Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge Mapping and Bringing about Change for the Sustainable Urban Environment (sue-km) – Gr/s18588/01 Review Report Research Background/context This Report Describes the Findings of a 12-month Scoping Study Entitled " Knowledge Mapping and Bringing about Change for The

The awareness of the impact of sustainable development is growing around the globe. It is also firmly on the political agenda of most countries in both developed and developing countries. are just a few initiatives which have provided additional impetus for this. In order to be successful, sustainable development must promote economic, social and environmental needs and benefits; focusing on inevitable trade-offs as well as synergies between these needs and benefits. Sustainability therefore means thinking in terms of whole systems, with all their interconnectedness, consequences, feed-forward and feedback loops. Many industries are facing pressure to increase the sustainability of their practice (Parkin, 2000). This pressure, in many cases, imply significant change of an industry's understanding of the demands of society and of its clients, as well as its own corporate social responsibility, and can imply major changes in its work practices. Sustainability issues inherently cut across many boundaries; and are trans-disciplinary and trans-organisational. This brings to the fore issues of how individuals, groups and organisations make knowledgeable interpretations for sustainability within organisations and professional structures and, in industries based on multi-firm and multi-professional projects, across these boundaries. The above discourse would suggest that the vagaries of different industrial sectors are likely to impact on how knowledge for sustainability is created, transferred and applied. Knowledge in the field of sustainability is also subject to ideological pressures that can be at odds with what makes both business and ecological sense. Under these pressures, from many sources at many different levels of power, decision-making can be either paralysed or pushed into unsatisfactory directions. The challenge of knowledge management is to understand how to create practical solutions to support individuals and groups as they generate or acquire this multi-faceted knowledge so as to suit the particular requirements of their application context Organisations must also grow the capability to share knowledge between specialisms and across internal and external boundaries (Quintas 2002). The ability to generate new technological knowledge is now viewed to be linked to a specific learning capability which draws from diverse knowledge bases and is able to activate a systemic recombination process (Antonelli, 1999). The principal purpose and clearest benefit of a knowledge map is to show people in an organisation or within a network/supply chain where to go when they need expertise. A knowledge map can also serve as an inventory. It is a 'picture' of what exists in an organisation or …
Almost all graphs with average degree 4 are 3-colorable

The technique of using differential equations to approximate the mean path of Markov chains has proved very useful in the average-case analysis of algorithms. Here, we significantly expand the range of this technique, by showing that it can be used to handle algorithms that favor high-degree vertices. In particular, we consider the problem of 3-coloring sparse random graphs and analyze a "smoothed" version of the Brelaz heuristic. This allows us to prove that i) almost all graphs with average degree d, i.e. G(n,p=d/n), are 3-colorable for d&xie; 4.03, and that ii) almost all 4-regular graphs are 3-colorable. This improves over the previous lower bound of 3.847 for the G(n,p) 3-colorability threshold and gives the first non trivial result on the 3-colorability of random regular graphs.
Reliable source transmission over relay networks with Side Information

In this paper, we consider reliable transmission of a discrete memoryless source over multi-relay networks with correlated Side Information (SI) available at the relay nodes and the final receiver. We obtain a necessary condition for reliable source transmission over a multi-terminal network with SI, which results in a necessary condition for a multi-relay network with SI, as a special case. We also propose a separate source-channel coding scheme, and based on it, a sufficient condition for a multi-relay network with SI is derived. Based on a partitioning method and the nature of a degraded relay network, we propose another coding scheme which results in a sufficient condition for a degraded relay network with SI. We show that these proposed schemes which are based on operational separation, achieve the same rates as the joint source-channel codes and these sufficient conditions are indeed necessary conditions for the degraded relay networks with degraded SI.
Proteomic Analysis of Apoptotic Pathways Reveals Prognostic Factors in Follicular Lymphoma

