Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preface The Knowledge Management Strategies : A Handbook of Applied Technologies is the fifth book in the Knowledge and Learning Society Book Series

Knowledge management is a buzz world of late 90‟s. In an era of business transition, the effective management of knowledge is proposed as a strategy that exploits the organizational intangible assets. This fact has intrinsic market attractiveness and a great interest for practical guidelines for the implementation of knowledge management strategies. However, the term of knowledge management has been used to describe many different applications. In some cases the tag of „knowledge management product‟ is attached to several software programs purely for marketing reasons.
Improving Attack Resilience of Biometric ( Iris ) Watermarking Authentication through Zernike Feature Extraction

Biometric Watermarking pertains to the integration of biometrics with watermarking. The paper presents an extension to the work proposed in [1]. In this paper, a biometric watermarking algorithm is presented which improves the snr ratio between the original and watermarked image as also the attack resilience hence providing enhanced protection against image tampering. The LWT algorithm has been strengthened by using biorthogonal wavelets instead of haar for better image reconstruction. The use of Zernike moments for feature extraction increases the layer of protection. This technique when tested for robustness gives appreciable results. The major geometric attacks which this technique survives like histogram equalization, salt and pepper noise, Gaussian noise and lossy JPEG compression have all been validated experimentally using standard test images as well as the existing Iris databases.
Mid-infrared, spatially resolved spectroscopy of the nucleus of the Circinus galaxy

High spatial resolution spectroscopy at 8-13 μm with T-ReCS on Gemini-S has revealed striking variations in the mid-infrared emission and absorption in the nucleus of the Circinus galaxy (hereafter Circinus) on subarcsecond scales. The core of Circinus is compact and obscured by a substantial column of cool silicate dust. Weak extended emission to the east and west coincides with the coronal line region and arises from featureless dust grains which are probably heated by line emission in the coronal emission zone. The extended emission on the east side of the nucleus displays a much deeper silicate absorption than that on the west, indicating significant columns of cool material along the line of sight and corresponding to an additional extinction of A V ∼ 25 mag. Emission bands from aromatic hydrocarbons are not subject to this additional extinction, are relatively weak in the core and in the coronal line region, and are much more spatially extended than the continuum dust emission; they presumably arise in the circumnuclear star-forming regions. These data are interpreted in terms of an inclined disc-like structure around the nucleus extending over tens of parsecs and possibly related to the inner disc found from observations of water masers by Greenhill et al.
Unusual glitch activity in the RRAT J1819−1458: an exhausted magnetar?

We present an analysis of regular timing observations of the high magnetic field Rotating Radio Transient (RRAT) J1819−1458 obtained using the 64-m Parkes and 76-m Lovell radio telescopes over the past 5 years. During this time, the RRAT has suffered two significant glitches with fractional frequency changes of 0.6 × 10 −6 and 0.1 × 10 −6 . Glitches of this magnitude are a phenomenon displayed by both radio pulsars and magnetars. However, the behaviour of J1819−1458 following these glitches is quite different to that which follows glitches in other neutron stars, since the glitch activity resulted in a significant long-term net decrease in the slow-down rate. If such glitches occur every 30 years, the spin-down rate, and by inference the magnetic dipole moment, will drop to zero on a time-scale of a few thousand years. There are also significant increases in the rate of pulse detection and in the radio pulse energy immediately following the glitches.
Property of correlation between entropy and focus

It makes all the difference whether one recognizes objects through the clear or fuzzy image through a video. That is a so-called garbage in garbage out. In an imaging automatic identification system, in order to recognize the objects in a frame of a video correctly, it is very important to extract the clearest frame from the video. Based on observing the distribution of histogram for each frame from a section of video with the same scene, we find that the distribution range of histogram is wider if the frame is clear, otherwise, the distribution range of histogram is narrower when the frame is fuzzy. On the other hand, clear image contains higher entropy and fuzzy image contains lower entropy. According to this fact, the relationship between entropy and the clarity of an image is proposed in this paper. By using this property, the clearest image is extracted from a section of video with the same scene automatically. Experiments are carried out for some samples with scenes of different distance to demonstrate the correctness of the proposed property.
The paradoxical effects of feedback and reward on decision performance

