Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating Shape Representations for Maya Glyph Classification

Shape representations are critical for visual analysis of cultural heritage materials. This article studies two types of shape representations in a bag-of-words-based pipeline to recognize Maya glyphs. The first is a knowledge-driven Histogram of Orientation Shape Context (HOOSC) representation, and the second is a data-driven representation obtained by applying an unsupervised Sparse Autoencoder (SA). In addition to the glyph data, the generalization ability of the descriptors is investigated on a larger-scale sketch dataset. The contributions of this article are four-fold: (1) the evaluation of the performance of a data-driven auto-encoder approach for shape representation; (2) a comparative study of hand-designed HOOSC and data-driven SA; (3) an experimental protocol to assess the effect of the different parameters of both representations; and (4) bridging humanities and computer vision/machine learning for Maya studies, specifically for visual analysis of glyphs. From our experiments, the data-driven representation performs overall in par with the hand-designed representation for similar locality sizes on which the descriptor is computed. We also observe that a larger number of hidden units, the use of average pooling, and a larger training data size in the SA representation all improved the descriptor performance. Additionally, the characteristics of the data and stroke size play an important role in the learned representation.
Assessing the Impact of Wage Bargaining and Worker Preferences on the Gender Pay Gap in Ireland Using the National Employment Survey 2003

This paper assesses the magnitude and nature of the gender pay gap in Ireland using the National Employment Survey 2003, an employeremployee matched dataset. The results suggest that while a wage bargaining system centred around social partnership was of benefit to females irrespective of their employment status, the minimum wage mechanism appears to improve the relative position of part-time females only. Trade union membership was associated with a widening gender pay gap in the full-time labour market and a narrowing differential among part-time workers. In relation to the motivations for working part-time, which help us to account for selection into part-time employment, our results indicate that when these factors are incorporated into the part-time decomposition, the previously observed wage gap is eliminated.
Using the FASB's Qualitative Characteristics in Accounting Policy Choices

Financial accounting standard setting involves making choices among alternative accounting methods. Accounting methods are multidimensional in nature, and each has many attributes which may be relevant for making a choice. The latest attempt to articulate relevant attributes appears in Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts No. 2: Qualitative Characteristics of Accounting Information (FASB [1980]). 1 Underlying this endeavor is the assumption that identifying and defining the appropriate attributes (qualitative characteristics) of accounting information will help standard setters in selecting financial accounting methods. The purpose of this study was to test this assumption for SFAC No. 2 (hereafter, Statement). A direct way to test the effectiveness of the Statement would be to assess the "quality" of standard setters' judgments, before and after the
New m-DBL based evaluation scheme for efficient scalar multiplication in ECC

This paper presents an innovative methodology for accelerating scalar multiplication in an elliptic curve cryptosystem over prime fields. We improve the m-DBL operation formulae to achieve faster arithmetic, and then propose our new evaluation scheme that takes advantage of fast point operations, mainly m-DBL, and combine them with the Frac-wNAF form with the flexibility to utilize memory. Our scheme offers faster computation than the mixed coordinates method for a broad range of I/M ratios. In comparison to the general left-to-right scheme, our scheme saves 7.71% of cost in general cases.
Aggregate Analysis of the Impact of Cigarette Tax Rate Increases on Tobacco Consumption and Government Revenue : The Case of Indonesia

This study uses aggregate times series data (annual data from 1970-2001) and monthly data from January 1996 to June 2001 to estimate the price and income elasticity of demand for tobacco products in Indonesia. Using various model specifications used in the cigarette demand literature, and then selecting the best model, it estimates the real price elasticity of cigarette demand as -0.345 and income elasticity of demand as 0.473. This inplies that a 10 percent real price increase would reduce consumption by 3.4 percent, and a 10 percent real income increase would raise consumption by 4.7 percent. The economic crisis after 1997 was found to increase consumption, over and above the effects of price and income, and the warning label on cigarette packs required after 1991 appears to have no significant impact on demand. Estimates based on the shorter period of monthly data showed less responsiveness to price and incomes, as would be expected. The study simulates the effects of a tax increase on total tobacco excise revenues and predicts that an increase in the tax level of 10, 50, or 100 percent would increase total tax revenue by 9 percent, 43 percent, and 82 percent respectively. The study comments on the effect of possible switching to cheaper products or illegal purchases.
Population synthesis of H ii galaxies

