Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Approximate entropy as an indicator of non-linearity in self paced voluntary finger movement EEG

This study investigates the indications of non-linear dynamic structures in electroencephalogram signals. The iterative amplitude adjusted surrogate data method along with seven non-linear test statistics namely the third order autocorrelation, asymmetry due to time reversal, delay vector variance method, correlation dimension, largest Lyapunov exponent, non-linear prediction error and approximate entropy has been used for analysing the EEG data obtained during self paced voluntary finger-movement. The results have demonstrated that there are clear indications of non-linearity in the EEG signals. However the rejection of the null hypothesis of non-linearity rate varied based on different parameter settings demonstrating significance of embedding dimension and time lag parameters for capturing underlying non-linear dynamics in the signals. Across non-linear test statistics, the highest degree of non-linearity was indicated by approximate entropy (APEN) feature regardless of the parameter settings.
Schema Change Operations for Full Support of Schema Versioning in the τXSchema Framework

tXSchema (Currim et al., 2004) is a framework (a language and a suite of tools) for the creation and validation of time-varying XML documents. A tXSchema schema is composed of a conventional XML Schema annotated with physical and logical annotations. All components of a tXSchema schema can evolve over time to reflect changes in the real-world. Since many applications need to keep track of both data and schema evolution, schema versioning has been long advocated to be the best solution to do this. In this paper, we complete the tXSchema framework, which is predisposed from the origin to support schema versioning, with the definition of the operations which are necessary to exploit such feature and make schema versioning functionalities available to final users. Moreover, we propose a new technique for schema versioning in tXSchema, allowing a complete and safe management of schema changes. It supports both versioning of conventional schema and versioning of annotations, in an integrated manner. For each component of a tXSchema schema, our approach provides a complete and sound set of change primitives and a set of high-level change operations, for the maintenance of such a component and defines their operational semantics.
Multivariate analysis of variance.

We provide an expository presentation of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) for both consumers of research and investigators by capitalizing on its relation to univariate analysis of variance models. We address several questions: (a) Why should one use MANOVA. 9 (b) What is the structure of MANOVA? (C) How are MANOVA test statistics obtained and interpreted? (d) How are MANOVA follow-up tests obtained and interpreted? (e) How is strength of association assessed in MANOVA. 9 (f) HOW should the results of MANOVA be presented? (g) Are there any alternatives to MANOVA. 9 We use an example data set throughout the article to illustrate these points.
Hierarchical auto-tagging: organizing Q&A knowledge for everyone

We propose a hierarchical auto-tagging system, TagHats, to improve users' knowledge sharing. Our system assigns three different levels of tags to Q&A documents: category, theme, and keyword. Multiple category tags can organize a document according to multiple viewpoints, and multiple theme and keyword tags can identify what the document is about clearly. Moreover, these hierarchical tags will be helpful in organizing documents to support everyone because different users have different demands in terms of tag specificity. Our system consists of a hierarchical classification method for assigning category and theme tags, a new keyword extraction method that considers the structure of Q&A documents, and a new method for selecting theme tag candidates from each category. Experiments with the documents of Oshiete! goo demonstrate that our system is able to assign hierarchical tags to the documents appropriately and is capable of outperforming baseline methods significantly.
Path planning of nonholonomic flying robots using a new virtual obstacle method

This paper presents a method for planning near-optimal collision-free path between two pre-specified points with given orientations for nonholonomic flying robots or UAVs navigating in a 3D space amid obstacles. The proposed method is based on the Fast Marching Method (FMM), which uses a first order numerical approximation of the Eikonal equation. The FMM is combined with average filter, B-spline functions and a new tool called Virtual Obstacle to guarantee smoothness of the produced path. The Virtual Obstacle is in the form of a torus to adjust the path with orientation of the flying robot at the start and goal points. Experimental results showed that the proposed method can find near-optimal paths with maximum curvatures less than the robot's minimum flying radius.
Why Have Aggregate Skilled Hours Become so Cyclical Since the Mid-1980s?

This paper documents and discusses a dramatic change in the cyclical behavior of aggregate hours worked by individuals with a college degree (skilled workers) since the mid-1980’s. Using the CPS outgoing rotation data set for the period 1979:1-2003:4, we find that the volatility of aggregate skilled hours relative to the volatility of GDP has nearly tripled since 1984. In contrast, the cyclical properties of unskilled hours have remained essentially unchanged. We evaluate the extent to which a simple supply/demand model for skilled and unskilled labor with capital-skill complementarity in production can help explain this stylized fact. Within this framework, we identify three effects which would lead to an increase in the relative volatility of skilled hours: (i) a reduction in the degree of capital-skill complementarity, (ii) a reduction in the absolute volatility of GDP (and unskilled hours), and (iii) an increase in the level of capital equipment relative to skilled labor. We provide empirical evidence in support of each of these effects. Our conclusion is that these three mechanisms can jointly explain about sixty percent of the observed increase in the relative volatility of skilled labor. The reduction in the degree of capital-skill complementarity contributes the most to this result.
Real-Time Semantics-Based Detection of Suspicious Activities in Public Spaces

