Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lymba's PowerAnswer 4 in TREC 2007

This paper reports on Lymba Corporation’s (a spinoff of Language Computer Corporation) participation in the TREC 2007 Question Answering track. An overview of the PowerAnswer 4 question answering system and a discussion of new features added to meet the challenges of this year’s evaluation are detailed. Special attention was given to methods for incorporating blogs into the searchable collection, methods for improving answer precision, both statistical and knowledge driven, new mechanisms for recognizing named entities, events, and time expressions, and updated pattern-driven approaches to answer definition questions. Lymba’s results in the evaluation are presented at the end of the paper.
A bio-inspired haptic interface for tele-robotics applications

This paper presents the design concept for a bio-inspired exoskeleton intended for applications in tele-robotics and virtual reality. We based the development on an attentive analysis of the human arm anatomy with the intent to synthesize a system that will be able to interface with the human limb in a natural way. Our main goal is to develop a multi contact-point haptic interface that does not restrict the arm mobility and therefore increases the operational workspace. We propose a simplified kinematic model of the human arm using a notation coming from the robotics field. To figure out the best kinematic architecture we employed real movement data, measured from a human subject, and integrated them with the kinematic model of the exoskeleton. This allows us to test the system before its construction and to formalize specific requirements. We also implemented and tested a first passive version of the shoulder joint.
Sustaining innovation in telehealth and telecare: WSDAN briefing paper

This paper, the first in a series of WSDAN briefing papers, looks at how telehealth and telecare innovations are being used in health and social care. It considers the range of innovative approaches that have been developed, giving some practical examples. We identify some of the key challenges to the adoption of technology-based approaches to care, and suggest some strategies to overcome these challenges, so that telehealth and telecare innovations may be sustained. The 'References' and 'Resources' sections at the end of the paper provide useful links to key documentation, innovations and evidence. If you have any questions about this briefing paper, please email us at: wsdnetwork@kingsfund.org. uk.
Towards a systematic study of binaural cues

Sound source localization is a need for robotic systems interacting with acoustically-active environments. In this domain, numerous binaural localization studies have been conducted within the last few decades. This paper provides an overview of a number of binaural localization cue extraction techniques. These are carefully addressed and applied on a simulated binaural database. Cues are evaluated in azimuth estimation and their discriminatory effectiveness is studied as a function of the reverberation time with statistical data analysis techniques. Results show that big differences exist between the discriminatory abilities of multiple types of cue extraction methods. Thus a careful cue selection must be performed before establishing a sound localization system.
Retrospective spectrum access protocol: A payoff-based learning algorithm for cognitive radio networks

Decentralized cognitive radio networks (CRN) require efficient channel access protocols to enable cognitive secondary users (SUs) to access the primary channels in an opportunistic way without any coordination. In this paper, we develop a distributed retrospective spectrum access protocol that can orient the network towards a socially efficient and fair equilibrium state. With the developed protocol, each SU j chooses a channel to select based on the experienced payoff in past Hj periods. Each SU is thus supposed to be equipped with bounded memory and should make its decision based on only local observations. In that sense, the SUs behavioral rules are said to be payoff-based. The protocol also models a natural human decision making behavior of striking a balance between exploring a new choice and retrospectively exploiting past successful choices. With both analytical demonstration and numerical evaluation, we illustrate the two noteworthy features of our solution: (1) the entirely distributed implementation requiring only local observations and (2) the guaranteed statistical convergence to the equilibrium state within a bounded delay.
Fuzzy Logic Based Multi-Criteria Wind Turbine Selection Strategy—A Case Study of Qassim, Saudi Arabia

The emergence of wind energy as a potential alternative to traditional sources of fuel has prompted notable research in recent years. One primary factor contributing to efficient utilization of wind energy from a wind farm is the type of turbines used. However, selection of a specific wind turbine type is a difficult task due to several criteria involved in the selection process. Important criteria include turbine’s power rating, height of tower, energy output, rotor diameter, cut-in wind speed, and rated wind speed. The complexity of this selection process is further amplified by the presence of conflicts between the decision criteria. Therefore, a decision is desired that provides the best balance between all selection criteria. Considering the complexities involved in the decision-making process, this paper proposes a two-level decision turbine selection strategy based on fuzzy logic and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach. More specifically, the fuzzy arithmetic mean operator is used in the decision process. The proposed approach is applied to wind data collected from the site of Qassim, Saudi Arabia. Results indicate that the proposed approach was effective in finding the optimal turbine from a set of 20 turbines of various capacities.
A Survey on Techniques of Secure Live Migration of Virtual Machine

