Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Connectionless service for public ATM networks

The interconnection of connectionless LANs and MANs over a connection-oriented B-ISDN presents a dilemma with regard to efficient interoperability. In order to provide solutions to this dilemma, there have been many techniques proposed. We describe and evaluate the architectural and conceptual alternatives available for the implementation of a connectionless service for public ATM networks. We also suggest a scheme through which best-effort connectionless service may be provided in public ATM networks using connectionless servers and hop-by-hop flow control. There is as yet no consensus on issues such as bandwidth management, address resolution, connectionless server forwarding modes, or connectionless server topology, and therefore much of the area remains open for research. These research issues must be addressed, however, in order to realize the interoperability, and thereby the acceptance, of ATM. <<ETX>>
Personal satellite communication: technologies and challenges

Communication regulatory bodies in many parts of the world have recently granted satellite operators the right to extend their networks by adding ground segments. This has opened the door, for the first time, to truly ubiquitous satellite coverage, thus revolutionizing the use of satellites in personal communications. In this article, we review personal satellite communication systems. Background on the evolution of satellite communications is given along with the basics of satellite systems. This is followed by a comprehensive discussion of the current challenges facing the future of personal satellite communication systems and some of the proposed solutions.
Simulation study of the effect of wall roughness on the dynamics of granular flows in rotating semicylindrical chutes

A discrete element model (DEM) is used to investigate the behavior of spherical particles flowing down a semicylindrical rotating chute. The DEM simulations are validated by comparing with particle tracking velocimetry results of spherical glass particles flowing through a smooth semicylindrical chute at different rotation rates of the chute. The DEM model predictions agree well with experimental results of surface velocity and particle bed height evolution. The validated DEM model is used to investigate the influence of chute roughness on the flow behavior of monodisperse granular particles in rotating chutes. To emulate different base roughnesses, a rough base is constructed out of a square close packing of fixed spherical particles with a diameter equal to, smaller, or larger than the flowing particles. Finally, the DEM model is used to study segregation in a binary density mixture for different degrees of roughness of the chute.
A new approach to variable frame rate front-end processing for robust speech recognition

Robustness in the presence of various types and severities of environmental noise has been researched extensively over the past several years, however this remains one of the main problems facing automatic speech recognition systems. This paper describes a noise-robust ASR front-end that employs a new variable frame rate analysis, based upon the first-order difference of the log energy for each frame (DE). Compared with previous variable frame rate methods, this delta energy approach is simpler and achieves similar recognition accuracy improvements but at reduced complexity. Recognition experiments on the Aurora II connected digits database reveal that the proposed front-end achieves an average digit recognition accuracy of 68.69% for a model set trained from clean data and 85.82% for a model set trained from data with multiple noise conditions. Compared with the ETSI standard Melcepstral front-end, the proposed front-end obtains a relative error rate reduction of around 20% for the clean model set, achieved consistently across nearly all signalto-noise ratios and noise conditions tested.
VLSI hardware architecture for complex fuzzy systems

This paper presents the design of a VLSI fuzzy processor, which is capable of dealing with complex fuzzy inference systems, i.e., fuzzy inferences that include rule chaining. The architecture of the processor is based on a computational model whose main features are: the capability to cope effectively with complex fuzzy inference systems; a detection phase of the rule with a positive degree of activation to reduce the number of rules to be processed per inference; parallel computation of the degree of activation of active rules; and representation of membership functions based on /spl alpha/-level sets. As the fuzzy inference can be divided into different processing phases, the processor is made up of a number of stages which are pipelined. In each stage several inference processing phases are performed parallelly. Its performance is in the order of 2 MFLIPS with 256 rules, eight inputs, two chained variables, and four outputs and 5.2 MFLIPS with 32 rules, three inputs, and one output with a clock frequency of 66 MHz.
Critical pedagogy in health education

Objective: This review investigated how the three-phase model of critical pedagogy, based on the writings of Paulo Freire, can be put into practice in health education. Design: The study considers literature related to the fields of health education, health promotion and critical pedagogy. Setting: The study is a scholarly review completed as part of a larger academic study. Method: A library search was conducted of relevant books, journal articles and theses using keyword searches including health education, health promotion, critical pedagogy and Freire. Ideas from the literature and from teaching experience were integrated to consider how the three-phase model of critical pedagogy might be of benefit to health education. Result: The review makes a case for the use of critical pedagogy in health education and discusses how Freire’s ideas can be combined with pedagogical techniques to overcome the difficulties of encouraging students and teachers to be co-learners in a power sharing arrangement, negotiating the content of the learning, ensuring that discussion is inclusive of a range of voices, perspectives and points of view, and dealing with the conflict which may be caused by the political nature of the teaching and learning. Conclusion: The three-phase model of critical pedagogy, based on the writings of Freire, is advocated for use in health education because it ensures that learners have an opportunity to critically engage with health information rather than to simply be passive recipients of it. It aims to focus learning on the problems, issues and real world experience of the learners, facilitates problem-posing education, and challenges the learner to question practices that support inequality. The three phases are: listening and naming; dialogue and reflection; the promoting of transformative social action.
Qualitative Investigation of the Influence of STEM Mentors on Youth With Disabilities

