Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pollinating insect responses to grazing intensity, grassland characteristics and landscape complexity

Pollinators uphold important ecological functions and their economic and ecological importance is considerable. In the present thesis the relationship between management practices and the behaviour, diversity and composition of four flower visitor groups: bees, butterflies, hoverflies and beetles, are examined in grasslands with different grazing intensity and in different landscapes in East-Central Sweden. Four flower visitor groups were influenced by grazing intensity in different ways. Hoverflies and beetles were positively related to vegetation height, while bees and butterflies were not. In the latter two groups some species were favoured by short vegetation. Hoverflies were more species rich in forested landscapes, whereas butterfly species richness was lower in areas containing many roads. Bees showed the most complex responses mainly due to their diverse life-history strategies corresponding to different environmental factors. The species richness of nest-parasitic and soil nesting bees was favoured by intensive grazing and the existence of bare soil. Cylinder-nesting solitary bees were little affected by management, and high species richness was associated with eutrophication and low plant species richness. The reproductive output in this group can be measured by produced offspring biomass, and this related mainly to human activity. Bumblebees were influenced mainly by landscape factors and long-tongued species appearing late in the season were especially dependent on landscape connectivity and grassland cover. To maintain viable populations of flower visitors, alternative grazing strategies are recommended. To maintain a high diversity of flower visitors in isolated grasslands local optimisation of grazing may be the best strategy. In interconnected landscapes a better strategy may be to vary grazing intensity at the landscape level. Grasslands with different grazing management could thus complement each other. In landscapes where conditions are particularly good for specific insects, a third alternative would be to manage the landscape to enhance the diversity of this particular group.
Process change projects: a study of Norwegian practice

Process change, in various incarnations, has been a central topic in the IS field for several decades. This paper presents an overview of Norwegian model-supported process-change practice, based on in-depth interviews of 33 informants, each describing a different process-change effort in one of 30 Norwegian enterprises. The overview focusses on use of process models, present versus future focus, ICT as enabler of change, participation, resistance to change and process ownership. Norwegian practice is then compared with the predominantly North-American process-change literature from a national-culture perspective. In particular, we find that stakeholder participation is high in Norwegian process-change projects and that resistance tends to be low, a finding consistent with theory on national-culture differences. The paper presents the first results from a larger project that aims to contribute towards a theory of model-based process change.
An RDF Approach for Discovering the Relevant Semantic Associations in a Social Network

A social network is a network of interactions between entities of social interest like people, organisations, hobbies and transactions. Finding relevant associations between entities in a social network is of great value in many areas like friendship networks, biology and countering terrorism. Semantic Web technology enables us to capture and process relationships among social entities as metadata. Analysing semantic social networks requires newer methods. In a social network, entities are connected by short chains of relationships. Query to find associations between two entities returns a large number of results. One of the major issues is to rank the associations as per user preference. The work presents an approach to rank two categories of semantic associations viz. common associations and informative associations. Associations are modelled as property sequences in an RDF graph and they are ranked based on preferred search mode. Heuristics such as i) information content due to occurrence of a property with respect to all the properties in a description base ii) unpredictability of an association due to participation of its properties in multiple domains iii) the extent of match between user specified keywords and properties and iv) the popularity of nodes involved in a sequence are used to rank associations. The results obtained suggest that these heuristics indeed help in obtaining relevant associations. To scale the results to large RDF graphs, a relevant subgraph is extracted from the input graph on which ranking is applied. The approach is tested successfully on real RDF datasets and multigraphs.
Evolutionary programming made faster

Evolutionary programming (EP) has been applied with success to many numerical and combinatorial optimization problems in recent years. EP has rather slow convergence rates, however, on some function optimization problems. In the paper, a "fast EP" (FEP) is proposed which uses a Cauchy instead of Gaussian mutation as the primary search operator. The relationship between FEP and classical EP (CEP) is similar to that between fast simulated annealing and the classical version. Both analytical and empirical studies have been carried out to evaluate the performance of FEP and CEP for different function optimization problems. The paper shows that FEP is very good at search in a large neighborhood while CEP is better at search in a small local neighborhood. For a suite of 23 benchmark problems, FEP performs much better than CEP for multimodal functions with many local minima while being comparable to CEP in performance for unimodal and multimodal functions with only a few local minima. The paper also shows the relationship between the search step size and the probability of finding a global optimum and thus explains why FEP performs better than CEP on some functions but not on others. In addition, the importance of the neighborhood size and its relationship to the probability of finding a near-optimum is investigated. Based on these analyses, an improved FEP (IFEP) is proposed and tested empirically. This technique mixes different search operators (mutations). The experimental results show that IFEP performs better than or as well as the better of FEP and CEP for most benchmark problems tested.
Wireless Sensor Network Platforms — Datasheets versus measurements

