Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DOA estimation by bootstrap method

The bootstrap is a great technique for assessing the accuracy of parameters estimator in situations where conventional techniques are not valid. In this article, we highlight the motivations for using the bootstrap in array signal processing applications. ESPRIT and bootstrap methods combines are combined into one novel technique to solve the DOA (Direction of Arrival) estimation of sources arriving simultaneously on an array. In the situation of fewer snapshots received by passive radar system, the proposed algorithm shows good estimation performance.
Theory of Evidence -a Survey of Its Mathematical Foundations, Applications and Computational Aspects

The mathematical theory of evidence has been introduced by Glenn Shafer in 1976 as a new approach to the representation of uncertainty. This theory can be represented under several distinct but more or less equivalent forms. Probabilistic interpretations of evidence theory have their roots in Arthur Dempster's multivalued mappings of probability spaces. This leads to random set and more generally to random lter models of evidence. In this probabilistic view evidence is seen as more or less probable arguments for certain hypotheses and they can be used to support those hypotheses to certain degrees. These degrees of support are in fact the reliabilities with which the hypotheses can be derived from the evidence. Alternatively, the mathematical theory of evidence can be founded axiomatically on the notion of belief functions or on the allocation of belief masses to subsets of a frame of discernment. These approaches aim to present evidence theory as an extension of probability theory. Evidence theory has been used to represent uncertainty in expert systems, especially in the domain of diagnostics. It can be applied to decision analysis and it gives a new perspective for statistical analysis. Among its further applications are image processing, project planing and scheduling and risk analysis. The computational problems of evidence theory are well understood and even though the problem is complex, eecient methods are available. Dempster developed there a theory of lower and upper probabilities in an attempt to reconcile Bayesian statistics with Fisher's ducial argument (Dempster 1967, 1968). As Shafer states in the preface of his book ". It ooers a reinterpretation of Dempster's work, a reinterpretation that identiies his "lower probabilities\ as epistemic probabilities or degrees of belief, takes the rule for combining such degrees of belief as fundamental, and abandons the idea that they arise as lower bounds over classes of Bayesian probabilities. \ The rule mentioned in this statement became known as Dempster's rule.
Enhanced Human-Computer Interaction for Business Applications on Mobile Devices: A Design-Oriented Development of a Usability Evaluation Questionnaire

Over the last few years mobile technology has gained enormous growth in the field of human-computer interaction as it became an essential part of our society's everyday life. Specific mobile characteristics such as availability, computational power, or high-resolution displays make these devices very useful, even in a business environment. However, usability plays a crucial role when it comes to software design for human-computer interaction with mobile devices. In order to achieve a high level of usability in user interfaces of application software, it is essential to ensure usability quality during the development process. Therefore, we have developed a specific questionnaire for evaluating the usability of mobile business apps as well as a corresponding Web-based software tool for simplifying the assessment. In this paper, we follow a design science research approach and evaluate our designed artifacts in expert interviews where we demonstrate the utility and applicability of the questionnaire and tool.
Evaluating cfengine’s immunity model of site maintenance

The immunity model of system maintenance draws its name from the immune systems of vertebrate organisms. The idea contends that all evolving large-scale cooperative organisms (animals, groups, societies) develop self-protecting sub-systems (immune and repair systems, police and emergency services) which try to keep those organisms in some kind of balance. Without such systems, organisms would quickly perish due to random decay and crime. Computers operating systems are artificial organisms, which work on the same cooperative principles as other organisms, but they have been designed rather than having evolved. They lack basic protecting systems, or immune-repair systems. The immunity model attempts to redress this imbalance by providing an expert counterforce to the forces of random or criminal attack on system integrity. One defines the ideal (desired) state for a computer system and agents (like immunity/repair cells) make sure that no dangerous deviations from that state are allowed to grow. The immunity model uses a principle of convergence to switch on and off repair and garbage collection mechanisms. When the system is in its ideal state, the immune system becomes inert. When the system deviates from the ideal state, the immune system guarantees to bring it only closer to that state, i.e. the state of the system is never made worse by the agents. This is similar in spirit to danger models of vertebrate immunity[1]. Cfengine is an agent/language framework for implementing the automatic management of large or small system installations with the immunity model. It uses the idea of an expert software agent to perform automatic maintenance on each host in a Unix or NT cluster. Cfengine is suitable for site-wide management; it can be used for large scale cloning of hosts, or for individual specialization, with any degree of granularity. A single configuration file, consisting of a specialized, descriptive language is used to describe the ideal state of groups and classes of hosts on the network. The purpose of this paper is to take a critical review of the success of the immunity model computer management. What are the criteria for judging a mechanism for maintenance? What aspects of system administration are not covered in this model? Can the immunity model be judged to be superior or inferior to other approaches to system management?
Affine estimation via region expansion

