Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An investigation into the use of Centering transitions for summarisation

This paper investigates the usefulness of Centering Theory, a theory of local coherence and salience, for automatic summarisation. The transitions computed for utterances in different types of texts are examined for patterns which relate to the coherence of summaries. These transitions are also employed in preliminary experiments as an evaluation method by which to judge extracts as readable and coherent.
Estimating communication skills using dialogue acts and nonverbal features in multiple discussion datasets

This paper focuses on the computational analysis of the individual communication skills of participants in a group. The computational analysis was conducted using three novel aspects to tackle the problem. First, we extracted features from dialogue (dialog) act labels capturing how each participant communicates with the others. Second, the communication skills of each participant were assessed by 21 external raters with experience in human resource management to obtain reliable skill scores for each of the participants. Third, we used the MATRICS corpus, which includes three types of group discussion datasets to analyze the influence of situational variability regarding to the discussion types. We developed a regression model to infer the score for communication skill using multimodal features including linguistic and nonverbal features: prosodic, speaking turn, and head activity. The experimental results show that the multimodal fusing model with feature selection achieved the best accuracy, 0.74 in R2 of the communication skill. A feature analysis of the models revealed the task-dependent and task-independent features to contribute to the prediction performance.
Smart Cities in Europe

Urban performance currently depends not only on a city's endowment of hard infrastructure (physical capital), but also, and increasingly so, on the availability and quality of knowledge communication and social infrastructure (human and social capital). The latter form of capital is decisive for urban competitiveness. Against this background, the concept of the “smart city” has recently been introduced as a strategic device to encompass modern urban production factors in a common framework and, in particular, to highlight the importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the last 20 years for enhancing the competitive profile of a city. The present paper aims to shed light on the often elusive definition of the concept of the “smart city. ” We provide a focused and operational definition of this construct and present consistent evidence on the geography of smart cities in the EU27. Our statistical and graphical analyses exploit in depth, for the first time to our knowledge, the most recent version of the Urban Audit data set in order to analyze the factors determining the performance of smart cities. We find that the presence of a creative class, the quality of and dedicated attention to the urban environment, the level of education, and the accessibility to and use of ICTs for public administration are all positively correlated with urban wealth. This result prompts the formulation of a new strategic agenda for European cities that will allow them to achieve sustainable urban development and a better urban landscape.
Power/performance advantages of victim buffer in high-performance processors

In this paper, we propose several different data cache configurations and analyze their power as well as performance implications on the processor. Unlike most existing works in low power microprocessor design, we explore a high performance processor with the latest innovations for performance. Using a detailed, architectural-level simulator, we evaluate full system performance using several different power/performance sensitive cache configurations. We then use the information obtained from the simulator to calculate the energy consumption of the memory hierarchy of the system. We show that victim buffer offers improved cache energy consumption over other techniques (10% compared to 3.8%), while at the same time providing comparable performance gains (3.54% compared to 3.45%).
Towards a Computerized Infrastructure for Managing Experimental Software Engineering Knowledge

The growing interest in experimental studies in software engineering and the difficulties found in their execution had led software engineering researchers to look for ways to (semi) automate the experimental process. This paper introduces the concept of experimental Software Engineering Environment (eSEE) – an infrastructure capable of instantiating software engineering environments to manage knowledge about the definition, planning, execution and packaging of experimental studies in software engineering.
Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha Polymorphism at Position -238 in Preeclampsia

Background: Preeclampsia is the most common serious disorder during pregnancy and studies show several immune-related processes in its pathophysiology. The role of cytokines and their expression remains controversial in this field. One of the cytokines of interest in recent studies has been TNF-α, which has been shown to have a higher level in maternal plasma of preeclamptic women. Objectives: This study was designed to evaluate the role of TNF-α polymorphism at position -238 in the risk of developing preeclampsia during pregnancy. Patients and Methods: One hundred fifty three preeclamptic cases and 140 healthy pregnant women were retrieved from two major hospitals of Mashhad, Iran. Methods a case-control study were designed. Anyone with a history of inflammatory disease, hypertension, or chronic kidney disease was excluded. DNA was extracted from peripheral blood leukocytes. Both groups were genotyped for the polymorphism of the TNF-α gene at position -238 by the RFLP method with Ava II enzyme. Allele and genotype frequencies were compared using one-way ANOVA and the Fisher’s exact test. Results: There were significant differences between the two groups in TNF-α genotype at position -238 (P < 0.001). In the preeclamptic group, the frequency of the AA genotype was higher (P < 0.001) and the frequency of the GG genotype was lower (P < 0.001). The overall prevalence of the A allele at position -238 was higher in preeclamptic cases (P < 0.001). Conclusion: In this study group, TNF-α -238 polymorphism was shown to be different in preeclamptic and non-preeclamptic pregnant women. The AA genotype and the A allele may carry an increased risk for developing of preeclampsia.
Distributed representation and estimation of WFST-based n-gram models

