Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Local dependent components

We introduce a mixture of probabilistic canonical correlation analyzers model for analyzing local correlations, or more generally mutual statistical dependencies, in cooccurring data pairs. The model extends the traditional canonical correlation analysis and its probabilistic interpretation in three main ways. First, a full Bayesian treatment enables analysis of small samples (large p, small n, a crucial problem in bioinformatics, for instance), and rigorous estimation of the degree of dependency and independency. Secondly, the mixture formulation generalizes the method from global linearity to the more reasonable assumption of different kinds of dependencies for different kinds of data. As a third novel extension the method decomposes the variation in the data into shared and data set-specific components.
Low-Density Parity-Check Codes

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) error correcting codes were introduced in 1963 by Robert Gallager in his Ph.D. thesis. The basic motivation came from the observation that random linear codes, cf. Section ? , had excellent theoretical performances but were unpractical. In particular, no efficient algorithm was known for decoding. In retrospect, this is not surprising, since it was later shown that decoding for linear codes is an NP-hard problem. The idea was then to restrict the RLC ensemble. If the resulting codes had enough structure, one could exploit it for constructing some efficient decoding algorithm. This came of course with a price: restricting the ensemble could spoil its performances. Gallager's proposal was simple and successful (but ahead of times): LDPC codes are among the most efficient codes around. In this Chapter we introduce one of the most important families of LDPC ensembles and derive some of their basic properties. As for any code, one can take two quite different points of view. The first is to study the code performances 27 under optimal decoding. In particular, no constraint is imposed on the computational complexity of decoding procedure (for instance decoding through a scan of the whole, exponentially large, codebook is allowed). The second approach consists in analyzing the code performance under some specific, efficient, decoding algorithm. Depending on the specific application, one can be interested in algorithms of polynomial complexity, or even require the complexity to be linear in the block-length. Here we will focus on performances under optimal decoding. We will derive rigorous bounds, showing that appropriately chosen LDPC ensembles allow to communicate reliably at rates close to Shannon's capacity. However, the main interest of LDPC codes is that they can be decoded efficiently, and we will discuss a simple example of decoding algorithm running in linear time. The full-fledged study of LDPC codes under optimal decoding is deferred to Chapters ? A more sophisticated decoding algorithm will be presented and analyzed in Chapter ? After defining LDPC codes and LDPC code ensembles in Section 11.1, we discuss some geometric properties of their codebooks in Section 11.2. In Section 11.3 we use these properties to a lower bound on the threshold for reliable communication. An upper bound follows from information-theoretic considera-27 Several performance parameters (e.g. the bit or block error rates, the information capacity, etc.) can be of interest. Correspondingly, the 'optimal' decoding strategy can vary (for instance symbol MAP, word …
Improving Traffic Flow Prediction With Weather Information in Connected Cars: A Deep Learning Approach

Transportation systems might be heavily affected by factors such as accidents and weather. Specifically, inclement weather conditions may have a drastic impact on travel time and traffic flow. This study has two objectives: first, to investigate a correlation between weather parameters and traffic flow and, second, to improve traffic flow prediction by proposing a novel holistic architecture. It incorporates deep belief networks for traffic and weather prediction and decision-level data fusion scheme to enhance prediction accuracy using weather conditions. The experimental results, using traffic and weather data originated from the San Francisco Bay Area of California, corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed approach compared with the state of the art.
The use of putative placebo in active control trials: two applications in a regulatory setting

For life‐threatening diseases, ethical considerations preclude the inclusion of an untreated control group in the investigation of a new therapeutic agent when a standard therapy exists. In these cases, active controlled studies are conducted, and may be planned to demonstrate either superiority or equivalence/non‐inferiority of the new drug over the standard therapy (active control). In the non‐inferiority study, an important aspect is the ability to detect an inferior drug (assay sensitivity). It has been suggested that assay sensitivity for a non‐inferiority study should be deduced from historical data, specifically placebo controlled studies with the standard therapy. The assessment of assay sensitivity may also be important in a superiority trial that fails to demonstrate a statistically significant difference between treatments, and the sponsor attempts to determine whether there is lack of inferiority as an alternative hypothesis for regulatory approval. This paper describes two methods of putative placebo analysis for assessing assay sensitivity in active controlled trials. One approach imputes a point estimate for the odds ratio (95 per cent confidence interval) for a new drug (T) compared to a placebo control (P). A Bayesian approach calculates the posterior probability that T is superior to P, or, that T is at least k per cent as good as the active control (A) and A is more effective than P. These methods are applied in two clinical/regulatory settings: a phase III trial comparing docetaxel (Taxotere) to doxorubicin in metastatic breast cancer patients, and a phase III programme with two trials comparing enoxaparin (Lovenox) plus aspirin to unfractionated heparin plus aspirin in patients with unstable angina or non‐Q‐wave myocardial infarction. The methodologies presented in this paper were used in securing regulatory approval for docetaxel in the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer after failure of prior chemotherapy, and for enoxaparin in the treatment of acute coronary syndrome. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Fast laser scan matching approach based on adaptive curvature estimation for mobile robots

