Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimal Coordinated Motions of Multiple Agents Moving on a Plane

We address the problem of optimal coordinated motions of multiple agents moving in the same planar region. The agents' motions must satisfy a separation constraint throughout the encounter to be conflict-free. The objective is to determine the conflict-free maneuvers (motions) with the least combined energy, while taking into account the fact that agents may have different priorities. A formal classification of conflict-free maneuvers into homotopy types is introduced by using their braid representation. Various local and global optimality conditions are derived through variational analysis in the presence of the separation constraint. In the case of two agents, these optimality conditions allow us to construct the optimal maneuvers geometrically. For the general multi-agent case, a convex optimization algorithm is proposed to compute within each homotopy type a solution to the optimization problem restricted to the class of multilegged maneuvers. Since the number of types grows explosively with the number of agents, a stochastic algorithm is suggested as the "type chooser," thus leading to a randomized optimization algorithm.
MODGRID – An environment in the WEB for the development and execution of spatial models in a Computational Grid

Collaboration among researchers is not found only in data exchange, but also in the interaction between the scientific models and their implementations, as well as in the aggregation of experiment programs and results. Besides, the researchers need an environment which renders possible the support of geographically distributed collaboration groups, to intensify the exchange of scientific resources. This work presents the MODGRID system, part of a technological infrastructure developed within the DESENSUS Project, where users can remotely access, share programs and data, as well as the scientific workflow and experiments definitions. Contribution of this work lies in studying how the proposed architecture can incorporate the database systems of current Computational Grid technologies.
Instability Phenomenain UnderloadedPacket Networks with QoSSchedulers

Instability in packet networks is normally associatedwith overload conditions, sincequeueingnetwork modelsshow that, in simpleconfigurations, only overload generatesinstability. However, someresultsshowing that instability can happen also in underloaded queueingnetworks appeared in the literatur e. Underload instabilities can be producedeither by customer routesthat visit several times the samequeues;or by variations of the customer service times at the different queues;or by complex schedulingalgorithms, that bear significant resemblanceto the Quality of Service (QoS) schedulersconsidered today for packet networks, and to the schedulingalgorithms usedin Input Queued(IQ) switches.Instability phenomenain networks of IQ switcheswere previously studied. In this paper, we study with fluid modelsand with adversarial queueingtheory the possibleunderload instabilities due to QoS schedulersin packet networks, focusingon strictpriority schedulers,aswell asGeneralizedProcessorSharing (GPS)schedulers. The considered scenariosalways refer to the caseof acyclic packet routes, and consider customer service times that vary only according to channelcapacities,sothat they model the approachesbeing currently considered to provide QoSin the Internet. Our (in)stability resultsare rather surprising: packet networks with strict-priority schedulersappear to be more robust than networks with GPSschedulers,whenever exact information on the effective averagepacket flow rates is not available.
SHREC’16 Track Large-Scale 3D Shape Retrieval from ShapeNet Core55

With the advent of commodity 3D capturing devices and better 3D modeling tools, 3D shape content is becoming increasingly prevalent. Therefore, the need for shape retrieval algorithms to handle large-scale shape repositories is more and more important. This track aims to provide a benchmark to evaluate large-scale shape retrieval based on the ShapeNet dataset. We use ShapeNet Core55, which provides more than 50 thousands models over 55 common categories in total for training and evaluating several algorithms. Five participating teams have submitted a variety of retrieval methods which were evaluated on several standard information retrieval performance metrics. We ﬁnd the submitted methods work reasonably well on the track benchmark, but we also see signiﬁcant space for improvement by future algorithms. We release all the data, results, and evaluation code for the beneﬁt of the community.
Collaborative Filtering via Concept Decomposition on the Netflix Dataset

Collaborative filtering recommender systems make automatic predictions about the interests of a user by collectin g information from many users (collaborating). Most recommendation algorithms are based in finding sets of customers or items whose ra tings overlap in order to create a model for inferring future ratin gs or items that might be of interest for a particular user. Traditional collaborative filtering techniques such as k-Nearest Neighbours and S i gular Value Decomposition (SVD) usually provide good accuracy bu t are computationally very expensive. The Netflix Prize is a colla borative filtering problem whose dataset is much larger than the previ ously known benchmark sets and thus traditional methods are stres sed to their limits when challenged with a dataset of that size. In t his paper we present experimental results that show how the concept decomposition method performs on the movie rating prediction task over the Netflix dataset and we show that it is able to achieve a well bal anced performance between computational complexity and predict ion accuracy.
Population and Conflict : Exploring the Links Defusing the Population Bomb : Is Security a Rationale for Reducing Global Population Growth ?