While the use of computerized decision aids in accounting is widespread, little is known about the effects of decision aids on accounting decision making. However, prior research has often noted the difficulty in getting users to accept and rely upon decision aids (Rose, 2002). A primary area of focus in the design of decision aids that will facilitate user acceptance and reliance has been the development of user-centered interfaces that increase the user's comfort with the aid. This study contributes to this body of research by extending the findings of Ryan, Mims, and Koestner (1983) on the use of informational versus controlling rewards to the context of a decision aid and the interface design. While Ryan et al. focused on the effects of verbal feedback on intrinsic motivation, this study focuses on the impact of text-based feedback from a decision aid on decision performance for a choice task. Additionally, this study examines the effect of task-contingent versus performance-contingent rewards on the impact of the decision aid feedback. The results indicate a differential effect from that of Ryan et al. (1983) when feedback is provided through a decision aid and the focus is on decision performance rather than the precursor condition of intrinsic motivation. Additional research is needed to help explain why the findings obtained by Ryan et al. do not hold in the context of computerized decision aid use when decision performance is measured directly. There are important implications of these findings both in terms of theory development and decision aid design in professional decision-making environments such as accounting.
A Distributed Economic Meta-scheduler for the Grid

In this paper we present DRIVE, a novel architecture for a virtual organization (VO) based distributed economic meta-scheduler in which members of the VO collaboratively allocate grid resources. Resource providers joining the VO contribute obligation services to the VO. These contributed services are in effect membership 'dues' and are used in the running of the VO's operations - allocation, advertising, management, etc. We use an auction plug-in mechanism to support arbitrary auction protocols which allows users to choose a protocol based on specific requirements and infrastructural availability. For instance, within a single organization, where internal trust exists, users can achieve maximum allocation performance by choosing a conventional sealed bid auction plug-in. In a global utility Grid no such trust exists. The same meta-scheduler architecture can be used with a more expensive secure auction protocol plug- in which ensures the allocation is carried out fairly in the absence of trust The DRIVE prototype has been implemented as a collection of standard WSRF Web services and includes a distributed implementation of a secure combinatorial Garbled Circuit protocol.
Crossed and uncrossed visual pathways are impaired differently in open angle glaucoma patients.

Recent electrophysiological evaluations, performed by pattern electroretinogram (PERG) and visual evoked potential (VEP) recordings, suggest that patients affected by open angle glaucoma (OAG) present a ret-inal dysfunction and a delay in neural conduction in the postretinal visual pathways (Parisi 1997). Although an impairment of the innermost retinal layers (ganglion cells and their fibres) is well documented (Quigley et al. 1995), only recently has an impairment of the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) been observed in animals in which experimental glaucoma was induced (Weber et al. 2000). Therefore, it is supposed that the abnormal visual cortical responses observed in glaucoma may result from both retinal impairment and the involvement at the LGN level. In our previous study (Parisi 1997), the VEP responses were derived by means of a single electrode placed over both occipital cortexes and therefore did not allow a separate evaluation of the neural conduction along the crossed and uncrossed fibre visual pathways. On the basis of recent evidence regarding postretinal involvement in glau-coma, the aim of our work now is to evaluate the neural conduction in crossed and uncrossed visual pathways in OAG patients.
Content-based Retrieval of Medical Images

We consider the requirements for the design and implementation of Image DataBase (IDB) systems which support the retrieval of medical images by content. Attention is focused on a methodology for the efficient representation and retrieval of medical images based on spatial information. The content of medical images is represented by Attributed Relational Graphs (ARGs) holding features of objects or regions and relationships between such objects or regions. The method can answer queries by example, such as " find all image examinations similar to Smith's examination ". The performance of the method has been evaluated using a dataset of 13,500 simulated, but realistic computed tomography and magnetic resonance images.
Finite state machines for strings over infinite alphabets

Motivated by formal models recently proposed in the context of XML, we study automata and logics on strings over infinite alphabets. These are conservative extensions of classical automata and logics defining the regular languages on finite alphabets. Specifically, we consider register and pebble automata, and extensions of first-order logic and monadic second-order logic. For each type of automaton we consider one-way and two-way variants, as well as deterministic, nondeterministic, and alternating control. We investigate the expressiveness and complexity of the automata and their connection to the logics, as well as standard decision problems. Some of our results answer open questions of Kaminski and Francez on register automata.
Formal Verification of an SSA-Based Middle-End for CompCert

CompCert is a formally verified compiler that generates compact and efficient code for a large subset of the C language. However, CompCert foregoes using SSA, an intermediate representation employed by many compilers that enables writing simpler, faster optimizers. In fact, it has remained an open problem to verify formally an SSA-based compiler. We report on a formally verified, SSA-based middle-end for CompCert. In addition to providing a formally verified SSA-based middle-end, we address two problems raised by Leroy in [2009]: giving an intuitive formal semantics to SSA, and leveraging its global properties to reason locally about program optimizations.
Evaluating the Performance of Software-Based Routing Algorithms for Dynamic Fault Tolerance in Tori

