240 research outputs found

    Facial asymmetry: A Computer Vision based behaviometric index for assessment during a face-to-face interview

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    Choosing the right person for the right job makes the personnel interview process a cognitively demanding task. Psychometric tests, followed by an interview, have often been used to aid the process although such mechanisms have their limitations. While psychometric tests suffer from faking or social desirability of responses, the interview process depends on the way the responses are analyzed by the interviewers. We propose the use of behaviometry as an assistive tool to facilitate an objective assessment of the interviewee without increasing the cognitive load of the interviewer. Behaviometry is a relatively little explored field of study in the selection process, that utilizes inimitable behavioral characteristics like facial expressions, vocalization patterns, pupillary reactions, proximal behavior, body language, etc. The method analyzes thin slices of behavior and provides unbiased information about the interviewee. The current study proposes the methodology behind this tool to capture facial expressions, in terms of facial asymmetry and micro-expressions. Hemi-facial composites using a structural similarity index was used to develop a progressive time graph of facial asymmetry, as a test case. A frame-by-frame analysis was performed on three YouTube video samples, where Structural similarity index (SSID) scores of 75% and more showed behavioral congruence. The research utilizes open-source computer vision algorithms and libraries (python-opencv and dlib) to formulate the procedure for analysis of the facial asymmetry

    COVID-19 in India: who are we leaving behind?

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    The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered and intensified existing societal inequalities. People on the move and residents of urban slums and informal settlements are among some of the most affected groups in the Global South. Given the current living conditions of migrants, the WHO guidelines on how to prevent COVID-19 (such as handwashing, physical distancing and working from home) are challenging to nearly impossible in informal settlements. We use the case of India to highlight the challenges of migrants and urban slum dwellers during the COVID-19 response, and to provide human rights-based recommendations for immediate action to safeguard these vulnerable population

    Revenue Driven Resource Allocation for Virtualized Data Centers

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    Abstract—The increasing VM density in cloud hosting services makes careful management of physical resources such as CPU, memory, and I/O bandwidth within individual virtualized servers a priority. To maximize cost-efficiency, resource management needs to be coupled with the revenue generating mechanisms of cloud hosting: the service level agreements (SLAs) of hosted client applications. In this paper, we develop a server resource man-agement framework that reduces data center resource manage-ment complexity substantially. Our solution implements revenue-driven dynamic resource allocation which continuously steers the resource distribution across hosted VMs within a server such as to maximize the SLA-generated revenue from the server. Our experimental evaluation for a VMware ESX hypervisor highlights the importance of both resource isolation and resource sharing across VMs. The empirical data shows a 7%-54 % increase in total revenue generated for a mix of 10-25 VMs hosting either similar or diverse workloads when compared to using the currently available resource distribution mechanisms in ESX. I

    Deoxydehydration of vicinal diols and polyols catalyzed by pyridinium perrhenate salts

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    Simple ammonium and pyridinium perrhenate salts were evaluated as catalysts for the deoxydehydration (DODH) of diols into alkenes. Pyridinium perrhenates were found to be effective catalysts at much lower temperatures than those in previous reports, outperforming primary, secondary, and tertiary ammonium salts, while quaternary ammonium salts are effectively inactive. The mechanism of reaction was studied computationally using DFT calculations which indicate that proton shuttling between the ion pair is intrinsic to the mechanism and that the reduction of rhenium by the phosphine occurs before the diol condensation

    Disease spectrum and its molecular characterisation in the lentil production system of lower-Indo Gangetic plains

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    Lentil is a food legume grown in the Indo-Gangetic plains including lower Gangetic Bengal (LGB). Lentil productivity in this zone is severely impeded because of the prevalence of several biotic cues. Plausible reports regarding the status of disease scenario and the associated risk factors are missing. Therefore, judicious crop management strategies are lacking. An intensive survey of 267 farmers’ fields was conducted over 3 years in major lentil-growing districts of LGB to evaluate the disease incidence and prevalence. Additional insights were generated, apprehending isolation and characterisation of associated pathogens through spore morphology and molecular markers as well as elucidating the role of biophysical factors in influencing disease development. Climate change has shifted the disease dimension of lentil and precipitated new disease complexes of great risk, which was reflected through geospatial mapping results in the present study. The prevalence of three major diseases, namely collar rot (Sclerotium rolfsii), lentil blight complex (LBC) incited by both Alternaria and Stemphylium, and lentil rust (Uromyces viciae-fabae), was ascertained through cultural and molecular studies and contextualised through pathogenicity appraisal. This study is the first to investigate the complex mixed infection of Alternaria alternata and Stemphylium botryosum, successfully isolating S. botyrosum in India, and confirming the pathogens through sequencing by using internal transcribed spacer (ITS) primers and Stemphylium-specific Glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase 1 (gpd1) and gpd2 primers. Unlike late planting, early planting promoted collar rot infestation. LBC and rust incidence were magnified in late planting. Soil texture resulted in the spatial distribution of collar rot disease. The surveyed data also highlighted the potential role of resistant cultivars and cropping pattern intervention to ensure associational resistance towards addressing the disease bottleneck in lentil
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