Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why Don’t Delay-based Congestion Estimators Work in the Real-world?

A number of designs have been proposed for complementing TCP’s treatment of packet loss as an implicit signal of congestion, with a signal derived from measurements of round-trip times (RTT). The premise of such delay-based congestion estimators (DBCEs) is that congestion is reflected in queueing delays that can be detected by measuring changes in RTT. We conduct a large-scale empirical analysis of real-world TCP connections to evaluate the effectiveness and limitations of five prominent DBCEs. Our findings are that none of the five perform well (correctly indicate congestion before a loss is experienced) for a large percentage of real-world TCP connections. They also often perform poorly by having high rates of false-positive and false-negative estimates of congestion. Further, we find that the connection characteristics that most influence the performance of these DBCEs are so diverse that designing an effective DBCE for all types of connections is still an open research problem.1
User independent, multi-modal spotting of subtle arm actions with minimal training data

We address a specific, particularly difficult class of activity recognition problems defined by (1) subtle, and hardly discriminative hand motions such as a short press or pull, (2) large, ill defined NULL class (any other hand motion a person may express during normal life), and (3) difficulty of collecting sufficient training data, that generalizes well from one to multiple users. In essence we intend to spot activities such as opening a cupboard, pressing a button, or taking an object from a shelve in a large data stream that contains typical every day activity. We focus on body-worn sensors without instrumenting objects, we exploit available infrastructure information, and we perform a one-to-many-users training scheme for minimal training effort. We demonstrate that a state of the art motion sensors based approach performs poorly under such conditions (Equal Error Rate of 18% in our experiments). We present and evaluate a new multi modal system based on a combination of indoor location with a wrist mounted proximity sensor, camera and inertial sensor that raises the EER to 79%.
Survey II : stellar populations and internal structure of early-type lens galaxies 1

We use images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to derive effective radii and effective surface brightnesses of 15 early-type lens galaxies identified by the Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) Survey as described in paper I. The structural parameters are used in combination with stellar velocity dispersions from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) database to construct the Fundamental Plane (FP) of lens galaxies. The size of the sample and the relatively narrow redshift range (z = 0.06−0.33) allows us to investigate for the first time the distribution of lens galaxies in the FP space. After correcting the effective surface brightnesses for evolution, we find that lens galaxies occupy a subset of the local FP. The edge-on projection (approximately 1 Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. These observations are associated with program #10174. Support for program #10174 was provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA (tt@physics.ucsb.edu) Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Box 951547, Knudsen Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA Kapteyn Institute, P.O. Box 800, 9700AV Groningen, The Netherlands (koopmans@astro.rug.nl) Department of Physics and Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA (bolton@alum.mit.edu, burles@mit.edu) Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138, USA (abolton@cfa.harvard.edu) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, MS169-327, Pasadena CA 91109 (leonidas@jpl.nasa.gov)
A Study of Image Retargeting Based on Seam Carving

Along with the rapid growth of display devices with different aspect ratios and resolutions, image retargeting has become a hot topic in image processing fields. Traditional methods such as scaling and cropping often cannot produce satisfactory results because they do not consider the content of the image. Seam carving, one of the most popular contentaware retargeting technologies, attracts a lot of researchers' attention owing to its effectiveness and flexibility. In this paper, we present the first comprehensive study of image retargeting technology based on seam carving method. We survey recent developments in image retargeting based on seam carving and categorize these algorithms. We also list some trends in image retargeting for the future research and intend this study to be useful to researchers interested in image retargeting.
Mobility Tracking Based on Autoregressive Models

We propose an integrated scheme for tracking the mobility of a user based on autoregressive models that accurately capture the characteristics of realistic user movements in wireless networks. The mobility parameters are obtained from training data by computing Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) estimates. Estimation of the mobility state, which incorporates the position, velocity, and acceleration of the mobile station, is accomplished via an extended Kalman filter using signal measurements from the wireless network. By combining mobility parameter and state estimation in an integrated framework, we obtain an efficient and accurate real-time mobility tracking scheme that can be applied in a variety of wireless networking applications. We consider two variants of an autoregressive mobility model in our study and validate the proposed mobility tracking scheme using mobile trajectories collected from drive test data. Our simulation results validate the accuracy of the proposed tracking scheme even when only a small number of data samples is available for initial training.
Band selection and classification of hyperspectral images by minimizing normalized mutual information