We study the stellar population of galaxies with active star formation, determining ages of the stellar components by means of spectral population synthesis of their absorption spectra. The data consist of optical spectra of 185 nearby (z0.075) emission-line galaxies. They are mostly H ii galaxies, but we also include some starbursts and Seyfert 2s, for comparison purposes. They were grouped into 19 high signal-to-noise ratio template spectra, according to their continuum distribution, absorption- and emission-line characteristics. The templates were then synthesized with a star cluster spectral base. The synthesis results indicate that H ii galaxies are typically age-composite stellar systems, presenting important contributions from generations up to as old as 500 Myr. We detect a significant contribution of populations with ages older than 1 Gyr in two groups of H ii galaxies. The age distributions of stellar populations among starbursts can vary considerably despite similarities in the emission-line spectra. In the case of Seyfert 2 groups we obtain important contributions from the old population, consistent with a bulge. From the diversity of star formation histories, we conclude that typical H ii galaxies in the local Universe are not systems presently forming their first stellar generation.
Predictors of Food Security Status in Older AdultsLiving in the Northeast United States

Little is known about food security of older adults in the Northeast U.S. This study of existing data from the 2008 national Current Population Survey and Food Security Survey datasets used a descriptive correlational design to describe food security status and identify its predictors in 3,207 respondents ≥65 years of age in the Northeast U.S. Simple and multivariable binary logistic regression modeling examined nine predictors of food security status, based on environments of the Ecological Model of Health Behavior. Nearly 6% of the sample lacked adequate food security status. Respondents who were young old, non-white, Hispanic, less educated, below the poverty income range, lived in non-metropolitan areas, and participated in food assistance programs were at risk for inadequate food security status after controlling for all other variables in the model. Sex and marital status were significant predictors individually, but non-significant in the multivariable model. These findings create a profile of risk factors for inadequate food security status for older adults in this geographical area suggesting that health professionals assess food security status during all healthcare encounters with at-risk patients.
The Effects of Web Personalization on User Attitude and Behavior: An Integration of the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Consumer Search Theory

Web personalization can achieve two business goals: increased advertising revenue and increased sales revenue. The realization of the two goals is related to two kinds of user behavior: item sampling and item selection. Prior research does not provide a model of attitude formation toward a personalization agent nor of how attitudes relate to these two behaviors. This limits our understanding of how web personalization can be managed to increase advertising revenues and/or sales revenues. To fill this gap, the current research develops and tests a theoretical model of user attitudes and behaviors toward a personalization agent. The model is based on an integration of two theories: the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and consumer search theory (CST). In the integrated model, a user's attitude toward a personalization agent is influenced by both the number of items he/she has sampled so far (from CST) and the degree to which he/she cognitively processes each one (from ELM). In turn, attitude is modeled to influence both behaviors--that is, item selection and any further item sampling. We conducted a lab study and a field study to test six hypotheses. This research extends the theory on web personalization by providing a more complete picture of how sampling and processing of personalized recommendations influence a user's attitude and behavior toward the personalization agent. For online merchants, this research highlights the trade-off between item sampling and item selection and provides practical guidance on how to steer users toward the attitudes and behaviors that will realize their business goals.
The formation of voids in a universe with cold dark matter and a cosmological constant

A spherical Lagrangian hydrodynamical code has been written to study the formation of cosmological structures in the early Universe. In this code we take into account the presence of collisionless non-baryonic cold dark matter (CDM), the cosmological constant and a series of physical processes present during and after the recombination era, such as photon drag resulting from the cosmic background radiation and hydrogen molecular production. We follow the evolution of the structure since the recombination era until the present epoch. As an application of this code we study the formation of voids starting from negative density perturbations which evolved during and after the recombination era. We analyse a set of COBE-normalized models, using different spectra to see their influence on the formation of voids. Our results show that large voids with diameters ranging from 10 h−1 Mpc up to 50 h−1 Mpc can be formed in a universe model dominated by the cosmological constant (ΩΛ∼0.8). This particular scenario is capable of forming large and deep empty regions (with density contrasts δ¯<−0.6). Our results also show that the physical processes acting on the baryonic matter produce a transition region where the radius of the dark matter component is greater than the baryonic void radius. The thickness of this transition region ranges from about tens of kiloparsecs up to a few megaparsecs, depending on the spectrum considered. Putative objects formed near voids and within the transition region would have a different amount of baryonic/dark matter when compared with Ωb/Ωd. If one were to use these galaxies to determine, by dynamical effects or other techniques, the quantity of dark matter present in the Universe, the result obtained would be only local and not representative of the Universe as a whole.
Ia-bearing T lymphocytes in man. Their identification and role in the generation of allogeneic helper activity