Choosing an adequate Wireless Sensor Network Platform for the intended application domain is of essential importance for successful deployments. Evaluating off-the-shelf WSN platforms by their datasheets can limit the available choices. The real performance however, cannot be judged by just evaluating datasheets. Measurements for crucial performance measures, like serial and radio performance, are necessary. In this work four available platforms have been evaluated. The platforms are compared among each other and to their respective datasheets. Several measurements show significant differences from the advertised performance numbers in the datasheet that can influence performance and successful operation of the protocol stack.
Near-infrared polarimetry setting constraints on the orbiting spot model for Sgr A* flares

Context. Recent near-infrared polarization measurements of Sgr A* show that its emission is significantly polarized during flares and consists of a non- or weakly polarized main flare with highly polarized sub-flares. The flare activity suggests a quasi-periodicity of ∼20 min in agreement with previous observations. Aims. By simultaneous fitting of the lightcurve fluctuations and the time-variable polarization angle, we address the question of whether these changes are consistent with a simple hot spot/ring model, in which the interplay of relativistic effects plays the major role, or whether some more complex dependency of the intrinsic emissivity is required. Methods. We discuss the significance of the 20 min peak in the periodogram of a flare from 2003. We consider all general relativistic effects that imprint on the polarization degree and angle and fit the recent polarimetric data, assuming that the synchrotron mechanism is responsible for the intrinsic polarization and considering two different magnetic field configurations. Results. Within the quality of the available data, we think that the model of a single spot in addition to an underlying ring is favoured. In this model the broad near-infrared flares of Sgr A* are due to a sound wave that travels around the MBH once while the sub-flares, superimposed on the broad flare, are due to transiently heated and accelerated electrons which can be modeled as a plasma blob. Within this model it turns out that a strong statement about the spin parameter is difficult to achieve, while the inclination can be constrained to values ≥35° on a 3σ level.
PERSONALITY BASED GAMIFICATION : HOW DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES PERCIVE GAMIFICATION Research in Progress

Personality is known to moderate task performance, learning styles, and gaming preferences. With the inclusion of game elements into non-game contexts such as education and workplaces, it is essential to develop models that will help explain and predict the influence of personality in environments that are, unlike the existing research, both ludic and utilitarian at the same time. In this study which is the first in a series of studies, we apply game elements to an undergraduate information systems course and examine the students perception of playfulness (n=102). Students completed a five factor personality test and answered questions about their preference for specific game elements and their overall playfulness from the gamification applied. T-tests and Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis were performed comparing low and high measures of each personality trait revealing a higher preference level for badges by introverts and higher levels of preference from progression by agreeable personalities. Several significant differences in the overall playfulness were found in the relations of the path model and are presented. The significance of these results comes from the understanding that playfulness from game elements is not always granted and depends among other factors on personality.
Perception driven robot locomotion (特集「ロコモーション」)

The problem of robot locomotion has historically been considered as a problem in control. Despite years of research by many labs, the best robots cannot match the general performance of a human child. Here we suggest that we re-examine the focus on control and consider locomotion from a new perspective, that of perception. This new perspective is suggested by recent results in the incorporation of visual information with walking and in the incorporation of reflexes during walking. It is suggested that a key role of the central pattern generator is to coordinate the fusion of the influence of perception on the step cycle.
Examining the Structure of the Modus Operandi Questionnaire for Adult & Juvenile Sex Offenders

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu. Recommended Citation Zatkin, Judith Gayle, "Examining the Structure of the Modus Operandi Questionnaire for Adult & Juvenile Sex Offenders" (2017). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 4073.
Corrosion Detection System for Submarin Oil Transportation Pipelines Based on Multi-sensor Data Fusion by Support Vector Machine

A system to detect the corrosion of submarine oil pipeline is introduced, it got the original data by 3 groups ultrasonic sensors and flux leakage sensors. We made multiscale wavelet transform and frequency analysis to multichannels original data and extracted multi-attribute parameters from time domain and frequency domain, then we selected the key attribute parameters that have bigger correlativity with the corrosion degrees of oil pipeline among of multi-attribute parameters. The support vector machine was used to do multisensor data fusion to detect the corrosion degrees of submarine oil transportation pipelines and those key attribute parameters were used to as input vectors of support vector machine. The experimental results show that this method is feasible and effective
Exploration of Chinese Website Accessibility Evaluation Model

