Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Asphalt Pavement Construction: A Case Study in China

In China, the construction of asphalt pavement has a significant impact on the environment, and energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from asphalt pavement construction have been receiving increasing attention in recent years. At present, there is no universal criterion for the evaluation of GHG emissions in asphalt pavement construction. This paper proposes to define the system boundaries for GHG emissions from asphalt pavement by using a process-based life cycle assessment method. A method for evaluating GHG emissions from asphalt pavement construction is suggested. The paper reports a case study of GHG emissions from a typical asphalt pavement construction project in China. The results show that the greenhouse gas emissions from the mixture mixing phase are the highest, and account for about 54% of the total amount. The second highest GHG emission phase is the production of raw materials. For GHG emissions of cement stabilized base/subbase, the production of raw materials emits the most, about 98%. The GHG emission for cement production alone is about 92%. The results indicate that any measures to reduce GHG emissions from asphalt pavement construction should be focused on the raw materials manufacturing stage. If the raw materials production phase is excluded, the measures to reduce GHG emissions should be aimed at the mixture mixing phase.
Micro Reality Mining of a Cell Phone Usage Behavior: A General Bayesian Network Approach

Successful products and services result from a keen awareness of the micro motives and factors underlying consumer behavior in the real world. Similarly, the success of ubiquitous decision support systems is heavily dependent on the capability of micro-reality mining from consumer behavior data. Micro-reality mining is defined by the system's ability to extract a set of trivial but meaningful rules of action from consumer behavior data. This study is based on the hard fact that such trivialness leads to the macro behavior of consumers. As an example of successful micro-reality mining, this paper proposes a new method based on General Bayesian Network (GBN). Using MIT students' real life data, we applied GBN and obtained a set of causal relationships among a set of relevant variables. The what-if and goal-seeking simulations with the causal relationships supported by GBN allowed us to explore the usefulness of GBN-driven micro-reality data mining.
Community-based user recommendation in uni-directional social networks

Advances in Web 2.0 technology has led to the rising popularity of many social network services. For example, there are over 500 million active users in Twitter. Given the huge number of users, user recommendation has gained importance where the goal is to find a set of users whom a target user is likely to follow. Content-based approaches that rely on tweet content for user recommendation have low precision as tweet contents are typically short and noisy, while collaborative filtering approaches that utilize follower-followee relationships lead to higher precision but data sparsity remains a challenge. In this work, we propose a community-based approach to user recommendation in Twitter-style social networks. Forming communities enables us to reduce data sparsity as the focus is on discover the latent characteristics of communities instead of individuals. We employ an LDA-based method on the follower-followee relationships to discover communities before applying the state-of-the-art matrix factorization method on each of the communities. This approach proves effective in improving the conversion rate (by as much as 20%) as demonstrated by the results of extensive experiments on two real world data sets Twitter and Weibo. In addition, the community-based approach is scalable as the individual community can be analyzed separately.
Programmable Comparators Based Array for Regular QCA Implementation

The paper presents a novel universal quantum cellular automata (QCA) gate called boundary comparator. This gate implements a Boolean function in its boundary form, which is a superposition of elementary boundary functions i.e. a threshold function having weights equal to integer powers of 2. The boundary comparators are arranged in a form of array forming homogeneous programmable structure. The paper proposes a method of synthesis of Boolean functions on the base of boundary functions. The method uses autocorrelation values of the initial function for minimization of a number of bounds. The structures of the boundary comparator as well as the structure of the comparator-based array are presented. Benchmark results allow evaluating efficiency of the proposed structure in comparison with known QCA solutions.
MADE4: an R package for multivariate analysis of gene expression data

SUMMARY MADE4, microarray ade4, is a software package that facilitates multivariate analysis of microarray gene-expression data. MADE4 accepts a wide variety of gene-expression data formats. MADE4 takes advantage of the extensive multivariate statistical and graphical functions in the R package ade4, extending these for application to microarray data. In addition, MADE4 provides new graphical and visualization tools that aid in interpretation of multivariate analysis of microarray data.
Les usages du « temps » dans les recherches sur l’enseignement

