Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Response Time of Large-scale Composite Web Services

: This paper studies the response time of a web service middleware that decomposes requests into sub-queries to different servers and then merges the results. We present a queuing model for such a fork-join system and an exact analysis for exponential server response times. We also provide accurate approximations for heavy-tailed server response times, which are a common effect in the Internet. Heavy-tailed distributions are critical since they may cause very long middleware response times, in particular in large-scale systems with many servers being involved. We show that in this case the performance can be signiﬁcantly improved if the middleware does not have to wait for a few slow servers, i. e. , if the merged result does not need to be absolutely complete. We discuss different choices to implement such a mechanism and quantify their impact on the middleware response time.
An Adaptive Energy-Efficient Medium Access Control Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Since the duty cycle of S-MAC is fixed and longer, it will cause longer idle time and latency of data packets under light loads. To solve these problems we present a new MAC protocol in which the sleep/wakeup schedules of the sensor nodes are adaptively determined, sensor nodes may sleep frequently. And also it minimizes control-packet overhead. Simulation shows that the new MAC is of significant effective in lessening delay time and power saving.
Multi-polarization SAR change detection: unstructured versus structured GLRT

The problem of coherent multi-polarization SAR change detection exploiting data collected from N multiple polarimetric channels, is addressed in this paper. The change detection problem is formulated as a binary hypothesis testing problem and a special block-diagonal structure for the polarimetric covariance matrix is forced to design a novel detector based on the Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test criterion. It is shown that the new decision rule ensures the Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) property. At the analysis stage, results on both simulated and real high resolution SAR data show the effectiveness of the proposed decision rule and its superiority against the traditional unstructured GLRT in some scenarios of practical interest.
Using the equitable partition technique to determine the non-controllability of dynamic networks

This paper considers the controllability of dynamic networks. Networks consist of a set of dynamic agents and links that describe the interconnection behavior between agents. These links can be described either by static gains, which we call static gain networks, or they can be described by dynamic transfer functions in which case they are dynamic gain networks. We consider a subset of one or more agents that act as control inputs to regulate the other remaining agents. A network can be described by a graph consisting of nodes and weighted edges. In previous work, tests for controllability for static graphs have been developed, and the results of controllability have been obtained. These results are based on the Laplacian matrices of the graph and some other graphical tools. This paper will consider a large class of networks where the links are dynamic systems. The main contribution of this paper is to test the controllability, based on extending the equitable partition technique to a dynamic gain networks. This technique was previously used for static gain networks. Finally, we illustrate our results with a practical application in robotics.
Direct Isolation, Culture and Transplant of Mouse Skeletal Muscle Derived Endothelial Cells with Angiogenic Potential

Background Although diseases associated with microvascular endothelial dysfunction are among the most prevalent illnesses to date, currently no method exists to isolate pure endothelial cells (EC) from skeletal muscle for in vivo or in vitro study. Methodology By utilizing multicolor fluorescent-activated cell sorting (FACS), we have isolated a distinct population of Sca-1+, CD31+, CD34dim and CD45− cells from skeletal muscles of C57BL6 mice. Characterization of this population revealed these cells are functional EC that can be expanded several times in culture without losing their phenotype or capabilities to uptake acetylated low-density lipoprotein (ac-LDL), produce nitric oxide (NO) and form vascular tubes. When transplanted subcutaneously or intramuscularly into the tibialis anterior muscle, EC formed microvessels and integrated with existing vasculature. Conclusion This method, which is highly reproducible, can be used to study the biology and role of EC in diseases such as peripheral vascular disease. In addition this method allows us to isolate large quantities of skeletal muscle derived EC with potential for therapeutic angiogenic applications.
Algorithms and Methods beyond the IEEE 802.15.4 Standard for a Wireless Home Network Design and Implementation

The aim of this paper is to describe techniques and algorithms that have been used to design and implement a commercial wireless home network (WHN). Although IEEE 802.15. 4 supposes an efficient solution for the lower layers of the communication stack, several key issues are out of its scope. Topology control (TC) of the network, address management, and multi-hop synchronization are some of these issues, which are covered in this paper. The WHN has been designed taking in mind low complexity, low consumption, and low end-to-end latency. These objectives have been reached thanks to a multi-hop beaconed structure, a distributed address management, and a routing algorithm based on masks.
To Establish Sustainability of Government Deficits : Methodology and Application March 2004