Follicular lymphoma (FL) is the second most common non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and generally is incurable. Reliable prognostic markers to differentiate patients who progress rapidly from those who survive for years with indolent disease have not been established. Most cases overexpress Bcl-2, but the pathogenesis of FL remains incompletely understood. To determine whether a proteomic approach could help overcome these obstacles, we procured lymphoid follicles from 20 cases of FL and 15 cases of benign follicular hyperplasia (FH) using laser capture microdissection. Lysates were spotted on reverse-phase protein microarrays and probed with 21 antibodies to proteins in the intrinsic apoptotic pathway, including those specific for posttranslational modifications such as phosphorylation. A panel of three antibodies [phospho-Akt(Ser473), Bcl-2, and cleaved poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase] segregated most cases of FL from FH. Phospho-Akt(Ser473) and Bcl-2 were significantly increased in FL (P = 0.001 and P < 0.0001, respectively). Additionally, the Bcl-2/Bak ratio completely segregated FL from FH. High ratios of Bcl-2/Bak and Bcl-2/Bax were associated with early death from disease with differences in median survival times of 7.3 years (P = 0.0085) and 3.8 years (P = 0.018), respectively. Using protein microarrays, we identified candidate proteins that may signify clinically relevant molecular events in FL. This approach showed significant changes at the posttranslational level, including Akt phosphorylation, and suggested new prognostic markers, including the Bcl-2/Bak and Bcl-2/Bax ratios. Proteomic end points should be incorporated in larger, multicenter trials to validate the clinical utility of these protein microarray findings.
Museums and Feminist Matters: Considerations of a Feminist Museology

Abstract This article speaks to a post-human feminist museology. It argues that considerations of a feminist museology would benefit from engaging with post-human feminist dialogues currently unfolding within academia. Dynamic political landscapes and global circumstances challenge dualist paradigms. Theorizations of museums are not exempt from these challenges. Critiques of androcentricity indicate that feminist theorizations have never fully centred on “the human”, but always already contextualized how we affect the world, and how the world affects us. Discussions in this article follow Barad’s agential-realist theorization of the material-discursive practices that shape our understandings in and of the world, and Haraway’s notion of diffraction that engages the material and re-tools recordings of object histories as entangled human and non-human processes that can be taken apart and reassembled, making different possibilities possible. The article demonstrates that museological alternatives that emerge from conversations about entanglements not only aim to move beyond the paradigms they have been circling within for so long, but towards a re-thinking of museology and cultural heritage museums. Thus, considerations of a feminist post-human museology re-imagine museums as entangled becomings that make different possibilities possible.
Analytic solution for tachyon condensation in open string field theory

We propose a new basis in Witten’s open string field theory, in which the star product simplifies considerably. For a convenient choice of gauge the classical string field equation of motion yields straightforwardly an exact analytic solution that represents the nonperturbative tachyon vacuum. The solution is given in terms of Bernoulli numbers and the equation of motion can be viewed as novel Euler–Ramanujan-type identity. It turns out that the solution is the Euler–Maclaurin asymptotic expansion of a sum over wedge states with certain insertions. This new form is fully regular from the point of view of level truncation. By computing the energy difference between the perturbative and nonperturbative vacua, we prove analytically Sen’s first conjecture.
Efiective, Intuitive, and Intelligent Volume Visualization

A spray nozzle for manually operated liquid atomizer comprises a valve pin forming a normally closed check valve and biased by a resetting spring so that a head portion thereof is biased toward a co-operating valve seat and an annular stop flange thereof having a larger diameter than this head portion is biased toward a radially projecting holding lip which is formed at the valve-side end of the cavity of a cup-shaped nozzle member having a bottom which supports the resetting spring.
CR-LIBM: The evaluation of the exponential

We present a new elementary function library, called CR-LIBM. This library implements the various functions defined by the Ansi99 C standard. It provides correctly rounded functions. When writing this library, our primarily goal was to certify correct rounding, and make it reasonably fast, and with a low utilisation of memory. Hence, our library can be used without any problem on real-scale problems. We are also giving the proof and the elements to understand the implementation of the exponential function of CR-LIBM.
A Demonstration of the Transition from Ready-to-Hand to Unready-to-Hand

The ideas of continental philosopher Martin Heidegger have been influential in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, despite the fact that there has been no effort to analyze these ideas empirically. The experiments reported here are designed to lend empirical support to Heidegger's phenomenology and more specifically his description of the transition between ready-to-hand and unready-to-hand modes in interactions with tools. In experiment 1, we found that a smoothly coping cognitive system exhibits type positively correlated noise and that its correlated character is reduced when the system is perturbed. This indicates that the participant and tool constitute a self-assembled, extended device during smooth coping and this device is disrupted by the perturbation. In experiment 2, we examine the re-organization of awareness that occurs when a smoothly coping, self-assembled, extended cognitive system is perturbed. We found that the disruption is accompanied by a change in attention which interferes with participants' performance on a simultaneous cognitive task. Together these experiments show that a smoothly coping participant-tool system can be temporarily disrupted and that this disruption causes a change in the participant's awareness. Since these two events follow as predictions from Heidegger's work, our study offers evidence for the hypothesized transition from readiness-to-hand to unreadiness-to-hand.
A system for developing tablet pc applications for education