Behaviour recognition and video understanding are core components of video surveillance and its real life applications. Recently there has been much effort to devise automated real-time high accuracy video surveillance systems. In this paper, we introduce an approach that detects semantic behaviours based on object and inter-object motion features. A number of interesting types of behaviour have been selected to demonstrate the capabilities of this approach. These types of behaviour are relevant to and most commonly encountered in public transportation systems such as abandoned and stolen luggage, fighting, fainting, and loitering. Using standard public datasets, the experimental results here demonstrate the effectiveness and low computational complexity of this approach, and its superiority to approaches described in some other work.
Validation of the Italian Version of the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire for Adolescents by A. Lancry and Th. Arbault

Background This study aimed to validate the Italian version of the Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire for adolescents by Lancry and Arbault. Material/Methods The Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire by Lancry and Arbault was translated from French into Italian by using forward-backward translation. Students aged 11–15 years old were enrolled from two schools in Milan (Italia). Validation of the questionnaire was performed in subsequent phases. A pre-test was given to 66 students aged 11–15 years (males 57.4%, females 42.6%) from a convenience sample. Syntactic aspects of the pre-test were improved, and the questionnaire in a revised version was re-administered to 292 students of same age (males 43.8%, females 54.1%) from a convenience sample. Results Factor analysis was performed on pre-test data, using the principal component method accounting for Morningness-Eveningness. Problematic items possibly uncorrelated with the extracted factor were identified, and reliability produced a Cronbach’s Alpha close to 0.7. In the test phase factor analysis was performed using the principal component method. Based on reliability analyses, we excluded a number of items because of their low performance, giving rise to a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.819. Pearson product-moment external correlations between Morningness-Eveningness disposition and temperament, behavioral, and cognitive aspects were evaluated. Conclusions A factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha and concurrent validity coefficients with disposition, behavior, and cognition, were performed, suggesting potential reliability and validity. The questionnaire is a useful and relevant tool for measuring Morningness-Eveningness disposition in adolescents, which has seldom been investigated with adequate psychometric instruments.
Methods to Improve the Reliability of the Functional Reach Test in Children and Adolescents With Typical Development

Purpose: Test-retest reliability of the Functional Reach Test was examined in children with typical development by comparing standard and alternate methods. Methods: Eighty subjects ages seven to 16 years were tested and 69 retested for four methods of Functional Reach Test (ie, one-arm finger-to-finger, two-arm finger-to-finger, one-arm toe-to-finger, and two-arm toe-to-finger). Intraclass correlation coefficients and limits of agreement were calculated. Results: Intraclass correlation coefficients were high in toe-to-finger measurement methods (0.97–0.98) for the entire group and specific age groups (00.83–0.93). Toe-to-finger methods were more reliable than finger-to-finger methods. The two-arm toe-to-finger method had the best limis of agreement with approximately ±5 cm indicated by the 95% confidence interval. Conclusions: Test-retest reliability using a toe-to-finger method of measuring is stronger than previously reported when using traditional methods. Limits of agreement analyses imply a change of 5 cm or more is likely to represent a true clinical difference when using the two-arm toe-to-finger method.
Meaning = Life (+ Culture): An outline of a unified biocultural theory of meaning

The article presents the outlines of an integrative theory of meaning based on the concept of value, understood both as a biological and as a socio-cultural category, synthesizing ideas from evolutionary and developmental psychology, semiotics and cybernetics. The proposal distinguishes between four types of meaning systems, cue-based, associational, mimetic and symbolic, forming an evolutionary and epigenetic hierarchy. The theory is applied to phylogenetic and human ontogenetic development, pointing out significant parallels between the two processes, involving both continuity and discontinuity between the different levels. Since one of the basic tenets of the theory is that only living systems have intrinsic value, which is a necessary and sufficient condition for possessing the category meaning, negative implications are drawn for the meaning potential of (current) artificial systems.
Open API for Ontology Building based on Sentence Triplet Extraction

Ontology is one of the important semantic web enablers. However, there are few open Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, to support developers in terms of building ontology. Often, the developers are asked to use a specific tool that does not open its API in a developer friendly manner. Thus, we provide a set of open APIs for ontology building. These APIs aim to help ontology building through sentence triplet extractions. Particularly, the APIs are used by a CoreOnto workbench semi-automatically generating an ontology structure from a Wikipedia corpus. Because of the open APIs, we expect that the ontology engineers can easily access this APIs through the internet and obtain the same ontology that might be generated by a sophisticated stand-alone ontology workbench. These open APIs are the first step to make this ontology and semantic web community grow through an open infrastructure.
ON THE OSCILLATIONS OF MUSICAL-INSTRUMENTS