Fault-tolerance has been the focus of attention recently in the research of parallel processing and computer networking. A fault-tolerant routing algorithm should guarantee the delivery of messages in the presence of faulty components. In this paper, we present a comparative performance study of seven prominent fault-tolerant routings in 2-D wormhole-switched tori. The routing algorithms here are coupled with the Software-Based routing scheme which supports dynamic fault-model, enabling the network to remain fully operational at all times. The performance measures studied here are the throughput and average message latency. Results obtained through simulation suggest two classes of presented routing schemes as high performance candidates in most faulty networks.
Clustering Using Isoperimetric Number of Trees

In this paper we propose a graph-based data clustering algorithm which is based on exact clustering of a minimum spanning tree in terms of a minimum isoperimetry criteria. We show that our basic clustering algorithm runs in $O(n \log n)$ and with post-processing in $O(n^2)$ (worst case) time where $n$ is the size of the data set. We also show that our generalized graph model which also allows the use of potentials at vertices can be used to extract a more detailed pack of information as the {\it outlier profile} of the data set. In this direction we show that our approach can be used to define the concept of an outlier-set in a precise way and we propose approximation algorithms for finding such sets. We also provide a comparative performance analysis of our algorithm with other related ones and we show that the new clustering algorithm (without the outlier extraction procedure) behaves quite effectively even on hard benchmarks and handmade examples.
Supporting Location-Based Services in a Main-Memory Database

With the proliferation of mobile devices and explosive growth of spatio-temporal data, Location-Based Services (LBS) have become an indispensable technology in our daily lives. The key characteristics of the LBS applications include a high rate of time-stamped location updates, and many concurrent historical, present and predictive queries. The commercial providers of LBS must support all three kinds of queries and address the high update rates. While they employ relational databases for this purpose, traditional databases are unable to cope with the growing demands of many LBS systems. Support for spatio-temporal indexes within these databases are limited to R-tree based approaches. Although a number of advanced spatio-temporal indexes have been proposed by the research community, only a few of them support historical queries. These indexing techniques, with support for historical queries, are unable to sustain high update and query throughput typical in LBS. Technological trends involving increasingly large main memory and core footprints offer opportunities to address some of these issues. We present several key ideas to support high performance commercial LBS by exploiting in-memory database techniques. Taking advantage of very large memory available in modern machines, our system maintains the location data and index for the past N days in memory. Older data and index are kept in disk. We propose an in-memory storage organization for high insert performance. We also introduce a novel spatio-temporal index that maintains partial temporal indexes in a versioned-grid structure. The partial temporal indexes are organized as compressed bitmaps. With extensive evaluation, we demonstrate that our system supports high insert and query throughputs and it outperforms the leading LBS system by a significant margin.
The Influence of Functional Constraints on Sport-Skill Learning in a Senior Adult

A large volume of research has focused on the benefits of appropriate health-related fitness activities for older adults (Spirduso, 1994). Although lifetime participation in sports is a common alternative to fitness activities, few studies have examined the subjective, personal experience underlying initial sport-skill development. The purpose of this study was to illustrate how dynamical-systems theory is a useful lens through which to examine the evolution of golf skill in 1 senior adult participant. Qualitative data collected over 7 months focused on a personal diary, formal and informal interviews, videotape analyses, and observational field notes. The development of golf skill was bounded by a series of functional constraints, as well as limiting factors connected to the task and the environment. The results illustrate the theoretical proposition (NewelI. 1986) that skill learning arises from and is structured by a system of interacting constraints.
Physical and clinical performance of the mCT time-of-flight PET/CT scanner

Time-of-flight (TOF) measurement capability promises to improve PET image quality. We characterized the physical and clinical PET performance of the first Biograph mCT TOF PET/CT scanner (Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.) in comparison with its predecessor, the Biograph TruePoint TrueV. In particular, we defined the improvements with TOF. The physical performance was evaluated according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) NU 2-2007 standard with additional measurements to specifically address the TOF capability. Patient data were analyzed to obtain the clinical performance of the scanner. As expected for the same size crystal detectors, a similar spatial resolution was measured on the mCT as on the TruePoint TrueV. The mCT demonstrated modestly higher sensitivity (increase by 19.7 ± 2.8%) and peak noise equivalent count rate (NECR) (increase by 15.5 ± 5.7%) with similar scatter fractions. The energy, time and spatial resolutions for a varying single count rate of up to 55 Mcps resulted in 11.5 ± 0.2% (FWHM), 527.5 ± 4.9 ps (FWHM) and 4.1 ± 0.0 mm (FWHM), respectively. With the addition of TOF, the mCT also produced substantially higher image contrast recovery and signal-to-noise ratios in a clinically-relevant phantom geometry. The benefits of TOF were clearly demonstrated in representative patient images.
Using Program Analysis to Reduce Misconfiguration in Open Source Systems Software

