Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Usage and Perceived Impact of Data Warehouses: a Study in Korean Financial Companies

Although several previous studies have investigated the success factors and implementations of data warehouses, only few of them have explored the end-users' perceptions of data warehouses. Moreover, none of these previous studies were conducted in a company outside North America. Thus, this study was conducted to identify the data warehousing system characteristics affecting end-users' usage and perceived impact of using data warehouses in Korean financial companies. A research model for end-users' usage and perceived impact of using data warehouses was developed based on the Technology Acceptance Model and the IS Success Model. Then, a survey questionnaire was design to collect data from the data warehousing users in four leading Korean financial companies. We analyzed these data to test the proposed hypotheses by using Structural Equation Modeling. Results of this study suggest that Data Quality and End-user Support and Training are significant system characteristics affecting end-users' usage of data warehouses and perceived impact of data warehouses.
A New Characterization of ACC^0 and Probabilistic CC^0

Barrington, Straubing and Therien (1990) conjectured that the Boolean AND function can not be computed by polynomial size constant depth circuits built from modular counting gates, i.e., by CC^0 circuits. In this work we show that the AND function can be computed by uniform probabilistic CC^0 circuits that use only O(log n) random bits. This may be viewed as evidence contrary to the conjecture. As a consequence of our construction we get that all of ACC^0 can be computed by probabilistic CC^0 circuits that use only O(log n) random bits. Thus, if one were able to derandomize such circuits, we would obtain a collapse of circuit classes giving ACC^0=CC^0. We present a derandomization of probabilistic CC^0 circuits using AND and OR gates to obtain ACC^0 = AND o OR o CC^0 = OR o AND o CC^0. AND and OR gates of sublinear fan-in suffice. Both these results hold for uniform as well as non-uniform circuit classes. For non-uniform circuits we obtain the stronger conclusion that ACC^0 = rand-ACC^0 = rand-CC^0 = rand(log n)-CC^0, i.e., probabilistic ACC^0 circuits can be simulated by probabilistic CC^0 circuits using only O(log n) random bits. As an application of our results we obtain a characterization of ACC^0 by constant width planar nondeterministic branching programs, improving a previous characterization for the quasipolynomial size setting.
Subdivision schemes and attractors

Subdivision schemes generate self-similar curves and surfaces. Therefore there is a close connection between curves and surfaces generated by subdivision algorithms and self-similar fractals generated by Iterated Function Systems (IFS). We demonstrate that this connection between subdivision schemes and fractals is even deeper by showing that curves and surfaces generated by subdivision are also attractors, fixed points of IFS's. To illustrate this fractal nature of subdivision, we derive the associated IFS for many different subdivision curves and surfaces without extraordinary vertices, including B-splines, piecewise Bezier, interpolatory four-point subdivision, bicubic subdivision, three-direction quartic box-spline subdivision and Kobbelt's √3-subdivision surfaces. Conversely, we shall show how to build subdivision schemes to generate traditional fractals such as the Sierpinski gasket and the Koch curve, and we demonstrate as well how to control the shape of these fractals by adjusting their control points.
Wavelet Analysis of Long-Range-Dependent Traffic

A wavelet-based tool for the analysis of long-range dependence and a related semi-parametric estimator of the Hurst parameter is introduced. The estimator is shown to be unbiased under very general conditions, and efficient under Gaussian assumptions. It can be implemented very efficiently allowing the direct analysis of very large data sets, and is highly robust against the presence of deterministic trends, as well as allowing their detection and identification. Statistical, computational, and numerical comparisons are made against traditional estimators including that of Whittle. The estimator is used to perform a thorough analysis of the long-range dependence in Ethernet traffic traces. New features are found with important implications for the choice of valid models for performance evaluation. A study of mono versus multifractality is also performed, and a preliminary study of the stationarity with respect to the Hurst parameter and deterministic trends.
A novel method for determination of wheeze type

