Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pythia: a privacy aware, peer-to-peer network for social search

Emerging "live social search" systems such as Aardvark.com allow users to pose questions to their social network in real time. People can thus obtain answers from real humans for questions that prove too complex for web searches. Centralized systems that broker such queries and answers, however, do not provide adequate privacy. The success of these systems will be limited since users may avoid asking or answering questions related to sensitive topics such as health, political activism, or even innocuous questions which may make the querier seem ignorant. Since social search systems leverage the structure of the social network to better match askers and answerers, standard ideas that hide this structure such as "connect to Aardvark via Tor" fall short. Thus new techniques are needed to preserve the privacy of askers and answerers beyond the currently understood anonymity techniques. We explore the new and unique challenges for privacy, and propose Pythia, a decentralized architecture based on "controlled flooding" to enable privacy-enhanced social search that retains some degree of social network structure.
Fasting Serum Triglyceride and High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Levels in Patients Intended to be Treated for Dyslipidemia

Objective The aim of the present investigation was to evaluate the influence of serum triglycerides (TG) on other plasma lipids in patients to be treated for dyslipidemia. Methodology Lipid profiles of a cohort of 801 patients (487 males and 314 females) aged 57 ± 9 years (mean ± SD) were evaluated. Patients were stratified according to their plasma lipid levels. They were divided into various groups on the basis of serum TG (≥150 or <150 mg/dL) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (≥40 or <40 mg/dL). Results Patients with TG ≥ 150 mg/dL had a higher total cholesterol and lower HDL-C levels compared with those with TG < 150 mg/dL, (p < 0.001). Patients with HDL-C < 40 mg/dL had a lower serum total cholesterol and higher TG compared with those with HDL-C ≥ 40 mg/dL (p = 0.011 and p < 0.0001, respectively). In all patients as well as in the subgroups, an inverse correlation between TG and HDL-C was found (r = −0.377, p < 0.001). Conclusions Although, the metabolic pathway for TG and HDL-C is closely linked, an inverse correlation between TG and HDL-C levels seems to exist in the entire sampled population. This correlation also appears to persist in fasting patients with low levels of TG.
Models as a Tool for Theory Construction: Some Strategies of Preliminary Physics

Theoretical models are an important tool for many aspects of scientific activity. They are used, i.a. , to structure data, to apply theories or even to construct new theories. But what exactly is a model? It turns out that there is no proper definition of the term "model" that covers all these aspects. Thus, I restrict myself here to evaluate the function of models in the research process while using "model" in the loose way physicists do. To this end, I distinguish four kinds of models. These are (1) models as special theories, (2) models as a substitute for a theory, (3) toy models and (4) developmental models. I argue that models of the types (3) and (4) are considerably useful in the process of theory construction. This will be demonstrated in an extended case-study from High-Energy Physics.
Sonography in the Diagnosis of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

OBJECTIVE The few papers published on the use of sonography in carpal tunnel syndrome suggest it may be a useful diagnostic test. This study aims to prospectively evaluate the use of sonographic measurements of the median nerve in the diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Patients with documented carpal tunnel syndrome and a group of asymptomatic control subjects were enrolled and underwent high-resolution sonography of the carpal tunnel. A small-footprint linear array transducer was used to scan and measure the median nerve cross-sectional area and the maximum transverse and anteroposterior diameters. Data from the patient group and the control group were compared to establish optimal diagnostic criteria for carpal tunnel syndrome. RESULTS Sixty-eight carpal tunnel syndrome patients (50 women, 18 men) with 102 affected nerves and 68 nerves in 36 asymptomatic controls (23 women, 13 men) were examined. Qualitative assessment alone was found to be unreliable. All measurements showed significant differences between patients and controls. The most predictive measurement was swelling of the median nerve, which was significantly greater in carpal tunnel syndrome patients compared with controls (mean, 0.13 cm2 versus 0.07 cm2). Thus, quantitative assessment of the median nerve provides an accurate diagnostic test (sensitivity, 82%; specificity, 97%), with an area larger than 0.09 cm2 being highly predictive of carpal tunnel syndrome. CONCLUSION We confirm that median nerve cross-sectional area measurement correlates well with the presence of carpal tunnel syndrome and is both sensitive and specific for the diagnosis.
Challenges and Research Directions for the Future Internetworking

