Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards a Corpus of Validated Web Design Guidelines

Numerous guidelines are available to support designing accessible and usable web sites. However, most of these guidelines come from multiple guidelines sources with various trust levels so that their application does not guarantee any improvement of neither the accessibility nor the usability of web sites. A corpus of validated web design guidelines is therefore expected to insure such an improvement. To reach a corpus of guidelines designers can trust in, five steps were performed : firstly, guidelines sources were categorised according to a source model; secondly, the most representative and interesting guidelines sources were selected on a basis of selection parameters; thirdly, guidelines belonging to these selected sources were categorised in turn according to a general purpose guideline model and subsequently gathered to form an initial corpus of guidelines; fourthly, particular guidelines were selected by properties to be subject to a dedicated validation; fifthly, these guidelines were empirically validated by analysing the user satisfaction score. A first corpus of validated web design guidelines was consequently divided into three parts : text-only sites, graphical sites, and framed sites. This corpus is itself transformed in a web site with a design relying on its own contents.
Block remap with turnoff: A variation-tolerant cache design technique

With reducing feature size, the effects of process variations are becoming more and more predominant. Memory components such as on-chip caches are more susceptible to such variations because of high density and small sized transistors present in them. Process variations can result in high access latency and leakage energy dissipation. This may lead to a functionally correct chip being rejected, resulting in reduced chip yield. In this paper, by considering a process variation affected on-chip data cache, we first analyze performance loss due to worst-case design techniques such as accessing the entire cache with the worst-case access latency or turning off the process variation affected cache blocks, and show that the worst-case design techniques result in significant performance loss and/or high leakage energy. Then by exploiting the fact that not all applications require full associativity at set-level, we propose a variation-tolerant design technique, namely, block remap with turnoff (BRT), to minimize performance loss and leakage energy consumption. In BRT technique we selectively turnoff few blocks after rearranging them in such a way that all sets get almost equal number of process variation affected blocks. By turning off process variation affected blocks of a set, leakage energy can be minimized and the set can be accessed with low latency at the cost of reduced set associativity. We validate our technique by running SPEC2000 CPU benchmark-suite on Simplescalar simulator and show that our technique significantly reduces the performance loss and leakage energy consumption due to process variations.
Characterization of forward rectilinear-gait performance for a snake-inspired robot

Snake-inspired locomotion is much more maneuverable compared to conventional locomotion concepts and it enables a robot to navigate through rough terrain. A rectilinear gait is quite flexible and has the following benefits: functionality on a wide variety of terrains, enables a highly stable robot platform, and provides pure undulatory motion without passive wheels. However, historically speed has been a limitation for the locomotion type. In this paper, Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is utilized to reduced the weight and thereby increase the speed potential of a snake-inspired robot design based on a rectilinear gait. FDM also provides feasibility for development of complex and capable mechanism designs for executing rectilinear motion. The new design is analyzed, fabrication and evaluated based on various anchoring material velocity experiments.
Optimizing Cauchy Reed-Solomon Codes for Fault-Tolerant Storage Applications

In the past few years, all manner of storage systems, ranging from disk array systems to distributed and wide-area systems, have started to grapple with the reality of tolerating multiple simultaneous failures of storage nodes. Unlike the single failure case, which is optimally handled with RAID Level-5 parity, the multiple failure case is more difﬁcult because optimal general purpose strategies are not yet known. Erasure Coding is the ﬁeld of research that deals with these strategies, and this ﬁeld has blossomed in recent years. Despite this research, the decades-old strategy of Reed-Solomon coding remains the only space-optimal (MDS) code for all but the smallest storage systems. The best performing implementations of Reed-Solomon coding employ a variant called Cauchy Reed-Solomon coding , developed in the mid 1990’s [BKK + 95]. In this paper, we present an improvement to Cauchy Reed-Solomon coding that is based on optimizing the Cauchy distribution matrix. We detail an algorithm for generating good matrices and then evaluate the performance of encoding using all manners of Reed-Solomon coding, plus the best MDS codes from the literature. The improvements over the original Cauchy Reed-Solomon codes are as much as 83% in realistic scenarios, and average roughly 10% over all cases that we tested.
Circuit Topology-Based Test Pattern Generation for Small-Delay Defects

