Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hybrid writer-independent-writer-dependent offline signature verification system

Standard signature verification (SV) systems are writer-dependent (WD), where a specific classifier is designed for each individual. It is inconvenient to ask a user to provide enough number of signature samples to design his WD classifier. In practice, very few samples are collected and inaccurate classifiers maybe produced. To overcome this, writer-independent (WI) systems are introduced. A global classifier is designed using a development database, prior to enrolling users to the system. For these systems, signature templates are needed for verification, and the template databases can be compromised. Moreover, state-of-the-art WI and WD systems provide enhanced accuracy through information fusion at either feature, score or decision levels, but they increase computational complexity. In this study, a hybrid WI-WD system is proposed, as a compromise of the two approaches. When a user is enrolled to the system, a WI classifier is used to verify his queries. During operation, user samples are collected and adapt the WI classifier to his signatures. Once adapted, the resulting WD classifier replaces the WI classifier for this user. Simulations on the Brazilian and the GPDS signature databases indicate that the proposed hybrid system provides comparative accuracy as complex WI and WD systems, while decreases the classification complexity.
Indebtedness, Deleveraging Dynamics and Macroeconomic Adjustment

The current crisis revealed the unsustainability of private sector indebtedness levels, fuelled, in the recent past, by a prolonged period of rapid credit expansion in some EU Member States. The deleveraging process that is now taking place, although necessary, stands as a source of concern in terms of its implications for economic activity. Against this background, this paper aims to (i) identify the EU Member States that are currently facing deleveraging pressures in the non-financial private sector, making use of the informational content of various indebtedness indicators; (ii) assess quantitatively those pressures, using both a threshold approach, which compares the current level of households and non-financial corporations' debt with a static benchmark, and a stationarity approach, which goes a step further by taking into account valuation effects and the possibility of a time-varying "sustainable" level of indebtedness; (iii) refine the link between the identified deleveraging pressures and the actual adjustment of indebtedness through an analysis of the credit supply and demand conditions in each Member State; (iv) simulate the impact of a households' sector deleveraging shock using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model and assess the transmission mechanism through which such a shock influences the economic activity. Some policy implications are also discussed in the concluding section.
Secure Hybrid Publish-Subscribe Messaging Architecture

In many applications of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to machine (M2M) communications, maintaining low latency is an important performance indicator. Encryption protocols are known to be CPU intensive, affecting the dissipated power and increasing the latency. Therefore, the security is often neglected in order to speed up, in particular, the realtime applications that require prompt response. However, in advanced communication networks the security should not be compromised. When data is sent over the Internet, encryption and authentication are required, whereas in the case of a trusted LAN network, encryption and authentication are not necessary in order to sustain lower latency. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach which secures the WAN and minimizes the delay on the LAN. We evaluate our solution by measuring the Round Trip Time (RTT) with and without security enabled to determine the actual security overhead introduced for different computing platforms.
Ribulose 1,5-Bisphosphate Carboxylase-Oxygenase

INTRODUCTION 379 Role in Photosynthesis 379 Enzyme Reaction 380 MOLECULAR PROPERTIES . 381 Native Enzyme 381 Subunit Structure 382 Is Bound Capper Involved? 384 CATALYTIC PROPERTIES . 384 Identification of Enzyme Activation 384 Oxygenase Activity 388 Relationship Between Carboxylase and Oxygenase 389 Kinetics of the Activated Enzyme . 390 Proper Assay of Fully Activated Enzyme . 393 SUMMARY OF KINETIC PARAMETERS . 393 CONCLUSIONS . 394 Physiological Control of CO2 Fixation in the Chloroplast 394 Future Research Aspects 395
The Amyloid Region of Hfq Riboregulator Promotes DsrA:rpoS RNAs Annealing

Simple Summary RNA:amyloid protein interactions have been observed in the past few years. Nevertheless, the molecular basis and physiological implications of these interactions are still poorly understood. Here we focus on a bacterial amyloid protein, Hfq. This protein is a pleiotropic bacterial regulator that mediates many aspects of RNA metabolism. The protein notably mediates mRNA stability and translation efficiency by using stress-related small noncoding regulatory RNAs. This regulation contributes to bacterial adaptation to stresses. Our results show that the amyloid region of Hfq significantly influences the efficiency of annealing between DsrA small noncoding RNA to its target mRNA. This unexpected result opens perspectives for a novel physiological role of amyloids, including those associated with neurodegenerative diseases. Abstract Hfq is a bacterial RNA chaperone which promotes the pairing of small noncoding RNAs to target mRNAs, allowing post-transcriptional regulation. This RNA annealing activity has been attributed for years to the N-terminal region of the protein that forms a toroidal structure with a typical Sm-fold. Nevertheless, many Hfqs, including that of Escherichia coli, have a C-terminal region with unclear functions. Here we use a biophysical approach, Synchrotron Radiation Circular Dichroism (SRCD), to probe the interaction of the E. coli Hfq C-terminal amyloid region with RNA and its effect on RNA annealing. This C-terminal region of Hfq, which has been described to be dispensable for sRNA:mRNA annealing, has an unexpected and significant effect on this activity. The functional consequences of this novel property of the amyloid region of Hfq in relation to physiological stress are discussed.
THE EFFECT OF HALAL AWARENESS AND FOOD INGREDIENTS ON CONSUMER INTERESTS OF CULINARY SEAFOOD BEACH TOURISM