Thanks to the Cloud, developers today often have access to dozens or hundreds of nodes. Managing this hardware requires a large software stack. Often, this software is open-source and community developed. As a result of this development model and the complexities of distributed resource management, modern software systems can have dozens or even hundreds of configurable options. The open source development process makes it easy for developers to add options and easy for documentation to become stale. We offer a static analysis to identify the options present in a given program and to infer types for them. Our analysis is often more precise than the existing human-written documentation. We offer a similar analysis to aid in debugging configuration errors. We build an explicit table matching program points to the configuration options that might have caused a failure at that point. The analysis runs quickly, taking less than an hour for programs with hundreds of thousands of lines of code. We use Hadoop and JChord as case studies to assess accuracy. For those programs, our technique diagnoses over 80% of the errors due to randomly-injected illegal configuration values. Precision is high; our analysis finds an average of 3–4 possibly relevant options for each error. Using stack traces in the analysis removes approximately a third of the imprecision as compared to error messages alone. We also present a solution to a quite different problem: poor quality console logs. Log analysis and logging configuration are hampered by the fact that there is no way to refer unambiguously to a particular log statement. Assigning a unique identifier to every statement enables fine-grained control of which messages are printed and how they are labeled. We achieve this using program-rewriting, retrofitting statement numbers to legacy Java programs. This numbering is consistent across program runs and in the presence of software updates. We use an offline analysis to match statements across program versions. The runtime overhead of our approach is negligible.
Estimated Intra-Speaker Variability Boundaries in Forensic Speaker Recognition Casework

Current automatic forensic speaker recognition algorithms are known to be highly dependent on matched reference data for producing statistically reliable outcomes. In day-to-day forensic casework, this data is often not available. This paper addresses this problem by introducing a data-driven modular method which does not require precise reference data. Results are more general and given as p-values and likelihood ratio ranges. Experiments performed with a real forensic database support our proposal.
Single Trial Classification of Imagined Hand Postures

Motor imagery (MI) based brain computer interface (BCI) systems are mostly used in the design of robotic/prosthetic arm control. MI signals are asynchronous and hence have the potential of being used in systems that require dynamic manipulation. In MI there is a significant amount of user adaptation involved; to address this issue there is a need to design BCI that is intuitive for the user to adapt to. Towards this goal, in this study we present that with significant accuracy, it is possible to decode imagined hand postures sensed using EEG.
Extracting Location from Contact Traces

Localization of nodes is essential for many applications. Sensor networks, routing in mobile environments as well as caching can benefit by having this extra information. Applications dealing with emergencies and rescue operations need precise and accurate localization information. Many node localization techniques have been proposed, but most of them lack in some features (non-convex areas, non-symmetric communication, other types of constraints, etc.) that are desirable to have. For example, some of the techniques require special hardware or are only effective when the nodes are close to nodes whose location is known a priori. Sextant [8] is such solution that seeks to incorporate most of the desirable features. It is a constraintbased framework which relies on connectivity information. The novel aspect of Sextant is that it relies on positive as well as negative spatial constraints. Positive constraints are based on the reception of a beacon from a nearby node. If a node cannot receive direct transmissions from another node, this constitutes a negative constraint. However, Sextant and the other techniques do not give us accurate localization estimates if we incorporate mobility of nodes. Although mobility brings several issues, we believe that mobility can offer extra information to improve the location estimates. To deal with mobility scenarios, we consider another type of constraint: temporal constraint. This constraint takes advantage of properties of time and space that limit the possible locations. For that we use adjacent timestep areas to intersect with areas increased by the maximal rate (speed) of the node’s movement. To quantify the gain obtained using temporal information, we run simulations using synthetic data
Image segmentation based on NSCT and watershed

A new method for image segmentation is presented. It combines the nonsubsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) with the marker-controlled watershed algorithm to control over-segmentation and therefore achieving better segmentation. The NSCT is employed to denoise the image and enhance the edges in multiple resolutions, and the image gradient is estimated at each scale. The marker-controlled watershed algorithm is then applied to the obtained gradient images. Finally, the labeled bandpass images and the corresponding high bandpass images are constructed by the inverse NSCT to obtain the final segmented image. Results of the experimental study indicate that the proposed method is a practicable approach to control over-segmentation and can segment objective accurately.