3 S cholars and policymakers alike focus most of their attention on proximate sources of violent conflict, giving short shrift to underlying, obscured, or complex causes. The Environmental Change and Security Program has historically offered a place for debating less prominent explanations and for examining conflict’s causal roots. We continue that tradition with these commentaries on links between population dynamics and conflict. Those seeking to understand war or population need to know: what role do population dynamics play in spurring, supporting, or explaining conflicts? The connection is not simple, however; a wide range of demographic relationships work in concert with a host of other factors, including the economy, the environment, and governance. But if we understand these relationships better, we may be able to defuse some population issues before they inflict more collateral damage in the world’s conflicts. ECSP Report asked five scholars to contribute commentaries summarizing their current research on the links between conflict and four key factors: density, age structure, sex ratio, and differential population growth. These commentaries, which seek to help non-experts navigate this complex territory, offer recommendations for policymakers and programmers working to prevent conflict and stabilize population growth. Henrik Urdal, who co-edited the July 2005 Journal of Peace Research issue devoted to the demography of conflict, presents his research’s surprising conclusion: at the national level, population growth, land scarcity, and urbanization do not have a great influence on patterns of war and peace, with a few exceptions.1 He encourages further research to explore the exceptions he found and suggests that subnational data might reveal the effects of local population pressure on conflict. The CIA’s National Intelligence Council (NIC) recently cited “youth bulge”—a large percentage of youth in a population—as one ingredient in a “perfect storm for internal conflict in certain regions. ” While the connection between youth and conflict is commonly accepted, Sarah Staveteig finds a more subtle measure of age structure can effectively predict insurgent-based civil wars. By studying the future relative cohort size—the difference in the number of young adults versus the number of older working adults—policymakers could develop policies to reduce the chances of such conflicts. The NIC’s report also expressed concern about the destabilizing effects of the pervasive “son preference” in Asian countries—notably China and India—that has produced a shortfall of an estimated 90 million women. Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer summarize their groundbreaking research into this troubling phenomenon and its impact on the likelihood of conflict. They warn policymakers that COMMENTARY
Interoperable Adaptive Multimedia Communication

The desire to gain access to rich, multimedia-based information anywhere, anytime grows enormously. To achieve such access, the research and standardization communities have launched an initiative called universal multimedia access (UMA). However, UMA tools and specifications that have so far emerged concentrate mostly on constraints imposed by terminals and networks along the multimedia delivery chain; users who consume the content are rarely considered. Researchers have developed a plethora of technologies and standards to address some of the issues. However, the big picture of how these different technologies and standards fit together is missing. Thus, the moving picture experts group (MPEG) decided to standardize the MPEG-21 multimedia framework with the ultimate goal to support users during the exchange, access, consumption, trade, or other manipulation of so-called digital items in an efficient, transparent, and interoperable way. Device and coding-format-independent multimedia content adaptation standardization committees such as MPEG, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) are exploring device and coding format independence issues. Here, however, we focus on how we can use the tools specified within MPEG-21 for interoperable multimedia communication.
A novel fractal UWB antenna for earthquake and tsunami prediction application (LETPA)

This paper presents a novelistic method of earthquake and tsunami forecasting system and the design and testing of UWB antennas for predicting applications. One of the most exciting applications which require the UWB antenna is wideband capturing of the electromagnetic waves for wireless communication. These antennas transmit lower short microwave pulses (ten picoseconds to nanoseconds) into the space and detect the differentiated scattering due to the dielectric constant between normal and abnormal earth and ocean beats. An UWB compact antenna array is employed to conduct a 3D scan through a so-called digital beam forming in space time domain.
Doomed Firms

Theoretical Issues: Introduction Precursors and challenges in the literature Failure of firms as process - a new modelling methodology. Empirical Issues - Towards a Dynamic Modelling of Financial Distress: The internal environment - the financial ratios The external environment - the impact of the macroeconomy Combining the impact of the internal and external factors on financial distress A dynamic model of financial distress - the path to failure. Discussion and Conclusions.
On the Consistency of Exact and Approximate Nearest Neighbor with Noisy Data

