Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enabling fast failure recovery in OpenFlow networks

OpenFlow is a novel technology designed at Stanford University which aims at decoupling the controller software from the forwarding hardware of a router or switch. The OpenFlow concept is based on the approach that the forwarding information base (FIB) of a switch can be programmed via a controller which resides at a separate hardware. The goal is to provide a standardized open management interface to the forwarding hardware of a router or switch. The aim of a project SPARC “SPlit ARchitecture Carrier grade networks” is to deploy OpenFlow in carrier grade networks. Reliability is a major issue to deploy OpenFlow in this networks. This work proposes the addition of a fast restoration mechanism in OpenFlow and evaluates the performance by comparing the switchover time and packet loss to existing restoration options in a current OpenFlow implementation.
Glottal Excitation Feature based Gender Identification System using Ergodic HMM

In this paper, through different experimental studies it is demonstrated that the time varying glottal excitation component of speech can be exploited for text independent gender recognition studies. Linear prediction (LP) residual is used as a representation of excitation information in speech. The gender-specific information in the excitation of voiced speech is captured using the Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The decrease in the error during training and recognizing genders during testing phase close to 100 % accuracy demonstrates that the excitation component of speech contains gender-specific information and is indeed being effectively captured by continuous Ergodic HMM. A gender recognition study using gender specific features for different HMM states, mixture components, size of testing data on the performance of the gender recognition is evaluated. We demonstrate the gender recognition studies on TIMIT database. KeywordsGender, Hidden Markov Model (HMM); LPC; MFCC
Male Batterer Parenting Attitudes

Objective: The purpose of the study was to investigate the differences between intimate partner violence (IPV) and parenting attitudes by race by comparing demographic, parenting, and IPV indicators for African American and White men. Method: The study employed a nonequivalent, control group design in a secondary analysis of 111 men. Results: Analyses indicated that (1) African American men had more children; (2) chi-square tests revealed no statistically significant differences between African American and Caucasian men with respect to IPV perpetration and parenting attitudes; and (3) a logistic regression model indicated that the number of children and a higher risk category for parenting attitudes were significant predictors of race group membership. Conclusion: These findings reveal that having more children is related to a higher level of stress on intimate partner relationships, and these stressors are not evenly distributed across racial groups. Batterer intervention programs should include parenting skills to help perpetrators better cope with such stresses.
Motivating and Modeling SIP Offload

Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is one building block for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and Next Generation Network (NGN), and is becoming ubiquitous in Internet telephony services. Therefore, the performance issue of SIP servers is becoming crucial. In this paper, SIP stack processing is identified to be CPU-bound in nature and dominates the system overhead for common SIP server scenarios. These facts provide motivations for the idea of SIP offload. We also find that current protocol offload models have not considered program parallelism and can not analyze throughput and latency in together, which makes them difficult to apply to SIP offload. Therefore, a new model is proposed based on 7 ratios capturing fundamental properties of the protocol stack and offload scheme. The model can be applied in prediction of performance gains, selection of parameters for adaptive offloading schemes, and estimation of software or hardware characteristics using observed performance results.
An Analysis of Multinational Corporations' Corporate Social Responsibility Strategies in China from an Institutional, Stakeholder and Social Contract Perspective

This paper combines institutional, stakeholder and social contract perspectives to develop a framework for analyzing the strategies of multinational corporations (MNCs) in developed countries in respect of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in China. The paper first discusses the contention that due to institutional differences between China and developed countries, MNCs will have different CSR strategies in China than in their home countries. Then there is an analysis of the stakeholder perceptions to identify what are the main factors MNCs need to address in their CSR practices in China. Evidence suggests that Chinese stakeholders have different expectations for CSR practices in China due to institutional differences and social, cultural and economic development differences. This study offers new insights into the factors that lead to successful CSR practices in China, suggesting that adoption of a social contract perspective may allow MNCs to take a more proactive approach.
The method of simulated scores for the estimation of LDV models

The method of simulated scores (MSS) is presented for estimating limited dependent variables models (LDV) with flexible correlation structure in the unobservables. We propose simulators that are continuous in the unknown parameter vectors, and hence standard optimization methods can be used to compute the MSS estimators that employ these simulators. The first continuous method relies on a recursive conditioning of the multivariate normal density through a Cholesky triangularization of its variance-covariance matrix. The second method combines results about the conditionals of the multivariate normal distribution with Gibbs resampling techniques. We establish consistency and asymptotic normality of the MSS estimators and derive suitable rates at which the number of simulations must rise if biased simulators are used.
Audio visual speech recognition in noisy visual environments

