Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gossip PCA

Eigenvectors of data matrices play an important role in many computational problems, ranging from signal processing to machine learning and control. For instance, algorithms that compute positions of the nodes of a wireless network on the basis of pairwise distance measurements require a few leading eigenvectors of the distances matrix. While eigenvector calculation is a standard topic in numerical linear algebra, it becomes challenging under severe communication or computation constraints, or in absence of central scheduling. In this paper we investigate the possibility of computing the leading eigenvectors of a large data matrix through gossip algorithms. The proposed algorithm amounts to iteratively multiplying a vector by independent random sparsification of the original matrix and averaging the resulting normalized vectors. This can be viewed as a generalization of gossip algorithms for consensus, but the resulting dynamics is significantly more intricate. Our analysis is based on controlling the convergence to stationarity of the associated Kesten-Furstenberg Markov chain.
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 Research Article Business Models for Open Innovation: from Collaboration to Incorporation

The paper describes five open innovation business models-collaboration, outsourcing, licensing, trading and incorporation-defined on the basis of open revenues and costs, new investments and divestments in intangibles. A sample of 271 companies from bio-pharmaceutical and technology hardware & equipment industries is investigated, and their annual reports for the three years period 2010-2012 are analysed. Results show that for biotech companies open innovation represents a characteristic activity, with most of them having high values of revenues deriving from joint development projects. On the other side, for pharmaceutical firms open innovation is somehow ancillary: even if most open innovation activities are widespread, their values are not really significant if compared to the total business volume. As to the technology hardware & equipment industry, the use of spin-ins as a mean for incorporating external knowledge is the most frequent open strategy. This work contributes to the research on open innovation by defining the business models that R&D intense companies may adopt to foster open innovation. From a managerial point of view, the framework can be used by companies for assessing the status of their own open strategies, also allowing the benchmarking with competitors.
An Enhanced CP-ABE based Access Control Algorithm for Point to Multi-Point Communication in Cloud Computing

Cipher-text Policy Attribute Based Encryption (CP-ABE) is a well-known access control technique, where the data content shared by a single user is accessed by several authorized entities with distinct data access rights, which forms the basis of the point to multi-point communication systems. In such type of systems, the process of user attributes management and user access policy specifications are found to be the challenging tasks. This work introduces an enhanced CP-ABE based access control algorithm, which extracts meaningful user attributes from a set of the user given attributes and stores it over a separate database system. Based upon the extracted attributes, a complete user attribute hierarchical access structure is framed. The user access is provided only when the user attributes hierarchical access structure satisfies the user access policy defined by the data owner. In this manner, the proposed system better solves the drawbacks of existing systems. Experiments show that our proposed algorithm provides comparatively efficient user access than existing CP-ABE techniques and it has lesser computational complexity.
Anion-coupled Na efflux mediated by the human red blood cell Na/K pump

The red cell Na/K pump is known to continue to extrude Na when both Na and K are removed from the external medium. Because this ouabain- sensitive flux occurs in the absence of an exchangeable cation, it is referred to as uncoupled Na efflux. This flux is also known to be inhibited by 5 mM Nao but to a lesser extent than that inhibitable by ouabain. Uncoupled Na efflux via the Na/K pump therefore can be divided into a Nao-sensitive and Nao-insensitive component. We used DIDS- treated, SO4-equilibrated human red blood cells suspended in HEPES- buffered (pHo 7.4) MgSO4 or (Tris)2SO4, in which we measured 22Na efflux, 35SO4 efflux, and changes in the membrane potential with the fluorescent dye, diS-C3 (5). A principal finding is that uncoupled Na efflux occurs electroneurally, in contrast to the pump's normal electrogenic operation when exchanging Nai for Ko. This electroneutral uncoupled efflux of Na was found to be balanced by an efflux of cellular anions. (We were unable to detect any ouabain-sensitive uptake of protons, measured in an unbuffered medium at pH 7.4 with a Radiometer pH-STAT.) The Nao-sensitive efflux of Nai was found to be 1.95 +/- 0.10 times the Nao-sensitive efflux of (SO4)i, indicating that the stoichiometry of this cotransport is two Na+ per SO4=, accounting for 60-80% of the electroneutral Na efflux. The remainder portion, that is, the ouabain-sensitive Nao-insensitive component, has been identified as PO4-coupled Na transport and is the subject of a separate paper. That uncoupled Na efflux occurs as a cotransport with anions is supported by the result, obtained with resealed ghosts, that when internal and external SO4 was substituted by the impermeant anion, tartrate i,o, the efflux of Na was inhibited 60-80%. This inhibition could be relieved by the inclusion, before DIDS treatment, of 5 mM Cli,o. Addition of 10 mM Ko to tartrate i,o ghosts, with or without Cli,o, resulted in full activation of Na/K exchange and the pump's electrogenicity. Although it can be concluded that Na efflux in the uncoupled mode occurs by means of a cotransport with cellular anions, the molecular basis for this change in the internal charge structure of the pump and its change in ion selectivity is at present unknown.
A tonotopic artificial neural network architecture for phoneme probability estimation