We describe a new system for building Tablet PC-based classroom software. The system, called SLICE, is built for extensibility, using a unique "explicit state" model. Applications developed thus far include presentation, classroom interaction, shared code review, and exam grading. The paper presents an overview of the system and describes these four applications. It then explains the extensibility model, showing how users can add new features.
Video de-noising and parallel implementation for full HD video conferencing

In this paper, we propose a new de-noising algorithm to handle the mixture of salt and pepper noise and Gaussian noise in videoconference. The algorithm detects the type of noise according to the human visual characteristics first, and then uses median filter to remove salt and pepper noise, and spatial-temporal adaptive filter to remove Gaussian noise. We analyze which parts of the algorithm can be parallelly implemented and implement them using GPU. Experiment results show that our algorithm can remove mixed noise effectively while preserving the edges and details in video, which leads to less bandwidth usage for transmission at the same time. Our implementation with GPU is able to process video frame of resolution 1920*1080 within 25 milliseconds, so it can be used in real-time 1080P/30fps videoconference.
Dietary glycemic index, glycemic load, fiber, simple sugars, and insulin resistance: the Inter99 study.

OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between daily glycemic index, daily glycemic load, simple sugars, dietary fiber, and the prevalence of a measure of insulin resistance in 30- to 60-year-old nondiabetic Danish men and women. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The Inter99 study is a nonpharmacological intervention study. We used baseline data and examined cross-sectional associations between carbohydrate-related dietary factors and an estimate of insulin resistance in 5,675 subjects at 30-60 years. The dietary intake was estimated from a self-administered food frequency questionnaire, and insulin resistance was estimated using the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR). Multiple regressions were performed with HOMA-IR as the dependent variable and carbohydrate-related factors as explanatory variables. All models were adjusted for age, sex, smoking, physical activity, total energy intake, BMI, and waist circumference. RESULTS Intake of lactose was positively associated with HOMA-IR (P < 0.0001), whereas daily glycemic load and intake of glucose, fructose, dietary fiber, total carbohydrate, fruit, and vegetables were inversely associated with HOMA-IR (P < 0.05). Intake of dietary fiber explained the associations with daily glycemic load and total carbohydrate and attenuated the association with fruit and vegetables. No significant associations were observed for daily glycemic index or sucrose. CONCLUSIONS Habitual intake of diets with a high glycemic index and high glycemic load or diets with a high content of total carbohydrate including simple sugars was not associated with the probability of having insulin resistance. Furthermore, intake of dietary fiber was inversely associated with the probability of having insulin resistance.
Towards adaptive robots based on interaction traces: A user study

We focus on the problem of adaptivity of companion robots to their users. Until recently, propositions on the subject of intelligent service robots were mostly user independent. Our work is part of the FUI-RoboPopuli project, which concentrates on endowing entertainment companion robots with adaptive and social behaviour.We concentrate on the capacity of robots to learn how to adapt and personalize their behaviour according to their users. Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are largely used for adaptive robots applications. Several approaches were proposed to decrease the sample complexity to learn the MDP model, including the reward function.We proposed in previous work, two learning algorithms to learn the MDP reward function through analysing interaction traces (i.e. the interaction history between the robot and their users) including users' feedback. The first algorithm is direct and certain. The second is able to detect the importance of certain information, regarding the users (profiles) and/or the environment, in the adaptation process. We present, in this paper, a user study in addition to simulated experiments. Those experiments prove that our proposed algorithms are able to learn, through interactions with real users, a reward function that leads to an adapted and personalised robot behaviour. We also show the ability of our algorithms to handle exceptions and ambiguities in users feedback during experiments with real users.
A collaborative recommendation algorithm based on user cluster classification

Recommendation system is playing an increasingly important role for Internet service, the information overload is one of the most crucial event that users encounter on the Internet. Personalized recommendation system is an effective technique to solve the current problem. However, with the development of collaborative recommendation with heterogeneous explicit feedbacks such as 5-star grade scores rating systems, the difficulties of extreme sparsity of user rating data have become more and more severe. In this paper, we proposed a collaborative recommendation algorithm based on user cluster classification (UCC). In order to obtain a more realistic users similarity, we propose a method to increase the accuracy of the score prediction by improve the similarity between the effective user. Experimental results show that, the proposed algorithm achieved an average of 5.73% improvement in terms of recommended quality using sparse data and the small neighboring environment.
ENVIRONMENT: A USABILITY STUDY

