Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design and Evaluation of a Pipelined Distributed Information Retrieval Architecture

Web-scale search engines deal with a volume of data and queries that forces them to make use of an index partitioned across many machines. Two main methods of partitioning an index for distributed processing have been described in the literature. In document partitioning, each processor node holds the information for a subset of documents, while in term partitioning, each node holds the information for a subset of terms. Additionally, a novel architecture, pipelining, has been proposed, offering to combine the best features of both architectures. This thesis develops a careful methodology for the experimental comparison of distributed information retrieval architectures, addressing questions such as experiment scalability and query set generation. Novel methods are proposed for accumulator pruning, and for compression of accumulators for shipping between nodes in the pipelined architecture. A meticulous experimental assessment of the three distributed architectures is then undertaken. The results demonstrate that term distribution suffers a severe processing bottleneck. Pipelining resolves term distribution’s processing bottleneck, while maintaining its superior I/O characteristics. However, pipelining suffers from serious load imbalance between the nodes, fails to fully utilise the cluster’s processing capacity, and scales poorly. Document distribution, in contrast, distributes workload evenly and scales well. Load balancing through the intelligent assignment of terms to partitions is explored, but fails to fully resolve the imbalance of the pipelined architecture. Instead, the partial replication of high-workload terms is proposed, coupled with the intelligent routing of queries. These techniques resolve pipelining’s load imbalance, allowing it to marginally outperform document distribution. The partially-replicated pipelined architecture is shown to benefit from system scale. It also significantly outperforms document distribution in a memorylimited environment, suggesting that it would also outperform for larger collections relative to cluster size. However, unlike document distribution, pipelining’s average response time at low to moderate loads does not scale. The system implementor must therefore weigh the relative benefits of the two architectures.
When Money Is Not Enough: Awareness, Success, and Variability in Motor Learning

When performing a skill such as throwing a dart, many different combinations of joint motions suffice to hit the target. The motor system adapts rapidly to reduce bias in the desired outcome (i.e., the first-order moment of the error); however, the essence of skill is to produce movements with less variability (i.e., to reduce the second-order moment). It is easy to see how feedback about success or failure could sculpt performance to achieve this aim. However, it is unclear whether the dimensions responsible for success or failure need to be known explicitly by the subjects, or whether learning can proceed without explicit awareness of the movement parameters that need to change. Here, we designed a redundant, two-dimensional reaching task in which we could selectively manipulate task success and the variability of action outcomes, whilst also manipulating awareness of the dimension along which performance could be improved. Variability was manipulated either by amplifying natural errors, leaving the correlation between the executed movement and the visual feedback intact, or by adding extrinsic noise, decorrelating movement and feedback. We found that explicit, binary, feedback about success or failure was only sufficient for learning when participants were aware of the dimension along which motor behavior had to change. Without such awareness, learning was only present when extrinsic noise was added to the feedback, but not when task success or variability was manipulated in isolation; learning was also much slower. Our results highlight the importance of conscious awareness of the relevant dimension during motor learning, and suggest that higher-order moments of outcome signals are likely to play a significant role in skill learning in complex tasks.
Ionic liquids behave as dilute electrolyte solutions

We combine direct surface force measurements with thermodynamic arguments to demonstrate that pure ionic liquids are expected to behave as dilute weak electrolyte solutions, with typical effective dissociated ion concentrations of less than 0.1% at room temperature. We performed equilibrium force–distance measurements across the common ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide ([C4mim][NTf2]) using a surface forces apparatus with in situ electrochemical control and quantitatively modeled these measurements using the van der Waals and electrostatic double-layer forces of the Derjaguin–Landau–Verwey–Overbeek theory with an additive repulsive steric (entropic) ion–surface binding force. Our results indicate that ionic liquids screen charged surfaces through the formation of both bound (Stern) and diffuse electric double layers, where the diffuse double layer is comprised of effectively dissociated ionic liquid ions. Additionally, we used the energetics of thermally dissociating ions in a dielectric medium to quantitatively predict the equilibrium for the effective dissociation reaction of [C4mim][NTf2] ions, in excellent agreement with the measured Debye length. Our results clearly demonstrate that, outside of the bound double layer, most of the ions in [C4mim][NTf2] are not effectively dissociated and thus do not contribute to electrostatic screening. We also provide a general, molecular-scale framework for designing ionic liquids with significantly increased dissociated charge densities via judiciously balancing ion pair interactions with bulk dielectric properties. Our results clear up several inconsistencies that have hampered scientific progress in this important area and guide the rational design of unique, high–free-ion density ionic liquids and ionic liquid blends.
The evaluation of delay jitter for haptics collaboration over the Internet

