Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lateral termination of the north‐directed Alpine orogeny and onset of westward escape in the Western Alpine arc: Structural and sedimentary evidence from the external zone

The initial propagation of the Western Alpine orogen was directed northwestward, as shown by basement‐involved and Mesozoic sedimentary cover compressional structures and by the early foreland basins evolution. The crystalline basement of the Dauphiné zone recorded three shortening episodes: pre‐Priabonian deformation D1 (coeval with the Pyrenean‐Provence orogeny), and Alpine shortening events D2 (N‐NW directed) and D3 (W‐directed). The early Oligocene D2 structures are trending sub‐perpendicular to the more recent, arcuate orogen and are interfering with (or truncated by) D3, which marks the onset of westward lateral extrusion. The NW‐ward propagating Alpine flexural basin shows earliest Oligocene thin‐skinned compressional deformation, with syn‐depositional basin‐floor tilting and submarine removal of the basin infill above active structures. Gravity enhanced submarine erosion gave birth locally to steep submarine slopes overlain by kilometric‐scale blocks slid from the orogenic wedge. The deformations of the basin floor and the associated sedimentary and erosional features indicate a N‐NW‐ward directed propagation, consistent with D2 in the Dauphiné foreland. The Internal zones represent the paleo‐accretionary prism developed during this early Alpine continental subduction stage. The early buildup has been curved in the arc and rapidly exhumed during the Oligocene collision stage. Westward extrusion and indenting by the Apulian lithosphere allowed the modern arc to crosscut the western, lateral termination of the ancient orogen from ∼32 Ma onward. This contrasted evolution leads to propose a palinspastic restoration taking in account important northward transport of the distal passive margin fragments (Briançonnais) involved in the accretionary prism before the formation of the Western Alps arc.
Business Process Management: A Comprehensive Survey

Business Process Management (BPM) research resulted in a plethora of methods, techniques, and tools to support the design, enactment, management, and analysis of operational business processes. This survey aims to structure these results and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art in BPM. In BPM the concept of a process model is fundamental. Process models may be used to configure information systems, but may also be used to analyze, understand, and improve the processes they describe. Hence, the introduction of BPM technology has both managerial and technical ramifications and may enable significant productivity improvements, cost savings, and flow-time reductions. The practical relevance of BPM and rapid developments over the last decade justify a comprehensive survey.
60-GHz Patch Antennas and Arrays on LTCC With Embedded-Cavity Substrates

The design is presented of aperture-coupled microstrip line-fed patch antennas (ACMPAs) and 4times4 planar arrays on Ferro A6-S low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) substrate operating in the 60-GHz frequency band. In addition to the traditional ACMPA design, air cavities processed inside the LTCC substrate are used to improve the bandwidth and gain of the antennas. The arrays are excited through the microstrip-line feed networks using quarter-wave matched T-junctions and using Wilkinson power dividers. The results show that ACMPAs and arrays can be fabricated with a standard LTCC process even for the millimeter-wave region. Good agreement is achieved between simulations and measurements. The measured S-parameters indicate impedance bandwidths of 9.5% and 5.8% for the array elements with and without an embedded cavity. The measured maximum gains for the 16-element patch arrays (with and without cavity) are 18.2 and 15.7 dBi, respectively.
Problem- Versus Case-based Approaches in Teaching Medical Students about Eating Disorders: A controlled comparison

Fourth-year medical students were allocated randomly to either problem-based learning (PBL) or case-based learning (CBL) tutorials on the topic of eating disorders during their 6-week psychiatry attachment. All students were evaluated in terms of their tutorial performance and the factual knowledge they had acquired. In turn, students evaluated the performance of the tutors in both the PBL and the CBL process. No significant differences were found between the student groups with respect to their performance or acquired knowledge. Furthermore, there were no significant differences when comparing the PBL format with the CBL format with regard to group functioning or oral interaction between students. Finally, student ratings for tutor performance on feedback, group management skills and personal qualities showed no differences. Implications for education are discussed.
Learning reactive neurocontrollers using simulated annealing for mobile robots

This paper presents a method based on simulated annealing to learn reactive behaviors. This work is related with multi-agent systems. It is a first step towards automatic generation of sensorimotor control architectures for completing complex cooperative tasks with simple reactive mobile robots. The controller of the agents is a neural network and we use simulated annealing techniques to learn the synaptic weights. We'll first present the results obtained with a classical simulated annealing procedure, and secondly an improved version that is able to adapt the controller to failures or changes in the environment. All the results have been experimented under simulation and with a real robot.
Regression models, scan statistics and reappearance probabilities to detect regions of association between gene expression and copy number

