UBSegNet: Unified Biometric Region of Interest Segmentation Network

Digital human identity management, can now be seen as a social necessity, as it is essentially required in almost every public sector such as, financial inclusions, security, banking, social networking e.t.c. Hence, in today's rampantly emerging world with so many adversarial entities, relying on a single biometric trait is being too optimistic. In this paper, we have proposed a novel end-to-end, Unified Biometric ROI Segmentation Network (UBSegNet), for extracting region of interest from five different biometric traits viz. face, iris, palm, knuckle and 4-slap fingerprint. The architecture of the proposed UBSegNet consists of two stages: (i) Trait classification and (ii) Trait localization. For these stages, we have used a state of the art region based convolutional neural network (RCNN), comprising of three major parts namely convolutional layers, region proposal network (RPN) along with classification and regression heads. The model has been evaluated over various huge publicly available biometric databases. To the best of our knowledge this is the first unified architecture proposed, segmenting multiple biometric traits. It has been tested over around 5000 * 5 = 25,000 images (5000 images per trait) and produces very good results. Our work on unified biometric segmentation, opens up the vast opportunities in the field of multiple biometric traits based authentication systems.Comment: 4th Asian Conference on Pattern Recognition (ACPR 2017

Preparation of Silica Nanoparticles using Microemulsion Techniques

Silica nanoparticles have been prepared in this work using water in oil (W/O) emulsion system at room temperature that employs a water-soluble amine as catalyst and tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) as the silica source. The pH value of the aqueous phase and the water: surfactant ratio were found to be the key factors contributing to the formation and final size of stable and regular spherical silica particles. When the pH value of the aqueous phase was controlled between 8 and 9, silica particles could be synthesized. The shell thickness of the hollow particles as and when prepared was found to increase with the length of the hydrocarbon tail of the amine catalyst. The viscosity of the external oil phase determined the shape regularity of the spherical silica hollow particles. The kinetics of the formation of silica hollow particles was believed to be based on the difference between the hydrolysis rate and the condensation rate of TEOS, which can be adjusted by the pH value of the aqueous phase. After treating the core-shell particles with concentric nitric acid, the hollow silica spheres were obtained correspondingly. The particles were characterized by Scanning electron Microscope (SEM), Optical Microscope and UV Spectrophotometer. The study shows that through further processing, advanced materials could be prepared; and that the hollow silica spheres could be potentially used as a novel class of catalyst supports

Online Hospitality and Tourism Education - Issues and Challenges

The study attempts to understand students\u27 apprehensions, satisfaction, and experience concerning online hospitality and tourism education (HTE) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Focused group discussions were conducted to gather student experiences implementing ICT in hospitality and tourism education. The group discussions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed in search of themes to identify and validate the constructs to develop the questionnaire for the study. The questionnaire was then presented before the subject experts to cross-check the validity of constructs. Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) was used to determine students\u27 satisfaction by comparing students\u27 perceptions to students\u27 expectations. The study\u27s findings show the importance of practical classes and labs and on-site instructor comments on students\u27 overall satisfaction. Online teaching can complement traditional classroom teaching but cannot fully replace lab sessions with instructor feedback. Transitioning to an online platform requires effective tools and curriculum modifications to fill the gap in industry expectations regarding student employability. Online teaching has immense capability, but it cannot be generalized and requires subject-specific attention and feedback. Online education needs to keep evolving alongside contemporary classroom teaching to meet student expectations. Future research would concentrate on communication, interpersonal, and technology skills and their effect on the study\u27s results

Mapping of literature on data mining by j-gate database

The present study discusses the “Data Mining” as reflected in J-gate for the period from 2010–2019. The present paper investigates the research area, productive authors, highly ranked authors, year-wise growth, and geographical distribution of the research output. The result indicates that there was a total of 6107 articles had been published on Data Mining from 2010 to 2019. The result shows that India and the United States of America have contributed the highest articles on Data Mining. This study reveals that the highest number of publications were published in the subject Information Science and Systems, and Jason H Moore from the University of Pennsylvania, USA has the highest number of articles during the selected period, i.e. 2010-2019

A Compact Printed Monopole Antenna for Dual-band RFID and WLAN Applications

Design of a simple and compact microstrip-fed printed monopole antenna (PMA) for applications in wireless local area network (WLAN) and radio frequency identification (RFID) is presented. The dual-band operation is achieved from the 9-shaped folded antenna which is printed on a non-conductor backed dielectric. Measured percentage impedance bandwidth of the PMA at the center frequencies of 2.43 GHz and 5.24 GHz are 33.13 (2.14 GHz to 2.99 GHz) and 36.43 (4.40 GHz to 6.36 GHz) respectively. Consistent omnidirectional radiation patterns have been observed in both the frequency bands from the experimental results. The proposed antenna is simple in design and compact in size. It exhibits broadband impedance matching, consistent omnidirectional radiation patterns and appropriate gain characteristics (>2.5 dBi) in the RFID and WLAN frequency regions

Randomized Phase III Trial Comparing Epirubicin/ Doxorubicin Plus Docetaxel and Epirubicin/ Doxorubicin Plus Paclitaxel as First Line Treatment in Women with Advanced Breast Cancer

This study aimed to examine the efficacy of docetaxel plus epirubicin against docetaxel plus capecitabine as first-line therapy for women with advanced breast cancer (ABC). Patients with ABC who had not been treated in the past were split into two groups: those who received docetaxel and epirubicin (DE) on day 1 and those who received docetaxel and capecitabine (DC) on day 1 and twice daily on days 1-14 of each 21-day cycle. Prior neoadjuvant treatment with anthracyclines was permitted if it had been finished more than a year prior to enrolment. The study\u27s major aim was to evaluate the difference in time to disease progression (TTP). Median TTP for DE was 10.6 months and for DC it was 11.0 months (P = 0.7), with each arm treating 170 women. Using the RECIST criterion, we found that the rates of complete responses were higher in DC (61%) than in DE (11%), and that the rates of partial responses were lower in DC (40%) than in DE (45%) (P = 0.8). Grade 3-4 neutropenia was more common with DE than DC (57% vs. 46%, P = 0.07), as were febrile neutropenia (11% vs. 8%, P = 0.4), hand-foot syndrome (0% vs. 4%, P = 0.02), grade 2-3 anemia (20% vs. 7%, P = 0.001), and asthenia (12% vs. 6%, P = 0.09)

A bibliometric analysis of open knowledge resources : a study

The present paper deals with a Bibliometric analysis of the published literature on Open Knowledge Resources for the period from 2014 to 2019. The data for the study was extracted from the Scival database of the Elsevier. A total of 3943 articles were retrieved for six years. The present paper investigates the year-wise growth, highly ranked authors, highest contributed institutions, most productive journals and geographical distribution of the research output. The result shows that the United States of America has contributed the highest number of articles (885) on Open Knowledge. This study reveals that the highest number of publications were published in the year of 2018, and Piedra, N. of Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Ecuador has the highest number (15) of articles with 115 citations during the selected period, i.e. 2014-2019

Boragaon: Amid Guwahati's Waste is a Neglected Ecosystem of People and Animals

Waste is often considered a great nuisance – but it can also be a source of livelihoods and sustenance in its own right. A big thorn in Guwahati’s side is its municipal waste, and the public dialogue over its Boragaon landfill is currently caught between urban development and ecological and public health. Yet there exists a third group with its own interests that both civil society and policymakers need to acknowledge and plan for