Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probabilistic Inference Techniques for Scalable Multiagent Decision Making

Decentralized POMDPs provide an expressive framework for multiagent sequential decision making. However, the complexity of these models--NEXP-Complete even for two agents--has limited their scalability. We present a promising new class of approximation algorithms by developing novel connections between multiagent planning and machine learning. We show how the multiagent planning problem can be reformulated as inference in a mixture of dynamic Bayesian networks (DBNs). This planning-as-inference approach paves the way for the application of efficient inference techniques in DBNs to multiagent decision making. To further improve scalability, we identify certain conditions that are sufficient to extend the approach to multiagent systems with dozens of agents. Specifically, we show that the necessary inference within the expectation-maximization framework can be decomposed into processes that often involve a small subset of agents, thereby facilitating scalability. We further show that a number of existing multiagent planning models satisfy these conditions. Experiments on large planning benchmarks confirm the benefits of our approach in terms of runtime and scalability with respect to existing techniques.
SIMULATIONS OF THE BOUNDARY LAYER BETWEEN A WHITE DWARF AND ITS ACCRETION DISK

Using a 2.5D time-dependent numerical code we recently developed, we solve the full compressible Navier–Stokes equations to determine the structure of the boundary layer (BL) between the white dwarf (WD) and the accretion disk in nonmagnetic cataclysmic variable systems. In this preliminary work, our numerical approach does not include radiation. In the energy equation, we either take the dissipation function (Φ) into account or we assume that the energy dissipated by viscous processes is instantly radiated away (Φ = 0). For a slowly rotating nonmagnetized accreting WD, the accretion disk extends all the way to the stellar surface. There, the matter impacts and spreads toward the poles as new matter continuously piles up behind it. We carry out numerical simulations for different values of the alpha-viscosity parameter (α), corresponding to different mass accretion rates. In the high viscosity cases (α = 0.1), the spreading BL sets off a gravity wave in the surface matter. The accretion flow moves supersonically over the cusp making it susceptible to the rapid development of gravity wave and/or Kelvin–Helmholtz shearing instabilities. This BL is optically thick and extends more than 30° to either side of the disk plane after only 3/4 of a Keplerian rotation period (tK = 19 s). In the low viscosity cases (α = 0.001), the spreading BL does not set off gravity waves and it is optically thin.
Image enhancement for point feature detection in built environment

Image preprocessing is required for texture poor, low-contrast images to enable the functionality of local feature detection algorithms. This is especially true in built environment. We propose a novel image enhancement procedure that conserves the core `signal' in images, while enriching its environment by damping non-essential parts of the signal. Proposed image enhancement method is examined with SIFT, MSER and Harris corner detectors. As a result all detectors, which were originally not able to recover the essential features, improved their performance. Such features were detected also in areas that were not optimally illuminated.
METAPHOR AND THE DYNAMICS OF KNOWLEDGE IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES: A CASE STUDY OF THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION

The 'learning organization' metaphor has swept through the academic and professional discourses, and has come to be seen by many as ushering in something of a paradigm shift in organizational life. Yet, despite increased acceptance as a critical concept within organization studies, surprisingly little research has been conducted on the 'learning organization' as a metaphor and its subsequent career throughout scientific and extra-scientific discourses within the organizational field. Very little is known about the semantic and pragmatic changes that this metaphor has brought with it in both scientific and extra-scientific realms. This paper contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of knowledge in organization studies by (1) outlining the discursive role of metaphor in organization studies, and (2) critically reviewing through discourse analysis the genealogy of the 'learning organization' metaphor in scientific and professional discourses.
On the Tanner Graph Cycle Distribution of Random LDPC, Random Protograph-Based LDPC, and Random Quasi-Cyclic LDPC Code Ensembles

In this paper, we study the cycle distribution of random low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, randomly constructed protograph-based LDPC codes, and random quasi-cyclic (QC) LDPC codes. We prove that for a random bipartite graph, with a given (irregular) degree distribution, the distributions of cycles of different length tend to independent Poisson distributions, as the size of the graph tends to infinity. We derive asymptotic upper and lower bounds on the expected values of the Poisson distributions that are independent of the size of the graph, and only depend on the degree distribution and the cycle length. For a random lift of a bi-regular protograph, we prove that the asymptotic cycle distributions are essentially the same as those of random bipartite graphs as long as the degree distributions are identical. For random QC-LDPC codes, however, we show that the cycle distribution can be quite different from the other two categories. In particular, depending on the protograph and the value of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$c$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, the expected number of cycles of length <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$c$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, in this case, can be either <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Theta (N)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> or <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Theta (1)$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the lifting degree (code length). We also provide numerical results that match our theoretical derivations. Our results provide a theoretical foundation for emperical results that were reported in the literature but were not well-justified. They can also be used for the analysis and design of LDPC codes and associated algorithms that are based on cycles.
An HD IPTV system based on scalable video coding

