A Unified Multilingual Handwriting Recognition System using multigrams sub-lexical units

We address the design of a unified multilingual system for handwriting recognition. Most of multi- lingual systems rests on specialized models that are trained on a single language and one of them is selected at test time. While some recognition systems are based on a unified optical model, dealing with a unified language model remains a major issue, as traditional language models are generally trained on corpora composed of large word lexicons per language. Here, we bring a solution by con- sidering language models based on sub-lexical units, called multigrams. Dealing with multigrams strongly reduces the lexicon size and thus decreases the language model complexity. This makes pos- sible the design of an end-to-end unified multilingual recognition system where both a single optical model and a single language model are trained on all the languages. We discuss the impact of the language unification on each model and show that our system reaches state-of-the-art methods perfor- mance with a strong reduction of the complexity.Comment: preprin

Levels of trace metals and effect of body size on metal content and concentration in Arctica islandica L. (Mollusca: Bivalvia) from Kiel Bay, Western Baltic

The levels of four trace metals (Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn) in the whole soft body and in different organs of the ocean quahog Arctica islandica were evaluated from four stations in Kiel Bay, Western Baltic. The relationships between the contents and concentrations of these metals and body size (weight and length) were also investigated. Double logarithmic plots of metal contents and concentrations against dry body weight and shell length, respectively, show straight-line relationships. The results indicate that smaller individuals have higher concentrations of Cu and Zn, two essential metals, while larger individuals have higher concentrations of Cd and Pb, two non-essential metals. The calculated regression slopes of metal content against dry-body weight revealed that Cd and Cu appear to be affected by maturation since two different slopes are observed for both metals before and after maturation. This was not obvious for Pb and Zn. Pooled slopes of metal content against dry-body weight for all animal sizes indicated that Cu and Zn have a one common slope of (0.82) and Cd and Pb another common one of (1.51). Plots of metal concentrations against shell length indicated also that Cu and Zn have one common slope of (−0.54) and Cd and Pb another one of (1.56). Moreover, it was possible to calculate one final slope of (1.53) for Cd and Pb from both content/weight and concentration/length plots. This indicates that A. islandica may have one metabolic strategy for the essential metals and another for the non-essential metals

Accounting Conservatism and its Impact on the Forecasting Financial Failure in Industrial Companies Listed on the Amman Stock Exchange: an Analytical Study

This study aimed to try to find a way to predict the advanced stages of financial failure in Industrial corporations listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE), and that by measuring the level of the conservatism the accounting abide by these companies, and by knowing whether there was a relationship between the Accounting Conservatism and forecasting financial failure. To achieve these results, the researchers used model (Basu, 1997) to measure the Accounting Conservatism, and model (Altman and mccough, 1995) to predict the financial failure, was the use of multiple linear regression model to test the hypotheses of the study and clarify the relationship between them. The study sample included industrial companies listed on the ASE and the number of (74), were excluded (14) company due to lack of information, to become the sample used in the study sample (60) company, and during the period from 2008 to 2012), and came results of the study are consistent with several previous studies have shown that industrial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange is committed to an acceptable degree of Accounting Conservatism, and that there is an impact of the Accounting Conservatism to predict the financial failure of those companies, and the findings also indicated that there is a relationship medium between the Accounting Conservatism, forecasting financial failure .

Accounting Conservatism and its Impact on the Forecasting Financial Failure in Industrial Companies Listed on the Amman Stock Exchange: an Analytical Study

This study aimed to try to find a way to predict the advanced stages of financial failure in Industrial corporations listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE), and that by measuring the level of the conservatism the accounting abide by these companies, and by knowing whether there was a relationship between the Accounting Conservatism and forecasting financial failure. To achieve these results, the researchers used model (Basu, 1997) to measure the Accounting Conservatism, and model (Altman and mccough, 1995) to predict the financial failure, was the use of multiple linear regression model to test the hypotheses of the study and clarify the relationship between them. The study sample included industrial companies listed on the ASE and the number of (74), were excluded (14) company due to lack of information, to become the sample used in the study sample (60) company, and during the period from 2008 to 2012), and came results of the study are consistent with several previous studies have shown that industrial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange is committed to an acceptable degree of Accounting Conservatism, and that there is an impact of the Accounting Conservatism to predict the financial failure of those companies, and the findings also indicated that there is a relationship medium between the Accounting Conservatism, forecasting financial failure .

Towards the Desirable Decision Boundary by Moderate-Margin Adversarial Training

Adversarial training, as one of the most effective defense methods against adversarial attacks, tends to learn an inclusive decision boundary to increase the robustness of deep learning models. However, due to the large and unnecessary increase in the margin along adversarial directions, adversarial training causes heavy cross-over between natural examples and adversarial examples, which is not conducive to balancing the trade-off between robustness and natural accuracy. In this paper, we propose a novel adversarial training scheme to achieve a better trade-off between robustness and natural accuracy. It aims to learn a moderate-inclusive decision boundary, which means that the margins of natural examples under the decision boundary are moderate. We call this scheme Moderate-Margin Adversarial Training (MMAT), which generates finer-grained adversarial examples to mitigate the cross-over problem. We also take advantage of logits from a teacher model that has been well-trained to guide the learning of our model. Finally, MMAT achieves high natural accuracy and robustness under both black-box and white-box attacks. On SVHN, for example, state-of-the-art robustness and natural accuracy are achieved

Antifungal and Antibacterial Activities of Isolated Marine Compounds

To combat the ineffectiveness of currently available pharmaceutical medications, caused by the emergence of increasingly resistant bacterial and fungal strains, novel antibacterial and antifungal medications are urgently needed. Novel natural compounds with antimicrobial activities can be obtained by exploring underexplored habitats such as the world’s oceans. The oceans represent the largest ecosystem on earth, with a high diversity of organisms. Oceans have received some attention in the past few years, and promising compounds with antimicrobial activities were isolated from marine organisms such as bacteria, fungi, algae, sea cucumbers, sea sponges, etc. This review covers 56 antifungal and 40 antibacterial compounds from marine organisms. These compounds are categorized according to their chemical structure groups, including polyketides, alkaloids, ribosomal peptides, and terpenes, and their organismal origin. The review provides the minimum inhibitory concentration MIC values and the bacterial/fungal strains against which these chemical compounds show activity. This study shows strong potential for witnessing the development of new novel antimicrobial drugs from these natural compounds isolated and evaluated for their antimicrobial activities

Verspera, du plan d’époque à la visite virtuelle : une fructueuse collaboration interdisciplinaire

La recherche en sciences du patrimoine est une recherche interdisciplinaire. Dans le cadre du projet Verspera, historiens, archivistes, conservateurs et informaticiens se sont associés autour du très riche corpus des plans d’Ancien Régime du château de Versailles, pour en assurer la numérisation, la préservation et la diffusion vers le grand public et les professionnels, et pour en proposer une exploitation sous forme de modélisations tridimensionnelles et de visites virtuelles. Cet article revient sur les différentes phases du projet et souligne la richesse et l’intérêt du travail interdisciplinaire pour l’étude de tels objets du patrimoine.Research in cultural heritage sciences is an interdisciplinary work. In the Verspera project, historians, archivists, curators and computer scientists worked together on the very rich corpus of the Ancien Régime plans of the Château de Versailles. The Verspera project aimed to digitise, preserve and share this corpus with the general public, and to exploit it as 3D models and virtual visits. This paper summarises the different stages of the project and emphasises the breadth and interest of interdisciplinary work for the study of such a cultural heritage object