Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Compact and Accurate Gaussian Variate Generator

A compact, fast, and accurate realization of a digital Gaussian variate generator (GVG) based on the Box-Muller algorithm is presented. The proposed GVG has a faster Gaussian sample generation rate and higher tail accuracy with a lower hardware cost than published designs. The GVG design can be readily configured to achieve arbitrary tail accuracy (i.e., with a proposed 16-bit datapath up to plusmn15 times the standard deviation sigma) with only small variations in hardware utilization, and without degrading the output sample rate. Polynomial curve fitting is utilized along with a hybrid (i.e., combination of logarithmic and uniform) segmentation and a scaling scheme to maintain accuracy. A typical instantiation of the proposed GVG occupies only 534 configurable slices, two on-chip block memories, and three dedicated multipliers of the Xilinx Virtex-II XC2V4000-6 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and operates at 248 MHz, generating 496 million Gaussian variates (GVs) per second within a range of plusmn6.66sigma. To accurately achieve a range of plusmn9.4sigma, the GVG uses 852 configurable slices, three block memories, and three on-chip dedicated multipliers of the same FPGA while still operating at 248 MHz, generating 496 million GVs per second. The core area and performance of a GVG implemented in a 90-nm CMOS technology are also given. The statistical characteristics of the GVG are evaluated and confirmed using multiple standard statistical goodness-of-fit tests.
Military Expenditure: Threats, Aid, and Arms Races

Using global data for the period 1960-99, the authors estimate neighborhood arms races. They find that the level of military expenditure is strongly influenced by the expenditure of neighbors. The authors estimate an"arms race multiplier,"finding that an initial exogenous increase in military expenditure by one country is more than doubled in both the originating country and its neighbor. An implication is that military expenditure is, to an extent, a"regional public bad. "Potentially, there is an offsetting public good effect if rebellions are deterred by military expenditure. However, instrumenting for military expenditure, the authors find no deterrence effect of military spending on the risk of internal conflict. So there appears to be no regional public good effect offsetting the public bad arising from a neighborhood arms race.
A soft switching bidirectional DC-DC converter based on three-state switching cell to photovoltaic systems applications

This paper presents a new three-port soft switching dc-dc converter topology based on the bidirectional version of the three-state switching cell, feasible to interconnect battery banks with a dc link and photovoltaic panels. All active switches are designed to operate in Zero Voltage Switching (ZVS). The theoretical analysis and experimental results a 2 kW prototype are presented.
Schedule Dynamic Multiple Parallel Jobs with Precedence-Constrained Tasks on Heterogeneous Distributed Computing Systems

Computer systems tend to be heterogeneous parallel and distributed computing systems, which are characterized by having various types of computational units interconnected via networks for executing multiple parallel jobs precedence-constrained tasks. Scheduling multiple jobs, which arrive at different instants, on such systems for fastest execution is a well-known NP-hard optimization problem. In order to achieve high-performance of systems, two important factors can be improved. One factor is the heterogeneity. Most algorithms use the upward rank value for ordering tasks and the earliest finish time for assigning processors. These two criteria can be improved to permit creating accurate and efficient schedules in heterogeneous distributed computing systems. Another factor is the fairness, existing algorithms are for static scheduling, and failed to make full use of the fairness in dynamic environments, such that obvious unfairness to longer-makespan jobs or shorter-makespan jobs can be caused. A dynamic multiple parallel jobs scheduling algorithm called F DMHSV (Fairness of Dynamic Multiple Heterogeneous Selection Value) is proposed to address the above problems to achieve high-performance of systems in this paper. Both example and extensive experimental evaluation demonstrate significant improvement of the F_DMHSV algorithm.
The Review of Economic Studies , Ltd . Multiple Time Series Regression with Integrated Processes

are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of Economic Studies. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This paper develops a general asymptotic theory of regression for processes which are integrated of order one. The theory includes vector autoregressions and multivariate regressions amongst integrated processes that are driven by innovation sequences which allow for a wide class of weak dependence and heterogeneity. The models studied cover cointegrated systems such as those advanced recently by Granger and Engle and quite general linear simultaneous equations systems with contemporaneous regressor error correlation and serially correlated errors. Problems of statistical testing in vector autoregressions and multivariate regressions with integrated processes are also studied. It is shown that the asympotic theory for conventional tests involves major departures from classical theory and raises new and important issues of the presence of nuisance parameters in the limiting distribution theory.
Bleeding detection in wireless capsule endoscopy images by support vector classifier

