Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantification of Harm in Damages Actions for Antitrust Infringements: Insights from German Cartel Cases

This paper argues that empirical economic analysis in court proceedings is subject to important economic and legal restrictions, cumulating in a fundamental trade-off between accuracy and practicality. We draw lessons from two influential German court cases – the paper wholesaler cartel decision of 2007 and the cement cartel decision of 2009. We characterise the trade-offs arguing that they need to be well understood, made transparent, and that decisions on how to proceed in light of these trade-offs have to be taken upfront by the court. In this respect, we believe that the three-step procedure (design, application, and robustness checks) followed by the German court in the cement case is well suited to meet the appropriate legal standard and requirements, both with respect to accuracy and practicality.
Virtual Humans for the Study of Rapport in Cross Cultural Settings

As an increasing part of the Army’s mission involves establishing rapport with diverse populations, training interpersonal skills becomes critically important. Here we describe a “Rapport Agent” that senses and responds to a speaker’s nonverbal behavior and provide empirical evidence that it increases speaker fluency and engagement. We argue such agent technology has potential, both as a training system to enhance communication skills, and to assess the key factors that influence rapport in face-to-face interactions. We conclude by discussing ways the nonverbal correlates of rapport vary between Arabic and English speakers and discuss the potential of such technology to advance research and training into rapport in cross-cultural settings.
Speaking style adaptation using context clustering decision tree for HMM-based speech synthesis

This paper describes an MLLR-based speaking style adaptation technique for HMM-based speech synthesis. Since speaking styles and emotional expressions are characterized by many suprasegmental features as well as segmental features, it is necessary to adapt suprasegmental features for speaking style adaptation. To achieve suprasegmental feature adaptation, we utilize context clustering decision trees, which are constructed in the training stage, for tying of regression matrices. Using this technique, we adapt an initial "reading" style model to "joyful" or "sad" styles. Experimental results show that, using 50 adaptation sentences, speech samples generated from adapted models were judged to be similar to the target speaking styles at rates of 92% and 70% for joyful and sad styles, respectively.
Tangible progress: less is more in Somewire audio spaces

We developed four widely different interfaces for users ofSomewire, a prototype audio-only media space. We informally studiedusers experiences with the two screen- based interfaces. Weprototyped a non-screen-based interface as an example of a noveltangible interface for a communication system. We explored theconflict between privacy and simplicity of representation, andidentified two unresolved topics: the role of audio quality and theprospects for scsiling audio spaces beyond a single Workgroup.Finally, we formulated a set of design guidelines for control andrepresentation in audio spaces, as follows: GUIs are notwell-suited to audio spaces, users do not require control overlocalization or other audio attributes, and awareness of otherusers presence is desirable.
HIV-1 Vpu Promotes Release and Prevents Endocytosis of Nascent Retrovirus Particles from the Plasma Membrane

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type-1 viral protein U (Vpu) protein enhances the release of diverse retroviruses from human, but not monkey, cells and is thought to do so by ablating a dominant restriction to particle release. Here, we determined how Vpu expression affects the subcellular distribution of HIV-1 and murine leukemia virus (MLV) Gag proteins in human cells where Vpu is, or is not, required for efficient particle release. In HeLa cells, where Vpu enhances HIV-1 and MLV release approximately 10-fold, concentrations of HIV-1 Gag and MLV Gag fused to cyan fluorescent protein (CFP) were initially detected at the plasma membrane, but then accumulated over time in early and late endosomes. Endosomal accumulation of Gag-CFP was prevented by Vpu expression and, importantly, inhibition of plasma membrane to early endosome transport by dominant negative mutants of Rab5a, dynamin, and EPS-15. Additionally, accumulation of both HIV and MLV Gag in endosomes required a functional late-budding domain. In human HOS cells, where HIV-1 and MLV release was efficient even in the absence of Vpu, Gag proteins were localized predominantly at the plasma membrane, irrespective of Vpu expression or manipulation of endocytic transport. While these data indicated that Vpu inhibits nascent virion endocytosis, Vpu did not affect transferrin endocytosis. Moreover, inhibition of endocytosis did not restore Vpu-defective HIV-1 release in HeLa cells, but instead resulted in accumulation of mature virions that could be released from the cell surface by protease treatment. Thus, these findings suggest that a specific activity that is present in HeLa cells, but not in HOS cells, and is counteracted by Vpu, traps assembled retrovirus particles at the cell surface. This entrapment leads to subsequent endocytosis by a Rab5a- and clathrin-dependent mechanism and intracellular sequestration of virions in endosomes.
Facial Expression Recognition Using Self Organizing Map

