Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Specialized Multicore Architectures Supporting Efficient Multi-Agent Simulations

Two new multiprocessor architectures to accelerate the simulation of multi-agent systems based on the massively parallel GCA (Global Cellular Automata) model are presented. The GCA model is suited to describe and simulate different multi-agent systems. The designed and implemented architectures mainly consist of a set of processors (NIOS II) and a network. The multiprocessor systems allow the implementation in a flexible way through programming, thus simulating different behaviors on the same architecture. Two architectures, one with up to 16 processors, were implemented on an FPGA. The first architecture uses hardware hash functions in order to reduce the overall simulation time, but lacks scalability. The second architecture uses an agent memory and a cell field memory. This improves the scalability and further increases the performance.
Hybrid segmentation of breast cancer cell images using a new fuzzy active contour model and an enhanced watershed method

Segmentation is the main sensitive problem in the automatic image analysis of histopathology specimens. In the stained breast image tissue, cancer cells present a large variety in their characteristics that bring various difficulties for traditional segmentation algorithms. In this paper, we propose an automatic segmentation method for breast cancer cell images combining a new fuzzy active contour model and an enhanced watershed method. Firstly, a color geometric active contour model incorporating spatial fuzzy clustering algorithm is proposed to detect the contours of all cell nuclei in the image. It combines the classical level set method, together with a Bayes error functional based on color region information. Moreover, the initial contour and the controlling parameters of the model are estimated from the fuzzy clustering results. Secondly, overlapping and touching cell nuclei are separated using an enhanced watershed algorithm based on concave vertex graph. Touching nuclei are located automatically using a robust high concavity point detector. Then, the watershed algorithm is applied on hybrid distance transform in order to get the most significant inner edges. A vertex graph is constructed from the concave points and the inner edges followed by an optimal path computed to select the separating curves of the touching nuclei. The proposed segmentation method is tested on a large dataset containing several breast cancer cell images with different levels of malignancy. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithm when compared to other recent segmentation methods.
First record of the invasive Asian fish tapeworm Bothriocephalus acheilognathi in Honduras, Central America

This paper provides the first report of the invasive Asian fish tapeworm, Bothriocephalus acheilognathi Yamaguti, 1934, in Honduras. The cestode was found in Profundulus portillorum (Cyprinodontiformes: Profundulidae), which represents a new host record, and which is a member of a genus faced with a variety of conservation challenges, now potentially complicated by the presence of this pathogenic cestode. Nearly complete sequence data from the ITS-1 5.8S and ITS-2 regions corroborate the determination based on morphological characteristics. Several species of carp were introduced to Honduras for aquaculture purposes in the early 1980s and the presence of the Asian fish tapeworm in Honduras may be related to these introductions. In addition, this report documents the currently known geographical distribution of this parasite in Central America, first recorded from Panamá and now from Honduras.
Adapting cots games for military simulation

The interactive digital medium of computer games holds promise for application in the realm of military simulation. This paper presents the Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA) and Singapore Armed Forces' (SAF) initiative to leverage on commercial computer games for military applications, how several SAF schools have adopted modified commercial games to enhance classroom instruction, and our future plans to extend the use of games in the SAF.
Distributed and synchronized measurements with FlockLab

Developing, testing, debugging, and evaluating communication protocols for low-power wireless networks is a long and cumbersome task. Simulators can be helpful in the early stages of development, but their models of hardware components and the wireless channel are often rather simplistic and hence cannot substitute experiments on real sensor node platforms. The resources available on common platforms are however very limited, and so are the possibilities for non-intrusive debugging and testing. With most existing testbeds it is only possible to collect information from the serial port, which requires adding highly intrusive logging statements that alter the timing behavior of the software running on the nodes. This is particularly detrimental to the operation of time-critical components, such as radio drivers, media access control (MAC) protocols, and certain flooding protocols [2], hindering their testbed-assisted development.
WINPITCH CORPUS, A SOFTWARE TOOL FOR ALIGNMENT AND ANALYSIS OF LARGE CORPORA

