Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Groups with free regular length functions in Z^n

This is the first paper in a series of three where we take on the unified theory of non-Archimedean group actions, length functions and infinite words. Our main goal is to show that group actions on Z^n-trees give one a powerful tool to study groups. All finitely generated groups acting freely on -trees also act freely on some Z^n-trees, but the latter ones form a much larger class. The natural effectiveness of all constructions for $Z^n-actions (which is not the case for R-trees) comes along with a robust algorithmic theory. In this paper we describe the algebraic structure of finitely generated groups acting freely and regularly on Z^n-trees and give necessary and sufficient conditions for such actions.
POLLEN TRANSFER BY NATURAL HYBRIDS AND PARENTAL SPECIES IN AN IPOMOPSIS HYBRID ZONE

Models of hybrid zones differ in their assumptions about the relative fitnesses of hybrids and the parental species. These fitness relationships determine the form of selection across the hybrid zone and, along with gene flow, the evolutionary dynamics and eventual outcome of natural hybridization. We measured a component of fitness, export and receipt of pollen in single pollinator visits, for hybrids between the herbaceous plants Ipomopsis aggregata and I. tenuituba and for both parental species. In aviary experiments with captive hummingbirds, hybrid flowers outperformed flowers of both parental species by receiving more pollen on the stigma. Although hummingbirds were more effective at removing pollen from anthers of I. aggregata, hybrid flowers matched both parental species in the amount of pollen exported to stigmas of other flowers. These patterns of pollen transfer led to phenotypic stabilizing selection, during that stage of the life cycle, for a stigma position intermediate between that of the two species and to directional selection for exserted anthers. Pollen transfer between the species was high, with flowers of I. aggregata exporting pollen equally successfully to conspecific and I. tenuituba flowers. Although this study showed that natural hybrids enjoy the highest quality of pollinator visits, a previous study found that I. aggregata receives the highest quantity of pollinator visits. Thus, the relative fitness of hybrids changes over the life cycle. By combining the results of both studies, pollinator‐mediated selection in this hybrid zone is predicted to be strong and directional, with hybrid fitness intermediate between that of the parental species.
Detecting and Tracking Breeding Cows from Bird's Eye Video of Pasture

Breeding cows are known to engage in social activities, such as interacting with other cows and forming groups similarly to humans. This paper proposes a method to extract information of interaction between cows, regarding it as a primary element of sociality. In order to extract such information, we record bird's eye pictures in a pasture by a fixed point camera set on a silo and analyze the interaction from the video data. Then, the movements of cows are tracked from bird's eye video data to detect interaction. As the cows have little features on image, background subtraction method is employed without modeling the target object. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been examined in experiments with the recorded bird's eye pictures. Our ultimate goal is to recognize the health conditions and stress of cows through their mutual interactions.
XRCE's Participation to CLEF 2007 Domain-Specific Track

Our participation to CLEF07 (Domain-specific Track) was motivated this year by assessing several query translation and expansion strategies that we recently designed and developed. One line of research and development was to use our own Statistical Machine Translation system (called Matrax) and its intermediate outputs to perform query translation and disambiguation. Our idea was to benefit from Matrax’ flexibility to output more than one plausible translations and to train its Language Model component on the CLEF07 target corpora. The second line of research consisted in designing algorithms to adapt an initial, general probabilistic dictionary to a particular pair (query, target corpus); this constitutes some extreme viewpoint on the “bilingual lexicon extraction and adaptation” topic that we are investigating since now more than 6 years. For this strategy, our main contributions lie in a pseudo-feedback algorithm and an EM-like optimisation algorithm that realize this adaptation. A third axis was to evaluate the potential impact of “Lexical Entailment” models in a cross-lingual framework, as they were only used in a monolingual setting up to now. Experimental results on CLEF-2007 corpora (domain-specific track) show that the dictionary adaptation mechanisms appear quite effective in the CLIR framework, exceeding in certain cases the performance of much more complex Machine Translation systems and even the performance of the monolingual baseline. In most cases also, Lexical Entailment models, used as query expansion mechanisms, turned out to be beneficial.
On achieving optimal throughput with network coding

With the constraints of network topologies and link capacities, achieving the optimal end-to-end throughput in data networks has been known as a fundamental but computationally hard problem. In this paper, we seek efficient solutions to the problem of achieving optimal throughput in data networks, with single or multiple unicast, multicast and broadcast sessions. Although previous approaches lead to solving NP-complete problems, we show the surprising result that, facilitated by the recent advances of network coding, computing the strategies to achieve the optimal end-to-end throughput can be performed in polynomial time. This result holds for one or more communication sessions, as well as in the overlay network model. Supported by empirical studies, we present the surprising observation that in most topologies, applying network coding may not improve the achievable optimal throughput; rather, it facilitates the design of significantly more efficient algorithms to achieve such optimality.
Study on the anticonvulsant activity of clonidine against pentylenetetrazol-induced seizures in rats: pharmacological evidence of alpha 2-adrenoceptors mediation.