The time‐domain description of musical and other nonlinear oscillators complements the more commonly used frequency‐domain description, and is advantageous for some purposes. It is especially advantageous when studying large‐amplitude oscillations, for which nonlinearity may be severe. It gives direct insight into the physical reasons for the variation of waveform as playing conditions vary, and into certain phenomena which may seem counter‐intuitive from the frequency‐domain viewpoint, such as the musically undesirable flattening in the pitch of a bowed string when the bow is pressed too hard onto the string. It is easy to set up efficient time‐domain simulations on a small computer, a fact that has been surprisingly little exploited in musical acoustics. The simplest relevant model is described here. It demonstrates some of the basic nonlinear behavior of the clarinet, violin, and flute families with very little programming effort. Remarkably, a single set of model equations has relevance to all three c.
Is This Your Final Answer?: Evaluating the Effect of Answers on Good Abandonment in Mobile Search

Answers on mobile search result pages have become a common way to attempt to satisfy users without them needing to click on search results. Many different types of answers exist, such as weather, flight and currency answers. Understanding the effect that these different answer types have on mobile user behavior and how they contribute to satisfaction is important for search engine evaluation. We study these two aspects by analyzing the logs of a commercial search engine and through a user study. Our results show that user click, abandonment and engagement behavior differs depending on the answer types present on a page. Furthermore, we find that satisfaction rates differ in the presence of different answer types with simple answer types, such as time zone answers, leading to more satisfaction than more complex answers, such as news answers. Our findings have implications for the study and application of user satisfaction for search systems.
Site Fidelity and Movement Patterns of Groundfish Associated with Offshore Petroleum Platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel

Abstract In order to better assess the ecological importance of offshore petroleum platforms for economically important groundfishes, we quantified the degree of site fidelity of 100 platform-associated individuals representing 15 species at three offshore platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel by means of acoustic telemetry monitoring. Thirty percent of the fish tagged were not detected after the first 6 d following release and were assumed to have died or to have immediately emigrated away from platforms. Degrees of site fidelity varied widely among individuals, among species, and between platforms. Of the most abundant species tagged (cabezon Scorpaenichthys marmoratus, vermilion rockfish Sebastes miniatus, widow rockfish Sebastes entomelas, copper rockfish Sebastes caurinus, and greenspotted rockfish Sebastes chlorostictus), widow rockfish showed a high probability of being detected at platforms over a 2-year period. Vermilion rockfish emigrated away from the shallower Platform Gilda (64 m) faster than vermilion rockfish tagged at the deeper Platform Grace (93 m). Ten tagged individuals (eight vermilion rockfish, one copper rockfish, and one lingcod Ophiodon elongatus) moved between platforms (range = 5–15 km) and/or natural habitat, although a majority moved from a shallower platform to a deeper one. These movements further support evidence that (1) many reef-associated rockfishes make ontogenetic shifts to deeper water and (2) shallower platforms export fishes faster than deeper platforms. There was no indication of seasonal emigration, but there was evidence for seasonal differences in activity for vermilion rockfish, widow rockfish, and greenspotted rockfish. Observed movements of fishes between platforms and natural reef habitat indicate that they can navigate between these habitats and that platform habitat, despite having higher densities of conspecifics, may be of higher quality to some individuals than natural reefs.
In-Farm Research - a Swiss Perspective

Conclusions The examination of the question, “why animals on farms” demonstrates the potential of “in-farm research” to gaining in-depth knowledge of the farm. The scientist’s observations and co-working on the farm are a method of choices that allows an accurate evaluation of the current situation of the farm, its atmosphere and the inner perspective of the farmers. It also lets the scientist contrast impressions from a personal point of view and to challenge statements made by the farmers. In addition, farmers were grateful for the “non-economic” assessments of the farm. As a consequence of this work, the reasons farmers give for keeping cows has become more conscious, and their decisions may strengthen their motives while also helping with public relations. Interestingly enough, looking at the farm as an individual organism, and trying to understand its intrinsic values the research methodology increasingly resembles that of social science, e.g. participative research. The researcher has to be trained in “objectivity” and precision in observational skills, and professional experience in agriculture is mandatory. Curricula in agri-science should include training programs to develop them. In-farm research cannot, and will not, be an alternative to other scientific endeavors. Rather, it is a complementary approach, especially for developing sustainable farming practices.
Creation and Application of the Systematically Merged Pacific Ocean Regional Temperature and Salinity (SPORTS) Climatology for Oceanic Heat Content Estimation