We present methods for partitioning a weighted ﬁnite-state transducer (WFST) representation of an n-gram language model into multiple blocks or shards , each of which is a stand-alone WFST n-gram model in its own right, allowing processing with existing algorithms. After independent estimation, including normalization, smoothing and pruning on each shard, the shards can be reassembled into a single WFST that is identical to the model that would have resulted from estimation without sharding. We then present an approach that uses data partitions in conjunction with WFST sharding to estimate models on orders-of-magnitude more data than would have otherwise been feasible with a single process. We present some numbers on shard characteristics when large models are trained from a very large data set. Functionality to support distributed n-gram modeling has been added to the open-source OpenGrm library.
Economic values for New Zealand dairy goats

A deterministic bio-economic farm model was developed to estimate economic values (EVs) for important milk production traits affecting profitability and to define a breeding objective for New Zealand dairy goats. Costs, revenue, metabolisable energy requirements for maintenance and activity, pregnancy, lactation and growth of replacements were included in the farm model. Three payment systems were investigated; Current scenario: Total milk-solids; Scenario 1: Ratio 1:2 for fat (F) and protein (P) and Scenario 2: ratio 2:1 for F and P. A price of $13.00 per kg milk solids (MS) was assumed to calculate daily revenue per milk-solid component. A penalty of $0.04 per litre of milk was applied in the last two scenarios. Assumed values of 3.7%, 3.2%, 4.4% and 0.7% for fat, protein, lactose and minerals, respectively, were used to estimate price per kg of F and P in Scenarios 1 and 2. For the Current scenario, the EVs for fat, protein, lactose and volume were $11.64, $12.27, $12.39 and -$0.10, while the estimations in Scenario 1 were $14.49, $31.09, -$0.76 and -$0.14, respectively and in Scenario 2 were $28.92, $14.37, -$0.76 and -$0.14, respectively. The EV for live weight was -$2.16 across scenarios. The EVs estimated can be used to establish breeding objectives for New Zealand dairy goats.
A disease epidemic on Zizyphus mucronata in the Kruger National Park caused by Coniodictyum chevalieri

This study records a severe outbreak of a disease on Zizyphus mucronata (Rhamnaceae) in Greater Kruger National Park, South Africa. The causal agent of the disease was found to be Coniodictyum chevalieri, a fungus previously believed to be very rare. Detailed illustrations of the symptoms and fungus are presented in order to facilitate future studies. The known geographical distribution of Coniodictyum is presented in relation to the distribution of its host, and a short review of its systematic history is also given. This also treats an invalidly published species name in South Africa, which has confused the literature. A DNA-based phylogeny is presented for the pathogen and this reflects the unique nature of its geographical distribution and biology.
Intermittent Reinforcement and the Persistence of Behavior: Experimental Evidence

Whereas economists have made extensive studies of the impact of levels of incentives on behavior, they have paid little attention to the effects of regularity and frequency of incentives. We contrasted three ways of rewarding participants in a real-effort experiment in which individuals had to decide when to exit the situation : a continuous reinforcement schedule (all periods paid) ; a fixed intermittent reinforcement schedule (one out of three periods paid) ; and a random intermittent reinforcement schedule (one out of three periods paid on a random basis). In all treatments, monetary rewards were withdrawn after the same unknown number of periods. Overall, intermittent reinforcement leads to more persistence and higher total effort, while participants in the continuous condition exit as soon as payment stops or decrease effort dramatically. Randomness increases the dispersion of effort, inducing both early exiting and persistence in behavior ; overall, it reduces agents' payoffs. Our interpretation is that, in the presence of regime shifts, both the frequency and the randomness of the reinforcement schedules influence adjustments that participants make across time to their reference points in earnings expectations. This could explain why agents persist in activities although they lose money, such as excess trading in stock markets.
Variable fractional delay filters in bandlimited oscillator algorithms for music synthesis

Trivially sampled geometric waveforms such as the rectangular pulse wave used in subtractive sound synthesis suffer from aliasing caused by the discontinuities in the waveform or its derivative. Several algorithms for the reduction of aliasing distortion have been suggested, providing either complete removal or great suppression of aliasing. Some antialiasing oscillators utilize variable fractional delay filters as an essential part of the algorithm. In this paper, these oscillators are reviewed with an emphasis on motivating the use of the fractional delay filters.
A Comparison of Job Satisfaction of Community Health Workers before and after Local Comprehensive Medical Care Reform: A Typical Field Investigation in Central China

