Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In this Issue

and cost containment. We also wish to examine how such programmes might develop when applied to health care systems outside the USA. The aim of this journal is to foster discussion about this emerging phenomenon and to allow colleagues throughout the world to contribute to the development of health care systems in an academically rigorous fashion. Both editors are, by training and inclination, clinicians rather than managers and are anxious that the clinical voice is heard as managed care programmes spread across more health systems. In the first issue, aspects of urology of relevance to the design of managed care programmes are considered. Future issues will concentrate on cancer care, heart disease and orthopaedics. We intend that this journal should contribute in a meaningful way to the improvement of health care in Europe and beyond.
Community Enterprises - An Institutional Innovation

Management research has long focused on the theory of the firm, studying for-profit organizations that produce privately owned resources based on central authority and within well-defined boundaries. In recent times, a new kind of enterprise has emerged that we call Community Enterprises. They are barrier free and extend beyond the reach of strong, personal relationships and are characterized by the production of appropriation-free resources and the absence of boundaries. Wikipedia is the most successful example of such a Community Enterprise. Assumptions and principles underneath related fields such as organizational theory, innovation economics, and industrial organization should therefore be critically examined.
A wideband and high-gain magneto-electric dipole antenna

A novel wideband high-gain Magneto-Electric dipole antenna is presented. The proposed Magneto-Electric antenna is composed of a fishtail-shaped electric dipole, a half-circular loop antenna that works as a magnetic dipole, a microstrip-to-coplanar stripline transition balun, a box-shaped reflector and the loading of T-shaped array of metamaterial elements on the dielectric substrate. A high gain can be realized by loading of T-shaped array of metamaterial elements and using a rectangular box-shaped reflector. Simulated results show that this antenna has a wide impedance bandwidth of 58.5%, ranging from 2.32 GHz to 4.24 GHz and a high gain about 8 dB. Moreover, radiation patterns with low back radiation, fixing broadside direction mainbeam, symmetrical E- and H-plane patterns and large front-to-back ratio are obtained over the whole operating band by using a rectangular box-shaped reflector. The good performances make the antenna suitable for the wireless communication systems.
Impact of Multiple Volatilities in Bioenergy Investments

The paper investigates the effect of the output and input market volatilities on irreversible bioenergy investments in the absence of policy support schemes. The effects of different volatility sources on investment trigger are studied in a partial equilibrium model which represents the interplay of the global energy market and the local bioenergy and food markets. Volatilities are assumed to stem from normally distributed stochastic shocks to the global energy price and the local food demand. Bioenergy producers are assumed to have the possibility to suspend production if business conditions worsen. The equilibrium investment trigger of the aggregated bioenergy producer is derived in stochastic simulations in the framework of the real options approach. The results demonstrate that the positive correlation between the volatility and investment trigger, as known from the real options theory and financial markets, does not necessarily hold for real irreversible investment decisions which are simultaneously influenced by multiple volatilities. This is especially pronounced if the volatility on the input market is significantly higher than that on the output market or if both volatilities are high. Declining investment trigger indicates that in the case of high expected volatility investors may realize very high contribution margins which cover all investment cost in only few periods. In the following periods initial investments may be followed only by reinvestments or by no investments. The findings suggest that the more the energy and food markets are correlated, the more unpredictable the impact of rising volatility on investment decisions might be.
Maximum power point tracking in solar panels under partial shading condition using equilibration algorithm

This paper presents the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) controller for solving partial shading problems in photovoltaic (PV) systems using Equilibration algorithm. The energy produced by the PV modules depends on the irradiation and temperature. Thus the changing environment creates a necessity to identify the point for every instant on the V-I characteristics of the PV generator in which there is the maximum amount of power transfer from the source to the load. Proper tracking algorithm is required to achieve the maximum power from the PV module. But the performance of a photovoltaic (PV) array is affected by various conditions such as temperature, solar insolation, shading and array configuration. Often the PV array gets shadowed, either completely or partially by passing clouds, neighboring buildings and trees. This situation being the major reason in the case of large PV installations such as distributed power generation scheme and residential PV systems. Under partially shaded conditions, there occurs multiple peaks in the PV curve. Conventional MPPT techniques will not reach the global maximum power point instead it will tend to stay at the local maximum power point which drastically reduces the efficiency of the PV system. This paper provides a elucidation to this problem by executing the equilibration algorithm to identify the global maximum power point (GMPP).
Research on transforming continuous-time system into discrete-time system

