Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification of MIMO-ARMAX models for glycemia and sodium ions tests, through Particle Swarm Optimization

In this article, the problem of multivariable data autoregressive identification is approached, in view of prediction. Such data are especially provided by natural phenomena with geographical distribution, but could also be acquired from concentrated systems with several outputs, like medical records of one or more patients. Presumably, data are generated by the same source and exhibit more or less correlations to each other. Instead of processing each data set as an independent time series, the whole data block can be seen as the reaction of some open MIMO system to unknown stimuli. Therefore, modeling and forecasting of system behavior can rely on multi-dimensional ARMAX models. Optimal structural indices of MIMO-ARMAX model are found by means of an evolutionary strategy: Particle Swarm Optimization.
Single molecule long read sequencing resolves the detailed structure of complex satellite DNA loci in Drosophila melanogaster

Satellite DNA (satDNA) repeats can make up a large fraction of eukaryotic genomes. These blocks of tandem repeats are rapidly evolving and have roles in genome stability and chromosome segregation. Their repetitive nature poses genome assembly challenges and has stymied progress on the detailed study of satDNA structure. Here we use single molecule realtime sequencing reads to assemble and study the genomic structure of two complex satDNA loci in Drosophila melanogaster—260-bp and Responder—with unprecedented resolution. We find that complex satDNAs are organized into large tandem arrays interrupted by transposable elements. The homogenized repeats in the array center suggest that gene conversion and unequal crossovers drive the concerted evolution of repeats, the degree to which differs among satDNA loci. Both satDNA arrays have a higher order organization that suggests recent structural rearrangements. These assemblies provide a platform for the evolutionary and functional genomics of satDNAs in pericentric heterochromatin. INTRODUCTION Satellite DNAs (satDNAs; Kit 1961; Sueoka 1961; Szybalski 1968) are tandemly repeated DNAs frequently found in regions of low recombination (Charlesworth, et al. 1994; e.g. centromeres, telomeres, and Y chromosomes) that can make up a large fraction of eukaryotic genomes (Britten and Kohne 1968). SatDNA families are classified according to their repeat unit size and composition—simple satellites generally correspond to uniform clusters of small (e.g 1-10 bp) repeat units and complex satellites correspond to more variable clusters of larger (e.g. >100 bp) . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi. org/10.1101/054155 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online May. 18, 2016;
Navigating the Relational Psychic Economy of Disability: The Case of M

This paper presents a theoretically-informed psychosocial analysis of the case of M, a physically disabled man from South Africa. We use M’s account as a platform from which to consider projection, melancholic suspension and grief, as these are played out in the negotiation of dependency in relationships for disabled people. Making use of a case study methodology, we examine the various strategies through which M manages those disability stereotypes which are ascribed to him, creating a picture of how identity is negotiated in the face of interpersonal dependency as well as disablist prejudice. A central proposition is that, for M, upholding relationships which bring much-needed assistance means caring for the emotional lives of his carers, in a manner which leaves him more vulnerable to internalizing identity insults, and less able to resist his own oppression. Employing a psychoanalytic frame, we suggest that the “melancholic suspension” which some disabled people may be subject to, may lead to the necessity to “take on” certain projections, in the process of accessing much-needed care. As shall be seen, M maneuvers creatively through this relational realm by engaging in trade-offs between positive identity and physical need, employing strategies which include self-deprecation, the performance of mastery, playing with gender, and humor. With these and other techniques, he navigates the relational and psychic economy of his dependency.
An Empirical Study of Software Requirements Verification and Validation Techniques along their Mitigation Strategies

