Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social work ‘logged on’: contemporary dilemmas in an evolving ‘techno-habitat’

ABSTRACT Information and communication technologies have become an integral part of daily life. This article explores the impact of the social networking site, Facebook, e-mail and text messaging for social workers in the Republic of Ireland. The study is small-scale and the findings, derived from a number of research interviews with practitioners and a survey of social work students, cannot be regarded as representative. However, the findings illuminate key dilemmas which are becoming apparent in social work’s evolving ‘techno-habitat’ and these are likely to be replicated, to different degrees, elsewhere in Europe.
Performance of Factor Mixture Models as a Function of Model Size, Covariate Effects, and Class-Specific Parameters.

Abstract Factor mixture models are designed for the analysis of multivariate data obtained from a population consisting of distinct latent classes. A common factor model is assumed to hold within each of the latent classes. Factor mixture modeling involves obtaining estimates of the model parameters, and may also be used to assign subjects to their most likely latent class. This simulation study investigates aspects of model performance such as parameter coverage and correct class membership assignment and focuses on covariate effects, model size, and class-specific versus class-invariant parameters. When fitting true models, parameter coverage is good for most parameters even for the smallest class separation investigated in this study (0.5 SD between 2 classes). The same holds for convergence rates. Correct class assignment is unsatisfactory for the small class separation without covariates, but improves dramatically with increasing separation, covariate effects, or both. Model performance is not influe.
Training Signal Design for Channel Estimation in Decode and Forward Relay Networks

We provide studies on the training based channel estimation for decode-and-forward relay networks. Since multiple relay nodes are geographically distributed over the service region, channel estimation is different from the traditional way in that each relay has its own individual power constraint. Since the general optimization for the minimum mean square error based channel estimation is hard to solve, we consider three special yet reasonable scenarios. The problem in the first scenario lies in the so called semidefinite programming and could be efficiently solved by state of the art optimization tools. Closed-form waterfilling type solutions are found in the remaining two scenarios, of which the first one has a special physical meaning and its corresponding structure is named as cave-filling.
Rigorous Modeling and Validation of CANopen Systems

CANopen is an increasingly popular protocol for the design of networked embedded systems. Nonetheless, the large variety of communication and network management functionalities supported in it can increase significantly systems complexity and in turn, the needs for system validation at design time. We present hereafter a novel approach relying on modeling and verification techniques, allowing to provide a comprehensive and faithful analysis of CANopen systems. This approach uses BIP, a formal framework for modeling, analysis and implementation of real-time, heterogeneous, component-based systems and the associated BIP tools for simulation, performance evaluation and statistical model-checking. As a proof of concept, the approach has been applied in an existing benchmark simulating a realistic automotive system and the Pixel Detector Control System of the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator. This work facilitates the systematical development of such systems and reveals potential application for the generation of optimal device configurations.
Acoustic Cue Integration in Speech Intonation Recognition With Cochlear Implants

The present article reports on the perceptual weighting of prosodic cues in question-statement identification by adult cochlear implant (CI) listeners. Acoustic analyses of normal-hearing (NH) listeners’ production of sentences spoken as questions or statements confirmed that in English the last bisyllabic word in a sentence carries the dominant cues (F0, duration, and intensity patterns) for the contrast. Furthermore, these analyses showed that the F0 contour is the primary cue for the question-statement contrast, with intensity and duration changes conveying important but less reliable information. On the basis of these acoustic findings, the authors examined adult CI listeners’ performance in two question-statement identification tasks. In Task 1, 13 CI listeners’ question-statement identification accuracy was measured using naturally uttered sentences matched for their syntactic structures. In Task 2, the same listeners’ perceptual cue weighting in question-statement identification was assessed using resynthesized single-word stimuli, within which fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration properties were systematically manipulated. Both tasks were also conducted with four NH listeners with full-spectrum and noise-band-vocoded stimuli. Perceptual cue weighting was assessed by comparing the estimated coefficients in logistic models fitted to the data. Of the 13 CI listeners, 7 achieved high performance levels in Task 1. The results of Task 2 indicated that multiple sources of acoustic cues for question-statement identification were utilized to different extents depending on the listening conditions (e.g., full spectrum vs. spectrally degraded) or the listeners’ hearing and amplification status (e.g., CI vs. NH).
Fiscal federalist relations in Russia: a case for subnational autonomy