We review the main challenges and survey promising techniques for network interconnection in the Internet of the future. To this end, we first discuss the shortcomings of the Internet's current model. Among them, many are consequence of unforeseen demands on the original Internet design such as: mobility, multihoming, multipath, and network scalability. These challenges have attracted significant research efforts in the latest years because of both their relevance and complexity. In this survey, for the sake of completeness, we cover several new protocols for network interconnection spanning both incremental deployments (evolutionary approach) and radical proposals to redesign the Internet from scratch (clean-slate approach). We focus on specific proposals for future internetworking such as: Loc/ID split, flat routing, network mobility, multipath and content-based routing, path programmability, and Internet scalability. Although there is no consensus on the future internetworking approach, requirements such as security, scalability, and incremental deployment are often considered.
Meta-level tracking for gestural intent recognition

In this paper, a novel mode-driven switching state space approach is proposed for the joint tracking and recognition of gestural commands. Gestures are modeled as spatio-temporal patterns comprised of syntactic sub-units called gesturelets. These gesturelets are directional vectors modulating a switching state space model. Stochastic context-free grammars (SCFG) are used as generative models for command gestures which impart a scale-invariant modeling framework. This translates into a method that is user-independent and robust to the signing variation between and among users. In addition to the modeling framework, we also design a library of useful gestural patterns that cannot be represented by regular grammars (hidden Markov models). Our approach combines tracking and recognition in a single framework and is able to deal with a high perplexity dataset. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by comparing SCFG models with HMM models on synthetic gesture trajectories.
Validating an Automated Evaluation Procedure for Ontology Triples in the Privacy Domain

In this paper we validate a simple method to objectively assess the results of extracting material (c.q. triples) from text corpora to build ontologies. The EU Privacy Directive has been used as corpus. Two domain experts have manually validated the results. Several experimental settings have been tried. As the evaluation scores are rather modest (sensitivity or recall: 0.5, specificity: 0.539 and precision: 0.21), we see them as a baseline reference for future experiments. Nevertheless, the human experts appreciate the automated evaluation procedure as sufficiently effective and time-saving for usage in real-life ontology modelling situations.
CUES TO CONTRASTIVE FOCUS IN ROMANIAN ALIS MANOLESCU

In this study we measured patterns of pitch alignment, pitch range and duration in relation to broad and contrastive focus in Romanian. In declarative sentences with broad focus, speakers place a pitch accent on each lexically stressed syllable with peaks that become progressively lower towards the end of the sentence. In prenuclear accents peaks align with the post-tonic syllable. In declarative sentences with contrastive focus, speakers use strategies based on pitch and duration in order to build a maximum contrast between the word under focus and those in preand post-focal contexts: an expanded pitch range under focus and a reduced pitch range and shorter stressed syllables in preand post-focal contexts. Thus, the flat F0 and shorter segmental durations in preand post-focal contexts constitute a background that by contrast, highlights the segmental durations and expanded pitch ranges found under contrastive focus.
Examining the Influence and Role of Pharmacogenetics among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Pharmacogenetics is the study of genetic-guided individualized drug prescription that plays an important role in: preventing severe adverse effects of the drugs, decreasing the time and cost of therapeutic choices and directing healthcare professionals to choose medications that are effective and safe. It is noteworthy that this approach becomes highly beneficial in patients suffering from chronic diseases or disorders, since these conditions may require multiple and long term pharmacological therapies; as in children with autism spectrum disorder ASD. The purpose of this study is two-fold: a) to investigate the link between genes previously associated with ASD and also implicated in pharmacological therapies commonly used in this population and b) to report the genotype frequency of genes known to influence drug metabolism among small cohort of children with ASD. Group of 15 school aged children with ASD were recruited for the study, venous blood was drawn to analyze the genotype of enzymes implicated in drug metabolism. Results showed that 66% of our cohort have a mutation to the CYP2C19; similarly, 72%, 66% and 30% have a mutation in the MTHFR, COMT and OPRM1gene respectively. The mentioned mutations were associated with ASD and detected as genes that are involved in drug metabolism as well.
Single-Event-Upset (SEU) Awareness in FPGA Routing

The majority of configuration bits affecting a design are devoted to FPGA routing configuration. We present a SEU-aware routing algorithm that provides significant reduction in bridging faults caused by SEUs. Depending on the routing architecture switches, for MCNC benchmarks, the number of care bits can be reduced between 13% and 19% on average with comparable delay, hi addition, in asymmetric SRAM FPGA using our router average FIT (failure-in-time) rate is reduced by 36%.
How L2 learners of French and English express modality using verbal means: A crosslinguistic and developmental study

Abstract This study describes and analyzes how native and non-native speakers express modality using verbal means during oral retellings. Participants included native speakers of French and English, as well as English-speaking learners of French and French-speaking learners of English at three levels of language proficiency. All participants performed the same short film retelling, which was then transcribed and analyzed in terms of modalization. Results show that all groups use verbal modal means, although rates, meanings and types of modal forms used vary across the two languages, and especially as a function of second language proficiency.
Does Marital Status Affect How Firms Interpret Job Applicants' Un/Employment Histories?

