Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the entropy of a hidden Markov process

In this paper the entropy rate of a binary hidden Markov process (HMP) defined by observing the output of a binary symmetric channel whose input is a first-order binary Markov process is studied. Despite the simplicity of the models involved, the characterization of this entropy is a long standing open problem. By presenting the probability of a sequence under the model as a product of random matrices, and show that the entropy rate sought is a top Lyapunov exponent of the product, which explains the difficulty in its explicit computation. The same product of random matrices to derive an explicit expression for a first order Taylor approximation of the entropy rate with respect to the parameter of the binary symmetric channel is applied. The accuracy of the approximation is validated against empirical simulation results and also extends the results to Renyi's entropy of any order.
Intergenerational support and women’s fertility in high-income countries: an evolutionary analysis

There is now considerable evidence that humans are cooperative breeders – that is, women need allomaternal support to successfully reproduce. Families play a key role in providing this support to women. Evidence from low-income contexts linking allomaternal support to beneficial child outcomes is particularly strong, but associations between support and successful reproduction are more varied in high-income settings and when fertility is the outcome. Two possible reasons for this are (1) allocare is measured in many forms and at many time points with potentially different meanings for reproductive women, and (2) highincome populations are very heterogeneous, including large socioeconomic inequalities, which may modify associations between support and fertility. This publication-based dissertation has three main objectives: (1) to contribute to cooperative breeding literature in high-income, low-fertility settings; (2) to deepen our understanding of how family support plays into reproductive decision making by testing associations between many types of support and women’s fertility; and (3) to explore contextual factors, particularly socioeconomic position, with may moderate associations between family support and women’s fertility. These objectives are investigated in four research chapters (two published and two written for submission) using secondary data from low-fertility, high-income countries. This research firstly confirms that families provide key allomaternal support for women in high-income countries, while also highlighting other sources of support. However, the results demonstrate that all support is not equal. Types, timing, and sources of support vary in terms of their influence on reproductive outcomes (e.g.in the United Kingdom, material or practical support often associates with lower fertility while non-material support associates with higher fertility). Secondly, this research demonstrates that socioeconomic environments modify many components of the reproductive decision making process, not the least of which is how families interact with and support each other and, in turn, how family support associates with fertility outcomes.
Une approche anthropocentrée interactive pour l'aide à la décision en marketing bancaire

This paper is focused on real banking marketing problem. It is based on association rules mining which is one main problem in knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). However, current methods is limited to extract some particular information and to restore it. Several works were proposed to solve it thanks to user-driven process. In this kind of approach, the whole KDD process is tackled and not only the mining step. KDD design integrates the user at the heart of the process by playing a role of evolutionary heuristic. This paper focuses on the role of the expert and explains his help within the process. We highlight in our works the HCI preponderant significance. Indeed, it merges tacit and explicit knowledge and good results are produced in our application.
Design of Dual-Polarized Monopole-Slot Antenna With Small Volume and High Isolation

A compact monopole-slot antenna with polarization diversity is proposed for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications. Dual polarization is provided by a ground-folded monopole and a slot cut from the folded ground. The total volume of the proposed antenna is only 50 × 16 × 16 mm<sup>3</sup> (0.4 λ<sub>0</sub> × 0.128 λ<sub>0</sub> ×0.128 λ<sub>0</sub>). However, low mutual coupling is achieved due to the orthogonal modes of current distribution on the ground. A prototype of the proposed antenna is built and tested. The obtained results include the S parameters, radiation patterns and radiation gain. The results from our presentation match with the simulation and demonstrate an isolation better than -36 dB in the required band.
Markov Random Fields for SAR Remote Sensing Applications

This article aims at illustrating the powerfulness of Bayesian and specially Markovian frameworks for different remote sensing applications and in particular for SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) image processing. Indeed, the Markovian model is a very convenient way to introduce prior knowledge on the problem to solve. It will first be evoked with examples on the pixel level like filtering, segmentation and classification. Then higher level applications, like object recognition, and global image interpretation will be developed.
Privacy Preserving Distributed Data Mining

Data mining technology has emerged as a means for identifying patterns and trends from large quantities of data. Data mining and data warehousing go hand-in-hand: most tools operate on a principal of gathering all data into a central site, then running an algorithm against that data (Figure 1). There are a number of applications that are infeasible under such a methodology, leading to a need for distributed data mining. The obvious solution of a “virtual” data warehouse – heterogeneous access to all the data – is not always possible. The problem is not simply that the data is distributed, but that it must be distributed. There are several situations where this arises:
Supra-Segmental Feature Based Speaker Trait Detection

It is well known that speech utterances convey a rich diversity of information concerning the speaker in addition to related semantic content. Such information may contain speaker traits such as personality, likability, health/pathology, etc. To detect speaker traits in human computer interface is an important task toward formulating more efficient and natural computer engagement. This study proposes two groups of supra-segmental features for improving speaker trait detection performance. Compared with the 6125 dimension features based baseline system, the proposed supra-segmental system not only improves performance by 9.0%, but also is computationally attractive and proper for real life application since it derives a less than 63 dimension features, which are 99% less than the baseline system.
The when and how of communicating climate change.