Description of endangered languages normally starts with the collection of speech data, which are then segmented into various phonological, prosodic, morphological and syntactic units. In this process, the (phonetic ) transcription is the most critical part, and user friendly tools are essential to tackle any sizeable work in a reasonable amount of time. The software program WinPitch Corpus addresses these concerns directly, allowing two modes of operation to handle the data. In the first mode, text is not available and is generated by the user speech segment by speech segment (as it was the case when only analog tape recorders were available). In the second mode, speech has already been transcribed into text, but the text units are not aligned, i.e. a bi-univocal relationship between units of text and units of speech has not been establishe d. Although some existing software programs operate in the first mode, establishing implicit text and speech alignment in the process, few allow operations in commonly found (difficult) recording conditions such as voice overlapping or presence of noise. This paper introduces briefly some of the important features of WinPitch Corpus , as an efficient tool for transcription and analysis of speech data: slower speech rate for easier transcription, dynamic adjustment of segments with simultaneous display of spectrograms for precise alignment, etc. Numerous speech analysis tools (fundamental frequency tracker, spectrogram, LPC formant analysis, etc.) are available with a quasi instantaneously display of the results. Support for the simultaneous acoustical analysis of both channels of stereo recordings is also provided. The program has already been extensively used for analysis of large romance languages corpora of spontaneous speech (more than 1.200.000 words, C-ORAL-ROM, 2003), as well as for the phonetic and phonological description of Parkateje, an endangered language of the Amazon spoken by about 300 people (Araujo and Martin, 2003). WinPitch Corpus is available from the www.winpitch. com web site, under the name WinPitchPro.
Sentence learning on deep convolutional networks for image Caption Generation

We propose a method to train image representation to improve the performance of image Caption Generation. We use transfer learning CNN on sentences, and extract image representation with deep Fisher kernel. With this representation, we generate sentence with gLSTM and show the improvements in performance. In the experiment, we validate each steps of our method by comparing with previous state-of-the-art models.
High Energy Radial Deposition of Diamond-Like Carbon Coatings

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings were deposited with a new direct ion deposition system using a novel 360 degree ion source operating at acceleration voltage between 4 and 8 kV. Cross-sectional TEM images show that the coatings have a three layered structure which originates from changes in the deposition parameters taking into account ion source condition, ion current density, deposition angles, ion sputtering and ion source movement. Varying structural growth conditions can be achieved by tailoring the deposition parameters. The coatings show good promise for industrial use due to their high hardness, low friction and excellent adhesion to the surface of the samples.
Effective image object retrieval and tag refinement by augmenting unsupervised semantic features

Image Retrieval is an evolving technique because of the rapid growth of images and videos in Social Medias such as Flickr and Facebook. To retrieve images user gives query as image or keyword. But these techniques provide low recall rates because of the varying lighting conditions, viewpoints and unambiguous tags by the user. In this paper we have tackled the problem by leveraging both visual and textual features in order to provide image retrieval effectively. We introduced a framework to augment each image with semantic features (Visual and Textual) by using graphs among images. Images are retrieved by propagation and selection on visually and textually similar graphs. Tag of images are also refined using semantic features. Experimental results confirm that proposed framework effectively retrieve images comparing to previous methods.
Improved Disorder Prediction by Combination of Orthogonal Approaches

Disordered proteins are highly abundant in regulatory processes such as transcription and cell-signaling. Different methods have been developed to predict protein disorder often focusing on different types of disordered regions. Here, we present MD, a novel META-Disorder prediction method that molds various sources of information predominantly obtained from orthogonal prediction methods, to significantly improve in performance over its constituents. In sustained cross-validation, MD not only outperforms its origins, but it also compares favorably to other state-of-the-art prediction methods in a variety of tests that we applied. Availability: http://www.rostlab. org/services/md/
What is collaborative reasoning?

Most physiotherapists would agree on the need to establish effective working relationships with their patients in order to achieve successful outcomes in therapy. Collaboration, as an entity in clinical practice, has continued to increase in importance due to a changing climate of healthcare. Traditional models of physiotherapy treatment based on the medical model and delivered in acute settings are giving way to newer models of practice, such as health promotion, that are patient or client centred and increasingly located in community settings. At the same time, the notion of patient compliance with physiotherapy advice and exercises, deriving from a medical model of practice, is being superseded by the notion of collaborative decision making (or reasoning) in physiotherapy. Recent physiotherapy literature suggests that collaborative decision making is an advanced clinical skill, while also casting doubt on just how well or consistently physiotherapists are able to set goals with their patients and nurture a collaborative approach in working towards those goals. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how clinical reasoning is an ideal vehicle by which physiotherapy practitioners can reflect on the process of collaboration with their patients in clinical practice. Three particular forms of collaboration are identified which can be traced to different assumptions about knowledge and how this knowledge is both generated and used by practitioners in clinical practice. In this paper, we argue that these different forms of collaboration each have an important role in clinical practice as they address both the diversity and underlying nature of those treatment goals that may be seen as desirable from the perspective of either practitioner or patient. In turn, these forms of collaboration assist in the development of a variety of knowledge and skills for both practitioners and patients alike.
A Software-hardware Collaborating Framework for Wear Leveling on Phase Change Memory