Hyperspectral images (HSI) classification is a high technical remote sensing tool. The main goal is to classify the point of a region. The HIS contains more than a hundred bidirectional measures, called bands (or simply images), of the same region called Ground Truth Map (GT). Unfortunately, some bands contain redundant information, others are affected by the noise, and the high dimensionalities of features make the accuracy of classification lower. All these bands can be important for some applications, but for the classification a small subset of these is relevant. In this paper we use mutual information (MI) to select the relevant bands; and the Normalized Mutual Information coefficient to avoid and control redundant ones. This is a feature selection scheme and a Filter strategy. We establish this study on HSI AVIRIS 92AV3C. This is effectiveness, and fast scheme to control redundancy.
Existence of pure strategy equilibria among geographically dispersed firms

This paper gives a proof of existence of price equilibria under certain parameters for a model of product differentiation commonly used in the empirical geographic differentiation literature. This proof is needed because the assumptions of Caplin and Nalebuff (1991) are not generally satisfied once data is introduced to geographic models. The theorem also has implications for existence in mixed-logit demand models.
Assessment of MRF based joint scale selection and segmentation for 3D liver vessel segmentation task

Vessel segmentation plays an important role in medical image analysis. Irrespective of the modality used, the common challenge in all vessel tracking methods is scale variability, in other words, the dependence on the size of the vessels, which is unknown a priori. Despite few approaches that attempts to perform scale selection and segmentation simultaneously, the common approach is to perform multiscale analysis and fuse the results afterwards via a scale selection mechanism. Recently, Mirzaalian et al. proposed to use MRFs for joint scale selection and vessel segmentation in 2D retinal images. In this study, we have assessed the 3D version of this method in comparison with the conventional multiscale approach augmented with novel automatic threshold selection and image guided morphological filtering, using the well-known Hessian based method. The assessment has been done quantitatively using IRCAD dataset and qualitatively by studying the output vessel masks. The results indicate that the MRF based approach does not improve the results significantly in 3D liver vessel segmentation task compared to conventional multiscale approach.
Objective constraints of figural goodness

The effects of uniformity, compactness and symmetry on pattern goodness estimates were evaluated in three experiments. Ss were asked to choose the pattern which looks the best in respect to other patterns from given set. Patterns within sets differed from each other in uniformity (Experiment 1), compactness (Experiment 2) and symmetry (Experiment 3). Regression analyses indicated that symmetry was a single good predictor of the frequency of good pattern choice. This result is connected with Koffka's concept of perceptual economy: uniformity and compactness have perceptual advantages in the restricted situations (low energy disposal), while symmetry prevails in unrestricted conditions (high energy disposal).
The Reciprocal Relations of Pressure, Work/Family Interference, and Role Satisfaction: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study in Taiwan

The aim of this longitudinal study was to explore reciprocal relationships between work/family pressure, work/family interference, and work/family satisfaction among Taiwanese employees (N = 310). All study variables were assessed three times. We found that within the work domain, earlier work pressure caused later work-to-family conflict (WFC), while earlier WFC reduced later job satisfaction. We also found that earlier WFC caused later work pressure, while earlier job satisfaction reduced later WFC. Similarly, we found that within the family domain, earlier family pressure caused later family-to-work conflict (FWC), while earlier FWC reduced later family satisfaction. We also found that earlier FWC caused later family pressure. In addition, family pressure and family satisfaction had reciprocal relationships over time. Together these longitudinal and reciprocal relations strongly support our hypothesized feedback loops linking pressure, work and family conflict, and role satisfaction, within each of the work and family domains. We made specific suggestions on breaking these vicious cycles to effectively manage both the work and family roles.
Low complexity higher order QAM modulation for IDMA system

Interleave division multiple access (IDMA) is a Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) technique regarded as an enabling technology for next generation wireless systems. IDMA can improve the system efficiency by supporting multiple access for a large number of stations. For high spectral efficiency transmission in IDMA, previous works proposed systems in the context of Superposition Coded Modulation (SCM) where multiple layers of BPSK or QPSK modulated symbols are transmitted simultaneously. However this method has a very high complexity due to the high number of streams that need to be separated in the multi-user detection of the receiver. In this paper, instead of SCM, we employ QAM modulation up to 256-QAM for high spectral efficiency transmission. We show our receiver architecture which uses a soft demapper that significantly decreases the receiver detection complexity. While a maximum number of users that can be accommodated in the proposed system is slightly less than the conventional, our proposed system is much more suited in modern multi-mode transceivers aside from the fact that it needs about 25% complexity compared with SCM-QPSK.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN CLUSTER ANALYSIS