Nearest neighbor has been one of the simplest and most appealing non-parametric approaches in machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision, etc. Empirical studies show the resistance of k-nearest neighbor to noise, yet the theoretical understanding is not clear. This work presents the consistency analysis on exact and approximate nearest neighbor in the random noise setting. Our theoretical studies show that k-nearest neighbor, in the noise setting, gets the same consistent rate as that in the noise-free setting, which verifies the robustness of k-nearest neighbor to random noise. The nearest neighbor (1-NN), however, is proven to be biased by random noise. For approximate $k$-nearest neighbor, we first generalize the Johnson-Lindenstrauss lemma to infinite set, and based on this result, we show that the approximate $k$-nearest neighbor is also robust to random noise as that of the exact k-nearest neighbor, and achieves faster convergence rate yet with a tradeoff between consistency and reduced dimension. Specifically, approximate $k$-nearest neighbor with sharp dimensional reduction tends to cause large deviation from the Bayes risk.
Global dimming or local dimming?: Effect of urbanization on sunlight availability

From the 1950s to the 1980s, a significant decrease of surface solar radiation has been observed at different locations throughout the world. Here we show that this phenomenon, widely termed global dimming, is dominated by the large urban sites. The global‐scale analysis of year‐to‐year variations of solar radiation fluxes shows a decline of 0.41 W/m2/yr for highly populated sites compared to only 0.16 W/m2/yr for sparsely populated sites (<0.1 million). Since most of the globe has sparse population, this suggests that solar dimming is of local or regional nature. The dimming is sharpest for the sites at 10°N to 40°N with great industrial activity. In the equatorial regions even the opposite trend to dimming is observed for sparsely populated sites.
A hybrid architecture for working memory

This article responds to M. C. MacDonald and M. H. Christiansen’s 2002 commentary on the capacity theory of working memory (WM) and its computational implementation, the Capacity-Constrained Collaborative Activation–based Production System (3CAPS). The authors also point out several shortcomings in MacDonald and Christiansen’s proposal for the construal of WM, arguing that at some level of description, their model is a variant of a small subset of the 3CAPS theory. The authors go on to describe how the symbolic and connectionist mechanisms within the hybrid 3CAPS architecture combine to produce a processing style that provides a good match to human sentence comprehension and other types of high-level cognition. The properties of 3CAPS are related to the development of other connectionist, symbolic, and hybrid systems.
Folate status, vascular disease and cognition in elderly Canadians.

OBJECTIVE To report on the relationship between serum folate levels and the prevalence of stroke, peripheral vascular disease, cognitive problems and short-term mortality in elderly people. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS 1171 subjects whose serum folate was determined as part of their clinical examination in the Canadian Study of Health and Aging, a population study of individuals 65 years and older. METHODS Cross-sectional analysis compared relationships between serum folate levels and clinical features; longitudinal analysis examined mortality at follow-up by folate status at the time of the clinical examination. RESULTS Membership in the lowest quartile for serum folate was associated with an increased likelihood of stroke. Those with low folate levels were more likely to be demented, institutionalized and depressed. In the cognitively impaired but not demented group, those with low folate levels scored lower on the Modified Mini Mental State and had more short-term memory problems. CONCLUSIONS Low folate level was a significant explanatory variable for stroke. Low folate levels were common in all types of dementia and were associated with a history of weight loss, lower body mass index and lower serum albumin concentrations. This may reflect the reduced ability of cognitively impaired individuals to eat adequately.
Normative scores of the Cambridge Cognitive Examination-Revised in healthy Spanish population.

BACKGROUND The Cambridge Cognitive Examination-Revised (CAMCOG) is widely used in clinical, epidemiological and research studies, but normative scores for age and educational level have not yet been established in the Spanish population. METHOD The CAMCOG-R was administered to 730 adult members ofthe community, aged between 50-97 years, living throughout the region of Galicia. Initial screening yielded provisional identification of cognitive impairment and depressive symptoms. The final sample consisted of 643 cognitively healthy adults. The following instruments were administered: a questionnaire concerning socio-demographic and clinical data, the Charlson's Comorbidity Index, the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), the Lawton and Brody Index, a short version of the Geriatric Depression Scale, and the CASP-19 quality of life scale. RESULTS Internal consistency values of the CAMCOG-R were similar to those obtained for the original scale. The convergent validity between MoCA and CAMCOG-R was good, and the divergent validity between CASP-19 and CAMCOG-R was higher than the recommended value. Percentiles and inter-quartile range for age and educational level were calculated. CONCLUSIONS Psychometric indexes showed that the CAMCOG-R is a reliable and valid instrument, which can generally avoid a ceiling effect. The study findings confirm the importance of specifying the normative data by age and educational level.
Experimental model of intervertebral disc degeneration by needle puncture in Wistar rats