The present work deals with an EEG and behavioral study of the interaction of alpha-adrenoceptor antagonists on the anticonvulsant activity of clonidine against the convulsions due to pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) in rats. Clonidine's ability (0.5 mg/kg, i.p.) to inhibit the tonic seizures and mortality induced by PTZ (75 mg/kg, i.p.) was counteracted by pretreatment with yohimbine and mianserine (10 mg/kg, i.p.). On the contrary, prazosin (10 mg/kg, i.p.) did not influence the anticonvulsant effect of clonidine. The results suggest that central alpha 2-adrenoceptors play an important role in the control of motor and EEG convulsions elicited by PTZ.
Cross-Layer Sleep Scheduling Design in Service-Oriented Wireless Sensor Networks

Service-oriented wireless sensor networks have recently been proposed to provide an integrated platform, where new applications can be rapidly developed through flexible service composition. In wireless sensor networks, sensors are periodically switched into the sleep mode for energy saving. This, however, will cause the unavailability of nodes, which, in turn, incurs disruptions to the service compositions requested by the applications. Thus, it is desirable to maintain enough active sensors in the system to provide each required service at any time in order to achieve dependable service compositions for various applications. In this paper, we study the cross-layer sleep scheduling design, which aims to prolong the network lifetime while satisfying the service availability requirement at the application layer. We formally define the problem, prove that the problem is NP-hard, and develop two approximation algorithms based on the LP relaxation and one efficient reordering heuristic algorithm. The proposed work will enhance the dependability of the service composition in service-oriented wireless sensor networks.
Natural Disasters and Attachment Quality: The Mediating Role of Coping

iii LIST OF TABLES . vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION . 9 Impact of Natural Disasters on Mental Health . 11 Effects of Trauma on Parenting . 14 Attachment . 15 Attachment Quality . 17 Coping . 20 Statement of Purpose . 23 Research Questions and Hypotheses . 24 CHAPTER II – METHODOLOGY. 28 Participants and Procedures . 28 Typical Sample of Emerging Adults. 29 Hurricane Katrina Survivor Sample . 30 Measures . 33 Demographic Questionnaire . 33 Hurricane-related Traumatic Experiences . 33 Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment . 35 vi Brief COPE . 36 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist . 37 Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21. 37 CHAPTER III – RESULTS . 39 CHAPTER IV – DISCUSSION. 57 Limitations . 64 Areas for Future Research . 66 Conclusions . 67 APPENDIX A –– Electronic Informed Consent . 69 APPENDIX B – IRB Approval Letter . 71 REFERENCES . 72
Translocation and insertion of precursor proteins into isolated outer membranes of mitochondria

Nuclear-encoded proteins destined for mitochondria must cross the outer or both outer and inner membranes to reach their final sub- mitochondrial locations. While the inner membrane can translocate preproteins by itself, it is not known whether the outer membrane also contains an endogenous protein translocation activity which can function independently of the inner membrane. To selectively study the protein transport into and across the outer membrane of Neurospora crassa mitochondria, outer membrane vesicles were isolated which were sealed, in a right-side-out orientation, and virtually free of inner membranes. The vesicles were functional in the insertion and assembly of various outer membrane proteins such as porin, MOM19, and MOM22. Like with intact mitochondria, import into isolated outer membranes was dependent on protease-sensitive surface receptors and led to correct folding and membrane integration. The vesicles were also capable of importing a peripheral component of the inner membrane, cytochrome c heme lyase (CCHL), in a receptor-dependent fashion. Thus, the protein translocation machinery of the outer mitochondrial membrane can function as an independent entity which recognizes, inserts, and translocates mitochondrial preproteins of the outer membrane and the intermembrane space. In contrast, proteins which have to be translocated into or across the inner membrane were only specifically bound to the vesicles, but not imported. This suggests that transport of such proteins involves the participation of components of the intermembrane space and/or the inner membrane, and that in these cases the outer membrane translocation machinery has to act in concert with that of the inner membrane.
Low Dimensional Representation of Dorsal Hand Vein Features Using Principle Component Analysis (PCA)