Early studies of breast cancer microarray data used linear models to quantify the relationship between measures of gene expression (GE) and copy number (CN) obtained from tumour samples. Motivated by a study of women with axillary node‐negative breast cancer, we propose a regression‐based scan statistic to identify within‐chromosome clusters of genetic probes that exhibit association between GE and CN, while accounting for tumour characteristics known to be prognostic for clinical outcome. As a measure of the association between GE and CN, for each genetic probe available from a microarray we regress GE on CN, and include subject‐specific covariates. In the development of the scan statistic, the within‐chromosome spatial distribution of the subset of probes with a statistically significant association is approximated by a Poisson process. By incorporating the distance between the probe positions, the scan statistic accounts for the spatial nature of CN alterations. Regions identified as clusters of significant associations are hypothesized to harbour genes involved in breast cancer progression. Using simulations, we examine the sensitivity of the method to certain factors, and to address issues of repeatability, we consider reappearance probabilities for each probe within detected regions and assess the utility of a quantity estimated by bootstrap sample frequencies. Applications of the proposed method to joint analysis of GE and CN in breast tumours, with and without an informative covariate, and comparisons with alternative methods suggest that inclusion of covariates and the use of a regional test statistic can serve to refine regions for further investigation including the analysis of their association with outcome. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Survey of Technical Progress in Speech Recognition by Machine over Few Years of Research

This paper reviews some of various research carried out over the last decade in the area of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and discusses the major themes and advance made in the last decade of research, in order to show the outlook of technology and an appreciation of the fundamental progress that has been achieved in this weighty area of speech communication. Over period of research and development, the accuracy of automatic speech recognition remains one of the important research challenges such as variation of the context, environmental condition, speaker’s variation and poor-quality audio. The design of speech recognition requires careful attention to the following issue: Definition of various types of speech classes, speech representation, techniques, database and performance evaluation. The history, challenges of speech recognition system and various techniques to solve these challenges constructed by various research works have been presented in a chronological order. The objective of this paper is to compare and summarize well know approaches used in various steps of speech recognition system.
Analysis of two methods of poles extraction for antenna caracterization

Antenna radiation characteristics can be modeled by some poles and residues. In this paper, we compare two different methods to extract these poles of a noisy antenna radiation in frequency and in time domain: the Cauchy method and the Total Least Square Matrix Pencil Method respectively. Results are presented for a dipole antenna and an Archimedean spiral antenna.
A robust linear controller for flexible joint manipulators

In this paper a new and completely linear algorithm is proposed for composite robust control of flexible joint robots. Moreover, the robust stability of the closed loop system in the presence of structured and unstructured uncertainties is analyzed. To introduce the idea, flexible joint robot with structured and unstructured uncertainties is modelled and converted into singular perturbation form. A robust linear control algorithm is proposed for the slow dynamics and its robust stability conditions are derived using Thikhonov's theorem. Then the robust stability of the total system considering the proposed composite controller is analyzed, and sufficient conditions for robust stability of system is obtained. Finally the effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified through simulations. It is shown that not only the tracking performance of the proposed controller is very suitable, but also the actuator effort is much smaller than previous result.
Sham control methods used in ear-acupuncture/ear-acupressure randomized controlled trials: a systematic review.

Ear-acupuncture/ear-acupressure (EAP) has been used for a range of health conditions with numerous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating its efficacy and safety. However, the design of sham interventions in these RCTs varied significantly. This study systematically reviewed RCTs on EAP for all clinical conditions involving a number of sham EAPs as a control intervention. The review is guided by the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions 5.1. 0 and investigated the types and differences of sham EAP interventions. Four electronic English databases (The Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL®) and two Chinese databases (CQVIP, CNKI) were searched in December 2012 and 55 published RCTs comparing real and sham EAP for any clinical condition were included. Characteristics of participants, real and sham interventions, and outcomes were extracted. Four types of sham methods were identified. Among the 55 RCTs, 25 studies involved treatment on nonspecific ear acupoints as the sham method; seven studies used nonacupoints on the ear; nine studies selected placebo needles or placebo ear-acupressure on the same ear acupoints for the real treatment; 10 studies employed pseudo-intervention; and five studies combined two of the above methods to be the sham control. Other factors of treatment such as number of points, treatment duration, and frequency also varied greatly. Risk of bias assessment suggests that 32 RCTs were "high risk" in terms of participants blinding, and 45 RCTs were "high risk" in terms of personnel blinding. Meta-analysis was not conducted due to the high clinical heterogeneity across included studies. No relationship was found between the sham designs and efficacy outcomes, or between the sham types and dropout rate. No solid conclusion of which design is the most appropriate sham control of EAP could be drawn in this review.
A Real-Time ASL Recognition System Using Leap Motion Sensors