Animal models of intervertebral disc degeneration play an important role in clarifying the physiopathological mechanisms and testing novel therapeutic strategies. The objective of the present study is to describe a simple animal model of disc degeneration involving Wistar rats to be used for research studies. Disc degeneration was confirmed and classified by radiography, magnetic resonance and histological evaluation. Adult male Wistar rats were anesthetized and submitted to percutaneous disc puncture with a 20-gauge needle on levels 6-7 and 8-9 of the coccygeal vertebrae. The needle was inserted into the discs guided by fluoroscopy and its tip was positioned crossing the nucleus pulposus up to the contralateral annulus fibrosus, rotated 360° twice, and held for 30 s. To grade the severity of intervertebral disc degeneration, we measured the intervertebral disc height from radiographic images 7 and 30 days after the injury, and the signal intensity T2-weighted magnetic resonance imaging. Histological analysis was performed with hematoxylin-eosin and collagen fiber orientation using picrosirius red staining and polarized light microscopy. Imaging and histological score analyses revealed significant disc degeneration both 7 and 30 days after the lesion, without deaths or systemic complications. Interobserver histological evaluation showed significant agreement. There was a significant positive correlation between histological score and intervertebral disc height 7 and 30 days after the lesion. We conclude that the tail disc puncture method using Wistar rats is a simple, cost-effective and reproducible model for inducing disc degeneration.
Electrical Detection of C-Reactive Protein Using a Single Free-Standing, Thermally Controlled Piezoresistive Microcantilever for Highly Reproducible and Accurate Measurements

This study demonstrates a novel method for electrical detection of C-reactive protein (CRP) as a means of identifying an infection in the body, or as a cardiovascular disease risk assay. The method uses a single free-standing, thermally controlled piezoresistive microcantilever biosensor. In a commonly used sensing arrangement of conventional dual cantilevers in the Wheatstone bridge circuit, reference and gold-coated sensing cantilevers that inherently have heterogeneous surface materials and different multilayer structures may yield independent responses to the liquid environmental changes of chemical substances, flow field and temperature, leading to unwanted signal disturbance for biosensing targets. In this study, the single free-standing microcantilever for biosensing applications is employed to resolve the dual-beam problem of individual responses in chemical solutions and, in a thermally controlled system, to maintain its sensor performance due to the sensitive temperature effect. With this type of single temperature-controlled microcantilever sensor, the electrical detection of various CRP concentrations from 1 μg/mL to 200 μg/mL was performed, which covers the clinically relevant range. Induced surface stresses were measured at between 0.25 N/m and 3.4 N/m with high reproducibility. Moreover, the binding affinity (KD) of CRP and anti-CRP interaction was found to be 18.83 ± 2.99 μg/mL, which agreed with results in previous reported studies. This biosensing technique thus proves valuable in detecting inflammation, and in cardiovascular disease risk assays.
A categorisation model for distributed virtual environments

Summary form only given. Although existing for many years, distributed virtual environments (DVEs) have only recently started to become widely implemented. With an increasing adoption rate, understanding the constitution of DVEs is of significant importance. One of the largest problems facing current DVE development is a lack of order. In an attempt to provide order to the area, we present a categorisation model for DVEs of significant complexity, represented as a multidimensional categorisation structure. From the highest level, the categorisation model is broken into two subspaces for categorisation: issues that may be perceived with no knowledge of a DVE's internal operation and those with a tight coupling to implementation specifics. Participant observable issues are further categorised with the axes of purpose, multimedia output, user interactions and time/timescales. In turn, implementation issues are further categorised into the axes of distribution, security, scalability, data and state synchronisation. Existing work provides insight into pertinent issues for constructing DVEs, however little has been done to: facilitate groupings of current implementations in a complex, multidimensional structure that places the many implementation efforts in some logical perspective; or identify areas that have been well researched and those in which research is lacking. We address some of these needs.
Harm Reduction

Abstract A practical antidote to the war on drugs, the harm reduction approach seeks to meet clients where they are, establish rapport and help them modify or give up their risk-taking behavior. This article presents the case for harm reduction techniques for work with youth whose risk-taking behavior is problematic. Emphasis is on drinking, drug use, and high-risk sexual activity.
A Data Mining Methodology for Evaluating Maintainability according to ISO / IEC-9126 Software Engineering-Product Quality Standard

This paper presents ongoing work on using data mining to evaluate a software system’s maintainability according to the ISO/IEC-9126 quality standard. More specifically it proposes a methodology for knowledge acquisition by integrating data from source code with the expertise of a software system’s evaluators A process for the extraction of elements from source code and Analytical Hierarchical Processing for assigning weights to these data are provided; K-Means clustering is then applied on these data, in order to produce system overviews and deductions. The methodology is evaluated on Apache Geronimo, a large Open Source Application Server; results are discussed and conclusions are presented together with directions for future work.