Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interaction: interfaces, algorithms, and applications

The virtual reality field has recently seen the advent of novel commodity 3D user interfaces that have led to not only a revolution in video game interaction, but also new possibilities for other virtual reality applications. This course provides background on the interfaces and algorithms involved in 3D interaction, and previews the future of research in the field. Topics include: interaction algorithms, their application to animation, interactive manipulation, video games, and general human-computer interaction. Special attention is focused on interfaces and multimodal interaction techniques.
Idaho National Laboratory Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition Intrusion Detection System (SCADA IDS)

Current intrusion detection system (IDS) technology is not suited to be widely deployed inside a supervisory, control and data acquisition (SCADA) environment. Anomaly- and signature-based IDS technologies have developed methods to cover information technology-based networks activity and protocols effectively. However, these IDS technologies do not include the fine protocol granularity required to ensure network security inside an environment with weak protocols lacking authentication and encryption. By implementing a more specific and more intelligent packet inspection mechanism, tailored traffic flow analysis, and unique packet tampering detection, IDS technology developed specifically for SCADA environments can be deployed with confidence in detecting malicious activity.
경제위기 이후 한국경제의 성장: 성장회계 및 성장회귀 분석 (Understanding Post-Crisis Growth of the Korean Economy: Growth Accounting and Cross-Country Regressions)

Korean Abstract: 본 연구는 경제위기 이후 한국경제의 성장 둔화의 요인을 살펴보고, 국제비교적 관점에서 위기 이후의 성장 성과를 평가해 보았다. 수량변수 및 가격변수를 이용한 성장회계 분석 결과는 경제위기 이후 급격한 성장 둔화가 주로 노동자 1인당 자본축적의 둔화에 의해 설명되는 것으로 나타났다. 반면, 경제위기 이후 2001～05년 기간 중 총요소생산성 증가율은 경제 위기 이전인 1991～95년 시기에 비해 다 소 높은 것으로 분석되었다. 한편 외환위기 이후 한국경제의 성장 둔화는 전 세계적 성장 둔화라는 시대적 요인과 동아시아 지역 고유의 요인에 대부분 기인한 것으로 분석되었다. 특히 자본축적의 둔화는 동아시아 지역 고유 요인에 주로 기인한 것으로 분석되었다. 국제비교적 관점에서 볼 때 전반적으로 위기 이후 한국경제의 성장 성과는 생산성 향상 및 자본축적이라는 측면에서 부정적으로만 평가하기는 어려운 것으로 보인다. English Abstract: This paper examines sources of growth of Korea’s economy for the period from 1980 to 2005, based on both primal and dual growth accounting methodology employed by Young (1995) and Hsieh (2002). Also, this paper evaluates post-crisis growth performance of Korea, using cross-country comparison of growth accounting results and cross-country regressions. Main results of this paper are as follows. First, the growth slowdown after the crisis has been mainly driven by the slowdown of per worker capital accumulation. By contrast, the estimated TFPG of Korea for the period from 2001 to 2005 seems higher than, or at least roughly comparable to, the estimated TFPG in the pre-crisis period of 1991-1995. In theses respects, there were no substantial differences between the results obtained from primal and dual growth accounting methodology. Second, the cross-country regressions reveal that post-crisis growth slowdown of the Korea’s economy can be largely attributed to world growth slowdown (decade effect) and East Asia-specific effects. In particular, it was found that the noticeable deceleration in per worker capital accumulation can be mostly attributed to some unknown factors which commonly affected East Asian countries. Viewed from an international perspective, the lowered post-crisis per worker GDP growth rate, as well as per-worker capital growth, which triggered concerns and debates in varying contexts, still seems respectable. So, the slowdown in capital accumulation is likely to be mainly a story of spectacularly high rate of capital accumulation in the pre-crisis period, not a story of ‘weak’ investment after the crisis.
Stability versus Neuronal Specialization for STDP: Long-Tail Weight Distributions Solve the Dilemma

Spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) modifies the weight (or strength) of synaptic connections between neurons and is considered to be crucial for generating network structure. It has been observed in physiology that, in addition to spike timing, the weight update also depends on the current value of the weight. The functional implications of this feature are still largely unclear. Additive STDP gives rise to strong competition among synapses, but due to the absence of weight dependence, it requires hard boundaries to secure the stability of weight dynamics. Multiplicative STDP with linear weight dependence for depression ensures stability, but it lacks sufficiently strong competition required to obtain a clear synaptic specialization. A solution to this stability-versus-function dilemma can be found with an intermediate parametrization between additive and multiplicative STDP. Here we propose a novel solution to the dilemma, named log-STDP, whose key feature is a sublinear weight dependence for depression. Due to its specific weight dependence, this new model can produce significantly broad weight distributions with no hard upper bound, similar to those recently observed in experiments. Log-STDP induces graded competition between synapses, such that synapses receiving stronger input correlations are pushed further in the tail of (very) large weights. Strong weights are functionally important to enhance the neuronal response to synchronous spike volleys. Depending on the input configuration, multiple groups of correlated synaptic inputs exhibit either winner-share-all or winner-take-all behavior. When the configuration of input correlations changes, individual synapses quickly and robustly readapt to represent the new configuration. We also demonstrate the advantages of log-STDP for generating a stable structure of strong weights in a recurrently connected network. These properties of log-STDP are compared with those of previous models. Through long-tail weight distributions, log-STDP achieves both stable dynamics for and robust competition of synapses, which are crucial for spike-based information processing.
The Challenges and Opportunities Experienced by Parent Supervisors in Primary School Distance Education

For a number of very remote students in Australia, distance education is regarded as the most effective means of providing access to primary school education. For these students isolation is experienced not only in relation to distance from a physical school, but also from a professionally trained educator and the instructional benefits this provides. In bridging the gap between the teacher and student the parent supervisor is vital. However little is known about their role and the challenges and opportunities it affords them in educating their children by this means. This paper reports on a research project that examined the role of parent supervisors in primary school distance education with the aim of understanding how they experience their role. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with volunteer parent supervisors of New South Wales primary school distance education students to gain insight into their practices and the opportunities and challenges they face in their role. Interview transcripts were analysed using a three step data coding framework to explore the themes that emerged in their experiences. This revealed that while most parent supervisors do not have formal qualifications in education, they undertake many tasks akin to those of a teacher and experience similar challenges to new teachers. In particular, supervisors have a crucial role in implementing lessons, motivating and engaging their children in learning, preparing for the lessons, assisting with problems their children encounter and monitoring their children’s progress. One of the main challenges parent supervisors experience is uncertainty, with many doubting their effectiveness in relation to technicalities in key learning areas and managing multi-age groupings. Parent supervisors report that the challenges are outweighed by the opportunities their role provides, particularly their close involvement with their children’s learning and the sense of reward they gain from this. Through this research a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities parent supervisors encounter will enable planning for their role to be improved. It contributes to the broader understanding of rural education by bringing the experiences of an often overlooked cohort of educators into the research literature who are essential to education in rural Australia.
FORCES ACTING ON ROTOR BLADES

In a modern wind machine, the preferred configuration is to place the rotor consisting of the rotor blades and the hub upwind of the nacelle and tower. The reason is that the air behind a wind turbine forms a wake much like a ship in water that is highly turbulent causing cyclic fatigue loading in a downwind configuration. Wind machines have adopted the technology developed for the construction of airplane wings and airplane propeller blades and added some ingenious ideas of their own leading to a new and unique specialized technology. Wind machines operate in an environment totally different than airplane wings characterized with continually changing wind speed and direction. Since the power contained in a moving air stream is proportional to the square of the rotor diameter and to the cube of the wind speed, the rotor blades must be carefully designed in order to optimally extract this power and convert it into torque that drives the electrical generator. As the wind speed increases, it is necessary for the rotor to speed up in order to remain near the optimal tip speed ratio. At some point in wind gusts its rotation must be stopped to avoid its catastrophic failure under a runaway condition.
Central auditory processing disorders