For sub-nanometer designs, testing for small-delay defects (SDDs) is essential to achieve low defect escapes for the manufactured silicon. Existing solutions for testing SDDs are not practical for high-volume production environments due to large pattern count or long compute time, or both. In this paper, we present a production-friendly method that takes the circuit topology into account while generating patterns for SDDs. Experimental results on several IWLS’05 benchmark and six industrial circuits show that compared to the default timing-aware pattern set, the proposed method reduces pattern count an average of 172% for IWLS benchmarks and an average of 105% for industrial circuits. We demonstrate the production-worthiness of our approach by using several quality metrics and showing that the proposed method provides similar or higher coverage for SDDs compared to the default timing-aware ATPG, but only with a significantly small number of test patterns and in significantly small run time.
An efficient extraction of character string positions using morphological operator

An efficient extraction of character string positions in a document is proposed by using a morphological operator. In regions of character strings, axial edge pixels and diagonal edge pixels are mingled together, but in other regions, they are distributed separately. Based on this difference in the directional edge pixel distribution between the character and the non-character regions, string positions are extracted directly from arbitrary blocks without any block analysis, in contrast to previous work which requires block analysis to extract string positions (F.M. Wahl et al., 1982; S. Imade et al., 1993). Experiments are conducted on the document images acquired through the scanner, and the proposed method can directly extract the character string positions from the plain text of character blocks, and even from the document containing tables and flow-charts, without any block analysis.
RecApp: A mobile application for ubiquitous and collaborative audio processing

The present paper provides a methodological framework for the design of a novel intelligent audio content processing cloud model. Motivated from previous experience on "desktop" audio content analysis and processing, a device-independent cloud model is thoroughly analyzed and designed, aiming at serving demanding new media services for the non-technologically experts (i.e. Journalists, Media Professionals, etc.). RecApp Android mobile application provides support to Journalists easily editing and sharing their audio material so they can better evaluate and disseminate it in working groups.
Criteria for minimum bit error rate decoding of turbo-codes

The stability behaviour of the iterative decoding (ID) of Turbo-Codes and its in uence on the overall performance are discussed. Several criteria to characterize the ID are proposed and the most reliable ones are determined. These criteria are used to partition the transnitted blocks into stable and unstable ones. For unstable blocks the decoding step is determined which most likely produces a low number of decoding errors. These operations allow to lower the bit error rate (BER) signi cantly and to detect the erroneous blocks with high probability. Simulations show an improvement in BER by factor 10 and more.
Time-first search for large vocabulary speech recognition

This paper describes a new search technique for large vocabulary speech recognition based on a stack decoder. Considerable memory savings are achieved with the combination of a tree based lexicon and a new search technique. The search proceeds time-first, that is partial path hypotheses are extended into the future in the inner loop and a tree walk over the lexicon is performed as an outer loop. Partial word hypotheses are grouped based on language model state. The stack maintains information about groups of hypotheses and whole groups are extended by one word to form new stack entries. An implementation is described of a one-pass decoder employing a 65000 word lexicon and a disk-based trigram language model. Real time operation is achieved with a small search error, a search space of about 5 Mbyte and a total memory usage of about 35 Mbyte.
Nutritional Supplements for Older Adults: Review and Recommendations—Part I

The majority of older adults take nutritional supplements (NS) to prevent deficiencies and/or because they are interested in the potential health promoting effects of these nutrients. This review explores the evidence of benefit for supplements of multivitamin/minerals (MVM), antioxidant nutrients, and vitamin D/calcium. Major conclusions include the following: While recommendations that older adults take a daily MVM are common, there is limited scientific support for the health-related efficacy of these supplements. In contrast, a number of antioxidant nutrients have been extensively studied. The evidence does not support a recommendation for vitamins A, C, E, or antioxidant combinations in the prevention of CVD or cancer. Based on encouraging preliminary findings, more study is recommended on the benefit of antioxidant supplements for age-related macular degeneration and of selenium for cancer prevention. In contrast to the state of the art for antioxidant supplements, there is strong and compelling support for the health benefits of supplements of Vitamin D and calcium when intake/status of these nutrients is not optimal. Thus, specific recommendations for these supplements in older adults are warranted.
Combining perception and knowledge processing for everyday manipulation

This paper describes and discusses the K-COPMAN (Knowledge-enabled Cognitive Perception for Manipulation) system, which enables autonomous robots to generate symbolic representations of perceived objects and scenes and to infer answers to complex queries that require the combination of perception and knowledge processing. Using K-COPMAN, the robot can solve inference tasks such as identifying items that are likely to be missing on a breakfast table. To the programmer K-COPMAN, is presented as a logic programming system that can be queried just like a symbolic knowledge base. Internally, K-COPMAN is realized through a data structure framework together with a library of state-of-the-art perception mechanisms for mobile manipulation in human environments. Key features of K-COPMAN are that it can make a robot environment-aware and that it supports goal-directed as well as passive perceptual processing. K-COPMAN is fully integrated into an autonomous mobile manipulation robot and is realized within the open-source robot library ROS.
Limitation and challenges of image quality measurement