SUMMARY This paper describes a complete laser-based approach for tracking the pose of a robot in a dynamic environment. The main novelty of this approach is that the matching between consecutively acquired scans is achieved using their associated curvature-based representations. The proposed scan matching algorithm consists of three stages. Firstly, the whole raw laser data is segmented into groups of consecutive range readings using a distance-based criterion and the curvature function for each group is computed. Then, this set of curvature functions is matched to the set of curvature functions associated to the previously acquired laser scan. Finally, characteristic points of pairwise curvature functions are matched and used to correctly obtain the best local alignment between consecutive scans. A closed form solution is employed for computing the optimal transformation and minimizing the robot pose shift error without iterations. Thus, the system is outstanding in terms of accuracy and computation time. The implemented algorithm is evaluated and compared to three state of the art scan matching approaches.
An Oblivious Game-Theoretic Approach for Wireless Scheduling in V2V Communications

This paper addresses the problem of wireless resource scheduling in a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication network. The technical challenges lie in the fast changing network dynamics, namely, the channel quality and the data traffic variations. For a road segment covered by a road side unit (RSU), especially in a dense urban area, the vehicle density tends to be stable. The incoming service requests from the vehicle user equipment (VUE)-pairs compete with each other for the limited frequency resource in order to deliver data packets. Such competitions are regulated by the RSU via a sealed second-price auction at the beginning of scheduling slots. Each incumbent service request aims at maximizing the expected long-term payoff from bidding the frequency resource for packet transmissions. Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) can be utilized to characterize the optimal competitive behaviors of the service requests. When the number of incumbent VUE-pairs becomes large, solving the MPE becomes infeasible. We adopt an oblivious equilibrium to approximate the MPE, which is theoretically proven to be error-bounded. The decision making process at each service request is hence transformed into a single-agent Markov decision process, for which we propose an on-line auction based learning scheme. Through simulation experiments, we show the potential performance gains from our proposed scheme, in terms of per-service request average utility.
An excited state of 229Th at 3.5 eV.

It has been known for many years that the first excited state of [sup 229]Th lies close to the ground state. Originally this energy was given as [lt]0.1 keV; later, the authors reported a value of [minus]1[plus minus]4 eV. In an attempt to improve the value for this level energy, we have remeasured the energies of a number of [gamma] rays from [sup 223]U whose positions in the [sup 229]Th level scheme can be used to establish it. Compared with our earlier study, we have considered more [gamma] rays in [sup 229]Th, used more well-measured energy calibration and reference lines, used more detectors, used detectors with better low-energy resolution, more closely matched the counting rates in the [gamma]-ray peaks whose relative energy is measured, and specifically considered certain systematic errors. More than 111 [gamma]-ray spectra have been measured. From this large set of measurements we have deduced a value of 3.5[plus minus]1.0 eV for the energy of this level.
Helicobacter Catalase Devoid of Catalytic Activity Protects the Bacterium against Oxidative Stress*♦

Catalase, a conserved and abundant enzyme found in all domains of life, dissipates the oxidant hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori undergoes host-mediated oxidant stress exposure, and its catalase contains oxidizable methionine (Met) residues. We hypothesized catalase may play a large stress-combating role independent of its classical catalytic one, namely quenching harmful oxidants through its recyclable Met residues, resulting in oxidant protection to the bacterium. Two Helicobacter mutant strains (katAH56A and katAY339A) containing catalase without enzyme activity but that retain all Met residues were created. These strains were much more resistant to oxidants than a catalase-deletion mutant strain. The quenching ability of the altered versions was shown, whereby oxidant-stressed (HOCl-exposed) Helicobacter retained viability even upon extracellular addition of the inactive versions of catalase, in contrast to cells receiving HOCl alone. The importance of the methionine-mediated quenching to the pathogen residing in the oxidant-rich gastric mucus was studied. In contrast to a catalase-null strain, both site-change mutants proficiently colonized the murine gastric mucosa, suggesting that the amino acid composition-dependent oxidant-quenching role of catalase is more important than the well described H2O2-dissipating catalytic role. Over 100 years after the discovery of catalase, these findings reveal a new non-enzymatic protective mechanism of action for the ubiquitous enzyme.
An arbitrary encryption scheme for homomorphic data Migration