The most popular technique of transforming continuous-time system into discrete-time system is Euler substitution method or Tustin substitution method. In these methods, the relationship between the differential coefficient operator s and displacement operator z is fixed, and the transforming precision isn't high. So a non-standard substituted method based on different relationship between the differential coefficient operator s and displacement operator z is advanced, and a group of equation is deduced. The simulation indicated that non-standard substituted method which compared with the standard substituted method is more flexible and has high precision than Euler and Tustin method.
High-level Programming Model Abstractions for Processing in Memory

While the idea of processing in memory (PIM) has been around for decades, both hardware and software limitations have kept it from growing in practical, real-world use. Recent advancements in 3D die-stacking technology have begun to make inroads towards solving some of the implementation issues, but software programmability questions remain. This position paper presents high-level programming models as a solution for PIM programmability by abstracting away many of the low-level architectural details. While we acknowledge that expert programmers still will want low-level, detailed control for optimization, we see high-level programming abstractions as a way to broaden the use of PIM to a larger audience of developers and increase the adoption of PIM architectures in future systems.
IL-12 Production Induced by Agaricus blazei Fraction H (ABH) Involves Toll-like Receptor (TLR)

Agaricus blazei Murill is an edible fungus used in traditional medicine, which has various well-documented medicinal properties. In the present study, we investigated the effects of hemicellulase-derived mycelia extract (Agaricus blazei fraction H: ABH) on the immune system. First, we examined the cytokine-inducing activity of ABH on human peripheral mononuclear cells (PBMC). The results indicated that ABH induced expression of IL-12, a cytokine known to be a critical regulator of cellular immune responses. Flow cytometric analysis demonstrated the induction of IL-12 production by the CD14-positive cell population, consisting of monocytes/macrophages (Mo/Mφ). Furthermore, the elimination of Mo/Mφ attenuated IL-12 production in PBMC. ABH-induced IL-12 production was inhibited by anti-CD14 and anti-TLR4 antibodies but not by anti-TLR2 antibody. The activity of ABH was not inhibited by polymyxin B, while the activity of lipopolysaccharide used as a reference was inhibited. Oral administration of ABH enhanced natural killer (NK) activity in the spleen. These findings suggest that ABH activated Mo/Mφ in a manner dependent on CD14/TLR4 and NK activity.
Video BenchLab: an open platform for realistic benchmarking of streaming media workloads

In this paper, we present an open, flexible and realistic benchmarking platform named Video BenchLab to measure the performance of streaming media workloads. While Video BenchLab can be used with any existing media server, we provide a set of tools for researchers to experiment with their own platform and protocols. The components include a MediaDrop video server, a suite of tools to bulk insert videos and generate streaming media workloads, a dataset of freely available video and a client runtime to replay videos in the native video players of real Web browsers such as Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. We define simple metrics that are able to capture the quality of video playback and identify issues that can happen during video replay. Finally, we provide a Dashboard to manage experiments, collect results and perform analytics to compare performance between experiments. We present a series of experiments with Video BenchLab to illustrate how the video specific metrics can be used to measure the user perceived experience in real browsers when streaming videos. We also show Internet scale experiments by deploying clients in data centers distributed all over the globe. All the software, datasets, workloads and results used in this paper are made freely available on SourceForge for anyone to reuse and expand.
Gluino-Condensate (CIV-DV) Prepotential from its Whitham-Time Derivatives

We describe an expedient way to derive the CIV-DV prepotential in power series expansion in S_i. This is based on integrations of equations for its derivatives with respect to additional (Whitham) moduli T_m. For illustrative purposes, we calculate explicitly the leading terms of the expansion and explicitly check some components of the WDVV equations to the leading order. Extension to any higher order is simple and algorithmic.
A new upper limit to the field‐aligned potential near Titan

Neutral particles dominate regions of the Saturn magnetosphere and locations near several of Saturn's moons. Sunlight ionizes neutrals, producing photoelectrons with characteristic energy spectra. The Cassini plasma spectrometer electron spectrometer has detected photoelectrons throughout these regions, where photoelectrons may be used as tracers of magnetic field morphology. They also enhance plasma escape by setting up an ambipolar electric field, since the relatively energetic electrons move easily along the magnetic field. A similar mechanism is seen in the Earth's polar wind and at Mars and Venus. Here we present a new analysis of Titan photoelectron data, comparing spectra measured in the sunlit ionosphere at ~1.4 Titan radii (RT) and at up to 6.8 RT away. This results in an upper limit on the potential of 2.95 V along magnetic field lines associated with Titan at up to 6.8 RT, which is comparable to some similar estimates for photoelectrons seen in Earth's magnetosphere.
Image Contrast Enhancement based on Non-linear Processing