This study aims to determine (1). The effect of halal awareness on consumer buying interest in coastal tourism seafood culinary SMEs. (2). The influence of foodstuffs on consumer buying interest in coastal tourism seafood culinary SMEs. And (3). The influence of halal awareness and foodstuffs on consumer buying interest in coastal tourism seafood culinary SMEs. The object of this research is the culinary consumers of Seafood Kedaikita in Gope beach. The research method used is a quantitative method. The data collection method used a questionnaire. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression method. The results of this study indicate that (1). Halal awareness affects the buying interest of consumers of beach tourism culinary SMEs. Shown by the value of t is greater than t table (6,851 1. 668) and the significance value is smaller than the alpha value (0.000 0.05) (2). Foodstuffs affect consumer buying interest in coastal tourism culinary SMEs. Shown by the value of t count greater than t table (5.784 1.668) and the significance value is smaller than the alpha value (0.000 0.05). (3). Halal awareness and food ingredients have a positive and significant effect on the purchase interest of consumers of coastal tourism culinary SMEs. Shown by the value of F count greater than F table (32,930 3.12) and the significance value is smaller than the alpha value (0.000 0.05) 0.05). (3). Halal awareness and food ingredients have a positive and significant effect on the purchase interest of consumers of coastal tourism culinary SMEs. Shown by the value of F count greater than F table (32,930 3.12) and the significance value is smaller than the alpha value (0.000 0.05) 0.05). (3). Halal awareness and foodstuffs have a positive and significant effect on the purchase interest of consumers of coastal tourism culinary SMEs. Shown by the value of F count greater than F table (32,930 3.12) and the significance value is smaller than the alpha value (0.000 0.05)
Ideal-based algorithms for VASSes and well-structured systems

2 PROJECT ORGANISATION AND MEANS IMPLEMENTED 9 2.1 SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR . 9 2.2 CONSORTIUM AND RESOURCES . 9 2.3 MEANS OF ACHIEVING THE OBJECTIVES . 11 TASK A: ADHERENCE MEMBERSHIP: A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF THE KLM ALGORITHM . 11 TASK B: HANDLING DOWNWARD-CLOSED SETS . 13 TASK C: ACCELERATIONS AND COVERABILITY SETS FOR VASS EXTENSIONS . 14 TASK D: COMPLEXITY ANALYSIS . 16 TASK E: COORDINATION AND DISSEMINATION . 17
Do Social Ties Moderate the Association between Childhood Maltreatment and Gratitude in Older Adults? Results from the NEIGE Study

Background: Childhood maltreatment can impede gratitude, yet little is known about the older population and its moderators. The aim of this study is to clarify the association between childhood maltreatment and levels of gratitude of the older population, and the moderating effect of social ties on the association. Methods: We analyzed the data of 524 community-dwelling older adults aged 65–84 years without functional disabilities in Tokamachi City, Niigata, Japan, collected for the Neuron to Environmental Impact across Generations (NEIGE) study in 2017. Using a questionnaire, the participants rated three types of childhood maltreatment before the age of 18 (physical abuse, emotional neglect, and psychological abuse), level of gratitude, and social ties. Results: We found an inverse association between emotional neglect and gratitude. Furthermore, emotional neglect was inversely associated with gratitude only for those with lower levels of social ties. Conclusions: Promoting social ties may mitigate the adverse impact of emotional neglect on the level of gratitude.
Changeable and privacy preserving face recognition

