Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Allocation of decision rights within networks: configuration and definition principles

The aim of the paper is to propose an interpretation of network building and structure in considering the way all types of in-house decisions are organized, i.e. the content of these decisions and their level of application within the network. Indeed, the essence of a network is to be found in the double role of a meta-organization overarching individual actions and, at the same time, being able to combine these collective decisions with individual actions. Firstly, the paper provides a description of the division between individual and collective decisions within networks and of the content of these decisions. We suggest to focussing this description on the concept of intentionality. Intentionality is defined as the power, either directly or indirectly, to decide over a sub class of specific. Secondly, we show that the logic of this allocation of decision rights within the network is an answer to a global principle found in any type of organization situated in a competitive environment, that is to say: how to meet external needs (for instance consumer demand) with the use of as less as possible resources ? The principles of efficiency and effectiveness are proposed to study this question.
On Convergence Property of Implicit Self-paced Objective

Self-paced learning (SPL) is a new methodology that simulates the learning principle of humans/animals to start learning easier aspects of a learning task, and then gradually take more complex examples into training. This new-coming learning regime has been empirically substantiated to be effective in various computer vision and pattern recognition tasks. Recently, it has been proved that the SPL regime has a close relationship to a implicit self-paced objective function. While this implicit objective could provide helpful interpretations to the effectiveness, especially the robustness, insights under the SPL paradigms, there are still no theoretical results strictly proved to verify such relationship. To this issue, in this paper, we provide some convergence results on this implicit objective of SPL. Specifically, we prove that the learning process of SPL always converges to critical points of this implicit objective under some mild conditions. This result verifies the intrinsic relationship between SPL and this implicit objective, and makes the previous robustness analysis on SPL complete and theoretically rational.
Factors Influencing Goal Attainment in Patients with Post-Stroke Upper Limb Spasticity Following Treatment with Botulinum Toxin A in Real-Life Clinical Practice: Sub-Analyses from the Upper Limb International Spasticity (ULIS)-II Study

In this post-hoc analysis of the ULIS-II study, we investigated factors influencing person-centred goal setting and achievement following botulinum toxin-A (BoNT-A) treatment in 456 adults with post-stroke upper limb spasticity (ULS). Patients with primary goals categorised as passive function had greater motor impairment (p < 0.001), contractures (soft tissue shortening [STS]) (p = 0.006) and spasticity (p = 0.02) than those setting other goal types. Patients with goals categorised as active function had less motor impairment (0.0001), contracture (p < 0.0001), spasticity (p < 0.001) and shorter time since stroke (p = 0.001). Patients setting goals for pain were older (p = 0.01) with more contractures (p = 0.008). The proportion of patients achieving their primary goal was not impacted by timing of first-ever BoNT-A injection (medium-term (≤1 year) vs. longer-term (>1 year)) post-stroke (80.0% vs. 79.2%) or presence or absence of severe contractures (76.7% vs. 80.6%), although goal types differed. Earlier BoNT-A intervention was associated with greater achievement of active function goals. Severe contractures impacted negatively on goal achievement except in pain and passive function. Goal setting by patients with ULS is influenced by impairment severity, age and time since stroke. Our findings resonate with clinical experience and may assist patients and clinicians in selecting realistic, achievable goals for treatment.
Public service motivation and willingness to collaborate: An examination in the context of homeland security

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to examine public service motivation (PSM) and the connection with collaborative attitudes among a sample of homeland security actors representing the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Design/methodology/approach - – This study examines relationships between measures of PSM and collaboration using original survey data and hierarchical multiple regression. Findings - – Findings reveal strong positive relationships between PSM measures and attitudes toward collaboration at the individual and organizational level. Research limitations/implications - – Survey results are cross-sectional and are from respondents participating in a single state's homeland security summit. Practical implications - – It is expected that results can be used to enhance collaboration at the individual and organizational levels. At the organizational level, results can be used for matching individuals with collaborative opportunities. At the individual level, results can be used for enhanced self-reflection and effectiveness purposes. Originality/value - – This study provides insights on the relationship between PSM measures and collaborative attitudes. The research contributes to the body of scholarly work connecting PSM and correlates of interest.
Adjacency based or Query Co-occurrence based Query Suggestion

