Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vertical Fragmentation of Views in Relational Data Warehouses

Within the framework of the data warehouse design methodology we are developing, in this paper we investigate the problem of vertical fragmentation of relational views aimed at minimizing the global query response time. Each view includes several measures which, within the workload, are seldom requested together; thus, the system performance may be increased by partitioning the views to be materialized into smaller tables. On the other hand, drill-across queries involve measures taken from two or more views; in this case the access costs may be decreased by unifying these views into larger tables. Within the data warehouse context, the presence of redundant views makes the fragmentation problem more complex than in traditional relational databases since it requires to decide on which views each query should be executed. After formalizing the fragmentation problem as a 0-1 integer linear programming problem, we define a cost function and propose a branch-and-bound algorithm to minimize it. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by presenting a sample set of experimental results.
What evolutionary economics has to say about energy and climate policy

The mainstream view in economics has been a key factor in designing climate policies. Given that the controversy over the “efficiency paradox” has shown that mainstream economics is not neutral in the way it deals with climate change, the purpose of this paper is to investigate what insights could come out of analysing this crucial issue through an alternative economic framework. The choice of an evolutionary line of thought is then quite straightforward. It stems from both its departure from the perfect rationality hypothesis and its shift of focus towards a better understanding of innovation, system change and economic dynamics. All together this renders evolutionary economics a suitable complementary framework for designing climate policies and for managing the needed transition towards a low carbon economy. Most notably, the evolutionary framework allows us to depict the presence of two sources of inertia (i.e at the levels of individuals through “habits” and at the level of socio-technical systems) that mutually reinforce each other in a path-dependent manner. Accordingly, decision-makers should design measures (e.g. commitment strategies, niche management, etc.) that specifically target those change-resisting factors as they tend to reduce the efficiency of traditional instruments.
ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS AS A TOOL FOR SELECTING AND EVALUATING PROJECTS

This paper explains the reasons for selecting the right project to conduct business in various organisations. It presents several methods for evaluating and selecting projects. A special focus is on Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method that is becoming increasingly important tool in different decision-making situations. We have used this method in project management and developed a project evaluation and selecting process. We have also developed a simple application in MS Excel that helps with calculating projects' total priority grade. This tool helps us with simulating project importance based on changes in perception of the criteria.
Design of an ATN generator/modifier for supporting a communication prosthesis

Research into construction of a communication prosthesis for the handicapped requires a system that can model a user's past language acts. We describe a system that continuously adapts to a particular user's needs by maintaining an augmented transition network (ATN) and discuss methods for optimizing and generalizing the information in the network.
Using plenary focus groups in information systems research: More than a collection of interviews

Standard data collection techniques in qualitative research have included surveys, interviews and observations. The Focus group technique is a more recent addition to the empirical researcher's repertoire and is highly appropriate to Information Systems research in particular circumstances. This paper introduces a focus group approach to the study of information systems using a case study scenario and employing a structuring technique borrowed from Soft Systems Methodology designed to shape the discussion and organize group attention on specific aspects of the descriptive process. The paper describes the conduct of focus groups with respect to individual incidents and defines a particular type of Focus Group which involves all persons attendant at an event, thereby removing problems of sampling and representativeness. The unique properties and advantages of this type of focus group in respect to IS research emerged from the case study and an example of the use of story elicitation technique is described. The case study scenario is a regional fire service and any fire or rescue related incident is unique, dynamic, live and real-time, in addition it requires the combined skills and actions of a group of individuals, none of whom may have a full overview of the situation until after the event. These factors are present in other events such as any emergency procedure, artistic or sporting performance, construction and demolition events. Recording of such events presents genuine problems for information systems and the elicitation technique helped the group members to think in different ways about the impact of their incident recording systems. As the technique has broader use across research disciplines, an attempt is made to identify the attributes and properties of these 'Plenary Focus Groups' in information systems research scenario that might lend themselves to focus group research as a useful and successful technique.
Atomic ordering effect on SiGe electronic structure

In this paper, a realistic atomic model is used to study the atomic ordering effect on electronic structures of Si0.5Ge0. 5. The hybrid density functional theory (DFT), HSE06, is chosen as the methodology. The calculated bandgap and effective masses of Si and Ge at various symmetry points are first validated by the reported experimental data and empirical pseudo-potential method (EPM) calculations. The study of two different Si0.5Ge0. 5 atomic configurations shows that the SiSi-GeGe case is more stable than SiGe-SiGe (RS2 structure). In addition, the electron effective masses of the former one are larger than those of the latter one, and those calculated by EPM with virtual crystal approximation (VCA). This large electron effective mass is attributed to the localized electron orbital of the lowest anti-bonding state in the SiSi-GeGe case which leads to a flat E-k curve. However, no obvious ordering effect on hole effective mass is found.
Proof linking: an architecture for modular verification of dynamically-linked mobile code