Background The government of China promulgated new medical care reform policies in March 2009. After that, provincial-level governments launched new medical care reform which focusing on local comprehensive medical care reform (LCMR). Anhui Province is an example of an area affected by LCMR, in which the LCMR was started in October 2009 and implemented in June 2010. The objective of this study was to compare the job satisfaction (JS) of community health workers (CHWs) before and after the reform in Anhui Province. Methods A baseline survey was carried out among 813 community health workers (CHWs) of 57 community health centers (CHCs) (response rate: 94.1%) and an effect evaluation survey among 536 CHWs of 30 CHCs (response rate: 92.3%) in 2009 and 2012 respectively. A self-completion questionnaire was used to assess the JS of the CHWs (by the job satisfaction scale, JSS). Results The average scores of total JS and satisfaction with pay, contingent rewards, operating procedures and communication in the effect evaluation survey were statistically significantly higher than those of the baseline survey (P<0.05). The average score of satisfaction with promotion (2.55±1.008) in the effect evaluation survey was statistically significantly lower than that in the baseline survey (2.71±0.730) (P=0.002). In both surveys, the average scores of satisfaction with pay, benefits and promotion were statistically significantly lower than the others (all P<0.05). Conclusions After two years’ implementation of the LCMR, CHWs’ total JS have a small improvement. However, CHWs have lower satisfaction in the dimensions of pay, promotion and benefits dimensions before and after the LCMR. Therefore, policy-makers should take corresponding measures to raise work reward of CHWs and pay more attention to CHWs’ professional development to further increase their JS.
PDPTA ' 03 Paper ID # : 229 PD BESA : Behavior-oriented , Event-driven and Social-based Agent Framework

This paper presents the BESA framework, which is intended to provide a flexible model that supports the design and implementation of MultiAgent Systems (MAS). The abstract model of BESA is based in three fundamental concepts: an event-driven control approach implementing a select like mechanism, a modular behavior-oriented agent architecture, and a social-based support for cooperation between agents. The fusion of these concepts into a parallel architecture is the main innovation of BESA. The BESA architecture is composed of three levels: agent level, social level and system level. The internal architecture of an agent integrates two important features: a modular composition of behaviors and an event selector mechanism. In the BESA abstract model, intermediate levels of abstraction are incorporated allowing to define and handle hierarchical organizations. An agent system implemented using the BESA architecture is seen as a distributed system composed of one or several BESA-containers. The main components of the BESA framework have been implemented using the Java language; its correct operation has been proven by building a multi-robot simulator.
Reliability enhanced grid workflow scheduling algorithm with budget constraint

Efficient workflow scheduling algorithm meeting user' s Quality of Service requirement is a complicated problem due to the dynamics and uncertainty of grid environment. Aiming at guaranteeing the reliability of workflow execution under budget constraint, a calculation method for reliability of task execution, based on evaluation of dynamic service capacity of resource, was proposed in the paper. A reliability enhanced grid workflow scheduling algorithm with budget constraint (REGWSA-BC) was proposed. The main idea of this algorithm is to select the resource which can maximize the reliability of task execution. The results of extensive simulation experiments showed that REGWSA-BC could achieve better average performance of workflow execution, and adapt to dynamic Grid environment and guarantee user's reliability requirements compared to other similar scheduling algorithms.
Trajectory optimization of autonomous driving by differential dynamic programming

We present a real-time optimization method for autonomous vehicle motion planning. Trajectory optimization is essential for autonomous vehicle motion planning, due to its non-holonomic motion. Conventional way of optimization is by trajectory smoothing. In this paper, we use differential dynamic programming (DDP) to optimize the trajectory. The key advantage of DDP is that it not only smoothes the trajectory but also considers the non-holonomic constrain of the vehicle. The optimized trajectory is pre-proof to be able to executed by the vehicle. Results are demonstrated with an autonomous vehicle model in Gazebo simulation environment.
Ethnic diversity and its spatial change in Latvia, 1897–2011

Utilizing data from five census enumerations of Latvia (including the most recent 2011 census), this study analyzes temporal and spatial trends in ethnic diversity in the country at the national and municipal levels. The measure employed, the ethnic diversity index (EDI), makes possible a more sophisticated interpretation of the dynamics of ethnic diversity than an analysis of the changing percentage shares of Latvia's various ethnic groups over time. At the national level, a trend of declining ethnic diversity prior to Latvia's incorporation into the Soviet Union was followed by a rapid increase during the Soviet period, before the onset of gradually decreasing diversity during the post-Soviet period. These national-level trends obscure a number of trends evident at the municipal level, including salient (depending on the period) ethnic diversity gradients Rīga–Latvia, cities/towns–countryside, and the east–west. Latvia remains one of the most ethnically diverse countries of Europe, and the study outlines some of the implications of the recent stagnation of regional EDIs at rather high levels for the economic and political life of the country.
Towards the semantic web: knowledge representation in a dynamic, distributed environment

