Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Joint Relay and Jammer Selection for Secure Two-Way Relay Networks

In this paper, we investigate joint relay and jammer selection in two-way cooperative networks, consisting of two sources, a number of intermediate nodes, and one eavesdropper, with the constraints of physical-layer security. Specifically, the proposed algorithms select two or three intermediate nodes to enhance security against the malicious eavesdropper. The first selected node operates in the conventional relay mode and assists the sources to deliver their data to the corresponding destinations using an amplify-and-forward protocol. The second and third nodes are used in different communication phases as jammers in order to create intentional interference upon the malicious eavesdropper. First, we find that in a topology where the intermediate nodes are randomly and sparsely distributed, the proposed schemes with cooperative jamming outperform the conventional nonjamming schemes within a certain transmitted power regime. We also find that, in the scenario where the intermediate nodes gather as a close cluster, the jamming schemes may be less effective than their nonjamming counterparts. Therefore, we introduce a hybrid scheme to switch between jamming and nonjamming modes. Simulation results validate our theoretical analysis and show that the hybrid switching scheme further improves the secrecy rate.
How to Expand Dictionaries by Web-Mining Techniques

This paper presents an approach to enrich conceptual classes based on the Web. To test our approach, we first build conceptual classes using syntactic and semantic information provided by a corpus. The concepts can be the input of a dictionary. Our web-mining approach deals with a cognitive process which simulates human reasoning based on the enumeration principle. The experiments reveal the interest of our approach by adding new relevant terms to existing conceptual classes.
2 . BACKGROUND 2 . 1 c-Approximate Near Neighbor Search and the Classical

Minwise hashing (Minhash) is a widely popular indexing scheme in practice. Minhash is designed for estimating set resemblance and is known to be suboptimal in many applications where the desired measure is set overlap (i.e., inner product between binary vectors) or set containment. Minhash has inherent bias towards smaller sets, which adversely affects its performance in applications where such a penalization is not desirable. In this paper, we propose asymmetric minwise hashing (MH-ALSH), to provide a solution to this well-known problem. The new scheme utilizes asymmetric transformations to cancel the bias of traditional minhash towards smaller sets, making the final “collision probability” monotonic in the inner product. Our theoretical comparisons show that, for the task of retrieving with binary inner products, asymmetric minhash is provably better than traditional minhash and other recently proposed hashing algorithms for general inner products. Thus, we obtain an algorithmic improvement over existing approaches in the literature. Experimental evaluations on four publicly available highdimensional datasets validate our claims. The proposed scheme outperforms, often significantly, other hashing algorithms on the task of near neighbor retrieval with set containment. Our proposal is simple and easy to implement in practice.
KERNEL EIGENSPACE-BASED MLLR ADAPTATION

Kernel methods have been applied to improve the performance of existing eigenvoicebased adaptation methods. Several adaptation methods including kernel eigenvoice adaptation (KEV) and embedded kernel eigenvoice adaptation (eKEV) report promising results. The basic idea of these kernel-based adaptation methods is to exploit possible nonlinearity among different speakers. In this thesis, a variant of eigenspace-based maximum likelihood linear regression (EMLLR) adaptation, named kernel eigenspace-based MLLR adaptation (KEMLLR), is proposed. It adopts kernel methods to map the MLLR transformation matrices to a kernel-induced high dimensional space and kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) is used to derive a set of kernel eigenmatrices in the feature space. A new speaker is then represented by a linear combination of the leading kernel eigenmatrices in the feature space, and the eigenmatrix weights are optimized by using BFGS quasi-Newton algorithm. In the Resource Management adaptation task using 10-mixture monophone hidden Markov models, KEMLLR gives encouraging results in rapid speaker adaptation. It is found that when only 5s of adaptation speech are available, EMLLR successfully reduces the word error rate (WER) by 7.82%, and KEMLLR can reduce the WER by 11.4%. When 10s of adaptation speech are provided, xi MLLR using full transformation (MLLR-F) becomes effective and matches the performance of KEMLLR. EMLLR, eKEV and MLLR using diagonal transformation (MLLR-D) do not perform as well as KEMLLR in the experiments. The time complexities of various adaptation methods including EV, MLLR, EMLLR, KEV, eKEV, and KEMLLR are also analyzed under some mild assumptions. Comparisons are made and the analysis helps understanding the efficiency of various methods.
I Can Help You Change! An Empathic Virtual Agent Delivers Behavior Change Health Interventions