Very little systematic research has been conducted on mentoring of youth with disabilities, especially science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) mentoring. This article describes findings from a qualitative study, conducted as a component of an explanatory, sequential mixed-methods investigation of the outcomes and processes of a STEM mentoring intervention for high school–aged youth with disabilities, provided by mentors with and without disabilities. Focus groups were conducted with 30 youth, 30 parents, and 28 mentors following their participation in a randomized trial of a mentoring intervention. Key themes include the benefits of mentoring for STEM career development, especially for older youth; the importance of relationship development, encouraging guidance, and participation in experiential activities; and personality and interest compatibility in successful mentor–mentee matching.
OS-aware tuning: improving instruction cache energy efficiency on system workloads

Low power has been considered as an important issue in instruction cache (I-cache) designs. Several studies have shown that the I-cache can be tuned to reduce power. These techniques, however, exclusively focus on user-level applications, even though there is evidence that many commercial and emerging workloads often involve heavy use of the operating system (OS). This study goes beyond previous work to explore the opportunities to design energy-efficient I-cache for system workloads. Employing a full-system experimental framework and a wide range of workloads, we characterize user and OS I-cache accesses and motivate OS-aware I-cache tuning to save power. We then present two techniques (OS-aware cache way lookup and OS-aware cache set drowsy mode) to reduce the dynamic and the static power consumption of I-cache. The proposed OS-aware cache way lookup reduces the number of parallel tag comparisons and data array read-outs for cache accesses to save dynamic I-cache power in a given operation mode. The proposed OS-aware cache set drowsy mode puts I-cache regions that are only heavily used by another operation mode to reduce leakage power. The proposed mechanisms require minimal hardware modification and addition. Simulation based experiments show that with no or negligible impact on performance, applying OS-aware tuning techniques yields significant dynamic and static power savings across the experimented applications. To our knowledge, this is the first work to explore cache power optimization by considering the interactions of application-OS-hardware. It is our belief that the proposed techniques can be applied to improve the I-cache energy efficiency on server processors mostly targeting on modern and commercial applications that heavily invoke OS activities
Dispersed Leadership: Exploring the Impact of Antecedent Forms of Power Using a Communicative Framework

This article presents an account of a police organization’s attempt to implement what senior officers described as a dispersed leadership initiative. A communicative framework is used to show how a particular historically constituted discourse is embedded in the communicative actions of those officers who participated in the study. Analysis of the effects of this discourse reveals how the organization’s dispersion of leadership, although on the surface representing a new and successful endeavor, is rendered problematic by what the article terms antecedent forms of power.
Desistance from Offending: Experiences of Probation

This article seeks to make connections between two different research fields: the ‘What Works? ’ literature on the effectiveness of community programmes in bringing about a reduction in reoffending; and, from the criminal careers literature, the discussion of the wider social processes by which people themselves come to stop offending. It does this by examining desistance from the point of view of a group of probationers and their supervisors. Reporting the extent to which probationers who were interviewed linked their experiences of supervision to a reduction in their offending, the article discusses the contribution which they saw those experiences as making to changes in their behaviour. Relating these accounts to what is known about the factors which cause people to desist from crime, the article considers the implications for how probation officers might be able to motivate and assist moves towards law-abiding conduct.
Media Coverage of the Supreme Court's Caseload

Citizens hold the Supreme Court in high regard, and this esteem necessarily, for most, must be based on mass media news coverage. Content analysis of Supreme Court coverage by three networks, three news magazines and three major newspapers finds the press is selective in type of cases covered. The best coverage fit to actual types of cases decided was in the New York Times. All sampled news media gave more coverage to civil rights cases than the number of these cases would justify. First Amendment issues also received close news media attention, but economic and other issues did not. High public esteem of the Supreme Court is based on an incomplete look at the court's workload.
Active binaural localization of intermittent moving sources in the presence of false measurements