(cid:3) Abstract — The quest of providing more secure identification system has led to a rise in developing biometric systems. Dorsal hand vein pattern is an emerging biometric which has attracted the attention of many researchers, of late. Different approaches have been used to extract the vein pattern and match them. In this work, Principle Component Analysis (PCA) which is a method that has been successfully applied on human faces and hand geometry is applied on the dorsal hand vein pattern. PCA has been used to obtain eigenveins which is a low dimensional representation of vein pattern features. Low cost CCD cameras were used to obtain the vein images. The extraction of the vein pattern was obtained by applying morphology. We have applied noise reduction filters to enhance the vein patterns. The system has been successfully tested on a database of 200 images using a threshold value of 0.9. The results obtained are encouraging.
Reactive Oxygen Species Originating From Mitochondria Regulate the Cardiac Sodium Channel

Rationale: Pyridine nucleotides regulate the cardiac Na+ current (INa) through generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Objective: We investigated the source of ROS induced by elevated NADH. Methods and Results: In human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells stably expressing the cardiac Na+ channel, the decrease of INa (52±9%; P<0.01) induced by cytosolic NADH application (100 &mgr;mol/L) was reversed by mitoTEMPO, rotenone, malonate, DIDS (4,4′-diisothiocyanatostilbene-2,2′-disulfonic acid), PK11195, and 4′-chlorodiazepam, a specific scavenger of mitochondrial superoxide and inhibitors of the mitochondrial complex I, complex II, voltage-dependent anion channels, and benzodiazepine receptor, respectively. Anti–mycin A (20 &mgr;mol/L), a complex III inhibitor known to generate ROS, decreased INa (51±4%, P<0.01). This effect was blocked by NAD+, forskolin, or rotenone. Inhibitors of complex IV, nitric oxide synthase, the NAD(P)H oxidases, xanthine oxidases, the mitochondrial permeability transition pore, and the mitochondrial ATP-sensitive K+ channel did not change the NADH effect on INa. Analogous results were observed in cardiomyocytes. Rotenone, mitoTEMPO, and 4′-chlorodiazepam also blocked the mutant A280V GPD1-L (glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase 1-like) effect on reducing INa, indicating a role for mitochondria in the Brugada syndrome caused by this mutation. Fluorescent microscopy confirmed mitochondrial ROS generation with elevated NADH and ROS inhibition by NAD+. Conclusions: Altering the oxidized to reduced NAD(H) balance can activate mitochondrial ROS production, leading to reduced INa. This signaling cascade may help explain the link between altered metabolism, conduction block, and arrhythmic risk.
Linear time offline tracking and lower envelope algorithms

Offline tracking of visual objects is particularly helpful in the presence of significant occlusions, when a frame-by-frame, causal tracker is likely to lose sight of the target. In addition, the trajectories found by offline tracking are typically smoother and more stable because of the global optimization this approach entails. In contrast with previous work, we show that this global optimization can be performed in O(MNT) time for T frames of video at M × N resolution, with the help of the generalized distance transform developed by Felzenszwalb and Huttenlocher [13]. Recognizing the importance of this distance transform, we extend the computation to a more general lower envelope algorithm in certain heterogeneous l1-distance metric spaces. The generalized lower envelope algorithm is of complexity O(MN(M+N)) and is useful for a more challenging offline tracking problem. Experiments show that trajectories found by offline tracking are superior to those computed by online tracking methods, and are computed at 100 frames per second.
RETROSPECTIVE: High Performance Cache Replacement Using Re-Reference Interval Prediction (RRIP)

At the time of this ISCA 2010 paper, growing on-chip lastlevel cache (LLC) sizes and multi-core processors had revived cache management as a hot research topic in industry and academia. This work was a collaboration between Intel’s product and research teams. Intel was then following its “tick-tock” paradigm, alternating architecture re-designs with process shrinks, and product teams always sought new features to give adequate performance gains per release. Kevin Theobald was a Performance Architect on Intel’s Oregon design team while Aamer Jaleel, Simon Steely, and Joel Emer were part of Intel’s VSSAD, an advanced R&D group. Both teams were independently seeking ways to improve LLC performance. This work is the result of combining their efforts that outperformed LRU at a lower cost. The design went into Ivy Bridge [1] and later processors, and has since influenced cache research and industry-wide cache designs.
Part Based Recognition of Pedestrians Using Multiple Features and Random Forests

This paper explores a discriminative part-based approach for recognising people in video. It uses many regions to model the background and foreground and a random forest for classification. The objective is to overcome the limitations of more holistic approaches that try to recognise people as a single region with the consequential need to segment each person as one representation. Attributes of each blob, their relationships and variation over video frames are argued to be useful features for discrimination. In this paper the attributes of each blob are considered as a first step in the recognition process. We evaluate our approach through a comparison of three state of the art classifiers: Bagging, Adaboost and a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), with the Random Forest (RF) using 10 fold cross validation. A detailed statistical analysis shows that the random forest classifier is more accurate compared to the other methods in terms of discrimination between regions describing people and those of the background.
A wavelet-based optimal texture feature set for classification of brain tumours