This investigation discovers how combined use of the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Elaboration Likelihood Model could offer greater specification for both academics and practitioners looking to improve the effectiveness of communication as a tool to encourage behaviour change. It will contribute, as Stern called for, to greater understanding of the catalog of variables which are involved when people are contemplating changing environmentally significant behaviors.
On the Development of the RST Spanish Treebank

In this article we present the RST Spanish Treebank, the first corpus annotated with rhetorical relations for this language. We describe the characteristics of the corpus, the annotation criteria, the annotation procedure, the inter-annotator agreement, and other related aspects. Moreover, we show the interface that we have developed to carry out searches over the corpus' annotated texts.
Use of picture archiving and communication system for imaging of radiological films in cardiac surgical intensive care unit

Journal of Anaesthesiology Clinical Pharmacology | July-September 2014 | Vol 30 | Issue 3 447 3. Lykoudis EG, Seretis K. Tapia’s syndrome: An unexpected but real complication of rhinoplasty: Case report and literature review. Aesthetic Plast Surg 2012;36:557-9. 4. Tesei F, Poveda LM, Strali W, Tosi L, Magnani G, Farneti G. Unilateral laryngeal and hypoglossal paralysis (Tapia’s syndrome) following rhinoplasty in general anaesthesia: Case report and review of the literature. Acta Otorhinolaryngol Ital 2006;26:219-21. 5. Nalladaru Z, Wessels A, DuPreez L. Tapia’s syndrome-a rare complication following cardiac surgery. Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg 2012;14:131-2. 6. Antonakakis JG, Ting PH, Sites B. Ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia for peripheral nerve blocks: An evidence-based outcome review. Anesthesiol Clin 2011;29:179-91.
Isoprene emission from plants: why and how.

BACKGROUND Some, but not all, plants emit isoprene. Emission of the related monoterpenes is more universal among plants, but the amount of isoprene emitted from plants dominates the biosphere-atmosphere hydrocarbon exchange. SCOPE The emission of isoprene from plants affects atmospheric chemistry. Isoprene reacts very rapidly with hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere making hydroperoxides that can enhance ozone formation. Aerosol formation in the atmosphere may also be influenced by biogenic isoprene. Plants that emit isoprene are better able to tolerate sunlight-induced rapid heating of leaves (heat flecks). They also tolerate ozone and other reactive oxygen species better than non-emitting plants. Expression of the isoprene synthase gene can account for control of isoprene emission capacity as leaves expand. The emission capacity of fully expanded leaves varies through the season but the biochemical control of capacity of mature leaves appears to be at several different points in isoprene metabolism. CONCLUSIONS The capacity for isoprene emission evolved many times in plants, probably as a mechanism for coping with heat flecks. It also confers tolerance of reactive oxygen species. It is an example of isoprenoids enhancing membrane function, although the mechanism is likely to be different from that of sterols. Understanding the regulation of isoprene emission is advancing rapidly now that the pathway that provides the substrate is known.
On-chip transient current monitor for testing of low-voltage CMOS IC

In this paper, on-chip test circuitry performing the transient supply current measurement is presented. The introduced principle makes uses of the parasitic resistance of the supply connection to sense the dynamic supply current. Thus, the monitor does not cause any additional power supply voltage degradation and provides detection capabilities for open defects that usually cause a significant reduction of the I/sub DDT/ current. The proposed monitor does not affect the performance of the CUT and can be efficiently used to test low-voltage CMOS circuits. Significant results summarising possibilities and limitations of the circuit are discussed as well. The design has been implemented together with an experimental CMOS circuit using Alcatel-Mietec 0.7 /spl mu/m CMOS technology and its processing is in progress. Evaluation results of the prototype test chips are presented.
Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor Improves MDX Mouse Response to Peripheral Nerve Injury