The purpose of this paper is to survey methodology of test for fiscal sustainability. The econometrical tests for fiscal sustainability have been improved since the 1980s. We introduce the methods and backgrounds of these tests. Also we apply the tests to the Indonesian and Japanese data. It is important to analyze the sustainability of government bonds consisting with the fiscal system, particularly intergovernmental relationship. Namely, we should investigate debt sustainability of the consolidated government including not only the central government but also local governments and other (off-budget) account of the central government. In the second half of this paper, we explain the Japanese fiscal policy from the viewpoint of the sustainability problem of government bond policy. *: Senior Economist of Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance, Japanese Government, and Associate Professor of Faculty of Economics, Keio University, E-mail: tdoi@econ.keio. ac.jp This paper was prepared for and presented at the seminar held at the Central Bank of Republic of Indonesia (Bank Indonesia) and the National Development Planning Agency (Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional: BAPPENAS), in March 2003. Opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not constitute the official position of the Ministry of Finance, the Japanese Government or the Policy Research Institute.
Lung Nodule Segmentation in CT Images using Rotation Invariant Local Binary Pattern

As the lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the medical field, Computed Tomography (CT) scan of the thorax is widely applied in diagnoses for identifying the lung cancer. In this paper, a technique of rotation invariant with Local Binary Pattern (LBP) for segmentation of various lung nodules from the Lung CT cancer data sets is used. This is tested on various lung data sets from teaching files of Casimage database and National Cancer Institute (NCI) of National Biomedical Imaging Archive (NBIA). The results show the segmented nodules with clear boundaries, which is helpful in diagnosis of lung cancer. Further, the results are compared with the watershed segmentation method, which shows that LBP based method yields better segmentation
MIMO-OFDM for the Better Quality Link of Wireless Network

In this paper we will study on features of the future wireless network generation such as the antenna schemes and the modulation systems. We also observe on the direction of the next generation of wireless network system. Since MIMO, the smart antenna technique, is known by its quality of data transmission there are many researchers who pay more attention to study on this antenna scheme in the purpose to improve performance of transmission at uplink and downlink. In the same time the only improving on the antenna schemes alone can not fulfill the requirement of the next wireless network generation, known as 4G, we also need the modulation system which can bring the performance of the current wireless network to another level, there for we will take a close look on the specifications of OFDM modulation scheme. Finally we will see what can the MIMO-OFDM promises for the 4G communication system.
Multilingual Collocation Extraction: Issues and Solutions

Although traditionally seen as a language-independent task, collocation extraction relies nowadays more and more on the linguistic preprocessing of texts (e.g., lemmatization, POS tagging, chunking or parsing) prior to the application of statistical measures. This paper provides a language-oriented review of the existing extraction work. It points out several language-specific issues related to extraction and proposes a strategy for coping with them. It then describes a hybrid extraction system based on a multilingual parser. Finally, it presents a case-study on the performance of an association measure across a number of languages.
Motion-based segmentation of chest and abdomen region of neonates from videos

Respiration rate (RR) is one of the important vital signs used for clinical monitoring of neonates in intensive care units. Due to the fragile skin of the neonates, it is preferable to have monitoring systems with minimal contact with the neonate. Recently, several methods have been proposed for contact-free monitoring of vital signs using a video camera. Detection of the chest-and-abdomen region of the neonate is crucial to determining the respiration rate accurately. We propose a technique for automatic selection of the region of interest (ROI) in neonates using motion. Our approach is based on the observation that points on the chest-and-abdomen region, and hence, the corresponding optic flow vectors, exhibit coherency in the motion caused by breathing. The motion induced due to the movement of the neonate (e.g., hands and legs) is not coherent and hence does not exhibit the characteristics of respiratory motion. We evaluate the proposed technique using several videos of neonates and demonstrate that it picks up the ROI accurately in spite of the movement of the neonate. We compare its performance with that of the standard motion history image (MHI) framework, using different metrics. Results indicate that our method can be profitably employed in RR studies.
Conscious thoughts and the causation of behavior

