Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implementing probabilistic description logics: An application to image interpretation

This paper presents an application of an optimized implementation of a probabilistic description logic defined by Giugno and Lukasiewicz [9] to the domain of image interpretation. This approach extends a description logic with so-called probabilistic constraints to allow for automated reasoning over formal ontologies in combination with probabilistic knowledge. We analyze the performance of current algorithms and investigate new optimization techniques.
Notes on the Canadian exception: security certificates in critical context

This paper attempts to place the Canadian security certificate program in critical context. The program is a mechanism of arbitrary detention targeted to non-citizens the state has certified as ‘threats’ to national security. As a mechanism of arbitrary detention the program fully locates Canadian policies inside of, and not in some manner external to, the worst abuses and ‘exceptional practices’ associated with the ‘global war on terror’. To place this program in critical context, the author draws upon the notion of ‘exception’. Although the security certificate program does invoke an exceptional practice in the terms made legible in recent discussions in critical security studies, it also points to ways in which critical discussions of ‘exception’ might be deepened and complicated. To this end, the paper put forwards the notion of the ‘legal complex’ to highlight the mundane and often contested ways in which the exception is invoked to certify which racialized bodies might be governed as political citizens and which will be governed as ‘bare life’.
Revised: Block Cipher Based Hash Function Construction From PGV

Preneel, Govaerts, and Vandewalle[12] considered the 64 most basic ways to construct a hash function from a block cipher, and regarded 12 of these 64 schemes as secure. Black, Pogaway and Shrimpton[3] proved that, in black-box model, the 12 schemes that PGV singled out as secure really are secure and given tight upper and lower bounds on their collision resistance. And also they pointed out, by stepping outside of the Merkle-Damgard[5] approach to analysis, an additional 8 of the 64 schemes are just as collision resistant as the first group of schemes. In this paper we point out that the 12 compression functions that PGV singled out are free start collision resistant and others are not, the additional 8 compression functions are only fix start collision resistant as singled out by BRS, the hash functions based on those 20 schemes are fix start collision resistant, the upper bound of collision resistance and preimage resistant are given based on conditional probability of | ( ) = Y X x P y , | ( ) = Y K k P y of compression function, not based on assumption of random oracle model, the bounds have more practical value than the bounds given by BRS. In view point of collision resistant, the best 4 schemes are not among the 12 schemes singled by PGV, and among the 8 schemes point out by BRS, and block cipher E itself is the best compression to build a collision resistant hash function. At the end of the paper, two recommend structure of block cipher based hash function are given, and a prove of their securities are also given.
Impulsive system of ODEs with general linear boundary conditions

The paper provides an operator representation for a problem which consists of a system of ordinary differential equations of the first order with impulses at fixed times and with general linear boundary conditions z (t) = A(t)z(t) + f(t, z(t)) for a.e. t ∈ [a, b] ⊂ R, z(ti+)− z(ti) = Ji(z(ti)), i = 1, . , p, l(z) = c0, c0 ∈ R n . Here p, n ∈ N, a < t1 < . < tp < b, A ∈ L ([a, b];R), f ∈ Car([a, b] × R;R), Ji ∈ C(R ;R), i = 1, . , p, and l is a linear bounded operator on the space of left-continuous regulated functions on interval [a, b]. The operator l is expressed by means of the KurzweilStieltjes integral and covers all linear boundary conditions for solutions of the above system subject to impulse conditions. The representation, which is based on the Green matrix to a corresponding linear homogeneous problem, leads to an existence principle for the original problem. A special case of the n-th order scalar differential equation is discussed. This approach can be also used for analogical problems with state-dependent impulses. Mathematics Subject Classification 2010: 34B37, 34B15, 34B27
A software synthesis tool for distributed embedded system design

We present a design tool for automated synthesis of embedded systems on distributed COTS-based platforms. Our synthesis tool consists of (1) a graphical user interface for input of software layouts, which maps tasks to resources and (2) a constraints solving engine, which allocates local resources to tasks, all with the goal of meeting specified performance criteria. Our tool differs from previous work in that it allows (a) use of stochastic (rather than worst-case) models of resource usage and (b) resource sharing among components. Our approach uses analytical approximate solutions for quick estimates of the desired performance measures. These estimates permit an efficient search of the possible design space. Once candidate designs are determined, they are validated through a simulation model. We demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of this tool on a synthetic aperture radar benchmark.
Extending TRANSIMS Technology to an Integrated Multilevel Representation

