Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enterprise Portal Personalization: Direct and Indirect End-User Effects, and the Moderating Effects of Gender

Enterprise portals offer rich functionality for end-user personalization, but few studies have been conducted on the end-user effects of this feature. This article presents a study of end-user effects of personalization, using the combined technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a research framework. We propose that personalization indirectly affects end-users' intentions through effects on ease of use, usefulness, attitude and behaviour control. In addition, it may have a direct effect on end-users' intentions to use enterprise portals that is not mediated by the variables of the combined TAM/TPB-model. Because previous studies have found gender differences in the use of personalization, we also propose that the effects of personalization are moderated by gender. To test these propositions, a study of the effects of enterprise portal personalization in a large Norwegian government-owned enterprise is reported. Results from applying structural equation modelling show that personalization has a significant effect on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude, and perceived behavioural control, but no direct effect on end-users' intentions to use the enterprise portal. Furthermore, the results show that the effects of personalization are moderated by gender. The results have implications for enterprise portal designers, for IS-managers and for further research on personalization of information systems in general.
Eddy Current Brakes for Haptic Interfaces: Design, Identification, and Control

We describe the design of an eddy current brake for use as programmable viscous damper for haptic interfaces. Unlike other types of programmable brakes, eddy current brakes can provide linear, programmable physical damping that can be modulated at high frequency. These properties makes them well suited as dissipative actuators for haptic interfaces. We overview the governing physical relationships, and describe design optimization for inertial constraints. A prototype haptic interface is described, and experimental results are shown that illustrate the improvement in stability when simulating a stiff wall that is made possible using programmable eddy current dampers.
Coordinate systems reconstruction for graphical documents by Hough-feature clustering and geometric analysis

Two-dimensional and three-dimensional coordinate systems are the basic graphics symbols in many graphical documents. A robust coordinate system detection scheme is needed in order to further decompose other graphics elements accurately. In this paper, we propose a robust coordinate systems reconstruction approach that combines the geometric information of the coordinate systems with feature clustering and line segments verification techniques in the Hough space. Experiments on both 2D and 3D scanned diagram images show that the proposed approach is robust and applicable in constructing the coordinate systems when comparing with other projection-based coordinate systems detection approaches.
Far-field ASR on inexpensive microphones

For a connected digits speech recognition task, we have compared the performance of two inexpensive electret microphones with that of a single high quality PZM microphone. Recognition error rates were measured both with and without compensation techniques, where both single-channel and two-channel approaches were used. In all cases the task was recognition at a significant distance (2–6 feet) from the talker’s mouth. The results suggest that the wide variability in characteristics among inexpensive electret microphones can be compensated for without explicit quality control, and that this is particularly effective when both single-channel and two-channel techniques are used. In particular, the resulting performance for the inexpensive microphones used together is essentially equivalent to the expensive microphone, and better than for either inexpensive microphone used alone.
Response Control and the Execution of Verbal Rules

Two-year-olds' difficulty with rule execution is robust and pervasive. In Experiment 1, 120 32-month-olds received 1 of 6 tasks: a task assessing knowledge about a series of items; a deductive card sort requiring children to use their knowledge to sort the items by rules; and 4 modifications of the card sor that provided various types of task support. Children performed better on the knowledge task than the other tasks, which did not differ. Errors increased over trials and were typically perseverative. Experiment 2 replicated the finding that children failed to ues rules systematically even when items were labeled by the rules' antecedents. Improvements in rule use seem to reflect emerging control over actions rather than increased representational flexibility
Mapping the Ethnic Landscape: Personal Beliefs About Own Group’s and Other Groups’ Traits

Brewer and Campbell showed that stereotypes fall along dimensions of achievement and evaluation. This study examines individuals’ personal beliefs about their own and other ethnic groups, along with indicators of in-group bias. Three hundred fifty-one college students who were members of six ethnic groups selected 4 traits from a list of 30 traits that best described each group. The six ethnic identities and the traits were represented in two dimensions using correspondence analysis. An achievement dimension emerged that we termed Collectivist Achievement Ethic, which contrasted three high-achieving Asian identities with three lower achieving non-Asian identities. The second dimension was linked with the socioeconomic status of the ethnic identities and had variable relationships with favorability ratings of the traits. In-group bias was found in five out of six cases; however, White Americans exhibited in-group derogation.
Efficient and Effective Hierarchical Feature Propagation

