Biometrics aims at reliable and robust identification of humans from their personal traits, mainly for security and authentication purposes, but also for identifying and tracking the users of smarter applications. Frequently considered modalities are fingerprint, face, iris, palmprint and voice, but there are many other possible biometrics, including gait, ear image, retina, DNA, and even behav...

The term biometrics is derived from the Greek bio (life) and metric (measure). Biometrics, as a means of identification, can be traced back to both ancient Egypt1 and China. Pioneering work on modern biometrics technologies dates back to the late 1960s, when researchers began looking at voice patterns, fingerprints, and hand geometry as a means for establishing unique individual identity. By th...

This paper presents an investigation into the effects, on the accuracy of multimodal biometrics, of introducing unconstrained cohort normalisation (UCN) into the score-level fusion process. Whilst score normalisation has been widely used in voice biometrics, its effectiveness in other biometrics has not been previously investigated. This study aims to explore the potential usefulness of the sai...

This paper presents a novel face and periocular biometric fusion at feature level using canonical correlation analysis. Face recognition itself has limitations such as illumination, pose, expression, occlusion etc. Also, periocular biometrics has spectacles, head angle, hair and expression as its limitations. Unimodal biometrics cannot surmount all these limitations. The recognition accuracy ca...

Although spermatozoa are formed during spermatogenesis in the testis, testicular spermatozoa are immature and cannot swim or fertilize. These critical spermatozoal functions are acquired in the epididymis where a specific luminal environment is created by the blood-epididymal barrier; proteins secreted by epididymal principal cells bind to maturing spermatozoa and regulate the maturational proc...

The first report of a foal born after artificial insemination (AI) with frozen/thawed semen, more than fifty years ago, was the result of insemination with epididymal spermatozoa (Barker en Gandier, 1957). Ever since, reports have confirmed pregnancies and/ or births after AI with epididymal semen, which proves the fertilizing capacity of epididymal semen (Morris, 2002; Monteiro et al., 2011). ...

In this paper, we define for the first time the crossing matching score of two biometrics traits and combine it with the conventional matching scores to perform personal authentication. The proposed method is very suitable for the bimodal biometrics systems with two similar biometrics traits such as the system with visible light and infrared face images and the system with palm images captured ...

Expression of mRNA of endothelin-1 (ET-1) and its receptors, endothelin receptor A (ET-A) and endothelin receptor B (ET-B), in human epididymis was assessed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Immunohistochemistry was performed on longitudinal sections through whole normal human epididymides. ET-1 mRNA was detected in caput, corpus and cauda epididymidis. Immunohistoche...

BACKGROUND The epithelium lining the epididymis provides an optimal acidic fluid microenvironment in the epididymal tract that enable spermatozoa to complete the maturation process. The present study aims to investigate the functional role of Na(+)/HCO(3)(-) cotransporter in the pH regulation in rat epididymis. METHOD/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Immunofluorescence staining of pan cytokeratin in the pr...

The epididymal anomalies and patent processus vaginalis are frequently seen in patients with cryptorchidism or hydrocele. We performed a prospective study on the relationship between the epididymal anomalies and the patency of the processus vaginalis in boys with hydrocele (190 cases) or cryptorchidism (89 cases) who were treated from August 1997 to February 2000 (mean age, 51 months; range, 12...