Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cross evaluation - A pilot application of a new evaluation mechanism

The work reports some initial success in extending the Rutgers Paradigm of IR evaluation to the realm of concrete measurement, not in information retrieval per se, but in the arguably more complex domain of Question Answering. Crucial to the paradigm are two components: cross evaluation, and an analytical model that controls for the potential problems of cross evaluation. We describe the experimental design and analytical models. In the models, interaction effects are examined and found not to be important. After eliminating the interaction effects, we are able to extract meaningful and useful results from a very small study involving just three analysts, five topics, and two “systems”.
Notch Signaling Pathway Is Activated in Motoneurons of Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a neurodegenerative disease produced by low levels of Survival Motor Neuron (SMN) protein that affects alpha motoneurons in the spinal cord. Notch signaling is a cell-cell communication system well known as a master regulator of neural development, but also with important roles in the adult central nervous system. Aberrant Notch function is associated with several developmental neurological disorders; however, the potential implication of the Notch pathway in SMA pathogenesis has not been studied yet. We report here that SMN deficiency, induced in the astroglioma cell line U87MG after lentiviral transduction with a shSMN construct, was associated with an increase in the expression of the main components of Notch signaling pathway, namely its ligands, Jagged1 and Delta1, the Notch receptor and its active intracellular form (NICD). In the SMNΔ7 mouse model of SMA we also found increased astrocyte processes positive for Jagged1 and Delta1 in intimate contact with lumbar spinal cord motoneurons. In these motoneurons an increased Notch signaling was found, as denoted by increased NICD levels and reduced expression of the proneural gene neurogenin 3, whose transcription is negatively regulated by Notch. Together, these findings may be relevant to understand some pathologic attributes of SMA motoneurons.
Adaptive Passive Velocity Field Control 1

Velocity field to draw’a circie Passive velocity field control (PVFC) was previously developed for mechanical systems which have strong coordination and must interact with the physical environment. Applications include teleoperated manipulators, contouring in machining and smart exercise machines. The methodology encodes tasks using time invariant desired velocity fields instead of the more traditional method of timed trajectories and guarantees that the closed loop system behave passively with environment power as the supply rate. By maintaining the passivity property of the closed loop system, stability and robustness will be enhanced, especially when interacting with uncertain environments. The present paper extends PVFC to situations where the inertia parameters of the mechanical system are unknown. A direct adaptive control scheme is proposed which preserves the passivity of the closed loop system and ensures that the asymptotic convergence of the velocity to the direction of desired velocity field.
Gesture recognition system for Kod Tangan Bahasa Melayu (KTBM) using neural network

This paper presents simple methods for translating Kod Tangan Bahasa Melayu (KTBM) into voice signal based on subject head and two hand gestures. Different gesture signs made by different subjects are captured using a USB web camera in RGB video stream format with a screen bit depth of 24 bits and a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels. The recorded video of the sign language is divided into number of image frames. Using a simple segmentation technique, the frame image is segmented into three region namely, head region, left hand region and right hand region. After performing the image segmentation, the image frames are converted into binary image format. A simple feature extraction method is then applied and the variations of the features in the subsequent frame are modeled using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). The features extracted are associated to the equivalent voice sound and a simple neural network model trained by error prob method is developed. An audio system is used to play the equivalent voice signal from the recognized sign language. Experimental results demonstrate that the recognition rate of the proposed neural network models is about 81.07%.
Lifelike computer characters: the persona project at Microsoft

This article describes the Persona project at Microsoft Research, which is exploring social user interfaces that employ an explicitly anthropomorphic character to interact with the user in a natural spoken dialogue. The prototype system described here integrates spoken language input, a simple conversational dialogue manager, reactive 3D animation, speech output and sound effects to create Peedy the Parrot, a conversational assistant who accepts user requests for audio CDs and then plays them. 1. Lifelike Computer Characters: the Persona project at Microsoft Research ______________________________________________________1 1.
Press Reporting and its Aftermath: The Rachel Nickell Case