of a thesis at the University of Miami. The Systematically merged Pacific Ocean Regional Temperature and Salinity (SPORTS) climatology was created to estimate oceanic heat content (OHC) for the North Pacific (McCaskill et al., 2015). A technique similar to the creation of the Systematically Merged Atlantic Regional Temperature and Salinity climatology was used to blend temperature and salinity fields from the Generalized Digital Environment Model and World Ocean Atlas 2001 at a 0.25° resolution (Meyers et al., 2014). The weighting for the blending of these two climatologies was estimated by minimizing residual covariances across the basin and accounting for drift velocities associated with eddy variability using a series of 3-year sea surface height anomalies (SSHA) tracks to insure continuity between the periods of differing altimeters. In addition to producing daily estimates of the 20°C and 26°C isotherm depths (and their mean ratios), mixed layer depth, reduced gravities, and OHC, the SSHA product includes mapping errors given the differing repeat tracks from the altimeters and sensor uncertainties. These SPORTS products are available daily in near real-time on the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Using SPORTS with satellite-derived sea-surface temperature (SST) and SSHA fields from radar altimetry, daily OHC has been estimated from 2000 to 2011 using a 2.5-layer model approach. Argo profiling-floats, expendable probes from ships and aircraft, long-term TAO moorings, and drifters provide over 267,000 quality controlled in-situ thermal profiles to assess uncertainty in estimates from SPORTS. The in-situ profiles were used to evaluate the SPORTS OHC with a basin-wide regression analysis. TAO moorings and XBT transects were used to evaluate SPORTS OHC on a regional scale temporally and spatially. A case study with the storms from the ONR-sponsored Impact of Typhoons on the Ocean in the Pacific (ITOP) 2010 experiments used SPORTS OHC to determine how OHC conditions before the storm contributed tropical cyclone (TC) intensification and TC induced ocean response. The SPORTS OHC before each TC showed that high OHC and horizontal ocean thermal gradients helped the ITOP storms intensify and maintain high TC intensity. Enthalpy fluxes were examined during the time while each TC intensified to its peak intensity to further investigate the TC intensification. The SPORTS OHC also helped explain the TC induced ocean SST cooling pattern. The momentum fluxes were calculated over the life cycle of the TCs to better understand the TC induced ocean response. This thesis research was ultimately aimed at the public …
Is There a Case for a "Second Demographic Transition"? Three Distinctive Features of the Post-1960 U.S. Fertility Decline

Dramatic fertility swings over the last 100 years have been the subject of large literatures in demography and economics. Recent research has claimed that the post-1960 fertility decline is exceptional enough to constitute a "Second Demographic Transition. " The empirical case for a Second Demographic Transition, however, rests largely on comparisons of the post-1960 period with the baby boom era, which was itself exceptional in many ways. Our analysis of the U.S. instead compares the fertility decline in the 1960s and 1970s to the earlier 20th century fertility decline, especially the 1920s and 1930s. Our findings affirm that both periods experienced similar declines in fertility rates and that the affected cohorts averaged the same number of children born over their lifetimes. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the mean age of household formation (by marriage or non-marital cohabitation) and first birth are almost identical for women reaching childbearing age in the 1920s and 1930s and today. Three features, however, distinguish the post-1960 period: (1) the convergence in the distribution of completed childbearing around a two-child mode and a decrease in childlessness; (2) the decoupling of marriage and motherhood; and (3) a transformation in the relationship between the educational attainment of mothers and childbearing outcomes. These three features of the 20th century fertility decline have implications for children's opportunities, children's educational achievement, and widening inequality in U.S. labor markets.
Decentralized group key management for dynamic networks using proxy cryptography

Decentralized group key management mechanisms offer beneficial solutions to enhance the scalability and reliability of a secure multicast framework by confining the impact of a membership change in a local area. However, many of the previous decentralized solutions reveal the plain text to the intermediate relaying proxies,or require the key distribution center to coordinate secure group communications between subgroups. In this study, we propose a decentralized group key management scheme that features a mechanism allowing a service provider to deliver the group key to valid members in a distributed manner using the proxy cryptography. In the proposed scheme, the key distribution center is eliminated while data confidentiality of the transmitted message is provided during the message delivery process. The proposed scheme can support a secure group communication in dynamic network environments where there is no trusted central controller for the whole network and the network topology changes frequently.
Constrained state estimation using the Unscented Kalman Filter

A simple procedure to include state inequality constraints in the unscented Kalman filter is proposed. With this procedure, the information of active state constraints influences the state covariance matrix, resulting in better estimates. In a numerical example, the approach outperforms the extended Kalman filter implemented with constraint handling via ldquoclippingrdquo.