Conscious experience is a defining feature of the human condition. As far as is known, no other creature has inner experience as rich and complex as does humankind. Subjective richness does not entail causal efficacy, however. In this chapter, we examine the surprisingly contentious issue of whether conscious thoughts do in fact exert a causal influence on behavior. We conclude that they do, though perhaps not in the way that many have surmised. We then consider the issue of just how conscious thoughts cause behavior. In recent decades, expert opinion has fluctuated wildly as to whether conscious thoughts exert direct or even indirect control over behavior. Some have suggested that even if people can control behavior consciously, it would be unwise to do so, because conscious thought is prone to bias and distortion, whereas the unconscious would be wiser (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006). Some researchers have advocated making decisions on the basis of gut feelings and intuitive reactions rather than conscious thought (see Wilson, 2002). As a brief, crude, and overly simplified account of these pendulum swings, we offer the following. In the 1960s, behaviorism was in high gear and exerted strong influence throughout research psychology, and it all but forbade discussion of mental events as causes of behavior. The cognitive revolution that began then and came to dominance in the 1970s and 1980s embraced cognitive causa-tion of behavior, and many psychologists assumed that almost all human behavior was guided by conscious thoughts. Late in the 1970s, psychologists began to distinguish consciously controlled thoughts from automatic and often unconscious mental processes (e.g., Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977), and some psychologists began to record unconscious causation of behavior (e.g., Bargh, 1997). At first they assumed that unconscious causes worked by way of altering conscious thoughts, so that a causal (mediating) role for consciousness was preserved, but then, emboldened by accumulated evidence, they began to assert that consciousness had at best a dispensable role. By the late 1990s, leading thinkers were suggesting that most behavior was caused by unconscious processes (Bargh, 1997), that conscious control of behavior was illusory (Wegner, 2002), and that if conscious thoughts did intrude into the process, they generally had unhelpful, even counterproductive effects (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006). To be sure, the questions of whether and how conscious thoughts could possibly cause physical movement did not originate with social psychologists in recent decades. Thomas Huxley (1874) had put forward …
Strategising and the routines of governance: An empirical analysis of practices in an international engineering consultancy firm

Purpose – This paper uses the strategy‐as‐practice perspective to explore the relationship between practices and organisational routines of governance in pluralistic contexts. The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically how strategising activities and organisational actions interact. It discusses and illustrates the relationship between strategising and organising through routines of governance, and in particular the use of board papers.Design/methodology/approach – This research is based on a single longitudinal “soft” case study. The researchers collected both primary and secondary data. Primary data collection took place from the end of 2004 until early in 2008. Primary data collection occurred through three main methods: interviews, meeting observations, and “shadowing” of participants; six participants were each shadowed for a working week (five days), and another participant was shadowed for three days. Interviews were held with 20 participants and typically lasted for between one and two ho.
A monolithic watt-level SOI LDMOS linear power amplifier with through silicon via for 4G cellular applications

In this paper, the design and measurement results of a thin-film SOI LDMOS linear Power Amplifier (PA) integrated in a 0. 13μm SOI CMOS industrial process with a Through Silicon Via (TSV) option are reported. First, the power stage of the linear PA has been characterized. At 900MHz under 3.6V supply voltage, it delivers up to 33.2dBm of peak power with a maximum PAE of 60%. At the 1-dB compression point, the output power is 31.8dBm with a PAE of 54%. Based on this SOI LDMOS power stage, a monolithic two-stage linear PA has been designed and fabricated. After load-pull characterization, a maximum output power of 32.8dBm has been measured with a corresponding PAE of 51 %. When tested with a 10MHz bandwidth 16QAM uplink LTE signal, the PA provides an output power of 27dBm with less than 3% EVM and 557mA current consumption under 3.6V supply. The obtained results represent a new step towards high efficiency SOI CMOS Inteurated 4G cellular RF front-ends.
Color Feature Reinforcement for Cosaliency Detection Without Single Saliency Residuals