Query suggestion attracts great concern recently. It is crucial for capturing frequently asked questions in question-answering system and most popular topics in search engine. Besides these, is also used in advertising retrieval systems, e-commerce system for advertising push to get more profits. The paper gives a general review of query suggestion methods. On the whole, all the methods can be grouped into two categories: session based methods and click-through based methods. Adjacency based query suggestion, co-occurrence based query suggestion, query-flow graph based query suggestion, clustering based query suggestion, and bipartite graph based query suggestion are presented respectively in detail. Furthermore, how to evaluate the performance of query suggestion is denoted. Finally the important related issues of the area in further research are discussed.
Responsiveness of Rural and Urban Land Uses to Land Rent Determinants in the U.S. South

Ricardian and von Thunen land rent models are combined into a single land use share model including farm, forest, and urban land uses. The land share model is applied to the Southern United States, and elasticities are extracted that measure land share response to changes in population, income, land values, prices, and costs in counties with different degrees of urbanizationT. he study explores the effect of treating either rural or urban land as a residual use. While this practice is common in existing land use studies, it is found to significantly affect parameter estimates in this county-level analysis.
Brain structure anomalies in autism spectrum disorder—a meta‐analysis of VBM studies using anatomic likelihood estimation

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are pervasive developmental disorders with characteristic core symptoms such as impairments in social interaction, deviance in communication, repetitive and stereotyped behavior, and impaired motor skills. Anomalies of brain structure have repeatedly been hypothesized to play a major role in the etiopathogenesis of the disorder. Our objective was to perform unbiased meta‐analysis on brain structure changes as reported in the current ASD literature. We thus conducted a comprehensive search for morphometric studies by Pubmed query and literature review. We used a revised version of the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach for coordinate‐based meta‐analysis of neuroimaging results. Probabilistic cytoarchitectonic maps were applied to compare the localization of the obtained significant effects to histological areas. Each of the significant ALE clusters was analyzed separately for age effects on gray and white matter density changes. We found six significant clusters of convergence indicating disturbances in the brain structure of ASD patients, including the lateral occipital lobe, the pericentral region, the medial temporal lobe, the basal ganglia, and proximate to the right parietal operculum. Our study provides the first quantitative summary of brain structure changes reported in literature on autism spectrum disorders. In contrast to the rather small sample sizes of the original studies, our meta‐analysis encompasses data of 277 ASD patients and 303 healthy controls. This unbiased summary provided evidence for consistent structural abnormalities in spite of heterogeneous diagnostic criteria and voxel‐based morphometry (VBM) methodology, but also hinted at a dependency of VBM findings on the age of the patients. Hum Brain Mapp, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Novel Approach for Generation of Panoramic View

Panoramic image stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a panorama. First, salient features are robustly detected from the input images by a robust algorithm called Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT). SIFT features are invariant to rotation, translation, image scaling and partially invariant to 3D viewpoint, illumination changes and image noise. These features are matched between the successive images and hence image transformation is estimated. Image blending technique is used to blend the images together to get a panoramic view. Potential applications of panoramic view include creating virtual environment for virtual reality, modeling the 3D environment using images acquired from the real world. KeywordsPanoramic view, SIFT, homography, image blending,
Prediction of Stock Market Index Movement by Ten Data Mining Techniques

Ability to predict direction of stock/index price accurately is crucial for market dealers or investors to maximize their profits. Data mining techniques have been successfully shown to generate high forecasting accuracy of stock price movement. Nowadays, in stead of a single method, traders need to use various forecasting techniques to gain multiple signals and more information about the future of the markets. In this paper, ten different techniques of data mining are discussed and applied to predict price movement of Hang Seng index of Hong Kong stock market. The approaches include Linear discriminant analysis (LDA), Quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), K-nearest neighbor classification, Naive Bayes based on kernel estimation, Logit model, Tree based classification, neural network, Bayesian classification with Gaussian process, Support vector machine (SVM) and Least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM). Experimental results show that the SVM and LS-SVM generate superior predictive performances among the other models. Specifically, SVM is better than LS-SVM for in-sample prediction but LS-SVM is, in turn, better than the SVM for the out-of-sample forecasts in term of hit rate and error rate criteria.
Adaptive power control of obstacle avoidance system using via motion context for visually impaired person

We propose adaptive power control of obstacle avoidance system for visually impaired person. It utilizes multiple ultrasonic sensors to avoid obstacles lying in the path. We evaluate complex structure in front of the user with predefined patterns and determine avoidance direction by analysing those patterns. It controls the number of active ultrasonic sensors by evaluating motion context using built-in accelerometer sensor. Our system safely guides visually impaired person as well as adaptively control power consumption of mobile devices.
The Impact of the 1986 Tax Reform Act on Personal Saving

