Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterising temporal distance and reachability in mobile and online social networks

The analysis of social and technological networks has attracted a lot of attention as social networking applications and mobile sensing devices have given us a wealth of real data. Classic studies looked at analysing static or aggregated networks, i.e., networks that do not change over time or built as the results of aggregation of information over a certain period of time. Given the soaring collections of measurements related to very large, real network traces, researchers are quickly starting to realise that connections are inherently varying over time and exhibit more dimensionality than static analysis can capture. In this paper we propose new temporal distance metrics to quantify and compare the speed (delay) of information diffusion processes taking into account the evolution of a network from a global view. We show how these metrics are able to capture the temporal characteristics of time-varying graphs, such as delay, duration and time order of contacts (interactions), compared to the metrics used in the past on static graphs. We also characterise network reachability with the concepts of in- and out-components. Then, we generalise them with a global perspective by defining temporal connected components. As a proof of concept we apply these techniques to two classes of time-varying networks, namely connectivity of mobile devices and interactions on an online social network.
Existing worst-case response time analysis of real-time tasks under fixed-priority scheduling with deferred preemption is too optimistic

This paper revisits response time analysis of real-time tasks under fixed priority scheduling with deferred preemption (FPDS), arbitrary phasing, and deadlines within periods. We show that existing worst-case response time analysis, as presented in [5, 6, 7], is too optimistic. In particular, the worst-case response time of a task is not necessarily assumed for the first job of that task when released at an e-critical instant. We also show that existing best-case response time analysis [4] indeed yields a lower bound.
A New Spatial Colour Metric for Perceptual Comparison

paper, we propose a new efficient full reference image quality assessment metric, which is based on human visual system proprieties in order to get the best correspondence with human judgments. The suggested full reference metric is generic (independent of image distortion type). It can be used in different application such as: compression, restoration, etc. The experimental results consider essentially JPEG2000 compressed images and ACE restored image correlate highly with the Mean Opinion Score (MOS). The correlation of the subjective ratings and objective scores illustrate the performance of the proposed metric.
Personal image and video organizer with person-based navigation Smart-PIVO system

At present in many next generation software's biometric recognition has been included as a key facility. The Key advantage of using biometric recognition technologies over traditional approaches is the ability of gaining high accuracy in results. Face recognition can be considered as one of such popularly used technology. In this research it has been used to solve problems when organizing personal media galleries such as videos and images . Since the growth of digital cameras and camera integrated mobile phone usage, the amount of personal media files kept in databases are growing rapidly. Handling huge databases have been very tedious and time consuming task. The main purpose of the proposed system is handling those large media databases efficiently. It helps to categorize personnel images and videos intelligently in computers. Smart-PIVO application uses face detection and face recognition techniques to automate the process, which gives the advantage of accurate arrangement of data in large media datasets. This research paper presents the proposed solution along with prototype results.
THE ACCEPTANCE OF SOCIAL PERSONALISED VERSUS STATIC WEB-BASED EDUCATION BY SAUDI STUDENTS

Saudi Arabia is going through massive changes in the educational system. In particular, web-based education is being strongly supported by the Saudi Ministry of Education. However, we believe a 'one size fits all' is especially not appropriate for the Saudi culture. Hence, this study focusses on the acceptance of the social personalised versus static web-based education by Saudi university students, and how a more social personalised system can cater for Saudi educational, instead of offering an identical delivery for all students regardless of students’ interests, preferences, backgrounds or even their knowledge. The comparison is based on the well-known Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the theoretical framework which we use for designing the data collection from students. The results from a case study in Taibah University point towards Saudi students accepting more easily a social personalised web-based education than static web-based education. Additionally, the results demonstrate that TAM is valuable in explaining the acceptance of the traditional and social personalised web-based education. Student’s attitude, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness were all found to be key factors in influencing the students’ acceptance. The outcomes of this study can aid educational institutes that plan to create static /social personalised web-based education systems, by taking into account these factors that affect students’ acceptance.
Experiments for Dependency Parsing of Greek

This paper describes experiments for statistical dependency parsing using two different parsers trained on a recently extended dependency treebank for Greek, a language with a moderately rich morphology. We show how scores obtained by the two parsers are influenced by morphology and dependency types as well as sentence and arc length. The best LAS obtained in these experiments was 80.16 on a test set with manually validated POS tags and lemmas.
Research issues in the development of context-aware middleware architectures

