Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhancing Supervised Terrain Classification with Predictive Unsupervised Learning

This paper describes a method for classifying the traversability of terrain by combining unsupervised learning of color models that predict scene geometry with supervised learning of the relationship between geometric features and traversability. A neural network is trained offline on hand-labeled geometric features computed from stereo data. An online process learns the association between color and geometry, enabling the robot to assess the traversability of regions for which there is little range information by estimating the geometry from the color of the scene and passing this to the neural network. This online process is continuous and extremely rapid, which allows for quick adaptations to different lighting conditions and terrain changes. The sensitivity of the traversability judgment is further adjusted online by feedback from the robot’s bumper. Terrain assessments from the color classifier are merged with pure geometric classifications in an occupancy grid by computing the intersection of the ray associated with a pixel with a ground plane computed from the stereo range data. We present results from DARPA-conducted tests that demonstrate its effectiveness in a variety of outdoor environments.
Fact, fiction, and disruptive pedagogies: are we having fun yet, Miranda?

This chapter explores potentially disruptive pedagogies. A conceptual frame is developed from characteristic features of disruptive pedagogies, including motivation, engagement, higher-order thinking, sociability, and fun in learning. The frame is applied to review how an undergraduate consumer behaviour learning design is used, preferred, and experienced by learners using data from two face-to-face cohorts in comparison to historic course feedback. Evidence of disruptive pedagogies existed in the context of technology-rich and focused activity and interactive collaborative learning settings. The design engaged and supported learning and its experience, in different ways, for different learners. Results indicate the importance of multiple, varied technologies with deep embedment in the learning design and disruptive pedagogies that confer control to learners. Socio-affective design elements using technologies increased diverse learner participation in voluntary and informal activities, in class and online.
Cytological Profile of Antibacterial FtsZ Inhibitors and Synthetic Peptide MciZ

Cell division protein FtsZ is the organizer of the cytokinetic ring in almost all bacteria and a target for the discovery of new antibacterial agents that are needed to counter widespread antibiotic resistance. Bacterial cytological profiling, using quantitative microscopy, is a powerful approach for identifying the mechanism of action of antibacterial molecules affecting different cellular pathways. We have determined the cytological profile on Bacillus subtilis cells of a selection of small molecule inhibitors targeting FtsZ on different binding sites. FtsZ inhibitors lead to long undivided cells, impair the normal assembly of FtsZ into the midcell Z-rings, induce aberrant ring distributions, punctate FtsZ foci, membrane spots and also modify nucleoid length. Quantitative analysis of cell and nucleoid length combined, or the Z-ring distribution, allows categorizing FtsZ inhibitors and to distinguish them from antibiotics with other mechanisms of action, which should be useful for identifying new antibacterial FtsZ inhibitors. Biochemical assays of FtsZ polymerization and GTPase activity combined explain the cellular effects of the FtsZ polymer stabilizing agent PC190723 and its fragments. MciZ is a 40-aminoacid endogenous inhibitor of cell division normally expressed during sporulation in B. subtilis. Using FtsZ cytological profiling we have determined that exogenous synthetic MciZ is an effective inhibitor of B. subtilis cell division, Z-ring formation and localization. This finding supports our cell-based approach to screen for FtsZ inhibitors and opens new possibilities for peptide inhibitors of bacterial cell division.
Approximate inference using unimodular graphs in dual decomposition

We use the property of unimodular functions to perform approximate inference with dual decomposition in binary labeled graphs. Exact inference is possible for a subclass of binary labeled graphs that have unimodular functions. We call such graphs unimodular graphs. These are graphs where the submodular and nonsubmodular edges follow a specific pattern– essentially that an isomorphism or ”flipping” exists to a fully submodular graph. Examples of unimodular graphs include tree-structured graphs, submodular graphs, and bipartite graphs with all non-submodular edges. We investigate the use of unimodular graphs in dual decomposition, based on different decomposition strategies. Experimentally, for image segmentation problems, we find that decomposition using unimodular graphs outperform traditional tree-based dual decomposition. Dual decomposition is also more easily parallelizable.
Towards Regulatory Compliant Storage Systems Graduate Board Orals Proposal

