Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regime Learning in Global Environmental Governance

An increasingly complex governance architecture has become a major characteristic of current global environmental governance, often resulting in different degrees of complexity and fragmentation within global environmental regimes. Social learning processes are introduced by scholars and policy makers alike as management approaches for governing complex dynamic systems in situations that feature a high degree of complexity and uncertainty. Scholars argue that actors in complex environmental issue areas can learn in their social context and could develop the necessary knowledge, attitudes and behaviour to enhance their capacity to effectively address the environmental problem. This is where this article picks up the discussion and assesses the impact of a regime's complexity on its learning capabilities. It further identifies major drivers and barriers of regime learning processes in international environmental regimes.
The Effects of Social Comparison and Objective Feedback on Work Performance Across Different Performance Levels

ABSTRACT This study investigated the interaction effects of feedback content type (social comparison feedback vs. objective feedback) and two different performance levels (high vs. low) on work performance. One hundred fifty participants were recruited and asked to perform a simulated work task in a preliminary session. Based on their performance, the upper 40% (high performance) and lower 40% (low performance) groups were selected for the main experiment. Participants in each group were randomly assigned to the two different experimental conditions: objective feedback and social comparison feedback. For the participants in the objective feedback condition, information on the number of correctly completed work tasks was provided. For the participants in the social comparison feedback condition, rank information on their performance was provided. The results indicated that social comparison feedback was more effective than objective feedback for the high performers, but was less effective for the low performers.
Differential Radon Transform for gait recognition

Experimental studies have proved that high frequency components have the maximum contribution in silhouette-based gait recognition. The Radon Transform (RT), used in gait analysis for its ability to compute useful directional projections, fails to capture the necessary high frequency content of images. In this paper we present the Differential Radon Transform (DiffRT) - a novel adaptation of the standard RT designed to extract such high frequency information efficiently. The proposed transform is used to extract a set of features from gait silhouettes. We provide both theoretical and experimental evidence that DiffRT can indeed collect the important image information to facilitate gait-based human recognition. Averaged silhouettes from USF database are used for performance evaluation following the gait challenge framework. Our proposed method achieves high recognition accuracy and outperforms several state-of-the- art algorithms.
Protocol Dependence of Sequencing-Based Gene Expression Measurements

RNA Seq provides unparalleled levels of information about the transcriptome including precise expression levels over a wide dynamic range. It is essential to understand how technical variation impacts the quality and interpretability of results, how potential errors could be introduced by the protocol, how the source of RNA affects transcript detection, and how all of these variations can impact the conclusions drawn. Multiple human RNA samples were used to assess RNA fragmentation, RNA fractionation, cDNA synthesis, and single versus multiple tag counting. Though protocols employing polyA RNA selection generate the highest number of non-ribosomal reads and the most precise measurements for coding transcripts, such protocols were found to detect only a fraction of the non-ribosomal RNA in human cells. PolyA RNA excludes thousands of annotated and even more unannotated transcripts, resulting in an incomplete view of the transcriptome. Ribosomal-depleted RNA provides a more cost-effective method for generating complete transcriptome coverage. Expression measurements using single tag counting provided advantages for assessing gene expression and for detecting short RNAs relative to multi-read protocols. Detection of short RNAs was also hampered by RNA fragmentation. Thus, this work will help researchers choose from among a range of options when analyzing gene expression, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Side-chain rotamer changes upon ligand binding: common, crucial, correlate with entropy and rearrange hydrogen bonding

Motivation: Protein movements form a continuum from large domain rearrangements (including folding and restructuring) to side-chain rotamer changes and small rearrangements. Understanding side-chain flexibility upon binding is important to understand molecular recognition events and predict ligand binding. Methods: In the present work, we developed a well-curated non-redundant dataset of 188 proteins in pairs of structures in the Apo (unbound) and Holo (bound) forms to study the extent and the factors that guide side-chain rotamer changes upon binding. Results: Our analysis shows that side-chain rotamer changes are widespread with only 10% of binding sites displaying no conformational changes. Overall, at most five rotamer changes account for the observed movements in 90% of the cases. Furthermore, rotamer changes are essential in 32% of flexible binding sites. The different amino acids have a 11-fold difference in their probability to undergo changes. Side-chain flexibility represents an intrinsic property of amino acids as it correlates well with configurational entropy differences. Furthermore, on average b-factors and solvent accessible surface areas can discriminate flexible side-chains in the Apo form. Finally, there is a rearrangement of the hydrogen-bonding network upon binding primarily with a loss of H-bonds with water molecules and a gain of H-bonds with protein residues for flexible residues. Interestingly, only 25% of side chains capable of forming H-bonds do so with the ligand upon binding. In terms of drug design, this last result shows that there is a large number of potential interactions that may be exploited to modulate the specificity and sensitivity of inhibitors. Contact: rafael.najmanovich@usherbrooke.ca
6.824 Final Project