This paper takes place within the field of active sound source localization in a binaural context. A stochastic filtering strategy is presented for the localization of a still or moving source from a moving binaural sensor. The proposed method accounts for the source intermittence as well as for false measurements induced by the non-stationarity of the emitted signal. Its effectiveness is showed on experimental results.
Outsourcing in the Uruguayan banking sector : a TCE perspective

This paper analyzes the outsourcing process in Uruguayan banks, based on the transaction cost economics approach. There is a growing use of alternative work arrangements that have in common the substitution of market-mediated transactions for direct employment relationships. The most common reasons for the increased use of these work arrangements are: (i) enhancing the organization’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances; (ii) taking advantage of lower wage rates for tasks that do not involve specific assets; and (iii) allowing the realization of greater economies of scale and scope in the provision of these services. These motives are consistent with the TCE view, i.e. turning to contracting out implies economizing in transaction costs. The Uruguayan banks have increased their outsourcing outlays by three times in the period 1991-1998. The financial institutions that have been more willing to contract out are those that are mainly dedicated to activities that involve highly specific assets. Outsourcing spending is higher in institutions that have increased their participation in the consumer credit markets and offered standardized services that are massively advertised. In the case of banking activities, where information and specific relations are relevant, the link between the credit manager and some customers (particularly, corporate clients) can be taken as a specific asset. Employees' movements among banks involve individuals who carry themselves a high degree of specificity in their tasks and connections. This is the case of credit managers whose relationships with borrower companies put them in a powerful bargaining position to negotiate their new jobs. I INTRODUCTION This paper focuses on the outsourcing process in the Uruguayan banking sector, which has shown several organizational transformations in the last two decades. Particular attention deserves the considerable changes in the labor relations, including the governance alternatives faced by firms, the new organization of work and the strategies they have followed. Some relevant questions refer to what factors have allowed and encouraged the outsourcing process, what kind of activities or processes should be spun off, and what are the specific features of the main activities in banking. From an institutional standpoint, it is also important to note why outsourcing in some activities could not be implemented. Issues related to power relationships and business strategies become crucial on these grounds. Regarding the changing employment relations in banks, Regini et al. (1999) introduce institutional variables to explain the common trends and the cross-country differences. The main transformations in labor practices include the growing distinction between front office and back office employees, the introduction of a sales culture into
Complementary roles of microtubules and microfilaments in the lung fibroblast-mediated contraction of collagen gels: Dynamics and the influence of cell density

SummaryFibroblasts are important cellular components in wound healing, scar formation, and fibrotic disorders; and the fibroblast-populated collagen-gel (FPCG) model allows examination of fibroblast behavior in an in vitro three-dimensional environment similar to that in vivo. Contraction of free-floating FPCGs depends, on an active and dynamic cytoskeleton, and the contraction dynamics are highly influenced by cell density. We investigated mechanistic differences between high- and low-cell density FPCG contraction by evaluating contraction dynamics in detail, using specific cytoskeletal disruptors. Collagen gels were seeded with human lung fibroblasts at either high (HD) or low (LD) density, and incubated with or without cytoskeletal disruptors colchicine (microtubules) or cytochalasin D (microfilaments). Gel area was measured daily. FPCG contraction curves were essentially sigmoidal, featuring an initial period of no contraction (lag phase), followed by a period of rapid contraction (log phase). Contraction curves of HD-FPCGs were distinct from those of LD-FPCGs. For example, HD-FPCGs had a negligible lag phase (compared with 3 d for LD-FPCGs) and exhibited a higher rate of log-phase contraction. Both colchicine and cytochalasin dose-dependently inhibited contraction but specifically affected different phases of contraction in HD- and LD-FPCGs; and colchicine inhibited LD-FPCGs much more than HD-FPCGs. The data indicate that LD- and HD-FPCGs contract through different primary mechanisms. Microtubules and microfilaments are both complementarily and dynamically involved in the contraction of FPCGs, and cell density influences primary cytoskeletal mechanisms. These results provide valuable information about fibroblast behavior in healing and fibrosis, and may suggest novel treatment options.
Optimizing information mediators by selectively materializing data

Building information mediators (a.k.a. information agents) has been a very active area of research in the information and data management community to address the problem of integrating data from multiple sources such as databases or Web sources. An issue with such mediators, particularly Web based mediators, is that the speed of any mediator application is heavily dependent on the remote sources being integrated, with often a very large amount of time being spent in retrieving data from the remote sources. I present an approach for optimizing the performance of information mediators by locally materializing data. I present a framework for materializing data in a mediator environment. The data is materialized selectively. I then present an approach for automatically identifying the portion of data to materialize by considering several factors such as the distribution of user queries, structure of Web sources and updates at the sources. I present experimental results demonstrating the effectiveness of my approach using a materialization system that I implemented for the Ariadne mediator based on the ideas in my thesis. I discuss how my work relates to previous work in materialization and caching in database and Web server environments and also how my approach is applicable to several other mediator systems. Finally I outline some directions for future work in this area.
Effective manipulation of virtual objects within arm's reach