In a federation as large and diverse as Russia, the policies of regional and local governments play a key role in determining economic outcomes. The state of intergovernmental and fiscal federalist relations directly affects the nature of these policies. Several existing studies highlight common problems in the conduct of regional and local state organs in Russia as key obstacles to the improvement of the business and investment climate. In this light, since early 1998, the Economics Department of the OECD has been carrying out special work on fiscal federalism and regional finance in the Russian Federation as part of a programme of the OECD Centre for Co-operation with Non-Members (CCNM). This work has involved the close co-operation of the Russian government, especially the Ministry of Finance, 10 representative Subjects of the Federation, and a number of local administrations during 1998-2000. The primary objectives have been a better understanding of problems in budgetary finance at the subnational level, the motivations behind regional and local economic policies, and the implications for reform of fiscal federalist relations.
Characteristics of heart failure patients associated with good and poor response to cardiac resynchronization therapy: a PROSPECT (Predictors of Response to CRT) sub-analysis.

AIMS Predictors of Response to Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT) (PROSPECT) was the first large-scale, multicentre clinical trial that evaluated the ability of several echocardiographic measures of mechanical dyssynchrony to predict response to CRT. Since response to CRT may be defined as a spectrum and likely influenced by many factors, this sub-analysis aimed to investigate the relationship between baseline characteristics and measures of response to CRT. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 286 patients were grouped according to relative reduction in left ventricular end-systolic volume (LVESV) after 6 months of CRT: super-responders (reduction in LVESV > or =30%), responders (reduction in LVESV 15-29%), non-responders (reduction in LVESV 0-14%), and negative responders (increase in LVESV). In addition, three subgroups were formed according to clinical and/or echocardiographic response: +/+ responders (clinical improvement and a reduction in LVESV > or =15%), +/- responders (clinical improvement or a reduction in LVESV > or =15%), and -/- responders (no clinical improvement and no reduction in LVESV > or =15%). Differences in clinical and echocardiographic baseline characteristics between these subgroups were analysed. Super-responders were more frequently females, had non-ischaemic heart failure (HF), and had a wider QRS complex and more extensive mechanical dyssynchrony at baseline. Conversely, negative responders were more frequently in New York Heart Association class IV and had a history of ventricular tachycardia (VT). Combined positive responders after CRT (+/+ responders) had more non-ischaemic aetiology, more extensive mechanical dyssynchrony at baseline, and no history of VT. CONCLUSION Sub-analysis of data from PROSPECT showed that gender, aetiology of HF, QRS duration, severity of HF, a history of VT, and the presence of baseline mechanical dyssynchrony influence clinical and/or LV reverse remodelling after CRT. Although integration of information about these characteristics would improve patient selection and counselling for CRT, further randomized controlled trials are necessary prior to changing the current guidelines regarding patient selection for CRT.
Well-Being Measuring Wellbeing in the SOEP

I define wellbeing as preference realization. Wellbeing can be measured with affective (the amount of pleasant versus unpleasant experiences) and cognitive (satisfaction with life in general and life domains) measures. Since its inception 25 years ago, the SOEP has included cognitive measures of wellbeing. In 2007, the SOEP included four items (happy, sad, angry, afraid) as an affective measure of wellbeing. This paper examines similarities and differences between cognitive and affective measures of wellbeing. In the end, I propose a wellbeing index that combines information from measures of life satisfaction, average domain satisfaction and affect balance.
Social Context in Mental Health Service Use Among Young Adults

ABSTRACT Examining the sources of health communication that young adults with mental health challenges receive regarding service use is critical to curbing the societal concern of unmet mental health needs of this population. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 59 young adults, all of whom were diagnosed with a mood disorder and used public mental health services and additional public systems of care during childhood. Thematic analysis was utilized. Of the 59 participants, 45 nominated at least one supportive adult, with a total of 97 relationships analyzed. Results indicate that the majority of messages came from informal supports (e.g., family) who spoke positively about mental health services. Fewer messages came from formal supports (e.g., professionals). Messages included statements surrounding beliefs toward services, social norms (approval and disapproval), self-efficacy, and image considerations around using services. These findings can suggest ways that mental health service engagement interventions can leverage communication from informal supports. Future research can explore what messages young adults find most influential in persuading them to use mental health care consistently and the relationship between messages and health behavior.
Road Sign Detection in Images: A Case Study

