Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is the cranfield paradigm outdated?

The Cranfield paradigm was designed in the early 1960s when information access was via Boolean queries against manually indexed documents and there was (virtually) no text online. Cyril Cleverdon, Librarian of the College of Aeronautics, Cranfield, England, built a test collection that modeled university researchers, including abstracts of aeronautical papers, one-line queries based on questions gathered from the researchers, and complete relevance judgments for each query submitted by these users. The idea of carefully modeling some user application continued with Prof. Gerard Salton and the SMART collections, such as searching MEDLINE abstracts using real questions submitted to MEDLINE, or searching full text TIME articles with real questions from several sources, etc. A 1969 paper by Michael Lesk and Salton used experiments on the ISPRA collection to show that relevance judgments made by a person who was not the user would still allow valid system comparison, a precursor to the paper by Ellen Voorhees in SIGIR 1998. Implementation of the Cranfield paradigm has undergone extensive modifications over the years in TREC and other evaluation forums as the data and tasks have gotten more complex. However it still stands as the model of choice, both for these (mostly) academic evaluations and at least partially for commercial evaluations, especially for straight-forward searching tasks where clicks and dwell times can be used to predict relevance. However the world of information access has exploded in recent years to encompass online shopping, social networking, personal desktop organization, etc. Is it time to have a new paradigm, and if so, how do we ensure that information retrieval evaluation remains scientifically valid? Categories & Subject Descriptors: H.3. 4 [Systems and Software]: Performance evaluation General Terms: Measurement, Experimentation Bio Donna Harman graduated from Cornell University as an Electrical Engineer, and started her career working with Professor Gerard Salton in the design and building of several collections, including the first MEDLARS one. Later work was concerned with searching large volumes of data on relatively small computers, starting with building the IRX system at the National Library of Medicine in 1987, and then the Citator/PRISE system at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1988. In 1990 she was asked by DARPA to put together a realistic test collection on the order of 2 gigabytes of text, and this test collection was used in the first Text Retrieval Conference (TREC). TREC is now in its 19th year, and along with its sister evaluations such as CLEF, NTCIR, INEX, and FIRE, serves as a major testing ground for information retrieval algorithms. Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). SIGIR’10, July 19–23, 2010, Geneva, Switzerland. ACM 978-1-60558-896-4/10/07.
Tumor necrosis factor suppresses transcription of the thrombomodulin gene in endothelial cells

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) dramatically alters the levels of various surface components of the blood vessel wall, such as blood coagulation enzyme receptors, leukocyte-adhesive receptors, and class 1 major histocompatibility complex antigens, which may have relevance to its effects in septic shock, angiogenesis, and tumor growth. However, the precise mechanism by which the cytokine is able to accomplish this remodeling of the endothelial cell surface has not been defined. We have demonstrated that exposure of bovine and human endothelial cells to TNF leads to suppression of the functional cell surface thrombin receptor, thrombomodulin (TM), and TM mRNA of virtually identical magnitude. The cytokine has no significant effect on the stability of TM mRNA or endothelial receptor turnover. Nuclear run-on studies reveal that the treatment of endothelial cells with TNF for short periods reduces TM gene transcription to as little as 3% of control values and that this inhibition does not require new protein synthesis.
When to Recommend What? A Study on the Role of Contextual Factors in IP-based TV Services

Today’s IP-based TV services commonly strive for personalizing their content offers using complex recommendation systems to match their users’ interests. These systems try to capture the relevance of content recommended to a user, which may also depend on many contextual factors such as time, location, or social company. Nevertheless, in most cases, these factors are either omitted or integrated in recommendation systems without a concrete modeling of what different roles each may play on different users’ experiences. Do users really care about all of these specific factors? How do those factors interact with or influence each other? Can this interaction be modeled commonly for all users or is it more specific to the user profile? To the best of our knowledge, answers to these questions have not been studied in detail yet. In this paper, we introduce the results of a questionnaire and a focus group discussion to elaborate on the influence of contextual factors on IP-based TV services from the users’ point-of-view.
Cache-tuning-aware scratchpad allocation from binaries

