Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inverse model approach to “online” performance enhancement for coal-fired power plant

This paper presents the control strategy of a fossilfuel power plant. In previous work, an advanced coordinated controller was synthesized to achieve stability with satisfying performances. This controller was implemented on-site leading to satisfactory results. However, mainly because of modeling uncertainties, the obtained performances could be non-optimal, with the risk of non-satisfaction of contract specification. In order to improve the plant behavior on-site, a new controller is added to the previous one. It consists in applying an additional control input computed from the error between the system output and a desired output trajectory. This Additional Inverse Model Controller (AIMC) is based on an inverse model of the plant and low-pass filters with small DC gain. The efficiency of the proposed control strategy is illustrated through realistic simulations and compared to the initial controller performance.
Neural fuzzy network and genetic algorithm approach for Cantonese speech command recognition

This paper presents the recognition of Cantonese speech commands using a proposed neural fuzzy network with rule switches. By introducing a switch to each rule, the optimal number of rules can be learned. An improved genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to train the parameters of the membership functions and the optimal rule set for the proposed neural fuzzy network. An application example of Cantonese command recognition in electronic books will be given to illustrate the merits of the proposed approach.
Distinct Properties of Stimulus-Evoked Bursts in the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus

Neurons in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the thalamus produce spikes that can be classified as burst spikes and tonic spikes. Although burst spikes are generally associated with states of sleep and drowsiness, bursts may also play an important role in sensory processing. This study explores the stimulus properties that evoke burst and tonic spikes and examines the reliability of LGN neurons to produce visually driven bursts. Using reverse-correlation techniques, we show that the receptive fields of burst spikes are similar to, but significantly different from, the receptive fields of tonic spikes. Compared with tonic spikes, burst spikes (1) occur with a shorter latency between stimulus and response, (2) have a greater dependence on stimuli with transitions from suppressive to preferred states, and (3) prefer stimuli that provide increased drive to the receptive field center and even greater increased drive to the receptive field surround. These differences are not attributable to the long interspike interval that precedes burst spikes, because tonic spikes with similar preceding interspike intervals also differ from burst spikes in both the spatial and temporal domains. Finally, measures of reliability are significantly greater for burst spikes than for tonic spikes with similar preceding interspike intervals. These results demonstrate that thalamic bursts contribute to sensory processing and can reliably provide the cortex with information that is similar to, but distinct from, that of tonic spikes.
The Influence of Technology Readiness and Interactivity on Consumers Behavior

A Multiple Media Kiosk (MMK) not only saves lots of cost for organization, but plays a role in innovating of self-service technology (SST). This research wanted to find factors of improving user intention in MMK by studying MMK in convenience stores in Taiwan, making more innovations in SST will come true in the future. This study used Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explain the behavior of using MMK, in the meantime, we premised that user experience to the internet service and the acceptance to the application of the new technology could also affect it in the multichannel and multimedia retailing environment. Final, confirming these relations by SEM was our research method in statistic. After analyzing data from Online-survey by AMOS, the results indicated that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (two factors in TAM) were significant influence on the behavior of using MMK, moreover, Technology Readiness also could be antecedent variable to the TAM.
Testing reliability of replay-based imitation for StarCraft

For StarCraft, it's easy to download lots of replays from gaming portals. Using simple tools, it's possible to extract all the gaming events stored in the replays. At each frame, it can tell us the human player's decision making given game states. Instead of making hard-coded AIs, it's promising to imitate the human player's decision recorded in the replays. In this study, we propose to create an AI bot imitates human player's high-level decisions (attack or retreat) on a group of units from replays. As a first step, we tested the reliability of the imitation system using replays from portals. We reported the ratio of apparent mistakes from the imitation system and the way to reduce the error.
Knowledge management systems: surveying the landscape

Knowledge management systems (KMS) are the tools and techniques that support knowledge-management practices in organizations. The study of these systems consists of a small but growing body of literature. In the last two years alone, at least four books, two special editions of journals and a number of academic and practitioner articles have been published related to this area. However, much of the work that has been published has been in the form of isolated survey studies, or anecdotal case studies into particular aspects of KMSs. This has made it difficult to build a cumulative body of knowledge into the development, use and management of these systems. The purpose of this paper is to ‘survey the current landscape’ of KMSs, and provide a framework for research into the development and use of these systems in organizations. The intent is to highlight areas where ‘gaps’ exist in what we know about KMSs and suggest ways to close those gaps.
Electron-Impact Widths and Shifts of B III 2p-2s Lines