Requirements engineering is very crucial phase of software development cycle. Different sub activities are performed during requirements engineering. Previous research shows that there are various techniques regarding requirements verification and validation. These techniques can have different relative importance in different situation. Typically the requirements engineers don’t have proper knowledge regarding nature of each technique. Existing requirements validation & verification techniques differ in their ability to effectively cover the system requirements. It is highly desirable to conduct an empirical study on requirements verification and validation techniques to know their relative importance in opinion of different experts. In this study we developed a questionnaire based on requirements verification and validation techniques and their relative importance. Analysis of the results indicates that according to experts point of view (based on their experiences and judgments) ambiguous requirements are the biggest reason behind requirements verification and validation issues. Experts do believe that review and inspection are the best mitigation strategies to remove or minimize requirements verification and validation challenges.
PENGEMBANGAN MEDIA PEMBELAJARAN INTERAKTIF BERBASIS WOT (WEBSITE ON TUMBLR) UNTUK MENINGKATKAN HASIL BELAJAR IPS MATERI KERAGAMAN SUKU BANGSA DAN BUDAYASTUDI KASUS : SISWA KELAS IV SD THB SEMARANG

Berdasarkan wawancara dan data lapangan permasalahan tersebut juga terjadi di SD Tunas Harum Bangsa Semarang. Hal ini terbukti pemahaman siswa terhadap materi IPS masih rendah, media kurang karena guru sering menggunakan gambar-gambar yang ada di buku teks sebagai media, sumber belajar siswa hanya buku pinjaman dari sekolah, minat baca siswa sangat rendah, motivasi siswa untuk mempelajari materi IPS sangat kurang. Jenis Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian pengembangan atau Research and Development (RD 2) pengumpulan data; 3) desain produk; 4) validasi desain; 5) uji coba produk; 6) revisi produk; dan 7) uji coba pemakaian. Berikut hasil penelitian yang dilakukan. Hasil uji t (Paired Sample Test) output paired sample test dengan SPSS versi 16, diperoleh nilai Sig (2-tailed) sebesar 0,000. Nilai Sig (2-tailed) sebesar 0,000 < 0,05, maka disimpulkan bahwa Ho ditolak dan Ha diterima, yang artinya terdapat perbedaan secara signifikan antara hasil belajar IPS materi Keragaman suku bangsa dan budayatingkat pusat, layak dan efektif dapat meningkatkan hasil belajar IPS Kelas IV SD Tunas Harum Bangsa.
Coupling-driven signal encoding scheme for low-power interface design

Coupling effects between on-chip interconnects must be addressed in ultra deep submicron VLSI and system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. A new low-power bus encoding scheme is proposed to minimize coupled switchings which dominate the on-chip bus power consumption. The coupling-driven bus invert method use slim encoder and decoder architecture to minimize the hardware overhead. Experimental results indicate that our encoding methods save effective switchings as much as 30% in an 8-bit bus with one-cycle redundancy.
Water destruction by X-rays in young stellar objects

Aims. We study the H2O chemistry in star-forming environments under the influence of a central X-ray source and a central far ultraviolet (FUV) radiation field. The X-ray models are applied to envelopes around low-mass Class 0 and I young stellar objects (YSOs). Methods. The gas-phase water chemistry is modeled as a function of time, hydrogen density and X-ray flux. To cover a wide range of physical environments, densities between nH = 10 4 –10 9 cm −3 and temperatures between T = 10–1000 K are studied. Results. Three different regimes are found: for T < 100 K, the water abundance is of order 10 −7 –10 −6 and can be somewhat enhanced or reduced due to X-rays, depending on time and density. For 100 K T 250 K, H2O is reduced from initial x(H2O) ≈ 10 −4 following ice evaporation to x(H2O) ≈ 10 −6 for FX 10 −3 erg s −1 cm −2 (t = 10 4 yr) and for FX 10 −4 erg s −1 cm −2 (t = 10 5 yr). At higher temperatures (T 250 K) and hydrogen densities, water can persist with x(H2O) ≈ 10 −4 even for high X-ray fluxes. Water is destroyed in both Class 0 and I envelopes on relatively short timescales (t ≈ 5000 yr) for realistic X-ray fluxes, although the effect is less prominent in Class 0 envelopes due to the higher X-ray absorbing densities there. FUV photons from the central source are not effective in destroying water. Conclusions. X-rays reduce the water abundances especially in regions where the gas temperature is T 250–300 K for fluxes FX 10 −5 –10 −4 erg s −1 cm −2 . T he affected regions can be envelopes, disks or outflow hot spots. The average water abundance in Class I sources for LX 10 27 erg s −1 is predicted to be x(H2O) 10 −6 . Central UV fields have a negligible influence, unless the
Stability properties of equilibria of classes of cooperative systems