The presence of Ia-like antigens was demonstrated on a small population (2-6%) of highly purified human circulating T lymphocytes by immunofluorescence with a rabbit anti-Ia serum raised against the isolated bimolecular Ia structure. The Ia+ T lymphocytes have no surface or intracellular immunoglobulins. The expansion of this Ia+ T- cell population was encountered in certain patients. Ia antigens were also found on T blasts grown in long-term cultures with conditioned medium generated by phytohemagglutinin-stimulated lymphocytes. In addition, leukemia blasts which stained for Ia antigens and formed E rosettes were identified in the peripheral blood of two leukemic patients. This evidence further supports the existence of Ia-bearing T cells in man. The Ia+ T-lymphocyte population was shown to contain cells responsible for the generation of allogeneic helper activity. Elimination of Ia+ lymphocytes from a purified T-cell population by the anti-Ia antiserum and complement abolished its ability to help an allogeneic B-cell preparation to generate plaque-forming cells against sheep erythrocytes in vitro in the presence of the antigen.
N I ] 1 0 M ay 2 00 4 Security-Performance Tradeoffs of Resilient Inheritance based Key Predistribution for Wireless Sensor Networks ∗

Key pre-distribution is a well-known technique for ensuring secure communication among sensors deployed in an ad-hoc manner to form a sensor network. Secure paths can be established between any two sensors, where adjacent sensors on the path share a (predistributed) secret key. Several results have been presented recently on random key predistribution schemes [6] and [2]. In this paper, we propose a novel 2-Phase technique for key predistribution based on a combination of inherited and random key assignments from the given key pool to individual sensor nodes. We also develop an analytical framework for measuring security-performance tradeoffs of different key distribution schemes by providing metrics for measuring sensornet connectivity and resiliency to enemy attacks. In particular, we show analytically that the 2-Phase scheme provides better average connectivity and superior q-composite connectivity than the random scheme. We then prove that the invulnerability of a communication link under arbitrary number of node captures by an adversary is higher under the 2-Phase scheme. We also show analytically that the vulnerability of an arbitrary communication link to single node capture is lower under 2-Phase assuming both an omniscient adversary and an average-case adversary. Finally we present several simulation results for these and other metrics regarding network connectivity and resiliency.
Two Novel Fully Complementary Self-Biased CMOS Differential Amplifiers

[I21 amplifier-based nonlinear function syntheses,” IEEE J . SolidState Circuits, vol. 24, pp. 1576-1586, Dec. 1989. K. K. Clarke and D. T. Hess, Communication Circuits: Analysis and Design. Reading MA: Addison Wesley, 1978. A. Rodriguez-VBzquez, B. Linares-Barranco, J. L. Huertas, and E. SBnchez-Sinencio, “On the design of voltage controlled sinusoidal oscillators using OTAs,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. , vol. 37, pp. 198-211, Feb. 1990. B. Linares-Barranco, A. Rodriguez-Vkzquez, E. SBnchezSinencio, and J. L. Huertas, “10 MHz CMOS OTA-C voltagecontrolled quadrature oscillator,” Electron. Lett. , vol. 25, pp. 765-766, June 1989. B. Linares-Barranco, A. Rodriguez-VBzquez, J. L. Huertas, E. SBnchez-Sinencio, and J. J. Hoyle, “Generation and design of sinusoidal oscillators using OTAs,” in Proc. IEEE / ISCAS ’88, vol. 3 (Espoo, Finland), June 1988, pp. 2863-2866. B. Linares-Barranco, “Design of high frequency transconductance mode CMOS voltage controlled oscillators,” Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Seville, Sevilla, Spain, May 1990 (available in English). A. Nedungadi and R. L. Geiger, “High-frequency voltage controlled continuous-time low-pass filter using linearized CMOS integrators,” Electron. Lett. , vol. 22, pp. 729-731, June 1986. P. E. Allen and D. R. Holberg, CMOS Analog Circuit Design. New York: Holt, Reinhart, Winston, 1987.
Nonnegative Matrix Factorization Based on Alternating Nonnegativity Constrained Least Squares and Active Set Method

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) determines a lower rank approximation of a matrix $A \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times n} \approx WH$ where an integer $k \ll \min(m,n)$ is given and nonnegativity is imposed on all components of the factors $W \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times k}$ and $H \in \mathbb{R}^{k \times n}$. NMF has attracted much attention for over a decade and has been successfully applied to numerous data analysis problems. In applications where the components of the data are necessarily nonnegative, such as chemical concentrations in experimental results or pixels in digital images, NMF provides a more relevant interpretation of the results since it gives nonsubtractive combinations of nonnegative basis vectors. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for NMF based on alternating nonnegativity constrained least squares (NMF/ANLS) and the active set-based fast algorithm for nonnegativity constrained least squares with multiple right-hand side vectors, and we discuss its convergence properties and a rigorous convergence criterion based on the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. In addition, we also describe algorithms for sparse NMFs and regularized NMF. We show how we impose a sparsity constraint on one of the factors by $L_1$-norm minimization and discuss its convergence properties. Our algorithms are compared to other commonly used NMF algorithms in the literature on several test data sets in terms of their convergence behavior.
On Vulnerability of Power and Total Graphs