In this paper, we present results for the relativistic quantum mechanical calculations of electron-impact line widths and shifts of 2p-2s transitions in doubly ionized boron (B III) ions. We use the Dirac R-matrix methods to solve (N + 1)-electron colliding systems for the scattering matrices that are required. The line widths are calculated for an electron density 1:81 × 1018 cm-3 and electron temperature 10:6 eV. The obtained results agree well with all the semiempirical calculations and most of the semiclassical calculations, and are closer to the experimental results published by Glenzer and Kunze (Glenzer, S.; Kunze, H.-J. Stark broadening of resonance transitions in B III. Phys. Rev. A 1996, 53, 2225–2229). Our line widths are almost twice as large as the earlier quantum mechanical calculations for the set of particular plasma conditions.
Effectively Fighting Common Spoofed and Unsolicited Packets via Lightweight Permits

One of key security issues on the current Internet is unwanted traffic, the forerunner of unauthorized accesses, scans, and attacks. It is vitally important but extremely challenging to fight such unwanted traffic. We need a series of defensive mechanisms to identify unwanted packets, filter them out, and further defeat their associated attacks. In this paper, we propose a lightweight, scalable packet authentication mechanism, named Lightweight Internet Permit System (LIPS), as a first line of defense to effectively filter out the most common forms of unwanted traffic, spoofed and unsolicited packets, such that in-depth security schemes can take care of the remaining issues more efficiently. LIPS is a simple extension of IP, in which each packet carries an access permit issued by its destination host or gateway, and the destination verifies the access permit to determine to accept or drop the packet. LIPS provides preliminary traffic-origin accountabilitythat supports two salient features to confine unwanted traffic: 1) filter out the most common forms of unwanted packets and defeat associated attacks; 2) help us identify compromised hosts/domains such that we are able to build active defense schemes to deal with various attacks through real-time inter-domain collaboration. In this paper, we first present the design and prototype implementation of LIPS on Linux 2.4 kernel, and then use analysis, simulations, and experiments to demonstrate the efficacy of LIPSin protecting critical resources with light overheads.
Effect of Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Patients with Resectable Colorectal Liver Metastases

Background Whether patients with resectable colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) receive survival benefit from neoadjuvant chemotherapy remains controversial. Methods We retrospectively analyzed 466 patients with resectable CRLM between 2000 and 2010. Patient characteristics and survival data were recorded. Results The patients were divided into one group with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (group NC, n = 121) and another without (group WN, n = 345). There was no difference in 5-year survival (52% vs. 48%) between the two groups. No significant differences were identified between the two groups in terms of 30-day mortality (1.7% vs. 1.2%) or morbidity (33.9% vs. 25.8%). A primary tumor at stage T4, ≥4 liver metastases, the largest liver metastasis ≥5 cm in diameter, and a serum CEA level ≥5 ng/ml were independent prognostic factors. By assigning one point to each, the patients were divided into a low-risk group (0–2) and a high-risk (3–4). The patients in the low-risk group received no survival benefit from neoadjuvant chemotherapy, whereas those in the high-risk group received survival benefit (5-year survival, 39% vs. 33%, P = 0.028). Conclusions Preoperative neoadjuvant chemotherapy did not increase mortality or complications. Not all resectable patients, only those with >2 independent risk factors, received survival benefit from neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
Learning Complexity : Agent-Based Modeling Supporting Education Research on Student Cognition in Social Contexts

We discuss an innovative application of computer-based simulations in the study of cognitive development. Our work builds on previous contributions to the field, in which theoretical models of cognition were implemented in the form of computer programs in attempt to predict human reasoning (Newell & Simon, 1972; Fischer & Rose, 1999). Our computer serves two distinct functions: (1) illustrate the Piagetian theoretical model and (2) simulate it departing from clinical interview data. We focused on the Piagetian conservation experiment, and collected and analyzed data from actual (not simulated) interviews with children from 4 to 10 years old. The interviews were videotaped, transcribed, and coded in terms of parameters of the computer simulation. The simulation was then fed these coded data. We were able to perform different kinds of experiments: 1) Playback the interview and the computer model side-by-side, trying to identify behavior
Automatic analysis of voice emotions in think aloud usability evaluation: a case of online shopping