In this work, the classification of brain tumours in magnetic resonance images is studied by using optimal texture features. These features are used to classify three sets of brain images—normal brain, benign tumour and malignant tumour. A wavelet-based texture feature set is derived from the region of interest. Each selected brain region of interest is characterized with both its energy and texture features extracted from the selected high frequency subband. An artificial neural network classifier is employed to evaluate the performance of these features. Feature selection is performed by a genetic algorithm. Principal component analysis and classical sequential methods are compared against the genetic approach in terms of the best recognition rate achieved and the optimal number of features. A classification performance of 98% is achieved in a genetic algorithm with only four of the available 29 features. Principal component analysis and classical sequential methods require a larger feature set to attain the similar classification accuracy of 98%. The optimal texture features such as range of angular second moment, range of sum variance, range of information measure of correlation II and energy selected by the genetic algorithm provide best classification performance with lower computational effort.
Recognition of power quality events using wavelet-based dynamic structural neural networks

Recognition of power-quality (PQ) events by analyzing the voltage and current waveform disturbances is a very important task for the power system monitoring. In this work, a hybrid of wavelet transformation and dynamic structural neural network (DSNN) approach is introduced for PQ events classification. The PQ waveform is first decomposed by four level Daubechies-8 wavelet analysis, and the decomposed waveforms then be processed by the DSNN for PQ event classification. By utilizing the DSNN, the PQ event recognition system can be implemented with minimum neurons and produces maximum performance. Moreover, the proposed method can adapt more training patterns without manually revising the neural network system. The proposed approach is implemented in a simulation program by C++ language to verify the validation and classification accuracy.
Misbehavior Detection Using Implicit Trust Relations in the AODV Routing Protocol

Trust is one of the basic assumptions that we use in every day life. In ad hoc networks, routing protocols implement trust implicitly between the nodes of the network. Unfortunately, the implicit trust relations are not used by nodes whereas the attacks on ad hoc routing protocols precisely lead to the violation of at least one of these trust relations.In this paper, we demonstrate that a node can use these implicit trust relations to reason on neighbor behaviors to detect malicious nodes. We first formalize implicit trust relations of the AODV protocol. Then, we show that, given these relations, a node is able to reason on the actions performed by its neighbors and so deduce information about their knowledge. Finally, we discuss how these relations and the deduced information can be used to supervise the neighbor behavior and detect malicious nodes.
Extensible records with scoped labels

Records provide a safe and flexible way to construct data structures. We describe a natural approach to typing polymorphic and extensible records that is simple, easy to use in practice, and straightforward to implement. A novel aspect of this work is that records can contain duplicate labels, effectively introducing a form of scoping over the labels. Furthermore, it is a fully orthogonal extension to existing type systems and programming languages. In particular, we show how it can be used conveniently with standard HindleyMilner, qualified types, and MLF.
Interoperability Framework for Competences and Learning Outcomes

This research work was carried out in the areas of Higher Education, Teaching Technology and Web Information Management with the aim of developing a model for identifying and classifying competences and learning outcomes (MICRA) and an ontology of the information management model (SICRA). The MICRA model was applied in a case study, whereas the verification and validation of its previously defined functionalities led to ontology validation. MICRA shows to be an innovative model, based on a thorough, organized and systematic analysis of the educational context. In addition, SICRA goes beyond other ontologies as it not only defines reusable competences, classified according to Blooms taxonomy, but also defines and establishes a correspondence among Computer Science Knowledge Areas. We have thus contributed to making learning institutions' training curricula widely available, allowing for their contrastive analysis in order to promote student and teacher mobility within the European Higher Education Area and in other countries.
Predicting Swedish elections with Twitter: A case for stochastic link structure analysis

The question that whether Twitter data can be leveraged to forecast outcome of the elections has always been of great anticipation in the research community. Existing research focuses on leveraging content analysis for positivity or negativity analysis of the sentiments of opinions expressed. This is while, analysis of link structure features of social networks underlying the conversation involving politicians has been less looked. The intuition behind such study comes from the fact that density of conversations about parties along with their respective members, whether explicit or implicit, should reflect on their popularity. On the other hand, dynamism of interactions, can capture the inherent shift in popularity of accounts of politicians. Within this manuscript we present evidence of how a well-known link prediction algorithm, can reveal an authoritative structural link formation within which the popularity of the political accounts along with their neighbourhoods, shows strong correlation with the standing of electoral outcomes. As an evidence, the public time-lines of two electoral events from 2014 elections of Sweden on Twitter have been studied. By distinguishing between member and official party accounts, we report that even using a focus-crawled public dataset, structural link popularities bear strong statistical similarities with vote outcomes. In addition we report strong ranked dependence between standings of selected politicians and general election outcome, as well as for official party accounts and European election outcome.