Security flaws are routinely discovered in commercial implementations of mobile code systems such as the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Typical architectures for such systems exhibit complex interdependencies between the loader, the verifier, and the linker, making them difficult to craft, validate, and maintain. This reveals a software engineering challenge that is common to all mobile code systems in which a static verification phase is introduced before dynamic linking. In such systems, one has to articulate how loading, verification, and linking interact with each other, and how the three processes should be organized to address various security issues.We propose a standard architecture for crafting mobile code verifiers, based on the concept of proof linking. This architecture modularizes the verification process and isolates the dependencies among the loader, verifier, and linker. We also formalize the process of proof linking and establish properties to which correct implementations must conform. As an example, we instantiate our architecture for the problem of Java bytecode verification and assess the correctness of this instantiation. Finally, we briefly discuss alternative mobile code verification architectures enabled by our modularization.
Improve Chinese Parsing with MaxEnt Reranking Parser

With the high-performance of statistical parsers on English (Charniak and Johnson, 2005), we are interested in adapting the parser to different languages. This report focuses on the improvement tasks for Chinese parsing using a Max-Ent reranking parser (Charniak parser). After the adaption to Chinese, the parser reached an f-score of 78.02% on Chinese Treebank 4.0 and 82.21% on Chinese Treebank 5.1. We also tried the self-training techniques on Chinese parsing. The experimental setups will be described in detail along with the results and the analysis. I. Introduction Parsing has been a fundamental step for today's natural language understanding tasks. The state of the art parser (Charniak and Johnson, 2005) reaches 91 f-score on English Penn Treebank, using a generative model to produce 50-best parses list, and feeds these parses into a MaxEnt reranker to select the best parse based on the features extracted from the parses. While the parser uses some lexical information such as head of the tree to help parsing, the parser's mechanism of maximum-entropy model is essentially language neutral. After we adapted the parser to Chinese with few modifications of language dependent features, the parser worked well overall on Chinese as described in Lian's work (Lian, 2005). However, there was still room for improvement. In Figure1, the right tree is a non-PennTreebank sentence parsed by the parser with
Computing connectedness: An exercise in computational topology

We reformulate the notion of connectedness for compact metric spaces in a manner that may be implemented computationally. In particular, our techniques can distinguish between sets that are connected, have a finite number of connected components, have infinitely many connected components, or are totally disconnected. We hope that this approach will prove useful for studying structures in the phase space of dynamical systems.
An integrated epigenetic robot architecture via context-influenced long-term memory

In this paper, we present a conceptual design for a context-influenced Long-Term Memory architecture. The notion of context is used as a means to organize the information flow between the Working Memory and Long-Term Memory components. In particular, we discuss the major influence of the notion of context within the Episodic Memory on the Semantic and Procedural Memory, respectively. In other words, we address how the occurrence of specific events in time impacts on the meaning of those events and the subsequent use of objects through robot actions. The general architecture design and its implementation in a simulated scenario are described. Such issues as memory items representation, individual structures of Long-Term Memory components, as well as memory-based recognition and item retrieval processes, are discussed in detail.
A Warning to the Human-Factors Engineer: False Derivations of Riesz’s Weber Fraction, Piéron’s Law, and Others Within Norwich et al.’s Entropy Theory of Perception