Traditional methods of identity recognition are based on the knowledge of a password or a PIN, or possession factors such as tokens and ID cards. Such strategies usually afford low level of security, and can not meet the requirements of applications with high security demands. Biometrics refer to the technology of recognizing or validating the identity of an individual based on his/her physiological and/or behavioral characteristics. It is superior to conventional methods in both security and convenience since biometric traits can not be lost, forgotten, or stolen as easily, and it is relatively difficult to circumvent. However, although biometrics based solutions provide various advantages, there exist some inherent concerns of the technology. In the first place, biometrics can not be easily changed or reissued if compromised due to the limited number of biometric traits that humans possess. Secondly, since biometric data reflect the user's physiological or behavioral characteristics, privacy issues arise if the stored biometric templates are obtained by an adversary. To that end, changeability and privacy protection of biometric templates are two important issues that need to be addressed for widespread deployment of biometric technology. This dissertation systematically investigates random transformation based methods for addressing the challenging problems of changeability and privacy protection in biometrics enabled recognition systems. A random projection based approach is first introduced. We present a detailed mathematical analysis on the similarity and privacy preserving properties of random projection, and introduce a vector translation technique to achieve strong changeability. To further enhance privacy protection as well as to improve the recognition accuracy, a sorted index number (SIN) approach is proposed such that only the index numbers of the sorted feature vectors are stored as templates. The SIN framework is then evaluated in conjunction with random additive transform, random multiplicative transform, and random projection, for producing reissuable and privacy preserving biometric templates. The feasibility of the introduced solutions is well supported by detailed theoretical analyses. Extensive experimentation on a face based biometric recognition problem demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
A N I NTELLIGENT M OBILE A PPLICATION FOR D EPRESSION R ELIEF USING A RTIFICIAL I NTELLIGENCE AND N ATURAL L ANGUAGE P ROCESSING

“What is an simple yet effective method to improve the mental health of individuals? ” is the question that we chose to tackle [7]. The solution that we came up with was having a deep conversation with another person. From personal experiences, having deep conversations with another person seemed to be one of the most effective ways to keep someone's mental health issues under control and maintain a more positive outlook on life. Sharing similar experiences with another person can demonstrate to people that they are not alone and there is always someone who can relate to them and lead them down the right path. In order to provide people with an easier method to have deep conversations with one another, we decided to create an application called Affinity, which was developed using Flutter [8]. In this application, users with various mental health issues will be able to talk with other users who have shared similar experiences. Users can connect to each other based on similar mental health issues, and they can engage in deep conversations with one another through a chat messaging system. We tested the results by providing twelve participants with two surveys. One survey measured a self-given score regarding the participant’s levels of stress and anxiety before using Affinity as well as after one week of using Affinity, and the other survey asks participants to tally the number of conversation partners that shared at least one mental health issue or experience with them compared to the total number of conversation partners. The results we have found are that daily usage of this application will generally reduce levels of stress and anxiety, and the majority of the individuals that the application will offer as conversation partners will be able to connect to a user through at least one additional similar shared experience or mental health issue.
Dual Preference Distribution Learning for Explainable Item Recommendation

Recommender systems can automatically recommend users with items that they probably like. The goal of them is to represent the user and item and model their interaction. Existing methods have primarily learned the user’s preferences and item’s features with vectorized representations, and modeled the user-item interaction by the similarity of them. In fact, the user’s preferences to items can be traced to his/her preferences to item attributes, and the user’s different preferences are also related. Thus, exploring such fine-grained preferences and modeling their relationships could help better understand the user’s preferences. Toward this end, we propose a dual preference distribution learning framework, which jointly captures the user’s preferences to both the items and attributes by a Gaussian distribution, termed the general and specific preference distributions, respectively. In this manner, the mean vector of the Gaussian distribution can capture the user’s preferences, while its covariance matrix can learn their relationships. The proposed DUPLE is a generative method that can produce the preference distribution for a given user. Thus, by tracking the user’s specific preference distribution, w can summarize a preferred attribute profile for each user, depicting his/her preferred item attributes. Based on that, we can provide the explanation of recommending an item with the overlap between the item attributes of the user prefers and the item has. Extensive quantitative and qualitative experiments on six public datasets demonstrate the effectiveness and explainability of the DUPLE method.
Choosing None of the Above : Persistence of Negativity after Group Discussion and Group Decision

Nutzungsbedingungen: Dieser Text wird unter dem "PEER Licence Agreement zur Verfügung" gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zum PEER-Projekt finden Sie hier: http://www.peerproject. eu Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf Nutzung dieses Dokuments. Dieses Dokument ist ausschließlich für den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen Gebrauch bestimmt. Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments müssen alle Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise auf gesetzlichen Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses Dokument nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen Sie dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie die Nutzungsbedingungen an. Terms of use: This document is made available under the "PEER Licence Agreement ". For more Information regarding the PEER-project see: http://www.peerproject. eu This document is solely intended for your personal, non-commercial use.All of the copies of this documents must retain all copyright information and other information regarding legal protection. You are not allowed to alter this document in any way, to copy it for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the document in public, to perform, distribute or otherwise use the document in public. By using this particular document, you accept the above-stated conditions of use.
Microstructures of puddling slags from Fontley, England and Roxbury, Connecticut, USA

