Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A gestural concrete user interface in MARIA

In this paper, we describe a solution for engineering and modelling user interfaces for supporting input collected through gesture recognition hardware. We describe how we applied such approach by extending the MARIA UIDL, and how the modelling solution can be applied to other UI toolkits. In addition, we detail the model-to-code transformation for obtaining a running application through an example case study.
On Analyzing Large Graphs Using GPUs

Studying properties of graphs is essential to various applications, and recent growth of online social networks has spurred interests in analyzing their structures using Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). Utilizing the faster available shared memory on GPUs have provided tremendous speed-up for solving many general-purpose problems. However, when data required for processing is large and needs to be stored in the global memory instead of the shared memory, simultaneous memory accesses by threads in execution becomes the bottleneck for achieving higher throughput. In this paper, for storing large graphs, we propose and evaluate techniques to efficiently utilize the different levels of the memory hierarchy of GPUs, with the focus being on the larger global memory. Given a graph G = (V, E), we provide an algorithm to count the number of triangles in G, while storing the adjacency information on the global memory. Our computation techniques and data structure for retrieving the adjacency information is derived from processing the breadth-first-search tree of the input graph. Also, techniques to generate combinations of nodes for testing the properties of graphs induced by the same are discussed in detail. Our methods can be extended to solve other combinatorial counting problems on graphs, such as finding the number of connected sub graphs of size k, number of cliques (resp. independent sets) of size k, and related problems for large data sets. In the context of the triangle counting algorithm, we analyze and utilize primitives such as memory access coalescing and avoiding partition camping that offset the increase in access latency of using a slower but larger global memory. Our experimental results for the GPU implementation show at least 10 times speedup for triangle counting over the CPU counterpart. Another 6 - 8% increase in performance is obtained by utilizing the above mentioned primitives as compared to the naïve implementation of the program on the GPU.
Legless Locomotion : Concept and Analysis

This thesis presents a novel locomotion technique, called legless locomotion, for convex-bodied legged robots. The motivation for studying legless locomotion stems from the mobile robot recovery problem, stated simply as what should a robot do when trapped? Legless locomotion is the technique of locomotion for a legged robot which has no leg-ground contact, but can use the swinging legs to excite body rotations. Legless locomotion is a result of the interaction between reaction mass-dynamics and robot-ground contact kinematics and presents many open research questions. Legless locomotion has many parameters, such as the robot mass distribution, robot body shape, leg motions, and contact constraints. We use a simple twolegged robot Rocking and Rolling Robot (RRRobot), RHex, a hexapod robot, and simulations to understand how the phenomena simultaneously interact. We also develop approximate simplified models that give us a qualitative understanding of the system behavior (see figure below). We hope to develop more exact kinematic reductions of legless locomotion, that will help us control legless locomotion. Finally, we present a classification structure for mobile robot error due to external physical influences and propose legless locomotion as a recovery technique for the particular case when a robot gets high-centered, that is, there is no leg-ground contact.
TTIC-TR-2009-3 May 2009 Trading Accuracy for Sparsity

We study the problem of minimizing the expected loss of a linear predictor while constraining the sparsity of the predictor, i.e. bounding the number of features used by the predictor. While this problem is generally NP-hard, we describe several approximation algorithms. We analyze the performance of our algorithms, focusing on the characterization of the trade-off between accuracy and sparsity of the learned predictor in different scenarios.
Comparative effectiveness of different wound dressings for patients with partial-thickness burns: study protocol of a systematic review and a Bayesian framework network meta-analysis

Introduction Selecting a suitable wound dressing for patients with partial-thickness burns (PTBs) is important in wound care. However, the comparative effectiveness of different dressings has not been studied. We report the protocol of a network meta-analysis designed to combine direct and indirect evidence of wound dressings in the management of PTB. Methods and analysis We will search for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the wound-healing effect of a wound dressing in the management of PTB. Searches will be conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register and CINAHL. A comprehensive search strategy is developed to retrieve articles reporting potentially eligible RCTs. Besides, we will contact the experts in the field and review the conference proceedings to locate non-published studies. The reference lists of articles will be reviewed for any candidate studies. Two independent reviewers will screen titles and abstracts of the candidate articles. All eligible RCTs will be obtained in full text to perform a review. Disagreement on eligibility of an RCT will be solved by group discussion. The information of participants, interventions, comparisons and outcomes from included RCTs will be recorded and summarised. The primary outcome is time to complete wound healing. Secondary outcomes include the proportion of burns completely healed at the end of treatment, change in wound surface area at the end of treatment, incidence of adverse events, etc. Ethics and dissemination The result of this review will provide evidence for the comparative effectiveness of different wound dressings in the management of PTB. It will also facilitate decision-making in choosing a suitable wound dressing. We will disseminate the review through a peer-review journal and conference abstracts or posters. Trial registration number PROSPERO CRD42016041574; Pre-results.
Localizing conflict spillovers : introducing regional heterogeneity in conflict studies