Facial expression recognition has attracted a significant interest in the scientific community, as it plays a vital role in human centered interfaces. Many applications require efficient facial expression recognition in order to achieve desired results. In this paper facial expression recognition is presented using self organizing map(SOM). At first placement of Candide grid nodes to face landmarks of the image is carried out. For the face recognition system Gabor filters extract the feature vector values. These values are used for classification and clustering in the SOM grid. The system adapts to the user's preferences by returning more relevant images from the SOM grid for which the responses have been most densely mapped. The main contribution of this work is the identification of a face image from a database along with its gesture. Results obtained on the test image database indicate that the system retrieves the relevant expressions accurately with minimum number of training steps.
A Comparative Numerical Study on the Performances and Vortical Patterns of Two Bioinspired Oscillatory Mechanisms: Undulating and Pure Heaving

The hydrodynamics and energetics of bioinspired oscillating mechanisms have received significant attentions by engineers and biologists to develop the underwater and air vehicles. Undulating and pure heaving (or plunging) motions are two significant mechanisms which are utilized in nature to provide propulsive, maneuvering, and stabilization forces. This study aims to elucidate and compare the propulsive vortical signature and performance of these two important natural mechanisms through a systematic numerical study. Navier-Stokes equations are solved, by a pressure-based finite volume method solver, in an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) framework domain containing a 2D NACA0012 foil moving with prescribed kinematics. Some of the important findings are (1) the thrust production of the heaving foil begins at lower St and has a greater growing slope with respect to the St; (2) the undulating mechanism has some limitations to produce high thrust forces; (3) the undulating foil shows a lower power consumption and higher efficiency; (4) changing the Reynolds number (Re) in a constant St affects the performance of the oscillations; and (5) there is a distinguishable appearance of leading edge vortices in the wake of the heaving foil without observable ones in the wake of the undulating foil, especially at higher St.
Changes in Sexual Risk Behavior in the Mombasa Cohort: 1993–2007

The Mombasa Cohort is an open cohort study following HIV-seronegative women reporting transactional sex. Established in 1993, the cohort provides regular HIV counseling and testing at monthly visits. Over time, HIV acquisition risk has declined steadily in this cohort. To evaluate whether this decline may reflect changes in sexual risk behavior, we investigated trends in condom use and partner numbers among women who participated in the Mombasa Cohort between 1993 and 2007. Multinomial logistic regression and generalized estimating equations were used to evaluate the association of calendar time and follow-up time with key risk behaviors, after adjustment for potential confounding factors. At enrollment visits by 1,844 women, the adjusted probability of never using condoms decreased over time, from 34.2% to 18.9%. Over 23,911 follow-up visits, the adjusted probabilities of reporting >2 partners decreased from 9.9% to 4.9% and inconsistent condom use decreased from 7.9% to 5.3% after ≥12 cohort visits. Important predictors of risk behavior were work venue, charging low fees for sex, and substance abuse. Women with a later sexual debut had less risky behavior. Although sexual risk has declined among women participating in the Mombasa Cohort, HIV acquisition continues to occur and interventions to promote and reinforce safer sex are clearly needed.
Grouping conversational markers across languages by exploiting large comparable corpora and unsupervised segmentation

This work approaches Conversational and Discourse Markers (hereafter DM) from a radical data-driven perspective grounded in large comparable corpora of French, English and Taiwan Mandarin conversations. The key features of our approach are (i) to account for lexicalization as a by-product of unsupervised segmentation applied to our corpora, (ii) to exploit simple metrics for clustering DM (both within a language and within multilingual clusters). We explore the benefits and the drawbacks of such a radical approach to DM. In particular we compare the DM clusters obtained from traditional segmentation into tokens (as given by manual transcription of the corpora) vs. unsupervised segmentation. The metrics on which we ground the clustering experiments are based on contrast between (i) short vs. longer utterances distribution and (ii) position within longer utterances.
Projective minimal analysis of camera geometry

This thesis addresses the general problem of how to find globally consistent and accurate estimates of multiple-view camera geometry from uncalibrated imagery of an extended scene. After decades of study, the classic problem of recovering camera motion from image correspondences remains an active area of research. This is due to the practical difficulties of estimating many interacting camera parameters under a variety of unknown imaging conditions. Projective geometry offers a useful framework for analyzing uncalibrated imagery. However, the associated multilinear models—the fundamental matrix and trifocal tensor— are redundant in that they allow a camera configuration to vary along many more degrees of freedom than are geometrically admissible. This thesis presents a novel, minimal projective model of uncalibrated view triplets in terms of the dependent epipolar geometries among view pairs. By explicitly modeling the trifocal constraints among projective bifocal parameters—the epipoles and epipolar collineations—this model guarantees a solution that lies in the valid space of projective camera configurations. We present a nonlinear incremental algorithm for fitting the trifocally constrained epipolar geometries to observed image point matches. The minimal trifocal model is a practical alternative to the trifocal tensor for commonly found image sequences in which the availability of matched point pairs varies widely among different view pairs. Experimental results on synthetic and real image sequences with typical asymmetries in view overlap demonstrate the improved accuracy of the new trifocally constrained model. We provide an analysis of the objective function surface in the projective parameter space and examine cases in which the projective parameterization is sensitive to the Euclidean camera configuration. Finally, we present a new, numerically stable method for minimally parameterizing the epipolar geometry that gives improved estimates of minimal projective representations. Thesis Supervisor: W. Eric L. Grimson Title: Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Thesis Supervisor: Olivier D. Faugeras Title: Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
A Kronecker product approximate preconditioner for SANs