The purpose of cluster analysis is to investigate the structure within the set of units, in particular, to ask whether the units fall naturally into a certain smaller number of groups (or clusters, or classes) of units, such that units within a group are 'similar' to one another. Although such a clustering problem is intuitively simple and understandable, its solution is a continuing area of research. This is confirmed by the increasing number of papers on this and similar topics in the last three decades in journals of theoretical and applied statistics, the establishment of a special journal in 1984 for the field of cluster analysis, the Journal of Classification, and the foundation of the International Federation of Classification Societies in 1985. In the process of the development of cluster analysis, various types of clustering problems arose. In the paper the main topics are presented and some promising discussed.
Poisson matrix completion

We extend the theory of matrix completion to the case where we make Poisson observations for a subset of entries of a low-rank matrix. We consider the (now) usual matrix recovery formulation through maximum likelihood with proper constraints on the matrix M of size d1-by-d2, and establish theoretical upper and lower bounds on the recovery error. Our bounds are nearly optimal up to a factor on the order of O(log(d1d2)). These bounds are obtained by adapting the arguments used for one-bit matrix completion [1] (although these two problems are different in nature) and the adaptation requires new techniques exploiting properties of the Poisson likelihood function and tackling the difficulties posed by the locally sub-Gaussian characteristic of the Poisson distribution. Our results highlight a few important distinctions of Poisson matrix completion compared to the prior work in matrix completion including having to impose a minimum signal-to-noise requirement on each observed entry. We also develop an efficient iterative algorithm and demonstrate its good performance in recovering solar flare images.
Parameterized Complexity and Approximability of Directed Odd Cycle Transversal

A directed odd cycle transversal of a directed graph (digraph) $D$ is a vertex set $S$ that intersects every odd directed cycle of $D$. In the Directed Odd Cycle Transversal (DOCT) problem, the input consists of a digraph $D$ and an integer $k$. The objective is to determine whether there exists a directed odd cycle transversal of $D$ of size at most $k$. In this paper, we settle the parameterized complexity of DOCT when parameterized by the solution size $k$ by showing that DOCT does not admit an algorithm with running time $f(k)n^{O(1)}$ unless FPT = W[1]. On the positive side, we give a factor $2$ fixed parameter tractable (FPT) approximation algorithm for the problem. More precisely, our algorithm takes as input $D$ and $k$, runs in time $2^{O(k^2)}n^{O(1)}$, and either concludes that $D$ does not have a directed odd cycle transversal of size at most $k$, or produces a solution of size at most $2k$. Finally, we provide evidence that there exists $\epsilon > 0$ such that DOCT does not admit a factor $(1+\epsilon)$ FPT-approximation algorithm.
Optimal and suboptimal linear receivers for time-hopping impulse radio systems

In this paper, we consider optimal and suboptimal linear receivers for a given user in a frequency-selective multiuser environment. The optimal linear receiver combining all the samples from the frames and the multipath components, according to the MMSE criterion, is designed. Due to the complexity of this receiver, two suboptimal receivers are considered: (i) an optimal frame combining receiver, which optimally combines the samples from the frames, while combining different multipath components suboptimally; (ii) an optimal multipath combining receiver, which combines the samples from different multipath components optimally, while combining the samples from the frames suboptimally. In this paper, these optimal and suboptimal linear receivers are designed and their performance is evaluated via simulations.
A characteristic observable signature of preferred-frame effects in relativistic binary pulsars

In this paper, we develop a consistent, phenomenological methodology to measure preferred-frame effects (PFEs) in binary pulsars that exhibit a high rate of periastron advance. We show that in these systems the existence of a preferred frame for gravity leads to an observable characteristic ‘signature’ in the timing data, which uniquely identifies this effect. We expand the standard Damour–Deruelle timing formula to incorporate this ‘signature’ and show how this new PFE timing model can be used to either measure or constrain the parameters related to a violation of the local Lorentz invariance of gravity in the strong internal fields of neutron stars. In particular, we demonstrate that in the presence of PFEs we expect a set of the new timing parameters to have a unique relationship that can be measured and tested incontrovertibly. This new methodology is applied to the Double Pulsar, which turns out to be the ideal test system for this kind of experiment. The currently available data set allows us only to study the impact of PFEs on the orbital precession rate, , providing limits that are, at the moment, clearly less stringent than existing limits on PFE strong-field parameters. However, simulations show that the constraints improve fast in the coming years, allowing us to study all new PFE timing parameters and to check for the unique relationship between them. Finally, we show how a combination of several suitable systems in a PFE antenna array, expected to be available, for instance, with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), provides full sensitivity to possible violations of local Lorentz invariance in strong gravitational fields in all directions of the sky. This PFE antenna array may eventually allow us to determine the direction of a preferred frame should it exist.
Visualization to Support Augmented Web Browsing