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore whether single and married female job candidates’ un/employment histories differentially affect their chances of obtaining interviews through China’s internet job boards, and to consider whether firms’ discrimination against, and/or preference for, candidates who are un/employed vary with the duration of unemployment spells. Design/methodology/approach Resumes of fictitious applicants are carefully crafted in terms of realistic work histories and educational backgrounds. Candidates’ experiences of unemployment and the revelation of their marital status are controlled. Over 7,000 applications are submitted to real job postings. Callbacks are carefully tracked and recorded. Linear probability models are employed to assess the roles of particular characteristics. Findings The marital status of female candidates affects how recruiters screen their applications. While current spells of unemployment, whether short or long term, significantly reduce married women’s chances of obtaining job interviews in the Chinese context, they strongly increase the likelihood that single women will be invited for interviews. Chinese firms appear to “forgive” long-term gaps in women’s employment histories as long as those gaps are followed by subsequent employment. Originality/value This paper is the first to explore how marital status affects the ways that firms, when hiring, interpret spells of unemployment in candidates’ work histories. It is also the first to explore the effects of both marital status and unemployment spells in hiring in the context of China’s dynamic internet job board labor market.
DETC 2002 / DAC-34036 RECONSTRUCTING FREEFORM SURFACE WITH PARAMETERIZED FEATURES

Reconstruction of freeform surfaces is a state-of-the-art topic in reverse engineering. In this paper, a method of reconstructing freeform faces with parameterized freeform features is proposed. By their definitions in 3-Dimensional (3D) space, freeform feature templates are analyzed and parameterized by high-level parameters first. The proposed parameterization provides both interactive user control and automatic feature extraction. With such freeform features, the designer can reason about and operate high-level entities in freeform surfaces than basic geometric constituents. An optimization function based on Hausdorff-like shape distance measuring method is proposed and applied as the similarity measuring method between the digitalized model surface and the parameterized feature template according to different kinds of features. Considering the fitting procedure between digitalized model surface data and the freeform feature templates, optimizing strategies were studied and the influence of parameters in each feature representation was qualified especially for shape elimination features. The proposed method was tested by numerical experiments based on ACIS and Open Inventor, fitting errors were analyzed as well.
Performance analysis of Intel MMX technology for an H.263 video H.263 video encoder

2. ~RODUCTION The htemationd Telecommunication Union, Telecommunication Standardisation Sector ~-~, has specified the first version of the H263 standard for video coding for low bit rate communication enabfing compression of video sequences to bit rates below @ kbps. The standard specifies a hybrid coding method containing discrete cosine transform @~ intra ties, and motion compznsatd and Da transformed inter frames. Applications for which tie standard is suitable include \<deo phone applications in the current Pubfic Switched Telephone Network &S~, and in future mobfie networks with data rates similar to the data rates of PS~. An H.263 encoder is one component of a video phone application.
Sign-Based Morphology: A Declarative Theory of Phonology-Morphology Interleaving

orgun@cogsci.berkeley. edu 2 Sign-Based Morphology: a declarative theory of phonology-morphology interleaving Cemil Orhan Orgun University of California, Berkeley 1. Setting the stage The issue: Is phonology-morphology interleaving derivational? When the issue of serialism is discussed, the issue of cyclic application of phonology is often not distinguished from rule ordering within a cycle, the assumption being that both are equally unacceptable in a parallelistic approach. However, these two issues are of course logically independent. The aim of this paper is to show that phonology-morphology interleaving (“cyclicity” and “level ordering”) effects can be captured in a strictly declarative approach to morphology. The non-interleaving model: a direct mapping from the set of underlying phonological strings to the surface phonological string, no intermediate strings: (1) morpheme1
The degrees of freedom of the MIMO Y-channel