The literature on scratchpad memories (SPMs) seems to indicate that the use of dynamic overlaying supersedes static, non-overlay-based (NOB) allocation. Although overlay-based (OVB) techniques operating at source-level code might benefit from multiple hot spots for higher energy savings, they cannot exploit libraries. When operating on binaries, OVB approaches lead to smaller savings, often require dedicated hardware, and sometimes prevent data allocation. Besides, all saving reports published so far ignore that, in cache-based systems, caches are likely to be optimized prior to SPM allocation. We show experimental evidence that, when handling binaries, NOB memory savings (15% to 33% on average) are as good as or better than OVB's. Since our savings (as opposed to related work) were measured after cache tuning -- when there is less room for optimization, our results encourage the use of simpler NOB methods to build library aware allocators that cannot depend on dedicated hardware. We also show that, given the capacity Ct of the equivalent pretuned cache, the optimal SPM size lies in [Ct/2, Ct] for 85% of the evaluated programs. Finally, we show counter-intuitive evidence that, even for cache-based architectures containing small SPMs, procedures should be preferred for allocation instead of basic blocks.
Feasibility of using respiration‐averaged MR images for attenuation correction of cardiac PET/MR imaging

Cardiac imaging is a promising application for combined PET/MR imaging. However, current MR imaging protocols for whole‐body attenuation correction can produce spatial mismatch between PET and MR‐derived attenuation data owing to a disparity between the two modalities' imaging speeds. We assessed the feasibility of using a respiration‐averaged MR (AMR) method for attenuation correction of cardiac PET data in PET/MR images. First, to demonstrate the feasibility of motion imaging with MR, we used a 3T MR system and a two‐dimensional fast spoiled gradient‐recalled echo (SPGR) sequence to obtain AMR images of a moving phantom. Then, we used the same sequence to obtain AMR images of a patient's thorax under free‐breathing conditions. MR images were converted into PET attenuation maps using a three‐class tissue segmentation method with two sets of predetermined CT numbers, one calculated from the patient‐specific (PS) CT images and the other from a reference group (RG) containing 54 patient CT datasets. The MR‐derived attenuation images were then used for attenuation correction of the cardiac PET data, which were compared to the PET data corrected with average CT (ACT) images. In the myocardium, the voxel‐by‐voxel differences and the differences in mean slice activity between the AMR‐corrected PET data and the ACT‐corrected PET data were found to be small (less than 7%). The use of AMR‐derived attenuation images in place of ACT images for attenuation correction did not affect the summed stress score. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using the proposed SPGR‐based MR imaging protocol to obtain patient AMR images and using those images for cardiac PET attenuation correction. Additional studies with more clinical data are warranted to further evaluate the method. PACS number: 87.57. uk
A multimodal-corpus data collection system for cognitive acoustic scene analysis

We report on the design and the collection of a multi-modal data corpus for cognitive acoustic scene analysis. Sounds are generated by stationary and moving sources (people), that is by omni-directional speakers mounted on people's heads. One or two subjects walk along predetermined systematic and random paths, in synchrony and out of sync. Sound is captured in multiple microphone systems, including a four MEMS microphone directional array, two electret microphones situated in the ears of a stuffed gerbil head, and a Head Acoustics, head-shoulder unit with ICP microphones. Three micro-Doppler units operating at different frequencies were employed to capture gait and the articulatory signatures as well as location of the people in the scene. Three ground vibration sensors were recording the footsteps of the walking people. A 3D MESA camera as well as a web-cam provided 2D and 3D visual data for system calibration and ground truth. Data were collected in three environments ranging from a well controlled environment (anechoic chamber), an indoor environment (large classroom) and the natural environment of an outside courtyard. A software tool has been developed for the browsing and visualization of the data.
Hind-Casting the Quantity and Composition of Discards by Mixed Demersal Fisheries in the North Sea

Many commercial fisheries seek to maximise the economic value of the catch that they bring ashore and market for human consumption by discarding undersize or low value fish. Information on the quantity, size and species composition of discarded fish is vital for stock assessments and for devising legislation to minimise the practice. However, except for a few major species, data are usually extremely sparse and reliant on observers aboard a small sample of fishing vessels. Expanding these data to estimate total regional discards is highly problematic. Here, we develop a method for utilising additional information from scientific trawl surveys to model the quantities of fish discarded by the commercial fisheries. As a case-study, we apply the model to the North Sea over the period 1978-2011, and show a long-term decline in the overall quantity of fish discarded, but an increase in the proportion of catch which is thrown away. The composition of discarded catch has shifted from predominantly (∼80%) roundfish, to >50% flatfish. Undersized plaice constitute the largest single fraction of discards, unchanged from the beginning of the 20th century. Overall, around 60% of discarded fish are rejected on the basis of size rather than for reasons of species value or quota restrictions. The analysis shows that much more information can be gained on discarding by utilising additional sources of data rather than relying solely on information gathered by observers. In addition, it is clear that reducing fishing intensity and rebuilding stocks is likely to be more effective at reducing discards in the long term, than any technical legislation to outlaw the practice in the short term.
Actinomyosin Contraction, Phosphorylation of VE-Cadherin, and Actin Remodeling Enable Melanoma-Induced Endothelial Cell-Cell Junction Disassembly