Speech recognition is a natural means of interaction for a human with a smart assistive environment. In order for this interaction to be effective, such a system should attain a high recognition rate even under adverse conditions. Audio-visual speech recognition (AVSR) can be of help in such environments, especially under the presence of audio noise. However the impact of visual noise to its performance has not been studied sufficiently in the literature. In this paper, we examine the effects of visual noise to AVSR, reporting experiments on the relatively simple task of connected digit recognition, under moderate acoustic noise and a variety of types of visual noise. The latter can be caused by either faulty sensors or video signal transmission problems that can be found in smart assistive environments. Our AVSR system exhibits higher accuracy in comparison to an audio-only recognizer and robust performance in most cases of noisy video signals considered.
On solving multi-type line planning problems

An important strategic element in the planning process of a railway operator is the development of a line plan, i.e. a set of routes (paths) on the network of tracks, operated at a given hourly frequency. The models described in the literature have thus far considered only lines that halt at all stations along their route. In this paper we introduce several models for solving line planning problems in which lines can have diÂ®erent halting patterns. Correctness and equivalence proofs for these models are given, as well as an evaluation using several real life instances.
Hyperpectral Images : Compression , Visualization and Band Ordering

Airborne and space-borne acquired hyperspectral images are used to recognize objects and to classify materials on the surface of the earth. The state of the art compressor for lossless compression of hyperspectral images is the SLSQ compressor. In this paper we discuss hyperspectral image compression: we show how to visualize each band of an hyperspectral image and how this visualization suggests that an appropriate band ordering can lead to improvements in the compression process. Our preliminary experiments with band ordering show the potential of a 3 to 5% improvement in the SLSQ
makeSense: Real-world Business Processes through Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been a promising technology for quite some time. Their success stories are, however, restricted to environmental monitoring. In the industrial domain, their adoption has been hampered by two main factors. First, there is a lack of integration of WSNs with business process modeling languages and back-ends. Second, programming WSNs is still challenging as it is mainly performed at the operating system level. To this end, we provide the makeSense framework, a unified programming framework and a compilation chain that, from high-level business process specifications, generates code ready for deployment on WSN nodes. In this paper, we present the makeSense framework and the application scenario for our final deployment.
Right-brain affect regulation: An essential mechanism of development, trauma, dissociation, and psychotherapy.

THERE IS CURRENTLY AN increasing awareness, indeed a palpable sense, that a number of clinical disciplines are undergoing a signifi cant transformation, a paradigm shift. A powerful engine for the increased energy and growth in the mental health fi eld is our ongoing dialogue with neighboring disciplines, especially developmental science, biology, and neuroscience. This mutually enriching interdisciplinary communication is centered on a common interest in the primacy of affect in the human condition. Psychological studies on the critical role of emotional contact between humans are now being integrated with biological studies on the impact of these relational interactions on brain systems that regulate emotional bodily based survival functions. By defi nition, a paradigm shift occurs simultaneously across a number of different fi elds, and it induces an increased dialogue between the clinical and applied sciences. This transdisciplinary shift is articulated by Richard Ryan in a recent editorial of the journal Motivation and Emotion:
A novel framework for robust video streaming based on H.264/AVC MGS coding and unequal error protection

We present a novel framework to provide robust video streaming service over time-varying error-prone network. The scheme is based on the medium granularity scalability (MGS) video coding of the H.264/AVC standard, which adopts a hierarchical prediction structure for the group-of-pictures (GOP). We determine the optimal allocation of protection strength for different network abstraction layer (NAL) units according to their individual importance to the end-to-end video quality. To analyse the importance of the NAL units, we emulate the error concealment if one frame is considered as lost and take into account the propagation distortion within the GOP. An efficient algorithm is proposed to account for the non-convex rate-distortion characteristics associated with the NAL units in the hierarchical GOP. With this framework, we can provide robust video streaming for the range of packet loss rates from 0% to 40% with about 30% additional channel bit-rate for the channel coding. The simulation results demonstrate high flexibility and efficiency of the proposed framework, which can effectively prevent frequent loss of frames.
The influence of curriculum on master’s students’ perceived abilities in four domains of graduateness

