Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electronic Kiosks in Retail Service Delivery

Abstract In-store interactive kiosks using Internet technology represent a channel within a channel in many retail and service settings. They offer wide-ranging informational, transactional and promotional benefits, as well as contributing to customer relationship management. Widespread adoption by customers is, however, required to realize their full potential. Drawing upon the diffusion of innovations and technology acceptance models, two empirical studies are reported, one using a kiosk prototype, the other an in-store trial system. In both cases, a model was able to predict around 50% of intention to use. Implications for retail strategy, positioning within stores, facility promotion and system design are discussed.
X-Ray Line Emission from Evaporating and Condensing Accretion Disk Atmospheres

We model the X-rays reprocessed by an accretion disk in a fiducial low-mass X-ray binary system with a neutron star primary. An atmosphere, or the intermediate region between the optically thick disk and a Compton temperature corona, is photoionized by the neutron star continuum. X-ray lines from the recombination of electrons with ions dominate the atmosphere emission and should be observable with the Chandra and XMM-Newton high-resolution spectrometers. The self-consistent disk geometry agrees well with optical observations of these systems, with the atmosphere shielding the companion from the neutron star. At a critical depth range, the disk gas has one thermally unstable and two stable solutions. A clear difference between the model spectra exists between evaporating and condensing disk atmospheres. This difference should be observable in high-inclination X-ray binaries, or whenever the central continuum is blocked by absorbing material and the extended disk emission is not.
Manufacturing Transition in Local Economies: A Regional Adjustment Model

This paper addresses changes in capital formation by testing the importance of location factors with respect to the rate of establishment births and deaths in U.S. manufacturing, 2000–2004. A theoretical concept called “localized creative destruction” is tested as a mechanism to explain the dynamics impacting the spatial distribution of manufacturing establishment birth and death rates. While no support of this process was found, results identify a convergence process occurring where counties with high initial birth/death rates have smaller changes in firm birth and death rates. The interpretation is that counties become more equally competitive in terms of firm formation dynamics in lieu of successful counties increasing their lead in the short run. This is potentially relevant to policymakers and economic development practitioners who are concerned with business retention and the impact of new manufacturing establishments on their existing base.
LOCALITY SENSITIVE CLUSTERING IN HIGH DIMENSIONAL SPACE

In high dimension space, many conventional clustering algorithms do not work well in effectiveness and efficiency, especially for image data set. For example, k-means is widely used in image clustering especially visual clustering. But its drawback such as long clustering time and high memory cost seriously deteriorates feasibility in incremental large image set. To improve the feasibility, we proposed a Locality Sensitive Clustering method. Firstly, multiple hashing functions are generated. Secondly, data points are projected to get bucket indices. Thirdly, proper quantification interval is selected to merge the bucket indices, and the cluster labels are assigned for each point. Experimental results show that on synthetic data set this method performs almost as well as k-means, and on image data set it performs slightly worse than k-means algorithm about accuracy. But its advantage is in low memory cost, fast running speed and incremental clustering. So Locality Sensitive Clustering can be used to clustering data, especially in high dimensional space.
Specific Bacterial, Archaeal, and Eukaryotic Communities in Tidal-Flat Sediments along a Vertical Profile of Several Meters

ABSTRACT The subsurface of a tidal-flat sediment was analyzed down to 360 cm in depth by molecular and geochemical methods. A community structure analysis of all three domains of life was performed using domain-specific PCR followed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analysis and sequencing of characteristic bands. The sediment column comprised horizons easily distinguishable by lithology that were deposited in intertidal and salt marsh environments. The pore water profile was characterized by a subsurface sulfate peak at a depth of about 250 cm. Methane and sulfate profiles were opposed, showing increased methane concentrations in the sulfate-free layers. The availability of organic carbon appeared to have the most pronounced effect on the bacterial community composition in deeper sediment layers. In general, the bacterial community was dominated by fermenters and syntrophic bacteria. The depth distribution of methanogenic archaea correlated with the sulfate profile and could be explained by electron donor competition with sulfate-reducing bacteria. Sequences affiliated with the typically hydrogenotrophic Methanomicrobiales were present in sulfate-free layers. Archaea belonging to the Methanosarcinales that utilize noncompetitive substrates were found along the entire anoxic-sediment column. Primers targeting the eukaryotic 18S rRNA gene revealed the presence of a subset of archaeal sequences in the deeper part of the sediment cores. The phylogenetic distance to other archaeal sequences indicates that these organisms represent a new phylogenetic group, proposed as “tidal-flat cluster 1. ” Eukarya were still detectable at 360 cm, even though their diversity decreased with depth. Most of the eukaryotic sequences were distantly related to those of grazers and deposit feeders.
ABRAXAS (FAM175A) and Breast Cancer Susceptibility: No Evidence of Association in the Breast Cancer Family Registry