A data encryption scheme which does not allows any internal data access to the third party who is responsible for processing the data which is highly confidential. This separation is a complex task and can fall in to a data violation for the intermediate processing nodes. We describe a new standard for these malleable environments which will provide good semantic level security and prevent the third party from accessing highly confidential internal data. This scheme allows the third party to execute any complex functions to the encrypted internal details but does not need any secret decryption key. But he is not permitted to peep into the data contents. We are proposing this scheme for cloud computing where more security is taking as the major factor.
Chapter 2 sbv IMPROVER : Modern Approach to Systems Biology

The increasing amount and variety of data in biosciences call for innovative methods of visualization, scientific verification, and pathway analysis. Novel approaches to biological networks and research quality control are important because of their role in development of new products, improvement, and acceleration of existing health policies and research for novel ways of solving scientific challenges. One such approach is sbv IMPROVER. It is a platform that uses crowdsourcing and verification to create biological networks with easy public access. It contains 120 networks built in Biological Expression Language (BEL) to interpret data from PubMed articles with high-quality verification available for free on the CBN database. Computable, human-readable biological networks with a structured syntax are a powerful way of representing biological information generated from high-density data. This article presents sbv IMPROVER, a crowd-verification approach for the visualization and expansion of biological networks.
SYSTRAN Chinese-English and English-Chinese Hybrid Machine Translation Systems for CWMT2011

: This report describes SYSTRAN’s Chinese-English and English-Chinese machine translation systems that participated in the CWMT 2011 machine translation evaluation tasks. The base systems are SYSTRAN rule-based machine translation systems, augmented with various statistical techniques. Based on the translations of the rule-based systems, we performed statistical post-editing with the provided bilingual and monolingual training corpora. In this report, we describe the technology behind the systems, the training data, and finally the evaluation results in the CWMT 2011 evaluation. Our primary Chinese-English system was ranked first in BLEU in the translation tasks.
Interpersonal Dependence and Efficiency of Interfirm Exchange: A Cross-national Study of Industrial Distributor – Supplier Relationships

A glaring hole exists between academic marketing literature and anecdotal observations on the effect of interpersonal ties for interfirm exchange. Academic marketing literature, economic perspective in particular, either frowns on or belittles the impact of interpersonal ties for interfirm exchange. In contrast, we often hear street-smart people say that i t is "who you know, not what you know," that counts for the success in business. This study aims to clarify the role of interpersonal ties in interfirm exchange by examining the effect of interpersonal dependence on interfirm-level issues in industrial distributor - supplier relationships. Specifically, we propose that interpersonal dependence has differential effect s on the elements of interfirm relationships (distributor dependence, trust, and commitment) and that, in return, these exchange elements have differential effects on the efficiency of interfirm exchange. The proposed hypotheses were tested with data collected through a survey of industrial distributors in the United States and Japan. The hypotheses on the effects of interpersonal dependence on interfirm relational elements r eceived a mixed support, while the hypotheses on the effects of interfirm relational elements on the efficiency of exchange r eceived support.
Dynamic Organization of User Historical Queries

: With the increasing number of published electronic materials, the World Wide Web (WWW) has become a vast resource for the individuals to acquire knowledge, solve problems, and complete tasks that use the Web information. To better support the users in their long term information quests on the Web, search engines keep track of their queries and clicks while searching online. In this paper, our goal is to automatically organize a user’s search history into query groups, each containing one or more related queries and their corresponding clicks. Each query group corresponds to the atomic information. First and foremost, query grouping allows the search engine to better understand the user’s session and potentially tailor that user’s search experience according to her needs. Once query groups have been identified, the search engines can have a good representation of the search context behind the current query using queries and clicks in the corresponding query group. This will help to improve the quality of the key components of search engines such as result ranking, query suggestions, query alterations, sessionization, and collaborative search.
Pricing Double Barrier Options: An Analytical Approach

Double barrier options have become popular instruments in derivative markets. Several papers_new have already analyseddouble knock-out call and put options using different methods. In a recent paper, Geman and Yor (1996) deriveexpressions for the Laplace transform of the double barrrier option price. However, they have to resort to numericalinversion of the Laplace transform to obtain option prices. In this paper, we are able to solve, using contour integration,the inverse of the Laplace transforms analytically thereby eliminating the need for numerical inversion routines. To ourknowledge, this is one of the first applications of contour integration to option pricing problems. To illustrate the power ofthis method, we derive analytical valuation formulas for a much wider variety of double barrier options than has beentreated in the literature so far. Many of these variants are nowadays being traded in the markets. Especially, options whichpay a fixed amount of money (a "rebate") as soon as one of the barriers is hit and double barrier knock-in options.
Cell Phones and Driving: Review of Research