The TRANSIMS system developed at Los Alamos in the USA over the past decade is a world leader in providing an integrated land-use transportation dynamical model for large areas with a million or more inhabitants. TRANSIMS uses standard survey data to create synthetic micropopulations, including family structure, to simulate trip making and emergent traffic dynamics. We propose to extend TRANSIMS by adapting it to a new multi-level representation, allowing dynamics to be algebraically integrated at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels. The new representation builds a lattice hierarchy in a way that integrates non-partitional hierarchies of links and routes based on the usual hierarchy of geographical zones, e.g. neighbourhoods, districts, cities, counties and countries. Applying the representation to a big city starts by defining sets of zones at different levels. At the first level, N, is the street. This can be subdivided to building plots at level N-1, buildings at level N-2, and even rooms at level N-3. At level N+1 are the neighbourhoods, at level N+2 is the set of district zones (each of them containing the different neighbourhoods in the previous level), and at the top level N+3 (in this case), is just one zone, the city itself. If a larger study area is to be considered, we would have a whole set of N+3 zones defining N+4-level areas, and so on, extending to the level of counties, countries or even continents. This paper will explain the fundamentals of TRANSIMS technology and compare it to other systems. We will show how TRANSIMS and the new multi-level representation can be brought together to give new insights into the macro-dynamics of very large road systems such as London, England and even the whole of Europe.
Distributed leadership: implications for the role of the principal

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on distributed leadership in schools and explore the implications arising from this model of leadership for those in formal leadership positions. It considers how the role of the principal, in particular, is affected and changed as leadership is more widely shared within the organization.Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws upon a wide range of research literature to explore the available empirical evidence about distributed leadership and organizational outcomes. The analysis focuses particularly on the evidence base concerning distributed leadership and student learning outcomes.Findings – This analysis of the available evidence highlights the potential for distributed leadership to make a difference to organizational change and improvement. It suggests that principals need to relinquish power and authority; that there is an inevitable shift away from leadership as position to leadership as interaction and that principals will need to build a high.
Efficient on-demand route establishment methods for dense ad-hoc networks

On-demand ad hoc routing protocols broadcast control packets to establish routes to destination nodes. In ad hoc networks that are joined by many mobile nodes, they generate a high number of broadcast packets, thereby causing contention, packet collisions and battery power wastage in the mobile nodes. We propose an efficient route establishment method to decrease the transmission of control packets adoptively according to the number of adjacent nodes and the number of routes that those nodes accommodate. Through simulation, we demonstrate that our proposed method is especially efficient in dense ad hoc networks. In our proposed method, the number of control packets is decreased without lowering the success ratio of path discoveries according to the number of adjacent nodes. Furthermore, our proposed method improves the performance of packet delivery, taking account of the path concentration.
Off-line AGV routing on the 2D mesh topology with partial permutation

In this paper, we consider the routing issue for the AGV system in the large scalable flexible manufacturing system (LSFMS). After we study the existing mature techniques in the packet routing and analyze the differences between the AGV routing and packet routing model, especially on the mesh topology, we propose an off-line algorithm for AGV routing on the 2D mesh layout with partial permutation. The running time of our routing algorithm is 2n + o(n) steps for an n /spl times/ n mesh layout, which is almost optimal in the worst case.
Continuous-time matched filtering and decoding without synchronization

Standard communication receivers need to establish both symbol synchronization and frame synchronization before error correction can take place. In this paper, we present a coded multi-tone packet transmission format in which synchronization is moved past decoding (and thus effectively eliminated). We also present the concept of an input-tracking decoder, which is required in such a scheme. An example of an input-tracking decoder for LDPC codes is presented and some preliminary simulation results are given.
Prestige, Centrality, and Learning: A Social Network Analysis of an Online Class

This study explored relations between social network characteristics in an online graduate class and two learning outcomes: affective and cognitive learning. The social network analysis data were compiled by entering the number of one-to-one postings sent by each student to each other student in a course web site discussion space into a specially designed spreadsheet. Regression analysis revealed that both network prestige and network centrality were robust predictors of cognitive learning outcomes. Self-reported affective learning, however, was not related to network factors. Results illustrate the utility of social network analysis in understanding interaction and learning outcomes in online classes.
Psychological correlates of depression in children with recurrent abdominal pain.

