Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Dynamic Offer/Answer Mechanism Encompassing TCP Variants in Heterogeneous Environments

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has evolved from its initial form defined in RFC 793 in 1981 to cope with the evolution of IP networks in general and of the Internet in particular. Over the years, several factors have led to the design of successive TCP variants: the increasing disparity of end hosts, the variety of data links characteristics (Optical, wireless cellular or satellite), the increase of the delay-bandwidth product in data networks or the use of multiple paths at the same time. In this context, some TCP variants tune the congestion control and avoidance mechanisms to adapt them to specific situations while others make use of TCP options. In practice, such enhanced versions of TCP can be unusable because of the presence of intermediate elements such as firewalls along the path between the two end hosts. Such elements can indeed filter some TCP options or tamper with the way congestion is managed, introducing then unacceptable jitter in the IP flows. In such cases, most TCP variants are designed to fallback to a generic form of TCP. In many situations, this generic TCP version is not the best fit, while another TCP variant could be used to deal with this transient problem. To address this issue, we introduce an original offer/answer (O/A) mechanism allowing end hosts to identify dynamically a suitable TCP variant able to satisfy the specific constraints of each type of packet flows.
Level Crossing Rate of Macrodiversity System Operating over Gamma Shadowed Rician Fading Channel

Macrodiversity system with macrodiversity selection combining (SC) receiver and two microdiversity SC r eceivers is considered. Received signal is affected simultaneou sly to Gamma long term fading and Rician short term fading resul ting in system performance degradation. Macrodiversity SC receiver reduces Gamma shadowing effects and microdiversity SC recei vers reduce multipath fading effects on bit error probability. Closed form expression for average level crossing rate of macrodiversity SC receiver output signal envelope is evaluated. Nu merical results are presented graphically to show the influ ence of Gamma long term fading severity, shadowing correlation and Rician factor on average level crossing rate. Keywordsfading channel; Gamma shadowed; Rician factor; selection combining (SC).
PR ] 1 0 M ar 1 99 8 A Lower Bound on the Growth Exponent forLoop-Erased Random Walk in Two Dimensions

The growth exponent α for loop-erased or Laplacian random walk on the integer lattice is defined by saying that the expected time to reach the sphere of radius n is of order nα. We prove that in two dimensions, the growth exponent is strictly greater than one. The proof uses a known estimate on the third moment of the escape probability and an improvement on the discrete Beurling projection theorem.
Weighing the Cost and Benefit of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Different Reading Subskills

Adults struggling with low reading skills are underserved by limited available treatments. While brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has the potential to improve a variety of cognitive functions, little work has been done examining its potential to treat reading disabilities. Research on the effects of tDCS on reading abilities has been somewhat inconsistent perhaps in part due to discrepancies between studies in the nature of the tasks. In the current study, we examined the effect of tDCS to the left inferior parietal lobe (L IPL) on two reading tasks in low-to-average readers. We compared performance on a sight word efficiency (SWE) task and a rhyme judgment task before and after either stimulation to the L IPL, right superior parietal lobe (R SPL), or sham stimulation. Readers who received stimulation to the L IPL showed greater improvements on the SWE task, but less improvement on the rhyme judgment task compared to the R SPL and sham groups. This study demonstrates for the first time both a positive and negative effect of stimulation under the same stimulation parameters within the same participants. The results highlight the need to consider multiple tasks when assessing the potential of using tDCS as a treatment.
Can program profiling support value prediction?

