Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Empirical Comparison of Bayesian Network Parameter Learning Algorithms for Continuous Data Streams

We compare three approaches to learning numerical parameters of Bayesian networks from continuous data streams: (1) the EM algorithm applied to all data, (2) the EM algorithm applied to data increments, and (3) the online EM algorithm. Our results show that learning from all data at each step, whenever feasible, leads to the highest parameter accuracy and model classification accuracy. When facing computational limitations, incremental learning approaches are a reasonable alternative. Of these, online EM is reasonably fast, and similar to the incremental EM algorithm in terms of accuracy. For small data sets, incremental EM seems to lead to better accuracy. When the data size gets large, online EM tends to be more accurate.
Towards a secure access control model for E-learning platform based on multi agent systems

Nowadays E-learning's popularity is increasing as more and more people are taking online courses. It becomes the need of the hour. The increase in the amount of resources available in E-learning systems will require the need for designing new architecture of such systems. The integration of multi-agent systems has played a very important role in improving the search quality, supplying new solutions and simplifying ways to very complex tasks. While a lot of efforts in the E-Iearning and multi-agent system domains has been put into delivering infrastructure and providing content, security and trust issues have hardly ever been considered. Worth knowing that in Multi-agent systems with the properties of agents (autonomous, social.), some activities will be dangerous and unreliable because it is difficult to know which agents are trustworthy and external accesses are safely. In the present paper, the security aspects are directly related to the application of a control access policy, responsible for securing interaction with agents and reinforcing it with the integration of trust. The giving work will focus on combining two access models based on RBAC model :"TrustBAC",T-SR " Dynamic RBAC with Trust-Satisfaction and Reputation for multi-agent system" . The main goal here, is to develop a new model that incorporates the advantages of both models and improve the highest degree of security in the E-Iearning platforms based on multi-agent systems.
Dynamic native optimization of interpreters

For domain specific languages, "scripting languages", dynamic languages, and for virtual machine-based languages, the most straightforward implementation strategy is to write an interpreter. A simple interpreter consists of a loop that fetches the next bytecode, dispatches to the routine handling that bytecode, then loops. There are many ways to improve upon this simple mechanism, but as long as the execution of the program is driven by a representation of the program other than as a stream of native instructions, there will be some "interpretive overhead". There is a long history of approaches to removing interpretive overhead from programming language implementations. In practice, what often happens is that, once an interpreted language becomes popular, pressure builds to improve performance until eventually a project is undertaken to implement a native Just In Time (JIT) compiler for the language. Implementing a JIT is usually a large effort, affects a significant part of the existing language implementation, and adds a significant amount of code and complexity to the overall code base.In this paper, we present an innovative approach that dynamically removes much of the interpreted overhead from language implementations, with minimal instrumentation of the original interpreter. While it does not give the performance improvements of hand-crafted native compilers, our system provides an appealing point on the language implementation spectrum.
Results on non-linear hybrid output regulation

We take preliminary steps in the field of hybrid output regulation for nonlinear systems by presenting necessary and sufficient conditions for the design of hybrid regulators. Necessary conditions are formulated in a quite general setting of “pre-asymptotic” output regulation in which closed-loop hybrid trajectories are not necessarily complete. The key notion of the hybrid internal model property is characterized in the considered hybrid setting. In the second part of the paper, more constructive sufficient conditions for the design of the regulator are given by restricting the attention to hybrid systems whose flow and jump conditions are governed by an exogenous clock-variable that implements an average dwell-time constraint.
Inducing logic programs without explicit negative examples

This paper presents a method for learning logic programs without explicit negative examples by exploiting an assumption of output completeness. A mode declaration is supplied for the target predicate and each training input is assumed to be accompanied by all of its legal outputs. Any other outputs generated by an incomplete program implicitly represent negative examples; however, large numbers of ground negative examples never need to be generated. This method has been incorporated into two ILP systems, Chillin and IFoil, both of which use intensional background knowledge. Tests on two natural language acquisition tasks, case-role mapping and past-tense learning, illustrate the advantages of the approach.
Source modeling for HMM based speech synthesis using integrated LP residual

In this work, new method of source modeling for HMM based speech synthesis is proposed using integrated LP residual (ILPR). The nature of ILPR waveform resembles the glottal flow derivative signal and may keep the speaker characteristics in a better way. The ILPR signal is modeled in the frequency domain by dividing the spectrum into two bands to characterize harmonic and noise components of the voice speech segment. The harmonic components of ILPR signals below the maximum voiced frequency (fm) is modeled using mel-cepstral coefficients called as RMCEPs, whereas noise component above fm is modeled by pitch adaptive triangular noise envelope weighted by the strength of excitation (SoE). The RMCEPs and SoE are modeled on the HMM framework along with MCEPs and F0 representing vocal tract information and fundamental frequency, respectively. The synthesized speech by the proposed source modeling reduces the buzziness and improves the speaker similarity compared to the conventional impulse / noise and mixed excitation source modeling and comparable with STRAIGHT based excitation. This is further reflected in both objective and subjective valuations.
Bootstrapping with Models: Confidence Intervals for Off-Policy Evaluation