Among respiratory disorders, obstructive diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) constitute an important group. To our knowledge, there does not exist a study in the literature that quantifies the relationship between the type of wheeze and the type or severity of the disease. This study, aims at classifying wheeze type rather than classical normal-wheeze sound classification studies in the literature. In this study, we propose a method based on Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm to differentiate between monophonic and polyphonic wheezes, without a need for pre-training the algorithm. The algorithm determines the true labels of monophonic and polyphonic wheezes with 100% and 78% accuracy, respectively. Since there does not exist a method in the literature that has been proposed specifically for this problem, only the results of the most relevant few studies have been presented. Since the proposed system can directly estimate the frequency, we consider the method proposed here would be a useful quantification method for further studies in medical literature, on finding correlations between wheezes and disorders.
Towards spatial assessment of carbon sequestration in peatlands: spectroscopy based estimation of fractional cover of three plant functional types

Abstract. Peatlands accumulated large carbon (C) stocks as peat in historical times. Currently however, many peatlands are on the verge of becoming sources with their C sequestration function becoming sensitive to environmental changes such as increases in temperature, decreasing water table and enhanced nitrogen deposition. Long term changes in vegetation composition are both, a consequence and indicator of future changes in C sequestration. Spatial continuous accurate assessment of the vegetation composition is a current challenge in keeping a close watch on peatland vegetation changes. In this study we quantified the fractional cover of three major plant functional types (PFTs; Sphagnum mosses, graminoids, and ericoid shrubs) in peatlands, using field spectroscopy reflectance measurements (400–2400 nm) on 25 plots differing in PFT cover. The data was validated using point intercept methodology on the same plots. Our results showed that the detection of open Sphagnum versus Sphagnumcovered by vascular plants (shrubs and graminoids) is feasible with an R2 of 0.81. On the other hand, the partitioning of the vascular plant fraction into shrubs and graminoids revealed lower correlations of R2 of 0.54 and 0.57, respectively. This study was based on a dataset where the reflectance of all main PFTs and their pure components within the peatland was measured at local spatial scales. Spectrally measured species or plant community abundances can further be used to bridge scaling gaps up to canopy scale, ultimately allowing upscaling of the C balance of peatlands to the ecosystem level.
Recent studies on music information processing

Music information processing has been widely deployed in music industries over the years. Of course, technologies oriented to musicians have long been studied including sound synthesis on music synthesizers, desktop music production based on MIDI sequencers, and various kinds of support for composing, performing, and recording music. Such tools have already become an essential part of the music-production process. But more recently, focus has shifted from these conventional tools to new technologies that target the direct enjoyment of music by end users who are not musicians. For example, it has become relatively easy to ‘‘rip’’ audio signals from compact discs (CD) and compress them and to deal with many musical pieces on a personal computer. It has also become possible to load a huge number of songs onto a portable music player (e.g., Apple iPod) enabling anyone to carry their personal collection of music anywhere and to listen to it at anytime. A variety of factors can be given for this trend including advances in computer hardware (high processing speeds and large-capacity/small-size memory and hard disks), spread of the Internet, and provision of low-cost audio input/output devices as standard equipment. The standardization of MPEG Audio Layer 3 (MP3) in 1992 and its spread in the latter half of the 1990s and the establishment of MP3-based businesses in response to enduser demand have also played a role here. This trend is accelerating all the more in the first half of the 2000s with the proposal of Ogg Vorbis, MPEG-4 AAC, Windows Media Audio (WMA), and other compression systems following on the heels of MP3. Enterprises for delivering music via the Internet are also appearing in rapid succession. End users who are not musicians are not generally proficient in music — their knowledge of notes, harmony, and other elements of music is usually limited. Furthermore, they generally have little desire to create music. They are quite interested, however, in retrieving and listening to their favorite music or a portion of a musical piece in a convenient and flexible way. Recent research themes of music information processing reflect such enduser demand. The target of processing is expanding from the internal content of individual musical pieces (notes, chords, etc.) to entire musical pieces and even sets of musical pieces. Accordingly, research is becoming active in music systems that can be used by people with no musical knowledge. Typical technologies driving this trend are technology for computing similarity between musical pieces and for retrieving and classifying music; technology for referring to what music friends and other people listen to and for selecting music accordingly; and technology for creating advanced music-handling interfaces. Focusing on this emerging research trend, this paper introduces recent studies on music information processing from a unique perspective.
Aggregate Implications of Changing Sectoral Trends