What we are concerned with in this paper is a shared virtual environment (SVE) on a non-dedicated network like the Internet. Especially, we address haptics on an SVE for the new generation of network applications. The goal of our research Is to build an SVE system in which multiple participants can collaborate using haptics feedback, even though the participants are located around the world. One of the problems for this system is network impairment, and we have examined the effect of constant network delay and packet loss on the haptics collaboration system. In this paper we examine and evaluate the effect of delay jitter on the system when using media synchronization and dead reckoning.
The Structure of Wiggins' Interpersonal Circumplex: Cross-Cultural Studies

Summary: This paper presents the results obtained in Spain with The Interpersonal Adjective Scales of J.S. Wiggins (1995) concerning the variables' structure. There are two Spanish versions of IAS, developed by two independent research groups who were not aware of each other's work. One of these versions was published as an assessment test in 1996. Results from the other group have remained unpublished to date. The set of results presented here compares three sources of data: the original American manual (from Wiggins and collaborators), the Spanish manual (already published), and the new IAS (our own research). Results can be considered satisfactory since, broadly speaking, the inner structure of the original instrument is well replicated in the Spanish version.
An efficient similarity matching for clustering XML element

In recent year, XML has become the major means for information representation and exchange on the Web. Due to the increasing number of XML documents, XML similarity becomes essential in a wide range of applications like information extraction, data integration etc. In this paper we present a clustering approach that calculate similarity between XML elements to identify appropriate information unit for retrieval task. Preliminary experimental results conducted using XML data sets of a biliographical site and a conference site shows that the proposed approach is promising to be further extended for other possible XML sources.
The Nonnegative Rank of a Matrix: Hard Problems, Easy Solutions

Using elementary linear algebra, we develop a technique that leads to solutions of two widely known problems on nonnegative matrices. First, we give a short proof of the result by Vavasis stating that the nonnegative rank of a matrix is NP-hard to compute. This proof is essentially contained in the paper by Jiang and Ravikumar, who discussed this topic in different terms fifteen years before the work of Vavasis. Secondly, we present a solution of the problem of Cohen and Rothblum on rational nonnegative factorizations, which was posed in 1993 and remained open.
Estimating Mean Survival Time: When is it Possible?

For right‐censored survival data, it is well‐known that the mean survival time can be consistently estimated when the support of the censoring time contains the support of the survival time. In practice, however, this condition can be easily violated because the follow‐up of a study is usually within a finite window. In this article, we show that the mean survival time is still estimable from a linear model when the support of some covariate(s) with non‐zero coefficient(s) is unbounded regardless of the length of follow‐up. This implies that the mean survival time can be well estimated when the support of linear predictor is wide in practice. The theoretical finding is further verified for finite samples by simulation studies. Simulations also show that, when both models are correctly specified, the linear model yields reasonable mean square prediction errors and outperforms the Cox model, particularly with heavy censoring and short follow‐up time.
Focusing on the Optimization for Scale up in Airlift Bioreactors and the Production of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a Model Microorganism

The aim of this work is to use optimization as a tool for scale up in airlift bioreactors and apply this approach to a real life process. To put this approach into practice, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a green microalgae, was used as a model microorganism. The effects of the design parameters on the performance of the bioreactors were monitored through the changes in mixing and circulation times. As the first step, the effective parameters (draft tube diameter and height, water level over the draft tube, volumetric flow rate of air, and sparger-draft tube distance) in the 1.1 L airlift bioreactor were determined and optimized by the 5-factor, 3-level Box-Behnken design for response surface methodology. A draft tube with a 38-250 mm dimension was selected resulting in a mixing time of 9.94 s with a 1.05 L min-1 air flow rate. In the second step the optimized values were applied to a larger airlift bioreactor of 11 L for C. reinhardtii productions. Comparable biomass productivities (0.87-0.90 g L-1 day-1) and doubling times (25-27 h) in both systems was a good indication of the success of the scale-up approach.
Slicing droids: program slicing for smali code

