Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Group History to Identify Character-Directed Utterances in Multi-Child Interactions

Addressee identification is an element of all language-based interactions, and is critical for turn-taking. We examine the particular problem of identifying when each child playing an interactive game in a small group is speaking to an animated character. After analyzing child and adult behavior, we explore a family of machine learning models to integrate audio and visual features with temporal group interactions and limited, task-independent language. The best model performs identification about 20% better than the model that uses the audio-visual features of the child alone.
Control strategy for ABS of EV with independently controlled four in-wheel motors

In order to realize the Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) in an Electric Vehicle (EV) with four-wheel drive (FWD), the project that based on four in-wheel Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) motors is proposed. According to the motor control theory and the traditional ABS, the controller for the EV based on PIC & CPLD is designed. The model of four-wheel independently drive is used in the EV; the strategies of open-loop and closed-loop control are discussed. The principle of the reference speed and real speed of the EV is given; the pure electric control method for ABS system based on this EV is researched later. By using a prototype EV with four 700W BLDC motors as example, the simulation and the experiment are done. Simulation and experiment results validate the rationality of the controller, and show that the system has more favourable dynamic performance. The control strategy of the ABS fulfilled the request of the EV with four in-wheel motors.
Accurate Parameters of the Mass Distribution in Spiral Galaxies. I. Fabry-Perot Observations of NGC 5585

Using the example of the Sd galaxy NGC 5585, it is shown that high-resolution, two-dimensional H II kinematical data are necessary to determine accurately the parameters of the mass (luminous and dark) distribution in spiral galaxies. New Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Fabry-Perot Hα observations are combined with low-resolution (20″) Westerbork H I data to study its mass distribution. Using the combined rotation curve and best-fit models, it can be seen that (M/LB)* of the luminous disk goes from 0.3, using only the H I rotation curve, to 0.8, using both the optical and the radio data. This reduces the dark-to-luminous mass ratio in NGC 5585 by ∼30% through increasing the dark matter halo core radius by nearly the same amount. This shows the importance of the inner, rising part of the rotation curve for the accurate determination of the parameters of the global mass (luminous and dark) distribution and suggests that such a fine tuning of the rotation velocities, using high-resolution, two-dimensional H II kinematics, is necessary to look at correlations between the parameters of the dark matter component and other properties of galaxies.
Image classification based on hash codes and space pyramid

Sparse Coding is a widely used method to represent an image. However, sparse coding and its improved algorithms have the problem of complex computation and long running time and so on. For these problems, we propose an image classification method based on hash codes and space pyramid, which encodes local feature points with hash codes instead of sparse coding. Firstly, extract the local feature points from the images. Second, learn binary auto-encoder hashing functions, which map the local feature points into hash codes. Third, perform binary k-means cluster on the binary hash codes and generate the binary visual vocabularies. Finally, Combine with spatial pyramid matching model, and represent the image by the histogram vector of space pyramid, which is used in image classification. Experimental results show that compared with other sparse coding methods, our method has the shorter time of learning vocabularies and faster encoder speed and higher classification accuracy.
A connected component labeling algorithm for grayscale images and application of the algorithm on mammograms

A new algorithm for connected component labeling is presented in this paper. This algorithm requires only one scan through an image for labeling connected components. Once this algorithm encounters a starting pixel of a component, it completely traces all the contour pixels and all internal pixels of that particular component. This algorithm recognizes components one at a time in the image while scanning in raster order. This property will be very useful in areas such as image matching, image registration and content-based information retrieval etc. This algorithm is also capable of extracting contour pixels of an image and storing them in the order of clock-wise direction which will provide very useful information in many applications. Also this algorithm assigns consecutive label numbers for different components and hence needs a minimum number of labels. As our main research is on mammography image analysis for diagnosing breast cancers, we applied this algorithm to mammograms and measured performance of the algorithm in terms of processing time. This will be a useful algorithm in medical image analysis as a preprocessing tool.
Pseudorandom financial derivatives

