed. The results showed that with increasing HF concentration, the surface morphology of the samples were signiﬁcantly changed. All the treated samples exhibited hydrophilic properties.
INVISIBLE WATERMARKING USING K-HARRIES AFFINE POINT DETECTION ALGORITHIM

The sudden expansion of intenet has hike the avalibility of digital data to the public.Hence the problem of protecting multimedia information, copyright protection has gained the intrest of researchers. oweners are worried about any illegal duplication of therir data.Digital watermarking is a technique which has been proposed as possible solution to the problem.It is a technique which is used to identify the owner,creator and distributer of given video or image by embedding copyright mark into the digital content.In this paper a k-harries point detection algorithim is used to find sharp point on the carrier image and then watermark image is divided into blocks of same size.After that each block is embed on to the points which are found using algorithim in order to increase the security.The invisible watermark technique is used in this process.
Dominance of Milnor Attractors and Noise-Induced Selection in a Multiattractor System

In a multiattractor state of a globally coupled dynamical system, stability of the attractors is studied by recording the return rates to themselves after perturbations. Besides the basin volume, attractors are characterized by strength, defined as the threshold perturbation for the full return rate. It is observed that Milnor attractors with a vanishing strength are dominant in the partially ordered phase. Attractions to weak attractors are found to be often enhanced with the addition of a noise, selectively for its amplitude. [S0031-9007(97)02844-5]
Análise de Desempenho de Frameworks de Deep Learning

Resumo. Este trabalho avalia o desempenho de dois frameworks de Deep Learning (Caffe e TensorFlow) em um ambiente de execução heterogêneo. A avaliação se dá ao mensurar os tempos gastos por imagem, através da variação de hiperparâmetros de duas redes profundas conhecidas. O estudo conclui que o framework TensorFlow apresenta uma menor necessidade de memória, e tempos até 49% menores em GPU e até 70% menores em CPU em relação ao Caffe.
Promises and limits of discourse ethics in communicative interactions

Communication ethics is concerned with the ways in which intersubjective relationships are constructed. It highlights the tensions among determinations that rule intersubjective contacts and the constant reformulation of meaning frames and forms of language that define both interlocution and its context. This text outlines the similarities and differences between two conflicting approaches concerning the use of everyday language as a particularly privileged way of social interaction. We shall first consider the Habermasian notion of an ideal situation of communication, then shifting to the problems concerning the power and interests encapsulated in any communicative exchange, following the perspective of Bourdieu. It is worth mentioning that an ethics of com- munication that intends to evaluate the role played by interests and language in the practical relationship between subjects should approach conditions under which, through a discursive interaction in the public scope, individuals could reach an understanding regarding their interests and needs.
What can cybernetics contribute to the conscious evolution of organizations and society

This contribution is based on the Ludwig von Bertalanffy Lecture delivered by the author at the 47th Conference of the International Society for the System Sciences (ISSS) in Crete, 7 July 2003. The conference was organized around the issue Conscious Evolution of Humanity: Using Systems Thinking to Construct Agoras of the Global Village. This article explores the potential and actual contributions of cybernetics to organizational and societal evolution. The focus is on the models and conceptual tools of managerial cybernetics. When properly used these can become powerful pivots of an evolution by design, as opposed to an evolution at the mercy of mere chance.
Earthquake scaling and the strength of seismogenic faults

Two important and unresolved issues in tectonics and earthquake mechanics are the strength of seismogenic faults, and scaling relationships between the seismic moment of an earthquake and the area or length of the rupture. These two issues, usually treated separately, are shown here to be fundamentally related. It is shown that the reported scatter in moment‐area and moment‐length data of strike‐slip and dip‐slip earthquakes is not scatter, but instead reflects the strength of the fault that failed. Relationships that exhibit continuous scaling between small and large earthquakes are derived, and demonstrate that fault zone pore pressure is the scaling parameter that collapses the combined catalogs of strike‐slip and dip‐slip earthquakes to a single function. It is shown that for large earthquakes overpressures vary continuously between hydrostatic and near‐lithostatic above about 15 km, with evidence for a clear transition to near‐lithostatic pore pressures below this depth. These results have significant implications for plate tectonics, earthquake source physics, and mechanistic seismic hazard assessment.
Analysis of the returns of small and medium-sized enterprises in Mongolia

This study analyses the profitability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Mongolia. SMEs play a crucial role in the Mongolian economy and are considered to be the stimulus of economic development in the country. The present paper investigates the factors that affect the performance of SMEs. It examines the relationship between returns, gender, age, education, bank advances, turnover volume, innovation, management experience, labour, interest rates, customer base, inflation and exchange rate based on data collected from 200 SMEs that have different capital structures. The equation specified profitability as the dependent variable and loans, sales, firm age, firm size and interest rates as independent variables. All data except interest rates which were derived from Central Bank data were gathered from a primary field survey. The conclusion to our study is that there is a strong positive correlation between sales growth, bank advances, business size and profitability.
THE APPRAISAL OF POLICY APPRAISAL: LEARNING ABOUT THE QUALITY OF IMPACT ASSESSMENT

What do governments, international organizations and stakeholders mean when they say that proposals for new regulation should be systematically appraised? And do regulators really use the results of appraisal? In this article, we consider two dimensions of policy appraisal: the breadth and scope of the empirical analysis, and the utilization of impact assessment. We use these two dimensions to produce an explanatory typology with four types. The types enable us to review the literature systematically, exposing gaps as well as documenting the results. In the final part of the article we build hypotheses that link quality of analysis and utilization, thus showing how future research may become less descriptive and more inclined to test explicit hypotheses.
Survey on Word Sense Disambiguation: An Initiative towards an Indo-Aryan Language

