Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Mediation Mechanism for Automated Negotiating Agents Whose Utility Changes over Time

Multi-issue negotiation protocols are an important field of study because real-world negotiation problems are often complex and involve multiple issues. Although much previous work has only addressed linear utility function, that is, simple negotiations involving independent issues, recently, non-linear utility functions for complex negotiations involing interdependent issues have gained attention. Most studies, however, do not focus on the changes in utility space over time. In economic theory, it is often assumed that the utility function changes dynamically over time. It is important to seek the Pareto front, which refers to the set of Pareto optimal points, in negotiation problems. Therefore, in this paper we propose a complex utility space that changes over time and a negotiation mechanism in which the mediator takes the lead in negotiation based on the genetic algorithm (GA). The experimental results show that our approach is suitable for utility that dynamically changes over time, and finds and follows the Pareto front effectively.
Two improved GPU acceleration strategies for force-directed graph layout

Force directed approach is one of the most widely used methods in graph drawing research. However, the running time is increased intolerablely along with the enlargement of the graph size, which restricts the algorithm's practicability. By the aid of GPU (graphics processing unit) computing platform, we can speed-up the graph layout with low cost, but the existing GPU implementation mainly employees an “one-by-one” style to update the vertex' coordination per iteration, which has a lower convergent rate than the “batch” style which is instead used commonly in traditional CPU implementation. As a result, the aesthetics of graph layout would be decreased if the total running time is restricted. It is hard to achieve both a high speedup factor of GPU over CPU and a high convergent rate in existing GPU computing implementation. In order to solve this problem partially, this paper presents two new strategies to implement the large-scale graph layout on CPU+GPU heteromerous platform to accelerate the force directed layout for graph drawing problem. The numerical computation results show that our GPU implementation can dramatically improve the performance of force-direct layout and is 20 times on a NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT GPU at 1.44 GHz faster than the one on single-CPU core of Intel Pentium 4 PC at 3.0 GHz for the graph layout with moderate size (typically 1000 vertices).
First-line and Middle Manager Competence, Usage Intention and IT Application Maturity

Past research focused on the effect of the top management on the IT application maturity. However, little is known about the roles of the first-line and middle manager during the IT application and the effect of the first-line and middle manager on the IT application maturity. In the present study, the relationships between the first-line and middle manager IT competence, IT usage intention, and IT application maturity are analyzed. With a sample size of 650, by conducting hierarchical regression analysis with the top management support as control variable, the roles of the first-line and middle manager in the IT application and the effect of the first-line and middle manager on the IT application maturity are empirically examined. Results show that when the first-line and middle managers play the role of manager, their IT competence has significant effect on the IT application maturity, whereas when the first-line and middle managers play the role of IT user, their IT usage intention has no significant effect on the IT application maturity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
How Representational Pictures Enhance Students’ Performance and Test-Taking Pleasure in Low-Stakes Assessment

Pictures are often used in standardized educational large-scale assessment (LSA), but their impact on test parameters has received little attention up until now. Even less is known about pictures’ affective effects on students in testing (i.e., test-taking pleasure and motivation). However, such knowledge is crucial for a focused application of multiple representations in LSA. Therefore, this study investigated how adding representational pictures (RPs) to text-based item stems affects (1) item difficulty and (2) students’ test-taking pleasure. An experimental study with N = 305 schoolchildren was conducted, using 48 manipulated parallel science items (text-only vs. text-picture) in a rotated multimatrix design to realize within-subject measures. Students’ general cognitive abilities, reading abilities, and background variables were assessed to consider potential interactions between RPs’ effects and students’ performance. Students also rated their item-solving pleasure for each item. Results from item-response theory (IRT) model comparisons showed that RPs only reduced item difficulty when pictures visualized information mandatory for solving the task, while RPs substantially enhanced students’ test-taking pleasure even when they visualized optional context information. Overall, our findings suggest that RPs have a positive cognitive and affective influence on students’ performance in LSA (i.e., multimedia effect in testing) and should be considered more frequently.
Research on configuration and innovation of service supply chain: a case study

Service supply chain (SSC) is a newly research topic in supply chain management, which is regarded as an integrated service-based supply chain different from either manufacturing sector or service sector. To address this deficiency, this article explores the configuration and characteristics of SSC based on case study of Shaanxi Blower (Group) Co., Ltd. The insights provided by this research propose that SSC reflects on three aspects. Firstly, the structure of SSC is a complex network, which combines direct or indirect service providers around service integrator. Secondly, its business process is comprised of capability, demand, supply, customer relationship, service delivery and capital management. Finally, SSC components reflect process-oriented structure and incentives.
Improving the Accuracy of Diffusion MR Tractography Using RESTORE

