Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic detection of group functional roles in face to face interactions

In this paper, we discuss a machine learning approach to automatically detect functional roles played by participants in a face to face interaction. We shortly introduce the coding scheme we used to classify the roles of the group members and the corpus we collected to assess the coding scheme reliability as well as to train statistical systems for automatic recognition of roles. We then discuss a machine learning approach based on multi-class SVM to automatically detect such roles by employing simple features of the visual and acoustical scene. The effectiveness of the classification is better than the chosen baselines and although the results are not yet good enough for a real application, they demonstrate the feasibility of the task of detecting group functional roles in face to face interactions.
A novel coarse-to-fine hair segmentation method

Segmenting hair regions from human images facilitates many tasks like hair synthesis and hair style trends forecast. However, hair segmentation is quite challenging due to hair/background confusion and large hair pattern diversity. To address these problems to some extent, this paper proposes a novel coarse-to-fine hair segmentation method. In our approach, firstly, the recently proposed “Active Segmentation with Fixation” (ASF) is used to coarsely define an enclosed candidate region with high-recall (but possibly low-precision) of hair pixels and exclude considerable part of the backgrounds which are easily confused with hair. Then Graph Cuts (GC) method is applied to the candidate regions to remove additional false positives by incorporating hair-specific information. Specifically, Bayesian method is employed to select some reliable hair and background regions (seeds) among the ones over-segmented by Mean Shift. SVM classifier is then learnt online from these seeds and explored to predict hair/background likelihood probability, which is subsequently fed into GC algorithm. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in three folds: 1) an elaborate design of hair segmentation framework, which utilizes ASF to reduce the candidate hair regions and adopts GC to achieve more accurate hair region contours; 2) the region-based strategy for seed selection; 3) the exploration of the discriminative method, SVM, to predict the probability of each pixel belonging to hair and background regions. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the approach outperforms recently proposed methods.
Reading Assessment: Looking Ahead.

A study aimed to examine how reading assessment information is understood and used by two powerful groups: federal legislators and members of the news media. Attempts were made to contact federal legislators on educational subcommittees to discuss how they used reading assessment information to make legislative policy decisions and to vote on education legislation. Education reporters were asked to describe their understandings and uses of reading assessment data in writing news stories. No response whatsoever was received from 25 (607.) of the legislators (United States Senators or Representatives), and only 2 legislative aides participated. This represented a participation rate of less than 54. Only 3 of 17 education reporters participated, and 14 (82%) did not respond to repeated requests. While the response rate to repeated requests for information was low, the interview data describe: (1) five participants' varied knowledge of reading assessment; (2) the diverse types and sources of reading assessment information used by participants; and (3) how reading assessment information is used in government and the media. A central finding was the emerging narrative of a lack of response and a lack of access to legislators and reporters. (Contains 22 references.) (Author/RS) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * from the original document. 7.0 *********************************************************************** Legislators, Reporters, and Reading Assessment Peter P. Afflerbach Karen Moni University of Maryland College Park U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educai.oha:Rewaich aria InnrOvn.reII EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERICI XThis document has been opioduced as `received from the person or organization onginating it 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy NRRC National Reading Research Center READING RESEARCH REPORT NO. 31
Dynamic configuration support for power-aware virtualized server clusters

Currently, an increasing number of large-scale server clusters (data centers) are being designed for supporting many different web-based application services in a seamless, transparent fashion. In this scenario, the rising energy costs for keeping up those server clusters is becoming an important concern. We present in this work a dynamic configuration support for specifying and deploying power management policies in a platform running multiple application services. In particular, it assumes a virtualized server environment and includes mechanisms that allow a designer to control power consumption, while meeting performance requirements, e.g., soft real-time. Keywords-dynamic configuration, power management, virtualization, soft real-time
Distributed Leader-Following Finite-Time Consensus Control for Linear Multiagent Systems under Switching Topology

This paper investigates the finite-time consensus problem of leader-following multiagent systems. The dynamical models for all following agents and the leader are assumed the same general form of linear system, and the interconnection topology among the agents is assumed to be switching and undirected. We mostly consider the continuous-time case. By assuming that the states of neighbouring agents are known to each agent, a sufficient condition is established for finite-time consensus via a neighbor-based state feedback protocol. While the states of neighbouring agents cannot be available and only the outputs of neighbouring agents can be accessed, the distributed observer-based consensus protocol is proposed for each following agent. A sufficient condition is provided in terms of linear matrix inequalities to design the observer-based consensus protocol, which makes the multiagent systems achieve finite-time consensus under switching topologies. Then, we discuss the counterparts for discrete-time case. Finally, we provide an illustrative example to show the effectiveness of the design approach.
The Spitzer Space Telescope First Look Survey: Neutral Hydrogen Emission

The Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly SIRTF) extragalactic First Look Survey covered about 5 deg2 centered on (J2000.0) α = 17h18m, δ = 59°30′ in order to characterize the infrared sky with high sensitivity. We used the 100 m Green Bank Telescope to image the 21 cm Galactic H I emission over a 3° × 3° square, covering this position with an effective angular resolution of 9. ′8 and a velocity resolution of 0.62 km s-1. In the central square degree of the image the average column density is N = 2.5 × 1020 cm-2 with an rms fluctuation of 0.3 × 1020 cm-2. The Galactic H I in this region has a very interesting structure. There is a high-velocity cloud, several intermediate-velocity clouds (one of which is probably part of the Draco Nebula), and narrow-line low-velocity filaments. The H I emission shows a strong and detailed correlation with dust. Except for the high-velocity cloud, all features in the NH I map have counterparts in an E(B - V) map derived from infrared data. Relatively high E(B - V)/NH I ratios in some directions suggest the presence of molecular gas. The best diagnostic of such regions is the peak H I line brightness temperature, not the total NH I: directions where Tb > 12 K have E(B - V)/NH I significantly above the average value. The data corrected for stray radiation have been released via the World Wide Web.
The mediating role of job satisfaction in the relationship of vertical trust and distributed leadership in health care context

Purpose This study aims at investigating the effect of vertical trust on distributed leadership (DL) and performance as mediated by job satisfaction, and further to observe the role of DL in carrying out the effect of satisfaction on employees’ performance. Design/methodology/approach As grounded in the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) literature, the author proposes that employees’ participation in DL should be viewed as an extra role behavior, as leadership functions are not directly related to their job description. The study uses large-scale survey data from a study in one of Denmark’s largest public hospitals (N = 1,439). Findings The results of structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis showed that job satisfaction mediates the relationship between vertical trust and DL, and DL had a positive impact on job performance. Furthermore, the results showed that job satisfaction had a positive impact on DL and employees’ performance. Moreover, DL has positively affected employees’ performance, and it carries the impact of job satisfaction on performance. Research limitations/implications The study showed that trust and job satisfaction are important triggers of DL. Furthermore, results are interesting because literature so far has shown an insignificant relationship between satisfaction and performance. Here, the author establishes that the satisfaction–performance relationship is mediated by DL. The findings should motivate health care organizations to introduce structures and educate formal leaders so that DL can be enabled. Originality/value This should be the first study that relates trust and DL in an empirical manner. As grounded in the OCB literature, results also showed the significance of job satisfaction as a mediator variable.
The Discursive double game of EMU reform: the clash of titans between French White Knight and German Iron Lady. Paper presented at the 9th Biennial Conference European Community Studies Association–Canada (ECSA-C), Ottawa, Ontario, April 27-28, 2012

From the Introduction. In the aftermath of the EU’s enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe, many scholars and observers of European integration were proclaiming that the French-German “engine” of Europe had come to an end. The political legitimacy of French-German initiatives was contested by coalitions of smaller member states and the ‘new Europe’ was calling for new leadership dynamics. However, the experience of the Eurozone debt crisis provided dramatic evidence that no alternative to the Franco-German partnership has yet to emerge in the enlarged EU. In a time of existential crisis, Franco-German initiatives appear to have remained the basic dynamic of integration. However, unlike in the past, agreements on steps forward have proven to be particularly difficult. This is largely due to these countries’ contrasting political economic policy ideas, cultures, and practices.the paper analyses the ideational ‘frames’ of the two leaders while tracing their discursive interactions against changing background conditions since the European debt crisis was triggered by Greece in October 2009 until the last measures taken in 2012 before the French Presidential elections. The empirical analysis is based on a systematic corpus of press conferences and media interviews by Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel after European summits. It is complemented by a number of press interviews including some given by their respective Finance Ministers) and important speeches in that same period of time.
Post ERP Feral System and use of ‘Feral Systemas Coping Mechanism