Context-aware middleware encompasses uniform abstractions and reliable services for common operations, supports for most of the tasks involved in dealing with context, and thus simplifying the development of context-aware applications. In this paper, we address some key issues of a middleware for context-aware ubiquitous computing, ranging from design considerations of a unified sensing framework, formal modeling and representation of the real world, pluggable reasoning engines for high-level contexts, and context delivery-runtime service composition mechanisms. Our implementation experience indicates that a comprehensive approach throughout the system layers results in a flexible and reusable middleware architecture.
Mass Functions of the Active Black Holes in Distant Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3

We present the mass functions of actively accreting supermassive black holes over the redshift range 0.3 ≤ z ≤ 5 for a well-defined, homogeneous sample of 15,180 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3 (SDSS DR3) within an effective area of 1644 deg2. This sample is the most uniform statistically significant subset available for the DR3 quasar sample. It was used for the DR3 quasar luminosity function, presented by Richards et al., and is the only sample suitable for the determination of the SDSS quasar black hole mass function. The sample extends from i = 15 to i = 19.1 at z≲ 3 and to i = 20.2 for z≳ 3. The mass functions display a rise and fall in the space density distribution of active black holes at all epochs. Within the uncertainties the high-mass decline is consistent with a constant slope of β ≈ − 3.3 at all epochs. This slope is similar to the bright-end slope of the luminosity function for epochs below z = 4. Our tests suggest that the downturn toward lower mass values is due to incompleteness of the quasar sample with respect to black hole mass. Further details and analysis of these mass functions will be presented in forthcoming papers.
Children of Mixed-Ethnic Heritage and Adverse Life Outcomes: A Comparison of Two Korean Adolescent Samples

The number of mixed-ethnic adolescents from multicultural families in South Korea has rapidly increased over the last several years. Although traditionally ethnically homogeneous, Korea has recently shifted toward multiculturalism, yet little research has compared mixed and single-ethnic youth on adverse outcomes in Korea and, to date, no research has done so using a quasi-experimental design. This study uses propensity score weighting with a sample of 1,156 Korean adolescents (756 inter-ethnic and 800 single-ethnic youths) to examine differences in mixed and single-ethic adolescent adverse life outcomes, including depressive symptoms, fear of crime, and victimization experiences. The results indicate that inter-ethnic heritage is associated with increases in fear of crime, but has a negative association with victimization. Findings also revealed nonsignificant differences on depression between the two groups. This highlights the need to engage in research with a strong emphasis on eliminating confounding effects. Implications for further research are discussed.
Ontology-based coalition formation in heterogeneous MRS

Multi-robot coordination is an important field of study in the recent years, due to the need of systems designed for complex tasks. Recently, the capability to perform tasks achievable only by multiple collaborating robots has been investigated, and there are studies on scenarios where robots can accomplish tasks/missions only if they have some aid from other robots. Our work focuses on coalition formation, where a robot coalition is a set of robots that is able to accomplish tasks that none of its member could perform autonomously with same effectiveness. We use a knowledge-based approach: we define an ontology for modelling robot capabilities and, using description logics reasoning systems, we realize a procedure that yields a partition of a team of robots in coalitions that improves the overall team performances.
Alcohol, Marijuana, and American Youth: The Unintended Effects of Government Regulation

This paper analyzes the impact of increases in the minimum drinking age on the prevalence of alcohol and marijuana consumption among high school seniors in the United States. The empirical analysis is based on a large sample of students from 43 states over the years 1980- 1989. We find that increases in the minimum drinking age did reduce the prevalence of alcohol consumption. We also find, however, that increased legal minimum drinking ages had the unintended consequence of increasing the prevalence of marijuana consumption. We estimate a model based on the canonical theory of the consumer. Estimates from this model suggest that this unintended consequence is attributable to standard substitution effects. The estimates of the structural model also suggest that an increased drinking age helps create a climate of societal disapproval for all drug use, not only alcohol. We find that holding the consumption of alcohol constant, an increase in the drinking age reduces the prevalence of marijuana consumption. This effect is not large enough, however, to offset the large substitution toward marijuana induced by the decreased prevalence of alcohol consumption.
Artistic Myth and its Interpretations of Cultural Heritage of the Eastern European Countries in the Popular Animated Films of the Post-Soviet Period