In many reinforcement learning applications, it is desirable to determine confidence interval lower bounds on the performance of any given policy without executing said policy. In this context, we propose two bootstrapping off-policy evaluation methods which use learned MDP transition models in order to estimate lower confidence bounds on policy performance with limited data. We empirically evaluate the proposed methods in a standard policy evaluation tasks.
Distribution Patterns of Three Long-Horned Beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) Shortly After Fire in Boreal Forest: Adults Colonizing Stands Versus Progeny Emerging from Trees

ABSTRACT We identified the factors that affect the early colonization of burned stands by adults and the progeny surviving in fire-killed black spruce trees for three cerambycid beetles: Acmaeops proteus proteus (Kirby), Acmaeops pratensis (Laicharting), and Monochamus scutellatus scutellatus (Say) (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) in the northern Canadian boreal forest. Furthermore, we measured if progeny emerging from burned trees was related to patterns of adults captured in traps the same year as the fire. Fire severity at the stand and landscape scales were the most important predictors for colonizing adults. Except for A. pratensis, thick-barked and lightly burned trees positively influenced the occurrence of surviving progeny at the tree level. Last-instar larvae of A. pratensis emerged from burned trees more often in severely burned landscapes. This may result from biotic interactions with intraguild species or predators. With the exception of A. pratensis, variables affecting the postfire abundance and occurrence pattern of adults were strikingly different from progeny emerging after fire. Progeny emerging from burned trees was almost exclusively related to tree- or stand level characteristics, whereas colonizing adults were correlated with variables measured at various spatial scales, and most often at the landscape scale. Moreover, A. proteus proteus and M. scutellatus scutellatus adults were more common in severely burned landscapes, although their progeny emerged more often in lightly or moderately burned trees. Host selection behavior within stands (e.g., host acceptance) by colonizing adults or host suitability for the larvae might have caused this discrepancy.
Tectonic activity and the history of Wairau Bar, New Zealand’s iconic site of early settlement

ABSTRACT Wairau Bar, possibly New Zealand's most significant archaeological site, is in a hazardous location. Since it was first settled, the site has several times been severely shaken by earthquakes and inundated by tsunamis. These events have impacted on the site's surroundings, on the archaeological remains in the site and possibly directly on the site's inhabitants. Observed impacts from the CE 1855 tsunami include demolition of buildings, scouring and fissuring of the ground surface, and stranding of fish. Inferred effects of the CE 1855 and earlier tsunamis include reworking and redepositing of archaeological material, and the possibility that some burials found on the site are of people killed by a tsunami. Judging from past earthquakes, and sea level rise from climate change, the site may not survive to the end of this century, an outcome that could be ameliorated by tectonic uplift.
The role of design values in information system development for human benefit

– This paper appropriates the value sensitive design (VSD) framework to examine the role of design values in the development of an information system designed to increase transparency and reduce corruption within the context of a large‐scale e‐governance project in India. , – A qualitative case study was conducted and data were collected through interviews with system designers, observations of system design and implementation, and walk‐through of designed systems. Data analysis followed an interpretive approach intended to understand informants' meaning‐making. Analysis occurred iteratively both during and after the field study. , – The study reveals the complexity of the role of values in the design of information technology wherein the designers in their pursuit of transparency and reduced corruption have to continuously balance their idealistic and pragmatic values. , – This study tests the VSD framework in the context of developing an e‐government system thereby highlighting its usefulness but also outlining ways in which the framework can be expanded to make it more relevant to diverse contexts. , – This study extends the VSD framework, particularly in contexts where designers' values are primary drivers of design decisions. A greater understanding of the role of design values across the design process can prove crucial in inculcating and reinforcing design values that lead to a more contextually relevant product. , – This research provides valuable lessons on how to approach design of systems that can benefit humans with implications for designers and for public policy. , – This is one of the first studies that utilizes the VSD framework to study information system design in a human development context with novel implications for both research and practice.
MIMO with More Users than RF Chains

