Word Spotting as a Service: An Unsupervised and Segmentation-Free Framework for Handwritten Documents

Word spotting strategies employed in historical handwritten documents face many challenges due to variation in the writing style and intense degradation. In this paper, a new method that permits efficient and effective word spotting in handwritten documents is presented that relies upon document-oriented local features that take into account information around representative keypoints and a matching process that incorporates a spatial context in a local proximity search without using any training data. The method relies on a document-oriented keypoint and feature extraction, along with a fast feature matching method. This enables the corresponding methodological pipeline to be both effectively and efficiently employed in the cloud so that word spotting can be realised as a service in modern mobile devices. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method in terms of its matching accuracy, along with its fast retrieval time, respectively, are shown after a consistent evaluation of several historical handwritten datasets.

The goals of the Mongol invaders according to European sources of the middle of the XIII century. Part 1

The middle of the XIII century - the apogee of power of the unified Mongol Empire. In 1241-1242, the first, bloodiest and most destructive Mongol invasion into Europe took place. Certainly, it was vital for the Europeans to find an answer to the question: what did the invaders want, what goals did they pursue? In this article, the author shows that, due to the abundance of contradictory information and the acute lack of an objective understanding of the new enemy at first, European political and ecclesiastical figures attributed many goals to the Mongols (at least eighteen!), of which only three were fully confirmed - an attack on Russia, Poland, and Hungary, and the rest were either not realized for some reason, or arose in minds of the Europeans themselves. All these goals, identified in various official and unofficial European sources, mainly dating from the middle of the XIII century, are discussed here taking into account information from synchronous Eastern sources. Despite well-known ideas of a world-building monarchy, perhaps actually hatched by the Mongol khans, events in Europe suggest that their main goal there was to punish the Hungarian king Bela IV, who refused to hand over the Polovtsians hiding in Hungary to the Mongols.

The goals of the Mongol invaders according to European sources of the middle of the XIII century. Part 2

The middle of the XIII century - the apogee of power of the unified Mongol Empire. In 1241-1242, the first, bloodiest and most destructive Mongol invasion into Europe took place. Certainly, it was vital for the Europeans to find an answer to the question: what did the invaders want, what goals did they pursue? In this article, the author shows that, due to the abundance of contradictory information and the acute lack of an objective understanding of the new enemy at first, European political and ecclesiastical figures attributed many goals to the Mongols (at least eighteen!), of which only three were fully confirmed - an attack on Russia, Poland, and Hungary, and the rest were either not realized for some reason, or arose in minds of the Europeans themselves. All these goals, identified in various official and unofficial European sources, mainly dating from the middle of the XIII century, are discussed here taking into account information from synchronous Eastern sources. Despite well-known ideas of a world-building monarchy, perhaps actually hatched by the Mongol khans, events in Europe suggest that their main goal there was to punish the Hungarian king Bela IV, who refused to hand over the Polovtsians hiding in Hungary to the Mongols.

Figbird: A probabilistic method for filling gaps in genome assemblies

Motivation: Advances in sequencing technologies have led to sequencing of genomes of a multitude of organisms. However, draft genomes of many of these organisms contain a large number of gaps due to repeats in genomes, low sequencing coverage and limitations in sequencing technologies. Although there exist several tools for filling gaps, many of these do not utilize all information relevant to gap filling. Results: Here, we present a probabilistic method for filling gaps in draft genome assemblies using second generation reads based on a generative model for sequencing that takes into account information on insert sizes and sequencing errors. Our method is based on the expectation-maximization(EM) algorithm unlike the graph based methods adopted in the literature. Experiments on real biological datasets show that this novel approach can fill up large portions of gaps with small number of errors and misassemblies compared to other state of the art gap filling tools. Availability and Implementation:The method is implemented using C++ in a software named "Filling Gaps by Iterative Read Distribution (Figbird)", which is available at: https://github.com/SumitTarafder/Figbird.

Enhancing the Speed of Response in Digital Money Transactions using Distributed Blockchain System

Waiting for anything is undesirable by most of the human beings. Especially in the case of digital money transactions, most of the people may have doubtful thoughts on their mind about the success rate of their transactions while taking a longer processing time. The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) system was developed in India for minimizing the typographic works during the digital money transaction process. The UPI system has a separate UPI identification number of each individual consisting of their name, bank name, branch name, and account number. Therefore, sharing of account information has become easier and it reduces the chances of typographic errors in digital transaction applications. Sharing of UPI details are also made easy and secure with Quick Response (QR) code scanning methods. However, a digital transaction like UPI requires a lot of servers to be operated for a single transaction same as in National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) and Immediate Payment Services (IMPS) in India. This increases the waiting time of digital transactions due to poor server communication and higher volume of payment requests on a particular server. The motive of the proposed work is to minimize the server communications by employing a distributed blockchain system. The performance is verified with a simulation experiment on BlockSim simulator in terms of transaction success rate and processing time over the traditional systems.