Objective. The research literature on drivers' use of cell phones was reviewed to identify trends in drivers' phone use and to determine the state of knowledge about the safety consequences of such use. Methods. Approximately 125 studies were reviewed with regard to the research questions, type and rigor of the methods, and findings. Reviewed studies included surveys of drivers, experiments, naturalistic studies (continuous recording of everyday driving by drivers in instrumented vehicles), studies of crash risk, and evaluations of laws limiting drivers' phone use. Results. Observational surveys indicate drivers commonly use cell phones and that such use is increasing. Drivers report they usually use hand-held phones. Experimental studies have found that simulated or instrumented driving tasks, or driving while being observed, are compromised by tasks intended to replicate phone conversations, whether using hand-held or hands-free phones, and may be further compromised by the physical distraction of handling phones. Effects of phone use on driving performance when drivers are in their own vehicles are unknown. With representative samples of adequate size, naturalistic studies in the future may provide the means to document the patterns and circumstances of drivers' phone use and their effects on real-world driving. Currently, the best studies of crash risk used cell phone company billing records to verify phone use by crash-involved drivers. Two such studies found a fourfold increase in the risk of a property-damage-only crash and the risk of an injury crash associated with phone use; increased risk was similar for males and females, younger and older drivers, and hands-free and hand-held phones. A number of jurisdictions in the United States and around the world have made it illegal for drivers to use hand-held phones. Studies of these laws show only limited compliance and unclear effects on safety. Conclusions. Even if total compliance with bans on drivers' hand-held cell phone use can be achieved, crash risk will remain to the extent that drivers continue to use or switch to hands-free phones. Although the enactment of laws limiting drivers' use of all phones is consistent with research findings, it is unclear how such laws could be enforced. At least in the short term, it appears that drivers' phone use will continue to increase, despite the growing evidence of the risk it creates. More effective countermeasures are needed but are not known at this time.
Effects of chronic angiotensin converting enzyme inhibition on glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in essential hypertension.

The relation between the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone (RAA) system and carbohydrate metabolism and insulin sensitivity in essential hypertension has not been investigated systematically. Twenty nondiabetic patients (age, 49 +/- 1 years; body mass index (BMI), 26.1 +/- 0.4 kg/m2) with essential hypertension (blood pressure, 155 +/- 3/105 +/- 1 mm Hg) received an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) at the end of a 1-month placebo period and again monthly during 3 months of angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibition (cilazapril, 5 mg/day). Furthermore, a two-step euglycemic insulin clamp was performed after placebo and again at the end of treatment. Blood pressure fell by 7 +/- 4/10 +/- 3 mm Hg (p less than 0.001), while BMI remained stable. On the euglycemic clamp, insulin-mediated (plasma insulin, 470 pM) whole body glucose use averaged 42.5 +/- 1.6 mumol.min-1.kg-1 before and 43.6 +/- 1.9 after ACE inhibition (p = NS). Substrate concentrations and oxidative rates and energy expenditure (as estimated by indirect calorimetry) were not altered by ACE inhibition, either in the fasting state or in response to insulin. In contrast, oral glucose tolerance was significantly (p less than 0.05) improved after treatment (area under OGTT curve (AUC), 240 +/- 24 versus 282 +/- 23 mmol 2 hr.l-1). The latter change was associated with enhanced (+16%, p less than 0.05) insulin responsiveness to glucose (estimated as the insulin AUC divided by the glucose AUC) throughout the 3 months of ACE inhibition. At baseline, both the OGTT and the clamp had a marked hypokalemic effect (mean decrements in plasma potassium of 0.75 +/- 0.05 and 0.92 +/- 0.05 mmol/l, respectively) in association with plasma aldosterone reductions of 30% and 50%. Chronic ACE inhibition caused a further 20% (p less than 0.03) lowering of plasma aldosterone concentrations but attenuated insulin-induced hypokalemia. Plasma sodium, which was unaltered by the pretreatment tests, fell during the posttreatment tests (by 3 mmol/l, p less than 0.001). In the urine, the ratio of the fractional excretion of potassium to that of sodium was decreased by both oral glucose (-22%, p less than 0.01) and ACE inhibition (-21%, p less than 0.001). Higher plasma potassium levels before treatment predicted a better blood pressure response to ACE inhibition (r = 0.60, p less than 0.005). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)