Antenna arrays with hybrid analog-digital signal processing capabilities offer a compromise between the performance of digital arrays and the cost-efficiency of analog arrays with a single radio-frequency (RF) chain. A limitation of hybrid arrays is that the number of independent streams that they can transmit with standard precoding techniques cannot be larger than the number of RF chains. In standard hybrid precoding, the analog precoder (phase shifters or switches) are fixed at the beginning of the streams. To break the ceiling on the number of streams, a new precoding paradigm is proposed, where the analog and digital precoder are changed in a symbol-by-symbol basis. Algorithms for optimizing the analog and digital precoders at the symbol rate are provided and their performance is extensively analyzed.
Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging and Volumetric Measurements of the Brain in Patients with Postcancer Fatigue: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background Postcancer fatigue is a frequently occurring problem, impairing quality of life. Until now, little is known about (neuro) physiological factors determining postcancer fatigue. For non-cancer patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, certain characteristics of brain morphology and metabolism have been identified in previous studies. We investigated whether these volumetric and metabolic traits are a reflection of fatigue in general and thus also of importance for postcancer fatigue. Methods Fatigued patients were randomly assigned to either the intervention condition (cognitive behavior therapy) or the waiting list condition. Twenty-five patients in the intervention condition and fourteen patients in the waiting list condition were assessed twice, at baseline and six months later. Baseline measurements of 20 fatigued patients were compared with 20 matched non-fatigued controls. All participants had completed treatment of a malignant, solid tumor minimal one year earlier. Global brain volumes, subcortical brain volumes, metabolite tissue concentrations, and metabolite ratios were primary outcome measures. Results Volumetric and metabolic parameters were not significantly different between fatigued and non-fatigued patients. Change scores of volumetric and metabolic parameters from baseline to follow-up were not significantly different between patients in the therapy and the waiting list group. Patients in the therapy group reported a significant larger decrease in fatigue scores than patients in the waiting list group. Conclusions No relation was found between postcancer fatigue and the studied volumetric and metabolic markers. This may suggest that, although postcancer fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome show strong resemblances as a clinical syndrome, the underlying physiology is different. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01096641
Genetic Analyses in Five Western Mediterranean Populations: Variation at Five Tetrameric Short Tandem Repeat Loci

A population study of the Balearic (Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza, Chueta) and Valencia populations was carried out using the short tandem repeat loci HUMTH01, D4S243, HUMF13A1, D18S535, and D12S391. All the populations sampled were found to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium for the five markers analyzed. Several statistical analyses showed a clear displacement of the Chueta and Ibiza populations from the other populations sampled. These results are in agreement with those obtained from the analysis of classical markers and mitochondrial DNA restriction fragment length polymorphisms, as well as with the history of these populations. A comparative study performed with other European populations using three of the five markers selected for this study (HUMTH01, HUMF13A1, and D12S391) revealed a clear differentiation only of the Chueta population. We detected a tendency for a west-east clinal distribution in the frequency of the HUMTH01*6 allele in the European and Mediterranean area. This distribution could reflect some of the migratory events that have happened throughout that area's history. The forensic usefulness of these markers can be judged by their highly combined power of discrimination (0.999997).
Inpainting and Its Application in Video CAPTCHA Text Removal

Video CAPTCHA improves the usability while reducing the attack success rate compared to a conventional text-based CAPTCHA, however remains vulnerable to OCR attacks. Thus, we proposed to use inpainting algorithms to remove the contained text in the video frames, so that the OCR success rate can be reduced without introducing unwanted artifacts that displease the endusers. We implemented Bertalmio’s Image Inpainting for our particular case of text inpainting, and were managed to prove through OCR attacks on inpainted text-containing image that inpainting can potentially help to improve the security of Video CAPTCHA.
Suppression of Random Dopant-Induced Threshold Voltage Fluctuations in Sub-0 . 1m MOSFET ’ s with Epitaxial and-Doped Channels

A detailed three-dimensional (3-D) statistical “atomistic” simulation study of fluctuation-resistant sub-0.1m MOSFET architectures with epitaxial channels and delta doping is presented. The need for enhancing the fluctuation resistance of the sub-0.1m generation transistors is highlighted by presenting summarized results from atomistic simulations of a wide range of conventional devices with uniformly doped channel. According to our atomistic results, the doping concentration dependence of the random dopant-induced threshold voltage fluctuations in conventional devices is stronger than the analytically predicted fourth-root dependence. As a result of this, the scaling of such devices will be restricted by the “intrinsic” random dopant-induced fluctuations earlier than anticipated. Our atomistic simulations confirm that the introduction of a thin epitaxial layer in the MOSFET’s channel can efficiently suppress the random dopantinduced threshold voltage fluctuations in sub-0.1m devices. For the first time, we observe an “anomalous” reduction in the threshold voltage fluctuations with an increase in the doping concentration behind the epitaxial channel, which we attribute to screening effects. Also, for the first time we study the effect of a delta-doping, positioned behind the epitaxial layer, on the intrinsic threshold voltage fluctuations. Above a certain thickness of epitaxial layer, we observe a pronounced anomalous decrease in the threshold voltage fluctuation with the increase of the delta doping. This phenomenon, which is also associated with screening, enhances the importance of the delta doping in the design of properly scaled fluctuation-resistant sub-0.1m MOSFET’s.
Fitting Social Capital, Informal Job Search, and Labor Market Outcomes in Hungary(1)