Abstract Potentially all university graduates, regardless of the discipline they have studied, are expected to have obtained generic learning outcomes, which we refer to as ‘graduateness’. This study investigates the extent to which learning programmes’ emphasis on graduateness affects students’ perceived abilities in the domains of graduateness. Four domains of graduateness are considered: reflective thinking, scholarship, moral citizenship and lifelong learning. Based on curriculum maps, master’s programmes were clustered according to the emphasis placed on each domain. Unexpectedly, there appeared to be no difference in students’ perceived competence in the four domains of graduateness between master’s programmes that placed little to no emphasis on reflective thinking, moral citizenship or lifelong learning and master’s programmes that placed more emphasis on these domains. Only in the scholarship domain was a difference found in students’ perceived competence; surprisingly, it was in the opposite direction. In conclusion, we can say that the relation between emphasis on the domains of graduateness and students’ perceived abilities in these domains were not found across a large sample of study programmes.
Twisted Recurrent Network for Named Entity Recognition

Named entity recognition Recognizing entities in sentences is one basic task in natural language understanding. It is often a prerequisite step in larger problems such as question answering, conversation, voice search, etc. Given a sequence of text tokens, a named entity recognizer (NER) shall identity the chunks of tokens that belongs to predefined category of entities such as persons and organizations. NER problem is formulated as to produce a sequence of entity labels, one for every token in the sentence.
Coping skills training for adolescents at school

Abstract This study investigates the effect of a coping skills program “The Best of Coping” on adolescents’ coping style and self-efficacy and highlights a model of program delivery through the collaboration of school staff and a school psychologist Eighty-eight adolescents were recruited from a Melbourne suburb and divided into treatment and control groups, with the treatment group receiving the program. All participants completed the Adolescent Coping Scale and Perceived Control of Internal States questionnaires prior to and after the program was conducted. Results showed significant decreases in nonproductive coping and increases in self-efficacy for the treatment group postprogram and a trend indicating increases in productive coping. The findings are discussed with regard to the need to implement programs that can teach adolescents optimism and problem-solving skills so that they may handle problems and stressors more effectively. With the increase in depression and suicide rates, the need to provide school based programs is discussed, with particular emphasis placed on program implementation by collaboration of the school psychologist with teachers.
Towards integral binary execution: implementing oblivious hashing using overlapped instruction encodings

Executing binaries without interference by an outside adversary has been an ongoing duel between protection methods and attacks. Recently, an efficient kernel-patch attack has been presented against commonly used self-checking code techniques that use checksumming ahead of execution. While methods based on self-modifying code can defend against this attack, such techniques depend on low-level architectural details and may not be practical in the long run. An alternative defense is to use oblivious hashing (OH). Instead of checking code integrity prior to execution, OH can verify untampered runtime behavior continuously. However, earlier OH approaches have some weaknesses, particularly with binary code: Physical instruction bytes cannot be easily checked during execution, and an attacker may be able to detect and remove OH checks, since OH alone does not provide tamper-resistance or obfuscation. In our approach, we deliberately overlap a program's basic blocks so that they share instruction bytes. This increases tamper-resistance implicitly because malicious modifications affect multiple instructions simultaneously. Also, our scheme facilitates explicit anti-tampering checks via injection of OH instructions overlapped with target code, enabling OH that can verify integrity of both runtime state and executing instructions. Thus, our method addresses anti-checksum attacks without resorting to self-modifying code, and also extends OH to verify physical code, not only program state. In addition, overlapping facilitates resistance against disassembly and decompilation. Our approach works on processor architectures and byte-codes that support variable-length instructions. To our knowledge, this is the first technique that blends tamper-resistance into architecture and therefore significantly improves robustness of binaries.
Psychosocial predictors of BRCA counseling and testing decisions among urban African-American women.

Genetic counseling and testing for mutations in XXX (BRCA)1/2 genes that increase breast cancer susceptibility potentially offer a number of benefits (e.g., more informed decision making regarding breast cancer prevention options) but also raise potential problems (e.g., issues of discrimination). However, the literature suggests that African-American women underuse genetics-related services. Therefore, the primary aim of the current study was to investigate predictors of the use of genetic counseling and testing for breast cancer susceptibility in this population. Participants were 76 African-Americans at increased risk for breast cancer attributable to their family history of the disease. Participants were recruited from an urban cancer screening clinic and completed measures assessing sociodemographic information, breast cancer knowledge, breast cancer-specific emotional distress, and perceived benefits of and barriers to BRCA testing. Free BRCA counseling and testing were offered to all interested participants, and measures were completed before counseling sessions. On the basis of their subsequent acceptance or refusal of these services, participants were described as having either: (a) declined BRCA-related genetic counseling (GC-); (b) participated in genetic counseling but refused genetic testing (GC+GT-); or (c) participated in both genetic counseling and testing (GC+GT+). Results revealed that participants who declined counseling had significantly less knowledge of breast cancer genetics than those who accepted both counseling and testing. No differences emerged among the three groups in terms of perceived benefits of testing. However, participants declining counseling demonstrated significantly higher perceived barrier scores compared with those accepting counseling and testing. Specifically, those who did not participate in counseling reported greater anticipation of negative emotional responses to testing and more concern about stigmatization, whereas those who underwent both counseling and testing had significantly lower family-related guilt. Finally, cancer-specific distress was positively associated with participation in counseling, regardless of participation in testing. The current findings underscore the need for refinement of outreach and intervention efforts that both increase awareness of BRCA counseling and testing among African-American women and provide information to those considering these options.
The herpesviral Fc receptor fcr-1 down-regulates the NKG2D ligands MULT-1 and H60