— A number of studies highlighted problems related to ERP systems, yet, most of these studies focus on the problems during the project and implementation stages but not during the post-implementation use process. Problems encountered in the process of using ERP would hinder the effective exploitation and the extended and continued use of ERP systems and their value to organisations. This paper investigates the different types of problems users (operational, supervisory and managerial) faced in using ERP and how ‘feral system’ is used as the coping mechanism. The paper adopts a qualitative method and uses data collected from two cases and 26 interviews, to inductively develop a casual network model of ERP usage problem and its coping mechanism. This model classified post ERP usage problems as data quality, system quality, interface and infrastructure. The model is also categorised the different coping mechanism through use of ‘feral system’ inclusive of feral information system, feral data and feral use of technology .
Formal Derivation of Divide-and-Conquer Programs: A Case Study in the Multidimensional FFT's

This paper reports a case study in the development of parallel programs in the Bird-Meertens formalism (BMF), starting from divide-and-conquer algorithm speciications. The contribution of the paper is twofold: (1) we classify divide-and-conquer algorithms and formally derive a parameterized family of parallel implementations for an important subclass of divide-and-conquer, called DH (distributable homomor-phisms); (2) we systematically adjust the mathematical speciication of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to the DH format and thereby obtain a generic SPMD program, well suited for implementation under MPI. The target program includes the eecient FFT solutions used in practice the binary-exchange and the 2D-and 3D-transpose implementations as its special cases. 1. Motivation Formal methods ooer a way to cope with the problems of programming parallel machines. They can be viewed as an alternative to the current practice of low-level programming, when the correctness and performance of programs strongly depend on the program-mer's experience and require a cumbersome process of debugging and testing, followed by the performance monitoring and tuning to a particular architecture. We follow the general approach of transformational program derivation from an intuitively clear and correct speciication via exclusive use of semantically sound rules in a suitable formalism. Our formal base is the Bird-Meertens formalism (BMF), where higher-order functions on lists are used for speciication, and equational reasoning is used for program derivation. More speciically, we take the skeleton-based approach 4] which captures the ubiquitous patterns of paral-lelism in a mathematically rigorous, higherrorder way. The transformational, skeleton-based approach splits the task of parallel programming between two groups of experts: The system experts, rst, identify a set of parallel skeletons which adequately express non-trivial applications and, second, develop provably correct, portable parallel skeleton implementations with a predictable performance. This work requires a deep knowledge of both the design formalism and the target parallel software. The application experts should be shielded from both the parallel machine details and the underlying formalism (in our case BMF). Their knowledge of the application domain is used to do non-trivial changes and optimizations in the process of problem speciication and the adjustment of the speci-cation to the available set of skeletons. In the paper, we present a case study, which demonstrates this rrle distribution in the case of divide-and-conquer algorithms. On the system side, we classify algorithms, which are based on the divide-and-conquer strategy, and identify a subclass of divide-and-conquer functions, called DH (Distributable Homomorphisms). For this class, a …
The Framing of Games and the Psychology of Strategic Choice

Psychological game theory can provide a rational choice explanation of framing effects; frames influence beliefs, and beliefs influence motivations. We explain this point theoretically, and explore its empirical relevance experimentally. In a 2×2-factorial framing design of one-shot public good experiments we show that frames affect subject’s first- and second-order beliefs, and contributions. From a psychological game-theoretic framework we derive two mutually compatible hypotheses about guilt aversion and reciprocity under which contributions are related to second- and first-order beliefs, respectively. Our results are consistent with either.
Patent Laws, Product Life-Cycle Lengths, and Multinational Activity

Do intellectual property rights influence multinationals' manufacturing location decisions? My theoretical model indicates that countries with strong patent laws attract multinational activity, but only in sectors with relatively long product life cycles. By contrast, firms with short life-cycle technologies are insensitive, because offshore imitation is less likely to succeed before obsolescence. I document strong empirical regularities consistent with the model using a panel dataset on the global operations of US-based multinational firms and a new measure of product obsolescence. Moreover, my identification strategy allows me to isolate the causal effect of patent laws on multinational activity.
A Multiple objective Ant--Q algorithm for the design of water distribution irrigation networks

The diiculty in solving multiple objective optimization problems with traditional techniques, has urge researchers to use alternative approaches. Ant-Q algorithms have shown good results in the solution of combinatorial optimization problems, however little work has been done for multiple objective problems. This paper describes an Ant-Q algorithm called MOAQ, that can solve multiple objective optimization problems. MOAQ considers a family of agents for each objective function involved. Each family nds solutions that depend on solutions found by the rest of the families, creating a negotiation mechanism and nding compromise solutions for all the objectives involved. The compromise solutions are evaluated in the Pareto sense, assigning rewards to the non-dominated solutions tting all problems constraints, and punishments to the solutions violating any of them. 1 We compare and contrast the solutions obtained with MOAQ with the solutions obtained with two recently developed genetic algorithm approaches in two artiicial problems, demonstrating the ability of MOAQ to nd and maintain the Pareto frontier. Furthermore, it is shown how MOAQ is applied to a complex real-world problem; the design of irrigation water distribution networks, with very promising results.
Artificial Neural Network for Opinion Target Identification in Czech