During melanoma cell extravasation through the vascular endothelium, melanoma cells interact with endothelial cells through secretion of cytokines and by adhesion between proteins displayed on opposing cell surfaces. How these tumor cell associated signals together regulate the dynamics of intracellular signaling pathways within endothelial cells leading to endothelial cell-cell junction disruption is not well understood. Here, we used a combination of experimental and computational approaches to examine the individual and combined effects of activation of the vascular cell adhesion molecule (VCAM)-1, interleukin (IL)-8, and IL-1β signaling pathways on the integrity of vascular junctions. Our simulations predict a multifaceted interplay of signaling resulting from individual activation of VCAM-1, IL-8 and IL-1β pathways that is neither synergistic nor additive compared to all inputs turned on simultaneously. Furthermore, we show that the levels of phosphorylated proteins associated with actinomyosin contractility and junction disassembly peak prior to those related to actin remodeling. The results of this work provide insight into the dynamics of tumor-mediated endothelial junction disassembly and suggest that targeting proteins downstream of several interaction pathways may be the most effective therapeutic approach to reduce melanoma extravasation.
An Efficient Fully Parallel Decoder Architecture for Nonbinary LDPC Codes

Nonbinary low-density parity-check (NB-LDPC) codes outperform their binary counterparts in some cases, but their high decoding complexity is a significant hurdle to their applications. In this paper, we propose a decoding algorithm with reduced computational complexities and smaller memory requirements for NB-LDPC codes. First, a simplified algorithm is proposed to reduce the computational complexity of variable node processing. To reduce the memory requirements, existing NB-LDPC decoders often truncate the message vectors to a limited number nm of values. However, the memory requirements of these decoders remain high when the field size is large. In this paper, an improved trellis-based check node processing algorithm is proposed to significantly reduce the memory requirement. The number of elements in a variable-to-check message is reduced to nv (nv <; nm). The sorted log likelihood ratio (LLR) vector of a check-to-variable (c-to-v) message is approximated using a piecewise linear function. For each a priori message, most of the LLRs are approximated with a linear function. Two low complexity LLR generation units (LGUs) are proposed to compute LLR vectors for c-to-v messages. A fully parallel NB-LDPC decoder over GF(256) is implemented with 28-nm CMOS technology. The decoder over GF(256) achieves a throughput of 546 Mb/s and an energy efficiency of 0.178 nJ/b/iter.
Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) Method to Prioritise Human Resources in Substitution Problem

In general, software project development is often to work within the restrictions of resource limitations.When a software project is running late, the project manager is under pressure to assess the impact of delays on the overall project duration. Basing on the time-cost trade-off approach, the problem can be alleviated by the replacement/substitution of other suitable resources that are in greater supply. This paper introduces a human resource substitution method based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) which is a popular decision-making model for tackling multiplecriteria problems. The proposed method can be regarded as a factor weighting approach providing a formal weighting mechanism to achieve a higher level of consistency. It will help the project manager to achieve a better replacement of the human resource and increase the chance to get a successful result. Finally, the approach is illustrated by the use of an example.
Load Balancing in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the next generation of computation. Possibly people can have everything they need on the cloud. Cloud computing provides resources to client on demand. The resources may be software resources or hardware resources. Cloud computing architectures are distributed, parallel and serve the needs of multiple clients in different scenarios. This distributed architecture deploys resources distributive to deliver services efficiently to users in different geographical channels. Clients in a distributed environment generate request randomly in any processor. So the major drawback of this randomness is associated with task assignment. The unequal task assignment to the processor creates imbalance i.e., some of the processors are overloaded and some of them are under loaded. The objective of load balancing is to transfer the load from overloaded process to under loaded process transparently. Load balancing is one of the central issues in cloud computing. To achieve high performance, minimum response time and high resource utilization ratio we need to transfer the tasks between nodes in cloud network. Load balancing technique is used to distribute tasks from over loaded nodes to under loaded or idle nodes. In following sections we are discuss about cloud computing, load balancing techniques and the proposed work of our load balancing system.
Capacity of MIMO channels with one-sided correlation

We present closed-form expressions for the marginal density distribution of the unordered eigenvalues of HFH* where F is an input covariance and H is a matrix representing a MIMO (multi-input multi-output) Rayleigh-faded channel with one-sided correlation at either end of the link, transmitter or receiver, with no constraints on the numbers of antennas therein. Using the foregoing distribution, we then derive analytical expressions for the capacity. The expressions found are evaluated through several examples conducted with correlation structures of practical interest.
Still not there? Comparing Traditional Sequence-to-Sequence Models to Encoder-Decoder Neural Networks on Monotone String Translation Tasks