Background G-CSF has been shown to increase neuronal survival, which may positively influence the spinal cord microenvironment during the course of muscular dystrophies. Methodology/Principal Findings Male MDX mice that were six weeks of age received a left sciatic nerve transection and were treated with intraperitoneal injections of 200 µg/kg/day of G-CSF 7 days before and 7 days after the transection. The axotomy was performed after the cycles of muscular degeneration/regeneration, consistent with previous descriptions of this model of muscular dystrophy. C57BL/10 mice were used as control subjects. Seven days after the surgery, the animals were sacrificed and their lumbar spinal cords were processed for immunohistochemistry (anti-MHC I, anti-Synaptophysin, anti-GFAP and anti-IBA-1) and transmission electron microscopy. MHC I expression increased in both strains of mice after the axotomy. Nevertheless, the MDX mice displayed a significantly smaller MHC I upregulation than the control mice. Regarding GFAP expression, the MDX mice showed a stronger astrogliosis compared with the C57BL/10 mice across all groups. Both groups that were treated with G-CSF demonstrated preservation of synaptophysin expression compared with the untreated and placebo groups. The quantitative analysis of the ultrastructural level showed a preservation of the synaptic covering for the both groups that were treated with G-CSF and the axotomized groups showed a smaller loss of synaptic contact in relation to the treated groups after the lesion. Conclusions/Significance The reduction of active inputs to the alpha-motoneurons and increased astrogliosis in the axotomized and control groups may be associated with the cycles of muscle degeneration/regeneration that occur postnatally. The G-CSF treated group showed a preservation of the spinal cord microenvironment after the lesion. Moreover, the increase of MHC I expression in the MDX mice that were treated with G-CSF may indicate that this drug performs an active role in regenerative potential after lesions.
Multitier Web Application Analyzer For SQL Injection

In today's world, web services and applications have paved the way of users for faster data access. In order to meet the user's requirements for faster data retrieval, the web applications have turned out to be multitier in which the back-end server contains the data base and application interface or web server acts as the front end. The Omni- present use of web services has made them a target of attackers. In this paper, we use the multitier web application analyser for securing the data storage at the back-end as well as the front-end applications. The multitier web application analyser safeguards the behaviour of the sessions performed by the users from the wide range of attacks. It helps in monitoring the web as well as database requests to prevent attacks which would not be done by an independent intrusion detection system. Thus, enhances the performance of the system to provide high efficiency.
Designing the User Experience in an agile context

NOTE BY THE UNIVERSITY This project report is submitted as an examination paper. No responsibility can be held by London University for the accuracy or completeness of the material therein. ii Acknowledgement First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Ann Blandford, whose support and advice considerably contributed to the quality of this thesis. Special thanks go to Helen Sharp, for our interesting discussions and organising the observations, and to Jennifer Ferreira for her feedback on my research. Without my participants, this thesis wouldn't have been possible, so I would like to thank all of them for their help. Interviewing and observing them was not only insightful and interesting, but made me enjoy my research. Finally, my thanks go to my friends and family; especially to all the friends I made at UCLIC, my flatmates Kim and Mark for their support, to my brother Walter for sharing his experiences with qualitative research, and to Marlijn and Sophia for motivating me throughout the last months. iii Abstract With an increasing number of software development projects that follow an agile approach, it becomes more and more important for User Experience (UX) practitioners to understand how user-centred design (UCD) and its techniques can be applied in an agile context. This thesis investigates the UX community's perspective by conducting grounded theory research about the role of UX practitioners on agile projects. The research yielded two themes that are highly relevant: UX practitioners' identity or self-concept and the need to establish, protect and communicate an overall UX vision. The results suggest that UX practitioners working in an agile context, who have a good understanding of its principles, value agile and are aware that an adaptation of UCD practices is required. The analysis highlighted that UX practitioners' self-concept is attached to the integration of the end user, as an understanding of one's users is the basis for designing a good UX. Equally, user research is a core element of the vision theme, facilitating not only the UX vision, but an overall team and product vision shared by all stakeholders. Additionally, the thesis discusses approaches for increasing end user involvement and best practices for bringing UCD and agile together. Open issues and potential challenges are highlighted. This research aspires to offer insight for UX practitioners, provide impulses for researchers and add to the current discussion about how designing the UX is possible in an agile …
Optimizing Time Histograms for Non-Poissonian Spike Trains

The time histogram is a fundamental tool for representing the inhomogeneous density of event occurrences such as neuronal firings. The shape of a histogram critically depends on the size of the bins that partition the time axis. In most neurophysiological studies, however, researchers have arbitrarily selected the bin size when analyzing fluctuations in neuronal activity. A rigorous method for selecting the appropriate bin size was recently derived so that the mean integrated squared error between the time histogram and the unknown underlying rate is minimized (Shimazaki & Shinomoto, 2007). This derivation assumes that spikes are independently drawn from a given rate. However, in practice, biological neurons express non-Poissonian features in their firing patterns, such that the spike occurrence depends on the preceding spikes, which inevitably deteriorate the optimization. In this letter, we revise the method for selecting the bin size by considering the possible non-Poissonian features. Improvement in the goodness of fit of the time histogram is assessed and confirmed by numerically simulated non-Poissonian spike trains derived from the given fluctuating rate. For some experimental data, the revised algorithm transforms the shape of the time histogram from the Poissonian optimization method.
Oolong : Programming Asynchronous Distributed Applications with Triggers