Approximately half of the familial aggregation of breast cancer remains unexplained. This proportion is less for early-onset disease where familial aggregation is greater, suggesting that other susceptibility genes remain to be discovered. The majority of known breast cancer susceptibility genes are involved in the DNA double-strand break repair pathway. ABRAXAS is involved in this pathway and mutations in this gene impair BRCA1 recruitment to DNA damage foci and increase cell sensitivity to ionizing radiation. Moreover, a recurrent germline mutation was reported in Finnish high-risk breast cancer families. To determine if ABRAXAS could be a breast cancer susceptibility gene in other populations, we conducted a population-based case-control mutation screening study of the coding exons and exon/intron boundaries of ABRAXAS in the Breast Cancer Family Registry. In addition to the common variant p.Asp373Asn, sixteen distinct rare variants were identified. Although no significant difference in allele frequencies between cases and controls was observed for the identified variants, two variants, p.Gly39Val and p.Thr141Ile, were shown to diminish phosphorylation of gamma-H2AX in MCF7 human breast adenocarcinoma cells, an important biomarker of DNA double-strand breaks. Overall, likely damaging or neutral variants were evenly represented among cases and controls suggesting that rare variants in ABRAXAS may explain only a small proportion of hereditary breast cancer.
A Voxel-Map Quantitative Analysis Approach for Atherosclerotic Noncalcified Plaques of the Coronary Artery Tree

Noncalcified plaques (NCPs) are associated with the presence of lipid-core plaques that are prone to rupture. Thus, it is important to detect and monitor the development of NCPs. Contrast-enhanced coronary Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA) is a potential imaging technique to identify atherosclerotic plaques in the whole coronary tree, but it fails to provide information about vessel walls. In order to overcome the limitations of coronary CTA and provide more meaningful quantitative information for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), we proposed a Voxel-Map based on mathematical morphology to quantitatively analyze the noncalcified plaques on a three-dimensional coronary artery wall model (3D-CAWM). This approach is a combination of Voxel-Map analysis techniques, plaque locating, and anatomical location related labeling, which show more detailed and comprehensive coronary tree wall visualization.
MIREX 2012 AUDIO BEAT TRACKING EVALUATION: BEAT.E

In this paper, we present a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based beat tracking system that simultaneously extracts downbeats, beat times, tempo, meter and rhythmic patterns. Our model builds upon the basic structure proposed by Whiteley et. al [9], which we further modified by introducing a new observation model: rhythmic patterns are learned directly from data, which makes the model adaptable to the rhythmical structure of any kind of music. The MIREX beat tracking evaluation 30 results using ten measures and three datasets placed our algorithm among the top three performing algorithms thirteen times and always inside the top ten.
The Influence of Example-data Homogeneity on EBMT Quality

Homogeneity of large corpora is still a largely unclear notion. In this study we first make a link between the notions of similarity and homogeneity : a large corpus is made of sets of documents to which may be assigned a score in similarity defined by cross-entropic measures, such similarity being implicitly expressed in the data. The distribution of the similarity scores of such subcorpora may then be interpreted as a representation of the homogeneity of the main corpus. A blatant fact is that the quality of an example-based machine translation (EBMT) system will depend heavily on the training examples it is fed. Being able to tune an MT system to a specific application through a wise selection of training data is therefore a critical issue. From this viewpoint, such a representation of homogeneity may be used to perform corpus adaptation to tune an EBMT system to the particular domain, or sublanguage, of an expected task. In the following study we further describe this framework and compare it with existing methods based on computing linguistic feature frequencies.
Audit Quality and the Pricing of Discretionary Accruals

Accrual‐based earnings is considered superior to cash flows. Accruals allow managers to communicate their private and inside information and thereby improve the ability of earnings to reflect underlying economic value. However, managers could engage in aggressive reporting of accruals that would seriously undermine the informativeness of reported earnings. Since outsiders cannot directly observe earnings, high‐accrual firms face greater agency costs relative to low‐accrual firms. Auditing plays an important role in mitigating these agency costs by constraining opportunistic management of accruals. This study examines whether there is a linkage between audit quality and pricing of discretionary accruals. The findings indicate that the association between stock returns and discretionary accruals is greater for firms audited by Big 6 auditors than for firms audited by non‐Big 6 auditors. Further, discretionary accruals of clients of Big 6 auditors have a greater association with future profitability than dis.
Predicting Student Performance: A Statistical and Data Mining Approach