Les perspectives praxeologiques, voire prescriptives, s’esquissant a partir de la question temporelle dans le champ scolaire sont nombreuses et heteroclites : allongement ou raccourcissement du temps d’enseignement, rationalisation du temps de travail des professeurs, individualisation des temps d’apprentissage des eleves, etc. Leitmotiv tenace, la thematique du temps surgit regulierement dans les discours sur l’ecole, suscitant a chaque fois d’intenses espoirs de changement. Le recensement des travaux menes a son propos fait apparaitre ce phenomene de repetition/recomposition. Il constitue egalement une etape indispensable a la clarification des fondements et des limites de l’entreprise visant a instituer le temps comme une variable-cle de l’amelioration du systeme d’enseignement.
Dissociable substrates for body motion and physical experience in the human action observation network

Observation of human actions recruits a well‐defined network of brain regions, yet the purpose of this action observation network (AON) remains under debate. Some authors contend that this network has developed to respond specifically to observation of human actions. Conversely, others suggest that this network responds in a similar manner to actions prompted by human and non‐human cues, and that one’s familiarity with the action is the critical factor that drives this network. Previous studies investigating human and non‐human action cues often confound novelty and stimulus form. Here, we used a dance‐learning paradigm to assess AON activity during observation of trained and untrained dance cues where a human model was present or absent. Results show that individual components of the AON respond differently to the human form and to dance training. The bilateral superior temporal cortex responds preferentially to videos with a human present, regardless of training experience. Conversely, the right ventral premotor cortex responds more strongly when observing sequences that had been trained, regardless of the presence of a human. Our findings suggest that the AON comprises separate and dissociable components for motor planning and observing other people’s actions.
Efficiency Enhancement in Organic Light-Emitting Devices With a Magnetic Doped Hole-Transport Layer

Magnetic field effects on tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum-based organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) by employing Fe3O4 as a magnetic dopant in the hole-transport layer (HTL) have been studied. The magnetic doped OLEDs exhibit efficient injection and transport of holes, and its performances are further enhanced after a magnetic field is applied. The enhancement of luminance and current efficiency of 20% and 24% has been obtained from the magnetic doped devices, while they are only 8% and 9%, respectively, for the nondoped devices under an applied magnetic field of 500 mT. Organic magnetoresistance induced by the magnetic doped HTL is the main origin of increased electroluminescence for the magnetic doped OLEDs.
Two-view facial movement estimation

This paper addresses the issue of two-view facial motion estimation for model-based facial image coding. A new approach to estimate the motion of the head and the facial expressions is presented, which can be viewed as a two-step procedure as compared with our previous approach. In this new approach M-estimation technique is used to eliminate the effect of the facial expressions on the estimation of the head movement. In this way the global head motion can be more reliably recovered. Once the global motion is obtained, the facial expressions can be estimated. Some experimental results on synthesized and real image sequences demonstrate the effectiveness of the new algorithm. >
Distributed Quota Enforcement for Spam Control

Spam, by overwhelming inboxes, has made email a less reliable medium than it was just a few years ago. Spam filters are undeniably useful but unfortunately can flag nonspam as spam. To restore email's reliability, a recent spam control approach grants quotas of stamps to senders and has the receiver communicate with a well-known quota enforcer to verify that the stamp on the email is fresh and to cancel the stamp to prevent reuse. The literature has several proposals based on this general idea but no complete system design and implementation that: scales to today's email load (which requires the enforcer to be distributed over many hosts and to tolerate faults in them), imposes minimal trust assumptions, resists attack, and upholds today's email privacy. This paper describes the design, implementation, analysis, and experimental evaluation of DQE, a spam control system that meets these challenges. DQE's enforcer occupies a point in the design spectrum notable for simplicity: mutually untrusting nodes implement a storage abstraction but avoid neighbor maintenance, replica maintenance, and heavyweight cryptography.
Cyclostationarity-based methods for the extraction of the channel allocation information in a spectrum pooling system

Spectrum pooling can be considered as a first step towards a fully dynamic spectrum allocation strategy. It allows a license owner to share a sporadically used part of his licensed spectrum with a renter system, until he needs it himself. For the smooth operation of a spectrum pooling scheme, the renter system has to monitor the channel and extract the channel allocation information (CAI), i.e. it has to detect which parts of the shared spectrum the owner system accesses, in order to immediately vacate the frequency bands being required by the license owner and to gain access to the frequency bands which the license owner has stopped using. This work presents and compares two methods based on exploiting the cyclostationary properties of the spectrum owner signal for the extraction of the CAI in a specific spectrum pooling scenario, where the license owner is a GSM network and the spectrum renter is an OFDM based WLAN system.
Roles of communication media in telework environments