Legislators and the courts have begun to recognize the importance of how electronically stored data should be maintained and secured, and how electronic data should be differentiated from their paper analogs. Examples of some of the sweeping pieces of electronic record management legislation include the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) of 1999, and the more recent Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002. Altogether, there exist over 4,000 acts and regulations that govern digital storage, all with a varying range of requirements for maintaining electronic records. Storage systems vendors have quickly identified the large market opportunity and have modified existing systems and marketed them as compliance products. Sarbanes-Oxley compliance alone represents a market of over $5 billion [22]. Mostly, vendors add policy enhancements to existing storage platforms that aid in the maintenance and retention of data, such as forbidding data deletion. Current product offerings include EMC Centera Compliance Edition, HP Reference Information Storage Systems, and IBM Tivoli Security Compliance Manager. Many of these products fail to meet the new demands legislation places on storage systems. Systems must now provide confidentiality through encrypted storage and data transmission. Some legislation requires an auditable trail of changes made to electronic records that are accessible in real-time. This implies versioning files and providing a means of quickly retrieving versions from any point in time. Other legislation sets limits on the amount of time an organization may be liable for maintaining their electronic data, but for those data that go out of scope, permanently deleting data from magnetic media can be challenging. Because electronic data is dynamic, and therefore easily malleable on disk, new methods for authentication and non-repudiation need to be developed to ensure a binding of an individual to an auditable trail of data changes. Further, these systems must be robust against both external and internal attacks. A data loss or compromise due to negligence may result in an organization falling out of compliance and susceptible to litigation. In this proposal we introduce some completed technical contributions to the field of regulatory compliant storage, and propose a set of goals pursuant to completing a Ph.D. We begin with a treatment of the ext3cow file system; an open-source versioning file system designed to be a platform for developing regulatory compliant storage technologies.
The SAT01 framework for NP problems

We consider an NP -complete problem SAT01 having a range of remarkable properties. First, it is equivalent to the weighted independent set problem on a graph with vertex weights w, where the required independent set weight equals the maximum possible ( ;w) value m, and hence is decidable by computation of the weighted Lov asz number unless ( ;w) < #( ;w) = ( ;w) = m. Second, it admits a suitable constraint propagation technique able to simplify many SAT01 instances. Third, a multitude ofNP problems reduce to SAT01 in a natural way, without excessive dimensionality growth. At that, the obtained SAT01 formulation tends to have a clear interpretation within notion of the original problem. Finally, we outline a rationale for choosing SAT01 as the framework for NP problems from an information theory viewpoint.
CONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION : PRACTICE AND EXPERIENCE Concurrency Computat

In large-scale data-intensive applications data play a pivotal role in the execution of these applications, and data transfer is a primary cause of job execution delay. In environments such as the data grids where execution of jobs that require large amounts of data is undertaken, a smart collaborative environment between the scheduling and data management services to achieve a synergistic effect on the performance of the grid becomes essential. This paper presents an intelligent data grid framework where job scheduling and data and replica management are coupled to provide an integrated environment for efficient access to data and job scheduling. The data management service predicts and estimates the appropriate locations of replica and proactively replicates the data sets in these locations while the intelligent tabu-searchbased scheduler incorporating information about the data sets dispatches the jobs to the sites expected to facilitate minimum job execution time and better overall system utilization. Evaluation of the framework shows significant improvement in the performance of the grid and job execution time. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Alternative technique for changing from nasal to oral endotracheal tube for orthognathic and nasal surgery by using an airway exchange catheter: a case report

A 28-year-old male patient with right maxillar, zygomatic arch, orbital wall, and nasal bone fractures had an orthognathic and nasal surgery. Naso-endotracheal intubation is the first choice during surgical correction of dentofacial deformities in an orthognathic surgery; however, its presence can interfere with concomitant surgical procedures on the nose. Traditionally, the naso-endotracheal tube will be removed and replaced with an oro-endotracheal tube. We changed the endotracheal tube from nasal to oral by using an airway exchange catheter.
TCP in Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) raises a number of issues when required to work in a wireless environment. In particular, within an ad hoc network, where changes can happen somewhat quickly and unpredictably, it has to deal with new tough challenges such as high probability of both network partition and route failures due to mobility. In order to adapt TCP to this demanding paradigm, some improvements have been proposed. Nevertheless, most of them present limited enhancements as they do not address important related issues. In this paper, we present an overall view on this subject in a detailed analysis of the major factors involved. Specifically, we show how TCP can be affected by mobility and lower layers strategies including path asymmetry. Additionally, we highlight the main features and weaknesses of the existing proposed schemes, and point out the main open issues in this area. CR
The Demographics’ Effects on Organizational Culture, Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Job Satisfaction: Evidence from Egypt and Mexico