The present study assesses the usability of a desktop virtual reality system in the light of individual differences and sense of presence. The issues we focus on are the performances achieved for spatial tasks and the induced level of satisfaction. The results indicate the impact of each considered variable upon time demanded to accomplish task but not upon its accuracy. Findings also indicate genderbased and presence-based differences upon user’s satisfaction with the system.
Non-invasive Classification of Laver Using Visible and Near-infrared Spectroscopy

Visible and near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was utilized to classify the verities of laver. As there are almost six hundreds of NMR variables which would cause poor classification and long calculation time, uninformative variables should be eliminated. Successive projections algorithm (SPA) was applied to select the effective variables from the full-spectrum (FS). Finally 13 variables were selected, and were inputted into least-square support vector machine (LS-SVM) to do the classification. A better result of 96.55% correct answer rate of SPA-LS-SVM model was obtained, compared to that of the principal component analysis (PCA)-LS-SVM model. It was proved that SPA is effective algorithm for spectra variable selection. As a conclusion, Vis-NIR spectroscopy is a feasible way to distinguish laver varieties fast and accurately.
Research on the Anti-attack Design Principles of Low-Latency Anonymous Communication

Low-latency anonymous communication is widely used in privacy protection. However, the attacks against anonymous communication are critical threats to the privacy protection. Many efforts have been conducted to provide robustness by establishing anti-attack principles. In this paper we present a brief survey on attack methods and summarize up four underlying anti-attack principles. In order to better understand the background of anonymous communication, we demonstrate the processes of attack and introduce some typical attack methods, ranging from active attacks to passive attacks. Based on our analysis, we propose four underlying principles, including information leaking prevention, key node protection, data stream signatures elimination and connection characteristics elimination, to improve the anti-attack ability of low-latency anonymous communication. To validate these principles, we design a protocol named Hermit-crab, which follows the four anti-attack principles. The analysis shows the protocol can effectively defend common attacks in low-latency anonymous communication.
iCat , the Affective Chess Player

This demo presents “iCat, the Affective Chess Player”, a social robot that is capable of playing chess against a human opponent. The chess game is played on a physical electronic chessboard that detects the board state and sends it to the computer. The goal is to enable children to play with iCat, in a scenario in which the character’s affective state is influenced by every move the player makes. Each move is evaluated by a chess engine using the mini-max algorithm. After the value of the evaluation function is returned, an emotion model based on the emotivector anticipatory mechanism is used to determine iCat’s affective reaction. By looking at iCat’s expressions, children experience in learning to play chess is enhanced, since they know that when they make a good or a bad move iCat will respond accordingly.
Reliability and construct validity of the Chinese version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition

Objective:To examine the reliability and construct validity of the Chinese version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition. Methods: Totally 1,757 persons aged above 16 years old w ere selected by stratified sampling based on the variables including age,sex and education level. They w ere assessed w ith the Chinese version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition. Among the samples,84 persons w ere re-assessed after 22 days. The reliability of the scale w as assessed w ith internal consistency,test-retest stability coefficients,and construct validity of the scale w as assessed w ith intercorrelations of subtests and composite scores,and confirmatory factor analysis. Results: The average reliability coefficients in the subtests,process,full scale intelligence quotient( FSIQ) and index scores ranged from 0. 82- 0. 94,0. 79- 0. 83,and 0. 90- 0. 98 respectively. The test-retest stability coefficients of the subtests, process, full scale intelligence quotient( FSIQ) and index scores ranged from 0. 68- 0. 86,0. 61- 0. 72,0. 78- 0. 91 respectively. The intercorrelations of subtests ranged from 0. 65 to 0. 71 in the verbal comprehension,ranged from 0. 49 to 0. 57 in perceptual reasoning, and w ere 0. 61 both in w orking memory and process speed. The intercorrelations among the 4 index scores and the full scale intelligence quotient w ere 0. 76- 0. 88. The confirmatory factor analysis indicated the four-factor model w as fitted w ell. Conclusion: The Chinese version of Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition has good reliability and construct validity.
A new approach to channel robust speaker verification via constrained stochastic feature transformation

This paper proposes a constrained stochastic feature transformation algorithm for robust speaker verification. The algorithm computes the feature transformation parameters based on the statistical difference between a test utterance and a composite GMM formed by combining the speaker and background models. The transformation is then used to transform the test utterance to fit the clean speaker model and background model before verification. By implicitly constraining the transformation, the transformed features can fit both models simultaneously. Experimental results based on the 2001 NIST evaluation set show that the proposed algorithms achieves significant improvement in both equal error rate and minimum detection cost when compared to cepstral mean subtraction and Z-norm. The performance of the proposed transformation approach is also slightly better than the short-time Gaussianization method proposed in [1].