Introduction The reporting of sex crimes in the British press is highly selective. The press does not report every sexual offence which occurs. Reflecting this, Soothill and Walby (1991) stress that it is the most sensational and/or titillating cases which the press tends to concentrate on. In fact in recent years the press has widened its scope in the reporting of sex crime. In the 1970s the press primarily concentrated on the reporting of rape trials, described as being akin to a soft porn package in order to sell newspapers (Hay, Soothill and Walby, 1980). However, since the 1980s there has been a move away from a concentration on rape trials (Soothill, 1994). The search for sex offenders in cases where no one falls under immediate suspicion is one such example of this widening process in the scope of reporting sex crime. In the case of the murder of Rachel Nickell, a focus on the press reporting during this stage, as well as the immediate aftermath of the release of the man accused of her murder, enables us to grasp the wider symbolic importance of some crimes. The murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in July 1992 was reported as "THE MURDER THAT SHOCKED THE NATION" (Daily Mirror, August 10, 1992). Reflecting this, it attracted intense media coverage and received the greatest press coverage of the search for a sex offender in 1992. This intensity was once again evident when Colin Stagg, the man accused of her murder, was released in September 1994 after crucial parts of the prosecution's evidence were ruled as inadmissible in court. The collapse of this high-profile case was traumatic for the police as the relatively new technique of psychological profiling "had been an important element in the police investigation of [Rachel] Nickell's murder almost from the start" (Wilson and Soothill, 1996). This article considers why some murder cases attract a high profile and others go by almost unnoticed. In brief, we argue that high-profile cases have symbolic significance which strikes a fundamental chord in the psyche of the nation. Analysing material in nine British newspapers, I we identified reports on about 150 pages of the sample newspapers in 1992, and on about 100 pages over an ll-day period after the release of Colin Stagg on September 14, 1994. We maintain two important themes emerged from
Impact of atmospheric convection on south Tibet summer precipitation isotopologue composition using a combination of in situ measurements, satellite data, and atmospheric general circulation modeling

Precipitation isotopologues recorded in natural archives from the southern Tibetan Plateau may document past variations of Indian monsoon intensity. The exact processes controlling the variability of precipitation isotopologue composition must therefore first be deciphered and understood. This study investigates how atmospheric convection affects the summer variability of δ18O in precipitation (δ18Op) and δD in water vapor (δDv) at the daily scale. This is achieved using isotopic data from precipitation samples at Lhasa, isotopic measurements of water vapor retrieved from satellites (Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES), GOSAT) and atmospheric general circulation modeling. We reveal that both δ18Op and δDv at Lhasa are well correlated with upstream convective activity, especially above northern India. First, during days of strong convection, northern India surface air contains large amounts of vapor with relatively low δDv. Second, when this low‐δDv moisture is uplifted toward southern Tibet, this initial depletion in HDO is further amplified by Rayleigh distillation as the vapor moves over the Himalayan. The intraseasonal variability of the isotopologue composition of vapor and precipitation over the southern Tibetan Plateau results from these processes occurring during air mass transportation.
LMM based blind signal separation with hybrid sampling

Laplace Mixture Model (LMM) is used to characterize the distribution of observed data. The stationary distribution of the model parameters is obtained by the hybrid of Gibbs and Metropolis-Hastings sampling, by which the mixing matrix is further estimated. With the mixing matrix estimated, we separate the sources successfully. Simulation results show that the method proposed is very robust to initial values and performs better than traditional methods, at the same time the method does not need large calculation amount.
ASSESSING HIGH COGNITIVE LOAD IN DRIVERS THROUGH ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY

This paper explores the influence of high cognitive load on driver’s Electroencephalography (EEG) signals collected from four positions (TP9, Fp1, Fp2, TP10) along with other physiological signals, plus eye tracking, driving performance, and subjective measures. Although EEG has been used in driving research to assess mental workload, only a few studies focused on high cognitive load, but they utilized research-grade EEG systems. Recent advancements allow for less intrusive and more affordable systems to be incorporated into vehicles. We tested the feasibility of one such system to differentiate three incremental levels of cognitive taskload in a preliminary simulator study, which so far has been completed by 15 participants. Each participant completed a baseline drive with no secondary task and two drives with a modified version of the n-back task (1-back, 2-back). The modification removed the verbal response during auditory stimulus presentation to increase EEG signal quality, with the 2-back level still imposing higher cognitive demand than 1-back. The system tested was sensitive to taskload levels, with alpha band being sensitive among all difficulty levels; beta and gamma bands distinguishing 2-back level from the baseline and 1-back; and the delta band distinguishing baseline from the n-back levels. In line with previous studies, galvanic skin response and standard deviation of gaze position also showed significant stepwise trends from the baseline to 1-back and then to 2-back. Further research is needed to investigate the ability of consumer-grade EEG headbands to differentiate different driver states.
EEG signal classification based on a Riemannian distance measure

We proposed a k-nearest neighbor EEG signal classification algorithm using a dissimilarity measure defined with a Riemannian distance. The EEG signals are characterized by curves on the manifold of power spectral density matrices. By endowing the manifold with a Riemannian metric we obtain the Riemanian distance between two points on the manifold. Based on this, the measure of dissimilarity is then defined. To best facilitate the classification of similar and dissimilar EEG signal sets, we obtain the optimally weighted Riemannian distance aiming to render signals in different classes more separable while those in the same class more compact. The motivation of the algorithm design and verification method are also provided. Experimental results are presented showing the superior performance of the new metric in comparison to the k-nearest neighbor EEG signal classification algorithm using the commonly used Kullback-Leibler (KL) dissimilarity measure.
Singer Identification Based on Accompaniment Sound Reduction and Reliable Frame Selection