Title of Dissertation: TOWARDS THE SEMANTIC WEB: KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION IN A DYNAMIC, DISTRIBUTED ENVIRONMENT Jeffrey Douglas Heflin, Doctor of Philosophy, 2001 Dissertation directed by: Professor James A. Hendler Department of Computer Science The World Wide Web is an information resource with virtually unlimited potential. However, this potential is relatively untapped because it is difficult for machines to process and integrate this information meaningfully. Recently, researchers have begun to explore the potential of associating web content with explicit meaning, in order to create a Semantic Web. Rather than rely on natural language processing to extract this meaning from existing documents, this approach requires authors to describe documents using a knowledge representation language. Although knowledge representation can solve many of the Web’s problems, existing research cannot be directly applied to the Semantic Web. Unlike most traditional knowledge bases, the Web is highly decentralized, changes rapidly, and contains a staggering amount of information. This thesis examines how knowledge representation must change to accommodate these factors. It presents a new method for integrating web data sources based on ontologies, where the sources explicitly commit to one or more autonomously developed ontologies. In addition to specifying the semantics of a set of terms, the ontologies can extend or revise one another. This technique permits automatic integration of sources that commit to ontologies with a common descendant, and when appropriate, of sources that commit to different versions of the same ontology. The potential of the Semantic Web is demonstrated using SHOE, a prototype ontology language for the Web. SHOE is used to develop extensible shared ontologies and create assertions that commit to particular ontologies. SHOE can be reduced to datalog, allowing it to scale to the extent allowed by the optimized algorithms developed for deductive databases. To demonstrate the feasibility of the SHOE approach, we describe a basic architecture for a SHOE system and a suite of general purpose tools that allow SHOE to be created, discovered, and queried. Additionally, we examine the potential uses and difficulties associated with the SHOE approach by applying it to two problems in different domains. TOWARDS THE SEMANTIC WEB: KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION IN A DYNAMIC, DISTRIBUTED ENVIRONMENT
Can pedagogical evaluation process of web based E-Learning be automated?

E-Learning aims to improve the quality of learning through the use of modern information and communication technologies. Designing E-Learning course materials is the most critical task because its entire educational system depends on the way content is presented. For that reason the necessity of evaluating the web based E-Learning content is arising. The evaluation of E-Learning content is beneficial for learner as well as instructional designer because it facilitates learner to choose the best learning material, and helps designers to improve the quality of their learning materials. This paper describes the importance of automating the pedagogical evaluating process of web based E-Learning contents and the theoretical framework used in the evaluation process. The aim of this research is to improve the quality of the content in e-Learning websites using the feedback given by the automated pedagogical evaluation process.
Mining from large image sets

So far, most image mining was based on interactive querying. Although such querying will remain important in the future, several applications need image mining at such wide scales that it has to run automatically. This adds an additional level to the problem, namely to apply appropriate further processing to different types of images, and to decide on such processing automatically as well. This paper touches on those issues in that we discuss the processing of landmark images and of images coming from webcams. The first part deals with the automated collection of images of landmarks, which are then also automatically annotated and enriched with Wikipedia information. The target application is that users photograph landmarks with their mobile phones or PDAs, and automatically get information about them. Similarly, users can get images in their photo albums annotated automatically. The object of interest can also be automatically delineated in the images. The pipeline we propose actually retrieves more images than manual keyword input would produce. The second part of the paper deals with an entirely different source of image data, but one that also produces massive amounts (although typically not archived): webcams. They produce images at a single location, but rather continuously and over extended periods of time. We propose an approach to summarize data coming from webcams. This data handling is quite different from that applied to the landmark images.
Breeding Diameter-Optimal Topologies for Distributed Indexes

The role of a distributed index from the perspective of an individual actor (node) is to minimize its separation from all other actors (nodes). From a systemwide perspective, an optimal distributed index is one that minimizes the diameter of the index graph. We tackle this optimization problem in an evolutionary fashion by performing a series of topology crossovers and fitness-based selections. A set of constraints regulate the fitness function. Different classes of topologies such as star, circle, and skip lists emerge as diameter-optimal structures under different constraints. Knowledge of the optimal topology class in a given context provides strategic information for distributed agents to (re)construct a global index structure based on local information. We also investigate a deterministic approach called polygon embedding, to build topologies with similar properties to that of the evolved topologies.