Members of the α- and β-subfamily of herpesviridae encode glycoproteins that specifically bind to the Fc part of immunoglobulin (Ig)G. Plasma membrane resident herpesviral Fc receptors seem to prevent virus-specific IgG from activating antibody-dependent effector functions. We show that the mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV) molecule fcr-1 promotes a rapid down-regulation of NKG2D ligands murine UL16-binding protein like transcript (MULT)-1 and H60 from the cell surface. Deletion of the m138/fcr-1 gene from the MCMV genome attenuates viral replication to natural killer (NK) cell response in an NKG2D-dependent manner in vivo. A distinct N-terminal module within the fcr-1 ectodomain in conjunction with the fcr-1 transmembrane domain was required to dispose MULT-1 to degradation in lysosomes. In contrast, down-modulation of H60 required the complete fcr-1 ectodomain, implying independent modes of fcr-1 interaction with the NKG2D ligands. The results establish a novel viral strategy for down-modulating NK cell responses and highlight the impressive diversity of Fc receptor functions.
Spatial Scaling of Environmental Variables Improves Species-Habitat Models of Fishes in a Small, Sand-Bed Lowland River

Habitat suitability and the distinct mobility of species depict fundamental keys for explaining and understanding the distribution of river fishes. In recent years, comprehensive data on river hydromorphology has been mapped at spatial scales down to 100 m, potentially serving high resolution species-habitat models, e.g., for fish. However, the relative importance of specific hydromorphological and in-stream habitat variables and their spatial scales of influence is poorly understood. Applying boosted regression trees, we developed species-habitat models for 13 fish species in a sand-bed lowland river based on river morphological and in-stream habitat data. First, we calculated mean values for the predictor variables in five distance classes (from the sampling site up to 4000 m up- and downstream) to identify the spatial scale that best predicts the presence of fish species. Second, we compared the suitability of measured variables and assessment scores related to natural reference conditions. Third, we identified variables which best explained the presence of fish species. The mean model quality (AUC = 0.78, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) significantly increased when information on the habitat conditions up- and downstream of a sampling site (maximum AUC at 2500 m distance class, +0.049) and topological variables (e.g., stream order) were included (AUC = +0.014). Both measured and assessed variables were similarly well suited to predict species’ presence. Stream order variables and measured cross section features (e.g., width, depth, velocity) were best-suited predictors. In addition, measured channel-bed characteristics (e.g., substrate types) and assessed longitudinal channel features (e.g., naturalness of river planform) were also good predictors. These findings demonstrate (i) the applicability of high resolution river morphological and instream-habitat data (measured and assessed variables) to predict fish presence, (ii) the importance of considering habitat at spatial scales larger than the sampling site, and (iii) that the importance of (river morphological) habitat characteristics differs depending on the spatial scale.
Parametric multi-level tiling of imperfectly nested loops

Tiling is a crucial loop transformation for generating high performance code on modern architectures. Efficient generation of multi-level tiled code is essential for maximizing data reuse in systems with deep memory hierarchies. Tiled loops with parametric tile sizes (not compile-time constants) facilitate runtime feedback and dynamic optimizations used in iterative compilation and automatic tuning. Previous parametric multi-level tiling approaches have been restricted to perfectly nested loops, where all assignment statements are contained inside the innermost loop of a loop nest. Previous solutions to tiling for imperfect loop nests have only handled fixed tile sizes. In this paper, we present an approach to parametric multi-level tiling of imperfectly nested loops. The tiling technique generates loops that iterate over full rectangular tiles, making them amenable to compiler optimizations such as register tiling. Experimental results using a number of computational benchmarks demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed tiling approach.