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a great breakthrough for Gastrointestinal (GI) Tract diagnoses, and it can view the entire gastrointestinal tract, especially the small intestine without invasiveness and sedation. However, a tough problem associated with this new technology is that too many images to be inspected by naked eyes cause a huge burden to physicians, so it is significant to find an automatic diagnosis method. In this paper, a new automatic algorithm for bleeding detection in WCE images is proposed. This new approach mainly focuses on color feature which is also a very effective clue used by physicians for diagnosis. We propose six color features in HSI color space to discriminate between bleeding and normal status. Then we use support vector classifier to verify the performance of the proposed features and judge the status of the images. Experimental results show that the proposed features and classification method is effective and the average accuracy can achieve approximately 97%.
The Diachrony of Dative Subjects and the Middle in Icelandic : A Corpus Study

Icelandic is very well known for non-nominative subjects. In recent years, it has been proposed that dative subjects are a Proto-Indo European feature, and that a Dative Subject Construction has been inherited through the ages in the daughter language families (Barðdal and Eythorsson, 2009; Barðdal et al., 2012). We conduct a corpus study and show that while dative subjects can indeed already be found in the earliest attested Icelandic texts, their distribution has been changing over the last millenium. In particular, their use in middles has increased significantly. We explain our findings via an increased use of experiencer subjects combined with a more regular association of experiencer arguments with dative case. We provide a formal analysis within LFG’s Mapping or Linking Theory that draws on Barron’s (2001) analysis of the diachronic development of raising verbs in Latin. Overall, we see our work as providing evidence against dative subjects in Icelandic as being due to an inherited monolithic Dative Subject Construction.
Wavefront coding for athermalization of infrared imaging systems

Wavefront coding involves the insertion of an asymmetric refractive mask close to the pupil plane of an imaging system so as to encode the image with a specific point spread function that, when combined with decoding of the recorded image, can enable greatly reduced sensitivity to imaging aberrations. The application of wavefront coding has potential in the fields of microscopy, where increased instantaneous depth of field is advantageous and in thermal imaging where it can enable the use of simple, low-cost, light-weight lens systems. It has been previously shown that wavefront coding can alleviate optical aberrations and extend the depth of field of incoherent imaging systems whilst maintaining diffraction-limited resolution. It is particularly useful in controlling thermally induced defocus aberrations in infrared imaging systems. These improvements in performance are subject to a range of constraints including the difficulty in manufacturing an asymmetrical phase mask and significant noise amplification in the digitally restored image. We describe the relation between the optical path difference (OPD) introduced by the phase mask and the magnitude of noise amplification in the restored image. In particular there is a trade between the increased tolerance to optical aberrations and reduced signal-to-noise ratio in the recovered image. We present numerical and experimental studies based of noise amplification with the specific consideration of a simple refractive infrared imaging system operated in an ambient temperature varying from 0°C to +50 C. These results are used to delineate the design and application envelope for which infrared imaging can benefit from wavefront coding.
Gene Algorithm of Crowd System of Data Mining

Data mining, which is attracting public attention, is a process of drawing out knowledge from a large mass of data. The key technique in data mining is the ability to maximize the similarity in a group and minimize the similarity between groups. Since grouping in data mining deals with a large mass of data, it lessens the amount of time spent with the source data, and grouping techniques that shrink the quantity of the data form to which the algorithm is subjected are actively used. The current grouping algorithm is highly sensitive to static and reacts to local minima. The number of groups has to be stated depending on the initialization value. In this paper we propose a gene algorithm that automatically decides on the number of grouping algorithms. We will try to find the optimal group of the fittest function, and finally apply it to a data mining problem that deals with a large mass of data.
DETERMINATION OF HEALTHY LIFE STYLE BEHAVIORS OF STUDENTS STUDYING IN THE SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SPORTS

This study was carried out to determine the healthy lifestyle behaviors of students studying at the School of Physical Education and Sports. The population of the study consists of the students studying at Kafkas University School of Physical Education and Sports and the sample consists of 150 students aged between 18-34 who study in different departments. Healthy Life Style Behavior Scale II was used to determine healthy lifestyle behaviors of students. Mean, standard deviation analysis techniques were used for data analysis. Kruskal-Wallis H, Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine the differences. The obtained data were statistically evaluated at p<0.05 level. SPSS 17.0 package program was used to analyze the data. The maximum score that can be obtained from the scale was 208, and the total score of the students (140.8 ± 15.18) was determined. When the mean scores of the sub-dimensions of the SYBDO participants were considered, the health responsibility was 22.6 ± 4.20, the physical activity was 20.8 ± 3.47, the nutrition was 23.0 ± 3.39, the spiritual development was 26.8 ± 5.07, the interpersonal relations were 25, 8 ± 4,68, stress management was found to be 21,4 ± 4,20. As a result, SYBD of the students studying at the School of Physical Education and Sports was found to be medium level. It can be said that teachers and trainees who will be a model for people in the future will be more aware of the importance of healthy lifestyle. Article visualizations:
Natural Movement: Or, Configuration and Attraction in Urban Pedestrian Movement