We describe how capital accumulation and the network structure of US production interact to amplify the effects of sectoral trend growth rates in total factor productivity and labor on trend GDP (gross domestic product) growth. We derive expressions that conveniently summarize this long-run amplification effect by way of sectoral multipliers. We estimate that sector-specific factors have historically accounted for approximately three-fourths of long-run changes in GDP growth. Trend GDP growth fell by nearly 3 percentage points over the postwar period, with especially significant contributions from the Construction sector in 1950–80 and the Durable Goods sector in 2000–2018. No sector has contributed any steady significant increase to the trend growth rate of GDP in the past 70 years.
‘Being kinder to myself’: A prospective comparative study, exploring post-trauma therapy outcome measures, for two groups of clients, receiving either Cognitive Behaviour Therapy or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Compassionate Mind Training

This prospective, comparative outcome study was designed to contrast the relative impact of differing therapeutic interventions for trauma victims, carried out by the same therapist.A non-random convenience sample (N=32) of participants, referred for therapy following a traumatic incident, were randomly assigned to receive up to 12 sessions of either Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), or CBT coupled with Compassionate Mind Training (CMT). A repeated measures design was used and data was analysed using analysis of variance. Data was gathered pre-therapy and post-therapy, using three self-report questionnaires (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; Impact of Events Scale; the Self-Compassion Scale). Results supported two of the three original hypotheses. Participants in both conditions experienced a highly statistically significant reduction in symptoms of anxiety, depression, avoidant behaviour, intrusive thoughts and hyper-arousal symptoms post-therapy. Participants in the combined CBT and CMT condition developed statistically significant higher self-compassion scores post-therapy than the CBT-only group [F(1,30)=4.657, p.05]. There was no significant difference between treatment groups.The results suggest that CMT may be a useful addition to CBT for clients suffering with trauma-related symptoms. In conclusion, high levels of self-compassion are linked to a decrease in anxiety and depression and trauma-related symptoms.
G 97 / 3 Efficient rules for monetary policy

This paper defines an efficient rule for monetary policy as one that minimizes a weighted sum of output variance and inflation variance. It derives several results about the efficiency of alternative rules in a simple macroeconomic model. First, efficient rules can be expressed as “Taylor rules” in which interest rates respond to output and inflation. But the coefficients in efficient Taylor rules differ from the coefficients that fit actual policy in the United States. Second, inflation targets are efficient. Indeed, the set of efficient rules is equivalent to the set of inflation-target policies with different speeds of adjustment. Finally, nominal-income targets are not merely inefficient, but disastrous: they imply that output and inflation have infinite variances.
Information seeking in animals: Metacognition?

Metacognition refers to humans’ ability to monitor the state of their own learning and to judge the correctness of information retrieved from memory. Inferences about metacognition-like processes in non-human animals have been made from studies in which subjects judge the adequacy of previously presented information and from information seeking studies in which no prior knowledge exists. This article briefly reviews the former type of experiments but focuses on studies of in formation seeking. A number of studies now indicate that apes and monkeys will look down opaque tubes or under opaque containers to see the location of a hidden reward. They less often make looking responses when other information indicates the location of reward, such as visible baiting, transparent tubes or containers, or logical inference. Studies of information seeking in pigeons, rats, and dogs are reported that indicate they do not readily show the types of looking responses seen in primates. If given a forced choice between stimuli that do and do not yield information about the location of reward, however, these non-primates make the informative choice. It is suggested that the choice of information in these pigeon, rat, and dog experiments may be a form of secondary sign-tracking and thus different from the metacognition-like processes used by primates.
Implantation and Optical Characterization of Color Centers in Silicon Carbide by Remmert