Many methods have been recently proposed to deal with the large amount of data provided by the new remote sensing technologies. Several of those methods rely on the use of segmented regions. However, a common issue in region-based applications is the definition of the appropriate representation scale of the data, a problem usually addressed by exploiting multiple scales of segmentation. The use of multiple scales, however, raises new challenges related to the definition of effective and efficient mechanisms for extracting features. In this paper, we address the problem of extracting features from a hierarchy by proposing two approaches that exploit the existing relationships among regions at different scales. The H-Propagation propagates any histogram-based low-level descriptors. The bag-of-visual-word (BoW)-Propagation approach uses the BoWs model to propagate features along multiple scales. The proposed methods are very efficient, as features need to be extracted only at the base of the hierarchy and yield comparable results to low-level extraction approaches.
Randomization Inference in a Group–Randomized Trial of Treatments for Depression

In the Prospect Study, in 10 pairs of two primary-care practices, one practice was picked at random to receive a “depression care manager” to treat its depressed patients. Randomization inference, properly performed, reflects the assignment of practices, not patients, to treatment or control. Yet, pertinent data describe individual patients: depression outcomes, baseline covariates, compliance with treatment. The methods discussed use only (i) the random assignment of clusters to treatment or control and (ii) the hypothesis about effects being tested or inverted for confidence intervals, so they are randomization inferences in Fisher's strict sense. There is no assumption that the covariance model generated the data, that compliers resemble noncompliers, that dependence is from additive random cluster effects, that individuals in a same cluster do not interfere with one another, or that units are sampled from a population. We contrast methods of covariance adjustment, never assuming the models are “true,” obtaining exact randomization inferences. We consider exact inference about effects proportional to doses with noncompliance and effects whose magnitude varies with the degree of improvement that would occur without treatment. A simulation examines power.
Partial Multiuser Detection for CS-CDMA/CP over Multipath Channels

Convolutional spreading CDMA with cyclic prefix (CS-CDMA/CP) enables multiuser interference-free (MUI-free) transmission over multipath downlink channels with the use of zero correlation zone (ZCZ) codes. However, MUI-free transmission is guaranteed only when the data length D, channel delay L, and ZCZ length Z satisfy Z+1 ≥ D + L. In this paper, we consider the situation that MUI-free transmission is not realized inevitably because of excessive multipath delays or deliberately because of the necessity to get a higher bandwidth efficiency, clarify the structure of MUI in the CS-CDMA/CP system employing M-ZCZ codes, and propose iterative partial multiuser detection (IPMUD). The detection is implemented at symbol-level (after despreading) and the number of users jointly considered can be adjusted flexibly to offer a tradeoff between system performance and receiver complexity. The performance of the proposed scheme is verified numerically by density evolution approach and BER simulations. The CS-CDMA/CP system with IPMUD is shown to be much less complex than the DS-CDMA system with Wang and Poor's turbo MUD receiver and to be less complex and better, in terms of bit error rate (BER) performance, than the DS-CDMA system with iterative chip-wise equalization receivers.
Macaca Moments Reconsidered: Electoral Panopticon or Netroots Mobilization?

ABSTRACT This article addresses popular misconceptions about so-called “Macaca moments”—high profile candidate gaffes that are captured on YouTube, receive a cascade of citizen views, and contribute to some substantial political impact. Since the 2006 Virginia Senate race, when Senator George Allen made the original “Macaca” gaffe and went on to be narrowly defeated by his challenger, the term has become synonymous with the transformative influence of YouTube. This article constructs a case study of that Senate race through the archived blog posts on DailyKos, the largest progressive blogging community in America. It compares this case study with a second high-profile candidate gaffe occurring in the 2008 election season—Michele Bachmann's verbal misstep on Hardball with Chris Matthews. The central argument of the article is that the impact of these high-profile moments, and of YouTube more generally, must be viewed in the context of the campaigns and organizations attempting to engage in partisan mobilization. YouTube provides additional tools for parties and political organizations, but its influence is often overstated when academics and commentators focus on the technology in the absence of the organizations that use it.
EDF as an arbitration policy for wormhole-switched priority-preemptive NoCs — Myth or fact?