Central auditory processing is essential for the perception of speech, environmental sounds and music, and may be deranged in two ways. Lesions of the ascending auditory pathway or cortex can produce deficits. Abnormal activity of the central auditory system is becoming increasingly recognized in disorders such as tinnitus. Recent work has investigated sound processing by the unconscious brain; such investigations may provide a ‘window’ into residual brain function and prognosis. Curr Opin Neurol 15:31–33. © 2002 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Rotation Invariant Image Registration using Robust Shape Matching

Image registration enables the geometric alignment of two images and is widely used in various applications in the fields of remote sensing, medical imaging and computer vision. The performance of image registration may degrade due to image quality. As a digital image may undergo any arbitrary translational, rotational changes because of which the object shape may change. Several algorithms have been proposed earlier involving feature matching. All these algorithms involve correspondence and transformation making the shape matching complex. It also increases the computational complexity. In this work, a novel approach for shape and feature matching using putative point matching has been proposed. The images considered in this thesis are views of a scene taken by a rotating camera. The approach is based on three basis steps of image acquisition, finding the feature points and matching. It involves detecting the feature points using feature descriptors irrespective of its color, shape, brightness, intenstity.etc. After which the feature points are matched in the images. The experiment shows robustness to various types of disturbances including outliers detecting our object of interest. The algorithm works effectively in detecting the desired shapes in complex and highly cluttered scenes irrespective of quality and type of image.
A Novel Attack Model Simulation in DSDV Routing

Mobile Ad hoc network consists of a collection of mobile nodes capable of forming instantaneous network with dynamic topology. Each node simultaneously acts as both router and host. Nodes can leave or join the network freely. Destination Sequence Distance Vector (DSDV) is a modification of the conventional Bellman-Ford routing algorithm for ad hoc networks. Dynamic topology of ad hoc networks makes them susceptible to attacks launched by malicious nodes. This paper provides an overview of the DSDV protocol and how DSDV can be exploited by malicious nodes. We propose two types of attacks on DSDV - Byzantine attack and a novel Broken Link attack. Byzantine attacks have mainly been studied with respect to reactive protocols. To the best of our knowledge, Broken Link attack has been proposed for the first time. In this paper we present a way to simulate these attacks and consequent effects on Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR). We observe that PDR falls after the onset of attacks. We observe that DSDV has natural reactiveness to attacks and sustaining an attack requires calculated effort. We also show experiments to study effect of Byzantine attack on Multiple Source Destination pairs which has not been done till now. It is observed that the probability of a source being affected increases if attacker moves in its vicinity.
Electric Power Components and Systems

Single-diode Model Based Photovoltaic Module: Analysis and Comparison Approach Ahmad H. Besheer, Ahmed M. Kassem & Almoataz Y. Abdelaziz a Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, University of Tabuk, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia b Environmental Studies and Research Institute, University of Sadat City, Sadat City, Egypt c Electrical Department, Beni Suef University, Beni Suef, Egypt d Electrical Power and Machines Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt Published online: 30 Jul 2014.
Tuning QoD in stream processing engines

Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Data (QoD) are the two major dimensions for evaluating any query processing system. In the context of data stream management systems (DSMSs), multi-query scheduling has been exploited to improve QoS. In this paper, we are proposing to exploit query scheduling to improve QoD in DSMSs. Specifically, we are presenting a new policy for scheduling multiple continuous queries with the objective of maximizing the freshness of the output data streams and hence the QoD of such outputs. The proposed Freshness-Aware Scheduling of Multiple Continuous Queries (FAS-MCQ) policy decides the execution order of continuous queries based on each query's properties (i.e., cost and selectivity) as well the properties of the input update streams (i.e., variability of updates). Our experimental results have shown that FAS-MCQ can improve QoD by up to 50% compared to existing scheduling policies used in DSMSs. Finally, we propose and evaluate a parametrized version of our FAS-MCQ scheduler that is able to balance the trade-off between freshness and response time according to the application's requirements.
Performance evaluation of different transport layer protocols on the IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.15.4 MAC/PHY layers for WSN