Arora, Barak, Brunnermeier, and Ge showed that taking computational complexity into account, a dishonest seller could dramatically increase the lemon costs of a family of financial derivatives. We show that if the seller is required to construct derivatives of a certain form, then this phenomenon disappears. In particular, we define and construct pseudorandom derivative families, for which lemon placement only slightly affects the values of the derivatives. Our constructions use expander graphs. We study our derivatives in a more general setting than Arora et al. In particular, we analyze arbitrary tranches of the common collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) when the underlying assets can have significant dependencies.
Secure Routing in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a promising concept to meet the challenges in next-generation networks such as providing flexible, adaptive, and reconfigurable architecture while offering cost-effective solutions to the service providers. Unlike traditional Wi-Fi networks, with each access point (AP) connected to the wired network, in WMNs only a subset of the APs are required to be connected to the wired network. The APs that are connected to the wired network are called the Internet gateways (IGWs), while the APs that do not have wired connections are called the mesh routers (MRs). The MRs are connected to the IGWs using multi-hop communication. The IGWs provide access to conventional clients and interconnect ad hoc, sensor, cellular, and other networks to the Internet. However, most of the existing routing protocols for WMNs are extensions of protocols originally designed for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and thus they perform sub-optimally. Moreover, most routing protocols for WMNs are designed without security issues in mind, where the nodes are all assumed to be honest. In practical deployment scenarios, this assumption does not hold. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of security issues in WMNs and then particularly focuses on secure routing in these networks. First, it identifies security vulnerabilities in the medium access control (MAC) and the network layers. Various possibilities of compromising data confidentiality, data integrity, replay attacks and offline cryptanalysis are also discussed. Then various types of attacks in the MAC and the network layers are discussed. After enumerating the various types of attacks on the MAC and the network layer, the chapter briefly discusses on some of the preventive mechanisms for these attacks.
Intravitreal AAV2.COMP-Ang1 Prevents Neurovascular Degeneration in a Murine Model of Diabetic Retinopathy

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness in the working-age population in the U.S. The vision-threatening processes of neuroglial and vascular dysfunction in DR occur in concert, driven by hyperglycemia and propelled by a pathway of inflammation, ischemia, vasodegeneration, and breakdown of the blood retinal barrier. Currently, no therapies exist for normalizing the vasculature in DR. Here, we show that a single intravitreal dose of adeno-associated virus serotype 2 encoding a more stable, soluble, and potent form of angiopoietin 1 (AAV2.COMP-Ang1) can ameliorate the structural and functional hallmarks of DR in Ins2Akita mice, with sustained effects observed through six months. In early DR, AAV2.COMP-Ang1 restored leukocyte-endothelial interaction, retinal oxygenation, vascular density, vascular marker expression, vessel permeability, retinal thickness, inner retinal cellularity, and retinal neurophysiological response to levels comparable with nondiabetic controls. In late DR, AAV2.COMP-Ang1 enhanced the therapeutic benefit of intravitreally delivered endothelial colony-forming cells by promoting their integration into the vasculature and thereby stemming further visual decline. AAV2.COMP-Ang1 single-dose gene therapy can prevent neurovascular pathology, support vascular regeneration, and stabilize vision in DR.
Faith Tribes as Powerful Communities of Adolescents in Highly Differentiated Societies

Abstract This article describes how communal aspects of faith find their way back into the lives of adolescents. The communal aspects of faith within individualized societies need more attention. It seems that with the current emphasis on individual faith, the intrinsic power of communal aspects of faith has been lost. This study shows that informal communities of adolescents—faith tribes—can restore the individual–communal balance in faith development. Youth ministry should encourage adolescents and tribal leaders to be aware of the faith possibilities of tribes.
Discovering a Nonstandard Higgs in a Standard Way

In this note, we explore the Tevatron and LHC detection prospects for a nonstandard Higgs whose decays contain both missing and visible energy. In particular, we consider the decay $h \to \chi_2 \chi_1$ where $\chi_1$ is stable and $\chi_2$ decay back to $\chi_1$ and additional visible particles. We focus on adapting standard searches for both Higgses and supersymmetry to these decays. In these channels, the Tevatron has little reach, but the LHC has good prospects for decays that involve leptons or neutrinos. In particular, the standard WW* search for a Higgs produced in vector boson fusion has the largest reach. Trilepton searches and invisible Higgs searches are less powerful, but can give corroborating evidence. However, such standard searches could become inefficient for these signals if the analyses adopt model dependent tools such as matrix elements and neural nets.
Language has evolved to depend on multiple-cue integration

Recent research on language evolution suggests that language to a large extent has been shaped by cultural evolution to fit domain-general constraints deriving from the human brain. An implication of this view is that much of the neural hardware involved in language is not specific to it. This means that language has to be acquired largely by mechanisms that are not uniquely dedicated for this purpose. But how could language have evolved to be as complex as it is without language-specific constraints? Here, I propose that language has evolved to rely on a multitude of probabilistic information sources for its acquisition, allowing language to be as expressive as possible while still being learnable by domain-general learning mechanisms. In particular, I focus on the probabilistic contributions of phonological information to the learning of basic aspects of syntax. Based on results from corpus analyses, computational modeling and human experimentation, I argue that a probabilistic relationship exists between what a word sounds like and how it is used: nouns tend to sound like other nouns and verbs like other verbs. Importantly, these sources of phonological information, or cues, not only play an important role in language acquisition but also affect syntactic processing in adulthood. I conclude that the integration of phonological cues with other types of information is integral to the computational architecture of our language capacity. Such multiple-cue integration, in turn, is what has allowed language to evolve to be learnable without language-specific constraints given the rich sources of information available in the input.
Balancing for Variable Players