It is always challenging for deaf and speech-impaired people to communicate with non-sign language users. A real-time sign language recognition system using 3D motion sensors could lower the aforementioned communication barrier. However, most existing gesture recognition systems are adopting a single sensor framework, whose performance is susceptible to occlusions. In this paper, we proposed a real-time multi-sensor recognition system for American sign language (ASL). Data collected from Leap Motion sensors are fused using multiple sensors data fusion (MSDF) and the recognition is performed using hidden Markov models (HMM). Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system can deliver higher recognition accuracy over single-sensor systems. Due to its low implementation cost and higher accuracy, the proposed system can be widely deployed and bring conveniences to sign language users.
Cycling Together: Menstrual Synchrony as a Projection of Gendered Solidarity

Though researchers have hotly debated the phenomenon of menstrual synchrony—women menstruating in tandem when living in close quarters with one another—no conclusive evidence has proven or disproven its existence. In this theoretical article, we draw from sociological theories of collective identities, psychological research on menstrual synchrony, and relevant literatures on menstrual activism and sisterhood to examine the frequent occurrence of women's belief in menstrual synchrony despite the lack of evidence that this phenomenon actually occurs. We propose a theoretical explanation for women's beliefs in menstrual synchrony by arguing that these beliefs serve several functions that enhance gender solidarity: (a) reduction of shame and taboo related to menstruation; (b) a socially acceptable way of constructing modern “sisterhood”; (c) a method for marking women's relationship to nature; and (d) a pathway to fight back against sexism and sexist assumptions about menstruation and menstruating women. We .
Fibro-Vascular Coupling in the Control of Cochlear Blood Flow

Background Transduction of sound in the cochlea is metabolically demanding. The lateral wall and hair cells are critically vulnerable to hypoxia, especially at high sound levels, and tight control over cochlear blood flow (CBF) is a physiological necessity. Yet despite the importance of CBF for hearing, consensus on what mechanisms are involved has not been obtained. Methodology/Principal Findings We report on a local control mechanism for regulating inner ear blood flow involving fibrocyte signaling. Fibrocytes in the super-strial region are spatially distributed near pre-capillaries of the spiral ligament of the albino guinea pig cochlear lateral wall, as demonstrably shown in transmission electron microscope and confocal images. Immunohistochemical techniques reveal the inter-connected fibrocytes to be positive for Na+/K+ ATPase β1 and S100. The connected fibrocytes display more Ca2+ signaling than other cells in the cochlear lateral wall as indicated by fluorescence of a Ca2+ sensor, fluo-4. Elevation of Ca2+ in fibrocytes, induced by photolytic uncaging of the divalent ion chelator o-nitrophenyl EGTA, results in propagation of a Ca2+ signal to neighboring vascular cells and vasodilation in capillaries. Of more physiological significance, fibrocyte to vascular cell coupled signaling was found to mediate the sound stimulated increase in cochlear blood flow (CBF). Cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) was required for capillary dilation. Conclusions/Significance The findings provide the first evidence that signaling between fibrocytes and vascular cells modulates CBF and is a key mechanism for meeting the cellular metabolic demand of increased sound activity.
Decentralized Trusted Timestamping using the Crypto Currency Bitcoin

Trusted timestamping is a process for proving that certain information existed at a given point in time. This paper presents a trusted timestamping concept and its implementation in form of a web-based service that uses the decentralized Bitcoin block chain to store anonymous, tamper-proof timestamps for digital content. The service allows users to hash files, such as text, photos or videos, and store the created hashes in the Bitcoin block chain. Users can then retrieve and verify the timestamps that have been committed to the block chain. The non-commercial service enables anyone, e.g., researchers, authors, journalists, students, or artists, to prove that they were in possession of certain information at a given point in time. Common use cases include proving that a contract has been signed, a photo taken, a video recorded, or a task completed prior to a certain date. All procedures maintain complete privacy of the user’s data.
Katariina Korniloff Interrelationships of Physical Activity and Depressive Symptoms with Cardiometabolic Risk Factors