Emotions elicited from interacting with technologies are fundamental components of user experience (UX). Two general approaches to measuring people’s emotional experiences exist: memory-based and moment-based. Whereas memory-based approaches are susceptible to the peak-end effect, moment-based approaches appear to better reflect the actual experiences of emotions. In this thesis, it is proposed that assessment of emotions of think aloud verbalisations is a moment-based approach for measuring emotional experiences. To evaluate the effectiveness of this approach, two independent user studies were conducted, respectively with 46 and 35 participants, in the domain of online shopping. In both studies, three assessment methods were applied for measuring emotional experiences: Self-reports, Vocal expressions (manual analysis), and Vocal Expressions (automatic analysis). Study 1 adopted machine learning (ML) approaches to analyse participants’ vocal expressions elicited during thinking aloud based on the discrete and dimensional models of emotions. While vocal analysis of verbal data was used as the momentbased approach, self-report questionnaires served as a means for the memory-based assessment. Results suggested that retrospective evaluations of emotions were significantly correlated with the most frequently elicited emotion (modal emotion) during the interaction. Study 2 expanded the extent of analysis of vocal expressions by taking a different set of ML techniques. Emotions were modelled by dimensional descriptors through binary pleasure (negative/positive), binary arousal (low/high) and ternary dominance (low/neutral/high). Results showed 66%, 70%, 41% recognition accuracy for Pleasure, Arousal and Dominance dimensions respectively. Moreover, elicited facial expressions were analysed to derive classification models to predict subjective self-reports. The main contribution of this thesis is the proposition and validation of an approach for automatic assessment of emotional experiences evoked during the think aloud protocol. Future work will investigate methods for improving the accuracy of automatic analysis, integration of multiple modalities (verbal and nonverbal) and different ML techniques in an actual automatic assessment tool.
A 75mW 50Gbps SerDes transmitter with automatic serializing time window search in 65nm CMOS technology

This paper presents a 50Gbps half rate SerDes transmitter with automatic serializing time window search. By implementing a serializing time window search loop, the serializing timing is guaranteed and circuits running at highest speed such as latches for retiming and clock tree buffers for delay matching are eliminated. Fabricated in 65nm CMOS technology, the transmitter running at 50Gbps consumes only 75mW power under 1.2V power supply. The total jitter of 50Gbps eye diagram is 9.8ps for 1e-12 BER.
Multi-User Quantum Key Distribution Using Wavelength Division Multiplexing

Quantum cryptography, or more specifically, quantum key distribution (QKD), has attracted a lot of attention in the recent years with the discovery that it can provide absolute secrecy for communications. We propose a new architecture for implementing a fiber-based network of quantum key distribution using optical wavelength division multiplexing in the fiber. We discuss the advantages over previous proposals and we report experimental work demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed architecture.
Irreversible Investment under Interest Rate Variability: Some Generalizations

We study the impact of interest rate and revenue variability on the decision to carry out irreversible investment. We provide a mathematical characterization of the two-dimensional optimal stopping problem and show that interest rate variability has a decelerating or accelerating impact on investment depending on whether the current interest rate is below or above the long-run steady state. Allowing for interest rate volatility decelerates investment by raising both the required exercise premium of the investment opportunity and the value of waiting. Finally, increased revenue volatility is shown to strengthen the negative impact of interest rate volatility and vice versa.
The effectiveness of computer-based speech corrective feedback for improving segmental quality in L2 Dutch

Abstract Although the success of automatic speech recognition (ASR)-based Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) systems is increasing, little is known about the pedagogical effectiveness of these systems. This is particularly regrettable because ASR technology still suffers from limitations that may result in the provision of erroneous feedback, possibly leading to learning breakdowns. To study the effectiveness of ASR-based feedback for improving pronunciation, we developed and tested a CAPT system providing automatic feedback on Dutch phonemes that are problematic for adult learners of Dutch. Thirty immigrants who were studying Dutch were assigned to three groups using either the ASR-based CAPT system with automatic feedback, a CAPT system without feedback, or no CAPT system. Pronunciation quality was assessed for each participant before and after the training by human experts who evaluated overall segmental quality and the quality of the phonemes addressed in the training. The participants' impressions of the CAPT system used were also studied through anonymous questionnaires. The results on global segmental quality show that the group receiving ASR-based feedback made the largest mean improvement, but the groups' mean improvements did not differ significantly. The group receiving ASR-based feedback showed a significantly larger improvement than the no-feedback group in the segmental quality of the problematic phonemes targeted.
The Classification of Spanish Adolescents Based on Substance Consumption Patterns and the Analysis of the Relationships within their Social Developmental Contexts