In conventional Web browsing, to explore contents of interest while browsing a Web page, in many cases users need to leave that Web page and switch to external applications or other task-specific Web sites. To avoid switching between Web pages, we present in this paper an approach to support the handling of data and tasks further added onto the browsed Web pages in terms of augmented Web browsing. Without changing the existing Web contents and page-layouts, two levels of visual supports addable onto any existing Web page are suggested: (1) at micro level, visual cues encoding additional information are directly bound to particular hypermedia items, and (2) at macro level, additional visual layers are flexibly attached onto the browsed Web pages. To illustrate the ideas, the Fire fox add-on VizMe is developed with examples mimicking Google as a browser's extension, and to browse Web snippets with geospatial and temporal references.
APE1/Ref-1 Regulates STAT3 Transcriptional Activity and APE1/Ref-1–STAT3 Dual-Targeting Effectively Inhibits Pancreatic Cancer Cell Survival

Pancreatic cancer is a largely incurable disease, and increasing evidence supports strategies targeting multiple molecular mediators of critical functions of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cells. Intracellular redox state modulates the activity of various signal transduction pathways and biological processes, including cell survival, drug resistance and responsiveness to microenvironmental factors. Recently, it has been shown that the transcription factor STAT3 is under redox control, but the mechanisms involved in its regulation are unknown. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that STAT3 DNA binding and transcriptional activity is directly regulated by the redox function of the APE1/Ref-1 endonuclease, using overexpression and redox-specific mutational strategies, and gene knockdown. Also, pharmacological blockade of APE1/Ref-1 by the redox-selective inhibitor E3330 abrogates STAT3 DNA binding. Since APE1/Ref-1 also exerts redox control on other cancer-associated transcription factors, we assessed the impact of dual-targeting of STAT3 signaling and APE1/Ref-1 redox on pancreatic cancer cell functions. We observed that disruption of APE1/Ref-1 redox activity synergizes with STAT3 blockade to potently inhibit the proliferation and viability of human PDAC cells. Mechanistically, we show that STAT3–APE1/Ref-1 dual targeting promotes marked tumor cell apoptosis, with engagement of caspase-3 signaling, which are significantly increased in comparison to the effects triggered by single target blockade. Also, we show that STAT3–APE1/Ref-1 dual blockade results in significant inhibition of tumor cell migration. Overall, this work demonstrates that the transcriptional activity of STAT3 is directly regulated by the redox function of APE1/Ref-1, and that concurrent blockade of STAT3 and APE1/Ref-1 redox synergize effectively inhibit critical PDAC cell functions.
On the implementation of AKS-class primality tests

Algorithms of the new “cyclotomic AKS class” determine rigorously and in polynomial time whether an input integer is prime. Herein are discussed implementation issues, with a focus on techniques such as asymptotically fast polynomial manipulations, the possible use of floating-point arithmetic, and special powering ladders. We implemented various of the ideas herein on an Apple G4, Mac OS X system, and report performance for one particular AKS variant. We note two performance issues: a) although single-precision vector floats were not employed in this test implementation, double-precision float performance was quite impressive (we quantify this), and b) there are many additional ways to invoke vectorization, if one so desires, for further speedups. * Advanced Computation Group, Apple Computer ** University of Maryland College Park
Maintaining Context in a Changing (Virtual) World - Educators' Perspectives for Opensim and Second Life

Educational activities previously performed in Second Life are now more and more move moving to other alternatives. This study concentrates on the features of Second Life and its open-source alternative, OpenSim that affect the results of the in-world educational activities. The need for educators to take these features into account is another focus of this study which also aims to highlight the similarities and differences between the contexts of Second Life and OpenSim worlds, whether internally or externally hosted, as well as their potentials and weaknesses. The findings suggest that each one of these alternatives gathers different positive and negative features and their suitability greatly depends on the academics’
Porter ’ s stemming algorithm for Dutch Wessel Kraaij

A stemming algorithm provides a simple means to enhance Recall in Text Retrieval systems. The paper describes the development of a Dutch version of the Porter stemming algorithm. The stemmer was evaluated using a method inspired by Paice (Paice, 1994). The evaluation method is based on a list of groups of morphologically related words. Ideally, each group must be stemmed to the same root. The result of applying the stemmer to these groups of words is used to calculate the Understemming and Overstemming Index. These parameters and the diversity of stem group categories that could be generated from the CELEX database enabled a careful analysis of the effects of each stemming rule. The testsuite is extremely fit for a qualitative comparison of different (versions of) stemmers.