Korniloff, Katariina Interrelationships of physical activity and depressive symptoms with cardiometabolic risk factors Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2013, 84 p. (Studies in Sport, Physical education and health ISSN 0356-1070; 193) ISBN 978-951-39-5192-4 (nid.) ISBN 978-951-39-5193-1 (PDF) The aim of this thesis was to examine the relationships between physical activity (PA) and health, more specifically PA in relation to depressive symptoms (DS) and cardiometabolic risk factors, also in a lifetime perspective, and further perceived barriers to PA. Additionally this thesis reveals the occurrence of unintentional injuries related to PA level and DS. The participants were randomly selected from the National Population Register in August 2007 and invited by mail to a clinical examination. Of the 4500 persons aged 45-74 years, 64% participated in the health examination. All participants completed a standard questionnaire, including questions on cardiometabolic risk factors, health behaviour, functional ability, unintentional injuries and somatic diseases. PA was assessed with the self-administered short version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire, with a question about leisure-time physical activity (LTPA), and retrospective recall of lifetime historical LTPA frequency from age 15 years onwards. Depressive symptoms (DS) were assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-21), and the cut-off point for mild depression was 10/63. The physically inactive participants presented more commonly with health risk factors and DS. In addition, the rate of simultaneous metabolic syndrome and DS was more than fivefold higher among the participants with low LTPA, than among those in the high LTPA group. Lack of time proved to be the main reason for inactivity, while among those with DS and metabolic syndrome the main reason for inactivity was illness or disability. Lifetime LTPA seemed to be associated with occurrence of DS and somatic diseases in later life. The presence of DS found to increase the prevalence of unintentional injuries. To conclude, PA plays a significant role relation to DS and cardiometabolic risk factors. Health-related risk factors seem to accumulate in inactive individuals. Therefore, promoting LTPA over the lifespan would be beneficial with respect to DS and somatic diseases.
The rise of China and India

‘Professor, have you watched the documentary Two Million Minutes, the one on India? Is it true, did you and do other Indian boys and girls study so hard? Or, is the video exaggerating to make a point about America? ’ My undergraduate student’s question referenced entrepreneur and venture capitalist Bob Compton’s controversial video Two Million Minutes: A Deeper Look at India, which focuses on the two million minutes that high school students spend on their education over a four-year period before they graduate. Emerging from Compton’s travels for business ventures in India and his subsequent quest to understand an Indian workforce whose energy and intelligence impressed him, the video compares and contrasts the lives of high-achieving students in the US and in India to conclude that students in the US are being cheated of a rigorous, cutting-edge education and that their mentors, teachers, parents, and the culture at large have failed to inspire students to excel in academic pursuits. Before I could answer my student’s question, another student chimed in and said, ‘But is this video making a different point than what we read about education and middle class pressure in China in the National Geographic? Do you remember what Bella had to go through? Poor girl had all that tutoring in math and English’ (Chang, 2008). Twenty minutes later I still had not responded to the first question about Two Million Minutes as other students, including two international students from China, jumped into this lively debate on American media portrayals of middle-class educational culture in India and China in my undergraduate globalization and media course. At the end of this course, which far exceeded my expectations for student engagement and class participation, several students wrote in their evaluation essays that the material they had learned about India and China should be a compulsory part of their education, and one student in particular said, ‘The world is ARTICLE
Intrusion Recovery Using Selective Re-execution

RETRO repairs a desktop or server after an adversary compromises it, by undoing the adversary's changes while preserving legitimate user actions, with minimal user involvement. During normal operation, RETRO records an action history graph, which is a detailed dependency graph describing the system's execution. RETRO uses refinement to describe graph objects and actions at multiple levels of abstraction, which allows for precise dependencies. During repair, RETRO uses the action history graph to undo an unwanted action and its indirect effects by first rolling back its direct effects, and then reexecuting legitimate actions that were influenced by that change. To minimize user involvement and re-execution, RETRO uses predicates to selectively re-execute only actions that were semantically affected by the adversary's changes, and uses compensating actions to handle external effects. An evaluation of a prototype of RETRO for Linux with 2 real-world attacks, 2 synthesized challenge attacks, and 6 attacks from previous work, shows that RETRO can often repair the system without user involvement, and avoids false positives and negatives from previous solutions. These benefits come at the cost of 35-127% in execution time overhead and of 4-150 GB of log space per day, depending on the workload. For example, a HotCRP paper submission web site incurs 35% slowdown and generates 4 GB of logs per day under the workload from 30 minutes prior to the SOSP 2007 deadline.
Scalar Representations in a Unified Model of Phonetics and Phonology

Standard phonological representations provide only a very coarse-grained specification of the phonetic properties of a word or phrase. That is, representation in terms of standard phonological features and timing units corresponds approximately to the level of detail contained in a broad phonetic transcription, and the representation of time is in many ways even more limited. For example, consider the representation in (1)
Optimizing vote and quorum assignments for reading and writing replicated data

The problem is discussed of determining the vote assignment and quorum that yields the highest availability in a system where node availabilities can be different and the mix of the read and write operations is arbitrary. For this purpose, an enumeration algorithm is presented that can be used to find the vote and quorum assignments that need to be considered for achieving optimal availability. An analytical method is derived to evaluate the availability of a given system for any vote and quorum assignment. This method and the enumeration algorithm are used to find the optimal vote and quorum assignment for several systems. The algorithm can also be used to obtain the optimal performance when other measures are considered. <<ETX>>