Predicting the performance of a student is a great concern to the higher education managements. The scope of this paper is to identify the factors influencing the performance of students in final examinations and find out a suitable data mining algorithm to predict the grade of students so as to a give timely and an appropriate warning to students those who are at risk. In the present investigation, a survey cum experimental methodology was adopted to generate a database and it was constructed from a primary and a secondary source. The obtained results from hypothesis testing reveals that type of school is not influence student performance and parents’ occupation plays a major role in predicting grades. This work will help the educational institutions to identify the students who are at risk and to and provide better additional training for the weak students.
Identification and control of nonlinear systems using piecewise affine models

Piecewise affine model is a useful tool for approximating nonlinear systems. In this paper, we first propose a procedure for obtaining the piecewise affine ARX models of nonlinear systems. Two parameters which fully characterize a piecewise affine ARX model, namely the parameters of the locally linear/affine subsystems, as well as the partitions of the regressor space, will be estimated, the former through a least-squares based identification method using multiple models, and the latter using standard procedures such as neural network classifier or support vector machine classifier. Based on the piecewise affine ARX model of the nonlinear system, we then proceed to derive a model-based controller to control the system for reference tracking. Simulation studies show that our algorithm can indeed provide accurate piecewise affine approximation of nonlinear systems, and that the proposed controller provides good tracking performance.
The fund of hedge funds reporting puzzle: Reconciling investors' expectations and fund managers' constraints

Purpose – The development of alternative investment has not yet been accompanied by genuine consideration of the specific characteristics of the risks and returns of hedge funds with regard to the provision of information to investors. To fill the gap, in 2004 EDHEC launched an international consultation process, seeking to implement a new framework for funds of hedge funds reporting. Design/methodology/approach – The consultation process was based on a series of recommendations proposed by EDHEC with regard to the academic state-of-the-art on risk measurement in the alternative universe. The findings of the survey, which brought together the opinions of 98 institutional investors and fund managers, allow a consensus to be established on the information required for the implementation of a relevant reporting method in the field of alternative investment. Findings – Interestingly, despite somewhat conflicting goals, investors and fund managers, except for slight discrepancies, globally agree on the definition of relevant information, and as a result on the content of the reports of tomorrow. Originality/value – A very large majority of hedge fund managers are satisfied with a reporting method based on a mean-variance structure, which is totally inappropriate for the risk and return profiles of alternative investment. To address this issue, the paper presents a series of indicators relying on a basic return-based analysis that allow a true and fair picture of the risk and return characteristics of alternative investment to be drawn. This paper therefore offers a pragmatic but robust answer, for both investors and fund managers, to the fund of hedge funds reporting quandary.
Formal Design and Verification of Self-Adaptive Systems with Decentralized Control

Feedback control loops that monitor and adapt managed parts of a software system are considered crucial for realizing self-adaptation in software systems. The MAPE-K (Monitor-Analyze-Plan-Execute over a shared Knowledge) autonomic control loop is the most influential reference control model for self-adaptive systems. The design of complex distributed self-adaptive systems having decentralized adaptation control by multiple interacting MAPE components is among the major challenges. In particular, formal methods for designing and assuring the functional correctness of the decentralized adaptation logic are highly demanded. This article presents a framework for formal modeling and analyzing self-adaptive systems. We contribute with a formalism, called self-adaptive Abstract State Machines, that exploits the concept of multiagent Abstract State Machines to specify distributed and decentralized adaptation control in terms of MAPE-K control loops, also possible instances of MAPE patterns. We support validation and verification techniques for discovering unexpected interfering MAPE-K loops, and for assuring correctness of MAPE components interaction when performing adaptation.
Now Daddy's Changing Diapers and Mommy's Making Her Career: Evaluating a Generous Parental Leave Regulation Using a Natural Experiment

Over the last decades many OECD countries introduced parental leave regulations in order to counteract low and decreasing birth rates. In general, these regulations aim at making parenthood more attractive and more compatible with a working career, especially for women. The recent German Elterngeld reform is one example: By replacing 67 per cent of prepartum parental labor earnings for up to 14 months after birth of the child - if both father and mother take up the transfer - it intends to i) smooth or prevent households’ earnings decline postpartum, ii) make childbearing attractive for working women while iii) keeping them close to the labor market, and iv) incentivize fathers to participate in childcare. We evaluate the reform by using a natural experiment created by the quick legislative process of the Elterngeld reform: Comparing outcomes of parents with children born shortly after and before the coming into effect of the law on 1 January 2007 yields unbiased estimates of the reform effects, because at the time when these children were conceived none of the parents knew that the regulation would be in force by the time their child is born. Our results are based on unique data from the official evaluation of the reform, which we conducted for the German government, and they show that the reform has been generally successful in attaining its objectives. In particular, we find a significant decrease in mothers’ employment probability during the 12 months after giving birth, and a significant increase in mothers’ employment probability after the Elterngeld transfer expires.
PDM and PSM Hybrid Power Control of a Series-Resonant Inverter for Induction Heating Applications