Live migration is an essential feature of virtualization that allows transfer of virtual machine from one physical server to another without interrupting the services running in virtual machine. Live migration facilitates workload balancing, fault tolerance, online system maintenance, consolidation of virtual machines etc. Unfortunately the disclosed vulnerabilities with the live migration pose significant security risks. Because of these security risks the industry is hesitant to adapt the technology for sensitive applications. This paper is an investigation of attacks on live migration of virtual machine and discusses the key proposed and implemented approaches to secure live migration. General Terms Virtualization, live migration, security.
A pr 2 01 0 AGN feedback in clusters of galaxies

Institute for Astrophysical Research and Astronomy Department, Boston University, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USA,Naval Research Laboratory, 455 Overlook Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20375, USA,Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, P. O. Box 400325, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4325, USA,HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L
Aggregation and perturbation in practice: Case-study of privacy, accuracy & performance

We analyse accuracy, privacy, compression-ratio and computational overhead of selected aggregation and perturbation methods in the Internet of Things (IoT). We measure over a real-life data set of detailed energy consumption logs of a single family household. We modelled privacy by simple, threshold-driven machine-learning algorithms that extract features of behaviour. The accuracy of those extraction is used as privacy metric. We state for different parameters of the aggregation, reduction and perturbation if the output still allows detections, as this follows the EU's data protection principle of “minimisation”: increased privacy due to less detailed data, but still good enough accuracy for the purpose. The result is that many detections for sensible predictions and intelligent reactions are still possible with lower quality data.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the atmosphere of two French alpine valleys: Temporal trends and examination of sources

Alpine valleys represent some of the most important crossroads for international heavy duty traffic in Europe, but impact of this traffic on air quality is not well-known due to a lack of data in these complex systems. As part of the program "Pollution des Vallees Alpines'' (POVA), we performed two sampling surveys of PAHs in two sensitive valleys: the Chamonix and the Maurienne Valleys, between France and Italy. Sampling campaigns were performed during summer 2000 and winter 2001, both periods taking place during the closure of the "Tunnel du Mont-Blanc''. The objectives of this paper are first to describe the relations between PAH concentrations, external parameters (sampling site localization, meteorological parameters, sources), and the aerosol characteristics, including its carbonaceous fraction (OC and EC). The second objective is to study the capacity of the PAH profiles to accurately discriminate the different emissions sources. Temporal evolution of relative concentration of individual PAH (CHR), and PAH groups (BghiP+COR and BbF+BkF) are studied in order to discriminate wood combustion, gasoline, and diesel emissions, respectively. The results show that during both seasons the total particulate PAH concentrations were higher in the valley of Chamonix, despite the stopping of the international traffic through the Chamonix valley. Seasonal cycles, with higher concentrations in winter are also stronger in this valley. During winter, particulate PAH concentration can reach very high levels (155 ng.m -3 ) in this valley during cold anticyclonic periods. Sources examination shows the impact of heavy duty traffic in the Maurienne valley and of gasoline vehicles in the Chamonix Valley during summer. During winter, Chamonix is characterized by the strong influences wood combustion in residential fireplaces, even if temporal evolution of specific PAH ratios are uneasy to interpret. Information on sources given by PAH profiles can only be considered as qualitative.
Clustering of Auto Supplier Plants in the U.S.: GMM Spatial Logit for Large Samples

A linearized version of Pinkse and Slade’s (1998) spatial probit estimator is used to account for the tendency of auto supplier plants to cluster together. By reducing estimation to two steps – standard probit or logit followed by two-stage least squares – linearization produces a model that can be estimated using large datasets. Our results imply significant clustering among older plants. Supplier plants are more likely to be in counties that are near assembly plants, that include interstate highways, and that are near other counties with supplier plants. New plants show no additional tendency toward clustering beyond that shown by older plants.
Information technology, capabilities and Asset Ownership: Evidence from Taxicab Fleets

We examine how information technology (IT) influences asset ownership through its impact on firms’ and agents’ capabilities. In particular, we propose that when IT is a substitute for agents’ industry-specific human capital, IT adoption leads to increased vertical integration. We test this prediction using micro data on vehicle ownership patterns from the Economic Census during a period when computerized dispatching systems were first adopted by taxicab firms. The empirical tests exploit exogenous variation in local market conditions, to identify the impact of dispatching technology on firm asset ownership. The results show that firms increase the proportion of taxicabs owned by 12% when they adopt new computerized dispatching systems. The findings suggest that firms increasingly vertically integrate when they acquire resources that substitute for their agents’ capabilities.
Notice of RetractionThe Formation and Analysis of the Earth Gravitation Model Based on Point Masses