The main focus of this thesis is to use neural networks, specifically long short-term memory cells, for identifying opinion targets in Czech data. The side product is a new version of dataset for opinion target identification. For a comparison, previously obtained results for another languages and by employing probabilistic methods instead were listed. The experiment was successful, achieved results are above trivial baseline models and comparable with the results achieved previously.
The frequency and dynamics of stratospheric sudden warmings in the 21st century

[1] Changes to stratospheric sudden warmings (SSWs) over the coming century, as predicted by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) chemistry climate model [Atmospheric Model With Transport and Chemistry (AMTRAC)], are investigated in detail. Two sets of integrations, each a three-member ensemble, are analyzed. The first set is driven with observed climate forcings between 1960 and 2004; the second is driven with climate forcings from a coupled model run, including trace gas concentrations representing a midrange estimate of future anthropogenic emissions between 1990 and 2099. A small positive trend in the frequency of SSWs is found. This trend, amounting to 1 event/decade over a century, is statistically significant at the 90% confidence level and is consistent over the two sets of model integrations. Comparison of the model SSW climatology between the late 20th and 21st centuries shows that the increase is largest toward the end of the winter season. In contrast, the dynamical properties are not significantly altered in the coming century, despite the increase in SSW frequency. Owing to the intrinsic complexity of our model, the direct cause of the predicted trend in SSW frequency remains an open question.
Locally analytic representations and sheaves on the Bruhat–Tits building

Let L be a finite field extension of Q_p and let G be the group of L-rational points of a split connected reductive group over L. We view G as a locally L-analytic group with Lie algebra g. We define a functor from admissible locally analytic G-representations with prescribed infinitesimal character to a category of equivariant sheaves on the Bruhat-Tits building of G. For smooth representations, the corresponding sheaves are closely related to the sheaves constructed by S. Schneider and U. Stuhler. The functor is also compatible, in a certain sense, with the localization of g-modules on the flag variety by A. Beilinson and J. Bernstein.
Placing Virtual Machines to Optimize Cloud Gaming Experience

Optimizing cloud gaming experience is no easy task due to the complex tradeoff between gamer quality of experience (QoE) and provider net profit. We tackle the challenge and study an optimization problem to maximize the cloud gaming provider's total profit while achieving just-good-enough QoE. We conduct measurement studies to derive the QoE and performance models. We formulate and optimally solve the problem. The optimization problem has exponential running time, and we develop an efficient heuristic algorithm. We also present an alternative formulation and algorithms for closed cloud gaming services with dedicated infrastructures, where the profit is not a concern and overall gaming QoE needs to be maximized. We present a prototype system and testbed using off-the-shelf virtualization software, to demonstrate the practicality and efficiency of our algorithms. Our experience on realizing the testbed sheds some lights on how cloud gaming providers may build up their own profitable services. Last, we conduct extensive trace-driven simulations to evaluate our proposed algorithms. The simulation results show that the proposed heuristic algorithms: (i) produce close-to-optimal solutions, (ii) scale to large cloud gaming services with 20,000 servers and 40,000 gamers, and (iii) outperform the state-of-the-art placement heuristic, e.g., by up to 3.5 times in terms of net profits.
Benefits of Contrast Normalization Demonstrated in Neurons and Model Cells

The large dynamic range of natural stimuli poses a challenge for neural coding: how is a neuron to encode large differences at high contrast while remaining sensitive to small differences at low contrast? Many sensory neurons exhibit contrast normalization: gain depends on the range of stimuli presented, such that firing-rate modulation is not proportional to contrast. However, coding depends strongly on the precision of spike timing and the reliability of spike number, neither of which can be predicted from neural gain. The presumption that contrast normalization is associated with maintained coding efficiency remained untested. We report that, as contrast decreases, responses are more variable and encode less information, as expected. Nevertheless, these changes can be small, and information transmission is even better preserved across contrasts than rate modulation. The extent of contrast normalization is correlated with the extent to which information transmission is preserved across contrasts. Specifically, normalization is associated with maintaining the bits of information per spike rather than bits per second. Finally, we show that a nonadapting model can exhibit both contrast normalization and the associated information preservation.