This note deals with the constant control problem for homogeneous cooperative and irreducible systems. These systems serve as models for positive systems. A necessary and sufficient condition for global asymptotic stability of the zero solution of this class of systems is known. Adding a constant control allows to shift the equilibrium point from zero to a point in the first orthant. We prove that for every nontrivial nonnegative control vector a unique nontrivial equilibrium point is achieved which is globally asymptotically stable if the zero solution of the uncontrolled system is globally asymptotically stable. In addition a converse result is provided. Finally a stability result for a particular class of Kolmogorov systems is established. We compare our main results to those in the literature.
Roads to Development: Experimental Evidence from Urban Road Pavement

Urban peripheries in many developing country cities lack basic local public goods like pavement, water, sewerage and electricity. We estimate the impacts of slum infrastructure upgrading using an experiment in urban road pavement provision in Mexico. Our findings show that homes in streets that were paved increased their value between 15 and 17%. Households living in streets that were paved obtained more credit, had higher per capita expenditures, increased motor vehicle ownership and were more likely to have made home improvements. The rate of return to road pavement is estimated to be 2% without considering externalities, but raises to 55% once externalities are accounted for. We also present a model to understand the experimental estimates. Increases in consumption are more strongly correlated with increases in housing value than reductions in transport costs, suggesting that the wealth effect generated by the road pavement was a stronger driver of consumption than the reduction in transport costs.
Mothers' Perceptions of Their Own and Their Spouses' Parenting Styles in Cultures of Origin, Acculturating Culture, and Cultures of Destination

Culture shapes parents’ childrearing beliefs and behaviors (Bornstein, 1991; Garcia Coll, Meyer, & Brillon, 1995). We studied cultural differences in parenting style, that is, parental reports of how frequently they engage in social, didactic, and limit setting behavior with their young children. Social exchanges are affective interpersonal dyadic interchanges (e.g., Bornstein, 2002; Kaye, 1982) that include rocking, kissing, comforting, smiling, and playful face-to-face contact. Didactic interactions are defined as caregiver attempts to stimulate the child’s attention to objects, properties, or events in the environment (Bornstein, 2002; Papoušek & Bornstein, 1992) by describing and demonstrating or providing opportunities to observe, imitate, and learn about the world. Limit setting can be defined as parents’ attempts to socialize self-control in their children (Emde, 1992) and includes the many ways parents guide children’s behavior. We chose to study these three parenting behaviors because although they are cross-culturally universal, cultural differences exist in the degree to which parents stress the importance of social, didactic, and limit setting behaviors (e.g., Bornstein et al., 1996; Caudill & Frost, 1972). We studied acculturation effects on mothers’ parenting style at the group level using the comparative approach recommended by Berry, Kim, and Boski (1987) in order to distinguish cultural variation in parenting style and make generalizations about the acculturation process (see also Bornstein & Cote, 2004; Lin & Fu, 1990). Specifically, we undertook two sets of comparisons: Japanese—Japanese immigrant— European American mothers and Argentine—South American immigrant—European American mothers. The immigrant mothers were similar ethnoculturally to the mothers in their respective cultures of origin but varied in level of acculturation to U.S. culture. We chose a European American sample so that readers would have a familiar reference point (because the bulk of research on parenting and child development studies European Americans; e.g., Parke, 2000), not because we believe European Americanism is or should be the endpoint of acculturation (for immigrants).
Distributed Estimation for Cooperative Mobile Manipulation