Road sign identification in images is an important issue, in particular for vehicle safety applications. It is usually tackled in three stages: detection, recognition and tracking, and evaluated as a whole. To progress towards better algorithms, we focus in this paper on the first stage of the process, namely road sign detection. More specifically, we compare, on the same ground-truth image database, results obtained by three algorithms that sample different state-of-the-art approaches. The three tested algorithms: Contour Fitting, Radial Symmetry Transform, and pair-wise voting scheme, all use color and edge information and are based on geometrical models of road signs. The test dataset is made of 847 images 960x1080 of complex urban scenes (available at www.itowns.fr/benchmarking.html). They feature 251 road signs of different shapes (circular, rectangular, triangular), sizes and types. The pros and cons of the three algorithms are discussed, allowing to draw new research perspectives.
Learning human pose in crowd

In a crowded public space, body and head pose can provide useful information for understanding human behaviours and intentions. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for locating people and inferring their body and head poses. Human detection and pose estimation are two closely related problems but have been tackled independently in previous studies. In this work, we advocate joint detection and recognition of both head and body poses. Our framework is based on learning an ensemble of pose-sensitive human body models whose outputs provide a new representation for poses. To avoid tedious and inconsistent manual annotation for learning pose-sensitive models, we formulate a semi-supervised learning method for model training which bootstraps an initial model using a small set of labelled data, and subsequently improves the model iteratively by data mining from a large unlabelled dataset. Experiments using data from a busy underground station demonstrate that the proposed method significantly outperforms a state-of-the-art person detector and is able to yield extremely accurate head and body pose estimation in crowded public spaces.
APPLYING FITTS ’ LAW IN A MOBILE AND PERVASIVE COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

The computing environment of the future will be mobile and pervasive, involving a paradigm shift away from the desktop. Inspired by the beginnings of this shift, from desktop to mobile and pervasive computing, this project set out to look at whether mobile and pervasive computers were different to desktop computers. Specifically, its original aim was to investigate the practice of simply scaling the desktop interface up or down in order to implement if on large and small screen computers respectively. This investigation gave rise to the uncovering of a possible flaw in Fitts’ Law, the model intended for use in the comparison between mobile, pervasive and desktop computers. Following these two lines of investigation, it was found that small and large screens are significantly different from the medium, desktop screen and that Fitts’ Law is scale independent while the pointing task it models is not. This leads us to the conclusion that the Windows graphical user interface should not be shrunk to fit on to small screen displays or stretched to fill a large screen. We also conclude that although Fitts’ law has served as an accurate model in Human Computer Interaction, it has been faulty since its first application in the area. In a mobile and pervasive environment the problem of scale independence becomes more apparent and greatly reduces the predictive and descriptive powers of Fitts’ Law.
On the isomonodromic tau-function for the Hurwitz spaces of branched coverings of genus zero and one

The isomonodromic tau-function for the Hurwitz spaces of branched coverings of genus zero and one are constructed explicitly. Such spaces may be equipped with the structure of a Frobenius manifold and this introduces a flat coordinate system on the manifold. The isomonodromic tau-function, and in particular the associated $G$-function, are rewritten in these coordinates and an interpretation in terms of the caustics (where the multiplication is not semisimple) is given.
Correlation: Pitfalls and Alternatives

Correlation is a mine eld for the unwary. One does not have to search far in the literature of nancial risk management to nd misunderstanding and confusion. This is worrying since correlation is a central technical idea in nance. Correlation lies at the heart of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the arbitrage pricing theory (APT), where its use as a measure of dependence between nancial instruments is essentially founded on an assumption of multivariate normally distributed returns. Increasingly, however, correlation is being used as a dependence measure in general risk management, often in areas where the assumption of multivariate normal risks is completely untenable such as credit risk. In using correlation as an all-purpose dependence measure and transferring CAPM thinking to general risk management, many integrated risk management systems are being built on shaky foundations. This article will tell you when it is safe and unproblematic to use correlation in the way that you imagine you can use it, and when you should take care. In particular it will tell you about two fallacies that have claimed many victims. These traps are known to statisticians, but not, we suggest, to the general correlation-using public. We will help you avoid these pitfalls and introduce an alternative approach to understanding and modelling dependency copulas. The recognition that correlation is often an satisfactory measure of dependence in nancial risk management is not in itself new. For instance, Blyth (1996) and Shaw (1997) have made the point that (linear) correlation cannot capture the non-linear dependence relationships that exist between many real world risk factors. We believe this point is worth repeating and amplifying; our aim is to provide theoretical clari cation of some of the important and often subtle issues surrounding correlation. To keep things simple we consider only the static case. That is, we consider a vector of dependent risks (X1; : : : ; Xn) 0 at a xed point in time. We do not consider serial correlation within or cross correlation between stochastic processes (see Boyer, Gibson, and Loretan (1999) in this context). Nor do we consider the statistical estimation of correlation, which is fraught with diAEculty. In this paper we do not go this far because enough can go wrong in the static case to ll an entire book.
Reversal of the morphological effects of monocular deprivation in the kittens's lateral geniculate nucleus.