DRAM has been used as main memory in most systems, but its scalability and energy consumption are difficult to improve because of its architecture nature. Phase change memory (PCM) is a new non-volatile memory, which addresses these problems and is a promising candidate to replace DRAM as main memory. Since PCM cell has a very limited lifetime, many hardware methods have been proposed to improve its endurance with only low-level information about physical memory operations. Meanwhile, operating system manages physical page mapping, and it has the knowledge of memory layout as well as memory requirements of each process. This paper investigates write behaviors of different memory areas of processes, and proposes a software-hardware collaborating framework that captures process write behavior with simple hardware to enable process write behavior predication by operating system. The framework combines operating system and PCM controller that exploits write behaviors of processes to aid in PCM wear leveling. The results show this framework helps reduce PCM page swaps for wear leveling by 63% on average. And it also lowers the writes of the most worn page by 12% with single process, and by 21% with two parallel processes sharing the PCM.
Secreted Aspartic Protease Cleavage of Candida albicans Msb2 Activates Cek1 MAPK Signaling Affecting Biofilm Formation and Oropharyngeal Candidiasis

Perception of external stimuli and generation of an appropriate response are crucial for host colonization by pathogens. In pathogenic fungi, mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways regulate dimorphism, biofilm/mat formation, and virulence. Signaling mucins, characterized by a heavily glycosylated extracellular domain, a transmembrane domain, and a small cytoplasmic domain, are known to regulate various signaling pathways. In Candida albicans, the mucin Msb2 regulates the Cek1 MAPK pathway. We show here that Msb2 is localized to the yeast cell wall and is further enriched on hyphal surfaces. A msb2Δ/Δ strain formed normal hyphae but had biofilm defects. Cek1 (but not Mkc1) phosphorylation was absent in the msb2Δ/Δ mutant. The extracellular domain of Msb2 was shed in cells exposed to elevated temperature and carbon source limitation, concomitant with germination and Cek1 phosphorylation. Msb2 shedding occurred differentially in cells grown planktonically or on solid surfaces in the presence of cell wall and osmotic stressors. We further show that Msb2 shedding and Cek1 phosphorylation were inhibited by addition of Pepstatin A (PA), a selective inhibitor of aspartic proteases (Saps). Analysis of combinations of Sap protease mutants identified a sap8Δ/Δ mutant with reduced MAPK signaling along with defects in biofilm formation, thereby suggesting that Sap8 potentially serves as a major regulator of Msb2 processing. We further show that loss of either Msb2 (msb2Δ/Δ) or Sap8 (sap8Δ/Δ) resulted in higher C. albicans surface β-glucan exposure and msb2Δ/Δ showed attenuated virulence in a murine model of oral candidiasis. Thus, Sap-mediated proteolytic cleavage of Msb2 is required for activation of the Cek1 MAPK pathway in response to environmental cues including those that induce germination. Inhibition of Msb2 processing at the level of Saps may provide a means of attenuating MAPK signaling and reducing C. albicans virulence.
Selective sorting and destruction of mitochondrial membrane proteins in aged yeast

Mitochondrial dysfunction is a hallmark of aging, and underlies the development of many diseases. Cells maintain mitochondrial homeostasis through a number of pathways that remodel the mitochondrial proteome or alter mitochondrial content during times of stress or metabolic adaptation. Here, using yeast as a model system, we identify a new mitochondrial degradation system that remodels the mitochondrial proteome of aged cells. Unlike many common mitochondrial degradation pathways, this system selectively removes a subset of membrane proteins from the mitochondrial inner and outer membranes, while leaving the remainder of the organelle intact. Selective removal of preexisting proteins is achieved by sorting into a mitochondrial-derived compartment, or MDC, followed by release through mitochondrial fission and elimination by autophagy. Formation of MDCs requires the import receptors Tom70/71, and failure to form these structures exacerbates preexisting mitochondrial dysfunction, suggesting that the MDC pathway provides protection to mitochondria in times of stress. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.13943. 001
Spatial ranking of remote sensing images by 1-D indicator: An integrated approach of extensibility and centrality

With the progress and ubiquitous features of Internet technologies, searching for the requisite information through internet has become a popular solution for information exchange. In addition, getting the required information through web query is becoming the most effective way for users due to the promotion of remote sensing image retrieval and popularity of image provision. However, how to make an efficient query from the large amounts of data faces a severe challenge. An effective ranking approach of the query items plays an important role on databases searching applications. In this paper, we proposed a multi-index image spatial ranking approach integrating with spatial ranking parameters (AS, IE) based on previous studies. The prerequisite of spatial ranking on remote sensing image is composed of area of interest and the coverage of the candidate images. Considering the ranking temporality, the metadata items of image are retrieved from the metadata of image based on ISO metadata standard for remote sensing image.
An improved RBF deforming algorithm in 3D face morphable model