In this work, we present a novel method for accurate affine transformation estimation of image regions. We illustrate the benefits of using such a method in a point matching mechanism that enables locating large amount of point matches with high geometric precision and low rate of false matches. Recent publications have shown that considering the affine transformation model of local regions, is extremely beneficial for the purpose of point matching. Yet, those methods are not used extensively for two reasons. First, because they are computationally more demanding, second reason is that the estimation of the Affine transformations are of limited accuracy and therefore the usage of them is limited. We propose a region expansion method, based on accurate estimation of the affine transformation, that is proven to accurately predict locations beyond the initial local regions. We also prove that expansion beyond local regions is crucial for getting much more accurate transformation estimations. Finally, by reducing the amount of false matches considerably, we reduce the need for computationally demanding post processes.
Uniprocessor EDF Feasibility is an Integer Problem

The research on real-time scheduling has mostly focused on the development of algorithms that allows to test whether the constraints imposed on the task execution (often expressed by deadlines) are verified or not. However, in many design scenarios the task set is only partially known and these algorithms cannot be applied because they require the complete knowledge of all the parameters of the task set. Moreover, very often the designer has the freedom to select some of the task set parameters in order to maximize the system performance, and an arbitrary selection of the free parameters can lead either to poor performance or to a constraint violation. It is then useful to describe the feasibility region of the task set parameters by equations instead of by algorithms, so that optimization algorithms can be applied to find the best assignment to the free variables. In this paper we formulate the EDF schedulability on a single processor through a combination of linear constraints. We study the geometry of the feasibility region of task deadlines when computation times and periods are known.
A novel approach for image enhancement by using contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization method

A novel approach for image enhancement by using contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization method will produces a good contrast images such as medical images. In this paper, we propose a new method for image enhancement by using contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization method. We propose a general framework with a adaptive histogram equalization method. We are going to prove its effectiveness in comparison to other contrast enhancement method.
Extension of stochastic volatility models with Hull-White interest rate process

In recent years the financial world has focused on accurate pricing of exotic and hybrid products that are based on a combination of underlyings from different asset classes. In this paper we present an extension of the stochastic volatility models by a stochastic Hull-White interest rate component. It is our goal to include this system of stochastic differential equations in the class of affine jump diffusion linear quadratic jump-diffusion processes (Duffie, Pan and Singleton [11], Cheng and Scaillet [8]) so that the pricing of European products can be efficiently done within the pricing framework of Carr-Madan [7].
Loss of Parvalbumin in the Hippocampus of MAM Schizophrenia Model Rats Is Attenuated by Peripubertal Diazepam

Background: Loss of parvalbumin interneurons in the hippocampus is a robust finding in schizophrenia brains. Rats exposed during embryonic day 17 to methylazoxymethanol acetate exhibit characteristics consistent with an animal model of schizophrenia, including decreased parvalbumin interneurons in the ventral hippocampus. We reported previously that peripubertal administration of diazepam prevented the emergence of pathophysiology in adult methylazoxymethanol acetate rats. Methods: We used an unbiased stereological method to examine the impact of peripubertal diazepam treatment on parvalbumin interneuron number in the ventral subiculum, dentate gyrus of the hippocampus and the basolateral amygdala. Results: Methylazoxymethanol acetate rats with peripubertal diazepam showed significantly more parvalbumin interneurons (3355±173 in the ventral subiculum, 1211±76 in the dentate gyrus) than methylazoxymethanol acetate without diazepam (2375±109 and 824±54, respectively). No change was found in the basolateral amygdala. Conclusions: Peripubertal diazepam attenuated the decrease of parvalbumin in the ventral hippocampus of methylazoxymethanol acetate rats.
Astrophysical constraints on a possible neutrino ball at the Galactic Center

The nature of the massive object at the Galactic Center (Sgr A) is still unclear even if various observational campaigns led many authors to believe that our Galaxy hosts a super-massive black hole with mass M' 2:6 10 6 M. However, the black hole hypothesis, which theoretically implies a luminosity'10 41 erg s 1 , runs into problems if one takes into account that the observed luminosity, from radio to -ray wavelengths, is below 10 37 erg s 1 . In order to solve this blackness problem, alternative models have recently been proposed. In particular, it has been suggested that the Galactic Center hosts a ball made up of non-baryonic matter (e.g. massive neutrinos and anti-neutrinos) in which the degeneracy pressure of fermions balances their self-gravity. Requiring it to be consistent with all the available observations towards the Galactic Center allows us to put severe astrophysical constraints on the neutrino ball parameters. The presence of such an object in the Galactic Center may be excluded if the constituent neutrino mass m is 24 keV, while if m 24 keV observations cannot give a denite answer.
Population Heterogeneity and the Nonprofit Sector in the United States : Global versus Local Spatial Approaches