This paper describes a method for automatic singer identification from polyphonic musical audio signals including sounds of various instruments. Because singing voices play an important role in musical pieces with a vocal part, the identification of singer names is useful for music information retrieval systems. The main problem in automatically identifying singers is the negative influences caused by accompaniment sounds. To solve this problem, we developed two methods, accompaniment sound reduction and reliable frame selection. The former method makes it possible to identify the singer of a singing voice after reducing accompaniment sounds. It first extracts harmonic components of the predominant melody from sound mixtures and then resynthesizes the melody by using a sinusoidal model driven by those components. The latter method then judges whether each frame of the obtained melody is reliable (i.e. little influenced by accompaniment sound) or not by using two Gaussian mixture models for vocal and non-vocal frames. It enables the singer identification using only reliable vocal portions of musical pieces. Experimental results with forty popular-music songs by ten singers showed that our method was able to reduce the influences of accompaniment sounds and achieved an accuracy of 95%, while the accuracy for a conventional method was 53%.
Compressor surge control using a close-coupled valve and backstepping

In this paper we propose anti surge controllers for a close coupled valve in a compression system. The valve modifies the characteristic of the compressor, and allows for stable operation beyond the original surge line. The design tool used is backstepping and global uniform asymptotic stability is proven. Damping terms are included in the controllers, and in the presence of both mass flow and pressure disturbances, global uniform boundedness and convergence to a set is ensured. Under the assumption of decaying disturbances the controller ensures convergence to the origin.
Prediction of Mechanical Shaft Failures Due to Pulsating Torques of Variable-Frequency Drives

Mechanical damage of rotating shafts has been reported for several years from various high-power applications. This paper shows that the variable frequency drive incorporated in a rotating shaft is one of the main root causes of mechanical-shaft failures. Simple analytical relationships show that the frequencies of the motor air-gap torque have a more significant impact on the mechanical-shaft failure than their magnitudes. Effects of mechanical damping are analytically derived and analyzed. Motor air-gap torque is successfully reconstructed using only the motor's voltage and current, thus avoiding torque sensors, which are subject to failure and errors. Simple relationships between frequencies of current harmonics and frequencies of motor pulsating torques are proposed. For pulsewidth-modulated inverters (two and multilevel), possible drive operating points that might excite the shaft's eigenmodes are predicted. Simulation results of four interleaved three-level neutral-point-clamped converters are analyzed for validation purposes. Experimental tests up to 35 MW are performed on a compressor test bed. The presented results confirm the accuracy of the proposed approach, which is particularly valuable for multimegawatt drive applications.
Nonlinear Realization of the {N}=2, D = 6 Supergravity

We have applied the method of dualisation to construct the coset realisation of the bosonic sector of the N=2, D=6 supergravity which is coupled to a tensor multiplet. The bosonic field equations are regained through the Cartan-Maurer equation which the Cartan form satisfies. The first-order formulation of the theory is also obtained as a twisted self-duality condition within the non-linear coset construction.
An application-oriented review of CogInfoCom: The state-of-the-art and future perspectives

Cognitive Infocommunications (CogInfoCom) is an emerging discipline that investigates synergies between infocommunications and the cognitive sciences, with the goal of creating engineering applications in which systems with various levels of cognitive capability are enabled to work together more effectively. While infocommunications deals with the error-free encoding, transmission and decoding of raw data, CogInfoCom aims to transmit information at a higher, conceptual level in a way that appeals to the receiver's cognitive capabilities. Thus, CogInfoCom may have implications for a wide variety of fields in the future, including virtual reality, 3D Internet and Internet of Things. In this paper, we provide a brief, application-oriented overview of the existing background of CogInfoCom, and outline future perspectives for the field.
Physical activity and risk of lung cancer.