The theory of the point-mass model has been widely used to represent the local gravity field. In this paper, the approximation theory of point-mass model is briefly introduced, and the characteristics of the elements in the coefficient matrix for the model construction are analyzed by numerical calculation. The data of gravity anomaly is calculated by using EGM2008 with degree and order 720 in the region of 32°~34°N and 103°~105°N. The four-tier point-mass groups based on the geopotential model with degree and order 36 from low frequency to high frequency are applied to approximate the gravity field. The results of the tests show that the truncation error of gravity disturbance created by using the point-mass model is less than 2 mGal on the radial direction and there is an optimal truncation error for some certain spectrum gravity field in the space.
On-line topological simplification of weighted graphs

We describe two efficient on-line algorithms to simplify weighted graphs by eliminating degree-two vertices. Our algorithms are on-line in that they react to updates on the data, keeping the simplification up-to-date. The supported updates are insertions of vertices and edges; hence, our algorithms are partially dynamic. We provide both analytical and empirical evaluations of the efficiency of our approaches. Specifically, we prove an O(log n) upper bound on the amortized time complexity of our maintenance algorithms, with n the number of insertions.
A Logical Approach to Factoring Belief Networks

We have recently proposed a tractable logical form, known as deterministic, decomposable negation normal form (d-DNNF). We have shown that d-DNNF supports a number of logical operations in polynomial time, including clausal entailment, model counting, model enumeration, model minimization, and probabilistic equivalence testing. In this paper, we discuss another major application of this logical form: the implementation of multi-linear functions (of exponential size) using arithmetic circuits (that are not necessarily exponential). Specifically, we show that each multi–linear function can be encoded using a propositional theory, and that each d-DNNF of the theory corresponds to an arithmetic circuit that implements the encoded multi–linear function. We discuss the application of these results to factoring belief networks, which can be viewed as multi–linear functions as has been shown recently. We discuss the merits of the proposed approach for factoring belief networks, and present experimental results showing how it can handle efficiently belief networks that are intractable to structure–based methods for probabilistic inference.
Reading epilepsy from the dominant temporo-occipital region

Background Reading epilepsy is a rare form of epilepsy, classified among idiopathic, age- and localisation-related (partial) epilepsies as a reflex epilepsy syndrome. Seizures usually consist of myoclonic jerks restricted to the jaw. However, distinct ictal features including visual symptoms and paroxysmal a- or dyslexia are described in some patients. The anatomical substrate of ictogenesis in reading epilepsy remains poorly understood. Methods The authors report here the case of a primary reading epilepsy for which ictal semiology was characterised by visual symptoms and dyslexia, investigated by MRI, interictal high-resolution EEG and PET, ictal video-EEG and SPECT. Brain MRI was normal. Interictal high-resolution EEG was performed with 64 scalp channels, a realistic head model and different algorithms to solve the inverse problem. Results Interictal source localisations highlighted the left occipito-temporal junction. Interictal PET demonstrated bilateral occipito-temporal hypometabolism with left-sided predominance. Ictal EEG showed a rhythmic discharge in left temporo-parieto-occipital junction channels, with left occipito-temporal predominance. MRI fusion of the coregistered subtraction between ictal and interictal SPECT individualised relative hyperperfusion affecting (a) the left occipito-parietal junction area, (b) the left lateral middle and inferior temporal gyri and (c) the left inferior frontal area. Conclusion Besides reading-induced myoclonic jerks of the jaw, a second variant of reading epilepsy exists with clearly partial seizures manifested by visual symptoms and a- or dyslexia. These seizures originate from the occipito-temporal region of the dominant hemisphere, corresponding to the posterior part of the neural network that underlies the function of reading.
IMI — A Multilingual Semantic Annotation Environment

Semantic annotated parallel corpora, though rare, play an increasingly important role in natural language processing. These corpora provide valuable data for computational tasks like sense-based machine translation and word sense disambiguation, but also to contrastive linguistics and translation studies. In this paper we present the ongoing development of a web-based corpus semantic annotation environment that uses the Open Multilingual Wordnet (Bond and Foster, 2013) as a sense inventory. The system includes interfaces to help coordinating the annotation project and a corpus browsing interface designed specifically to meet the needs of a semantically annotated corpus. The tool was designed to build the NTU-Multilingual Corpus (Tan and Bond, 2012). For the past six years, our tools have been tested and developed in parallel with the semantic annotation of a portion of this corpus in Chinese, English, Japanese and Indonesian. The annotation system is released under an open source license (MIT).
Compact design of a dual master-slave system for maxillary sinus surgery