Introduction Young-adults with cerebral palsy (CP) often experience a decrease in physical activity as they reach adolescence and consequently an increase in social isolation from their peers. This decrease in physical activity negatively impacts both their physical and social well being. The project CP Fit 'n' Fun aims to improve the physical fitness and social immersion of youth with CP by developing multiplayer exergames that will allow youth to exercise in a fun social environment. To achieve this goal, the game Liberi was developed. Liberi is a distributed, persistent, multiplayer exergame where players can engage in a variety of activities from building to fighting all while exercising on a stationary bike. The Liberi world consists of a set of mini-games that can be accessed from the main world. Because of the persistent nature of this world, where players can just come and go as they please, there is no guarantee of how many players will be playing at any given time. The mini-games can be played with any number of players so that, even if there were only one player in the world, he/she could still play the mini-games. This creates a problem with setting the difficulty of the mini-games though. The goal when designing game difficulty is to balance the different elements of the game so that the player is neither board nor frustrated with the experience. If the game is too hard or too easy the player will not enjoy the game as much and be less inclined to play it. Because the Liberi mini-games can have any number of players, coming up with a difficulty level that will be fun for all amounts is a challenge. If just one difficulty level is set then this difficulty level will be ideal in only one situation and it will either be too hard or too easy in others. For example, if Liberi had a mini-game where players were trying to fill a bucket with water by transferring the water from a far off lake, this task would be much easier to complete with four players carrying water then with just one player. The four players would have the capability to transfer water four times as fast as one player if all the game elements were the same. In this situation four players might find the mini-game too easy, but when the game is played with one player, this player …
From Mechatronic Components to Industrial Automation Things - An IoT model for cyber-physical manufacturing systems

IoT is considered as one of the key enabling technologies for the fourth industrial revolution that is known as Industry 4.0. In this paper, we consider the mechatronic component as the lowest level in the system composition hierarchy that tightly integrates mechanics with the electronics and software required to convert the mechanics to intelligent (smart) object offering well defined services to its environment. For this mechatronic component to be integrated in the IoT-based industrial automation environment, a software layer is required on top of it to convert its conventional interface to an IoT compliant one. This layer, which we call IoT wrapper, transforms the conventional mechatronic component to an Industrial Automation Thing (IAT). The IAT is the key element of an IoT model specifically developed in the context of this work for the manufacturing domain. The model is compared to existing IoT models and its main differences are discussed. A model-to-model transformer is presented to automatically transform the legacy mechatronic component to an IAT ready to be integrated in the IoT-based industrial automation environment. The UML4IoT profile is used in the form of a Domain Specific Modelling Language to automate this transformation. A prototype implementation of an Industrial Automation Thing using C and the Contiki operating system demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Height and reproductive success: how a Gambian population compares to the West

In Western societies, height is positively correlated with reproductive success (RS) for men but negatively correlated with RS for women. These relationships have been attributed to sexual selection: women prefer tall men, and men prefer short women. It is this success in the marriage market which leads to higher RS for tall men and short women. We have already shown that the relationship between height and RS for women is quite different in a non-Western context. In a subsistence farming community in rural Gambia, height is positively correlated with reproductive success for women, largely due to the higher survival of the children of tall women. Here, the relationship between height and reproductive success is analysed for men in the same community. For these Gambian men, there is no significant relationship between height and the number of children they produce, although tall men do contract more marriages than shorter men. We conclude that environmental context needs to be taken into account when analysing human reproductive behaviour.
Stochastic Algorithms for Two-stage Stochastic Integer Programming Applications

We recently proposed a new hybrid algorithm to solve linear two-stage stochastic integer programs (2SIPs) based on stage wise (primal) decomposition [1]. The master algorithm performs a search on the first stage variables by an evolutionary algorithm (EA), the decoupled second stage scenario problems are solved by mathematical programming. In this paper, the performance of the EA approach is compared to that of the 2SIP-solver of Carøe and Schultz [2] which is based on scenario (dual) decomposition. A real-world batch scheduling problem with uncertainties serves as a test instance.
Expression of Genes Encoding the Enzymes for Glycogen and Trehalose Metabolism in L3 and L4 Larvae of Anisakis simplex