In this paper we study the relationship between the relative size of the U.S. nonprofit sector and population heterogeneity, at the county level, by adopting and extending the model of Alesina, Baquir and Easterly (1999). The relative size of the voluntary sector is assessed as a share of voluntary donations in the total public good provided locally via public expenditures and private contributions.We demonstrate empirically that the relative size of the nonprofitt sector in each county depends not only on its population heterogeneity, but also on its neighbors' average relative size of the nonprofit sector and average population heterogeneity. Moreover, this relationship seems to be unstable across counties as the signs and magnitudes of neighborhood effects vary with geographical location.
Classification of opinions in conversational content

Nowadays, with enhancing possibilities of the Internet usage, the number of its users grows as well. People use it more and more to communicate among themselves. This kind of communication plays a significant role in the decision-making process. Based on this finding, a need to analyze the content of the ample web discussions (so-called conversational content) using the computers arose. Therefore, the following article deals especially with the issue of opinion analysis, more specifically the classification of opinions. We have created an algorithm, which allows determining the polarity of the text. With the analysis of text we can also process the intensification, negation and their combinations. We have created 4 classification dictionaries divided according to the types of words they contain. We have subsequently tested the algorithm with average accuracy of 86%.
Canadian English teachers in South Korea: A look at how interpersonal and intercultural communication impacts the experience of working abroad

Teaching English abroad, particularly in South Korea, is a popular choice for many Canadian university graduates. This research begins to examine the unique experiences of young, educated Canadians who lived and worked in this East Asian country for an extended period of time. This study is based on a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with 10 Canadians in the Ottawa area who taught English in South Korea for a period of one year or longer between 2001 and 2006. The findings show that while most of those interviewed had little knowledge of South Korea before leaving, their communication with other expatriates and the local Korean population resulted in predominantly positive perceptions of both their time abroad and of the Korean culture. This thesis contributes to the field of expatriate literature, where limited attention has been devoted to teaching abroad, and adds to the field of communication by bringing into it existing literature on expatriate management.
Designing a model human cochlea: issues and challenges in crossmodal audio-haptic displays

In this paper, we describe a Model Human Cochlea (MHC), a sensory substitution technique aimed at translating some of the emotional content expressed in music onto a haptic ambient display. We present some of the issues and challenges encountered in designing the model. This research is situated within the domain of crossmodal displays, with specific focus on enhancing the entertainment experience associated with film audio for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. The interface, in its final form factor, will be integrated into an EmotiChair, a multi-sensory entertainment interface that supports crossmodal audio-haptic display interactions. To assist with the design of the MHC, we have developed a flexible prototype to support research in cross-modal audio-haptic displays. Details of the multidisciplinary design process that has informed the development of the the MHC prototype, and the evaluation methodology adopted to explore the different configurations of the MHC are presented.
P = BPP if E requires exponential circuits: derandomizing the XOR lemma

Russell Impagliazzo* Avi Wigdersont Department of Computer Science Institute of Computer Science University of California Hebrew University San Diego, CA 91097-0114 Jerusalem, Israel russell@cs . ucsd. edu avi@cs . huj i. ac. il Yao showed that the XOR of independent random instances of a somewhat hard Boolean problem becomes almost completely unpredictable. In this paper we show that, in non-uniform settings, total independence is not necessary for this result to hold. We give a pseudo-random generator which produces n instances of a problem for which the analog of the XOR lemma holds. Combining this generator with the results of [25, 6] gives substantially improved results for hardness vs randomness tradeoffs. In particular, we show that if any problem in E = DTIAl E(2°t”j) has circuit complexity 2Q(”), then P = BPP. Our generator is a combination of two known ones the random walks on expander graphs of [1, 10, 19] and the nearly disjoint subsets generator of [23, 25]. The quality of the generator is proved via a new proof of the XOR lemma which may be useful for other direct product results. *Research supported by NSF YI Award CCR-92s70979, Sloan Research Fellowship BR-3311, grant #93025 of the joint US-Czechoslovak Science and Technology Program, and USA-Israel BSF Grant 92-00043 tWork pmtly done while visiting the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J. 08540 and Princeton University. Research supported the Sloan Foundation, American-Israeli BSF grant 92-00106, and the Wolfson Research Awards, administered by the Israel Academy of Sciences.
Seeing Pink Elephants: Fourteen-Month-Olds' Interpretations of Novel Nouns and Adjectives