In communication networks, greater degrees of stability or less vulnerability is required. The vulnerability of communication network measures the resistance of the network to the disruption of operation after the failure of certain stations or communication links. If the network begins losing communication links or processors, then there is a loss in its effectiveness. Thus, communication networks must be so designed that they do not easily get disrupted under external attack and, moreover, these are easily reconstructible if they do get disrupted. These desirable properties of networks can be measured by various graph parameters like toughness, integrity, scattering number, tenacity and rupture degree. Power graphs and total graphs constitute a large class of graphs and which are widely used in systems ranging from large supercomputers to small embedded systems-on-a-chip. In this paper, we firstly give the exact values for the integrity and toughness of powers of paths. After that, the vulnerability parameters such as integrity, toughness, rupture degree of total graphs of some special graphs are calculated. Finally, the relationships between some vulnerability parameters, namely the integrity, toughness, scattering number, tenacity and rupture degree are established. Key–Words: Vulnerability, Integrity, Toughness, Scattering number, Tenacity, Rupture degree, Total graph, Power graph.
Employing automatic approach and avoidance tendencies for the assessment of implicit personality self-concept: The implicit association procedure (IAP).

A new chronometric procedure, the Implicit Association Procedure (IAP), was adapted to assess the implicit personality self-concept of shyness. A sample of 300 participants completed a shyness-inducing role play and, before or after the role play, a shyness IAP, a shyness Implicit Association Test (IAT), and direct self-ratings. The experimental group was instructed to fake nonshyness. The control group did not receive this instruction. IAT and IAP were unaffected by position effects, and were less susceptible to faking than direct self-ratings with regard to mean levels and correlates. Under faking, correlations between direct and indirect measures decreased, and direct but not indirect measures showed higher correlations with social desirability and lower correlations with observed shyness. Despite many similarities, the true correlation between IAT and IAP was estimated only . 61, indicating high method-specific variance in both procedures. The findings suggest that indirect measures are more robust against faking than traditional self-ratings but do not yet meet psychometric criteria for practical assessment purposes.
The Effects of Government Spending: A Disaggregated Approach

We disaggregate government spending into five macroeconomic-relevant components: average wage, employment, purchases of intermediate goods and services, investment and transfers. We set up a simple RBC model with only search and matching frictions in the labour market to show that these components have different, quantitative and sometimes qualitative, effects on output, private wages and employment, the unemployment rate and private consumption. Using simulated data we show that a VAR with aggregate government spending and output does not identify any type of fiscal shock. We then use the several identification strategies proposed in the literature to understand the effects of different components, for the United States. We find that both the average wage and employment have larger multipliers than purchases of intermediate goods, investment and transfers. They also have distinct effects on private wages and private consumption.
An Improved Multicast Routing Protocol Based on Fuzzy Clustering

The routing topology optimization is one focus of overlay multicast research. To improve the routing scalability issue, this paper proposed an improved multicast routing protocol based on fuzzy clustering (FHRouting) to construct a hierarchical topology tree for the routing optimization in overlay network. The scheme firstly formulated the issue as a degree-restraint minimal latency optimization and utilized RTT of MSNs (multicast service node) as the metric for the topology hierarchical clustering. And then it selected a fuzzy clustering method to divide all the MSNs into several groups to optimize the clustering performance for the better construction in the multicast routing topology. Finally the scheme formed the hierarchical topology tree by applying a multicast SPT (MSPT) method to achieve the scalable routing topology. The experiments illustrated that the proposed scheme indicated better robust clustering performance and scalable routing performance compared with MSPT.
Pseudoconvex Proximal Splitting for L ∞ Problems in Multiview Geometry

In this paper we study optimization methods for minimizing large-scale pseudoconvex L∞ problems in multiview geometry. We present a novel algorithm for solving this class of problem based on proximal splitting methods. We provide a brief derivation of the proposed method along with a general convergence analysis. The resulting meta-algorithm requires very little effort in terms of implementation and instead makes use of existing advanced solvers for non-linear optimization. Preliminary experiments on a number of real image datasets indicate that the proposed method experimentally matches or outperforms current state-of-the-art solvers for this class of problems.
Performance of a Multicore Matrix Multiplication Library

Multicore processors promise dramatic improvements in performance, but their diverse and often unique architectures are a major inhibitor to software adoption. Algorithm libraries that operate at the chip level and are optimized across multiple cores provide the quickest route by which programmers can port or develop highperformance software for multicores. This paper reports on a flexible matrix multiplication library for the Cell Broadband EngineTM (BE) processor that meets or exceeds the performance of known matrix multiplication implementations on the Cell. In addition, the library operates within a larger framework for programming multicores that enables programmers to combine library code with multicore functions they have developed themselves.