The pathway to the maxillary sinus area is anatomically curved and narrow. Thus, using the conventional approach based on the straight endoscope and surgical tools, there are some limitations in inspection and treatment of the target legion of the maxillary sinus. To cope with such problems, a dual master-slave system is investigated in this work for general maxillary sinus surgery. Initially, the need for dual arm operation is explained. A compact design of two 4-DOF end-effector mechanisms for acquiring the endoscopic image and performing biopsy is introduced. Next, a dual master device to control the motions of the two end-effector mechanisms is employed and a motion scheduling algorithm for a proper master-slave control is also developed. Finally, the feasibility of the dual master-slave system is verified through experimental work.
Automatic Template Creation for Information Extraction, an Overview

Information Extraction (IE) approaches currently assume that a template exists which sufficiently defines the requirements of the task. Substantial human ef fort is required to generate these basic templates and to provide a development corpus. In the two principal IE competitions, the Message Understanding Conference (MUC) and Tipster, the templates were constructed directly from the experience of analysts. This manual approach cannot always be assumed. This proposal concerns the automatic construction of MUC-style templates, substantially reducing the human ef fort required. The approach will carry out a corpus-based analysis of task-relevant documents, identifying and analysing the interaction between the fundamental elements. A resource which defines semantic relationships will be necessary to identify and categorise these fundamental elements. This application is of particular interest to researchers in the field of IE and automatic abstracting.
Profile-based string kernels for remote homology detection and motif extraction

We introduce novel profile-based string kernels for use with support vector machines (SVMs) for the problems of protein classification and remote homology detection. These kernels use probabilistic profiles, such as those produced by the PSI-BLAST algorithm, to define position-dependent mutation neighborhoods along protein sequences for inexact matching of k-length subsequences ("k-mers") in the data. By use of an efficient data structure, the kernels are fast to compute once the profiles have been obtained. For example, the time needed to run PSI-BLAST in order to build the profiles is significantly longer than both the kernel computation time and the SVM training time. We present remote homology detection experiments based on the SCOP database where we show that profile-based string kernels used with SVM classifiers strongly outperform all recently presented supervised SVM methods. We also show how we can use the learned SVM classifier to extract "discriminative sequence motifs" - short regions of the original profile that contribute almost all the weight of the SVM classification score - and show that these discriminative motifs correspond to meaningful structural features in the protein data. The use of PSI-BLAST profiles can be seen as a semi-supervised learning technique, since PSI-BLAST leverages unlabeled data from a large sequence database to build more informative profiles. Recently presented "cluster kernels " give general semi-supervised methods for improving SVM protein classification performance. We show that our profile kernel results are comparable to cluster kernels while providing much better scalability to large datasets.
Exposing MP3 audio forgeries using frame offsets

Audio recordings should be authenticated before they are used as evidence. Although audio watermarking and signature are widely applied for authentication, these two techniques require accessing the original audio before it is published. Passive authentication is necessary for digital audio, especially for the most popular audio format: MP3. In this article, we propose a passive approach to detect forgeries of MP3 audio. During the process of MP3 encoding the audio samples are divided into frames, and thus each frame has its own frame offset after encoding. Forgeries lead to the breaking of framing grids. So the frame offset is a good indication for locating forgeries, and it can be retrieved by the identification of the quantization characteristic. In this way, the doctored positions can be automatically located. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective in detecting some common forgeries, such as deletion, insertion, substitution, and splicing. Even when the bit rate is as low as 32 kbps, the detection rate is above 99%.
Nucleon spin fluctuations and the supernova emission of neutrinos and axions.

In the hot and dense medium of a supernova (SN) core, the nucleon spins fluctuate so fast that the axial-vector neutrino opacity and the axion emissivity are expected to be significantly modified. Axions with {ital m}{sub {ital a}}{approx_lt}10{sup {minus}2} eV are not excluded by SN 1987A. A substantial transfer of energy in neutrino-nucleon ({nu}{ital N}) collisions is enabled which may alter the spectra of SN neutrinos relative to calculations where energy-conserving {nu}{ital N} collisions had been assumed near the neutrinosphere. {copyright} {ital 1996 The American Physical Society. }