Login Authentication with Facial Gesture Recognition

Facial recognition has proven to be very useful and versatile, from Facebook photo tagging and Snapchat filters to modeling fluid dynamics and designing for augmented reality. However, facial recognition has only been used for user login services in conjunction with expensive and restrictive hardware technologies, such as in smart phone devices like the iPhone x. This project aims to apply machine learning techniques to reliably distinguish user accounts with only common cameras to make facial recognition logins more accessible to website and software developers. To show the feasibility of this idea, we created a web API that recognizes a users face to log them in to their account, and we will create a simple website to test the reliability of our system. In this paper, we discuss our database-centric architecture model, use cases and activity diagrams, technologies we used for the website, API, and machine learning algorithms. We also provide the screenshots of our system, the user manual, and our future plan

Paikallavalettavien betonirakenteiden työmaaohjeistus

Betoni raaka-aineena vaatii paljon valmistajiltaan ja käsittelijöiltään. Eri rakenteet vaativat eri työmenetelmiä käyttökohteen, sijainnin ja rakenteen mukaan. Betonia työstettäessä betonia pitää ymmärtää. Tässä opinnäytetyössä perehdytään paikallavalettavien betonirakenteiden työskentelymenetelmiin, huomioitaviin asioihin ja yleisohjeisiin, joista raottuu betonin syvin olemus. Onnistunut betonointi normaaleissa olosuhteissa vaatii perusteellista ennakkosuunnittelua, valmistautumista ja huolellista toteutusta. Työmaaolosuhteissa on kyettävä ennakoimaan mahdolliset vastoinkäymiset ja odottamattomat yllätykset. Ongelmien tapahtuessa pitää pystyä reagoimaan ja tekemään pikaisia päätöksiä betonin lyhyen työstettävyyden takia. Betonia valettaessa ei voida aina seurata ohjekirjaa. Pelkästään ongelmattoman betonoinnin toteuttaminen vaatii paljon suunnittelua ja ennakkojärjestelyä. Jo betonoidun rakenteen korjaamiskustannukset ovat hyvin kalliit, kun taas hyvin muotitettu, valettu ja jälkihoidettu betonipinta kelpaa pinnoittamattomanakin toimistotaloihin. Betonirakenteita tehtäessä joudutaan usein tekemään kompromisseja, ja tämä opinnäytetyö auttaa pääsemään lähemmäksi käytännön betonointia ja tukemaan tulevia työmaatehtäviä.This bachelor’s thesis explores the work methods related to concreting concrete structures at a worksite and the notable facts and instructions. Concrete as a material requires a great amount of planning ahead from the workers and different structures require different methods because of their demanding nature. Instructions and examples in this bachelor’s thesis were taken from a wide selection of literature, materials by assorted range of professionals in the concrete industry and from personal experience and discussions with construction professionals. When working concrete in construction site environment one might find themselves in surprising situations in which one has to apply his accumulated knowledge. A single set of instructions is not enough to understand the effect of different environments on concrete, but with a clear and comprehensive variety of instructions one can avoid the common mishaps associated with worksite concreting. Even a standard concreting requires plenty of planning ahead and organizing. In construction business, one cannot always relay on ”The Manual” but once own knowledge and applying it in creative ways will help you survive the majority of the concrete work. This bachelor’s thesis will provide support and reference for construc-tion professionals, both young and old, when they are in need of written material and clear instructions to complement their practical learning

Social Capital of Political Leaders: The Third Dimension of Political Power, Committee of Foreign Affairs in Parliament of Finland

Recently, theories on social capital have received growing attention in public policy making due to the benefits social capital is claimed to aggregate to goups of people. Emerged critics, however, challenge this comprehension: social capital also restricts performance. According to Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), social capital is a metaphor for power that defines individuals’ positions in social hierarchies. Forms of this influential power are relational to different fields, within which social interactions are embedded. Further, distribution of social authority is a growing trend in political leadership—who decides what is decided? Drawing on Bourdieu, this thesis defends the third dimension of power, as introduced by Steven Lukes (2005), as the dominant component of social capital. The purpose is to extend past social capital research to parliamentary context in order to explain differences in political leaders’ performance. In particular, the study sets forth political leaders’ resources for power and deepens understanding on the social regularities, power distribution, and unwritten rules in the Parliament of Finland. The qualitative case research samples 15 political leaders working in the Committee of Foreign Affairs at the time the research data was gathered in year 2015. Method for the study is qualitative case research. Primary data was gathered via semi-structured interviews, the average duration of which were 60 minutes. Findings reveal that social relationships contribute to dominate social positions that equal with political power. Power is distributed proportionally to quality and amount of individual resources with ability to advertise them, hence, Members of Parliament (MPs) are pre-evaluated based on age and gender. MPs with shared interests tend to form reciprocal sub-groups which strengthen their influence. First term MPs are positioned low in the power hierarchy. The most valued resources for power are status, substance, seniority and experience, social capabilities, and charm including persuasion skills. Social sensitivity together with parliamentary regularities constitutes political habitus, or the eye for the game. Power relations shape individual identity and judgement, which have considerable effect on MPs’ ability to utilize available strategies for political influence as well as on the collective benefits of social capital. In this case, power distances are narrow and micro level social capital is converted from the cultural. Therefore, social capital induces positive gain in form of consent and knowledge based political decisions. However, actors diverging from shared expectancies are excluded in the political decision making. This thesis paves the way for socio-political research on social capital, parliamentary policy making, and organizational leadership by introducing a theoretical frame that conjoins the third dimension of power and Bourdieu’s social capital.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Perceptions Of North Dakota Principals Regarding Teacher Hiring Practices