Existing theories relating patterns of pedestrian and vehicular movement to urban form characterise the problem in terms of flows to and from ‘attractor’ land uses. This paper contains evidence in support of a new ‘configurational’ paradigm in which a primary property of the form of the urban grid is to privilege certain spaces over others for through movement. In this way it is suggested that the configuration of the urban grid itself is the main generator of patterns of movement. Retail land uses are then located to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the passing trade and may well act as multipliers on the basic pattern of ‘natural movement’ generated by the grid configuration. The configurational correlates of movement patterns are found to be measures of global properties of the grid with the ‘space syntax’ measure of ‘integration’ consistently found to be the most important. This has clear implications for urban design suggesting that if we wish to design for well used urban space, then it is not the local properties of a space that are important in the main but its configurational relations to the larger urban system.
Towards Morse Theory for Point Cloud Data

Morse theory provides a powerful framework to study the topology of a manifold from a function defined on it, but discrete constructions have remained elusive due to the difficulty of translating smooth concepts to the discrete setting. Consider the problem of approximating the Morse-Smale (MS) complex of a Morse function from a point cloud and an associated nearest neighbor graph (NNG). While following the constructive proof of the Morse homology theorem, we present novel concepts for critical points of any index, and the associated Morse-Smale diagram. Our framework has three key advantages. First, it requires elementary data structures and operations, and is thus suitable for high-dimensional data processing. Second, it is gradient free, which makes it suitable to investigate functions whose gradient is unknown or expensive to compute. Third, in case of under-sampling and even if the exact (unknown) MS diagram is not found, the output conveys information in terms of ambiguous flow, and the Morse theoretical version of topological persistence, which consists in canceling critical points by flow reversal, applies. \\ %% On the experimental side, we present a comprehensive analysis of a large panel of bi-variate and tri-variate Morse functions whose Morse-Smale diagrams are known perfectly, and show that these diagrams are recovered perfectly. \smallskip In a broader perspective, we see our framework as a first step to study complex dynamical systems from mere samplings consisting of point clouds.
Glycosylation of Candida albicans Cell Wall Proteins Is Critical for Induction of Innate Immune Responses and Apoptosis of Epithelial Cells

C. albicans is one of the most common fungal pathogen of humans, causing local and superficial mucosal infections in immunocompromised individuals. Given that the key structure mediating host-C. albicans interactions is the fungal cell wall, we aimed to identify features of the cell wall inducing epithelial responses and be associated with fungal pathogenesis. We demonstrate here the importance of cell wall protein glycosylation in epithelial immune activation with a predominant role for the highly branched N-glycosylation residues. Moreover, these glycan moieties induce growth arrest and apoptosis of epithelial cells. Using an in vitro model of oral candidosis we demonstrate, that apoptosis induction by C. albicans wild-type occurs in early stage of infection and strongly depends on intact cell wall protein glycosylation. These novel findings demonstrate that glycosylation of the C. albicans cell wall proteins appears essential for modulation of epithelial immunity and apoptosis induction, both of which may promote fungal pathogenesis in vivo.
Fixed and trained combiners for fusion of imbalanced pattern classifiers

In the past decade, several rules for fusion of pattern classifiers' outputs have been proposed. Although imbalanced classifiers, that is, classifiers exhibiting very different accuracy, are used in many practical applications (e.g., multimodal biometrics for personal identity verification), the conditions of classifiers' imbalance under which a given rule can significantly outperform another one are not completely clear. In this paper, we experimentally compare various fixed and trained rules for fusion of imbalanced classifiers. The experiments are guided by the results of a previous theoretical analysis of the authors. Linear, order statistics-based, and trained combiners are compared by experiments on remote-sensing image data and on the X2M2VTS multimodal biometrics data base.
The Search for Efficiency in Automated Intrusion Response for Distributed Applications

Providing automated responses to security incidents in a distributed computing environment has been an important area of research. This is due to the inherent complexity of such systems that makes it difficult to eliminate all vulnerabilities before deployment and costly to rely on humans for responding to incidents in real time. Earlier work has investigated automated responses but failed to argue about the optimality of the response choices. Here we propose a new approach where the optimality of responses is considered from a global point of view, i.e., "What’s the eventual outcome on the entire system due to a response? " We formalize the process of providing automated responses and the criterion for asserting global optimality of the set of deployed responses. We show that reaching the globally optimal solution is an NP-hard problem. Therefore we design a genetic algorithm framework for searching for good solutions. Our framework adapts itself to the changing environment based on history of attacks seen so far and effectiveness of responses. We demonstrate the solution on a distributed e-commerce application called PetStore with injection of real attacks and show that it improves the survivability of the system over the prior ADEPTS system.
Contribution of Bone Marrow-Derived Hematopoietic Stem/Progenitor Cells to the Generation of Donor-Marker+ Cardiomyocytes In Vivo