A constant increase in the number of processors integrated within multiprocessor platforms led to more apparent contentions for the interconnect medium. Consequently, inter-processor communication latencies significantly outgrew the threshold until which their effects on the real-time analysis of multiprocessors can be discarded as negligible. Yet, despite its ever increasing importance, the contention analysis of interconnects is still in its infancy! In that vein, we propose a novel arbitration policy for interconnect routers, which is based on the EDF paradigm - a well-established approach in the scheduling theory. First, we elaborate on the practical aspects of this model and propose the worst-case traffic delay analysis. Then, we experimentally evaluate the approach against the state-of-the-art methods, and also investigate its practical limitations, so as to give a complete answer to the question posed in the title of this work.
Polynomial-Time Approximation Schemes

Let Π be an NP-hard optimization problem, and let A be an approximation algorithm for Π. For an instance I of Π, let A(I) denote the objective value when running A on I, and let OPT (I) denote the optimal objective value. The approximation ratio of A for the instance I is RA(I) = A(I)/OPT (I), thus, when Π is minimization (maximization) problem RA(I) ≥ 1 (RA(I) ≤ 1). A polynomial time approximation scheme is an algorithm which takes as input an additional parameter, ε, which determines the desired approximation ratio. This ratio can be arbitrarily close to 1, when ε approaches 0. The time complexity of the scheme is polynomial in the input size but may be exponential in 1/ε. This gives a clear trade-off between running time and quality of approximation. Formally,
Effects of 0.12 and 0.80 ppm Ozone on Rat Nasal and Nasopharyngeal Epithelial Mucosubstances: Quantitative Histochemistry

The present study was designed to characterize the quantity of mucosubstances in surface epithelia of the rat nasal cavity and nasopharynx after short-term ozone exposure. Rats were exposed for 7 days (6 hr/day) to 0, 0.12, or 0.8 ppm ozone and were killed immediately or 7 days after the last exposure. Nasal cavities were processed for morphometric analysis of intraepithelial mucosubstances. Compared to controls, rats exposed to 0.12 ppm ozone had increased amounts of stored mucosubstances within epithelium lining the medial aspect of the nasal turbinate, but no change within the epithelium of the nasopharynx. Rats exposed to 0.8 ppm ozone had increased quantities of stored mucosubstances within the transitional and respiratory epithelia lining turbinates and lateral walls of the anterior nasal airway, and significant decreases in stored mucosubstances within the epithelium of the nasal septum at the end of exposure. Seven days after the end of exposure, the amounts of intraepithelial mucosubstances returned to control levels along the septum, but remained greater than those of controls along the turbinates and nasopharynx. We conclude that exposures to ambient levels of ozone induce significant changes in the stored secretory product of nasal epithelium in the rat, and that these changes persist for at least 7 days after cessation of exposure.
Improved Methods for Production, Isolation, and Assay of Two New Chloroisoxazoline Amino Acid Antitumor Antimetabolites: U-42,126 and U-43,795

Improved fermentation and isolation procedures for antitumor antimetabolites U-42,126 and U-43,795 increased drug yields 30-fold. The sensitivity limit of a newly developed assay is 0.03 μg of U-42,126 and 2.0 μg of U-43,795 per ml. The in vitro antimicrobial effect of both drugs was antagonized by histidine.
Literacies in the humanities: the student voice

Humanities includes a diverse range of disciplines in which little literature has explored in any depth the desired learning outcomes. This study was designed to articulate and illustrate learning outcomes in the humanities from students' voices and work. Undergraduate students in their final year, postgraduate students and recent alumni from the Faculty of Arts at a Hong Kong university were interviewed individually or in groups of three to four. They discussed their desired and actual learning outcomes in three areas: the overall university experience, studying in the humanities and their studies in their specific majors. The students' comments were grouped into 16 categories of description. Seventy-three pieces of student work were collected and matched to the 16 categories to illustrate students' perceptions. A common set of qualities was found in all the humanities programmes. The findings have been helpful in bringing the student voice into internal discussions about outcomes-based approaches to teaching and learning and how these approaches relate to internal quality-assurance and curriculum-change processes.
Susceptibility of Black Soldier Fly (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) Larvae and Adults to Four Insecticides

Abstract Dosage-mortality regressions were determined for black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens (L.), larvae fed cyromazine or pyriproxifen treated media. Cyromazine LC50s for larvae dying before becoming prepupae ranged from 0.25 to 0.28 ppm with dosage-mortality regression slopes between 5.79 and 12.04. Cyromazine LC50s for larvae dying before emergence ranged from 0.13 to 0.19 ppm with dosage-mortality regression slopes between 3.94 and 7.69. Pyriproxifen dosage-mortality regressions were not generated for larvae failing to become prepupae since <32% mortality was recorded at the highest concentration of 1,857 ppm. LC50s for larvae failing to become adults ranged from 0.10 to 0.12 ppm with dosage mortality-regression slopes between 1.67 and 2.32. Lambda-cyhalothrin and permethrin dosage-mortality regressions were determined for wild adult black soldier flies and house flies, Musca domestica L. , and for susceptible house flies. Our results indicate that the wild house fly, unlike the black soldier fly, population was highly resistant to each of these pyrethroids. Regression slopes for black soldier flies exposed to λ-cyhalothrin were twice as steep as those determined for the wild house fly strain. Accordingly, LC50s for the black soldier fly and susceptible house fly were 10- to 30-fold lower than those determined for wild house flies. The differential sensitivity between wild black soldier flies and house flies might be due to behavioral differences. Adult house flies usually remain in animal facilities with the possibility of every adult receiving pesticide exposure, while black soldier fly adults are typically present only during emergence and oviposition thereby limiting their exposure.
Twin Vector Machines for Online Learning on a Budget