The Entropy Theory of Perception of Professor K.H. Norwich and various collaborators spans 1975 to 2010. Thirty-five years is a surprisingly long publication life for a mathematical model of perception. Its longevity is no doubt related to its unusual ability to provide derivations, from pure theory, of a large cadre of well-established empirical relations of psychophysics, referred to by Norwich et al. as „laws“. Norwich et al.’s work involves computational biology, because they always started their derivations using the same base equation, whose utility was justified through curve-fitting to various kinds of empirical data (see Norwich, 1993). Norwich et al. intended the scope of their theory to be vast, and so the present paper focuses on just one particular set of derivations. Few people offer firstprinciples derivations of natural relations, making such derivations all the more demanding of our attention. At „Fechner Day 96“, the 12th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Psychophysics, W. Wong and K.H. Norwich introduced „Weber fraction and reaction time from the neural entropy“. Therein they showcased what appeared to be two long-overdue breakthroughs: the first-principles derivation of Riesz’s equation for auditory just-noticeable intensity differences (Riesz, 1928), and the first-principles derivation of Pieron’s empirical relation for the minimum time required for a human subject to signal their perception of a newly presented auditory or visual stimulus (Pieron, 1952). The Wong and Norwich breakthroughs were allowed by a „universal model of single-unit sensory receptor action“ presented in a previous paper (Norwich & Wong, 1995). The present paper summarizes the latter work, as an introduction to Norwich et al.’s Entropy Theory, and then proceeds to scrutinize the Wong and Norwich (1996) derivations. In so doing, it reveals that, unfortunately, the algebra of Wong and Norwich (1996) conceals hidden assumptions, unjustified simplifications, and outright mistakes, which had not been brought to public attention. The problems prove to be uncorrectable. This is all the more important because several of the derivations produced in Wong and Norwich (1996) were presented again later, in Wong and Figueiredo (2002). The problems with the Wong and Norwich (1996) and Wong and Figueiredo (2002) derivations are instructional, as they illustrate just how easily
Single Neuron Optimization as a Basis for Accurate Biophysical Modeling: The Case of Cerebellar Granule Cells

In realistic neuronal modeling, once the ionic channel complement has been defined, the maximum ionic conductance (Gi-max) values need to be tuned in order to match the firing pattern revealed by electrophysiological recordings. Recently, selection/mutation genetic algorithms have been proposed to efficiently and automatically tune these parameters. Nonetheless, since similar firing patterns can be achieved through different combinations of Gi-max values, it is not clear how well these algorithms approximate the corresponding properties of real cells. Here we have evaluated the issue by exploiting a unique opportunity offered by the cerebellar granule cell (GrC), which is electrotonically compact and has therefore allowed the direct experimental measurement of ionic currents. Previous models were constructed using empirical tuning of Gi-max values to match the original data set. Here, by using repetitive discharge patterns as a template, the optimization procedure yielded models that closely approximated the experimental Gi-max values. These models, in addition to repetitive firing, captured additional features, including inward rectification, near-threshold oscillations, and resonance, which were not used as features. Thus, parameter optimization using genetic algorithms provided an efficient modeling strategy for reconstructing the biophysical properties of neurons and for the subsequent reconstruction of large-scale neuronal network models.
Fast algorithms for Taylor shifts and certain difference equations

Joachim von zur Gathen Jurgen Gerhard Fachbereich 17 Mathematik-Informatik Universitat-GH Paderborn D-33095 Paderborn, Germany {gathen, jngerhar}@uni-paderborn. de http://www.uni-paderborn . de/cs/gathen . html
Robust production of purified H2 in a stable, self-regulating, and continuously operating solar fuel generator

The development of practical solar-driven electrochemical fuel generators requires the integration of light absorbing and electrochemical components into an architecture that must also provide easy separation of the product fuels. Unfortunately, many of these components are not stable under the extreme pH conditions necessary to facilitate ionic transport between redox reaction sites. By using a controlled recirculating stream across reaction sites, this work demonstrates a stable, self-regulating and continuous purified solar-hydrogen generation from near neutral pH electrolytes that yield continuous nearly pure H2 streams with solar-fuel efficiencies above 6.2%.
A comparative study of object proposals re-ranking methods for object detection

Object detection is one of the most essential problems in computer vision and has made great progress in recent years, which is mainly contributed by powerful CNN and accurate object proposals. However, most of the existing proposal generation methods suffer from strong localization bias, and achieve high recall by outputting large amount bounding boxes (e.g. 2000). Thus, an effective proposal re-ranking approach becomes crucial to obtain high quality object proposals with few bounding box numbers. In this paper, we make a comparative study of the existing unsupervised objectness measuring approaches to testify their effectiveness and generalization abilities. Experiments on PASCAL VOC 2007 dataset demonstrates that contour is not an adequate objectness cue to pop out high quality proposals, because an object usually has a closed contour, while a good proposal (with high IoU) may not, and considering more objectness cues can get better performance. Thus, more effective objectness cues should be explored and combined together for proposals re-ranking, such more accurate saliency maps, which can greatly benefit subsequent object detection task and is also our future work.
Modeling the Input History of Programs for Improved Instruction-Memory Performance