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of several demographic variables on organizational culture, organizational citizenship behavior and job satisfaction. This comparative study extracted two samples from Egypt (127 participants) and Mexico (116 participants). Participants answered a 7-point Likert scale questionnaire and SPSS software was used to analyze the data. Results showed no demographic effect on the three constructs. From Egypt, differences were only observed in on the managerial level regarding the market organizational culture. Results also showed significant results from Mexico on the managerial level and job satisfaction, organizational citizenship behavior, and clan and adhocracy organizational cultures. Further implications and future research directions are provided.
A SURVEY OF SKYLINE PROCESSING IN VARIOUS ENVIRONMENT

Skyline queries which received an interesting attention to the database and data mining field and its main advantage is it is used for multi-criteria decision making. Advanced query operators, such as skyline queries are necessary in order to help users to handle huge amount of data from a large database by identifying set of non-dominated points. Skyline queries means it retrieve set of non-dominated points or better points from the given data points. It provides an interactive environment for information retrieval that help user to get answer for the given preference based query. This survey paper discusses about various skyline query processing algorithms and its different application in various fields includes spatial database, subspace, network, distributed environment etc. This study gives an overview about the existing algorithms for skyline query processing technique and different applications.
On the "How" and "Why" of Emergent Role Behaviors in Wikipedia

Research on peer-production suggests that as participants choose what actions to perform, prototypical activity patterns emerge. Recent work characterized these patterns and demonstrated that informal emergent roles are highly stable. Nonetheless, we know little about the ways in which contributors take on and shed emergent roles. The objectives of this study are to: (a) delineate the temporal dynamics of participants' emergent role taking behaviors, and (b) identify the motivations driving role-transition behaviors. Our study links motivation to role-transition behaviors within Wikipedia. Our first sample covered eleven years and 222,119 contributors, and was used to identify four categories of temporal role-taking behaviors, that differ in their mobility between emergent roles and across Wikipedia articles. Our second examination linked the motivations of 175 new participants to their subsequent role-taking activity over 14 months. Together, the two analyses reveal that role-taking categories can be distinguished based on participants' motivational orientation (intrinsic/extrinsic and self/others-oriented).
Affording higher reliability through software reusability

During the last several years, there has been increasing interest in making software reusable [1]. However, due to a number of factors, only limited success has been achieved in the United States [2]. Par t of the problem centers around the large differences between "code reusability in the large" and "code reusability in the small" issues [3] including programming practices, location o f reusable components, and the strong protection of proprietary software. It has further been argued that without the availability of better quality software, it is more efficient to develop ones own software, than to reuse available code [4]. However, the Japanese Software Factory example [5] illustrates that significantly improved productivity can be achieved through software reuse. What is required is to generate code and abstractions (e.g. schemas [6] and plans [7]), which are developed with the intention of reusability. This will not only result in higher productivity, but higher reliability as well. In order to support these arguments, a simple economic model of reuse is introduced. We then use that model to show tha t much higher levels of reliability are feasible with highly reusable software.
Clinical Application of Antimicrobial Bone Graft Substitute in Osteomyelitis Treatment: A Systematic Review of Different Bone Graft Substitutes Available in Clinical Treatment of Osteomyelitis

Osteomyelitis is a common occurrence in orthopaedic surgery, which is caused by different bacteria. Treatment of osteomyelitis patients aims to eradicate infection by debridement surgery and local and systemic antibiotic therapy. Local treatment increases success rates and can be performed with different antimicrobial bone graft substitutes. This review is performed to assess the level of evidence of synthetic bone graft substitutes in osteomyelitis treatment. According to the PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews, different types of clinical studies concerning treatment of osteomyelitis with bone graft substitutes are included. These studies are assessed on their methodological quality as level of evidence and bias and their clinical outcomes as eradication of infection. In the fifteen included studies, the levels of evidence were weak and in ten out of the fifteen studies there was a moderate to high risk of bias. However, first results of the eradication of infection in these studies showed promising results with their relatively high success rates and low complication rates. Due to the low levels of evidence and high risks of bias of the included studies, these results are inconclusive and no conclusions regarding the performed clinical studies of osteomyelitis treatment with antimicrobial bone graft substitutes can be drawn.
A hierarchical broad-class classification to enhance phoneme recognition