Under the background of information accessibility, four principles of accessibility evaluation model based on Chinese Web site were raised, the corresponding evaluation indexes were given, and following some certain standardized process, respective weights were gotten by doing quantification dispositions of the accessibility evaluation model indexes. The evaluation criteria and the implementation methods of evaluation based on the accessibility evaluation model index were discussed.
Sense Discriminative Patterns for Word Sense Disambiguation

Given a target word w i to be disambiguated, we define a class of local contexts for w i such that the sense of w i is univocally determined. We call such local contexts sense discriminative and represent them with sense discriminative (SD) patterns of lexico-syntactic features. We describe an algorithm for the automatic acquisition of minimal SD patterns based on training data in SemCor. We have tested the effectiveness of the approach on a set of 30 highly ambiguous verbs. Results compare favourably with the ones produced by a SVM word sense disambiguation system based on bag of words.
Moral and Ethical Antecedents of Attitude Toward Counterfeit Luxury Products: Evidence from Pakistan

ABSTRACT Counterfeiting a universal problem is influencing marketers and consumers across the world. Despite its severity, earlier researchers have not paid much attention to it especially in the perspective of moral and ethical aspects. Researchers generally have established the influence of ethical/moral aspects along with social-personal factors on attitude toward counterfeiting luxury products (CLPs). They have not entirely explored the influence of moral aspects on CLPs. Thus, the aim of this study is to ascertain the influence of ethical issues on attitude toward CLPs in the context of theory of planned behavior and theory of reasoned action.
Strain relaxation of SiGe islands on compliant oxide

The relaxation of patterned, compressively strained, epitaxial Si0.7Ge0. 3 films transferred to borophosphorosilicate (BPSG) glass by a wafer-bonding and etch-back technique was studied as an approach for fabricating defect-free Si1−xGex relaxed films. Both the desired in-plane expansion and undesired buckling of the films concurrently contribute to the relaxation. Their relative role in the relaxation process was examined experimentally and by modeling. Using x-ray diffraction, Raman scattering and atomic force microscopy, the dynamics of in-plane expansion and buckling of Si0.7Ge0. 3 islands for island sizes ranging from 10 μm×10 μm to 200 μm×200 μm for anneal temperatures between 750 and 800 °C was investigated. Lateral relaxation is favored in small and thick islands, and buckling is initially dominant in large and thin islands. Raising the temperature to lower viscosity of the oxide enhances the rate of both processes equally. For very long annealing times, however, the buckling disappeared, allowing l.
A stochastic model for the throughput of non-persistent TCP flows

The general aim of this paper is to analyze the throughput of a HTTP flow. For this, we introduce a simplified model of such a flow which consists of a succession of idle and download periods. The file downloads are subject to a fixed packet loss probability. The same TCP connection is possibly used for the download of a random number of files, for which the effect of the slow start is taken into account. For this stochastic model, we derive a closed form formula for the stationary throughput obtained by a flow. We also derive closed form expressions for the mean time to transfer a file and for the distribution of the throughput. Several laws of file sizes and idle times are considered including heavy tailed distributions. We also briefly discuss how the formulas can be applied to predict bandwidth sharing among competing HTTP flows.
A New Defogging Method with Nested Windows

Images captured in foggy scenes suffer from degraded contrast and colors. It's imperative to overcome the weather effects and make outdoor vision systems more reliable. This paper describes a fast algorithm to enhance the visibility of foggy scenes with solely a single image. Firstly, the thickness of the fog is estimated with a Gaussian filter and an intensity image, which is composed of the foggy image's darkest color channel. It's based on the observation the edges of the airlight are similar to that of the foggy image's low frequency component. Secondly, to handle misestimates of the airlight, a revised imaging model and a strategy of nested multiple windows are proposed to enhance the visibility and make faint objects in the distance to be visible. Compared with previous single image based techniques, the algorithm proposed in this paper can handle images with large regions similar to the atmospheric light. In addition, it's timesaving. Experimental results on large number of foggy images validate the effectiveness of the method. Keywords-contrast enhancement; bad weather; defog; dehaze
Cognitive Modelling of Event Ordering Reasoning in Imagistic Domains