With the development of mobile Internet technology and smart phones, IPTV is faced with a greatly increasing demand for adaptive media contents. An IPTV system is designed for HD video based on scalable video coding (SVC), which could serve the increasing smart phone users with different quality videos by using SVC encoder while do not consume more computing resource, storage and bandwidth. Due to the hot of HD video, our system could run with HD video steadily in real-time. Unlike other approaches, this system executes rewrite operation on the edges server instead of end devices with limited computing power. The system is implemented in real equipment and the results show a well performance.
A Model Predictive Control to Reduce Torque Ripple for Brushless DC Motor with Inbuilt Stator Current Control

Torque-Ripple control of brushless DC motor has been the main obstacle in drive system in which speed fluctuation, vibration and acoustics noise should be minimized. This paper proposes the results of simulation and the experiment shows that the stator current can be improved and torque-ripple can be reduced obviously. Model predictive control (MPC) is used to generate the pulses to the gate circuit of three phase inverter. It consists of sensors, rectifier, controller . This has been simulated with the help of PSIM, filter effect is analyzed by FFT and current controlled technique is based on the generation of quasi-square wave currents using only one controller for all the three phases.
Electrotactile stimulation on the tongue: Intensity perception, discrimination, and cross-modality estimation

Due to its high sensitivity and conductivity, electrotactile stimulation (ETS) on the tongue has proven to be a useful and technically convenient tool to substitute and/or augment sensory capabilities. However, most of its applications have only provided spatial attributes and little is known about (a) the ability of the tongue's sensory system to process electrical stimuli of varying magnitudes and (b) how modulation of ETS intensity affects subjects’ ability to decode stimulus intensity. We addressed these questions by quantifying: (1) the magnitude of the dynamic range (DR; maximal comfortable intensity/perception threshold) and its sensitivity to prolonged exposure; (2) subjects’ ability to perceive intensity changes; and (3) subjects’ ability to associate intensity with angular excursions of a protractor's handle. We found that the average DR (17 dB) was generally large in comparison with other tactile loci and of a relatively constant magnitude among subjects, even after prolonged exposure, despite a slight but significant upward drift (p < 0.001). Additionally, our results showed that as stimulus intensity increased, subjects’ ability to discriminate ETS stimuli of different intensities improved (p < 0.05) while estimation accuracy, in general, slightly decreased (increasing underestimation). These results suggest that higher ETS intensity may increase recruitment of rapidly adapting mechanoreceptor fibers, as these are specialized for coding stimulus differences rather than absolute intensities. Furthermore, our study revealed that the tongue's sensory system can effectively convey electrical stimuli despite minimal practice and when information transfer is limited by memory and DR drift.
Implementation of 8 x 8 MIMO OFDM systems for higher order modulation using QOSTBC under different fading channels

A general Quasi orthogonal space time block code (QOSTBC) structure is proposed for multiple-input multipleoutput–orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMOOFDM) systems for 8 X 8 antenna configuration. The signal detection technology used in this work for MIMO-OFDM system is Zero-Forcing Equalization (linear detection technique). In this paper, analysis of high level of modulations (i.e. M-QAM and M-PSK for different values of M) on MIMO-OFDM system is presented. In this, AWGN, Rayleigh and Rician channels have been used for analysis purpose and their effect on BER and Spectral Efficiency for high data rates have been presented. The proposed system has better performance than the other systems in terms of SNR improvement of 3-5 dB and spectral efficiency.
Social Connections, Networks, and Social Capital Erosion: Evidence from Surveys and Field Experiments