The presented project implements a persistent, fault-tolerant, high-performance key/value store. In order to achieve these goals, the system implements at-most-once semantics, relies upon Paxos for reaching consensus, shards the database across multiple replica groups, persistently stores values to disk, and implements protocols for automatically recovering and updating disk contents upon server reboot. In order to improve performance, the system features two paxos optimizations: a protocol similar to multi-paxos to avoid the dueling leaders problem, and the ability for leaders to send out prepare messages in advance to reduce the required number of RPCs for paxos agreement.
An Experiment in Game-Based Classiﬁer Selection

We present a two-player game against nature for the study of classiﬁer combination. The game is an extension of the prediction with expert advice framework developed by Cesa Bianchi et al. In the game, the player selects from a set of base classiﬁers and their combinations, playing a closed-world competitive prediction with expert advice game, with the aim of selecting one of the classiﬁers that will achieve the minimum error. To demonstrate our approach we present a simple game for a binary classiﬁcation task using the MNIST data set. From our exhaustive evaluation of this scenario we develop two simple strategies for selecting the best forecaster. In the future, the game presented may be used to study various classiﬁcation contexts, structural pattern recognition problems
A model of information practices in accounts of everyday-life information seeking

Many research‐based models of information seeking behaviour are limited in their ability to describe everyday life information seeking. Such models tend to focus on active information seeking, to the neglect of less‐directed practices. Models are often based on studies of scholars or professionals, and many have been developed using a cognitive approach to model building. This article reports on the development of a research‐based model of everyday life information seeking and proposes that a focus on the social concept of information practices is more appropriate to everyday life information seeking than the psychological concept of information behaviour The model is derived from a constructionist discourse analysis of individuals’ accounts of everyday life information seeking.
Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015: elaboration and explanation

Protocols of systematic reviews and meta-analyses allow for planning and documentation of review methods, act as a guard against arbitrary decision making during review conduct, enable readers to assess for the presence of selective reporting against completed reviews, and, when made publicly available, reduce duplication of efforts and potentially prompt collaboration. Evidence documenting the existence of selective reporting and excessive duplication of reviews on the same or similar topics is accumulating and many calls have been made in support of the documentation and public availability of review protocols. Several efforts have emerged in recent years to rectify these problems, including development of an international register for prospective reviews (PROSPERO) and launch of the first open access journal dedicated to the exclusive publication of systematic review products, including protocols (BioMed Central’s Systematic Reviews). Furthering these efforts and building on the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) guidelines, an international group of experts has created a guideline to improve the transparency, accuracy, completeness, and frequency of documented systematic review and meta-analysis protocols—PRISMA-P (for protocols) 2015. The PRISMA-P checklist contains 17 items considered to be essential and minimum components of a systematic review or meta-analysis protocol. This PRISMA-P 2015 Explanation and Elaboration paper provides readers with a full understanding of and evidence about the necessity of each item as well as a model example from an existing published protocol. This paper should be read together with the PRISMA-P 2015 statement. Systematic review authors and assessors are strongly encouraged to make use of PRISMA-P when drafting and appraising review protocols.
On-demand , In-place Help for Mixed Reality Environments

In many help systems, users are either distracted with a constant barrage of help or have to stop working on the task at hand and explicitly search for help. In this paper, we propose intuitive methods to present on-demand, in-place help in mixed reality interfaces. In these interfaces, users interact with virtual objects that are superimposed on the real world by manipulating physical cards. We describe Tiles, a prototype application for designing aircraft instrument panels, from which our work on help systems grew. In Tiles, Tangible Bubble Help is used, in which users manipulate special ‘help’ cards in combination with data cards to invoke detailed help. Tangible Bubble Help may be multi-modal, taking the form of text, audio, graphics, and animations. We also present Tangible Tooltips, a lightweight technique in which users control the amount of textual help by tilting data cards to different degrees. In both cases, users can seamlessly transition between performing the main task and acquiring help.
Fuzzy controller implementations with fewer than ten transistors?