Cross-border conflict spillovers are commonly viewed as one of the main instigators of violent civil conflict. We question the alleged robustness of this finding reported by earlier studies that typically ascribe part of the observed spatial clustering of civil war to cross-border conflict spillovers. Spillovers however, are not the only explanation for the spatial clustering of civil war. We show that if we control for two different types of regional heterogeneity the evidence on the role of conflict spillovers turns out to be more delicate and not as omnipresent as suggested by previous studies. We allow for regional heterogeneity in unobserved conflict causing variables and in the magnitude of conflict spillovers themselves. We find significant conflict spillovers in Africa, but not in other parts of the world. In Africa, having at least one neighbor at war increases the probability of civil war onset by about 4%. ∗University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Email: E.M. Bosker@rug.nl (Maarten) †Corresponding author: DIW Berlin, Mohrenstrasse 58, 10117 Berlin, Germany. Email: jderee@diw.de (Joppe).
BPEL4Chor: Extending BPEL for Modeling Choreographies

The business process execution language (BPEL) is a language to orchestrate web services into a single business process. In a choreography view, several processes are interconnected and their interaction behavior is described from a global perspective. This paper shows how BPEL can be extended for defining choreographies. The proposed extensions (BPEL4Chor) distinguish between three aspects: (i) participant behavior descriptions, i.e. control flow dependencies in each participant, (ii) the participant topology, i.e. the existing participants and their interconnection using message links and (iii) participant groundings, i.e. concrete configurations for data formats and port types. As BPEL itself is used unchanged, the extensions facilitate a seamless integration between service choreographies and orchestrations. The suitability of the extensions is validated by assessing their support for the Service Interaction Patterns.
Under Consideration for Publication in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming a Simple Correctness Proof for Magic Transformation

The paper presents a simple and concise proof of correctness of the magic transformation. We believe it may provide a useful example of formal reasoning about logic programs. The correctness property concerns the declarative semantics. The proof, however, refers to the operational semantics (LD-resolution) of the source programs. Its conciseness is due to applying a suitable proof method.
Normalization of Application Performance in IEEE 802.11 Networks

The IEEE 802.11 standards define a distributed scheme for Wi-Fi access points and stations to fairly share the wireless medium. Even if fully standard-compliant, Wi-Fi devices from different vendors have implementation differences that lead to disparities in their ability to access the medium. Erratic upper-layer behaviors become manifest when devices that exhibit such disparities inter-operate within one network. In this paper we show examples of those behaviors based on common use cases. We find that a primary cause of performance inconsistency for most network applications is the uneven ability of different IEEE 802.11 devices to access the shared medium for transmission of TCP acknowledgments, further aggravated by the excessive size of the buffers where those packets are queued before transmission. We devise and validate in a real network an effective solution for Linux hosts that is based on the link-layer priorities of IEEE 802.11e. This solution allows researchers conducting Wi-Fi experiments to collect device-independent results, and application providers to guarantee a consistent experience to their users across different devices.
Shorter or longer anticoagulation to prevent recurrent venous thromboembolism: systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a major disease associated with short-term and long-term morbidity and mortality. Patients with a VTE provoked by surgery or immobilisation are at low risk of recurrence and do not require long-term anticoagulation; those with a VTE and metastatic cancer are at high risk of recurrence and require lifetime thromboprophylaxis. In those at intermediate risk of recurrence, it remains controversial whether prolonging anticoagulation and thus incurring treatment burden and bleeding risk is warranted. Methods and analysis We will conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials enrolling patients with VTE at intermediate risk of recurrence and evaluating short-term anticoagulation (12 weeks to 9 months initial therapy) versus longer term anticoagulation (at least 6 months additional anticoagulation beyond the course of treatment in the shorter arm). Anticoagulation could consist of vitamin K antagonists or new oral anticoagulants. Outcomes of interest include recurrent non-fatal thrombosis (deep venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism), major non-fatal bleeding and mortality. We will systematically search CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE and the Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials. Teams of two reviewers will, independently and in duplicate, screen titles and abstracts and complete full text reviews to determine eligibility, and subsequently abstract data and assess risk of bias in eligible trials. We will conduct meta-analyses to establish the effect of short-term versus long-term anticoagulation on the outcomes of interest and evaluate confidence in estimates (quality of evidence) using the GRADE (grading of recommendations, assessment, development and evaluation) approach. Ethics and dissemination Our review will facilitate evidence-based management of patients with unprovoked or recurrent VTE. For purposes of privacy and confidentiality, the systematic review will be limited to studies with deidentified data. The study will be disseminated by peer-review publication and conference presentation. Trial registration number PROSPERO (CRD42014007620).
CMOS Photonics for High-Speed Interconnects