This paper proposes Twin Vector Machine (TVM), a constant space and sublinear time Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm for online learning. TVM achieves its favorable scaling by maintaining only a fixed number of examples, called the twin vectors, and their associated information in memory during training. In addition, TVM guarantees that Kuhn-Tucker conditions are satisfied on all twin vectors at any time. To maximize the accuracy of TVM, twin vectors are adjusted during the training phase to approximate the data distribution near the decision boundary. Given a new training example, TVM is updated in three steps. First, the new example is added as a new twin vector if it is near the decision boundary. If this happens, two twin vectors are selected and merged into a single twin vector to maintain the budget. Finally, TVM is updated by incremental and decremental learning to account for the change. Several methods for twin vector merging were proposed and experimentally evaluated. TVMs were thoroughly tested on 12 large data sets. In most cases, the accuracy of low-budget TVMs was comparable to the state of the art resource-unconstrained SVMs. Additionally, the TVM accuracy was substantially larger than that of SVM trained on a random sample of the same size. Even larger difference in accuracy was observed when comparing to Forgetron, a popular kernel perceptron algorithm on a budget. The results illustrate that highly accurate online SVMs could be trained from large data streams using devices with severely limited memory budgets.
GLCM-based fingerprint recognition algorithm

An efficient and reliable fingerprint recognition system is the fundamental need of contemporary living. Beside forensic use, it has been deployed in a large number of commercial applications recently. In this paper, a new method for fingerprint recognition is introduced. The Core point is found initially using Poincare Index method. The dominant fingerprint region around the core point is selected and enhanced using the Diffusion Coherence Technique. The Gray level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) is then applied to find out the fingerprint most significant statistical descriptors. Finally the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) Classifier is adopted for the recognition of unknown fingerprint images. The proposed algorithm is tested on images from FVC 2002 public domain database DB1. The experimental results demonstrate the improved performance of the algorithm.
Experimental Evaluation of the MPEG-7 Visual Descriptors for Object Classification

In this paper we present an experimental study on the efficiency of the various MPEG-7 visual descriptors as far as the object classification is concerned. Seven different visual descriptors are investigated with the aid of three state of the art classifiers. Our data consist of 7686 manually annotated object instances corresponding to eight different object classes. A total of 1952 images from the athletics domain collected in the framework of the FP6 BOEMIE project were used for blob extraction. The aim of this study is to provide practical hints to the researchers working in the areas of automatic object detection and classification concerning the utilization of the MPEG-7 visual descriptors. The training and testing files we used along with the learned object models are provided online so as to be used as benchmark data. The results show there is a significant difference on the performance of the individual descriptors as well as on their combination with other descriptors irrespectively of the classifier used.
Computational Complexity in Natural Language

We have become so used to viewing natural language in computational terms that we need occasionally to remind ourselves of the methodological commitment this view entails. That commitment is this: we assume that to understand linguistic tasks—tasks such as recognizing sentences, determining their structure, extracting their meaning, and manipulating the information they contain—is to discover the algorithms required to perform those tasks, and to investigate their computational properties. To be sure, the physical realization of the corresponding processes in humans is a legitimate study too, but one from which the computational investigation of language may be pursued in Splendid Isolation. Complexity Theory is the mathematical study of the resources—both in time and space—required to perform computational tasks. What bounds can we place—from above or below—on the number of steps taken to compute such-and-such a function, or a function belonging to such-and-such a class? What bounds can we place on the amount of memory required? It is not surprising, therefore, that in the study of natural language, complexity-theoretic issues abound. Since any computational task can be the object of complexity-theoretic investigation, it would be hopeless even to attempt a complete survey of Complexity Theory in the study of natural language. We focus therefore on a selection of topics in natural language where there has been a particular accumulation of complexity-theoretic results. Section 2 discusses parsing and recognition; Section 3 discusses the computation of logical form; and Section 4 discusses the problem of determining logical relationships between sentences in natural language. But we begin with a brief review of the Complexity Theory itself.