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has gathered lot of attention from the research community lately. Among other WSN communication protocols, transport layer protocol plays a significant role in maintaining the node's energy budget. In this context we have carried out extensive testing of various transport protocols using IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.15. 4 MAC/PHY protocol and Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV) routing agent for WSN having multi-hop ad-hoc and WPAN network topology. The main contribution of this paper is to find out the dependency of Transport layer on MAC layer. Simulation results indicate that the underlying MAC/PHY layer protocol along with Transport layer protocol plays a vital role in achieving the high throughput, low latency and packet loss rate in WSN. For IEEE 802.11 with RTS/CTS ON high throughput, low packet drop rate and increased end-to-end packet delay is observed. While for IEEE 802.15. 4 similar behavior as for IEEE 802.11 (except for UDP) but with improved power efficiency is observed. This has led the foundation for the future development of the proposed cross layered energy efficient transport protocol for multimedia application.
Orthopairs: A Simple and Widely UsedWay to Model Uncertainty

The term orthopair is introduced to group under a unique definition different ways used to denote the same concept. Some orthopair models dealing with uncertainty are analyzed both from a mathematical and semantical point of view, outlining similarities and differences among them. Finally, lattice operations on orthopairs are studied and a survey on algebraic structures is provided.
Time to digital converter based on a 2-dimensions Vernier architecture

A novel 2-dimension Vernier Time to digital converter (TDC) is presented. The proposed architecture reduces drastically the number of delay stage required by linear TDCs minimizing the power consumption and the area of the design. A 7bits TDC prototype realized in 65nm CMOS technology is presented. The chip has a resolution of 4.8ps with a power consumption of 1.7mW at a conversion rate of 50Msps.
Quality rating of Islamic Websites features: A single-user evaluation

Islamic Websites post a new challenge for evaluation criteria due to the importance to their design contents. Today, little is known regarding the present quality rating of both design & content features of Islamic websites. This paper proposes several criteria to evaluate Islamic Websites: navigation, interactivity, legitimacy, objectivity, authority, relevance, attractiveness, credibility and reliability. A single-user evaluation has been conducted for fifty (50) selected Islamic Websites by using the proposed criteria. The results suggest that the quality of Islamic websites may change significantly over time. The findings also revealed that different design and content features contributes differently to the overall quality of Islamic websites. The paper suggests that the nine (9) identified criteria for both design and content features are suitable for the evaluation of different category of Islamic website's quality.
Spectrum sharing for 5G wireless systems (Spectrum sharing challenge)

Understanding the performance of a spectrum sharing system by means of a hardware deployment is a challenging task. Motivated by this fact, we propose a prototype of a secondary system that co-exists with a primary system and simultaneously sustains the constraints defined by the regulatory. In this paper, we propose several key-techniques for the secondary system, which will be deployed on a hardware.
Dual Effect of Beta-Amyloid on α7 and α4β2 Nicotinic Receptors Controlling the Release of Glutamate, Aspartate and GABA in Rat Hippocampus