The inference of temporal information from past event occurences in imagistic domains is relevant in several applications in knowledge engineering. In such applications, the order in which events have happened is imprinted in the domain as visual-spatial relations among its elements. Therefore, the interpretation of the relative ordering in which those events have occured is essential for understanding the domain evolution. We propose a cognitive model for event ordering reasoning within domains whose elements have been modified by past events. From the analysis of cognitive abilities of experts we propose new ontology constructs for knowledge modelling associated to Problem-Solving Methods. We illustrate the effectiveness of the model by means of an applications to an imagistic domain.
Towards interactive physical robotic assistance: Parameterizing motion primitives through natural language

Natural language interaction between humans and robots is a very challenging topic, especially when it refers to motion descriptions in a certain environment. This problem is particularly relevant during physical human-robot interaction, e.g. in cooperative transportation tasks, where the partners' physical coupling requires an agreement on the way to follow. Understanding in depth the link between sentences, words, environmental properties and motions can deeply enhance the interaction between humans and robots. In this work, we propose a novel approach for learning relations and dependencies between motion, natural language and environmental properties using parameterized left-to-right time-based Hidden Markov Models. A natural language model represents the link between language and motion symbols while the HMMs parameterization corresponds to the explicit influence on motions of both words and environmental features. The proposed PHMM approach parameterizes the output and the transition probabilities using a non-linear dependency estimation. The method is validated by learning and generating navigation primitives in a 2 Degrees-Of-Freedom (DoF) virtual scenario.
Reliable Multicast MAC Protocol for Spatial Reuse Efficiency assisted by Multicarrier DS-CDMA in WLAN Systems

We propose a reliable multicast MAC protocol based on the multicarrier direct-sequence code-division multiple access (MC DS-CDMA) scheme to enhance spatial reuse efficiency in wireless local area networks (WLANs). Conventional multicast MAC protocols using RTS-CTS handshake exchange CTS and ACK packets consecutively for reliable transmission. Although this protocol guarantees transmission reliability by avoiding the hidden node (HN) problem, multiple CTSs and ACKs degrade network efficiency and cause the well-known exposed node (EN) problem, rather than the HN problem. The multicast sender must receive multiple CTSs and ACKs from all multicast receivers in its own multicast group for reliable multicast. The range of the EN problem is greater than that of the unicast, and spatial reuse efficiency decreases. In the proposed protocol, CTS/ACK messages of multiple receivers can be transmitted concurrently through the MC DS-CDMA mechanism to alleviate the EN problem and enhance spatial reuse efficiency. This can reduce the transmission and carrier sensing range of multiple receivers, since the protocol spreads the CTS/ACK transmission power by the spreading gain. The proposed protocol also reduces the total transmission delay due to the reduction of the overhead of consecutive CTSs and ACKs. The proposed protocol is thoroughly examined by simulation and theoretical methods. Results show that the proposed protocol significantly reduces the aforementioned overhead, and thus improves the performance of WLAN systems.
The cost of reconfiguration in a cloud

Emerging clouds promise enterprises the ability to increase or decrease their resource allocation on demand using virtual machine resizing and migration. These dynamic reconfiguration actions lead to performance impact during the reconfiguration duration. In this paper, we study the cost of reconfiguring a cloud-based IT infrastructure in response to workload variations. We observe that live migration requires a significant amount of spare CPU on the source server (but not on the target server). If spare CPU is not available, it impacts both the duration of migration and the performance of the application being migrated. Further, the amount of CPU required for live migration varies with the active memory of the VM being migrated. Finally, we show that live migration may impact any co-located VMs based on the cache usage pattern of the co-located VM. We distill all our observations to present a list of practical recommendations to cloud providers for minimizing the impact of reconfiguration during dynamic resource allocation.
Compositional Verification of an Object-Based Model for Reactive Systems

Reactive systems have an ongoing interaction with their environment, accepting requests and producing responses. Correct and reliable construction of reactive systems is particularly important and challenging. So, using a formal method to establish mathematical proof of correctness of such systems is necessary. A formal method consists of three major components: a model for describing the behavior of the system, a specification language to embody correctness requirements, and an analysis method to verify the behavior against the correctness requirements [8]. We choose an object-based model as the modelling language to describe the system, linear temporal logic as the specification language, and compositional verification for verifying that the model meets its specification. In system verification, a main obstacle to the use of automatic methods is the state-explosion problem, which is the exponential increase in the number of system states caused by a linear increase in the number of system components or variables [6]. Compositional verification attempts to overcome the stateexplosion problem by exploiting the modular structure that is naturally present in many system designs. Compositional verification can decrease the complexity of problem when the model is naturally decomposable [10]. So, a model consisting of inherently independent modules is suitable for compositional verification. Object-based modelling is based on abstraction, encapsulation, and information hiding, using modules with high independence. Therefore, we choose an object-based model.