An improved RBF (Radial Basis Function) deforming algorithm, which is based on the RBF interpolation of scattered data and aims at the deficiency of RBF algorithm in 3D face morphable model, is proposed in this paper. According to the different characteristics of feature points and non-feature points, it chooses different parameter values for the basis function to make the adjustment transformation more reasonable in the model. Then it executes a secondary smoothing on the local areas containing feature points again by use of the binary cubic polynomial interpolation method to avoid producing the distortion model, and further characterizes the specific feature details of the face organs. Ultimately it obtains a smooth and natural personalized 3D face model.
Statistical detection of LSB matching in the presence of nuisance parameters

This paper investigates the reliable detection of information embedded with the least significant bits (LSB) matching scheme. It is aimed to design a test with analytically predictable error probabilities. To this end, the problem of hidden information detection is cast in the framework of hypothesis testing theory. In order to deal with nuisance parameters a rejection approach is used with a statistical model of medium. The use of a linear parametric model permits to analytically express statistical performance of proposed test. Numerical simulations and comparisons with state-of-the-art detectors highlight the relevance of proposed approach.
A search for distant radio-loud quasars in the CLASS survey : three new radio-selected quasars at z > 4

We report on the search for distant radio-loud quasars in the Cosmic Lens All Sky Survey (CLASS) of flat spectrum radio sources with S-5GHz > 30 mJy. Unresolved optical counterparts were selected from APM scans of POSS-I plates, with e 2.0 colours, in an effective area of similar to 6400 deg(2). Four sources were found to be quasars with z > 4, of which one was previously known. This sample bridges the gap between the strong radio surveys with S-5GHz > 200 mJy and the samples of radio-weak quasars that can be generated via radio observations of optically selected quasars. In addition, four new quasars at z > 3 have been found. The selection criteria result in a success-rate of similar to 1:7 for radio-loud quasars at z > 4, which is a significant improvement over previous studies. This search yields a surface density of 1 per 1600 deg(2), which is about a factor of similar to 15 lower than that found in a similar search for radio-quiet quasars at z > 4. The study presented here is strongly biased against quasars beyond z > 4.5, since the e-passband of the POSS-I only samples the spectra shortward of 1200 Angstrom at these redshifts.
Reduction of Non-Orthogonal Interference in OFDM Receivers by Optimized Windowing

For conventional orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (OFDM) systems, the guard interval is disregarded in the receiver and rectangular shaped windows are used implicitly due to the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). We consider a Nyquistshaped window in the receiver, so that the transmit signal does not need to be modified, and optimize the window shape in order to suppress interference from non-orthogonal single carrier interferer signals. For the window coefficients, a closed form solution is derived. This type of interference occurs for example in OFDM radio systems like Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) that are operating in low frequency bands. (Disturbance is given for instance by harmonics of switched-mode power supplies.) Further for multiple interferers, the receiver with optimized window outperforms the conventional receiver.
'Like': A Unique Way to Judge User Preference in Social Networking Sites

Popularity and usability of Social Media in today's scenario is universal. None of us can deny to the fact it is not only the source of communication or connection between friends but also has broaden its horizons to politics, television industry, source to advertisement for companies, education and many more[11][15]. Most of the companies or personalities are maintaining pages on these social media sites to interact with the users of these sites they are even posting messages, videos on these sites so that they can get attached by more and more users. Researches have shown even in latest 2014 elections that BJP used social media as its most liked option for promotion. The same was hit and liked by masses. Seeing this we can actually see the acceptance of 'Like' on the social media. It has become a measure to actually analyze and capture user interest on social media. It enables one to actually calculate and measure the user liking over certain objects. It gives the clear cut idea of user interest in a particular object and thus calculations can be made accordingly for sharing and promoting information or objects on social media sites [12]. We are trying to seek a model to analyze and mine the influence of 'Like' in social media. To calculate the effect on the object 'Like' mining algorithm is proposed along with the network model for social media. Facebook data is being used to show the influence and effect of the approach.
Pathway recommendation based on a pedagogical ontology and its implementation in moodle

Trahasch, Stephan [Hrsg. ]; Plotzner, Rolf [Hrsg. ]; Schneider, Gerhard [Hrsg. ]; Gayer, Claudia [Hrsg. ]; Sassiat, Daniel [Hrsg. ]; Wohrle, Nicole [Hrsg. ]: DeLFI 2014. Die 12. e-Learning Fachtagung Informatik der Gesellschaft fur Informatik e.V. , 15. -17. September 2014 in Freiburg. Bonn : Gesellschaft fur Informatik e.V. (GI) 2014, S. 39-50. - (Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) - Proceedings; P-233) Padagogische Teildisziplin: Medienpadagogik;