1. Eleven kittens were deprived of vision in one eye until the age of between 5 and 14 weeks. Their eyes were then reverse‐sutured, they were allowed to survive for a further 3‐63 days, and their brains were then examined histologically. 2. Measurement of the cross‐sectional area of cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) showed that when the reversal of lid suture was performed at the age of 8 or 14 weeks, the mean cell size was smaller in laminae connected to the initially closed right eye than it was in other laminae. 3. When the reversal of lid suture took place at 5 or 6 weeks of age there was a reversal of interlaminar size differences: the initially deprived eye was then connected to laminae containing larger cells. Even within 3 days after the reversal of lid suture, most of the morphological effects of the initial suture had been abolished, and they were fully reversed within 12 days. 4. These results are compared with physiological changes in the visual cortex of these and similarly reared animals.
WALKING AND CYCLING BEHAVIOR WITHIN THE SERVICE AREA OF PUBLIC PARKS

Public parks provide a variety of benefits and opportunities for community. This paper reports the investigation on the behavior of park users in Saga city, Japan using a new recreational valuation method and Voronoi diagram to redefine service area of park. The valuation was performed through comparison of walking, cycling and car mode. Different threshold distances based on rational choice approach was derived to understand behavior of walking and cycling users that their characteristics and socioeconomic cou3ld affect different patterns of park utilization. This information reflects the need to improve accessibility and facility for walkers and cyclists according to the community need since approximately 70 percent of parks users are the frequent users. This valuable approach could be utilized to guide local planning agency to locate suitable plan for current and future policy for accessibility of public park service improvement for livable city.
Maximum Entropy Coordinates for Arbitrary Polytopes

Barycentric coordinates can be used to express any point inside a triangle as a unique convex combination of the triangle's vertices, and they provide a convenient way to linearly interpolate data that is given at the vertices of a triangle. In recent years, the ideas of barycentric coordinates and barycentric interpolation have been extended to arbitrary polygons in the plane and general polytopes in higher dimensions, which in turn has led to novel solutions in applications like mesh parameterization, image warping, and mesh deformation. In this paper we introduce a new generalization of barycentric coordinates that stems from the maximum entropy principle. The coordinates are guaranteed to be positive inside any planar polygon, can be evaluated efficiently by solving a convex optimization problem with Newton's method, and experimental evidence indicates that they are smooth inside the domain. Moreover, the construction of these coordinates can be extended to arbitrary polyhedra and higher‐dimensional polytopes.
Simulating Network Robustness for Critical Infrastructure Networks

We examine the robustness of critical infrastructure networks in the face of terrorist attack, using a simulation experiment that incorporates link capacity, and an extension of data farming which we call network farming. Our results show that symmetrical designed networks generally outperform randomly generated networks, although ring-like structures are very vulnerable. Under targeted attacks, most networks begin to fail when the number of attacks is equal to the node connectivity. Examining the distribution of real-world terrorist attacks, we show that these can be modelled by a Poisson statistical distribution, leading to recommendations for the node connectivity required at different threat levels.
Good modelling practice: expanding the ODD model description protocol for socioenvironmental agent based models

We have found in a literature review of land use change models that the documentation of human decisions, adaptation and learning is quite often incomplete and incomprehensible and would greatly benefit from a standard protocol for model description. Grimm et al. [2006, 2010] introduced such a standard protocol (ODD – Overview, Design, Details) for describing individualbased (IBM) and agent-based models (ABM). However, the current version of ODD [Grimm et al. 2010] is mainly designed to describe ecological models and is limited when it comes to the description of socio-environmental models, where human decisions play a central role. Furthermore we think that the majority of published model descriptions presents the model rules rather as ad hoc rules than try to embed the model and assumptions in a theoretical framework. To put the model rules into theoretical context may not be technically necessary to reimplement the model, but it assists the reader to understand the model’s functionality and its design and maybe more important it will facilitate the synthesis and comparison of specific case studies. Therefore we want to present an extension of the ODD protocol that explicitly addresses the needs to describe human decisions in agent-based models and to better link specific models to theory. This talk will be based on a working paper available in early 2012 that describes in detail our revised version of the ODD protocol. We have asked presenters in this session to base their model description on this revised ODD version and to discuss its applicability and usefulness.