Background Definite identification of the cell types and the mechanism relevant to cardiomyogenesis is essential for effective cardiac regenerative medicine. We aimed to identify the cell populations that can generate cardiomyocytes and to clarify whether generation of donor-marker+ cardiomyocytes requires cell fusion between BM-derived cells and recipient cardiomyocytes. Methodology/Principal Findings Purified BM stem/progenitor cells from green fluorescence protein (GFP) mice were transplanted into C57BL/6 mice or cyan fluorescence protein (CFP)-transgenic mice. Purified human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from cord blood were transplanted into immune-compromised NOD/SCID/IL2rγnull mice. GFP+ cells in the cardiac tissue were analyzed for the antigenecity of a cardiomyocyte by confocal microscopy following immunofluorescence staining. GFP+ donor-derived cells, GFP+CFP+ fused cells, and CFP+ recipient-derived cells were distinguished by linear unmixing analysis. Hearts of xenogeneic recipients were evaluated for the expression of human cardiomyocyte genes by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. In C57BL/6 recipients, Lin−/lowCD45+ hematopoietic cells generated greater number of GFP+ cardiomyocytes than Lin−/lowCD45− mesenchymal cells (37.0+/−23.9 vs 0.00+/−0.00 GFP+ cardiomyocytes per a recipient, P = 0.0095). The number of transplanted purified HSCs (Lin−/lowSca-1+ or Lin−Sca-1+c-Kit+ or CD34−Lin−Sca-1+c-Kit+) showed correlation to the number of GFP+ cardiomyocytes (P<0.05 in each cell fraction), and the incidence of GFP+ cardiomyocytes per injected cell dose was greatest in CD34−Lin−Sca-1+c-Kit+ recipients. Of the hematopoietic progenitors, total myeloid progenitors generated greater number of GFP+ cardiomyocytes than common lymphoid progenitors (12.8+/−10.7 vs 0.67+/−1.00 GFP+ cardiomyocytes per a recipient, P = 0.0021). In CFP recipients, all GFP+ cardiomyocytes examined coexpressed CFP. Human troponin C and myosin heavy chain 6 transcripts were detected in the cardiac tissue of some of the xenogeneic recipients. Conclusions/Significance Our results indicate that HSCs resulted in the generation of cardiomyocytes via myeloid intermediates by fusion-dependent mechanism. The use of myeloid derivatives as donor cells could potentially allow more effective cell-based therapy for cardiac repair.
Wind Energy Resource Assessment Using Wind Atlas and Meteorological Data for the City of Guelph , Canada

Abstract The ability to accurately assess renewable energy resources is an essential prerequisite to integrating renewable energy technologies into the energy supply portfolio of a community. This study investigates the potential for wind energy development in Guelph, a growing mid-size city in Southern Ontario, Canada. Community awareness of energy has led to the development of a Community Energy Plan that includes discussion on the utilization of energy supplied from renewable sources. Wind resources are particularly difficult to evaluate at the community level. A preliminary evaluation of the City of Guelph’s wind energy resource was undertaken to determine the degree to which locally-produced wind energy could supply the city’s current and future energy demand. Wind data for Guelph and the nearby village of Elora was sourced from two wind maps (Environment Canada’s Canadian Wind Energy Atlas and the Wind Resource Atlas published by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources), as well as the weather stations at the Guelph Turfgrass Institute and the Elora Research Station. These different data sources produced wind energy estimates all within ±44% of each other for a small wind turbine (10 kW). Community scale generation was estimated through a uniform grid of turbines across the city. Nearly 18,000 small wind turbines generate 139 GWh while 128 utility-scale turbines generate 424 GWh. These utility-scale turbines could potentially deliver 24% of Guelph’s 2005 electrical demand.
Brain-Computer Interface Analysis using Continuous Wavelet Transform and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Classifier

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals of imaginary left and right hand movements, an application of brain-computer interface (BCI). We propose here to use an adaptive neuron- fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) as the classification algorithm. ANFIS has an advantage over many classification algorithms in that it provides a set of parameters and linguistic rules that can be useful in interpreting the relationship between extracted features. The continuous wavelet transform will be used to extract highly representative features from selected scales. The performance of ANFIS will be compared with the well-known support vector machine classifier.