Evolutionary algorithms (EA) offer good promise for automated design of analog circuits as well as for adaptation and automatic reconfiguration of programmable devices. In particular, EAs facilitate the design of analog circuits for very specific requirements, such as those related to the implementation of fuzzy operators, or even of complete fuzzy systems. The paper starts with a brief overview of the evolutionary process applied to circuit design and of a family of analog programmable devices that support on-chip evolution. As a case study, we describe the evolutionary design of a fuzzy controller, using re-configurable analog chips models and unstructured representation. We were able to achieve a circuit that approximates the control surface of a 2-input fuzzy controller, mapping thus a full fuzzy system in only seven transistors. The paper presents evidence that EA can provide very compact solutions for implementation of fuzzy systems, and that programmable analog devices are an efficient and rapid solution for rapid deployment of fuzzy systems.
An approach towards benchmarking of table structure recognition results

After we developed a model free table recognition system we had the desire to automatically register the effect of minor changes to parameters upon the overall performance quality of our system in order to tune parameters. Therefore we developed a complete benchmarking environment, containing a user front-end to acquire ground truth data as well as mechanisms to evaluate the quality of the recognition results. The tasks involved in the analysis systems were the locating of table regions, identification of cells and mapping of cells to rows and columns. This paper presents our approach towards the comparison of recognition results with the ground truth. The established definitions of recall and precision did not meet our requirements, as we wanted to register even smallest improvements (or changes in general) in the results, even when both results were imperfect. We therefore extended the measures recall and precision in order to deal with recognition probabilities of objects rather than just with Boolean values.
Grandmother cells and the distinction between local and distributed representation

ABSTRACT A grandmother cell is a neural or cognitive unit that selectively responds to just one particular physical object (one’s maternal grandmother, for example, or one’s own right hand, or one’s own car). Grandmother cells should be distinguished from gnostic units, which are neural or cognitive units that respond selectively to all members of categories of physical objects (all elderly ladies, for example, or all hands, or all cars). Both grandmother cells and gnostic units count as local representations, but not all local representations count as grandmother cells.
A Landscape Analysis of Grassland Birds in a Valley Grassland-Oak Woodland Mosaic

While little research has been done on California grassland birds, their populations are thought to be declining due to habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation. We investigated the association between California grassland birds and their landscape-scale habitat matrix. The habitat is a mosaic of valley grassland with blue oak and coast live oak woodlands. In this study, we used logistic regression to analyze presence of grasshopper sparrows (Ammodramus savannarum), horned larks (Eremophila alpestris), western meadowlarks (Sturnella neglecta), savannah sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis), and the guild as a whole in response to patch size, cover-type richness, and proportion of high-intensity development, low-intensity development, deciduous forest, and evergreen forest in the landscape. These landscape variables were analyzed for the 2004 and 2005 breeding seasons at three spatial scales: 500 m, 1 km, and 2 km buffer zones from the point count center. We found that the grassland bird guild as a whole was positively associated with patch size, proportion of low-intensity development, and proportion of evergreen forest and negatively associated with cover-type richness, proportion of high-intensity development, and proportion of deciduous forest. Patch size and cover-type richness were the most commonly significant variables across spatial scales and across years. Individual species showed similar trends to that of the guild.
A Direct Approach Toward Global Minimization for Multiphase Labeling and Segmentation Problems

This paper intends to extend the minimization algorithm developed by Bae, Yuan and Tai [IJCV, 2011] in several directions. First, we propose a new primal-dual approach for global minimization of the continuous Potts model with applications to the piecewise constant Mumford-Shah model for multiphase image segmentation. Different from the existing methods, we work directly with the binary setting without using convex relaxation, which is thereby termed as a direct approach. Second, we provide the sufficient and necessary conditions to guarantee a global optimum. Moreover, we provide efficient algorithms based on a reduction in the intermediate unknowns from the augmented Lagrangian formulation. As a result, the underlying algorithms involve significantly fewer parameters and unknowns than the naive use of augmented Lagrangian-based methods; hence, they are fast and easy to implement. Furthermore, they can produce global optimums under mild conditions.
AGNs with composite spectra. II. Additional data