The article touches upon the issue of the need to study the myth in artistic practices as special phenomenon in the modern social life of Europe countries. The novelty of the study is as follows. We assert that among the newest myths, which significantly affect the value orientations and life standards of modern society, a special place is occupied exactly by the myth of ancient state in newest artistic practices. Such newest myth gives a new interpretation of cultural heritage. We analyses the animation blockbusters all created the newest artistic myth about Rus. We have focus on analyzing the artistic myth as special product of contemporary artistic practices and phenomenon of East-Central Europe culture which was formed as result of post-totalitarian practices and cultural policy of the state. The analysis of its features, as the social and cultural phenomenon, is carried out in our study taking into account problem of post-totalitarian practices in East Europe countries. As result, this myth transposed an idea of “cradle of fraternal nations” in East-Central Europe, and it created the other artistic myth about the Lord of Kiev Vladimir as a naive, capricious and ridiculous ruler of an ancient country.
Speech recognition for subtitling Japanese live broadcasts

There is a great need for more TV programs to be subtitled to help hearing impaired and elderly people to watch TV. NHK has researched automatic speech recognition for subtitling live TV programs in real time efficiently. Our speech recognition system learns frequent words and expressions expected in the program beforehand and also learns characteristics of announcers’ voices in order to reduce recognition errors. It periodically outputs recognition results while the announcer is speaking, which shortens the delay for texts to be displayed on the screen. NHK has been using speech recognition to subtitle some of its news, sports and music shows. In news programs, speech read by an announcer in a quiet studio is automatically recognized and errors are immediately corrected by hand. Live TV programs, e.g., the Winter Olympic Games, the World Cup Football Games, and the Grand Sumo Tournaments, have been subtitled by using a re-speak method in which an announcer listens to the program contents and rephrases them. The method improves the recognition accuracy and makes the subtitles easier to be read because it can generate subtitling for programs with high background noise and also allows summarization and paraphrasing of the original speakers’ words.
Declarative Policy-Based Adaptive Mobile Ad Hoc Networking

This paper presents DAWN, a declarative platform that creates highly adaptive policy-based mobile ad hoc network (MANET) protocols. DAWN leverages declarative networking techniques to achieve extensible routing and forwarding using declarative languages. We make the following contributions. First, we demonstrate that traditional MANET protocols can be expressed in a concise fashion as declarative networks and policy-driven adaptation can be specified in the same language to dictate the dynamic selection of different protocols based on various network and traffic conditions. Second, we propose interprotocol forwarding techniques that ensure packets are able to seamlessly traverse across clusters of nodes running different protocols selected based on their respective policies. Third, we have developed a full-fledged implementation of DAWN using the RapidNet declarative networking system. We experimentally validate a variety of policy-based adaptive MANETs in various dynamic settings using a combination of ns-3 simulations and deployment on the ORBIT testbed. Our experimental results demonstrate that hybrid protocols developed using DAWN outperform traditional MANET routing protocols and are able to flexibly and dynamically adapt their routing mechanisms to achieve a good tradeoff between bandwidth utilization and route quality. We further demonstrate DAWN's capabilities to achieve interprotocol forwarding across different protocols.
Thalamic Control of Layer 1 Circuits in Prefrontal Cortex

Knowledge of thalamocortical (TC) processing comes mainly from studying core thalamic systems that project to middle layers of primary sensory cortices. However, most thalamic relay neurons comprise a matrix of cells that are densest in the “nonspecific” thalamic nuclei and usually target layer 1 (L1) of multiple cortical areas. A longstanding hypothesis is that matrix TC systems are crucial for regulating neocortical excitability during changing behavioral states, yet we know almost nothing about the mechanisms of such regulation. It is also unclear whether synaptic and circuit mechanisms that are well established for core sensory TC systems apply to matrix TC systems. Here we describe studies of thalamic matrix influences on mouse prefrontal cortex using optogenetic and in vitro electrophysiology techniques. Channelrhodopsin-2 was expressed in midline and paralaminar (matrix) thalamic neurons, and their L1-projecting TC axons were activated optically. Contrary to conventional views, we found that matrix TC projections to L1 could transmit relatively strong, fast, high-fidelity synaptic signals. L1 TC projections preferentially drove inhibitory interneurons of L1, especially those of the late-spiking subtype, and often triggered feedforward inhibition in both L1 interneurons and pyramidal cells of L2/L3. Responses during repetitive stimulation were far more sustained for matrix than for core sensory TC pathways. Thus, matrix TC circuits appear to be specialized for robust transmission over relatively extended periods, consistent with the sort of persistent activation observed during working memory and potentially applicable to state-dependent regulation of excitability.
Layout driven decomposition with congestion consideration