Measuring trust, a cognitive social capital that can significantly affect cooperation among individuals and groups to take collective actions for joint benefits, is an important empirical research. This study aimed to understand the determinants of social capital with specific focus on the effect of individuals' bonding social capital and bridging social capital. It explored the methods of measuring trust and identified the determining factors affecting trust/trustworthiness among village members in southwestern China's Yunnan province. A survey was done on 600 farmers in 30 administrative villages. A trust game was conducted using the respondents as subjects of the experiments, 300 playing the role of senders and 300 playing the role of receivers. Results showed that education level could positively and significantly predict both players' behaviors. The percentage of expenditure on gift exchange in the sender's total family expenditure and trust measured were robust to the model's specifications and could almost predict the sender's behavior. Meanwhile, there was no significant evidence the surveyed trust could predict the receiver's behavior. The village's openness to the market and outside world also negatively and significantly predicted both players' behaviors. It showed that the receiver's family participation in closed versus opened networks had an opposite impact on receiver's behavior. Hence, social connection variables could play more important roles than individual demographic characteristics in interactions that involve social capital. However, social capital could be eroded when the villages become more open to the outside world and when informal institutions are gradually substituted by modern formal institutions.
Statistical Tests for the Detection of the Arrow of Time in Vector Autoregressive Models

The problem of detecting the direction of time in vector Autoregressive (VAR) processes using statistical techniques is considered. By analogy to causal AR(1) processes with non-Gaussian noise, we conjecture that the distribution of the time reversed residuals of a linear VAR model is closer to a Gaussian than the distribution of actual residuals in the forward direction. Experiments with simulated data illustrate the validity of the conjecture. Based on these results, we design a decision rule for detecting the direction of VAR processes. The correct direction in time (forward) is the one in which the residuals of the time series are less Gaussian. A series of experiments illustrate the superior results of the proposed rule when compared with other methods based on independence tests.
Working Paper N° 2008 -37 Tax-benefit Revealed Social Preferences Www.pse.ens.fr Tax-benefit Revealed Social Preferences

1 This paper inverts the usual logic of applied optimal income taxation. It starts from the observed distribution of income before and after redistribution and corresponding marginal tax rates. Under a set of simplifying assumptions, it is then possible to recover the social welfare function that would make the observed marginal tax rate schedule optimal. In this framework, the issue of the optimality of an existing tax-benefit system is transformed into the issue of the shape of the social welfare function associated with that system and whether it satisfies elementary properties. This method is applied to the French redistribution system with the interesting implication that the French redistribution authority may appear, under some plausible scenario concerning the size of the labor supply behavioral reactions, non Paretian (e.g. giving negative marginal social weights to the richest class of tax payers).
Image-fusion-based adaptive regularization for image expansion

This paper presents a regularized image sequence interpolation algorithm, which can restore high frequency details by fusing low-resolution frames. Image fusion algorithm gives the feasibility of using different data sets, which correspond to the same scene to get a better resolution and information of the scene than the one obtained using only one data set. Based on the mathematical model of image degradation, we can have an interpolated image which minimizes both residual between the high resolution and the interpolated images with a prior constraint. In addition, by using spatially adaptive regularization parameters, directional high frequency components are preserved with efficiently suppressed noise. The proposed algorithm provides a better-interpolated image by fusing low-resolution frames. We provide experimental results which are classified into non-fusion and fusion algorithms. Based on the experimental results, the proposed algorithm provides a better interpolated image than the conventional interpolation algorithms in the sense of both subjective and objective criteria. More specifically, the proposed algorithm has the advantage of preserving high frequency components and suppressing undesirable artifacts such as noise.
The De Novo Transcriptome and Its Functional Annotation in the Seed Beetle Callosobruchus maculatus

Despite their unparalleled biodiversity, the genomic resources available for beetles (Coleoptera) remain relatively scarce. We present an integrative and high quality annotated transcriptome of the beetle Callosobruchus maculatus, an important and cosmopolitan agricultural pest as well as an emerging model species in ecology and evolutionary biology. Using Illumina sequencing technology, we sequenced 492 million read pairs generated from 51 samples of different developmental stages (larvae, pupae and adults) of C. maculatus. Reads were de novo assembled using the Trinity software, into a single combined assembly as well as into three separate assemblies based on data from the different developmental stages. The combined assembly generated 218,192 transcripts and 145,883 putative genes. Putative genes were annotated with the Blast2GO software and the Trinotate pipeline. In total, 33,216 putative genes were successfully annotated using Blastx against the Nr (non-redundant) database and 13,382 were assigned to 34,100 Gene Ontology (GO) terms. We classified 5,475 putative genes into Clusters of Orthologous Groups (COG) and 116 metabolic pathways maps were predicted based on the annotation. Our analyses suggested that the transcriptional specificity increases with ontogeny. For example, out of 33,216 annotated putative genes, 51 were only expressed in larvae, 63 only in pupae and 171 only in adults. Our study illustrates the importance of including samples from several developmental stages when the aim is to provide an integrative and high quality annotated transcriptome. Our results will represent an invaluable resource for those working with the ecology, evolution and pest control of C. maculatus, as well for comparative studies of the transcriptomics and genomics of beetles more generally.
Curbing Bailouts: Bank Crises and Democratic Accountability in Comparative Perspective