Samples of slags from the site of Henry's Cort's original iron puddling furnace at Fontley Forge, Hampshire, and a puddled steel works at Roxbury, Connecticut, have very similar compositions that are in agreement with what is known of the operation of puddling furnaces. Fayalite is the dominant constituent and is accompanied by varying proportions of magnetite, silica in the form of tridymite or cristobalite, iron sulphide, and a groundmass composed of complex intergrowths of magnetite, fayalite and glass. Wustite and metallic iron are absent and the content of Na 2 O, K 2 O, CaO, and Al 2 O 3 is very low. These characteristics distinguish the slags studied from bloomery and finery slags and, if found in other examples, may be diagnostic of puddling slag. In the three principal methods of making wrought iron -- bloom smelting, fining, and puddling -- solid iron is formed in a liquid slag that approximates the composition of fayalite (2FeO SiO 2 ). Chemical analyses of the bulk compositions of slags from the three processes overlap to such a degree that a given slag sample cannot be associated with the process it is from on the basis of composition alone. Additional information about a slag can be obtained from its microstructure. Compilations of slag microstructures have been published by Sperl and by Bachmann while Kresten has presented a detailed study of the chemistry and mineralogy of ancient Swedish slags. Bloomery slags have received the most attention in recent research. Fells has described the structures of several English bloomery slags in detail and has also reviewed the results of previous research on slag structure. Micrographs of finery slags have been published by Bedwin and by Morton and Wingrove; inspection of their photographs shows that there are no differences in microstructure that could be used to distinguish finery from bloomery slag. No examples of the microstructure of puddling slags appear to have been published. We have examined the structures of samples of puddling slags from Fontley Forge (Hampshire, England) and Roxbury (Connecticut, United States) to see if their structures distinguish them from finery and bloomery slags. -- AATA
On Binaural Spatialization and the Use of GPGPU for Audio Processing

x 0.1 Abstract . x 0.2 Structure of this text . xi 1 An Introduction to Sound Perception and 3D Audio 1 1.1 Glossary and Spatial Coordinates . 1 1.2 Anatomy of the Auditory System . 5 1.3 Sound Localization: Localization Cues . 8 1.4 Minimum Audible Angle (MAA) . 14 1.5 Distance Perception . 14 1.6 Listening through headphones and the Inside the Head Localization (IHL) . 17 1.7 3D Audio and Binaural Spatialization Techniques . 18 1.8 Binaural Spatialization . 18 2 General Purpose computing on Graphic Processing Units (GPGPU): An Overview 20 2.1 Available Architectures . 21
SkM 1 and Cx 32 improve conduction in canine myocardial infarcts yet only SkM 1 is antiarrhythmic

SkM1 and Cx32 improve conduction in canine myocardial infarcts yet only SkM1 is antiarrhythmic
THE VALUE OF THE COLD PRESSOR TEST IN THE PREDICTION OF HYPERTENSION AND TOXÆMIA IN PREGNANCY

Page. ORIGINAL ARTIVLESThe Value of the Cold Pressor Test in the Prediction of Hypertension and Toxllemiil. in Pregnancy, by Vera I. Krieger, D.Sc., and Sara Welden, B.Sc. . " 417 Undergraduate and Post-Graduate Education in Physical Medicine, by Harold Crawford, M.B. , B.S., F.R. A.C. S. 423 Cross-Infection of Wounds in a Surgical Ward during a Trial of the Use of Oiled Blankets, by Phyllis M. Rountree . , . 427 Nutritional Deflciency Diseases, by G. Bruce Hall 430
The Impact of Patient Education on Quality of Life of Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG) in the West Bank of Palestine

Background: Quality of life (QoL) has emerged as an important concept and outcome in health and health care. Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the health education program to improve QoL of patients with coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) and to reduce the problems encountered after discharge. The objectives were to help patients to develop healthy behavior s to deal properly with the problems caused by the disease and to enhance their QoL after discharge. Design: The study was clinical trial with experimental correlation design. Methods: Hundred and sixty patients were included in this experimental study and divided into two groups as; the intervention group (n = 80) and the control group (n = 80). Patients in the intervention group were given planned educational program of booklet and DVD by the research nurse beginning from hospitalization and reinforced at discharge, while the patients in the control group did not receive planned educational program other than the ordinary verbal instructions. The patient data were collected using the”Personal Information Form”, “The Home Follow-Up Form after Discharge” and “SF-36 Health Survey” and “effectiveness of the educational program. The forms were used for data collection before and after intervention. follow up after discharge was provided within three intervals; 2 days, 10 days and one month after discharge. Results: It was found that the mean QoL scores of the patients in the intervention group were higher than in the control group one month after discharge, significant difference was observed between the intervention and control group in all QoL domains (p < 0,05). Conclusion: The educational program that consists of booklet and DVD given to CABG patients in the intervention group had a positive impact on the QoL of these patients and on alleviating the problems they encountered.