Subjectively-rated image databases have become increasingly popular in the evaluation of image quality measurement algorithms. Several groups recently have improved their metrics' performance in matching these databases, using particular HVS (human visual system) properties or image statistical models. However, it is difficult to know whether these improvements are due to progress towards mimicking the perceptual properties, or are due to matching some characteristics of the databases. This paper demonstrates an inherent limitation in using such databases, showing that our very simple metric, built on the contrast masking effect, is able to perform as good as many state-of-the-art metrics. It is also argued that existent databases neither contain enough images with particularly biased distortions to test the significance of single HVS property, nor cover diverse distortion types to reflect the requirement of emerging applications.
Analysis of Perforin Assembly by Quartz Crystal Microbalance Reveals a Role for Cholesterol and Calcium-independent Membrane Binding*

Perforin is an essential component in the cytotoxic lymphocyte-mediated cell death pathway. The traditional view holds that perforin monomers assemble into pores in the target cell membrane via a calcium-dependent process and facilitate translocation of cytotoxic proteases into the cytoplasm to induce apoptosis. Although many studies have examined the structure and role of perforin, the mechanics of pore assembly and granzyme delivery remain unclear. Here we have employed quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) to investigate binding and assembly of perforin on lipid membranes, and show that perforin monomers bind to the membrane in a cooperative manner. We also found that cholesterol influences perforin binding and activity on intact cells and model membranes. Finally, contrary to current thinking, perforin efficiently binds membranes in the absence of calcium. When calcium is added to perforin already on the membrane, the QCM-D response changes significantly, indicating that perforin becomes membranolytic only after calcium binding.
Contacts and Contracts: Cross-Level Network Dynamics in the Development of an Aircraft Material

In this paper, we investigate how interorganizational networks and interpersonal networks interact over time. We present a retrospective longitudinal case study of the network system that developed a novel aircraft material and analyze change episodes from a structurationist perspective. We identify five types of episodes in which interpersonal and interorganizational networks interact (persistence, prospecting, consolidation, reconfiguration, and dissolution) and analyze conditions for these episodes and sequences among them. Our findings advance a cross-level perspective on embeddedness and show how individuals may draw on relational and structural embeddedness as distributed resources. The multiple levels of embeddedness impact network dynamics by introducing converging and diverging dialectics, thereby limiting path dependence and proactive network orchestration.
Life Satisfaction of Downtown High-Rise vs. Suburban Low-Rise Living: A Chicago Case Study

There has been a long-standing debate about whether urban living is more or less sustainable than suburban living, and quality of life (QoL) is one of several key measures of the social sustainability of residential living. However, to our knowledge, no study to date has examined life satisfaction among residents of downtown high-rise living compared to residents living in suburban low-rise housing. Further, very few studies have utilized building or neighborhood-scale data sets to evaluate residents’ life satisfaction, and even fewer have controlled for both individual and household-level variables such as gender, age, household size, annual income, and length of residence, to evaluate residents’ life satisfaction across different living scenarios. Therefore, the goal of this study was to investigate residents’ satisfaction with their place of residence as well as overall life in general via surveys of individuals living in existing high-rise residential buildings in downtown Chicago, IL, and in existing low-rise residential buildings in suburban Oak Park, IL. Over 1500 individuals were contacted directly, resulting in over 500 responses. The number of fully completed responses for this study was 177, including 94 from residents of four downtown high-rise buildings and 83 from residents in suburban low-rise homes. Residents living in downtown high-rise buildings had significantly higher life satisfaction scores than residents living in suburban low-rise homes when controlling for demographic differences; however, the differences were small, as housing type explained less than 5% of the observed variance in life satisfaction outcomes. The research also evaluated five life satisfaction domains including travel, accessibility, social interaction, safety, and overall residential environment (ORE). In all cases, residents of the downtown high-rises reported higher satisfaction levels, although the scores on all these five satisfaction domains reported from both urban scenarios were very high. Moreover, all five satisfaction domains were highly associated with each other, and accessibility and safety were found as the strongest predictors of ORE for individuals.
Constructing a model hierarchy with background knowledge for structural risk minimization: application to biological treatment of wastewater