Luxtera has demonstrated the technology required to implement CMOS photonics, and product development is underway. It has also demonstrated all the technology required for 10-Gbps operation, in addition to that required to scale to 100 Gbps and 1 Tbps. A single 10-Gbps channel today integrates tens of optical components into a single die alongside circuitry of modest gate count, 100,000 per transceiver. For the first time, high-speed optical communications directly between silicon die are possible at a price-performance point competitive with traditional electrical interconnects
Quantifying uncertainties of cloud microphysical property retrievals with a perturbation method

Quantifying the uncertainty of cloud retrievals is an emerging topic important for both cloud process studies and modeling studies. This paper presents a general approach to estimate uncertainties in ground‐based retrievals of cloud properties. This approach, called the perturbation method, quantifies the cloud retrieval uncertainties by perturbing the cloud retrieval influential factors (like inputs and parameters) within their error ranges. The error ranges for the cloud retrieval inputs and parameters are determined by either instrument limitations or comparisons against aircraft observations. With the knowledge from observations and the retrieval algorithms, the perturbation method can provide an estimate of the cloud retrieval uncertainties, regardless of the complexity (like nonlinearity) of the retrieval algorithm. The relative contribution to the uncertainties of retrieved cloud properties from the inputs, assumptions, and parameterizations can also be assessed with this perturbation method. As an example, we apply this approach to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program baseline retrieval, MICROBASE. Only nonprecipitating single‐phase (liquid or ice) clouds have been examined in this study. Results reveal that different influential factors play the dominant contributing role to the uncertainties of different cloud properties. To reduce uncertainties in cloud retrievals, future efforts should be emphasized on the major contributing factors for considered cloud properties. This study also shows high sensitivity of cloud retrieval uncertainties to different cloud types, with the largest uncertainties for deep convective clouds. Limitations and further efforts for this uncertainty quantification method are discussed.
A Closed Form Solution to L 2-Sensitivity Minimization of Second-Order State-Space Digital Filters Subject to L 2-Scaling Constraints

This paper proposes a closed form solution to L2sensitivity minimization of second-order state-space digital filters subject to L2-scaling constraints. The proposed approach reduces the constrained optimization problem to an unconstrained optimization problem by appropriate variable transformation. Furthermore, restricting ourselves to the case of second-order state-space digital filters, we can express the L2-sensitivity by a simple linear combination of exponential functions and formulate the L2-sensitivity minimization problem by a simple polynomial equation. As a result, L2-sensitivity is expressed in closed form, and its minimization subject to L2-scaling constraints is achieved without iterative calculations. key words: state-space digital filters, L2-sensitivity, variable transformation, closed form solution
Spot the difference! Plagiarism identification in the visual arts

Over recent years there has been considerable investment in the use of technology to identify sources of text-based plagiarism in universities. However, students of the visual arts are also required to complete numerous pieces of visual submissions for assessment, and yet very little similar work has been undertaken in the area of non-text based plagiarism detection. The Spot the Difference! project (2011-2012), funded by JISC and led by the University for the Creative Arts, seeks to address this gap by piloting the use of visual search tools developed by the University of Surrey and testing their application to support learning and teaching in the arts and specifically to the identification of visual plagiarism. Given that most commonly used search technologies rely on text, the identification and evidencing of visual plagiarism is often left to the knowledge and experience of academic staff, which can potentially result in inconsistency of detection, approach, policies and practices. This paper outlines the work of the project team, who sought to investigate the nature, scope and extent of visual plagiarism in the arts education sector. It will also introduce the iTrace visual searching pilot, developed through the project.
The Eifel algorithm: making TCP robust against spurious retransmissions

We propose an enhancement to TCP's error recovery scheme, which we call the Eifel algorithm. It eliminates the retransmission ambiguity, thereby solving the problems caused by spurious timeouts and spurious fast retransmits. It can be incrementally deployed as it is backwards compatible and does not change TCP's congestion control semantics. In environments where spurious retransmissions occur frequently, the algorithm can improve the end-to-end throughput by several tens of percent. An exact quantification is, however, highly dependent on the path characteristics over time. The Eifel algorithm finally makes TCP truly wireless-capable without the need for proxies between the end points. Another key novelty is that the Eifel algorithm provides for the implementation of a more optimistic retransmission timer because it reduces the penalty of a spurious timeout to a single (in the common case) spurious retransmission.
Lignosulfonic Acid Exhibits Broadly Anti-HIV-1 Activity – Potential as a Microbicide Candidate for the Prevention of HIV-1 Sexual Transmission