We present a study that compares finger-based direct interaction to controller-based ray interaction in a CAVE as well as in head-mounted displays. We focus on interaction tasks within reach of the users' arms and hands and explore various feedback methods including visual, pressure-based tactile and vibro-tactile feedback. Furthermore, we enhanced a precise finger tracking device with a direct pinch-detection mechanism to improve the robustness of grasp detection. Our results indicate that finger-based interaction is generally preferred if the functionality and ergonomics of manually manipulated virtual artifacts has to be assessed. However, controller-based interaction is often faster and more robust. In projection-based environments finger-based interaction almost reaches the task completion times and the subjective robustness of controller-based interaction if the grasping heuristics relies on our direct pinch detection. It also improves significantly by adding tactile feedback, while visual feedback proves sufficient in head-mounted displays. Our findings provide a guideline for the design of fine grain finger-based interfaces.
MAP Kinases Couple Hindbrain-Derived Catecholamine Signals to Hypothalamic Adrenocortical Control Mechanisms during Glycemia-Related Challenges

Physiological responses to hypoglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, and hyperglycemia include a critical adrenocortical component that is initiated by hypothalamic control of the anterior pituitary and adrenal cortex. These adrenocortical responses ensure appropriate long-term glucocorticoid-mediated modifications to metabolism. Despite the importance of these mechanisms to disease processes, how hypothalamic afferent pathways engage the intracellular mechanisms that initiate adrenocortical responses to glycemia-related challenges are unknown. This study explores these mechanisms using network- and cellular-level interventions in in vivo and ex vivo rat preparations. Results show that a hindbrain-originating catecholamine afferent system selectively engages a MAP kinase pathway in rat paraventricular hypothalamic CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone) neuroendocrine neurons shortly after vascular insulin and 2-deoxyglucose challenges. In turn, this MAP kinase pathway can control both neuroendocrine neuronal firing rate and the state of CREB phosphorylation in a reduced ex vivo paraventricular hypothalamic preparation, making this signaling pathway an ideal candidate for coordinating CRH synthesis and release. These results establish the first clear structural and functional relationships linking neurons in known nutrient-sensing regions with intracellular mechanisms in hypothalamic CRH neuroendocrine neurons that initiate the adrenocortical response to various glycemia-related challenges.
Overproduction and localization of components of the polyketide synthase of Streptomyces glaucescens involved in the production of the antibiotic tetracenomycin C

Three proteins, including the beta-keto acyl synthase and the acyl carrier protein, involved in the synthesis of the polyketide antibiotic tetracenomycin C by Streptomyces glaucescens GLA.0 were produced in Escherichia coli by using the T7 RNA polymerase-dependent pT7-7 expression vector. Changing the N-terminal codon usage of two of the genes greatly increased the level of protein produced without affecting mRNA levels, suggesting improvements in translational efficiency. Western immunoblot analysis of cytoplasmic and membrane fractions of S. glaucescens with antibodies raised to synthetic oligopeptides corresponding to the two presumed components of the beta-keto acyl synthase indicated that both proteins were membrane bound; one appears to be proteolytically cleaved before or during association with the membrane. The beta-keto acyl synthase could be detected in stationary-phase cultures but not in rapidly growing cultures, correlating with the time of appearance of tetracenomycin C in the medium.
Chapter 13 Basics of Side-Channel Analysis

Classical cryptography considers attack scenarios of adve rsari s getting black-box access to a cryptosystem, namely to its inputs and outputs. F or example, in a chosenciphertext attack, an adversary can submit ciphertexts of h er c oice to a decryption oracle and receives in return the corresponding plaintexts . In real life, however, an adversary may be more powerful. For example, an adversary ma y in addition monitor the execution of the cryptosystem under attack and coll e t some side-channel information, such as the execution time or the power consump tion. The idea behind side-channel analysis is to infer some secret data from this extra information. This chapter presents several applications of side-channe l alysis using different types of side-channel leakage. The primary goal is to exp lain the basic principles of side-channel analysis through concrete examples. S imple countermeasures to prevent side-channel leakage are also discussed. More so phisticated methods and advanced techniques are presented in the next chapters.