This article introduces a novel approach to the issue of learning from empirical data coming from complex systems that are continuous, dynamic, highly nonlinear, and stochastic. The main feature of this approach is that it attempts to integrate the powerful statistical learning theoretic methods and the valuable background knowledge that one possesses about the system under study. The learning machines that have been used, up to now, for the implementation of Vapnik's inductive principle of structural risk minimization (IPSRM) are of the "black-box" type, such as artificial neural networks, ARMA models, or polynomial functions. These are generic models that contain absolutely no knowledge about the problem at hand. They are used to approximate the behavior of any system and are prodigal in their requirements of training data. In addition, the conditions that underlie the theory of statistical learning would not hold true when these "black-box" models are used to describe highly complex systems. In this paper, it is argued that the use of a learning machine whose structure is developed on the basis of the physical mechanisms of the system under study is more advantageous. Such a machine will indeed be specific to the problem at hand and will require many less data points for training than their black-box counterparts. Furthermore, because this machine contains background knowledge about the system, it will provide better approximations of the various dynamic modes of this system and will, therefore, satisfy some of the prerequisites that are needed for meeting the conditions of statistical learning theory (SLT). This paper shows how to develop such a mechanistically based learning machine (i.e., a machine that contains background knowledge) for the case of biological wastewater treatment systems. Fuzzy logic concepts, combined with the results of the research in the area of wastewater engineering, will be utilized to construct such a machine. This machine has a hierarchical property and can, therefore, be used to implement the IPSRM.
Waiting time analysis for an OFDMA wireless cellular system with finite buffering and AMC

In this paper, the waiting time analysis for an OFDMA wireless cellular system with finite buffering and Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) is addressed. When AMC is considered, several concentric regions within cells serving users with different data rates are differentiated. Phase type (PHT) distribution functions are used to model the conditional cumulative distribution function of the waiting time for users in the different coverage regions. The representation of the conditional waiting time distribution through PHT distributions allows expressing cumulative distribution function (CDF) as a linear combination of negative exponential distributions. The analytical method proposed here captures the exact behavior of the waiting time and the obtained solution is based on matrix analytic derivation, which allows evaluating system performance for any size of buffer and any number of coverage regions.
Oligodendrocyte‐type 2 astrocyte‐derived trophic factors increase survival of developing dopamine neurons through the inhibition of apoptotic cell death

Survival of embryonic dopamine (DA) neurons is extremely low (5–20%) following transplantation. Strategies to increase this survival are critical to the future of transplantation for Parkinson's disease. We demonstrate here that a factor(s) released from striatal oligodendrocyte‐type 2 astrocytes (SO2A) greatly improves the survival and phenotype expression of mesencephalic DA neurons in culture while simultaneously decreasing the presence of apoptotic nuclear profiles, as detected by the TUNEL method and bisbenzamide/tyrosine hydroxylase double labeling. This SO2A‐derived trophic factor(s) has minimal effects on glia and no effect on nondopaminergic mesencephalic neurons. The developmental period during which this SO2A trophic effect occurs (E14–18) coincides with the period when mesencephalic grafts are undergoing the highest rates of apoptosis, i.e., immediately following implantation. Therefore, SO2A‐derived trophic factor(s) offers great potential for the augmentation of grafted DA neuron survival. J. Comp. Neurol. 426:143–153, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Pedestrian association and localization in monocular FIR video sequence

This paper addresses the frame-to-frame data association and state estimation problems in localization of a pedestrian relative to a moving vehicle from a monocular far infra-red video sequence. Using a novel application of the hierarchical model-based motion estimation framework, we are able to use the image appearance information to solve the frame-to-frame data association problem and estimate a sub-pixel accurate height ratio for a pedestrian in two frames. Then, to localize the pedestrian, we propose a novel approach of using the pedestrian height ratio estimates to guide an interacting multiple-hypothesis-mode/height filtering algorithm instead of using a constant pedestrian height model. Experiments on several IR sequences demonstrate that this approach achieves results comparable to those from a known pedestrian height thus avoiding errors from a constant height model based approach.
Multi-Element Strain Gauge Modules for Soft Sensory Skins

In this paper, we describe the fabrication and testing of a sensory module composed of resistive strain gauges in an elastomer substrate. Each module contains three resistive gauges, providing sufficient information to reconstruct the geometry of the module. The modules are fabricated from two bonded sheets of silicone elastomer. The sensing element is a resistive strain gauge based on room-temperature liquid gallium-indium alloy contained within microchannels in the substrate. We demonstrate the functionality of the module by mechanically stretching it over a template and measuring the change in resistance of the embedded liquid metal strain gauges. Starting with known strains, we calibrate the device and fit a quadratic model. With the model and the measured error distribution, we can predict the uncertainty in the reconstructed position of the corners of the triangular modules, which we refer to as nodes.