A novel sparse ANN connection scheme is proposed. It is inspired by the so called tonotopic organization of the auditory nerve, and allows a more detailed representation of the speech spectrum to be input to an ANN than is commonly used. A consequence of the new connection scheme is that more resources are allocated to analysis within narrow frequency sub bands-a concept that has recently been investigated by others with so called sub band ASR. ANNs with the proposed architecture have been evaluated on the TIMIT database for phoneme recognition, and are found to give better phoneme recognition performance than ANNs based on standard mel frequency cepstrum input. The lowest achieved phone error rate, 26.7%, is very close to the lowest published result for the core test set of the TIMIT database.
Design and analysis of lightweight polyetheretherketone (PEEK) front lower control arm

Forged Aluminum is regarded as the optimum process for producing light weight front lower control arm (FLCA) with assured internal qualities and high reliabilities since aluminum forging provides the highest weight reduction effect, as much as 35 to 40% reduction compared to cast iron. However due to the high cost of aluminum and motivation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the aim of this research is to develop lightweight material with optimum design of FLCA and achieve equivalent structural performance and function at a reduced cost relative to the baseline forged aluminum FLCA. In this research, the first stage was started with reverse engineering (RE) of forged aluminum FLCA, which RE refers to the process of obtaining a CAD model from an existing physical part. CAD model is prepared using solidwork software and finite element analysis by using Autodesk mechanical simulation software. We constructed a 3D CAD model for both baseline forged aluminum front lower control arm (FLCA) and improved design of FCLA using Solidwork (optimum design). The models are subjected to loading and boundary conditions and then analyzed using the FEA techniques which the optimum design FLCA used the lightweight polymer, polyetheretherketone (PEEK). The structural analysis was conducted to find out the stress, deformation and safety factor of PEEK FLCA. The structural analysis result of PEEK FLCA showed that the standard load given was not exceeded the yield strength of PEEK material, 100Mpa. The safety factor for the optimum design of PEEK FLCA, 1.09 is also bigger than 1. Thus, it showed that it is safe to use lightweight plastic, PEEK as a FLCA to replace forged aluminum and proof that the research aim to develop lighter weight than aluminum is achieved.
Gaining the Upper Hand: Evidence of Vertical Asymmetry in Sex-Categorisation of Human Hands

Visual perception is characterised by asymmetries arising from the brain’s preferential response to particular stimulus types at different retinal locations. Where the lower visual field (LVF) holds an advantage over the upper visual field (UVF) for many tasks (e.g., hue discrimination, contrast sensitivity, motion processing), face-perception appears best supported at above-fixation locations (Quek & Finkbeiner, 2014a). This finding is consistent with Previc’s (1990) suggestion that vision in the UVF has become specialised for object recognition processes often required in ”extrapersonal” space. Outside of faces, however, there have been very few investigations of vertical asymmetry effects for higher-level objects. Our aim in the present study was, thus, to determine whether the UVF advantage reported for face-perception would extend to a nonface object – human hands. Participants classified the sex of hand images presented above or below central fixation by reaching out to touch a left or right response panel. On each trial, a briefly presented spatial cue captured the participant’s spatial attention to either the location where the hand was about to appear (valid cue) or the opposite location (invalid cue). We observed that cue validity only modulated the efficiency of the sex-categorisation response for targets in the LVLVF and not the UVF, just as we have reported previously for face-sex categorisation (Quek & Finkbeiner, 2014a). Taken together, the data from these studies provide some empirical support for Previc’s (1990) speculation that object recognition processes may enjoy an advantage in the upper-hemifield.
Price-based approach for activity coordination in a supply network

Pressed by market globalization and concomitant competition, more and more manufacturers are relying on their suppliers to provide raw materials and component parts so as to focus on their core competence. As a result, the coordination of activities across a network of suppliers becomes critical to quickly respond to dynamic market conditions. In this paper, a novel framework combining mathematical optimization and the contract net protocol is presented for make-to-order supply network coordination. Interactions among organizations are modeled by a set of interorganizational precedence constraints and the objective is to achieve the organizations' individual and shared goals of fast product delivery and low inventory. These interorganizational constraints are relaxed by using a set of interorganizational prices that represent marginal costs per unit time for the violation of such constraints. The overall problem is thus decomposed into organizational subproblems, where individual organizations schedule their activities based on their internal situations and interorganizational prices. Coordination is achieved through an iterative price-updating process carried out in a distributed and asynchronous manner. With prices dynamically updated and schedules adjusted, this approach coordinates activities to fulfill existing commitments while maintaining agility to take on new orders. Numerical testing results show that interorganizational prices converge and prices may change as new orders arrive to reflect the new pressure on deliveries.
Evaluation of multicore systems soft error reliability using virtual platforms