This paper presents a high-frequency series-resonant inverter for induction heating applications, which is characterized by the pulse-density-modulation (PDM) and phase-shift-modulation (PSM) hybrid power control strategy. The inverter is kept to work at load resonant state for all load conditions and achieves zero-current-switching or zero-voltage-switching (ZCS ZVS) for switches of the inverter. Compared with PDM only schemed inverters, the PDM/PSM hybrid control schemed inverters present many advantages, such as: more steady output current, continuous power regulation, and operating in continuous current mode (CCM); When compared with PSM only schemed inverters, they achieve smaller phase-shift as well as hardly any distortion in output current. Even working under light load status, the inverter can realize quasisinusoid output current waveform with less fluctuation in peak value
Turbo Unequal Error Protection Codes with Multiple Protection Levels

Most existing Turbo unequal error protection (UEP) codes provide two error protection levels at the cost of extending the block size of the codeword or increasing the computational complexity. This paper proposes two novel Turbo UEP coding schemes, which provide multiple error protection levels for information bits, according to their different sensitivities to the channel noise. By per- muting the information bits and designing the puncturing scheme, multiple error protection levels can be achieved using one encoder without increasing the computational complexity. In addition, the coding rate of the proposed Turbo UEP schemes can be chosen from 1/3 to 1/2. Experimental results show that the information bits with a high protection level resist noise more effectively than those with a low protection level. The proposed UEP schemes provide better capability of error protection for the entire information, compared with the Turbo equal error protection (EEP) schemes and the existing Turbo UEP schemes.
Wide range stereo time-of-flight camera

Time-of-Flight cameras provide real-time depth information at each pixel. These cameras, however, suffer from modular errors, recording shortened distance measurements if the objects are farther than a certain maximum range. Previous error-correction methods use either a single depth map or successively acquired multi-frequency depth maps. In general, they are prone to incorrect range extension results when the scene is discontinuous or when the camera or objects are moving. Our method based on a stereo Time-of-Flight camera deals with moving cameras and objects by acquiring a pair of depth maps simultaneously. Challenges caused by noise and different viewpoints are resolved by an iterative Markov random field optimization technique that delivers the consistent recovery of actual depth values beyond the maximum range. The experiments show that the proposed method extends the range use of Time-of-Flight cameras beyond twice.
Development of automatic parcel delivery system using image processing techniques

Recently many robots are used on various scenes in industry. It is also desired to make transportation task automatic in the transport industry. We develop an automatic parcel delivery system for personal delivery services. This system has some features that it can be introduced at low cost and delivery not only parcels but also any goods. This system is composed of a table unit and a transport robot. The work of the table unit is pushing out a parcel to the transport robot and the transport robot moves the parcel to the truck. The table unit obtains external information through a camera. This paper develops a vision system for the table unit. The vision system recognizes the parcel and a bar which extrudes the parcel. Then, when the parcel is set on table unit, this unit can extrude the parcel to the transport robot and return the extruding bar to its original position.
Robustness of Traveling Waves in Ongoing Activity of Visual Cortex

Numerous studies have revealed traveling waves of activity in sensory cortex, both following sensory stimulation and during ongoing activity. We contributed to this body of work by measuring the spike-triggered average of the local field potential (stLFP) at multiple concurrent locations (Nauhaus et al., 2009) in the visual cortex of anesthetized cats and macaques. We found the stLFP to be progressively delayed at increasing distances from the site of the triggering spikes, and interpreted this as a traveling wave of depolarization originating from that site. Our results were criticized, however, on two grounds. First, a study using the same recording techniques in the visual cortex of awake macaques reported an apparent lack of traveling waves, and proposed that traveling waves could arise artifactually from excessive filtering of the field potentials (Ray and Maunsell, 2011). Second, the interpretability of the stLFP was questioned (Kenneth Miller, personal communication), as the stLFP must reflect not only interactions between spike trains and field potentials, but also correlations within and across the spike trains. Here, we show that our data and interpretation are not imperiled by these criticisms. We reanalyzed our field potentials to remove any possible artifact due to filtering and to discount the effects of correlations within and across the triggering spike trains. In both cases, we found that the traveling waves were still present. In fact, closer inspection of Ray and Maunsell's (2011) data from awake cortex shows that they do agree with ours, as they contain clear evidence for traveling waves.