Single color centers, point defects in crystal structures, are widely studied for their optical and spin properties. The most famous color center is the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond. Many indispensable operations for quantum computing have already been demonstrated with NV centers, plus single photon emission has been improved by coupling NV centers to a variety of photonic structures. The major bottleneck for quantum and photonic technologies in diamond is the difficult nanofabrication process. This work is concerns with the implantation and characterization of color centers in silicon carbide. Silicon carbide is a material with superb electrical, optical and mechanical properties, which already finds applications in electronics. Recently single fluorescent centers with addressable spin states have been revealed. Additionally, a wide variety of photonic cavities with moderately high quality factors have been reported. We aimed to implant silicon-vacancy carbon-antisite defects in silicon carbide wafers by means of fast electron irradiation and to characterize these luminescent centers in the irradiated samples with high NA confocal fluorescence microscopy and cathodoluminescence microscopy. While the antisite defect has not been detected, this work can be used as a guide to research color centers, specifically in silicon carbide, since it addresses many important issues such as the choice of wafers, defect implantation with fast electrons and characterization of the optical properties of color centers with photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence microscopy techniques.
The identification of protein biomarkers for oxidative stress in Down syndrome

Down syndrome (DS) is a chromosomal abnormality due to partial or complete triplication of chromosome 21 (HSA21), and is the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability. DS may be considered a multifactorial disease, where an abnormal expression of trisomic genes arises not only from genetic, but also environ mental factors [1]. Thus, trisomy leads to a deregulated scenario that also affects disomic genes and that ultimately results in largely different phenotypes [2]. In fact, DS patients present a high variability of symptoms, including premature aging, mental retardation and Alzheimer’s-like dementia. Thus, above 40 years of age these persons develop a form of dementia with several clinical and neuropathologic characteristics of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), although with an earlier age of onset [3].
Constitutive Modeling of Reinforced Concrete Panel Behavior under Cyclic Loading

A new constitutive model – named the Fixed Strut Angle Model (FSAM) – is proposed for simulating the cyclic shear behavior of reinforced concrete panel elements. The main inherent assumption underlying the formulation of the FSAM is that upon cracking of concrete in a reinforced concrete panel, crack directions in concrete do not rotate, as observed consistently in reinforced concrete panel and wall tests. Refined material constitutive relationships were incorporated in the formulation of the model. Detailed correlation studies were conducted to compare the model predictions with results of cyclic reinforced concrete panel tests available in the literature. The model was shown to capture, with reasonable accuracy, overall behavioral attributes of reinforced concrete panel elements subjected to cyclic shear effects; including cyclic shear stress vs. shear strain behavior, shear stress capacity, shear stiffness, cyclic stiffness degradation, pinching, ductility, and failure mode. The model has also yielded promising results on local deformation predictions.
Distributed Resource Allocation for Data Center Networks: A Hierarchical Game Approach

The increasing demand of data computing and storage for cloud-based services motivates the development and deployment of large-scale data centers. This paper studies the resource allocation problem for the data center networking system when multiple data center operators (DCOs) simultaneously serve multiple service subscribers (SSs). We formulate a hierarchical game to analyze this system where the DCOs and the SSs are regarded as the leaders and followers, respectively. In the proposed game, each SS selects its serving DCO with preferred price and purchases the optimal amount of resources for the SS's computing requirements. Based on the responses of the SSs’ and the other DCOs’, the DCOs decide their resource prices so as to receive the highest profit. When the coordination among DCOs is weak, we consider all DCOs are noncooperative with each other, and propose a sub-gradient algorithm for the DCOs to approach a sub-optimal solution of the game. When all DCOs are sufficiently coordinated, we formulate a coalition game among all DCOs and apply Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining as a resource division approach to achieve high utilities. Both solutions constitute the Stackelberg Equilibrium. The simulation results verify the performance improvement provided by our proposed approaches.
Feature Selection for Unbalanced Class Distribution and Naive Bayes

