Latent Fingerprint Recognition: Fusion of Local and Global Embeddings

One of the most challenging problems in fingerprint recognition continues to be establishing the identity of a suspect associated with partial and smudgy fingerprints left at a crime scene (i.e., latent prints or fingermarks). Despite the success of fixed-length embeddings for rolled and slap fingerprint recognition, the features learned for latent fingerprint matching have mostly been limited to local minutiae-based embeddings and have not directly leveraged global representations for matching. In this paper, we combine global embeddings with local embeddings for state-of-the-art latent to rolled matching accuracy with high throughput. The combination of both local and global representations leads to improved recognition accuracy across NIST SD 27, NIST SD 302, MSP, MOLF DB1/DB4, and MOLF DB2/DB4 latent fingerprint datasets for both closed-set (84.11%, 54.36%, 84.35%, 70.43%, 62.86% rank-1 retrieval rate, respectively) and open-set (0.50, 0.74, 0.44, 0.60, 0.68 FNIR at FPIR=0.02, respectively) identification scenarios on a gallery of 100K rolled fingerprints. Not only do we fuse the complimentary representations, we also use the local features to guide the global representations to focus on discriminatory regions in two fingerprint images to be compared. This leads to a multi-stage matching paradigm in which subsets of the retrieved candidate lists for each probe image are passed to subsequent stages for further processing, resulting in a considerable reduction in latency (requiring just 0.068 ms per latent to rolled comparison on a AMD EPYC 7543 32-Core Processor, roughly 15K comparisons per second). Finally, we show the generalizability of the fused representations for improving authentication accuracy across several rolled, plain, and contactless fingerprint datasets

Social Movements and Institutional Entrepreneurship as Facilitators of Technology Transition: The Case of Free/Open-Source Software

We integrate insights from the literature on social movements and institutional entrepreneurship into the strategic niche management (SNM) and multilevel perspective (MLP) frameworks to understand the emergence of Linux, a free/open-source operating system, in a regime dominated by proprietary operating systems such as Unix and Windows NT. Employing a “microhistories” methodology, we document how actors in the free/open-source movement took steps that enabled an alternate technological niche to form, gain momentum and eventually infiltrate the extant regime. Our account delineates the key role that actors play in shaping the identity of a niche, amplifying its presence, and finally mainstreaming it. We observe a heterogenous response by incumbents to the emergent niche and highlight the sustained coexistence of a niche and regime as a distinct form of technological transition. Finally, we demonstrate the significant impact that a niche can have, spanning beyond the targeted regime, and becoming part of the landscape. Our insights highlight how tracing the processes involved in the emergence and development of a niche can provide a prospective and generative understanding of technological transition, thereby contributing to and complementing the extant SNM and MLP literatures

One-Dimensional Dispersive Magnon Excitation in the Frustrated Spin-2 Chain System Ca3Co2O6

Using inelastic neutron scattering, we have observed a quasi-one-dimensional dispersive magnetic excitation in the frustrated triangular-lattice spin-2 chain oxide Ca3Co2O6. At the lowest temperature (T = 1.5 K), this magnon is characterized by a large zone-center spin gap of ~27 meV, which we attribute to the large single-ion anisotropy, and disperses along the chain direction with a bandwidth of ~3.5 meV. In the directions orthogonal to the chains, no measurable dispersion was found. With increasing temperature, the magnon dispersion shifts towards lower energies, yet persists up to at least 150 K, indicating that the ferromagnetic intrachain correlations survive up to 6 times higher temperatures than the long-range interchain antiferromagnetic order. The magnon dispersion can be well described within the predictions of linear spin-wave theory for a system of weakly coupled ferromagnetic chains with large single-ion anisotropy, enabling the direct quantitative determination of the magnetic exchange and anisotropy parameters.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures including one animatio

A retrospective study to assess and correlate maternal periodontal status with term of pregnancy and weight of newborn

Background: Periodontitis is an inflammatory disease affecting the tooth supporting structures; studies have shown that it also affects the systemic health and conditions like pregnancy. With this background the present retrospective study was conducted to assess and correlate periodontal status of pregnant women with their pregnancy outcome.Methods: A total of 150 pregnant women two days postpartum were examined for periodontal status using following parameters: Oral hygiene index- simplified (OHI-S), modified gingival index (MGI), probing pocket depth (PPD) and clinical attachment loss (CAL). The level of education, body mass index (BMI), gestational age and weight of the baby were recorded and correlated with the periodontal status.Results: Out of 150 women, 83 (55.3%) women suffered from gingivitis and 67 (44.7%) had periodontitis. The incidence of preterm low birth weight babies was seen in 65 (43.33%) women. Body mass index, education level and periodontal disease were significantly associated with preterm low birth weight infants.Conclusions: A significant association was found between periodontitis and preterm low birth infants. The promotion of early detection and treatment of periodontal diseases in women before and during pregnancy will be beneficial. This will minimize the cost of post natal care and morbidity in the new born