BACKGROUND Physical activity has been proposed to decrease lung cancer risk; however, few data are available. Further, no studies have examined specific kinds and intensities of activities. METHODS We conducted a prospective cohort study among 13 905 male Harvard University alumni (mean age, 58.3 years), free of cancer. Men reported their walking, stair climbing and participation in sports or recreation on baseline questionnaires in 1977, and the occurrence of lung cancer on follow-up questionnaires in 1988 and 1993. Death certificates were obtained for decedents through 1992 to determine lung cancers not previously reported. RESULTS During follow-up, 245 men developed lung cancer. Adjusting for age, cigarette smoking, and body mass index, the relative risks of lung cancer associated with <4200, 4200-8399, 8400-12 599 and > or =12 600 kJ/week of estimated energy expenditure at baseline were 1.00 (referent), 0.87 (95% CI: 0.64-1.18), 0.76 (95% CI: 0.52-1.11), and 0.61 (95% CI: 0.41-0.89), respectively; P trend = 0.0008. Similar trends were observed among non-smokers or former smokers in 1977 (82.7% of men) as well as among those who smoked >20 cigarettes a day in 1977 (8.0%), although the findings in the latter group were not statistically significant, possibly due to the small number. Walking, climbing stairs and participating in activities of at least moderate intensity (> or =4.5 MET, or multiples of resting metabolic rate) were each inversely associated with lung cancer risk, independent of the other activity components. However, light intensity activities (<4.5 MET) did not predict lung cancer risk. CONCLUSIONS These data indicate that physical activity may be associated with lower risk of lung cancer among men. An energy expenditure of 12 600 kJ/week, achievable by perhaps 6-8 hours of at least moderate intensity physical activity, may significantly lower risk. Further studies are required to confirm these observations.
Partitioning evapotranspiration across gradients of woody plant cover: Assessment of a stable isotope technique

In water‐limited ecosystems, partitioning ecosystem‐scale evapotranspiration fluxes between plant transpiration and soil/canopy evaporation remains a theoretical and technical challenge. We used the Biosphere 2 glasshouse to assess partitioning of evapotranspiration across an experimentally manipulated gradient of woody plant cover using continuous measurements of near‐surface variations in the stable isotopic composition of water vapor (δ2H). Our technique employs a newly‐developed laser‐based isotope analyzer and the Keeling plot approach for surface flux partitioning. The applicability of the technique was verified by comparison to separate, simultaneous lysimeter and sap flow estimates of ET partitioning. The results showed an expected increase in fractional contribution of transpiration to evapotranspiration as woody cover increased—from T/ET = 0.61 at 25% woody cover to T/ET = 0.83 at 100% cover. Further development of this technique may enable field characterization of evapotranspiration partitioning across diverse woody cover gradients, a central issue in addressing dryland ecohydrological responses to land use and climate change.
Deciding within a competition

In this paper we present two models for the description of what we call a decision within a competition. With this term we denote an iterative process through which two sets of deciders Da and Db may take a decision about either one or two competing projects. Such a decision involves the approval of a project and such approval turns into the definition and the sharing of the sets of benefits and costs that derive to the deciders either from the single project or from the two competing projects. In both models the main aim is the acceptance of a project from both sets of deciders through the devising of fair solutions and the sharing of benefits and costs among such sets of deciders.
Power model analysis using variable rate clock network in CMOS processor

In this paper, we present a variable node clock network and a power model to estimate leakage power in CMOS processor. Design of clock delivery network is a constrained optimization problem. A variable rate clock network is provided to reduce unwanted switching as well as to limit active clock routing network. We propose two power models to estimate processor performance under variable rate clock signal. Overall this optimization method provides improved in power and performance in current CMOS processor.
Photodynamic Therapy of Human Glioma Spheroids Using 5-Aminolevulinic Acid¶

Abstract The response of human glioma spheroids to 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA)–mediated photodynamic therapy (PDT) is investigated. A two-photon fluorescence microscopy technique is used to show that human glioma cells readily convert ALA to protoporphyrin IX throughout the entire spheroid volume. The central finding of this study is that the response of human glioma spheroids to ALA-mediated PDT depends not only on the total fluence, but also on the rate at which the fluence is delivered. At low fluences (≤50 J cm−2), lower fluence rates are more effective. At a fluence of 50 J cm−2, near-total spheroid kill is observed at fluence rates of as low as 10 mW cm−2. The fluence rate effect is not as pronounced at higher fluences (>50 J cm−2), where a favorable response is observed throughout the range of fluence rates investigated. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
- 1-A Software Layer for IDE Disk Fault Injection To appear in Systems Lacking Originality Workshop 2005

Increasing demands for reliability, fault isolation, and fault tolerance have emphasized the need to study systems under failure conditions. Commodity disk systems have been studied for many years with simple assumptions about how they fail. To provide enabling technology for new research in more reliable file systems, disk systems, and I/O interfaces, we present a flexible, software-based fault injection system, targeted for commodity disks running in conjunction with a commodity operating system. We present five sophisticated but general disk failure models, and a simple interface to allow arbitrary faults to be injected rapidly and without permanent hardware damage. We also evaluate the performance of a common file system utility to detect these faults, and present a summary of our findings.