Diffusion magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is an effective tool in the assessment of the central nervous system. Diffusion MR tractography, which uses diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) techniques, may be useful in exploring the connectivity between different regions of the brain and examining changes in brain mircostructure in several diseases, including cancer and multiple sclerosis. However, DTI with spin-echo echo-planar imaging suffers from various types of artifacts. Previous studies have shown both thermal noise and spatially and temporally varying artifacts can affect the estimated tensors. Here we show that these artifacts can cause significant error in diffusion tractography and that the error can be reduced by using a robust estimation of tensors by the outlier rejection method
A new method for Direct and point-to-point robot trajectory planning in narrow spaces

In this paper a novel method for planning point-to-point robot trajectories will be introduced. With the new method, the requirement of an optimal path and the need of a slim motion due to the lack of free space can be compromised. The generated slim motion is suitable for applications where human-robot cooperation takes place and the workspace is considered to be constrained. This new method is based on the synchronized links motion with a constant ratio of the link angle positions. The proof that any PTP motion can be carried out under this constraint will be provided. The new method of synchronized motion will be illustrated at hand of some examples and compared with conventional methods.
Adaptive Wavelet Fusion based Color Image Enhancement by Scaling the DC Coefficients

Usually the images taken by digital cameras are different from the original true color image in terms of color and brightness of the scene captured. Various factors like non uniform illumination, color of ambient light, low or high contrast, and over exposure or under exposure of some specific regions may leads to poor contrast which is annoying to human visual system. Thus, enhancement methods are required for color images. In this paper An image fusion is used to improve the performance of DC coefficient scaling method in the compressed DCT domain for enhancing the contrast of colour images. Using the multi resolution wavelet fusion preserves the brightness of the enhanced image. This improves the entropy of standard DCT based DC coefficient scaling method. For comparing the performance along with SNR and the absolute standard deviation difference is also used as parameters. The methods are tested on various true colour images from different environment
Some experience in interactive system development and application

Minicomputers pgoggammed in a high-level interactive language form a very attractive basis fog the development of systems involving close man-computer collaboration. This paper is based on a wide range of experience of interactive minicomputer systems in commercial, medical, industrial, and scientific applications. It is first argued that the development of systems fog effective man-computer collaboration requires not only interactive system use but also interactive system depelopment. The designer needs to be able to tailor the system to user requirements at least partially as an experimental dialogue at a terminal with a user. There follows a critique of certain features of central computer utilities that limit their effectiveness in interactive apllications, leading to a proposal fog the use of minicomputer-based systems programmed, and used, interactively. We then give a number of case histories of our own experience in developing and using such systems in commercial, medical, and scientific appllications. From this experience, we have extracted a number of rules for programming interaction between the user and computer system which are outed. Finally, the main features of the software technology underlying these systems are briefly described.
A new UWB dual pulse transmission and detection technique

A new UWB signaling technique based on dual pulse transmission is presented in this paper. The proposed technique is simple, robust, and based on an autocorrelation type of receiver structure. Several detection schemes with different implementation complexity are presented and their performances are studied by Monte-Carlo simulations. Comparison of the proposed new designs to the transmitted reference system is also carried out in the paper.
Modeling Mutual Visibility Relationship in Pedestrian Detection

Detecting pedestrians in cluttered scenes is a challenging problem in computer vision. The difficulty is added when several pedestrians overlap in images and occlude each other. We observe, however, that the occlusion/visibility statuses of overlapping pedestrians provide useful mutual relationship for visibility estimation - the visibility estimation of one pedestrian facilitates the visibility estimation of another. In this paper, we propose a mutual visibility deep model that jointly estimates the visibility statuses of overlapping pedestrians. The visibility relationship among pedestrians is learned from the deep model for recognizing co-existing pedestrians. Experimental results show that the mutual visibility deep model effectively improves the pedestrian detection results. Compared with existing image-based pedestrian detection approaches, our approach has the lowest average miss rate on the Caltech-Train dataset, the Caltech-Test dataset and the ETH dataset. Including mutual visibility leads to 4% - 8% improvements on multiple benchmark datasets.
Development and Implementation of the PSI MI Standard for Molecular Interaction