We present a distributed method for the estimation of the kinematic parameters, the dynamic parameters, and the kinematic state of an unknown body manipulated by a decentralized team of mobile ground (planar) robots. The proposed approach relies on the geometry of the rigid body kinematics, the rigid body dynamics, on nonlinear observation, and on consensus algorithms. The only three requirements are that each robot is able to control the 2D wrench exerted locally on the load, it can measure the velocity of its contact point, and the communication graph is connected. The finite time convergence of the strategy is proven and all the robots agree on the same estimated quantities at the end of the procedure. We present also two basic distributed control strategies that are proven to satisfy nonlinear observability conditions needed for the estimation accomplishment. Finally, a numerical test that demonstrates the evolution of the estimation algorithm is given.
Cochannel Speech Segregation with Sparse Coding

Most of the computational auditory scene analysis (CASA) based systems rely on pitch based features. When we go for cochannel speech segregation, two speakers are involved. Pitch ranges for male speech and female speech overlap to a large extent. Therefore multi-pitch tracking becomes a nontrivial task. In case of same gender mixtures, again pitch tracking becomes harder. Considering this fact, we should go for some reliable features. Here we propose a cochannel speech segregation system with sparsity based features. Sparse coding is applied on the cochleagram of the signal to get sparse approximation coefficients using pre-trained dictionaries for speakers. We treat sparse approximation coefficients the features because these are selected from the speaker specific dictionaries to represent an input signal. Sparse approximation coefficients are good choice for finding binary masks. Speech waveform is resynthesized from the masked cochleagram of the mixture. Experimental results show that the proposed method produces better objective intelligibility scores than the baseline system.
P o S ( A P C S 2 0 1 8 ) 0 0 1 Accretion Processes in Astrophysics ( A General Review )

I will update the review published in the proceedings of the first Accretion Processes in Cosmic Sources (APCS) 2016 workshop (Giovannelli & Sabau-Graziati, 2016). A part of the figures used are the same since there are no reasons to justify a drastic change in the structure of the present review. However, it is my intention to show that every component of the Universe is bound to every other component and that the comfortable classifications that are usually used are nothing more than artifices to demonstrate their apparent diversity. In reality, we move from "one class of cosmic sources" to another continuously. In this review I will discuss the following arguments:
Flow Focusing in Unsaturated Fracture Networks: A Numerical Investigation

A numerical modeling study is presented to investigate flow–focusing phenomena in a large‐scale fracture network, constructed using field data collected from the unsaturated zone of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the proposed repository site for high‐level nuclear waste. The two‐dimensional fracture network for an area of 100 by 150 m contains more than 20000 fractures. Steady state unsaturated flow in the fracture network is investigated for different boundary conditions and rock properties. Simulation results indicate that flow paths are generally vertical, and that horizontal fractures mainly provide pathways between neighboring vertical paths. In addition to fracture properties, flow–focusing phenomena are also affected by rock–matrix permeability, with lower matrix permeability leading to a high degree of flow focusing. The simulation results further indicate that the average spacing between flow paths in a layered system tends to increase and flow tends to become more focused, with depth.
Wavelet Maxima Dispersion for Breathy to Tense Voice Discrimination

This paper proposes a new parameter, the Maxima Dispersion Quotient (MDQ), for differentiating breathy to tense voice. Maxima derived following wavelet decomposition are often used for detecting edges in image processing, where locations of these maxima organize in the vicinity of the edge location. Similarly for tense voice, which typically displays sharp glottal closing characteristics, maxima following wavelet analysis are organized in the vicinity of the glottal closure instant (GCI). Contrastingly, as the phonation type tends away from tense voice towards a breathier phonation it is observed that the maxima become increasingly dispersed. The MDQ parameter is designed to quantify the extent of this dispersion and is shown to compare favorably to existing voice quality parameters, particularly for the analysis of continuous speech. Also, classification experiments reveal a significant improvement in the detection of the voice qualities when MDQ is included as an input to the classifier. Finally, MDQ is shown to be robust to additive noise down to a Signal-to-Noise Ratio of 10 dB.
Accurate and robust ego-motion estimation using expectation maximization