Christine Lisetti, School of Information and Computing Sciences, Florida International University, Miami USA Reza Amini, School of Information and Computing Sciences, Florida International University, Miami USA Ugan Yasavur, School of Information and Computing Sciences, Florida International University, Miami USA Naphtali Rishe, School of Information and Computing Sciences, Florida International University, Miami USA
The Allocation of Authority in Organizations: A Field Experiment with Bureaucrats

We design a field experiment to study how the allocation of authority between frontline procurement officers and their monitors affects performance both directly and through the response to incentives. In collaboration with the government of Punjab, Pakistan, we shift authority from monitors to procurement officers and introduce financial incentives in a sample of 600 procurement officers in 26 districts. We find that autonomy alone reduces prices by 9% without reducing quality and that the effect is stronger when the monitor tends to delay approvals for purchases until the end of the fiscal year. In contrast, the effect of performance pay is muted, except when agents face a monitor who does not delay approvals. Time use data reveal agents’ responses vary along the same margin: autonomy increases the time devoted to procurement and this leads to lower prices only when monitors cause delays. By contrast, incentives work when monitors do not cause delays. The results illustrate that organizational design and anti-corruption policies must balance agency issues at different levels of the hierarchy.
Environmental Impacts of Acid Rock Drainage Remediation in a Coal Waste Pile: An Experimental and Hydro-Geochemical Modeling Approach

The mining-related acid rock drainage (ARD) constitutes a serious type of pollution that causes widespread degradation of water resources in regions with mining activity. Despite of a large number of research activities carried out on this topic, studies about ARD passive remediation have shown various existing issues that require further investigation. For instance, what long-term impacts will the remediation techniques have? Is there an optimal content of the reactive material that should be applied in the field? What impacts will the hydrological processes have on the ARD remediation techniques at the watershed scale? To investigate these issues, a comprehensive and systematic approach is developed through this dissertation research work in which laboratory experiments (> 3 years), complemented with field measurements (> 5 years), and hydro-geochemical modeling have been combined to explore the effectiveness and long-term impacts of a remediation technique -- alkaline clay (AC), an industrial waste, used as the remediation material in coal refuse (CR) waste piles. Our study yielded the following main findings: 1) AC is an effective and environmentally sustainable material for passive ARD remediation, maintaining a neutral pH and immobilizing metals/metalloids; 2) There is a range for the mixing ratio between the amount of AC and CR to achieve an optimal or close to optimal remediation effectiveness; 3) The appropriate depth for the amended layer was determined and it was found to be mostly constrained by the root zone depth; 4) Complementary strategies such as a vegetated cover and a saturated sand layer are highly beneficial; 5) The utilization of a sophisticated hydro-geochemical model allowed to investigate the remediation effectiveness and its long-term performance at a watershed scale, making possible the assessment inside and outside the coal waste pile ; and 6) Both the laboratory experiments and modeling results show that the proposed remediation design can lead to the total alkalinity in the system exceeding the total acidity over a long time period. In summary, this study provides valuable new insights through three defined stages (i.e., laboratory experiments, field measurements and modeling) to demonstrate the effectiveness and sustainability of the proposed remediation approach.
Management Dynamics Management Dynamics

This paper aims to investigate the relationships between the components of transformational leadership (such as, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration) and job performance in a collectivistic society. Transformational leadership components were measured by the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5X while job performance was assessed by Tsui et al.,'s Job Performance Scale. Data for this study were collectedfrom 116 working MBA students who were asked to rate their managers' transformational leadership behavior and job performance studying at three private universities in Chittagong, a port city of Bangladesh, with the help ofprinted survey instruments. In data collection, this study used convenience sampling technique. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, bivariate correlation, and regression analysis. Results indicated a positive correlation between the components of transformational leadership and job performance. An important implication of the study is that managers should use their transformational leadership attributes to improve their own as well as subordinates' job performance. The most important limitation was to use the convenience samples that might limit the generalizability of the results. Future research directions are also discussed.
Demand Estimation and Forecasting Using Cognitive Models of Consumer Choice

: Empirical studies of consumer choice increasingly make use of cognitive process models that incorporate behavioral insights while maintaining quantitative rigor. At the same time, important questions remain regarding their ability to deliver insights that are at once accurate, generalizable, and managerially relevant. We take a step toward addressing these issues by conducting a series of consumer choice experiments and comparing the accuracy and generalizability of the canonical multinomial logit model (MNL) against the drift diffusion model (DDM), a cognitive model that incorporates response times in addition to choice data. We find that the DDM robustly outperforms MNL in providing accurate forecasts on several managerially relevant measures, and that these improvements generalize to out-of-sample scenarios involving new consumers and new choice environments. Perhaps most impressively, relative performance improvements when generalizing across individuals are greater in magnitude than when using holdout choices within the same individuals. Additional analyses further show that these improvements derive from the ability of the cognitive model to capture heterogeneity in the tradeoff between time spent on deliberation and the probability of mistakenly choosing a lower-valued option. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for theoretical and applied work in consumer choice modeling.
AIS Electronic