Many critics believed that the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) would discourage saving. Yet personal saving rates have rebounded since 1987. This rebound might have been caused by a general decline in marginal tax rates on household saving. And we estimate, at least for the 1980s, a positive elasticity of saving with respect to the after-tax rate of return. But the tax changes alone cannot account for the recent upswing in saving rates. Furthermore, the positive saving elasticity during the 1980s is fleeting and fragile; during the entire postwar period the correlation between the after-tax rate of return and personal saving is at most zero. We also consider three alternative ways by which the Tax Reform Act could have affected personal saving. First, the cutbacks in IRA eligibility were viewed by some as discouraging saving. But conventionally measured personal saving increased after IRA enrollment plummeted in 1987. We show that this anomalous finding may be an artifact of how personal saving is measured, since a different measure - - the real change in household wealth - - grew strongly during the mid-l98Os, before leveling off after 1987. Second, the phasing out of personal credit interest deductions in TRA86 could have discouraged borrowing and thereby stimulated national saving. We find that wealthier taxpayers simply shuffled their personal credit loans into tax-deductible housing mortgages with little net effect on aggregate saving. Finally, saving could have been reduced in 1986 if taxpayers, rushing to realize capital gains before TRA86, spent their proceeds on bit-ticket consumption goods. We also find little evidence in favor of this view, although we do find much of the capital gains ended up in interest-bearing accounts. In sum, TRAB6 had more impact on the composition than on the overall level of saving.
What Do Talents Want? Work Expectations in India, China, and Germany

International talent management becomes increasingly important, because companies compete on a global scale for qualified employees. Finding highly educated talent, however, is difficult, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. This research investigates the work expectations of Chinese (N=404), Indian (N=588), and German (N=257) students, the talent group from which companies hope to recruit their future workforce. Incorporating their specific expectations is essential; if these expectations are not met, decreases in job satisfaction, commitment, and performance are likely. Using factor analytic techniques, we develop a scale that reliably measures students' work expectations. A two-factor structure was established and generality was assessed across countries, age, gender, and study level. Findings show that students from all countries share more similarities than cultural differences might predict. Nevertheless the subtleties provide essential insights for international talent management and call for more targeted recruitment and retention strategies.
Identifying Predators Using ChatCoder 2 . 0 Notebook for PAN at CLEF 2012

This article describes our experiments for the Sexual Predator Identification tasks at PAN2012. We have previously developed a software application, ChatCoder, for the identification of predatory posts in an online conversation. This paper extends this research to the detection of authors in addition to individual lines of text. We show that we were able to detect up to 98% of the predatory authors in the training data and 87% of the authors in the test set, using our fully automated system. Our recall is high, but it comes at a cost, as we return many false positives. This article describes our experimental method and results, and suggests improvements to our system that will improve precision without hurting recall.
Dynamic Programming and Fuzzy Classification for the Automatic Segmentation of the Carotid in Ultrasound Images

A new approach is proposed for the automatic detection of the near-end and far-end intima and adventitia inner boundaries in ultrasound images of the common carotid artery. This method uses the instantaneous coefficient of variation edge detector, fuzzy classification of edges, several discriminating features of the carotid wall boundaries and dynamic programming. The carotid wall boundaries are detected both in healthy and in atherosclerotic arteries, with a wide range of plaque types and sizes. Manual and automatic results are significantly better for the far-end wall, where the automatic detection shows an accuracy similar to manual detections. The application of this approach in clinical practice is encouraged by the results for the far-end wall and the short computation time.
Delay computation for real-time synchronization of speech and its converted text

Transmission of real-time text data integrated with other multimedia applications such as audio and video has raised the issues of compatibility and synchronization among these applications since a stringent quality of service (QoS) guarantee is especially critical for real-time traffic. In order to meet the real-time properties, text must be produced efficiently to integrate its transmission with other multimedia applications. Literature survey shows that the text for the real-time transmission can be produced by different input sources such as from handwriting recognition, voice recognition or it can be entered by human users from a keyboard or any other input method [1]. This paper presents an efficient way of producing text which to the best of our knowledge has not been previously explored. We propose to generate text from the recognition of the real-time voice in the source machine. We calculate the delay in the speech-recognition or speech-to-text conversion. Based on these statistics we suggest a buffer size to store the voice data until its respective text is generated. This enables us to transmit both voice and its converted text synchronously. We find, and show it graphically, that this delay is almost negligible and there is almost no queue formation in the buffer. Hence both of the applications can be transmitted instantly that is as they are available. This research is a reasonable advancement in the subject area.
Allocation of Stands and Cutting Patterns to Logging Crews Using a Tabu Search Heuristic