The popularity of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets has increased significantly in the last few years with many millions of sold devices. This growth also has its drawbacks: attackers have realized that smartphones are an attractive target and in the last months many different kinds of malicious software (short: malware) for such devices have emerged. This worrisome development has the potential to hamper the prospering ecosystem of mobile devices and the potential for damage is huge. Considering these aspects, it is evident that malicious apps need to be detected early on in order to prevent further distribution and infections. This implies that it is necessary to develop techniques capable of detecting malicious apps in an automated way. In this paper, we present SAAF, a Static Android Analysis Framework for Android apps. SAAF analyzes smali code, a disassembled version of the DEX format used by Android's Java VM implementation. Our goal is to create program slices in order to perform data-flow analyses to backtrack parameters used by a given method. This helps us to identify suspicious code regions in an automated way. Several other analysis techniques such as visualization of control flow graphs or identification of ad-related code are also implemented in SAAF. In this paper, we report on program slicing for Android and present results obtained by using this technique to analyze more than 136,000 benign and about 6,100 malicious apps.
Wavelet Packet and TCQ Coding for SAR Raw Data Compression

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an imaging system which provides high resolution images of earth surface. The high resolution in the range direction is achieved by using large bandwidth signals and that in the azimuth direction is achieved by synthesizing a large aperture antenna using platform motion. The unique data collection geometry of SAR system requires that huge amounts of raw data be processed before obtaining a viewable image. Therefore, performing some form of compression on SAR raw data provides an attractive option for SAR systems. In this paper, we present a transform coding approach for SAR raw data compression. Due to presence of large dynamic range of frequency content in SAR raw data we propose the usage of wavelet packet transform. Furthermore, the transform coefficients are quantized using universal trellis coded quantizers. The quantization is performed independently on each subband in contrary to the current image coding algorithms like JPEG2000, considering the nature of SAR raw data where dependencies across scales are not evident. An adaptive rate allocation scheme is used to efficiently allocate the fixed rate resources among different subbands. Experimental results of the proposed method provides significant improvement in SNR results over standard block adaptive quantization (BAQ) and JPEG2000 techniques. AMS Subject Classification: 78A25 Electromagnetic theory, general.
Probabilistic sequential POIs recommendation via check-in data

While on the go, people are using their phones as a personal concierge discovering what is around and deciding what to do. Mobile phone has become a recommendation terminal customized for individuals. While existing research predominantly focuses on one-step recommendation---recommending the next single activity according to current context, this work moves one step beyond by recommending a series of activities, which is a package of sequential Points of Interest (POIs). The recommended POIs are not only relevant to user context (i.e., current location, time, and check-in), but also personalized to his/her check-in history. We presents a probabilistic approach, which is highly motivated from a large-scale commercial mobile check-in data analysis, to ranking a list of sequential POI categories (e.g., "Japanese food" and "bar") and POIs (e.g., "I love sushi"). The approach enables users to plan consecutive activities on the move. Specifically, the probabilistic recommendation approach estimates the transition probability from one POI to another, conditioned on current context and check-in history in a Markov chain. To alleviate the discritization error and sparsity problem, we further introduce context collaboration and integrate prior information. Experiments on over 100k real-world check-in records and 20k POIs validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
VS-APPLE: A Virtual Screening Algorithm Using Promiscuous Protein-Ligand Complexes

As the number of structurally resolved protein-ligand complexes increases, the ligand-binding pockets of many proteins have been found to accommodate multiple different compounds. Effective use of these structural data is important for developing virtual screening (VS) methods that identify bioactive compounds. Here, we introduce a VS method, VS-APPLE (Virtual Screening Algorithm using Promiscuous Protein-Ligand complExes), based on promiscuous protein-ligand binding structures. In VS-APPLE, multiple ligands bound to a pocket are combined into a query template for screening. Both the structural match between a test compound and the multiple-ligand template and the possible collisions between the test compound and the target protein are evaluated by an efficient geometric hashing method. The performance of VS-APPLE was examined on a filtered, clustered version of the Directory of Useful Decoys data set. In Area Under the Curve analyses of this data set, VS-APPLE outperformed several popular screening programs. Judging from the performance of VS-APPLE, the structural data of promiscuous protein-ligand bindings could be further analyzed and exploited for developing VS methods.
An Expert Ground Truth Set for Audio Chord Recognition and Music Analysis

Audio chord recognition has attracted much interest in recent years, but a severe lack of reliable training data—both in terms of quantity and range of sampling—has hindered progress. Working with a team of trained jazz musicians, we have collected time-aligned transcriptions of the harmony in more than a thousand songs selected randomly from the Billboard “Hot 100” chart in the United States between 1958 and 1991. These transcriptions contain complete information about upper extensions and alterations as well as information about meter, phrase, and larger musical structure. We expect that these transcriptions will enable significant advances in the quality of training for audio-chord-recognition algorithms, and furthermore, because of an innovative sampling methodology, the data are usable as they stand for computational musicology. The paper includes some summary figures and statistics to help readers understand the scope of the data as well as information for obtaining the transcriptions for their own research.
FPGA implementation of glass-free stereo vision