This paper explores the possibility of using program profiling to enhance the efficiency of value prediction. Value prediction attempts to eliminate true-data dependencies by predicting the outcome values of instructions at run-time and executing true-data dependent instructions based on that prediction. So far, all published papers in this area have examined hardware-only value prediction mechanisms. In order to enhance the efficiency of value prediction, it is proposed to employ program profiling to collect information that describes the tendency of instructions in a program to be value-predictable. The compiler that acts as a mediator can pass this information to the value-prediction hardware mechanisms. Such information can be exploited by the hardware in order to reduce mispredictions, better utilize the prediction table resources, distinguish between different value predictability patterns and still benefit from the advantages of value prediction to increase instruction-level parallelism. We show that our new method outperforms the hardware-only mechanisms in most of the examined benchmarks.
IMPACT OF DATA SIZE ON DATA MINING PREDICTION ACCURACY

Prediction accuracy is an essential topic to be researched and studied to have maximum precision and more efficient prediction systems especially in critical fields like medicine and bioinformatics. In this study we investigated the prediction models, viz., Logistic Regression, Neural Network and Decision Tree and compared their prediction performance taking into account the dataset size and the dependent variable values distribution in the dataset as prediction model performance metrics and we used a robust and highly correlated data from the Palestinian Households Census 2007. The Neural Network outperformed the other two models and the Logistic Regression outperformed the Decision Tree. The dependent variable values distribution and dataset size had no significant effect on prediction accuracy but the data content was found to as the most affecting factor on prediction accuracy. Depending on the results of this research we believed and stated that the prediction accuracy is a function of data content and characteristics.
Extracting age information from local spatially flexible patches

Motivated by the fact that age information can often be observed from local evidence on the human face, we contribute to the age estimation problem in two aspects. On the one hand, we present a new feature descriptor, called spatially flexible patch (SFP), which encodes the local appearance and position information simultaneously. SFP has the potential to alleviate the problem of insufficient samples owing to that SFPs similar in appearance yet slightly different in position can still provide similar confidence for age estimation. One the other hand, the SFP associated with age label is modeled with Gaussian Mixture Model, and then age estimation is conducted by maximizing the sum of likelihoods from all the SFPs associated with the hypothetic age. Experiments are conducted on the YAMAHA database with 8,000 face images and ages ranging from 0 to 93. Compared with the latest reported results, our new algorithm brings encouraging reduction in mean absolute error for age estimation.
Bilateral Controller for Teleoperators with Time Delay via (cid:22)-Synthesis

In the standard teleoperator system, force and velocity signals are communicated between a master robot and a slave robot. It is well-known that the system can become unstable when even a small time delay exists in the communication channel. In this paper, a method based on the H1-optimal control and (cid:22)-synthesis frameworks is introduced to design a controller for the teleoperator which achieves stability for a prespeci(cid:12)ed time-delay margin while optimizing performance speci(cid:12)cations. A numerical design example is included
Shopping for top forums: discovering online discussion for product research

Community generated content, or social media, has become increasingly important over the past several years. Social media sites such as blogs, twitter and online discussion boards have been recognized as valuable sources of market intelligence for companies wishing to keep abreast of their customers' attitudes expressed online. There has been little focus, however, on providing a similar service to potential customers. In this paper we present a system for aiding consumers with their product research by providing access to community generated content. We focus specifically on online forums or message boards, which are particularly useful for product research. These web sites often host discussion among users with first-hand product experiences, expert users and enthusiasts. The system presented here is designed to integrate with a shopping search portal, providing access to online forums that are likely to have a significant amount of discussion relating to a user's expressed interest in product brands and categories. We describe this system and present experiments showing that in the context of a shopping search engine, the proposed system is preferred or equivalent to results from a web search engine 80% of the time and achieves accuracy at the top ranked result of 85%.
Generalized raised-cosine filters

Data transmission over bandlimited channels requires pulse shaping to eliminate or control intersymbol interference (ISI). Nyquist filters provide ISI-free transmission. Here we introduce a phase compensation technique to design Nyquist filters. Phase compensation can be applied to the square-root of any zero-phase bandlimited Nyquist filter with normalized excess bandwidth less than or equal to one. The resulting phase compensated square-root filter is also a Nyquist filter. In the case of a raised-cosine spectrum, the phase compensator has a simple piecewise-linear form. Such a technique is particularly useful to accommodate two different structures for the receiver, one with a filter matched to the transmitting filter and one without a matched filter. We also use the phase compensation technique to characterize a more general family of Nyquist filters which subsumes raised-cosine spectra. These generalized raised-cosine filters offer more flexibility in filter design. For instance, the rate of asymptotic decay of the filter impulse response may be increased, or the residual ISI, introduced by truncation of the impulse response, may be minimized. Design examples are provided to illustrate these choices.
Cases Study of Cultural Production Innovation in Chinese Cultural Industries