We present a novel algorithm that applies physical layout information during common subexpression extraction to improve wiring congestion and delay, resulting in improved design closure. As feature sizes decrease and chip sizes increase, the traditional separation of physical design and logic synthesis proves to be increasingly detrimental. Interconnect delay and wiring congestion, among the most critical objective functions to meet design closure, are not considered during logic synthesis. On the other hand, physical design is too deep in the design process to be able to significantly restructure the already technology mapped netlist. While this problem has been addressed previously, the existing solutions only apply simple synthesis transforms during physical design. Hence they are generally unable to reverse decisions made during logic restructuring which have a major negative impact on the circuit structure. In our novel approach, we propose a layout driven algorithm for the concurrent extraction of common subexpressions, one of the most important steps that affect the overall circuit structure, and consequently congestion and wire length during logic synthesis. In addition, we consider dependency relations between cube divisors to improve the extraction process. As a result, our layout driven decomposition algorithm combines logic synthesis and physical layout information to effectively decrease wire length and improve congestion for improved design closure.
Web usage mining using rough sets

This paper studies the use of a rough set based learning program for predicting Web usage. In our approach, Web usage patterns are represented as rules generated by the inductive learning program, BLEM2. Inputs to BLEM2 are clusters generated by a hierarchical clustering algorithm applied to preprocessed Web log records. Empirical results show that the prediction accuracy of rules induced by the learning program is better than a centroid based method. In addition, the use of a learning program can generate shorter cluster descriptions.
Training Does Not Alter Muscle Ceramide and Diacylglycerol in Offsprings of Type 2 Diabetic Patients Despite Improved Insulin Sensitivity

Ceramide and diacylglycerol (DAG) may be involved in the early phase of insulin resistance but data are inconsistent in man. We evaluated if an increase in insulin sensitivity after endurance training was accompanied by changes in these lipids in skeletal muscle. Nineteen first-degree type 2 diabetes Offsprings (Offsprings) (age: 33.1 ± 1.4 yrs; BMI: 26.4 ± 0.4 kg/m2) and sixteen matched Controls (age: 31.3 ± 1.5 yrs; BMI: 25.3 ± 0.7 kg/m2) performed 10 weeks of endurance training three times a week at 70% of VO2max on a bicycle ergometer. Before and after the intervention a hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp and VO2max test were performed and muscle biopsies obtained. Insulin sensitivity was significantly lower in Offsprings compared to control subjects (p < 0.01) but improved in both groups after 10 weeks of endurance training (Off: 17 ± 6%; Con: 12 ± 9%, p < 0.01). The content of muscle ceramide, DAG, and their subspecies were similar between groups and did not change in response to the endurance training except for an overall reduction in C22:0-Cer (p < 0.05). Finally, the intervention induced an increase in AKT protein expression (Off: 27 ± 11%; Con: 20 ± 24%, p < 0.05). This study showed no relation between insulin sensitivity and ceramide or DAG content suggesting that ceramide and DAG are not major players in the early phase of insulin resistance in human muscle.
Modeling Young Stand Development towards the Old-Growth Reference Condition in Evergreen Mixed-Conifer Stands at Headwaters Forest Reserve, California

We sought to answer the question: How do we restore characteristics of old-growth evergreen mixed-conifer forests in young even-aged stands on upland terrain at Headwaters Forest Reserve (HFR)? We described the old-growth reference condition for three stands at HFR. In each old-growth stand, trees within a 1-ha plot were inventoried. We found coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) and tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) well represented while coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) dominated in terms of size. Numbers of understory and overstory trees ha−1 and average tree sizes were similar among sites, suggesting these were useful goals for restoration. Adjacent to each old-growth stand, we measured recent growth rates of second-growth trees and remnant old trees across a range of tree sizes, stand structures, and densities. The resultant growth models of redwood and Douglas-fir enabled us to project the development of precommercially thinned young stands at HFR forward in time under two silvicultural prescriptions: (i) no further management; and (ii) partial harvesting simulated before trees attained 30 cm dbh. The partial-harvesting prescription reduced stand density and set the young stand on a more rapid trajectory towards the reference condition found at HFR.
A Supervised Approach for Detecting Allusive Bibliographical References in Scholarly Publications

Exploiting the links between content is crucial in recommendation approaches. In the case of a scientific article library, bibliographic references serve as a major link source. Among them, some are explicit references as we can find at the end of articles or books, while other references are scattered in the text or in the footnotes, according to a more or less strong implicit degree. We propose to focus on the detection of this type of references that we call allusive, in scientific articles from the field of Human and Social Sciences. To overcome the inherent difficulties raised by such reference detection, we present a method which aims at (i) identifying paragraphs that contain references via a classification process and (ii) at applying CCRFs (Cascaded Conditional Random Field) in order to detect more accurately the bibliographic entries and consequently annotate their contents.