The Social network sites (SNS) has been rapid diffusion around the world. With the increasing importance of SNS, continuance intention also becomes a popular issue in the SNS context. SNS providers have to maintain better relationships with users and make individuals continue to use their sites. Based on this phenomenon, the objective of this study is to gain a better understanding of the continuance intention of SNS through examining the effects of commitments. Specifically, followed Meyer and Allen’s three-component model of commitment, we develop a theoretical model to understand the factors that influence normative, affective and continued commitment and investigate the effects of commitments on continuance intention in the SNS context. Through a survey-based empirical investigation, we anticipate the results to enhance our existing knowledge on continuance intention in the SNS context.
Detection of areas susceptible to land degradation in Cyprus using remote sensed data and environmental quality indices

This study is an effort to adapt the general principles, methodological tools, and equations of a widely used Mediterranean desertification and land use approach (MEDALUS approach) in order to detect environmental sensitive areas susceptible for land degradation in Cyprus. For this scope, different remote sensed data and products (Landsat multispectral imagery and ASTER Digital Elevation Model) were used as well as demographic information, taken from the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center. Four quality indices were calculated (Climate Quality Index, Demographic Index, Soil Quality Index, and Vegetation Quality Index) and combined in order to provide at final stage, the Environmental Sensitivity Area Index (ESAI) with which the environmental status is described. The use of remote sensed data of 30‐m spatial resolution and the calculation of different indices to extract the environmental stress at regional scale can be considered as innovative characteristics of this study. According to this ESAI, it was found that 9.68% of the Cyprus Island is at environmental risk, strictly related to the land degradation potential. The spatial distribution of the ESAI values shows that the environmental risk is most significant in Paphos district and Limassol, following the Larnaca and the Famagusta districts. Nicosia and Kyrenia districts are found slightly less problematic. In addition, large parts of Troodos Mountain (especially in its low altitudes), which is one of the most vegetated areas of the Island, seem to be at notable environmental stress.
State Machine Replication in the Libra Blockchain

This report describes the Libra Byzantine Fault Tolerance (LibraBFT) algorithmic core and discusses next steps in its production. The consensus protocol is responsible for forming agreement on ordering and finalizing transactions among a configurable set of validators. LibraBFT maintains safety against network asynchrony and even if at any particular configuration epoch, a threshold of the participants are Byzantine. LibraBFT is based on HotStuff, a recent protocol that leverages several decades of scientific advances in Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) and achieves the strong scalability and security properties required by internet settings. Several novel features distinguish LibraBFT from HotStuff. LibraBFT incorporates a novel round synchronization mechanism that provides bounded commit latency under synchrony. It introduces a nil-block vote that allows proposals to commit despite having faulty leaders. It encapsulates the correct behavior by participants in a “tcb”-able module, allowing it to run within a secure hardware enclave that reduces the attack surface on participants. LibraBFT can reconfigure itself, by embedding configuration-change commands in the sequence. A new configuration epoch may change everything from the validator set to the protocol itself.
Assessment of Soil Fertility under Different Land-Use Systems in Dhading District of Nepal

Unscientific land use and cropping techniques have led high soil erosion and degradation of soil quality in the mid-hills of Nepal. To understand the effects of land use systems for selected soil chemical properties in mid-hills, composite soil samples at 0 cm to 20 cm depth were collected from five different land-use systems: Grassland, forest land, upland, lowland, and vegetable farms from Dhading district of Nepal in 2017. Soil samples were analyzed for soil fertility parameters: Soil pH, organic matter (OM), total nitrogen (N), available phosphorus (P), available potassium (K) and its effect due to different land use systems were compared. Results showed that soil pH was neutral in vegetable farms (6.61), whereas the rest of the land-use systems had acidic soils. Soil OM (3.55%) and N (0.18%) content was significantly higher in forest, but the lowest soil OM (1.26%) and N (0.06%) contents were recorded from upland and lowland farms, respectively. Available P was the highest in the vegetable farm (41.07 mg kg−1) and was the lowest in grazing land (2.89 mg kg−1). The upland farm had significantly higher P levels (39.89 mg kg−1) than the lowland farm (9.02 mg kg−1). Available K was the highest in the vegetable farm (130.2 mg kg−1) and lowest in grazing land (36.8 mg kg−1). These results indicated that the land under traditional mixed cereal-based farming had poor soil health compared with adjacent vegetable, grazing, and forest lands among the study area. The variations in soil fertility parameters suggest the immediate need for improvement in soil health of traditional farmlands.
KOF Working Papers