Many very large Markov chains can be modelled efficiently as stochastic automata networks (SANs). A SAN is composed of individual automata which, for the most part, act independently, requiring only infrequent interaction. SANs represent the generator matrix Q of the underlying Markov chain compactly as the sum of Kronecker products of smaller matrices. Thus, storage savings are immediate. The benefit of a SAN's compact representation, known as the descriptor, is often outweighed by its tendency to make analysis of the underlying Markov chain tough. While iterative or projections methods have been used to solve the system πQ=0, the time until these methods converge to the stationary solution π is still unsatisfactory. SAN's compact representation has made the next logical research step of preconditioning thorny. Several preconditioners for SANs have been proposed and tested, yet each has enjoyed little or no success. Encouraged by the recent success of approximate inverses as preconditioners, we have explored their potential as SAN preconditioners. One particularly relevant finding on approximate inverse preconditioning is the nearest Kronecker product approximation discovered by Pitsianis and Van Loan. In this paper, we extend the nearest Kronecker product technique to approximate the Q matrix for an SAN with a Kronecker product, A1 ⊗ A2 ⊗…⊗ AN. Then, we take M = A 1−1 ⊗ A 2−1 ⊗…⊗ A N−1 as our SAN NKP preconditioner. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
RecurrenceVs: A Software Tool for Analysis of Similarity in Recurrence Plots

Recurrence plots visualize spatial and temporal correlations inside sequence of data. This technique allows the identification of hidden data relationships inside a data sequence. The comparison between recurrence plots in order to identify common structures is difficult because the lack of similarity quantification tools in the available software for recurrence plots analysis such as VRA (Visual Recurrence Analysis), RQA (Recurrence Quantification Analysis) and CRP (Cross Recurrence Plots). In this work a software tool for analysis of structural similarity between recurrent plots is proposed, the tool named RecurrenceVs allows the comparison and quantification of similarity between recurrence plots generated from different sequences of data. Also it allows the generation of a classification by their similarity degree between recurrence plots from a set under study. Different datasets from time series to genomic sequences were used to evaluate the performance and usability of this tool.
From structural to functional glycomics: core substitutions as molecular switches for shape and lectin affinity of N-glycans

Abstract Glycan epitopes of cellular glycoconjugates act as versatile biochemical signals (sugar coding). Here, we test the hypothesis that the common N-glycan modifications by core fucosylation and introduction of the bisecting N-acetylglucosamine moiety have long-range effects with functional consequences. Molecular dynamics simulations indicate a shift in conformational equilibria between linear extension or backfolding of the glycan antennae upon substitution. We also present a new fingerprint-like mode of presentation for this multi-parameter system. In order to delineate definite structure-function relationships, we strategically combined chemoenzymatic synthesis with bioassaying cell binding and the distribution of radioiodinated neoglycoproteins in vivo. Of clinical relevance, tailoring the core region affects serum clearance markedly, e.g., prolonging circulation time for the neoglycoprotein presenting the N-glycan with both substitutions. α2,3-Sialylation is another means toward this end, similarly seen for type II branching in triantennary N-glycans. This discovery signifies that rational glycoengineering along the given lines is an attractive perspective to optimize pharmacokinetic behavior of glycosylated pharmaproteins. Of general importance for the concept of the sugar code, the presented results teach the fundamental lesson that N-glycan core substitutions convey distinct characteristics to the concerned oligosaccharide relevant for cis and trans biorecognition processes. These modifications are thus molecular switches.
Early Diagnosis of Cardiac Toxicity Related to Antineoplastic Treatment