Words from different grammatical categories (e.g., nouns and adjectives) highlight different aspects of the same objects (e.g., object categories and object properties). Two experiments examine the acquisition of this phenomenon in 14-month-olds, asking whether infants can construe the very same set of objects (e.g., four purple animals) either as members of an object category (e.g., animals) or as embodying a salient object property (e.g., four purple things) and whether naming (with either count nouns or adjectives) influences infants' construals. Results suggest (1) that infants have begun to distinguish count nouns from adjectives, (2) that infants share with mature language-users an expectation that different grammatical forms highlight different aspects, and (3) that infants recruit these expectations when extending novel words. Further, these results suggest that an expectation linking count nouns to object categories emerges early in acquisition and supports the emergence of other word-to-world mappings.
Pulling a rabbit out of a hat, where do policies come from? An examination of the criminal justice policy processes behind the building of the Dóchas Centre (Ireland’s largest women’s prison).

There is an increasing need to understand the processes in which key decisions are made within the criminal justice system. While women in the Irish prison system are still very much in the minority they are the fastest growing population in prison and are currently experiencing overcrowding unknown in living memory in Irish prisons. It is too soon to comprehensively examine the origins of the recent policy decision to retrofit bunk beds and dormitories in Irelandâ? Ts largest womenâ? Ts prison (DA³chas Centre) and what other possible solutions were explored, for example, why a proposed new facility was cancelled. However, it is possible to examine the origins of the DA³chas Centre, which was responding to a crisis of its era.
Estimating global black carbon emissions using a top‐down Kalman Filter approach

Black carbon (BC) is an important aerosol constituent in the atmosphere and climate forcer. A good understanding of the radiative forcing of BC and associated climate feedback and response is critical to minimize the uncertainty in predicting current and future climate influenced by anthropogenic aerosols. One reason for this uncertainty is that current emission inventories of BC are mostly obtained from the so‐called bottom‐up approach, an approach that derives emissions based on categorized emitting sources and emission factors used to convert burning mass to emissions. In this work, we provide a first global‐scale top‐down estimation of global BC emissions, as well as an estimated error range, by using a Kalman Filter. This method uses data of both column aerosol absorption optical depth and surface concentrations from global and regional networks to constrain our fully coupled climate‐aerosol‐urban model and thus to derive an optimized estimate of BC emissions as 17.8 ± 5.6 Tg/yr, a factor of more than 2 higher than commonly used global BC emissions data sets. We further perform 22 additional optimization simulations that incorporate the known uncertain ranges of various important physical, model, and measurement parameters and still yield an optimized value within the above given range, from a low of 14.6 Tg/yr to a high of 22.2 Tg/yr. Furthermore, we show that the emissions difference between our optimized and a priori estimation is not uniform, with East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe underestimated, while North America is overestimated in the a priori inventory.
DC-SIGN (CD209) gene promoter polymorphisms in a Brazilian population and their association with human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 infection

This study evaluated four polymorphisms located in the DC-SIGN (CD209) gene promoter region (positions −336, −332 −201 and −139) in DNA samples from four Brazilian ethnic groups (Caucasians, Afro-Brazilian, Asians and Amerindians) to establish the population distribution of these single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and correlated DC-SIGN polymorphisms and infection in samples from human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1)-infected individuals. To identify CD209 SNPs, 452 bp of the CD209 promoter region were sequenced and the genotype and allelic frequencies were evaluated. This is the first study to show genetic polymorphism in the CD209 gene in distinct Brazilian ethnic groups with the distribution of allelic and genotypic frequency. The results showed that −336A and −139A SNPs were quite common in Asians and that the −201T allele was not observed in Caucasians, Asians or Amerindians. No significant differences were observed between individuals with HTLV-1 disease and asymptomatic patients. However, the −336A variant was more frequent in HTLV-1-infected patients [HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP), 80 %; healthy asymptomatic HTLV-1 carriers, 90 %] than in the control group (70 %) [P=0.0197, odds ratio (OR)=2.511, 95 % confidence interval (CI)=1.218–5.179). In addition, the −139A allele was found to be associated with protection against HTLV-1 infection (P=0.0037, OR=0.3758, 95 % CI=0.1954–0.7229) when the HTLV-1-infected patients as a whole were compared with the healthy-control group. These observations suggest that the −139A allele may be associated with HTLV-1 infection, although no significant association was observed among asymptomatic and HAM/TSP patients. In conclusion, the variation observed in SNPs −336 and −139 indicates that this lectin may be of crucial importance in the susceptibility/transmission of HTLV-1 infections.