In a previous paper (Veron et al. 1997) we presented medium resolution (3.4 A FWHM ) spectroscopic observations of 15 "transition objects”, selected for having an ambiguous location in the Veilleux & Osterbrock (1987) diagnostic diagrams, and showed that most of them were in fact "composite”, this being due to the simultaneous presence on the slit of both a Seyfert or Liner nucleus and a HII region. Here, we report new spectroscopic observations of 53 emission-line galaxies with a "transition” spectrum, bringing up to 61 the total number of observed objects in an unbiased sample of 88 "transition objects”. Almost all of the observed galaxies have a "composite" nature, confirming the finding that true "transition” spectra may not exist at all. By eliminating "composite objects” from the diagnostic diagrams, a clear separation between the different classes of nuclear emission-line regions (Seyfert 2s, Liners and HII regions) becomes apparent; by restricting the volume occupied by the different line-emitting regions in the 3-dimensional diagnostic diagrams, we are also restricting the range of possible physical parameters in these regions. There seems to be no continuity between Seyfert 2s and Liners, the two classes occupying distinct volumes in the 3-dimensional space defined by , , and .
Alleles in space (AIS): computer software for the joint analysis of interindividual spatial and genetic information.

Genetic analyses of natural populations have historically relied on statistical procedures based on the concept that distinct ‘‘populations’’ of a species exist across a landscape. Invariably, commonly used analyses reduce to approaches that treat collections of individuals (‘‘populations’’) as independent/causative variables and allele frequencies as dependent/ response variables. Examples of these procedures include Wright’s FST and its variants (Excoffier et al. 1992; Nei 1973; Slatkin 1995; Weir and Cockerham 1984), contingency table procedures (Raymond and Rousset 1995; Roff and Bentzen 1989), and measures of genetic distances among populations (e.g., Nei 1972, 1978; Reynolds et al. 1983). These analyses qualitatively or explicitly test null hypotheses of homogeneity of allele frequencies between or among populations. Although almost universally applied, the analyses mentioned above are not necessarily appropriate in many situations. For example, highly mobile organisms such as large mammals or birds can occupy continuous habitats over large spatial scales. Plants may also occupy large continuous habitats, as can species inhabiting marine or aquatic systems. In these cases, objectively designating groups of individuals at population levels for use in genetic analyses may prove difficult, if not impossible. Clearly, an important consideration in these situations is the spatial extent of the ‘‘populations’’ that are chosen for analyses. If groups of organisms are defined over larger than appropriate spatial scales, resulting measures of genetic differentiation may actually provide ambiguous or misleading results (Miller et al. 2002). To address many of these issues, I have developed a new software package entitled ‘‘Alleles In Space’’ (AIS). This program, rather than implementing methodology that relies on arbitrary groupings of individuals, instead has the ability to perform joint analyses of interindividual spatial and genetic information that can be applied at virtually any spatial scale. These approaches specifically lend themselves to analyses of genetic data when one or a few individuals are sampled from large numbers of collection sites. Moreover, the program is designed to handle a wide variety of genetic data types, including codominant marker systems, dominant marker systems, and DNA sequences. Thus AIS will likely be useful for elucidation of patterns in diverse study types ranging from local analyses of genetic structure, phylogeographical studies, and studies encompassing aspects of the emerging field of landscape genetics (Manel et al. 2003).
Region-Based Routing: A Mechanism to Support Efficient Routing Algorithms in NoCs

An efficient routing algorithm is important for large on-chip networks [network-on-chip (NoC)] to provide the required communication performance to applications. Implementing NoC using table-based switches provide many advantages, including possibility of changing routing algorithms and fault tolerance, due to the option of table reconfigurations. However, table-based switches have been considered unsuitable for NoCs due to their perceived high area and power consumption. In this paper, we describe the region-based routing (RBR) mechanism which groups destinations into network regions allowing an efficient implementation with logic blocks. RBR can also be viewed as a mechanism to reduce the number of entries in routing tables. RBR is general and can be used in conjunction with any adaptive routing algorithm. In particular, we have evaluated the proposed scheme in conjunction with a general routing algorithm, namely segment-based routing (SR) and an application specific routing algorithm (APSRA) using regular and irregular mesh topologies. Our study shows that the number of entries in the table is significantly reduced, especially for large networks. Evaluation results show that RBR requires only four regions to support several routing algorithms in a 2-D mesh with no performance degradation. Considering link failures, our results indicate that RBR combined with SR is able to tolerate up to 7 link failures in an 8times8 mesh. RBR also reduces area and power dissipation of an equivalent table-based implementation by factors of 8 and 10, respectively. Moreover, the degradation in performance of the network is insignificant when using APSRA combined with RBR.