The pool of molecular interaction data is growing fast but nevertheless remains fragmented. Combining together data coming from heterogeneous sources is a crucial step towards a deeper understanding of the cell machinery. The Proteomics Standard Initiative offers mature standards (PSI-MI) to facilitate the exchange and analysis of molecular interaction data. After introducing the details of the latest version of the PSI-MI data model, we will present the implementation of PSI-MI in the IntAct project, which offers a platform for management and analysis of interaction data. Finally we will give some insight into realistically using molecular interaction data as a foundation for other research
Humanoid full-body controller adapting constraints in structured objects through updating task-level reference force

Manipulation of structured objects connected to the environment by a kinematics chain involves two problems: (a) The objects have movable directions and unmovable directions. An undesired reaction force in the unmovable directions prevents a robot from successful manipulation; (b) The reaction forces from the objects could fluctuate during manipulation. Related works have enabled robots to manipulate objects by integrating position control in movable directions and force control in unmovable directions at the hands. However, in the case of a humanoid robot, too large undesired reaction forces in movable directions cause the robot's falling down and slipping. In this paper, we propose a controller system controlling reaction forces at the hands and successively updating reference forces based on reaction forces. For problem (a), we apply force control both to the movable and unmovable directions in order to satisfy both maintaining full-body balance and achieving manipulation. For problem (b), the update of the reference forces enables the humanoid robot to adapt to fluctuation of the reaction forces. We show experimental results on the cmanipulating four doors and a drawer.
Framing, reframing and the transformation of stance in news translation: a case study of the translation of news on the China–Japan dispute

ABSTRACT The growing interest in news translation in the last decade has raised issues regarding the nature of news translation itself, leading to a shift away from the traditional concept of equivalence between source text (ST) and target text (TT) to an interest in the role of journalistic conventions in the process. This article examines variation in the stance adopted in translation between Western press reports (in English) and Reference News (Chinese in pinyin: Cancao Xiaoxi) and argues, on the basis of frame analysis of 27 pairs of news reports on the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute, that news translation of controversial issues is a process in which the stance framed in the original news report is reframed for the target culture. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, this study identifies three prominent types of framing variations—appropriation variation, labeling variation, and ambiguity variation—and examines their respective roles in reframing the stance toward a pro-China and often anti-Japan direction in the translation by Reference News.
Images sub-segmentation with the PFCM clustering algorithm

In this work we propose a method for sub-segmentation of images using the PFCM clustering algorithm. The sub-segmentation consists of finding, within the clusters found using the segmentation process, those data less representative, or atypical data, belonging to the clusters. These data represent, in many cases, the zones of interest during image analysis. Two different examples are used in order to show the results, and the advantages of identifying those elements of data forced to belong to a cluster, of which they are the less representative and, therefore may contain information of great interest in particular applications.
Effects of Dietary Fatty Acids on Lipid Traits in the Muscle and Perirenal Fat of Growing Rabbits Fed Mixed Diets

Simple Summary Polyunsaturated fatty acids in human foods have been shown to have health benefits. We investigated the potential to incorporate them into rabbit meat by adding them to the diet. Good relationships between dietary fatty acids (FAs) and their content in longissimus dorsi muscle and perirenal fat of rabbits was established, especially the latter. The results should make it possible to enhance the polyunsaturated fatty acid content of rabbit meat, with benefits to the health of human consumers. Abstract The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of various raw materials (spirulina, curcuma, tomato pomace, false flax, linseed, chia, perilla seeds) as suitable polyunsaturated fatty acid n-3 (n-3 PUFA) sources, on the lipid traits in the longissimus dorsi muscle and perirenal fat of growing rabbits. The fatty acid (FA) analyses of the diets, carried out by gas chromatography, differed over a wide range on the basis of the highly varied ingredients in 27 experimental formulations. Among the 29 identified FAs, three from feeds were catabolized in the rabbits, five were de novo synthesized and stored chiefly in the muscle. It was possible to linearly characterize the incorporation from the feed to the muscle of 16 FAs. This study has confirmed that the dietary inclusion of various raw materials could be considered as a way of enriching the n-3 PUFA of rabbit meat. A proposal for the prediction of n-3 PUFA from dietary α-linolenic acid (C18:3 n-3) and a panel of another 10 FAs has been made for intramuscular fat (R2 = 0.94) and perirenal fat (R2 = 0.96).
Gesture based Finger Print Authentication System for Network Security and Mobile Devices in Heterogeneous Wireless Network