Reliability is rapidly emerging as a major design metric in both embedded and high performance computing (HPC) domains. Such systems are integrating modern multicore processors (e.g. big.LITTLE) and graphics processing unit (GPUs) aiming to perform complex software stacks (i.e. operating system OS, drivers, and applications). To ensure failsafe functionality of underlying systems, designers should be able to identify soft errors at the initial design cycle considering different system configurations. In this context, virtual platforms (VPs) appear as an effective means for early design-time assessment of multicore-based systems with respect to soft error resilience. This paper discusses the benefits of using virtual platforms to assess soft errors of multicore-based systems as well as investigates the soft error analysis consistency of an instruction accurate simulator (OVPsim) with respect to a cycle accurate full system simulator (gem5). Fault injection campaigns (more than 1 million) were performed on a multicore ARM processor, considering a Linux Kernel and benchmarks with up to 220 million of object code instructions.
Coloured noise or low - dimensional chaos?

Devising a method capable of distinguishing a low - dimensional chaotic signal that might be embedded in a noisy stochastic process has become a major challenge for those involved in time-series analysis. Here a null hypothesis approach is used in conjunction with a known nonlinear predictive test, to probe for the presence of chaos in epidemiological data. A probabilistic set of rules is used to simulate a historic record of New York City measles outbreaks, generally understood to be governed by a chaotic attractor. The simulated runs of 'surrogate data’ are carefully constructed so as to be free from any underlying low-dimensional chaotic process. They therefore serve as a useful null model against which to test the observed time series. However, despite the assumed differences between the dynamics of measles outbreaks and the null model, a nonlinear predictive scheme is found to be unable to differentiate between their characteristic time series. The methodology confirms that, if there is in fact a chaotic signal in the measles data, it is extremely difficult to detect in time series of such limited length. The results have general relevance to the analysis of physical, ecological and environmental time series.
Compact UWB Antenna With Tunable Band-Notched Characteristic Based on Microstrip Open-Loop Resonator

A compact ultrawideband (UWB) antenna with an electronically tunable notched band is proposed for UWB communication applications. The proposed antenna utilized a C-shaped ground to realize miniaturization and a pair of open-loop resonators (OLRs) to create notched band. The center frequency of the notched band can be electronically tuned by changing the effective electrical length of the OLRs, which is achieved by employing varactor diodes. A prototype with an overall size of 24 × 28 mm2 was constructed, and good agreement has been obtained between simulation and measurement. The experimental results show that, for a varactor diode capacitance approximately ranging from 0.63-2.67 pF, a continuous tuning notched band range from 5.1 to 5.9 GHz is achieved.
Mean value technique for closed fork-join networks

Elizabeth Varki Department of Computer Science University of New Hampshire email: varki@cs.unh. edu A simple technique for computing mean performance measures of closed single-class fork-join networks with exponential service time distribution is given here. This technique is similar to the mean value analysis technique for closed product-form networks and iterates on the number of customers in the network. Mean performance measures like the mean response times, queue lengths, and throughput of closed fork-join networks can be computed recursively without calculating the steady-state distribution of the network. The technique is based on the mean value equation for fork-join networks which relates the response time of a network to the mean service times at the service centers and the mean queue length of the system with one customer less. Unlike product-form networks, the mean value equation for fork-join networks is an approximation and the technique computes lower performance bound values for the fork-join network. However, it is a good approximation since the mean value equation is derived from an equation that exactly relates the response time of parallel systems to the degree of parallelism and the mean arrival queue length. Using simulation, it is shown that the relative error in the approximation is less than 5% in most cases. The error does not increase with each iteration. Permlsslon to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without tee provided that copa are not made or distributed for pro10 01 commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full cNa110n on the first Page. To copy otherwise, to republish. to post on servers Or t0 redwribute to lists. requires pnor specific permission and/or a fee. SIGMETRICS ‘99 5/99 Atlanta, Georgia. USA
The Masses of Nearby Dwarfs and Brown Dwarfs with the HST