Resolution of lexical ambiguity, commonly known as Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) task is to distinguish the correct sense among the set of senses for an ambiguous term depending on the particular context automatically. It plays the vital role as it acts as an intermediate phase to many Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications like Machine Translation, Information Retrieval, Speech Processing, Hypertext navigation, Parts-of -Speech tagging. Existing literature reveals that there are various approaches for lexical ambiguity resolution-Knowledge based, Corpus based. In recent years, many WSD systems is being developed in Indian languages like Hindi, Malayalam, Manipuri, Nepali, Kannada but no such automated system has yet emerged for the Indo-Aryan language- Assamese. Our future work aims to develop a model for the WSD problem which is fast, optimal and efficient in terms of accuracy and scalability. This paper presents a survey report made in this research topic discussing the WSD problem, various approaches along with their algorithms. Moreover it also list out the various NLP applications which would be efficient when disambiguation system is merged. Evaluation measures used to determine the WSD performance are also discussed here.
What killed Moritz Erhardt?:internships and the cultural dangers of “positive” ideas

Moritz Erhardt’s tragic death as an intern at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in August 2013 provides an illustration of the cultural intensity and complexity that has come to imbue internships in higher education degree schemes. We offer an analysis of internships as part of a wider process of dissemination and proliferation of managerial vocabularies and images that underpin certain hyper-performative practices that permeate the powerful cultures stimulated by and sustained in many organizations. We analyze the cultural ground from which such practices might be seen to arise and present an interpretation of how certain “positive” themes and motifs—such as “potentiality,” “self-expression,” or “self-realization”—can become dangerous. These categories become dangerous once they are constituted as ideal measures of an unattainable level of performativity which can then become destabilizing and disorienting for any individual’s sense of self. In this sense, the paper contributes to the growing body of literature investigating the significance of internships in the new cultures of work characterizing the broader context of neoliberalism.
HYLOZOISM AND HYLOMORPHISM: A LASTING LEGACY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Apparently philosophical reflection commenced when the awareness of diversity prompted the contemplation of an underlying unity. Thales found this principle of origination in water. Alongside elements such as water, air and fire as well as the apeiron (the infinite-unbounded) Greek philosophy successively explores different modes of explanation. Number, space and movement were succeeded by hule and morphe, where these two terms at once captured a connection between the (material) world of becoming and the world of organic life. The combination of matter and form (life) gave rise to the two terms of our investigation: hylozoism and hylomorphism. These terms are also related to the act-potency scheme and they also presuppose the relation between primary matter and substantial form. In the thought of Aristotle one can also identify energeia with entelecheia. As soon as one of the two elements present in the two terms hylozoism and hylomorphism is elevated, a monistic perspective ensues, such as found in the opposition of mechanism and vitalism. These extremes sometimes surface in the shape of physicalism and the idea of an immaterial vital force. During and after the Renaissance, the idea of the mechanisation of the universe emerged, while vitalism continued its after-effect within biology, articularly seen in the legacy of idealist morphology (Ray and Linnaeus). The Aristotelian-Thomistic substance-concept appeared to have inherent problems. On the basis of experimental data Driesch revived vitalism (and Aristotle’s view of an entelechie), but did not succeed in coming to terms with the physical law of non-decreasing entropy – he had to assign the ability to his entelechie to suspend physical laws in order to account for the increasing order found in growing living entities. However, his neo-vitalist followers further explored Von Bertalanffy’s generalisation of the second main law of thermodynamics to open systems. Most recently the idea of a Workmaster (Demiurge) resurfaced in theories of Intelligent Design. These developments are explained by briefly referring to Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer. The historical lines discussed demonstrate how one-sided ismic orientations may make a positive contribution to the identification of unique and irreducible modes of explanation from which scholarly research could still benefit.
The Clash of Voices: Community-based Targeting of Safety-net Interventions in Malawi

Using the principle of community targeting, the 2003 Winter Targeted Input Programme was designed to extend free inputs to about 400,000 households in rural Malawi on the basis of access to dambo, and poverty status. The tendency for most communities was, however, to modify the stipulated criteria on the basis of their perceptions and interpretations of need, entitlement and equity. Strikingly, even though the resulting criteria often reflected priorities conflicting with the officially prescribed guidelines, they were nevertheless not necessarily motivated by fraudulent intentions, though there were some isolated cases of ill-intention. This article therefore advocates at least the incorporation of views from below in the design of interventions of this nature in order to ensure that they achieve the overall desired strategic impact.
Giant Glioblastoma in a Patient with Previous Prostate Adenocarcinoma

Introduction: Malignant gliomas (GBM) are the most common primary malignant brain tumors. Clinical presentation is variable, being headache the most common symptom. Diagnosis is usually suspected by magnetic resonance (MRI) and in most of cases the treatment consists in neurosurgery followed by co-adjuvant radiotherapy and temozolomide. Case presentation: A 57-year-old male presented to the Emergency Department with a 48-hour history of progressive holocraneal headache, vomiting, gait instability and bilateral hearing loss. He underwent brain Computed Tomography (CT) scan and MRI, with results compatible with GBM. Complete mass excision was performed without complications and he was discharged with co-adjuvant treatment with radiotherapy and temozolomide. Conclusion: Despite optimal treatment and important advances in our understanding of molecular pathogenesis, GBM are still associated with high morbidity and mortality.