In Japan, the continual rise in the number of people moving to Tokyo is causing various economic and social problems, including high office rents, housing shortages, traffic jams, and obligatory long-distance commuting. To try to curb this concentration in Tokyo, government agencies and private companies have set up projects and research groups to study distributing office space. We have been studying problems associated with communication between distributed offices in telework environments. In this paper, we analyze the characteristics and roles of communication media, based on our experience with distributed software development. First, we introduce our communication systems and analyze moving pictures within the video conferencing system to explore how such information is used. We then discuss the roles of media in remote personal communication. Finally, we propose how to evaluate the feasibility of video conferencing and other multimedia communication systems. <<ETX>>
Study of Interference Noise in multi-Kinect set-up

Kinect™, a low-cost multimedia sensing device, has revolutionized human computer interaction (HCI) by making various applications of human activity tracking affordable and widely available. Often multiple Kinects are used in imaging applications to improve the field of view, depth of field and uni-directional vision of a single Kinect. Unfortunately, multiple Kinects lead to IR Interference Noise (IR Noise, in short) in the depth map. In this paper we analyse the estimators for interference noise, survey various imaging techniques to mitigate the interference at source, and characterize them in parallel to a well-known classification system in telecom industry. Finally we compare their performance from reported literature and outline our on-going research to control interference noise by software shuttering.
On Driving Signal of Electronic Speed Controller for Small Multi-Rotor Helicopter

In this paper we experimentally investigate on relations between dynamic characteristics of thrust subsystem of small drones and driving signal of ESC (Electronic Speed Controller). As a case study, it is shown that with a fixed ESC firmware both driving mode and PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) frequency do not change the transfer function between ESC command and thrust force. In contrast, we also found that a different ESC firmware could significantly change the thrust dynamics.
Measuring the Quality of Life in the Workplace （QLW） Through Job Diagnostic Survey （JDS）： Comparative Study on Two Legal Nature Differentiated Organizations

The article presents a theoretical-empirical reflection about concepts, models, and practices of Quality of Life at Work (QLW) in organizations of different legal nature. The initial proposition of the research suggested that private organizations, that are more susceptible to competitive pressures in the market for resources and the uncertainties regarding the employability tend to have worse indicators of QLW than the public organizations that exhibit greater control over their influx of resources and greater stability in jobs that are offered. The literature review included the concepts and models of QLW as well as the characteristics and application methodology of the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS), and your score on Task Motivational Potential (TMP), as instruments of evaluating the dimensional indicators of QLW in organizations. In methodological terms, we proceeded to a multiple case study comparative, supported by the application of the reduced version of JDS, through its questionnaire that has already been validated in previous studies in two organizations, a private foundation supporting university and a public company of electricity supply, both located in the State of Amazonas-Brazil. The research findings using the JDS instrument indicated failed to detect significant differences between the scores of TMP between the two organizations, nor any robust correlation between their respective legal personalities and environments of institutional performance. Nevertheless, the small differences found suggest a framework of indicators of QLW slightly more favorable to the foundation of university support.
Motion pattern analysis in crowded scenes by using density based clustering

Video surveillance is always a hot topic in computer vision. With the public safe issue received more and more attention, analysis for crowd motion is becoming significant, and detecting motion patterns or activities in crowded scenes from videos is one of the major problem in crowd analysis. This paper proposes a new method for learning the motion patterns in crowded scenes. We add the direction information to the motion vectors, and cluster the data by a density based clustering. We extract the feature points using KLT corner extractor and track them to obtain basic motion information by optical flow techniques. All the motion information in different frames forms the motion flow field. Improved DBSCAN method is used to divide the motion flow filed into different patterns. The result of the system is given as a graph with groups of vectors. The experiment result in real-world videos is presented to demonstrate our approach.
Version Spaces and Rule-Based Configuration Management

We develop a rule-based method for representing version spaces of software products. The version information is expressed with version clauses that may be combined using conjunction and disjunction. A configuration model is divided into a database and a set of inference rules. The rules have a declarative semantics and they are implemented using the extended rule types of the S MODELS system.
Experimental comparison of voting algorithms in cases of disagreement