The known nearby stars, moving in front of the background of distant stars and galaxies, create 'weak gravitational lensing' variations in their positions. These variations may be measurable with the HST, and they may allow a direct mass determination for the nearby stars. The cross section for the HST measurable astrometric effect is much larger than the cross section for the photometric effect which is measurable from the ground. The mass determination will be easier for the fainter nearby lenses which will be discovered in future searches of faint high proper motion stars.
Intestinal Microflora in Colicky and Noncolicky Infants: Bacterial Cultures and Gas‐Liquid Chromatography

Summary: To find out whether intestinal microflora in colicky infants is different from that in noncolicky controls, stool samples were collected from colicky infants during colic (n = 55) and at the age of 3 months (n = 46) and compared with samples from age-matched controls (n = 49 and n = 45, respectively). The samples were cultured on several selective and unselective aerobic and anaerobic culture agars, and gas-liquid chromatography of bacterial cellular fatty acids was used to produce fatty-acid profiles of the stool samples. In quantitative bacterial cultures, no differences were found between the colicky and control groups in the amounts of each bacterium. The colicky infants were more frequently colonized with Clostridium difficile during the time of colic than were the age-matched controls. This difference disappeared by age 3 months. The fatty-acid profiles did not differ between the colicky and control groups as a whole at the time of colicky symptoms. At age 3 months, a difference in fatty-acid profiles was found between the colicky infants who had suffered from severe colic and the control infants. The fatty-acid profiles were also influenced by the age of the infant, the mode of delivery, antimicrobial drugs taken by the mother during delivery, and breast-feeding and type of feeding. In conclusion, no difference in intestinal microflora was found between the colicky infants at the time of colic and the controls. However, a difference in bacterial cellular fatty-acid profiles at the age of 3 months was found that correlated with severe infantile colic. This difference may contribute to the cause(s) of colic, or it may be secondary to the colic, which may influence the microbial environment of the intestine.
Elastic constants and mechanical stability of InxAl1 − xAsySb1 − y lattice-matched to different substrates

ABSTRACT Based on a pseudopotential approach under the virtual crystal approximation, the elastic modulus of InxAl1 − xAsySb1 − y quaternaries lattice-matched to InP, GaSb and InAs substrates has been investigated. Our findings show a reasonably good accord with experiment. The dependence of the elastic features of interest on the indium concentration x shows a monotonic behaviour when InxAl1 − xAsySb1 − y is lattice-matched to InP substrate. In that case, the elastic constants have larger values and the material system of interest becomes less harder and its rigidity becomes weaker. The mechanical stability criteria is verified in terms of elastic constants and shows that InxAl1 − xAsySb1 − y is mechanically stable for each x and substrate being considered here. The change in indium content x and the substrate is found to have no much effect on both the Poisson ratio and machinability. The present study showed that a proper choice of the indium composition x and substrate may provide more diverse opportunities as regards the elastic modulus of InxAl1 − xAsySb1 − y.
Liquid Metal Based Soft Robotics: Materials, Designs, and Applications

Emerging classes of soft robotics with flexible actuation, intelligent sensibility, and biomimetic functionality are driving significant advances in academic researches and commercial applications. Such new generation robotics relies heavily on important breakthroughs in soft matter engineering and flexible actuation systems. Unlike conventional rigid robots, soft robots generally have unique sporting styles and manufacturing strategies. Recently, a series of newly developed soft materials—gallium‐based liquid metals (LMs) are found to display dramatical roles in making soft machines and robotics with their unusual properties in soft robotic actuation and self‐driven field. With superior merits of both high stretchability and electroconductivity over conventional soft materials, LM is increasingly innovated as flexible sensors and actuators in constructing intelligent soft robots. Typical advances in LM enabled soft machines and robotics are summarized and interpreted, herein, with special focus on the driving principles of the LM objects, the preparation methods of LM flexible electronics for making soft robots, and the applications of LM in biomedicines and intelligent robots, together with the consideration of key challenges facing LM‐based soft robotics and its future prospects.
Applied Hermeneutics and Qualitative Safety Data: The CIRAS Project

This article describes the new qualitative methodology developed for use in CIRAS (Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System), the confidential database set up for the UK railways by the University of Strathclyde. CIRAS is a project in which qualitative safety data are disidentified and then stored and analysed in a central database. Due to the confidential nature of the data provided, conventional (positivist) methods of checking their accuracy are not applicable; therefore a new methodology was developed - the Applied Hermeneutic Methodology (AHM). Based on Paul Ricoeur's `hermeneutic arc', this methodology uses appropriate computer software to provide a method of analysis that can be shown to be reliable (in the sense that consensus in interpretations between different interpreters can be demonstrated). Moreover, given that the classifiers of the textual elements can be represented in numeric form, AHM crosses the `qualitative-quantitative divide'. It is suggested that this methodology is more rigorous and philosophically coherent than existing methodologies and that it has implications for all areas of the social sciences where qualitative texts are analysed.