This study addresses price convergence in two cities in Turkey (Istanbul and Ankara) using the annual data over the three quarters of the 20th century (1922–1998), characterized by prevailing high inflation rates for most of the period. In contrast to the rest of the literature addressing convergence in price levels with a typical result of extremely slow convergence rates at best, we argue that convergence is much easier detected in growth rates rather than levels of prices. We suggest using the bounds testing procedure of Pesaran et al. (2001) for this purpose. We find a clear-cut evidence on the existence of a common driving force behind inflation dynamics in Istanbul and Ankara—a finding that is intuitively appealing from the point of view of economic theory.
Technology, Gender, and Climate Change: A Feminist Examination of Climate Technologies

In this article, I examine the subject of justice as it relates to gender and climate change by focusing on two specific strategies, namely, the geoengineering strategy of ocean fertilization, and renewable energy as a means of mitigation (where mitigation is understood as the adoption of technologies and practices that aim to slow the rise of greenhouse gas emissions). My overarching argument is that iron fertilization geoengineering is not consistent with the feminist values of justice embedded in feminist standpoint theory and feminist contextual empiricism. Alternative mitigation strategies, on the other hand, go much further in meeting these objectives and virtues.
Influence of the strongest central Pacific El Niño–Southern Oscillation events on the precipitation in eastern China

The impact of the strongest central Pacific (CP) El Niño event 2009/2010 and CP La Niña event 1998/1999 from 1979 to 2010 on the precipitation in eastern China has been analysed. During the 2009/2010 CP El Niño event, it is rainy in northern China during maturing winter and decaying spring, but dry during decaying summer. The rainfall centre is located in south China during maturing period and gradually moves northwards, remaining over the Yellow‐Huai River valley during decaying summer. When the 1998/1999 CP La Niña event occurs, northern China is in a state of drought throughout. In south China, dry periods gradually evolve into rainy ones from maturing winter to decaying summer. The two strongest events also have notable impact on the extreme rainfall, and they mainly affect the total rainfall by influencing the extreme precipitation in eastern China. When the 2009/2010 CP El Niño event occurs, the Western Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH) is stronger with a northwards shift, and there is an obvious anticyclonic circulation near the South China Sea and Philippines. Furthermore, during decaying summer, the Pacific–Japan (PJ) wave train shows an eastwards shift comparing to the typical PJ wave train locating from low latitudes to high latitudes, associating with clearly northwardly spreading wave activity fluxes (WAFs) from the equator. When the 1998/1999 CP La Niña event occurs, the WPSH is weaker and retreats eastwards, and there is a noticeable cyclonic circulation around the South China Sea. In decaying spring, the convective activity in the South China Sea is strong, and there are correspondingly significant WAFs spreading from southeastern Asia to north. In decaying summer, northern (southern) China is controlled by anomalous anticyclones (cyclones) with weak (strong) convection, and the WAFs extend northwards to the Yangtze and Huai River valleys.
Centrality measures in psychological networks: A simulation study on identifying effective treatment targets

The network theory of psychopathology suggests that symptoms in a disorder form a network and that identifying central symptoms within this network might be important for an effective and personalized treatment. However, recent evidence has been inconclusive. We analyzed contemporaneous idiographic networks of depression and anxiety symptoms. Two approaches were compared: a cascade-based attack where symptoms were deactivated in decreasing centrality order, and a normal attack where symptoms were deactivated based on original centrality estimates. Results showed that centrality measures significantly affected the attack’s magnitude, particularly the number of components and average path length in both normal and cascade attacks. Degree centrality consistently had the highest impact on the network properties. This study emphasizes the importance of considering centrality measures when identifying treatment targets in psychological networks. Further research is needed to better understand the causal relationships and predictive capabilities of centrality measures in personalized treatments for mental disorders.
The signaling role of feedback in the repeated public goods game: Experimental evidence from the laboratory

This paper empirically examines the signaling role of feedback in the repeated public goods game. To eliminate the potential impact of feedback’s informative function, we test whether the provision of detailed yet redundant feedback leads to increased contributions. Our findings demonstrate that redundant information significantly promotes contributions. Given the equal informative power in both treatments, the observed increase in contributions can be attributed to the signaling effect. Furthermore, an examination of cooperative disposition heterogeneity reveals that conditional cooperators primarily utilize feedback for its informative function, while free riders primarily exploit it for its signaling function. These results offer empirical evidence of the signaling function of feedback and offer valuable insights into the design of feedback provision in repeated public goods settings.