Cosaliency detects the common salient objects within a group of images. Hence, those objects that are salient only in individual image or small portion of the image group should conceptually be treated as background. However, most state-of-the-art methods cannot do this well because they measure cosaliency as an explicit combination of single-image saliency and interimage similarity, thus inevitably leaving single saliency residuals into the cosaliency maps. In this letter, we show such problem can be solved by color feature reinforcement, based on a simple observation that cosalient objects usually have similar color distributions in an abundant color feature space. Since we model the cosaliency of an image w.r. t. another one as a reinforced product of the foreground dictionary and sparsely coded saliency coefficients of the two images, respectively, within a same rich feature space, we can effectively eliminate the single saliency residual effect in cosaliency detection. Extensive experiments validate the superior performance of the proposed approach on benchmark datasets.
Extreme learning machine for multi-categories classification applications

In the paper, the multi-class pattern classification using extreme learning machine (ELM) is studied. The study is based on either a series of ELM binary classifiers or a single ELM classifier. When using binary ELM classifiers, the multi-class problem is decomposed into two-class problem using the one-against-all (OAA) and one-against-one (OAO) schemes, which are named as ELM-OAA and ELM-OAO respectively for brevity. In a single ELM classifier, the multi-class problem is implemented with an architecture of multi-output nodes which is equal to the number of pattern classes. Their performance is evaluated using some multi-class benchmark problems and simulation results show that ELM-OAA and ELM-OAO requires fewer hidden nodes than the single ELM classifier. In addition ELM-OAO usually has similar or less computation burden than the single ELM classifier when the pattern class labels is not larger than 10.
WCET Analysis of Multi-level Non-inclusive Set-Associative Instruction Caches

With the advent of increasingly complex hardware in real-time embedded systems (processors with performance enhancing features such as pipelines, cache hierarchy, multiple cores), many processors now have a set-associative L2 cache. Thus, there is a need for considering cache hierarchies when validating the temporal behavior of real-time systems, in particular when estimating tasks' worst-case execution times (WCETs). In this paper, we propose a safe static instruction cache analysis method for multi-level non-inclusive caches. The proposed method is experimented on medium-size and large programs. We show that the method is reasonably tight. We further show that in all cases WCET estimations are much tighter when considering the cache hierarchy than when considering only the L1 cache. An evaluation of the analysis time is conducted, demonstrating that analyzing the cache hierarchy has a reasonable computation time.
Children Abducted by Family Members: National Estimates and Characteristics.

The words “missing child” call to mind tragic and frightening kidnappings reported in the national news. But a child can be missing for many reasons, and the problem of missing children is far more complex than the headlines suggest. Getting a clear picture of how many children become missing—and why—is an important step in addressing the problem. This series of Bulletins provides that clear picture by summarizing findings from the Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART–2). The series offers national estimates of missing children based on surveys of households, juvenile residential facilities, and law enforcement agencies. It also presents statistical profiles of these children, including their demographic characteristics and the circumstances of their disappearance.
Isometric biomass partitioning pattern in forest ecosystems: evidence from temporal observations during stand development

1. Knowledge of biomass partitioning is essential for estimating spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of root biomass in terrestrial ecosystems. The isometric hypothesis predicts that aboveground biomass scales isometrically with belowground biomass across both individual plants and community types (i.e. the slope of the log–log relationship between above‐ and belowground biomass is not significantly different from 1.0), and that the isometric pattern is independent of variation in environmental conditions. However, current evidence primarily comes from observations over space. It is still unknown whether biomass partitioning patterns occurring over time are similar to those observed over space.
Computing Narratives of Cognitive User Experience for Building Design Analysis: KR for Industry Scale Computer-Aided Architecture Design

We present a cognitive design assistance system equipped with analytical capabilities aimed at anticipating architectural building design performance with respect to people-centred functional design goals. The paper focuses on the system capability to generate narratives of visuo-locomotive user experience from digital computer-aided architecture design (CAAD) models. The system is based on an underlying declarative narrative representation and computation framework pertaining to conceptual, geometric, and qualitative spatial knowledge. The semantics of the declarative narrative model, i.e., the overall representation and computation model, is founded on: (a) conceptual knowledge formalised in an OWL ontology; (b) a general spatial representation and reasoning engine implemented in constraint logic programming; and (c) a declaratively encoded (narrative) construction process (based on search over graph structures) implemented in answer-set programming. We emphasise and demonstrate: complete system implementation, scalability, and robust performance & integration with industry-scale architecture industry tools (e.g., Revit, Archi-CAD) & standards (BIM, IFC).