Background We previously showed that beta-amyloid (Aβ), a peptide considered as relevant to Alzheimer's Disease, is able to act as a neuromodulator affecting neurotransmitter release in absence of evident sign of neurotoxicity in two different rat brain areas. In this paper we focused on the hippocampus, a brain area which is sensitive to Alzheimer's Disease pathology, evaluating the effect of Aβ (at different concentrations) on the neurotransmitter release stimulated by the activation of pre-synaptic cholinergic nicotinic receptors (nAChRs, α4β2 and α7 subtypes). Particularly, we focused on some neurotransmitters that are usually involved in learning and memory: glutamate, aspartate and GABA. Methodology/Findings We used a dual approach: in vivo experiments (microdialysis technique on freely moving rats) in parallel to in vitro experiments (isolated nerve endings derived from rat hippocampus). Both in vivo and in vitro the administration of nicotine stimulated an overflow of aspartate, glutamate and GABA. This effect was greatly inhibited by the highest concentrations of Aβ considered (10 µM in vivo and 100 nM in vitro). In vivo administration of 100 nM Aβ (the lowest concentration considered) potentiated the GABA overflow evoked by nicotine. All these effects were specific for Aβ and for nicotinic secretory stimuli. The in vitro administration of either choline or 5-Iodo-A-85380 dihydrochloride (α7 and α4β2 nAChRs selective agonists, respectively) elicited the hippocampal release of aspartate, glutamate, and GABA. High Aβ concentrations (100 nM) inhibited the overflow of all three neurotransmitters evoked by both choline and 5-Iodo-A-85380 dihydrochloride. On the contrary, low Aβ concentrations (1 nM and 100 pM) selectively acted on α7 subtypes potentiating the choline-induced release of both aspartate and glutamate, but not the one of GABA. Conclusions/Significance The results reinforce the concept that Aβ has relevant neuromodulatory effects, which may span from facilitation to inhibition of stimulated release depending upon the concentration used.
Nonlinear Constrained Realizations of the Large-Scale Structure

The linear algorithm of the Wiener filter and constrained realizations (CRs) of Gaussian random fields is extended here to perform nonlinear CRs. The procedure consists of (1) using low-resolution data to constrain a high-resolution realization of the underlying field, as if the linear theory were valid; (2) taking the linear CR backward in time, by the linear theory, to set initial conditions for N-body simulations; (3) forwarding the field in time by an N-body code. An intermediate step is introduced to "linearize" the low-resolution data. The nonlinear CR can be applied to any observational data set that is quasi-linearly related to the underlying field. Here it is applied to the IRAS 1.2 Jy catalog using 846 data points within a sphere of 6000 km s-1, to reconstruct the full nonlinear large-scale structure of our "local" universe. The method is tested against mock IRAS surveys, taken from random nonlinear realizations. A detailed analysis of the reconstructed nonlinear structure is presented.
A case study of customer communication in globally distributed software product development

Agile methodologies emphasize the importance of customer and highlight that communication with the customer is seen as a central tenet. Despite the prevalence and benefits associated with globally distributed software development, communication can be much more challenging in such environments due to temporal, geographical and cultural distances. This paper describes results from a case study of customer communication in a globally distributed product development program applying both traditional and agile approaches. Based on the study, the frequency of communication, the content of that communication and engagement with the customer along with a support for rapid decision making among the development teams and the customer groups are important success factors in distributed agile development.
Executive functions and achievements in school: Shifting, updating, inhibition, and working memory

Links have recently been established between measures of educational attainment and both verbal and visuo-spatial aspects of working memory. Relationships have also been identified between specific executive functions—shifting, updating, and inhibition—and scholastic achievement. In the present study, scholastic attainment, shifting, updating, inhibition, and verbal and visuo-spatial working memory were assessed in 11- and 12-year-old children. Exploratory factor analysis identified two executive factors: one associated with updating functions and one associated with inhibition. Updating abilities were closely linked with performance on both verbal and visuo-spatial working memory span tasks. Working memory was closely linked with attainment in English and mathematics, and inhibition was associated with achievement in English, mathematics, and science. Domain-specific associations existed between verbal working memory and attainment in English, and between visuo-spatial working memory and attainment in English, mathematics and science. Implications of the findings for the theoretical analysis of executive functioning, working memory and children's learning are discussed.