This paper presents a real-time efficient glass-free 3D system, which is based on FPGA. The system converts two-view input that is 60 frames per second (fps) 1080P stream into a multi-view video with 30fps and 4K resolution. In order to provide smooth and comfortable viewing experience, glass-free 3D systems must display multi-view videos. To generate a multi-view video from a two-view input includes three steps, the first is to compute disparity maps from two input views; the second is to synthesize a couple of new views based on the computed disparity maps and input views; the last is to produce video from the new views according to the specifications of the lens installed on TV sets.
An Examination of Preschool Teachers' Shared Book Reading Practices in Spanish: Before and After Instructional Guidance

Shared book reading is a prominent practice in preschools; however, limited research has examined this practice in classrooms with English language learners (ELLs). This study investigated the shared book reading practices of seven preschool teachers of Spanish-speaking ELLs to describe their vocabulary instructional practices before and after receiving instructional guidance (i.e., curriculum implementation, distributed professional development, and instructional cues). Teachers implemented 75 fifteen-min daily structured shared book reading vocabulary sessions for 15 weeks. In addition, they participated in professional development prior to and at two points during the curriculum implementation. To document instructional practices, teachers were observed three times: without and with an instructional cue prior to curriculum implementation and once with a cue at postintervention. Because some preschool teachers may require more intensive guidance than others to improve vocabulary instruction, professional development models must adjust and distribute support more responsively. Implications for future practice and research are discussed.
An Implementation of Camera Calibration Algorithms

Computer vision is inherently plagued by the loss of dimensionality incurred when capturing a 3D photo in a 2D image. Camera calibration is an important step towards recovering threedimensional information from a planar image. Over the past twenty years several algorithms have proposed solutions to the problem of calibration. Among the most popular are Roger Tsai’s algorithm [5], Direct Linear Transformation (DLT), and Zhang’s algorithm[6]. The focus of this paper is on Zhang’s algorithm because it is the basis behind popular open source implementations of camera calibration i.e. Intel’s Open CV and Matlab’s calibration toolkit [1].
Validity of Occupational Choice

How much significance can be attached to a college freshman’s statement that he intends to enter a given occupation? What percentage of freshmen are engaged 19 years later in the occupation of their choice? If they change their choice, do they change to a closely related occupation or to most any occupation ? If they change their choice do they select an occupation of higher or lower prestige value? Also, do they select an occupation more or less in harmony with their measured interests ?
Teach peace: assessing instruction of the nonviolent communication and peace course

This paper assesses the efficacy of teaching a new course in the communication curriculum entitled Nonviolent Communication and Peace. Three studies are included: two pilot studies at a large Eastern US university and a final study which also included data from a concurrent study at a large Canadian university. Results from a pre-post instructional design show modest changes in the predicted direction of greater peace for three areas of assessment: (1) greater elaboration and integration of definitions for peace, (2) more agreement with statements about peaceful beliefs and behaviors related to the practice of peace in everyday life, and (3) increased recall for the number of peace role models. Future research includes recommendations for continued development of the peace assessment measure.
Phase based adaptive branch predictor : Seeing the forest for the trees

Understanding and exploiting the dynamic behavior of programs is key to improving performance beyond what is possible using static techniques. We present an implementation of a phase tracking algorithm and show that it can be successfully applied to existing SPEC2000 benchmarks, many of which show a consistent phase behavior. We then show the application of phase information to optimize branch prediction. Our results indicate a reduction of up to 44.35% in branch predicition misses, using simpler predictors based on per phase information. We also get an improvement of up to 4.70% in IPC for our target benchmarks.
Title Real Time Detection and Recognition of License Plate in Bengali Permalink

Automatic license plate detection and recognition has numerous applications. A large number of schemes have already been proposed in order to make the detection and recognition process efficient. However, a very little work has been done on Bengali license plate recognition. Wide variation among the license plate patterns, complex background, and the difficulty in segmenting Bengali characters of Bangladeshi license plates make it inefficient to use the existing algorithms. In this paper, we propose a solution for Bengali license plate detection and recognition. We use three stages of conventional license plate recognition system. However, we propose new algorithm in each stage, which are effective for Bengali license plate detection and recognition. We tested our algorithms for over 250 images taken from the road. We achieve over 95% success in Bengali license plate recognition.