This research is part of the 2006 edition of the Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. The data presented were composed of a sample of 15942 Spanish adolescents ranging from 13 to 18 years of age. The instruments used included a variety of questions related to substance consumption among adolescents, their bio-psycho-social adjustment and developmental contexts, all of which are part of the HBSC study instrument bank. Through classification analysis, as well as significance and effect size tests, we obtained relevant information about the current epidemiology of substance consumption among Spanish adolescents. These results are representative of the Spanish adolescent population which allows the typical risk profile attributed to young people to be clarified. A gradual adjustment can be seen in terms of substance consumption levels in youth and that same level in their friends. Likewise, the analysis of the developmental context (family, friends and school) provides important information when it comes to preventing substance consumption, thus showing the advantages that coherence and connection have between the different environments where youth live, grow up and develop. Esta investigación forma parte de la edición 2006 del estudio Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC). Los datos que se presentan constituyen una muestra de 15942 adolescentes españoles de 13 a 18 años. Los instrumentos utilizados han sido diversas preguntas relacionadas con el consumo de sustancias, el ajuste biopsicosocial de los adolescentes y sus contextos de desarrollo, que forman parte del banco de instrumentos del estudio HBSC. Realizando análisis de clasificación, pruebas de significación y tamaños de efecto, se obtiene información relevante acerca de la epidemiología actual del consumo de sustancias en los adolescentes españoles. Se trata de resultados representativos de la población española que permiten matizar con detalle el perfil de riesgo típicamente atribuido a los jóvenes. Se demuestra una graduación en la relación entre el nivel de consumo de sustancias de los jóvenes y el nivel de consumo de sus amistades. Así mismo, el análisis de los contextos de desarrollo (familia, amistades y escuela) aporta información relevante a la hora de prevenir el consumo de sustancias, demostrando las ventajas que supone la coherencia y conexión entre los diferentes ámbitos donde los jóvenes viven, crecen y se desarrollan.
On Quantum Noncompression

This article presents a quantum transmission problem, in which Alice is trying to send a number of qbits to Bob. Alice has access to two channels, one that sends classical bits and another that sends quantum bits. We show that under certain error terms, Alice can optimize transmission, up to logarithmic precision, by sending only a classical description of the qbits.
The Role of Compliance in Robot Safety

In situations where robots share their workspace with humans, and where physical human-robot interaction is possible or even necessary, safety is of paramount importance. Low weight and passive compliance are often considered important aspects contributing to robot safety. In this paper, the role of passive compliance is investigated with respect to the safety of a 2-DOF pneumatically actuated arm. By combining measurements and impact simulations, the safety of the system is evaluated for a wide range of joint stiffnesses. It turns out that passive compliance plays a double role: it improves safety in some impact situations, but its capacity to store energy can also be dangerous.
Automatic Control of Mechatronic Systems

This contribution deals with different concepts of nonlinear control for mechatronic systems. Since most physical systems are nonlinear in nature, it is quite obvious that an improvement in the performance of the closed loop can often be achieved only by means of control techniques that take the essential nonlinearities into consideration. Nevertheless, it can be observed that industry often hesitates to implement these nonlinear controllers, despite all advantages existing from the theoretical point of view. On the basis of three different applications, a PWM-controlled dc-to-dc converter, namely the Cuk-converter, the problem of hydraulic gap control in steel rolling, and the design of smart structures with piezolelectric sensor and actuator layers, we will demonstrate how one can overcome these problems by exploiting the physical structure of the mathematical models of the considered plants.
Scheduling under Location and Time Constraints for Data Collection in Sensor Networks ( Work in Progress paper )

Unlike the traditional multihop forwarding approach, an alternative approach for data collection in sensor networks is to exploit the mobility: a mobile node travels through the sensor field and collects data from each sensor when it is at the proximity. In this paper, we define data mule scheduling problem and formulate it as a scheduling problem that has both location constraints and time constraints. We present some initial results on simple cases of data mule scheduling problem and suggest similarities with speed scaling problems such as DVS (Dynamic Voltage Scaling).
Building Dynamic Remote Attestation Framework

Remote attestation is an important mechanism to provide the trustworthiness proof of a computing system by verifying its inte grity. In this poster, we propose a dynamic remote attestation fram ework for efficiently attesting a target system based on an informa tion flow-based integrity model. With this model, the high integr ity processes of a system are first verified through measurements and these processes are then protected from accesses initiated by low integrity processes. Also, our framework verifies the lates t changes in a system’s new state, instead of considering the entire sy stem information. In addition, we adopt a graph-based method to rep resent integrity violations with a ranked violation graph, which s upports intuitive reasoning of attestation results. We also descri be our experiments and performance evaluation.