Background: breast cancer because of radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy causes cardiac disease, often it occurs on women just affected by hypertension and/or diabetes. All these conditions may affect left ventricular (LV) geometry, mass and diastolic function. The purpose of this study is to early detect these affections to improve heart failure prevention. Patients and methods: 134 women, affected by breast cancer, underwent to conventional transthoracic echocar-diography (TTE) and pulse wave tissue Doppler imaging (PW-TDI). A control group (CG) of 80 women unaffected by breast cancer, hypertension and diabetes was enrolled. Results: 54 of 134 women (40.2%), were affected by hypertension or diabetes too (Prone Group = PG), 8 by both, 80 (59.8%) were free (FG). Mean age of all patients was 45.4 years. The rates of LV eccentric hypertrophy and LV distolic dysfunction were statistically significant higher on FG group than controls, and on PG group than FG group. Conclusions: an abnormal LV diastolic function is more common among women affected by breast cancer after treatment than in general population, the same for LV eccentric hypertrophy but at a lower rate. 40% of women were affected by hypertension, diabetes or both, and as expected they have a higher rate of LV eccentric hypertrophy and diastolic dysfunction. This high prevalence of LV eccentric hypertrophy and diastolic dysfunction, on asymptomatic women, affected by breast cancer, is a predictor of heart failure; Doppler-echo techniques may be helpful in early diagnosis.
Moderating Role of Perceived Social Support between Perceived Parenting Styles and Relational Aggression in Adolescents

ABSTRACT This study examined the moderating role of perceived social support between perceived parenting styles and relational aggression (RA). A sample (N = 400) was selected through stratified sampling from public and private schools and colleges. Adolescents (n = 200 boys and n = 200 girls) completed (a) Demographic Performa, (b) Early Memories of Upbringing for Children to measure perceived parenting styles, (c) Social Support Questionnaire to measure perceived social support, and (d) Diverse Adolescent Relational Aggression Scale to measure RA. Statistical analyses showed that perceived social support moderated the relationship between perceived parenting styles and RA. Findings indicated that perceived social support strengthens the negative relationship between perceived father’s Overprotection parenting and RA. Results also showed that perceived social support strengthens positive relationship between perceived father’s Anxious Rearing parenting and RA. Moreover, perceived social support strengthens the positive relationship between perceived mother’s Rejection parenting and RA. Results help in implementing interventions to promote the consolidation or increment of sources that constitute adolescents with concrete and feasible actions in the cultural, educational, and counseling implications.
Perceptually Optimized Error-Resilient H.264 Video Streaming System over the Best-Effort Internet

Streaming video over Internet suffers varied quality degradation from packet delay, loss and spatiotemporal error propagation. This paper first proposes a perceptually optimized INTRA refreshing (POIR) H.264 video coding scheme, which stops error propagation quickly. It was inspired by the high-level recognition feature of the human visual system (HVS), and takes into consideration the error concealment (EC) function of decoder in an effort to optimize the end-toend distortion. Further, a spatio-temporal EC method at decoder based on refined boundary match criterion is introduced. Simulation illustrates that the POIR scheme:(1) maintains a best rate-distortion tradeoff point by selecting the number and placement of INTRA updated macroblock; (2) outperforms random intra refresh (RIR) by several dBs in terms of PSNR depending on sequences, especially at low coding bit rate and at high packet loss rate; (3) delivers a good tradeoff between performance and computational load, which is critical for real-time situations and portable devices.
Fully Anonymous Profile Matching in Mobile Social Networks

In this paper, we study user profile matching with privacy-preservation in mobile social networks (MSNs) and introduce a family of novel profile matching protocols. We first propose an explicit Comparison-based Profile Matching protocol (eCPM) which runs between two parties, an initiator and a responder. The eCPM enables the initiator to obtain the comparison-based matching result about a specified attribute in their profiles, while preventing their attribute values from disclosure. We then propose an implicit Comparison-based Profile Matching protocol (iCPM) which allows the initiator to directly obtain some messages instead of the comparison result from the responder. The messages unrelated to user profile can be divided into multiple categories by the responder. The initiator implicitly chooses the interested category which is unknown to the responder. Two messages in each category are prepared by the responder, and only one message can be obtained by the initiator according to the comparison result on a single attribute. We further generalize the iCPM to an implicit Predicate-based Profile Matching protocol (iPPM) which allows complex comparison criteria spanning multiple attributes. The anonymity analysis shows all these protocols achieve the confidentiality of user profiles. In addition, the eCPM reveals the comparison result to the initiator and provides only conditional anonymity; the iCPM and the iPPM do not reveal the result at all and provide full anonymity. We analyze the communication overhead and the anonymity strength of the protocols. We then present an enhanced version of the eCPM, called eCPM+, by combining the eCPM with a novel prediction-based adaptive pseudonym change strategy. The performance of the eCPM and the eCPM+ are comparatively studied through extensive trace-based simulations. Simulation results demonstrate that the eCPM+ achieves significantly higher anonymity strength with slightly larger number of pseudonyms than the eCPM.