Voting algorithms are used to mask erroneous results from redundant subsystems (variants) in fault tolerant systems. While voting algorithms are well known and widely used, the authors are not aware of any detailed investigation of voter behaviour in the presence of multiple errors. The results of an experimental evaluation of seven voting algorithms in a variety of simulated error scenarios are reported. A software error injection approach is used to simulate multiple errors in a triple modular redundant configuration. The Majority and Plurality voters produce the lowest number of catastrophic errors, in these tests. The Median voter produces the largest number of correct results, but also produces the largest number of catastrophic errors. The Three Domain voter results show a compromise between the large number of correct results identified by the Median voter and the small number of catastrophic results produced by the Majority voter.
Combining String and Context Similarity for Bilingual Term Alignment from Comparable Corpora

Automatically compiling bilingual dictionaries of technical terms from comparable corpora is a challenging problem, yet with many potential applications. In this paper, we exploit two independent observations about term translations: (a) terms are often formed by corresponding sub-lexical units across languages and (b) a term and its translation tend to appear in similar lexical context. Based on the first observation, we develop a new character n-gram compositional method, a logistic regression classifier, for learning a string similarity measure of term translations. According to the second observation, we use an existing context-based approach. For evaluation, we investigate the performance of compositional and context-based methods on: (a) similar and unrelated languages, (b) corpora of different degree of comparability and (c) the translation of frequent and rare terms. Finally, we combine the two translation clues, namely string and contextual similarity, in a linear model and we show substantial improvements over the two translation signals.
Ethical Futures in Qualitative Research: Decolonizing the Politics of Knowledge

* 1. Introduction: Ethical Futures in Qualitative ResearchNorman K. Denzin and Michael D. Giardina, University of Illinois* 2. The pressing need for ethical educationThomas Schwandt, University of Illinois* 3. Challenges in ethical research practice in a context of global diversityCliff Christians, University of Illinois* 4. Research Regulation, Marginalized Peoples, and Constructing Ethical SystemsYvonna S. Lincoln, Texas A&M University, and Gaile S. Cannella, Arizona State University* 5. The Global Challenge: Research Ethics for Protecting Indigenous KnowledgeMarie Battiste, University of Saskatchewan* 6. Participatory Action Research, Critical Methods, and Indigenous KnowledgesMichelle Fine, Eve Tuck, and Sarach Zeller-Berkman, City University of New York Graduate Center* 7. Red Pedagogy and Qualitative InquirySandy Grande, Connecticut College* 8. Globalization, Resistance, and Qualitative ResearchCorrine Glesne, Independent Scholar* 9. Performing EthicsRonald Pelias, Southern Illinois University* 10. Toward an Ethics of MemoryArthur Bochner, University of South Florida* 11. Relational Ethics in Research with Intimate OthersCarolyn Ellis, University of South Florida* Coda: A Conversation on Qualitative Research Now and in the FutureArthur Bochner, University of South FloridaNorman K. Denzin, University of IllinoisCarolyn Ellis, University of South FloridaYvonna S. Lincoln, Texas A&M UniversityJan Morse, University of AlbertaRonald Pelias, Southern Illinois UniversityLaurel Richardson, The Ohio State University
A new clock synchronization algorithm for collaborative computing

This paper describes the analysis, implementation and performance of a new clock synchronization algorithm, which utilizes the physical properties of synthetic quartz crystals. Thus a very high accuracy (down to a few milliseconds) can be achieved. This algorithm adjusts itself to the preferences of the local quartz oscillator and dynamically to the changing environment conditions such as temperature, and humidity via a additional phase locked loop control loop. As the computing and bandwidth requirements could be kept pretty low, this algorithm could be very well used in mobile environment.
Integrating Taoist Yin‐Yang thinking with Western nomology

Purpose – This paper aims to relate Taoist Yin‐Yang thinking to Western nomology in terms of trust and trust building, seeking to explore the question of how trust impacts on conflict management.Design/methodology/approach – A moderating model of trust in conflict management is proposed. Investigations and observations using primary and secondary data are described. Three cases are presented to explain the moderating effects of adjusting activities and trust on conflict and negotiation.Findings – The proposed model was supported. The following findings have been obtained: keeping a balance between adjusting others and adjusting self is a key to resolving conflict; creating and retaining harmony is a bridge that leads both sides in conflict and negotiation to adjust themselves; taking indirect actions through relationships instead of by direct actions through power is a good way to trigger a state of harmony; and trust is shown to be the original driver and source that contribute to adapting actions, harmo.