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which North Dakota public school principals consider research-based professional and personal teacher characteristics when hiring teachers. Additionally, this study sought to determine North Dakota public school principals\u27 perceptions regarding teacher hiring practices - the interviewing and teacher selection process. This study utilized the conceptual framework on effective teacher qualities and personal teacher characteristics that are taken into consideration during the interviewing and teacher selection process. Participating principals completed surveys that asked them to rank order professional and personal teacher characteristics when considering teachers for hire. The principals also reported on a Likert-type scale the extent they agreed with statements regarding interviewing and selecting teachers in their school districts. The results of this study revealed that North Dakota public school principals take into consideration research-based effective teacher characteristics when they hire teachers. Evidence from this study could help principals make informed decisions for hiring the most effective teachers. Information obtained from this study may also help school district leaders analyze their hiring policies, practices, and procedures, and make any necessary changes for identifying and hiring effective teachers. Recommendations for practice as a result of this study include: school districts working to ensure hiring policies and procedures are developed, principals providing appropriate interview training for interview committee members, teacher preparation programs updating prospective teachers on principals\u27 perceptions of the teacher hiring process, and principal preparation programs providing training for prospective principals in the teacher hiring process. Keywords: Effective teachers, Teacher hiring, Interviewing, Teacher selectio

Understanding Behavioral Sources of Process Variation Following Enterprise System Deployment

This paper extends the current understanding of the time-sensitivity of intent and usage following large-scale IT implementation. Our study focuses on perceived system misfit with organizational processes in tandem with the availability of system circumvention opportunities. Case study comparisons and controlled experiments are used to support the theoretical unpacking of organizational and technical contingencies and their relationship to shifts in user intentions and variation in work-processing tactics over time. Findings suggest that managers and users may retain strong intentions to circumvent systems in the presence of perceived task-technology misfit. The perceived ease with which this circumvention is attainable factors significantly into the timeframe within which it is attempted, and subsequently impacts the onset of deviation from prescribed practice and anticipated dynamics

Facilitating arrhythmia simulation: the method of quantitative cellular automata modeling and parallel running

BACKGROUND: Many arrhythmias are triggered by abnormal electrical activity at the ionic channel and cell level, and then evolve spatio-temporally within the heart. To understand arrhythmias better and to diagnose them more precisely by their ECG waveforms, a whole-heart model is required to explore the association between the massively parallel activities at the channel/cell level and the integrative electrophysiological phenomena at organ level. METHODS: We have developed a method to build large-scale electrophysiological models by using extended cellular automata, and to run such models on a cluster of shared memory machines. We describe here the method, including the extension of a language-based cellular automaton to implement quantitative computing, the building of a whole-heart model with Visible Human Project data, the parallelization of the model on a cluster of shared memory computers with OpenMP and MPI hybrid programming, and a simulation algorithm that links cellular activity with the ECG. RESULTS: We demonstrate that electrical activities at channel, cell, and organ levels can be traced and captured conveniently in our extended cellular automaton system. Examples of some ECG waveforms simulated with a 2-D slice are given to support the ECG simulation algorithm. A performance evaluation of the 3-D model on a four-node cluster is also given. CONCLUSIONS: Quantitative multicellular modeling with extended cellular automata is a highly efficient and widely applicable method to weave experimental data at different levels into computational models. This process can be used to investigate complex and collective biological activities that can be described neither by their governing differentiation equations nor by discrete parallel computation. Transparent cluster computing is a convenient and effective method to make time-consuming simulation feasible. Arrhythmias, as a typical case, can be effectively simulated with the methods described