Examining User Verification Schemes, Safety and Secrecy Issues Affecting M-Banking: Systematic Literature Review

Nowadays, movable banking apps are thriving in international pecuniary market due to its flexibility and convenience, especially during COVID-19 pandemic lock-down. Despites these benefits, its development continues to face a lot of challenges due to security, privacy, and authentication issues, especially in developing nations where elegant technologies and explicit cyberspace laws remain an issue. This study used PRISMA approach to systematically reviewed present m-banking studies with aims of identifying other security and privacy issues, and user authentication schemes challenges. Six scholarly databases of; IEEE Xplore, EBSCOhost, Science Direct, Scopus, Taylor and Francis, and Web of Science were searched. 38 articles were carefully read and analyzed meticulously. The study results exposed customers fear of third-party intrusion through other apps, device lost or theft with account information, financial loses, and absence of clear cyberspace laws to be the main safety and privacy issues. Also, the results found that the present authentication schemes used by banks are becoming weak and open to various attacks due to increase in online fraud. Thus, proposed two frameworks for investigating other dimensions of risk and trust factors, and for design of new user authentication scheme. Lastly, missing gaps in current studies, and direction for upcoming studies are mentioned.

Examining User Verification Schemes, Safety and Secrecy Issues Affecting M-Banking: Systematic Literature Review

Nowadays, movable banking apps are thriving in international pecuniary market due to its flexibility and convenience, especially during COVID-19 pandemic lock-down. Despites these benefits, its development continues to face a lot of challenges due to security, privacy, and authentication issues, especially in developing nations where elegant technologies and explicit cyberspace laws remain an issue. This study used PRISMA approach to systematically reviewed present m-banking studies with aims of identifying other security and privacy issues, and user authentication schemes challenges. Six scholarly databases of; IEEE Xplore, EBSCOhost, Science Direct, Scopus, Taylor and Francis, and Web of Science were searched. 38 articles were carefully read and analyzed meticulously. The study results exposed customers fear of third-party intrusion through other apps, device lost or theft with account information, financial loses, and absence of clear cyberspace laws to be the main safety and privacy issues. Also, the results found that the present authentication schemes used by banks are becoming weak and open to various attacks due to increase in online fraud. Thus, proposed two frameworks for investigating other dimensions of risk and trust factors, and for design of new user authentication scheme. Lastly, missing gaps in current studies, and direction for upcoming studies are mentioned.

Anthropometric indicators of obesity. Are the new indicators a better predictor of body fat content than BMI?

Anthropometric measurements are widely used in medicine, scientific research, but also in specialist medical care. Their proper use provides valuable information about the nutritional status, the adipose tissue and even the risk of comorbidities. Numerous scientific works question the usefulness of the BMI (body mass index), which is only an indirect measure of obesity. It does not take into account information on gender and age, and does not provide an answer on the distribution of body fat. Misclassification can result in serious deviations in the estimation of obesity-related effects. Therefore, the aim of this study is to present five new anthropometric obesity indicators as an alternative to BMI.In response to the dramatically growing problem of overweight and obesity, further exacerbated by the necessary restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is necessary to search for precise, yet simple tools for assessing body composition that can be routinely used by individuals but also for population studies. Based on the literature review, five frequently described indicators were selected: Relative Fat Mass (RFM), A Body Shape Index (ABSI), Body Adiposity Index (BAI), Body Roundness Index (BRI) and CUN-BAE. Application possibilities and their effectiveness for the estimation of adipose tissue content and the risk of coexisting diseases are presented.Growing number of authors confirm the validity of using indicators such as RFM, BRI, CUN-BAE and ABSI. At the same time, researchers point to the need for further verification of their usefulness in clinical practice and public health.

Floristic regions of the Samur-Chirakhchay interfluve and Dzhufudag (Southern Dagestan) according to analysis of petrophyte species composition

Aim. To undertake floristic zoning of the Samur-Chirakhchay interfluve and Dzhufudag for the analysis of the species composition of petrophylic complexes.Material and Methods. A list of obligate petrophytes was compiled based on the results of processing the authors' own field collections and taking into account information from floristic reports and determinations. The assessment of similarity of species composition of petrophytes in the regions was carried out using the Jaccard (Kj) and S0rensen-Czekanowski (Ksc) coefficients.Results. A subdivision of the mountain area studied into 7 floristic regions was carried out, based on a comparison of floristic lists and the presence of endemic species.Conclusion. The tendency in petrophytes to isolation of species forms, arising from spatial isolation relating to habitat specificity, makes it possible to quite accurately draw boundaries corresponding to the natural boundaries of differentiation of floras.