OBJECTIVE To examine the associations between coping style, social support, self-efficacy, locus of control, maternal adjustment, and depressive symptoms in children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) of childhood. METHODS Fifty children with RAP (8-18 years) and their mothers were recruited from a gastroenterology clinic (GI) and community medical practices. Participants completed questionnaires that assessed coping style, social support, self-efficacy, locus of control, maternal adjustment, and psychological adjustment. RESULTS Passive coping strategies such as isolating oneself from others, catastrophizing, and behavioral disengagement were associated with more child-reported depressive symptoms. Higher levels of self-efficacy and greater social support from teachers and classmates were associated with fewer child-reported depressive symptoms. Higher levels of maternal adjustment problems, higher social support from parents, and lower social support from classmates were associated with maternal reports of more child internalizing symptoms. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that coping style, self-efficacy, social support, and maternal adjustment are correlates of depressive symptoms in children with RAP.
Chemiluminescent hybridization assay for hepatitis delta virus RNA in serum

A nonradioactive hybridization assay for the detection of hepatitis delta virus RNA in serum is described. This assay utilizes a digoxigenin-labeled RNA hybridization probe and chemiluminescent immunodetection. The probe can detect as little as 0.4 pg of cDNA with a 60-min exposure. Results obtained are in agreement with serological indicators of hepatitis delta virus infection and are comparable to those obtained by hybridization assays employing radioactively labeled RNA.
Poor Estimates of Context are Worse than None

It is difficult to estimate the probability of a word's context because of sparse data problems. If appropriate care is taken, we find that it is possible to make useful estimates of contextual probabilities that improve performance in a spelling correction application. In contrast, less careful estimates are found to be useless. Specifically, we will show that the Good-Turing method makes the use of contextual information practical for a spelling corrector, while attempts to use the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) or expected likelihood estimator (ELE) fail. Spelling correction was selected as an application domain because it is analogous to many important recognition applications based on a noisy channel model (such as speech recognition), though somewhat simpler and therefore possibly more amenable to detailed statistical analysis.
Model-based Development of Self-organizing Earthquake Early Warning Systems

A new approach for earthquake early warning systems (EEWS) is presented that uses wireless, selforganizing mesh sensor networks. To develop the prototype of such IT infrastructures, we follow a modeldriven system development paradigm. Structure and behaviour models of network topologies in specific geographic regions are coupled with wave signal analysing algorithms, alarming protocols, convenient visualisations and earthquake data bases to form the basis for various simulation experiments ahead of system implementation and installation. The general objective of these studies is to test the functionality of an EEWS and to optimize it under the real-time, reliability and cost-depended requirements of potential end-users. For modelling a technology mix of SDL/ASN.1/UML/C++ is used to generate the code for different kind of simulators, and for the target platform (several node types). This approach is used for realizing a prototype EEWS developed within the EU project SAFER (Seismic Early Warning for Europe) in cooperation with the Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam (GFZ). The first operational area of that EEWS is preparation for Istanbul in a region threatened by strong earthquakes. The presented paper focuses on our adopted and developed tool-based modelling and data base techniques used in that project, that are general and flexible enough for addressing similar prototyping use cases of selforganizing sensor-based IT infrastructures.
Concept based modeling approach for blog classification using fuzzy similarity

As information technology is developing in a faster pace, there is a steep increase in social networking where the user can share their knowledge, views, criticism through various ways such as blogging, facebook, microblogging, news, forums, etc. Among these various ways, blogs play a different role as it is a personal site for each user, and blogger writes lengthy posts on various topics. Several research works are carried out, to classify blogs based on machine learning techniques. In this paper, we describe a method for classifying blog posts automatically using fuzzy similarity. We perform, experiments using TREC dataset and applied our approach to six different fuzzy similarity measures. Experimental results proved that Einstein fuzzy similarity measures performs better than the other measures.
Indirect Detection of an Epitope-Specific Response to HIV-1 gp120 Immunization in Human Subjects

A specific response of human serum neutralizing antibodies (nAb) to a conformational epitope as a result of vaccination of human subjects with the surface envelope glycoprotein (gp120) of HIV-1 has not previously been documented. Here, we used computational analysis to assess the epitope-specific responses of human subjects, which were immunized with recombinant gp120 immunogens in the VAX003 and VAX004 clinical trials. Our computational methodology—a variation of sieve analysis—compares the occurrence of specific nAb targeted conformational 3D epitopes on viruses from infected individuals who received vaccination to the occurrence of matched epitopes in the viruses infecting placebo subjects. We specifically studied seven crystallographically defined nAb targeted conformational epitopes in the V3 loop, an immunogenic region of gp120. Of the six epitopes present in the immunogens and targeted by known monoclonal neutralizing antibodies, only the one targeted by the anti-V3 nAb 2219 exhibited a significant reduction in occurrence in vaccinated subjects compared to the placebo group. This difference occurred only in the VAX003 Thailand cohort. No difference was seen between vaccinated and placebo groups for the occurrence of an epitope that was not present in the immunogen. Thus, it can be theorized that a specific 2219-like human neutralizing antibody immune response to AIDSVAX immunization occurred in the VAX003 cohort, and that this response protected subjects from a narrow subset of HIV-1 viruses circulating in Thailand in the 1990s and bearing the conformational epitope targeted by the neutralizing antibody 2219.
Pathophysiology of Immediate Reactions to Injectable Gadolinium-based Contrast Agents