Contrast enhancement is one of the major image processing for cameras, smartphones and printers. This study proposes a novel adaptive image enhancement algorithm based on the Total Variation regularization decomposition. In our proposed method, an image is decomposed into a structure component and a texture component and the structure and texture components are processed by utilizing the Gamma correction to correct its contrast and a detail enhancement, respectively. The experimental results show that the performance of our proposed method is very similar to that of the Retinex method, whereas the computational time required is much lower than that with the Retinex method.
Metric Factorization for Exploratory Analysis of Complex Data

How to explore complex data? Often, several representations for each data object are available, the data are described by attributes of heterogeneous data type and/or each data object is characterized by many features. It is difficult to choose a suitable similarity measure and an appropriate data mining technique to get an unbiased overview on the information contained in complex data. In this paper, we introduce Metric Factorization as a novel data mining task. The goal of Metric Factorization is to discover the major alternative views of complex data. Our novel algorithm MF extends matrix factorization techniques to support metric data. We do not need to choose a single similarity measure but can just input any available metric. Metric Factorization builds automatically interesting basis spaces from a large variety of input metrics. Due to metric properties, the basis spaces can be further explored with standard techniques like Multidimensional Scaling. We relate the Metric Factorization task to data compression and demonstrate how ideas from information theory (Minimum Description Length principle) make the parametrization of MF optional. We further introduce the idea of landmark points to effectively compress and thus support large data sets. Extensive experiments demonstrate the benefits of our approach.
Cortical regions responding to eye movement

Monitoring the changes in eye position of another should be very important for humans motion perception in general has been well studied in primates. The middle temporal area (MT), or V5, is consistently responsive to all forms of motion, including apparent motion [1]. Apparent motion is the perception of motion generated by changing the spatial position of a stimulus rapidly in time. Recent human neuroimaging studies, using positron emission tomography (PET) [2], functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) [3,4] and magnetoencephalography (MEG) [5-9], indicate a general motion-sensitive region located at the occipito-temporal border thought to be a human MT/V5 homologue. Similarly, real images of apparent facial motion, indicating eye gaze deviations, activate regions of the human superior temporal sulcus (STS), as well as MT/V5 [4], suggesting that the human brain also possess a motion analysis system made up of a number of discrete brain regions. Recently, we reported the MEG responses when viewing eye movement [10], and we summarized the results in that paper in this article.
Improving Manageability of Access Control Policies

Applications are continuously increasing in both complexity and number of users they serve. Moreover, the set of applications used by organizations is continuously expanding. This poses challenges, not in the least with regard to access control. More specifically, manageability of access control policies becomes more difficult. This leads to administrative overhead and challenges in enforcing a consistent security policy. The goal of this PhD project is to increase manageability of access control by supporting refinement of application-specific access control policies from explicitly specified organization-wide security policies. This paper provides an overview of the challenges and discusses the objectives we set in order to achieve it.
Draft Genome Sequence of the Tumor-Targeting Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Strain SL7207

ABSTRACT Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium strain SL7207 is a genetically modified derivative of strain SL1344, which preferentially accumulates in tumors and can be used as a vehicle for tissue-specific gene delivery in vivo. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of SL7207, confirming a purported aroA deletion and four single-nucleotide polymorphisms compared to SL1344.
Programming-in-the-large: past, present, and future

The historical development of the concepts of programming-in-the-large is surveyed, covering layered systems, inforniation hiding, languages for programming-in-the-large, object-oriented languages, and software configuration management. Large-scale reuse, stronger foundations and better tools, cataloguing of software architectures, and improved preparation of software engineers are identified as future directions.
Channel sounding in corridors of an academic building

This paper presents results of channel sounding experiments conducted in two types of corridors in an academic building — one enclosed from the top with recesses for windows on sides and the other open at the top with regularly spaced concrete columns on both sides. The corridors have also openings on either sides leading to hallways. The measurements were made at 1.80 GHz using a channel probing signal with a bandwidth of 60 MHz. The measured results are analyzed for CIR parameters like delay spread, average delay, and number of paths. The channel is also characterized in frequency domain.
No Evidence for XMRV Nucleic Acids, Infectious Virus or Anti-XMRV Antibodies in Canadian Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