Some secondary metabolites from plants show to have potent inhibitory activities against microbial pathogens, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), herpes simplex virus (HSV), Treponema pallidum, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, etc. Here we report that lignosulfonic acid (LSA), a polymeric lignin derivative, exhibits potent and broad activity against HIV-1 isolates of diverse subtypes including two North America strains and a number of Chinese clinical isolates values ranging from 21.4 to 633 nM. Distinct from other polyanions, LSA functions as an entry inhibitor with multiple targets on viral gp120 as well as on host receptor CD4 and co-receptors CCR5/CXCR4. LSA blocks viral entry as determined by time-of-drug addiction and cell-cell fusion assays. Moreover, LSA inhibits CD4-gp120 interaction by blocking the binding of antibodies specific for CD4-binding sites (CD4bs) and for the V3 loop of gp120. Similarly, LSA interacts with CCR5 and CXCR4 via its inhibition of specific anti-CCR5 and anti-CXCR4 antibodies, respectively. Interestingly, the combination of LSA with AZT and Nevirapine exhibits synergism in viral inhibition. For the purpose of microbicide development, LSA displays low in vitro cytotoxicity to human genital tract epithelial cells, does not stimulate NF-κB activation and has no significant up-regulation of IL-1α/β and IL-8 as compared with N-9. Lastly, LSA shows no adverse effect on the epithelial integrity and the junctional protein expression. Taken together, our findings suggest that LSA can be a potential candidate for tropical microbicide.
Routing Performance in CDMA-based Sensor Networks for Different Energy Metrics

In this paper, we study the performance of a routing algorithm in a CDMA-based sensor network with respect to three energy metrics. These commonly used metrics are expected lifetime, multiple access interference, and queue length - all of which provide insight into how energy is depleted when nodes participate in packet forwarding. We formalize these metrics and show how the delay, throughput, and node life time are affected when routing is performed with a specific objective. Through ns-2 based simulation experiments, we show the tradeoffs between network performance and the different routing strategies adopted. These strategies can also be combined in order to achieve a desired system performance
Atr's Artiicial Brain Project: Cam-brain Machine (cbm) and Robot Kitten (robokoneko) Issues Atr's Artiicial Brain Project: Cam-brain Machine (cbm) and Robot Kitten (robokoneko) Issues

ATR's Arti cial Brain Project: CAM-Brain Machine (CBM) and Robot Kitten (Robokoneko) Issues Michael KORKIN (1), Hugo de GARIS (2), N. Eiji NAWA (2), William Dee RIEKEN (2) (1) Genobyte Inc., 1503 Spruce St., Suite 3, Boulder, CO 80302, USA. tel. +1 303 545 6790, fax. +1 303 545 9667 http://www.genobyte.com korkin@genobyte.com korkin@internetphone.com (2) Brain Builder Group, Evolutionary Systems Dept., ATR Research Labs, 2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, JAPAN. tel. +81 774 95 1079, fax. +81 774 95 1008 http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/ fdegaris, xnawa, wriekeng fdegaris, xnawa, wriekeng@hip.atr.co.jp degaris@internetphone.com brainbuilder@internetphone.com
Transforming digital reading with visual-syntactic text formatting

This is a revised and expanded version of the plenary speech given by the first author at the JALTCALL 2011 conference held in June 2011 in Kurume, Japan. Visual-syntactic text formatting uses natural language processing techniques to parse sentences and present them in a way that highlights meaning. Specifically, VSTF breaks sentences up at salient clause and phrase boundaries, fits each row of text into one or two fixation eyespans, uses a cascading pattern to denote syntactic hierarchies, and creates visual clusters across multiple rows to help readers retain and integrate multi-phrase images. This paper reviews the theoretical basis of VSTF and summarizes research on its impact on reading comprehension, speed, retention, and proficiency, with a focus on its use by English language learners.
Does an aptitude test affect socioeconomic and gender gaps in attendance at an elite university

The increasing use of aptitude tests as part of the admissions processes at elite English universities potentially has significant implications for fair access to these institutions. I attempt to isolate the impact of the introduction of one such test on the proportion of successful applicants by school type (as a proxy for socioeconomic status) and by gender using a difference in differences approach and administrative data from the University of Oxford. The introduction of the test coincided with the implementation of a guideline number of interviews per available place, significantly reducing the proportion of applicants offered an interview (by 14 percentage points) and, hence, increasing the proportion of interviewees offered places (by 3.6 percentage points). By gender, I find some evidence that these changes may be having differing effects at different stages of the admissions process, but not on each group's overall chances of securing an offer. I do not find any evidence that the policy has negative side effects on the chances of applicants from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds at any stage of the process.