From our exploratory cases study, this research has attempted to explain how local puppet show troupes can develop sustainable competitiveness through a competitiveness virtuous circle. This paper indicates that puppet show troupes apply advanced technology to innovate beyond traditional cultural content and substantially meet market demand, aiding the organization¡¦s survival, sustaining traditional culture, and finally making the most of the synergies between cultural production innovations. The case investigations also help us understand the reasons why the case company should innovate continuously and explain the large number of new ideas and innovations generated in the last two decades.
Enhancing distributed EAs using proactivity

In this abstract we describe a proactive strategy followed by a distributed evolutionary algorithm to adapt its migration policy. The proactive decision is made locally within each subpopulation, ant it is based on the entropy of that subpopulation. In that way, each subpopulation can ask for more/less frequent migrations from its neighbors in order to maintain the genetic diversity at a desired level, thus avoiding the subpopulations to get trapped into local minima. We conduct computational experiments on a set of different problems and it is shown that our proactive approach outperforms classical dEA settings by reaching accurate solutions in a lower number of generations.
Plasmodium attenuation: connecting the dots between early immune responses and malaria disease severity

Sterile attenuation of Plasmodium parasites at the liver-stage either by irradiation or genetic modification, or at the blood-stage by chemoprophylaxis, has been shown to induce immune responses that can protect against subsequent wild-type infection. However, following certain interventions, parasite attenuation can be incomplete or non-sterile. Instead parasites are rendered developmentally stunted but still capable of establishing an acute infection. In experiments involving Plasmodium berghei ANKA, a model of experimental cerebral malaria, it has been observed that several forms of attenuated parasites do not induce cerebral pathology. In this perspective we collect evidence from studies on murine malaria in particular, and attempt to “connect the dots” between early immune responses and protection from severe cerebral disease, highlighting potential parallels to human infection.
Gesture tracking and recognition in touchscreens usability testing

In this paper we present a tool for gathering touchscreen data for usability analysis. Touchscreens are becoming the most popular input/output devices mainly because of increasing number of smartphones and tablets. As the interaction with touchscreens differs from interaction using standard devices such as mouse or touchpad it is necessary to deliver special tools for data gathering and methods for usability analysis.
Tuberculin Skin Reaction among Healthy People and Patients with Arthritis in the Southern Israeli Region

Introduction: Reactivation of latent tuberculosis is a major complication of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) inhibitors. Therefore, screening for latent TB is recommended before initiation of this treatment. The aim of the study was to compare Tuberculosis skin test (TST) size reaction between healthy people and patients, with Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), Ankylosising spondylitis (AnS) and Psoriatic arthritis (PsA). Patients and Methods: Results of TST of 133 healthy subjects were compared with the results of TST of 79 patients, suffering from RA, AnS and PsA. A χ2 test was used to compare the difference between the groups. A value of p 0.05 was considered significant. Active tuberculosis (TB) was excluded by chest X-ray and through patient’s history. The results of TST reaction were grouped according to the CDC’s (Centers for Disease Control and prevention) recommendation, e.g. 0 - 4 mm, 5 - 9 mm, 10 - 15 mm and >15 mm. Results: Among RA patients 80% received Methotrexate (MTX), 50% Prednisone and 20% other DMARDs. 20% of patients suffering from AnS received MTX, 80%—NSAIDs, and among patients with PsA 70% received MTX, 30%—Salazopirin. There was no significant difference in history of bacilli Calmette-Guerine vaccination between the groups. There was no significant difference in TST reaction distribution between healthy subjects and patients with RA—p > 0.5. TST reaction distribution differed significantly between healthy people and AnS (p 0.05) and PsA (p 0.001) patients. The overall tendency in these two patients’ groups was towards high positive TST, especially among PsA patients. Conclusion: Our results showed that RA patients may present TST reaction as healthy people. The high percent of our AnS and PsA patients that showed TST reaction above15 mmneed further exploration. We conclude that it may be not appropriate to use TST to recognize LTBI in our population.
Staggered chiral perturbation theory and the fourth-root trick