•Convergence: inherent detection of termination without separate check job Oolong targets: •Allows incremental recomputation •Asynchronous execution without global barriers •Examples: Crawling, incremental PageRank, SSSP Long trigger thread Retrigger Table Scheduled Fire Trigger Enqueue Retrigger dists = Table(int, double) nodes = Table(int, Node) initialize all dists <infinity enable SSSP_Trigger on dists table RunOne(SSSP_Kernel) #initializes source
Ring Paxos: A high-throughput atomic broadcast protocol

Atomic broadcast is an important communication primitive often used to implement state-machine replication. Despite the large number of atomic broadcast algorithms proposed in the literature, few papers have discussed how to turn these algorithms into efficient executable protocols. Our main contribution, Ring Paxos, is a protocol derived from Paxos. Ring Paxos inherits the reliability of Paxos and can be implemented very efficiently. We report a detailed performance analysis of Ring Paxos and compare it to other atomic broadcast protocols.
MinuteSort with Flat Datacenter Storage

The sorts were accomplished using a heterogeneous cluster consisting of 256 computers and 1,033 disks, divided broadly into two classes: storage nodes and compute nodes. Notably, no compute node in our system uses local storage for data; we believe FDS is the first system with competitive sort performance that uses remote storage. Because files are all remote, our 1,470 GB runs actually transmitted 4.4 TB over the network in under a minute. No strong assumptions are made around key or record lengths; keys and records of other lengths can be handled with only a performance-neutral configuration change. Our cluster’s computers are a mix of HP and Dell systems with a range of RAM (24GB to 96GB) and CPUs (2 to 12 cores). The compute nodes had a single local disk, used only for operating system files. Storage nodes had one operating system disk plus between 5 and 16 FDS data disks used for sort data. These disks had a range of capabilities: primarily (78%) 10K RPM dualport SAS disks, but with some (22%) 7,200 RPM SATA disks. Each computer is networked using 10G (10 gigabit/sec) Ethernet connected in a full-bisection-bandwidth CLOS network [5]. The interconnect is 22 × Blade
Robust Policy Computation in Reward-Uncertain MDPs Using Nondominated Policies

The precise specification of reward functions for Markov decision processes (MDPs) is often extremely difficult, motivating research into both reward elicitation and the robust solution of MDPs with imprecisely specified reward (IRMDPs). We develop new techniques for the robust optimization of IRMDPs, using the minimax regret decision criterion, that exploit the set of nondominated policies, i.e., policies that are optimal for some instantiation of the imprecise reward function. Drawing parallels to POMDP value functions, we devise a Witness-style algorithm for identifying nondominated policies. We also examine several new algorithms for computing minimax regret using the nondominated set, and examine both practically and theoretically the impact of approximating this set. Our results suggest that a small subset of the nondominated set can greatly speed up computation, yet yield very tight approximations to minimax regret.
Extending context-free grammars with permutation phrases

A permutation phrase is a grammatical phrase that specifies a syntactic construct as any permutation of a set of constituent elements. Permutation phrases allow for the concise and natural expression of free-order constructs as found in programming languages and notations such as C, Cobol, BibTEX, and Unix command lines. The conciseness and clarity of expression that permutation phrase grammars offer over context-free grammars are illustrated through a case study of the declarations in C. The parsing problem for permutation phrase grammars is considered, and it is shown how efficient linear-time parsing can be achieved for permutation phrase grammars satisfying an extended notion of the LL(1) property.
Modern Chinese Helps Archaic Chinese Processing: Finding and Exploiting the Shared Properties

Languages change over time and ancient languages have been studied in linguistics and other related fields. A main challenge in this research area is the lack of empirical data; for instance, ancient spoken languages often leave little trace of their linguistic properties. From the perspective of natural language processing (NLP), while the NLP community has created dozens of annotated corpora, very few of them are on ancient languages. As an effort toward bridging the gap, we have created a word segmented and POS tagged corpus for Archaic Chinese using articles from Huainanzi, a book written during Chinas Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-9 AD). We then compare this corpus with the Chinese Penn Treebank (CTB), a well-known corpus for Modern Chinese, and report several interesting differences and similarities between the two corpora. Finally, we demonstrate that the CTB can be used to improve the performance of word segmenters and POS taggers for Archaic Chinese, but only through features that have similar behaviors in the two corpora.