Trehalose and glycogen metabolism plays an important role in supporting life processes in many nematodes, including Anisakis simplex. Nematodes, cosmopolitan helminths parasitizing sea mammals and humans, cause a disease known as anisakiasis. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of genes encoding the enzymes involved in the metabolism of trehalose and glycogen—trehalose-6-phosphate synthase (TPS), trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase (TPP), glycogen synthase (GS), and glycogen phosphorylase (GP)—in stage L3 and stage L4 larvae of A. simplex. The expression of mRNA all four genes, tps, tpp, gs, and gp, was examined by real-time polymerase chain reaction. The A. simplex ribosomal gene (18S) was used as a reference gene. Enzymatic activity was determined. The expression of trehalose enzyme genes was higher in L3 than in L4 larvae, but an inverse relationship was noted for the expression of gs and gp genes.
Study on control method of dual-motor for steer-by-wire system

In this paper, a structure of the steer-by-wire system with dual steering motors based on FlexRay bus has been proposed for meeting the real-time and reliability requirement of a steer-by-wire system. A control method is proposed to realize the coordinated control of dual steering motors. The control method has been verified experimentally. The results indicate that the control method can effectively achieve coordinated control of the dual steering motors and improve the safety of steer-by-wire vehicles.
Endothelial signalling by the Notch ligand Delta-like 4 restricts angiogenesis

Notch signalling by the ligand Delta-like 4 (Dll4) is essential for normal vascular remodelling, yet the precise way in which the pathway influences the behaviour of endothelial cells remains a mystery. Using the embryonic zebrafish, we show that, when Dll4-Notch signalling is defective, endothelial cells continue to migrate and proliferate when they should normally stop these processes. Artificial overactivation of the Notch pathway has opposite consequences. When vascular endothelial growth factor (Vegf) signalling and Dll4-Notch signalling are both blocked, the endothelial cells remain quiescent. Thus, Dll4-Notch signalling acts as an angiogenic `off' switch by making endothelial cells unresponsive to Vegf.
Dynamics of subglacial floods

The Nye model of jökulhlaups is able to explain both their periodicity and even the detailed shape of the flood hydrograph. In this paper, we show how the model can be used to predict the shape of the hydrographs from the subglacial lake Grímsvötn beneath Vatnajökull in Iceland, and we comment on three particular issues that have proved contentious in the application of the Nye model: the role of water temperature; the shape of the flood channel; and the value of the bed roughness coefficient.
Back to the future - decomposition analysis of distributive policies using behavioural simulations

For policy makers and analysts, it is important to isolate the redistributive impact of tax-bene(cid:133)t policy changes from changes in the environment in which policies operate. When actual reforms are motivated by work incentives, it is also crucial to evaluate behavioural responses and the distributional consequences thereof. For that purpose, we embed counterfactual simulations in a formal framework based on the Shapley value decomposition and quantify the relative roles of (i) tax-bene(cid:133)t policy changes (direct policy e⁄ect), (ii) labour supply responses to the policy reforms (indirect e⁄ect) and (iii) all other factors a⁄ecting income distribution over time. An application to the UK shows that the redistributive reforms of the 1998-2001 period have o⁄set the increase in inequality that would have occurred otherwise. They also contribute to a strong decline in child poverty and poverty amongst single parent households. In the latter group, a third of the headcount poverty reduction (and half of the reduction in the depth of poverty) is on account of the very large incentive e⁄ect of policy changes.
Supervisor Design to Enforce Production Ratio and Liveness Using Petri Nets

This work proposes a new Petri net class, namely Ratio-enforced weighted Augmented Marked Graphs (RAMG), and solves ratio control and liveness-enforcing supervisi on problems for automated manufacturing systems. RAMG can ensure any required product ratios as demanded by production planners. Since deadlock of such a system can be attributed to improper acquisition of finite shared resources, a supervisor is intr oduced such that they are properly allocated. This work proves that ratio and supervisory controllers for RAMG can be separatel y designed. Their design methods are presented. Examples are given to illustrate them.
The inclusion of geography in TIMSS: can consensus be reached?

ABSTRACT An initial call by the editors of International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education prompted a study about the inclusion of geography in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tests. This study found that the geography education community were overwhelmingly in favour of such a move, believing that the information collected would be valuable in enhancing learning outcomes through its impact on research, policy and teaching practice. However, a number of questions about the development and implementation of this assessment were posed. This paper addresses two of these questions: (1) what is the global geographical education community's views about Grades 4 and 8 as target year levels for the assessment? ; and (2) what types of knowledge and cognitive dimensions would they like to see assessed? Based on these findings, the overarching key question that requires further discussion is: can there be some degree of consensus in terms of what should be assessed and how the test should be implemented?