Do democratic governments and authoritarian regimes respond to banking crises in the same way? Banking crises threaten the stability and growth of economies around the world. In response, politicians restore banks to solvency by redistributing losses from bank shareholders and depositors to taxpayers. Whereas some governments stay close to the prescriptions espoused by Sir Walter Bagehot in the 19th century that limit the costs shouldered by taxpayers, others engage in generous bank bailouts at great cost to society. In this comparative analysis of late 20th-century banking crises, Guillermo Rosas identifies political regime type as the determining factor. Compared with authoritarian regimes, democratic regimes show a lower propensity toward dramatic, costly bailouts.
A near-infrared interferometric survey of debris-disc stars - III. First statistics based on 42 stars observed with CHARA/FLUOR

Context. Dust is expected to be ubiquitous in extrasolar planetary systems owing to the dynamical activity of minor bodies. Inner dust populations are, however, still poorly known because of the high contrast and small angular separation with respect to their host star, and yet, a proper characterisation of exozodiacal dust is mandatory for the design of future Earth-like planet imaging missions. Aims. We aim to determine the level of near-infrared exozodiacal dust emission around a sample of 42 nearby main sequence stars with spectral types ranging from A to K and to investigate its correlation with various stellar parameters and with the presence of cold dust belts. Methods. We use high-precision K-band visibilities obtained with the FLUOR interferometer on the shortest baseline of the CHARA array. The calibrated visibilities are compared with the expected visibility of the stellar photosphere to assess whether there is an additional, fully resolved circumstellar emission source. Results. Near-infrared circumstellar emission amounting to about 1% of the stellar flux is detected around 13 of our 42 target stars. Follow-up observations showed that one of them (eps Cep) is associated with a stellar companion, while another one was detected around what turned out to be a giant star (kap CrB). The remaining 11 excesses found around single main sequence stars are most probably associated with hot circumstellar dust, yielding an overall occurrence rate of 28 +8 % for our (biased) sample. We show that the occurrence rate of bright exozodiacal discs correlates with spectral type, K-band excesses being more frequent around A-type stars. It also correlates with the presence of detectable far-infrared excess emission in the case of solar-type stars. Conclusions. This study provides new insight into the phenomenon of bright exozodiacal discs, showing that hot dust populations are probably linked to outer dust reservoirs in the case of solar-type stars. For A-type stars, no clear conclusion can be made regarding the origin of the detected near-infrared excesses.
Prediction of Streaming Sensor Data

This paper presents a real-time system for online prediction in large sensor networks, with two components. The goal of our system is to predict the value of each sensor with a given horizon. Due to the large number of sensors (around 2400), we first aggregate sensors into clusters. Afterwards, associated with each cluster, we train a predictive model. The first step is achieved with an online clustering system able to aggregate streaming sensor variables with high correlation. The clustering system uses a top-down divisive strategy, with the leaves being the resulting clusters, which may be aggregated if the system detects changes in the actual correlation structure. The second step is achieved by means of a neural-network-based model. Each neural network is associated with one cluster and continuously trained with data from the corresponding streams. The system operates online, with incremental monitoring of clusters’ diameters and incremental neural network training. Whenever a cluster is split the offspring clusters inherit the parent neural network, starting to fit a different copy. The system is evaluated in the context of online prediction of large electrical sensor networks. Preliminary results indicate a promising research line.
A real-life, ecologically valid test of executive functioning: The executive secretarial task

A major goal of neuropsychological assessment is predicting a person's level of functioning in daily life. Making predictions about everyday executive functioning based on tests is problematic because of the contrast between demands made in the test environment and demands made in everyday life (Shallice & Burgess, 1991). As executive functions play an important role in independent functioning, tests with robust psychometric properties and ecologically validity are needed. We developed the Executive Secretarial Task (EST) and assessed 92 participants: 35 brain-injured patients and 57 controls. Analyses showed the EST is sensitive to executive problems and has concurrent and ecological validity.