Nowadays, there is a more significant demand for authentication in heterogeneous wireless networks. The heterogeneous networks are considered as combination of different wireless network technologies, different end user devices and various communication technologies. The present heterogeneous wireless network mainly suffers from providing authentication especially for mobile equipment. In this paper, a gesture based finger print authentication system has been proposed for securing both network and mobile devices. The entire system depends on gesture based finger print authentication method which is totally isolated from the network, service provider and mobile devices. The user is allowed to enter secret code and gesture based finger print. The entered data will be verified in the pre-stored database. The user is allowed to access the network only after a complete finger print verification of user through mobile. The performance and efficiency of the system is evaluated based on simulation. The simulation result shows that gesture based finger print authentication inside heterogeneous wireless network is highly secured. If the connected device or other devices found to be malicious, the device will be immediately withdrawn from the network service.
Who brings home the pork? Parties and the role of localness in committee assignments in mixed-member proportional systems

The assignment of seats to specialized standing committees is a most consequential choice in legislative contexts. Distributive theories of legislative organization suggest that electoral incentives to cultivate personal votes result in the self-selection of legislators to committees best suited to please their constituents and, thus, to secure reelection. However, these theories discard the partisan basis of European parliaments and therefore fail to adequately assess the politics of committee assignments in these particular contexts. This article aims to explore the significance of distributive theories for the German case in differentiated ways and on the basis of a new and rich data set including statistical data for five legislative terms (1983, 1987, 1998, 2005, and 2009). It argues that in partisan assemblies, political parties might develop an interest in distributive politics themselves and might assign distinct types of legislators to distinct committees to seek personal votes contingent upon distinct electoral incentives. Particularly, we argue that Germany’s mixed proportional system provides incentives to parties to assign legislators with profound local roots to district committees best suited to please geographic constituents.
Certified Transformation for Static Single Assignment of SPMD Programs

A common program view adapted by most contemporary compilers is Static Single Assignment (SSA) which can be realized as transitional form (TF). In SSA, each variable is modified by exactly one assignment. SSA is based on splitting variables of the original program into many versions. Power constraints of sequential programming led parallel programming to be the main programming style today for performance boosting. The single program, multiple data (SPMD) style of parallelism is a prevalent model of parallel computing. A Proof-Carrying Code package typically consists of the original code, a proof that is checkable by a machine, and the code’s correctness specification. A new technique for constructing a static single assignment form for SPMD programs is introduced in this paper. The proposed technique is in the form of a system of inference rules. The input of our proposed technique is a SPMD program and the output is a SSA form of the program. Judgment derivations in the proposed system are convenient choices for proof parts of a PCC packages. Therefore the resulting SSA form is certified in terms of proof-carrying code area of research.
Effective Stochastic Simulation Methods for Chemical Reaction Systems

Recent studies through biological experiments have indicated that noise plays a very important role in determining the dynamic behaviour of biological systems. The advances in stochastic modelling of genetic regulatory networks and cell signalling transduction pathways have proposed chemical reaction systems in which some key reactants have small copy numbers. Over the last years extensive research has been carried out to develop effective -leap methods and multiscale simulation methods to reduce the huge computational time of the stochastic simulation algorithm. This paper gives a review of the recent progress in the stochastic simulation methods for chemical reaction systems.
Land Cover Classification of Cloud-Contaminated Multi-Temporal High-Resolution Images

We show how methods proposed in the statistical community dealing with missing data may be applied for land cover classification, were optical observations are missing due to clouds and snow. The proposed method may be divided into two stages; (i) cloud/snow-classification and (ii) training and classification. The purpose of the cloud/snow classification stage is to determine which pixels are missing due to clouds and snow. All pixels in each optical image are classified into the classes cloud, snow, water and vegetation using a suitable classifier. The pixels classified as cloud or snow are labeled as missing, and this information is used in the training and classification stages which deal with the land cover classification. In the training stage the unknown parameters of the statistical distribution modeling the land cover classes are estimated using the Expectation Maximization algorithm. If a non-parametric classifier is applied, the training is omitted. In the classification stage the pixels are classified into various land cover classes. Here we apply the Maximum Likelihood (assuming normal distributions), k-NN and Parzen classifiers, all modified to handle missing features. The classifiers are evaluated on Landsat (both TM and ETM+) images covering a scene at about 900 m a.s. l. in the Hardangervidda mountain-plateau in South Norway, where 4 869 in situ samples of the land cover classes water, ridge, leeside, snow-bed, mire, forest and rock are obtained. The results show that proper modeling of the missing pixels improves the classification rate by 5-10%, and by using multiple images we increase the chance of observing the land cover type substantially. The nonparametric classifiers applied ignores the missing-data mechanism, and are therefore particularly suitable for remote sensing applications where the pixels covered by snow and cloud may depend on the land cover type.