In this paper a hierarchical classification of different levels of phonetic information is proposed in order to improve phone recognition. In this paradigm several intermediate classifiers give posterior probability predictions for broad phonetic classes, achieving phone detail in the last layer. Class membership probabilities are weighted and combined in order to get a more robust phoneme prediction. A method for finding the best set of weights is also proposed based on discriminative training in a hybrid MLP/HMM system. Experiments show that the use of broad-class information enhances phone recognition. Relative improvements of 8% in Correctness and 5% in Accuracy were achieved in phoneme recognition on the TIMIT database compared to a baseline system.
Scalable, Trie-based Approximate Entity Extraction for Real-Time Financial Transaction Screening

Financial institutions have to screen their transactions to ensure that they are not affiliated with terrorism entities. Developing appropriate solutions to detect such affiliations precisely while avoiding any kind of interruption to large amount of legitimate transactions is essential. In this paper, we present building blocks of a scalable solution that may help financial institutions to build their own software to extract terrorism entities out of both structured and unstructured financial messages in real time and with approximate similarity matching approach.
Extending Digital Waveguides To Include Material Modelling

Digital Waveguides have been extensively used for musical instrument and room acoustics modelling. They can be used to form simplistic models for ideal wave propagation in one, two and three dimensions. Models in 1D for string and wind instrument synthesis and more recently a model for a drum, realised by interfacing 2D and 3D waveguide meshes, have been presented [1]. A framework is thus in place for the virtual construction of new or abstract musical instruments. However, straight-forward waveguides and waveguide meshes behave in an extremely indeal nature and phenomena such as stiffness and internal friction are often compromised or ignored altogether. In this paper we discuss and evaluate models which incorporate material parameters. We review a 1D bar model, and then present a 2D extension to model plates. We also discuss the problem of modelling frequency dependent damping, by describing a waveguide model of a visco-elastically damped string.
NEURAL NETWORKS-BASED MULTI-INTEREST INFORMATION FILTERING

With an increasing amount of information available, users find it difficult to obtain the most relevant Web pages from the large number returned by search engines. This is particularly true if users have more than one interest and require information spanning several of them. In this paper, we present an improved adaptive neural fuzzy network providing an information filtering system for the Web to sift the results provided by external search engines. We discuss how to model a user’s multi-interests and filter information according to ‘IF-THEN’ rules and how to optimize and adjust the parameters stored in the network as a user’s multi-interests. Preliminary experiments show that our prototype system improves the performance of current search engines for the user who has multi-interests. The distinguishing features are that of a user model embedded in a neural fuzzy network to process the multi-interests and the replacement of the traditional cosine measure method by a parameterized non-linear map allowing multiinterests to be processed. The results achieved support the choice of the neuro-fuzzy network for multiinterest information filtering and show that the information retrieval system can benefit from the technology available in Soft Computing for better retrieval.
Predicting Recidivism Among Released Juvenile Offenders in Florida

Each year in the United States, as many as 100,000 juvenile offenders are released after completing a residential placement. A significant task for researchers is to identify the factors that explain variations in recidivism. This study considers this by evaluating the predictive validity of the Residential Positive Achievement Change Tool (R-PACT), a fourth-generation risk assessment instrument adopted by Florida for use in all of its juvenile residential facilities. The R-PACT includes a wide variety of static and dynamic risk and needs scales that are used here to predict reoffending among 4,700 released juvenile offenders in Florida. We devote special attention to (1) whether R-PACT scales typically predict reoffending and (2) whether the R-PACT’s predictive validity varies across different subgroups of offenders. In considering these questions, we also consider whether the predictive risk and protective factors in prior research are predictive in the R-PACT as well. The analysis revealed relatively strong support for the R-PACT, but there were nuanced exceptions to that pattern. We discuss the implications these findings have for assessing risk, monitoring progress among residential youth, and predicting reoffending.
A low complexity heuristic adaptive resource llocation algorithm for multiuser OFDM under rate constraints

Power minimization problem under minimum rate constraint for each user is studied in this paper for multiuser OFDM systems. By thoroughly analyzing the necessary conditions for the optimum solution of the resource allocation problem, we deduce a heuristic Lagrange relaxation (LR) based resource allocation algorithm. Different from existing LR schemes which obtain Lagrange multipliers through exhaustive search, we use the estimations of the Lagrange multipliers to guide the resource allocation and then revise the estimations according to the allocation result. By repeating the process the algorithm can achieve a good resource allocation strategy with a low complexity. Numerical results show that the proposed low complexity algorithm offers comparable performance with the exhaustive search algorithm and outperforms existing low complexity algorithms.