When a program is loaded into memory for execution the relative position of its basic blocks is crucial, since loading basic blocks that are unlikely to be executed first places them high in the instruction-memory hierarchy only to be dislodged as the execution goes on. In this paper, we study the use of Bayesian networks as models of the input history of a program. The main point is the creation of a probabilistic model that persists as the program is run on different inputs and at each new input refines its own parameters in order to reflect the program's input history more accurately. As the model is thus tuned, it causes basic blocks to be reordered so that, upon arrival of the next input for execution, loading the basic blocks into memory automatically takes into account the input history of the program. We report on extensive experiments, whose results demonstrate the efficacy of the overall approach in progressively lowering the execution times of a program on identical inputs placed randomly in a sequence of varied inputs. We provide results on selected SPEC CINT2000 programs and also evaluate our approach as compared with the gcc level-3 optimization and with Pettis--Hansen reordering.
A Novel System for Music Learning using Low Complexity Algorithms

This paper introduces a music learning system that uses new low complexity algorithms and aims to solve the four most common problems faced by self-learning beginner pianists: reading music sheets, playing fast tempo music pieces, verifying the key of a music piece, and finally evaluating their own performances. In order to achieve these aims, the system proposes a monophonic automatic music transcription system capable of detecting notes in the range from G2 to G6. It uses an autocorrelation algorithm along with a binary search based algorithm in order to map the detected frequencies of the individual notes of a musical piece to the nearest musical frequencies. To enable playing fast music, the system uses a MIDI player equipped with a virtual piano as well as section looping and speed manipulation functionalities to enable the user to start learning a musical piece slowly and build up speed. Furthermore, it applies the Krumhansl-Schmuckler key-finding algorithm along with the correlation algorithm to identify the key of a musical piece. A musical performance evaluation algorithm is also introduced which compares the original performance with that of the learner’s producing a quantitative similarity measure between the two. The experimental evaluation shows that the system is capable of detecting notes in the range from G2 to G6 with an accuracy of 88.7% in addition to identifying the key of a musical piece with an accuracy of 97.1%.
Don't show your hand: on the security leakages of *BFT systems

After the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance work [2], the distributed systems literature has improved quality and performance of *BFT systems. Through this deﬁnition we address all the solutions, deriving from [2], for State Machine Replication (SMR) that are based on node active replication (usally 3f+1 replicas for f faults), and where servers are always synchronized on the set of operations executed. However, many solutions aim at improving robustness and performance , providing eﬃcient solutions to safety and liveness guarantees [3]. These requirements are surely important, but with the growth of clients number other dynamics and issues appear. The security and resilience aspect of *BFT environment is indeed an open ﬁeld where the ﬁrst results have started to be presented [1]. These results address the clients-replicas interaction in the ﬁrst part of the protocol (usually attacking the primary or injecting view inconsistency). One of the most important problems is the trust that clients received. *BFT systems usually return to the clients a set of answers (usually a quorum of at least f+1 ) and then clients understand if a correct quorum has been reached. Hiding conveniently what happens inside can relieve the system from DDoS or from targeting the faulty nodes. With the actual solutions the clients can indeed infer from the REPLY messages received the number and the identity of the replicas that are working accurately and the ones that are faulty or unavailable. They can exploit these valuable information to form a coalition and to easily bring an attack against the system.
Assigning Coordinates to Events: Solving Combinatorial problems using Discrete Event Simulation

This paper is inspired by the “event list” mechanism in discrete event simulations. We argue that descriptions of many combinatorial algorithms can be simplified by casting the solution in terms of processing events according to some order. We propose generalizations of the event list mechanism, and show their applications in problems from graph theory and computational geometry. Discrete event simulation is used to mimic the real time behavior of a physical system. Typically, the physical system generates “events” at specific times, and the execution of an event may cause other events to happen in the future. Many combinatorial problems have the same structure as discrete event simulation in that they generate events, the events have to be processed in some order, and the processing of events may generate yet more events (to be processed later). Explicit real-time does not play a role in combinatorial problems, but processing of events imposes an order akin to the real-time order. Such problems can be solved by specifying (1) the order in which the events have to be processed, and (2) the steps needed for processing each event, where the steps may also generate new events. The management of the data structure for events, the event list, may be delegated to a standard run-time routine called the “event list manager”. Structuring the solution in such a manner often simplifies the algorithm description by eliminating book keeping, as we show with several examples in this paper.