Summary These hypotheses suggest the following strategy to separate the three mechanisms. First,observe whether status or being employee is the contact characteristic that has an effecton the value of job offer. If contact status has an effect then examine both the impact ofpersonnel departments on returns to contact status, and the impact of networkcharacteristics on job acceptance decisions. If, however, employee has an effect, examineemployers' job offer decisions, and check whether there is an interaction betweenemployee contacts and interview. DATA AND MEASUREMENT Data come from a recent survey that was conducted among young people who finishedtheir secondary vocational education in 1998. The choice of school-leavers enables us toassess the impact of pre-existing social ties on mobility outcomes in various stages of thejob search process. The survey was held in 7 large cities of Hungary. For practicalreasons, data collection was restricted to those individuals who were resident in thesecities. The sampling procedure consisted in two steps. First, schools in the cities werevisited and addresses of school-leavers were collected in order to obtain a samplingframe. Second, individuals were randomly selected from the sampling frame. Therespondents were interviewed two times: first between December 1998 and February1999, then during September-October 1999. This process resulted in 690 interviews.The analyses reported in this paper use between 436 and 461 cases. Out of the 690individuals, 612 heard about a job after completing their studies. About 150 cases weredeleted due to missing observations. Missing cases occur mainly because interview dataare not observed for those who did not apply for the job, and many respondents did notreport on the income of the job offer. Our analyses are limited to the extent that noattempt was made at either imputing missing values or modelling nonresponse behaviour.Our hypotheses refer to both the value of the job offer and the outcomes of the hiringprocess. This paper uses only one measure for the value of job offer, the natural log of the
Time for a rethink: time sub‐sampling methods in disparity‐through‐time analyses

Disparity‐through‐time analyses can be used to determine how morphological diversity changes in response to mass extinctions, or to investigate the drivers of morphological change. These analyses are routinely applied to palaeobiological datasets, yet, although there is much discussion about how to best calculate disparity, there has been little consideration of how taxa should be sub‐sampled through time. Standard practice is to group taxa into discrete time bins, often based on stratigraphic periods. However, this can introduce biases when bins are of unequal size, and implicitly assumes a punctuated model of evolution. In addition, many time bins may have few or no taxa, meaning that disparity cannot be calculated for the bin and making it harder to complete downstream analyses. Here we describe a different method to complement the disparity‐through‐time tool‐kit: time‐slicing. This method uses a time‐calibrated phylogenetic tree to sample disparity‐through‐time at any fixed point in time rather than binning taxa. It uses all available data (tips, nodes and branches) to increase the power of the analyses, specifies the implied model of evolution (punctuated or gradual), and is implemented in R. We test the time‐slicing method on four example datasets and compare its performance in common disparity‐through‐time analyses. We find that the way we time sub‐sample taxa can change our interpretations of the results of disparity‐through‐time analyses. We advise using multiple methods for time sub‐sampling taxa, rather than just time binning, to gain a better understanding disparity‐through‐time.
[Cancer mortality among rubber industry workers in São Paulo, Brazil].

OBJECTIVE To investigate cancer deaths among rubber industry workers according to company size. METHODS This historical cohort study included 9,188 male workers, engaged as members of a workers' union in São Paulo, Southeastern Brazil, between 1975 and 1985, alive in January 1990 and followed until the end of 2000. Overall and specific cancer deaths were compared within the cohort, with subjects stratified according to company size and economic activity, sector of work, and worker qualification. Risk set assessment and conditional logistic regression were used to estimate relative risks, adjusted for age, time since first job, and duration of employment in the rubber industry. RESULTS When compared to employees of larger companies, workers employed in small companies showed greater risk of death due to any type of cancer (RR=2.33, 95% CI: 0.90-6.03), stomach tumors (RR=3.47; 95% CI: 2.57-4.67), and upper aero-digestive tract tumors (RR=2.49; 95% CI: 1.78-3.48). Risk of death was greater among workers employed in maintenance (RR=2.23; 95% CI: 0.73-6.76); expedition, storage and transportation (RR=2.97; 95% CI: 0.77-11.38); and production (RR=3.51; 95% CI: 1.07-11.57), when compared to workers engaged in clerical work and support activities. CONCLUSIONS Our results provide further evidence for an increased risk of stomach and upper aero-digestive tract tumors--and possibly of all types of cancer--among rubber industry workers employed in small companies when compared to employees of larger companies.