This paper describes an approach to feature subset selection that takes into account problem speciics and learning algorithm characteristics. It is developed for the Naive Bayesian classiier applied on text data, since it combines well with the addressed learning problems. We focus on domains with many features that also have a highly unbalanced class distribution and asymmetric misclassii-cation costs given only implicitly in the problem. By asymmetric misclassiication costs we mean that one of the class values is the target class value for which we want to get predictions and we prefer false positive over false negative. Our example problem is automatic document categorization using machine learning, where we want to identify documents relevant for the selected category. Usually, only about 1%-10% of examples belong to the selected category. Our experimental comparison of eleven feature scoring measures show that considering domain and algorithm characteristics signiicantly improves the results of classiication.
Incidence and Geographical Variation of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in Southern Germany – Completeness of the ALS Registry Swabia

Objective of this paper was to investigate the incidence, potential geographical clusters and the completeness of the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) registry in Southern Germany (Swabia). Age-standardized incidence rates (ASR) and ratios (SIR) as well as 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated at county level. Capture-recapture (CARE) procedures were applied taking data source dependency into account to estimate the quality of case ascertainment in the ALS registry Swabia. We identified 438 ALS cases (53% men, 47% women) in the target population of about 8.4 Mio inhabitants. The gender ratio (men∶women) was 1.1∶1. The mean age at onset of ALS was 63.8 (SD = 11.9) years for men and 66.0 (12.2) for women. The age distribution peaked in the age group 70–74 years. The ASR of ALS was 2.5 per 100,000 person years (PY; 95% CI: 2.3–2.7). The mean SIR was 1.1 per 100,000 PY (95% CI: 1.0–1.2). High SIR suggesting geographical clusters were observed in two counties (Göppingen and Bodenseekreis), but the variation was not statistically significant (p-values = 0.2 and 0.5). The percentage of CARE estimated missing cases was 18.9% in the registry yielding an ASR of 3.1 per 100,000 PY. The high coverage of the CARE estimated completeness of the ALS registry Swabia indicates excellent quality for future projects. Regional variations have to be investigated further.
Gauged maximal supergravities and hierarchies of nonabelian vector‐tensor systems

We describe generalizations of the manifestly E6(6) covariant formulation of five‐dimensional gauged maximal supergravity with regard to the structure of the vector and tensor fields. We indicate how the group‐theoretical structures that we discover seem to play a role in gauged supergravities in various space‐time dimensions.
Thermal Tolerance of Turkish Crayfish (Astacus leptodactylus) Acclimated to Three Different Temperatures

15, 20 ve 25 °C’ye alistirilan Turk kereviti icin kritik termal maksima ( CTMax ) ve minima ( CTMin ) degerleri belirlenmistir. CTMin ve CTMax degerleri sirasiyla 1,3, 1,1 ve 2,0 ile 37,4, 37,5 ve 38,7 °C’dir. Sicaklik tolerans testleri alistirma sicakliklarinin (15, 20 ve 25 °C) A. leptodactylus CTMin degerlerine onemli etkilerde bulunduklarini gostermistir (P≤0,05). Sicaklik tolerans alani CTMin ve CTMax sinirlari ile degerlendirilerek 364°C 2 olarak hesaplanmistir. Genel olarak 15 ile 25 ° C arasi alistirma sicakliklarinda, alistirma tepki orani ( ARR ) 0,07 ile 0,13 olarak hesaplananmistir. Kerevitlerin tamami 0,5 °C’de kivrilma ve geneli 32,0- 33,0°C’de kasilma gostermistir. Akdeniz bolgesinin guneydogu kesiminde A. leptodactylus yetistiriciligi sicaklik toleransi acisindan uygun olabilir.