We analyze the performance of encoder-decoder neural models and compare them with well-known established methods. The latter represent different classes of traditional approaches that are applied to the monotone sequence-to-sequence tasks OCR post-correction, spelling correction, grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, and lemmatization. Such tasks are of practical relevance for various higher-level research fields including digital humanities, automatic text correction, and speech recognition. We investigate how well generic deep-learning approaches adapt to these tasks, and how they perform in comparison with established and more specialized methods, including our own adaptation of pruned CRFs.
Molecular Characterization of Newly Emerged bla KPC-2-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae in Singapore

ABSTRACT In Asia, bla KPC detection has been limited to East Asia and not yet seen in Southeast Asia. We report four bla KPC-2-containing Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates from two different hospitals in Singapore. All isolates belonged to strain type 11 (ST11) and were indistinguishable by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). bla KPC-2 was located on nonconjugative plasmids and flanked by mobile genetic structures composed of a partial Tn4401 transposon and a Tn3-based transposon which previously have been described only in Chinese isolates.
E2WFQ: an energy efficient fair scheduling policy for wireless systems

As embedded systems are being networked, often wirelessly, an increasingly larger share of their total energy budget is due to the communication. This necessitates the development of power management techniques that address communication subsystems, such as radios, as opposed to computation subsystems, such as embedded processors, to which most of the research effort thus far has been devoted. In this paper, we present E2WFQ, an energy efficient version of the Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ) algorithm for packet scheduling in communication systems. We employ a recently proposed radio power management technique, Dynamic Modulation Scaling (DMS), as a control knob to enable energy-latency tradeoffs during wireless packet scheduling. The use of E2WFQ results in an energy aware packet scheduler, which exploits the statistics of the input arrival pattern as well as the variability in packet lengths. Simulation results show that large savings in energy consumption can be obtained through the use of our scheduling scheme, compared to conventional WFQ, with only a small, bounded increase in worst case packet latency.
SIMO Channel Estimation Using Space-Time Signal Subspace Projection and Soft Information

We consider the channel estimation of a time-slotted wireless communication system with a mobile user and a base station, where the base station employs an M-element (M >; 1) antenna array. The uplink single-input multiple-output (SIMO) channel is usually estimated by training sequence within each time slot. To improve the estimation performance, the channel estimate is often refined by projecting it to the corresponding spatial signal subspace. However, this projection will not work when the number of resolvable multipath rays is larger than that of the antenna array elements, which makes the channel matrix full row rank. In this paper, we formulate the channel estimation under the space-time signal model for this full-row-rank case, and propose a new method by space-time signal subspace projection using both training and unknown data sequences. To further improve the accuracy of the channel estimate, the soft information fed back from the decoder can be used. By involving this soft information, we propose another new channel estimation method. This method approximately follows the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion and is therefore referred to as the approximated ML channel estimation. Numerical results show that these methods can be performed separately or jointly to improve the performance of channel estimation by training sequences.
Synergistic Development of Information Systems and Quality Management in Healthcare

We present an approach for the synergistic development of information systems (IS) and quality management systems (QMS) in healthcare. Canonical action research is our mode of inquiry to address the multidimensional hospital quality: ISO 9001 certification, hospital accreditation, and IS quality. Our study tests and extends the ISO2 approach in two hospital services: emergency and pediatric care. Hospitals present challenging realities in their complex socio-technical structure. Our approach suggests self-evaluation by hospital professionals and the contrast of opinions to identify IS development opportunities, while contributing to quality awareness and the adoption of quality principles in business processes. The proposed approach allows (1) self-evaluation, (2) joint design, and (3) continuous improvement planning of hospital processes. Moreover, it supports diverse quality models in healthcare and the development of heterogeneous IS solutions in different maturity stages.
Learning Eigenvectors for Free

We extend the classical problem of predicting a sequence of outcomes from a finite alphabet to the matrix domain. In this extension, the alphabet of n outcomes is replaced by the set of all dyads, i.e. outer products uuΤ where u is a vector in ℙn of unit length. Whereas in the classical case the goal is to learn (i.e. sequentially predict as well as) the best multinomial distribution, in the matrix case we desire to learn the density matrix that best explains the observed sequence of dyads. We show how popular online algorithms for learning a multinomial distribution can be extended to learn density matrices. Intuitively, learning the n2 parameters of a density matrix is much harder than learning the n parameters of a multinomial distribution. Completely surprisingly, we prove that the worst-case regrets of certain classical algorithms and their matrix generalizations are identical. The reason is that the worst-case sequence of dyads share a common eigensystem, i.e. the worst case regret is achieved in the classical case. So these matrix algorithms learn the eigenvectors without any regret.