Objective: The aim of this paper was to review the classification of adverse drug reactions, highlight the known pathophysiology of immediate hypersensitivity reactions, and discuss the utility of diagnostic testing for immunologically mediated immediate reactions to gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs). Methods: Current literature on immediate reactions to GBCA was reviewed and summarized. Results: Adverse drug reactions to GBCA are rare, and can be attributed to physiologic, immunologic, and nonimmunologic processes. When immunologic reaction is suspected, particularly in the case of severe reactions, skin testing may be useful to confirm allergy and identify alternative agents for subsequent studies. Conclusion: As GBCAs are widely used for the diagnosis and monitoring of disease, the incidence of adverse drug reactions to GBCA warrants ongoing development of approaches to diagnosis and avoidance of these adverse events.
How much for the Michelangelo? Valuation, Commoditization and Finitism in the Secondary Art Market

This article is a sociological re-evaluation of the auction house, a central institution of the secondary art market. As an intermediary between buyers and sellers, the auction house is portrayed as an institution that straddles the poles of economic (calculative) and social (aesthetic) life. Relying on the work of Michel Callon and Barry Barnes, the process of the commoditization that takes place within auction houses is presented as a structuring mechanism through which symbolic, economic and cultural values are shaped and reinforced. In particular, the finitist calculative practices associated with commoditization (through the generation of estimated auction prices) are presented as responsible for reproducing the secondary art market and the aesthetic judgements on which it is based.
An Energy-Aware Adaptive Probabilistic Tracking Mechanism Based on Quantization for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) enable applications where target state estimation is essential. To deal with the energy source and communication bandwidth constraints, an energy-aware adaptive probabilistic tracking mechanism based on quantization was proposed. According to the relationship between the sensing radius and node properties which include stored information and position, a part of redundant nodes were removed under the condition on accuracy. An energy optimization model was established using the quantitative observations and an adaptive sampling interval strategy to reduce traffic for communication between sensor nodes. After that, a probabilistic sensor selection algorithm based on the sensing model of the node is creatively proposed to further reduce energy. In order to show the ascendant functions of the proposed mechanism, numerical simulation results including two scenarios, the single target and multiple Targets, showed that the algorithm can achieve the required tracking accuracy, effectively reduce energy consumption, and distinctly improve the performance of WSNs.
Association of race and sex with risk of incident acute coronary heart disease events.

CONTEXT It is unknown whether long-standing disparities in incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) among US blacks and whites persist. OBJECTIVE To examine incident CHD by black and white race and by sex. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Prospective cohort study of 24,443 participants without CHD at baseline from the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) cohort, who resided in the continental United States and were enrolled between 2003 and 2007 with follow-up through December 31, 2009. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Expert-adjudicated total (fatal and nonfatal) CHD, fatal CHD, and nonfatal CHD (definite or probable myocardial infarction [MI]; very small non-ST-elevation MI [NSTEMI] had peak troponin level <0.5 μg/L). RESULTS Over a mean (SD) of 4.2 (1.5) years of follow-up, 659 incident CHD events occurred (153 in black men, 138 in black women, 254 in white men, and 114 in white women). Among men, the age-standardized incidence rate per 1000 person-years for total CHD was 9.0 (95% CI, 7.5-10.8) for blacks vs 8.1 (95% CI, 6.9-9.4) for whites; fatal CHD: 4.0 (95% CI, 2.9-5.3) vs 1.9 (95% CI, 1.4-2.6), respectively; and nonfatal CHD: 4.9 (95% CI, 3.8-6.2) vs 6.2 (95% CI, 5.2-7.4). Among women, the age-standardized incidence rate per 1000 person-years for total CHD was 5.0 (95% CI, 4.2-6.1) for blacks vs 3.4 (95% CI, 2.8-4.2) for whites; fatal CHD: 2.0 (95% CI, 1.5-2.7) vs 1.0 (95% CI, 0.7-1.5), respectively; and nonfatal CHD: 2.8 (95% CI, 2.2-3.7) vs 2.2 (95% CI, 1.7-2.9). Age- and region-adjusted hazard ratios for fatal CHD among blacks vs whites was near 2.0 for both men and women and became statistically nonsignificant after multivariable adjustment. The multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio for incident nonfatal CHD for blacks vs whites was 0.68 (95% CI, 0.51-0.91) for men and 0.81 (95% CI, 0.58-1.15) for women. Of the 444 nonfatal CHD events, 139 participants (31.3%) had very small NSTEMIs. CONCLUSIONS The higher risk of fatal CHD among blacks compared with whites was associated with cardiovascular disease risk factor burden. These relationships may differ by sex.