The degrees of freedom (DoF) of the MIMO Y-channel, a multi-way communication network consisting of 3 users and a relay, are characterized for arbitrary number of antennas. The converse is provided by cut-set bounds and novel genie-aided bounds. The achievability is shown by a scheme that uses beamforming to establish network coding on-the-fly at the relay in the uplink, and zero-forcing pre-coding in the downlink. It is shown that the network has min{2M2+2M3, M1+ M2 + M3,2N} DoF, where Mj and N represent the number of antennas at user j and the relay, respectively. Thus, in the extreme case where M1+M2+M3 dominates the DoF expression and is smaller than N, the network has the same DoF as the MAC between the 3 users and the relay. In this case, a decode and forward strategy is optimal. In the other extreme where 2N dominates, the DoF of the network is twice that of the aforementioned MAC, and hence network coding is necessary. As a byproduct of this work, it is shown that channel output feedback from the relay to the users has no impact on the DoF of this channel.
Research on business goal oriented process knowledge retrieving

Reuse of process knowledge, especially organizational specific process knowledge is of great help to business process management efforts. The amount of such knowledge maybe large and ever growing, so the first step of process knowledge reuse is retrieving. A business goal oriented process knowledge retrieving method is introduced. The reuseable process knowledge is organized into process units. A Process Unit semantic description framework is defined. Business goal is also defined using semantic based model. User defined goal description is transformed into target process knowledge description, and used as input of a PK retrieving algorithm on the PK repository. User requirements on target process's functionality, performance and compatibility with collaborative processes are concerned in the retrieving process. The approach is aimed at providing direct and semi-automatic instructions on business process management operations towards business goal achieving.
“What about the child issue?” Group negotiations of gender and parenthood contracts in recruitment situations

ABSTRACT Men and women becoming parents are supposed to have equal opportunities in working life. However, inequality and discrimination are not easily avoided. The aim of this study was to investigate how argumentation related to parenthood and careers takes form in group discussions of a fictional recruitment situation, and how stereotypes such as competence and warmth are manifested in such discussions. Thirty-five ad-hoc groups of university students were asked to make a choice between three candidates for a consultancy position. The first two candidates were a man and a woman, while the third alternately was described either as a man or a woman described as having a newborn child. Parenthood was sometimes seen as reducing competence, but it was more often viewed as adding to competence. Parenthood was also considered to add warmth to the organization. Interestingly, all groups avoided relating the parenthood issue to gender. Three conversation patterns were found, differing in the amount of elaboration of the topic of parenthood and work. It was concluded that the most elaborated kind seems to foster a situation where implicit norms are made visible more easily.
Automatic age classification with LBP

Estimating the age exactly and then producing the younger and older images of the person is important in security systems design. In this paper local binary patterns are used to classify the age from facial images. The local binary patterns (LBP) are fundamental properties of local image texture and the occurrence histogram of these patterns is an effective texture feature for face description. In the study we classify the FERET images according to their ages with 10 years intervals. The faces are divided into small regions from which the LBP histograms are extracted and concatenated into a feature vector to be used as an efficient face descriptor. For every new face presented to the system, spatial LBP histograms are produced and used to classify the image into one of the age classes. In the classification phase, minimum distance, nearest neighbor and k-nearest neighbor classifiers are used. The experimental results have shown that system performance is 80% for age estimation.
Money and Interest Rates under a Reserves Operating Target

This study examines the short-run dynamic relationships between nonborrowed reserves, the federal funds rate, and transaction accounts using daily data from 1979 through 1982. Separate models are estimated for each day of the week, and simulation experiments are performed. The results suggest that the funds rate responded quite rapidly to a change in nonborrowed reserves, but that the short-run nonborrowed reserves multiplier for transaction accounts was only about 18 percent of its theoretical maximum. In addition, the Federal Reserve appeared to accommodate about 65 percent of a permanent shock to money, and lagged reserve requirements seemed to delay depository institutions' response to a money shock.
A Character Education Program Taught to Parents and Its Effects on Perceived Parent-Child Relationship and Academic Performance

The concept of character education is important one for everyone in our society. The issue of character affects business, schools, law enforcement, and even churches. It is particularly important for families who are trying to raise their children the best they can, and schools which are seeking better means to improve student morals and academic performance. This study sought to determine if a character education program taught to parents would affect family dynamics (measured by three subscales of the PCRI) and student academic achievement (measured by grades in the four core subjects). The sample consisted of second through fifth grade parents of a suburban/rural elementary school in a southeastern state (n = 24 in each group). A quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design was employed. The character education class was taught at the beginning of the third quarter of the school year. Data was analyzed using one-way between-subjects ANOVA for parent relationship sub-scales at the end of quarter three of the school year. The results did not show a statistically significant difference in the means of the three subscales from pre-test to post-test. For grades, one-way withinsubjects ANOVAs were used. There was no significant difference in the grades for either the control or the experimental group. Future studies should consider increasing the treatment exposure, using different and larger populations, and basing character education programs explicitly based on Christian ideals.