A novel robust visual-odometry technique, called EM-SE(3) is presented and compared against using the random sample consensus (RANSAC) for ego-motion estimation. In this contribution, stereo-vision is used to generate a number of minimal-set motion hypothesis. By using EM-SE(3), which involves expectation maximization on a local linearization of the rigid-body motion group SE(3), a distinction can be made between inlier and outlier motion hypothesis. At the same time a robust mean motion as well as its associated uncertainty can be computed on the selected inlier motion hypothesis. The data-sets used for evaluation consist of synthetic and large real-world urban scenes, including several independently moving objects. Using these data-sets, it will be shown that EM-SE(3) is both more accurate and more efficient than RANSAC.
Advances in Abstract Categorial Grammars: Language Theory and Linguistic Modeling. ESSLLI 2009 Lecture Notes, Part II

These are the lecture notes of the ESSLLI 2009 second week course on Abstract Categorial Grammar. This was an advanced course, while an introductory course was given the first week: Introduction to Abstract Categorial Grammars: Foundations and main properties, delivered by Philippe de Groote and Sylvain Salvati. An up-to-date version of these notes, possible errata, and generally ACG papers, can be found at the ACG homepage: http://calligramme.loria. fr/acg. At this URL, the ACG Development Toolkit is also available and downloadable as free software. It might be useful to run some of the examples given in these notes. In particular, some of the latter are gathered in a special file. The Abstract Categorial Grammar (ACG) framework, a grammar formalism based on the typed lambda calculus, elegantly generalizes and unifies a variety of grammar formalisms that have been proposed for the description of formal and natural languages. The first part of the course investigated formal-language-theoretic properties of "second-order" ACGs, a subclass of ACGs that have "context-free" derivations. Their generative capacity was precisely characterized. Lecture notes for this part are available at http://research.nii. ac.jp/~kanazawa/publications/esslli2009_lectures. pdf. An efficient Earley-style algorithm, suitable both for parsing and generation, was then presented. The second part of the course (these present notes) presents linguistic applications of ACGs and gives various illustrations of how ACGs provide flexible and explicit ways to model the syntax-semantics interface of natural language.
Reinforcement Learning via Recurrent Convolutional Neural Networks

Deep Reinforcement Learning has enabled the learning of policies for complex tasks in partially observable environments, without explicitly learning the underlying model of the tasks. While such model-free methods do achieve considerable performance, they often ignore the structure of task. We present a more natural representation of the solutions to Reinforcement Learning (RL) problems, within 3 Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network (RCNN) architectures to better exploit this inherent structure. The forward passes of each RCNN execute an efficient Value Iteration, propagate beliefs of state in partially observable environments, and choose optimal actions respectively. Applying back-propagation to these RCNNs allows the system to explicitly learn the Transition Model and Reward Function associated with the underlying MDP, serving as an elegant alternative to classical model-based RL. We evaluate the proposed algorithms in simulation, considering a robot planning problem. We demonstrate the capability of our framework to reduce the cost of re-planning, learn accurate MDP models, and finally re-plan with learned models to achieve near-optimal policies.
Arrhythmic risk biomarkers for the assessment of drug cardiotoxicity: from experiments to computer simulations

In this paper, we illustrate how advanced computational modelling and simulation can be used to investigate drug-induced effects on cardiac electrophysiology and on specific biomarkers of pro-arrhythmic risk. To do so, we first perform a thorough literature review of proposed arrhythmic risk biomarkers from the ionic to the electrocardiogram levels. The review highlights the variety of proposed biomarkers, the complexity of the mechanisms of drug-induced pro-arrhythmia and the existence of significant animal species differences in drug-induced effects on cardiac electrophysiology. Predicting drug-induced pro-arrhythmic risk solely using experiments is challenging both preclinically and clinically, as attested by the rise in the cost of releasing new compounds to the market. Computational modelling and simulation has significantly contributed to the understanding of cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmias over the last 40 years. In the second part of this paper, we illustrate how state-of-the-art open source computational modelling and simulation tools can be used to simulate multi-scale effects of drug-induced ion channel block in ventricular electrophysiology at the cellular, tissue and whole ventricular levels for different animal species. We believe that the use of computational modelling and simulation in combination with experimental techniques could be a powerful tool for the assessment of drug safety pharmacology.