Abstract An algorithm that combines tabu search principles with a simple improvement- swapping heuristic has been developed for allocating stands and cutting patterns to logging crews for a single time period. A limited set of market and operational constraints has been included. Individual crew productivity has also been taken into account. The algorithm has been implemented in Visual Basic. Tests have been carried out on up to 60 stands, 10 logging crews, and seven cutting patterns. The “best” solutions have usually been found within a few hundred iterations.
Praana : A Personalized Desktop Filesystem

Owing to the absence of rich contextual cues, filesystem search has been full of noise, imprecision and very less recall. Contextual information in the form of annotations (tags defined by users or extracted from files) and data/process provenance would improve the personal search experience of the user. A filesystem architecture to support contextual desktop search is proposed. Implementation issues are also discussed.
The Idd4 Locus Displays Sex-Specific Epistatic Effects on Type 1 Diabetes Susceptibility in Nonobese Diabetic Mice

The nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse recapitulates many aspects of the pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes in humans, including inheritance as a complex trait. More than 20 Idd loci have been linked to type 1 diabetes susceptibility in NOD mice. Previously, we used linkage analysis of NOD crossed to the nonobese diabetes-resistant (NOR) strain and NOD congenic strains to map susceptibility to both spontaneous and cyclophosphamide-accelerated type 1 diabetes to the Idd4 locus on chromosome 11 that displayed a sex-specific effect on diabetes susceptibility. Here, we elucidate the complex genetic architecture of Idd4 by analysis of congenic strains on the NOD and NOR backgrounds. We previously refined Idd4.1 to 1.4 Mb and demonstrated an impact of this interval on type 1 interferon pathways in antigen-presenting cells. Here, we identify a second subregion, the 0.92 Mb Idd4.2 locus located telomeric to Idd4.1. Strikingly, Idd4.2 displayed a sex-specific, epistatic interaction with Idd4.1 in NOR.NOD congenic females that was not observed in syngenic males. Idd4.2 contains 29 genes, and promising candidates for the Idd4.2 effect on type 1 diabetes are described. These data demonstrate sex-dependent interaction effects on type 1 diabetes susceptibility and provide a framework for functional analysis of Idd4.2 candidate genes.
A Functional Approximation Based Distributed Learning Algorithm

Scalable machine learning over big data stored on a cluster of commodity machines with significant communication costs has become important in recent years. In this paper we give a novel approach to the distributed training of linear classifiers (involving smooth losses and L2 regularization) that is designed to reduce communication costs. At each iteration, the nodes minimize approximate objective functions; then the resulting minimizers are combined to form a descent direction to move. Our approach gives a lot of freedom in the formation of the approximate objective function as well as in the choice of methods to solve them. The method is shown to have O(log(1/ǫ)) time convergence. The method can be viewed as an iterative parameter mixing method. A special instantiation yields a parallel stochastic gradient descent method with strong convergence. When communication times between nodes are large, our method is much faster than the SQM method [7], which computes function and gradient values in a distributed fashion.
The Kauffman Index 2015: Startup Activity | National Trends

The Kauffman Index: Startup Activity is a novel early indicator of new business creation in the United States, integrating several high-quality sources of timely entrepreneurship information into one composite indicator of startup activity. The Index captures business activity in all industries, and is based on both a nationally representative sample size of more than a half million observations each year and on the universe of all employer businesses in the United States. This allows us to look at both entrepreneurs and the startups they create. Broad-based entrepreneurship in America appears to be slowly crawling its way out of the depths it has been stuck in since 2010. Startup activity rose in 2015, reversing a five-year downward trend in the United States, giving rise to hope for a revival of entrepreneurship. However, the return remains tepid and well below historical trends. A principle driver of this yearâ€™s uptick is the growth of male opportunity entrepreneurship, accompanied by the continued strength of immigrant entrepreneurship. Trends in entrepreneurship rates are analyzed for several additional demographic groups.
Physical layer security vs. network layer secrecy: Who wins on the untrusted two-way relay channel?

We consider the problem of secure communications in a Gaussian two-way relay network where two nodes exchange confidential messages only via an untrusted relay. The relay is assumed to be honest but curious, i.e., an eavesdropper that conforms to the system rules and applies the intended relaying scheme. We analyze the achievable secrecy rates by applying network coding on the physical layer or the network layer and compare the results in terms of complexity, overhead, and efficiency. Further, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the respective approaches.