The gammaretroviruses xenotropic murine leukemia virus (MLV)-related virus (XMRV) and MLV have been reported to be more prevalent in plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients than in healthy controls. Here, we report the complex analysis of whole blood and plasma samples from 58 CFS patients and 57 controls from Canada for the presence of XMRV/MLV nucleic acids, infectious virus, and XMRV/MLV-specific antibodies. Multiple techniques were employed, including nested and qRT-PCR, cell culture, and immunoblotting. We found no evidence of XMRV or MLV in humans and conclude that CFS is not associated with these gammaretroviruses.
Setting up a self-learning IDS based on Markov chains theory

The tremendous growth of the web-based applications has increased information security vulnerabilities over the Internet. Security administrators use Intrusion-Detection System (IDS) to monitor network traffic and host activities to detect attacks against hosts and network resources. The proposed solutions in the literature, actually achieved good results for the detection rate, while there is stillroom for reducing the false positive rate or even predict beforehand attack according to a website visitor behavior. For this purpose we propose a probabilistic approach applied for an “intelligent IDS” whose main role is to tell which pages of a website are subjects to most attacks and eventually present security weaknesses, according to a real time probabilistic calculation based on Markov chains.
Mixture Modeling of Individual Learning Curves

We show that student learning can be accurately modeled using a mixture of learning curves, each of which specifies error probability as a function of time. This approach generalizes Knowledge Tracing [7], which can be viewed as a mixture model in which the learning curves are step functions. We show that this generality yields order-of-magnitude improvements in prediction accuracy on real data. Furthermore, examination of the learning curves provides actionable insights into how different segments of the student population are learning. To make our mixture model more expressive, we allow the learning curves to be defined by generalized linear models with arbitrary features. This approach generalizes Additive Factor Models [4] and Performance Factors Analysis [16], and outperforms them on a large, real world dataset.
Uncertainty, Conventional Behavior, and Economic Sociology

This paper addresses the problem of the conceptualization of social structure and its relationship to human agency in economic sociology. The background is provided by John Maynard Keynes's observations on the effects of uncertainty and conventional behavior on the stock market; the analysis consists of a comparison of the social ontologies of the French Intersubjectivist School and the Economics as Social Theory Project in the light of these observations. The theoretical argument is followed by concrete examples drawn from a prominent recent study of the stock market boom of the 1990s.
Using the complex network for solving TSP problem

This paper puts forward a new algorithm (Complex Network Generic Algorithm, CGA) for solving TSP problem, which is an variant of genetic algorithm. There are three differences between GA and CGA. First CGA does not use selection operator. Second, individuals of CGA interact with each other in specific environment determined by the complex network. Third, to some extent, the interaction of individuals in CGA is structured by the given complex network. Experimental results invalidate this new method on the one hand. On the other hand, they show that CGA is an effective algorithm.
Active Web Service Registries

Atom news feeds can work both as an infrastructure for distributed Web service registries and to inform users about Web service changes. The authors consider an approach in which every Web service provider offers a Web service registry news channel that serves as part of a globally distributed registry. They also apply this approach to a real-world case study. Their future plans include providing a Web service aggregator that offers additional metadata for Web service descriptions, which users could generate as they rate the services they use.
Cross-pose color facial expression recognition using transductive transfer linear discriminat analysis

In this paper, we propose a novel transductive transfer linear discriminant analysis (TTLDA) approach for cross-pose facial expression recognition (FER), in which training and testing facial images are taken under the two different facial views. The basic idea of the proposed expression recognition method is to choose a set of auxiliary unlabelled facial images from target facial pose and leverage it into the labelled training image set of source facial pose for discriminant analysis, where the labels of the auxiliary images are parameters of TTLDA to be optimized. After learning the class labels of the auxiliary image set, we train a support vector machine (SVM) for classifying the testing facial images based on them. On the other hand, to make full utilize the facial appearance information of color images for improving expression recognition accuracy, we adopt color scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) to describe facial image feature. Finally, we conduct experiments on BU-3DFE and Multi-PIE multiview color facial expression databases to evaluate the proposed cross-pose FER method and compare the results with other methods.