Staggered chiral perturbation theory (S{chi}PT) takes into account the 'fourth-root trick' for reducing unwanted (taste) degrees of freedom with staggered quarks by multiplying the contribution of each sea quark loop by a factor of 1/4. In the special case of four staggered fields (four flavors, n{sub F}=4), I show here that certain assumptions about analyticity and phase structure imply the validity of this procedure for representing the rooting trick in the chiral sector. I start from the observation that, when the four flavors are degenerate, the fourth root simply reduces n{sub F}=4 to n{sub F}=1. One can then treat nondegenerate quark masses by expanding around the degenerate limit. With additional assumptions on decoupling, the result can be extended to the more interesting cases of n{sub F}=3, 2, or 1. An apparent paradox associated with the one-flavor case is resolved. Coupled with some expected features of unrooted staggered quarks in the continuum limit, in particular, the restoration of taste symmetry, S{chi}PT then implies that the fourth-root trick induces no problems (for example, a violation of unitarity that persists in the continuum limit) in the lowest energy sector of staggered lattice QCD. It also says that the theory with staggered valence quarksmore » and rooted staggered sea quarks behaves like a simple, partially-quenched theory, not like a mixed theory in which sea and valence quarks have different lattice actions. In most cases, the assumptions made in this paper are not only sufficient but also necessary for the validity of S{chi}PT, so that a variety of possible new routes for testing this validity are opened. « less
Three-dimensional analysis of a tensile test on a propellant with digital volume correlation

A full three-dimensional study of a tensile test on a sample made of polymerbonded propellant is presented. The analysis combines different tools, namely, X-ray microtomography of an in situ experiment, image acquisition and treatment, 3D volume correlation to measure three-dimensional displacement fields. It allows for global and local strain analyses prior to and after the peak load. By studying the correlation residuals, it is also possible to analyze the damage activity during the experiment.
Relating Faults in Diagnostic Reasoning With Diagnostic Errors and Patient Harm

Purpose The relationship between faults in diagnostic reasoning, diagnostic errors, and patient harm has hardly been studied. This study examined suboptimal cognitive acts (SCAs; i.e., faults in diagnostic reasoning), related them to the occurrence of diagnostic errors and patient harm, and studied the causes. Method Four expert internists reviewed patient records of 247 dyspnea patients, using a specially developed questionnaire to detect SCAs. The patients were treated by 72 physicians between May 2007 and February 2008 in five Dutch hospitals. The findings of the record review were discussed with the treating physicians, and the causes of SCAs were classified using Reason's taxonomy of unsafe acts. Statistical analyses were performed with descriptive statistics and independent t tests to compare groups. Furthermore, a reliability study was conducted to assess the interrater reliability. Results SCAs occurred in 163 of 247 cases reviewed (66%). In 34 (13.8%) of all cases, a diagnostic error occurred, and in 28 (11.3%) cases, the patient was harmed. Cases with diagnostic errors or patient harm had more SCAs. However, in 10 (4.0%) of the cases, diagnostic errors or patient harm occurred, though there were no SCAs. The causes of SCAs were mostly mistakes (i.e., the planned action was incorrect). Conclusions In cases with more SCAs, diagnostic errors and patient harm occurred more often, suggesting that the number of SCAs per case was predictive of the occurrence of these events. The most common causes were mistakes, meaning that physicians did not realize their actions were incorrect.
Real-time streaming of Gauss-Markov sources over sliding window burst-erasure channels

We study sequential streaming of Gauss-Markov sources over a burst-erasure channel. In any sliding window of length L, the channel introduces a single erasure burst of maximum length B. The encoder observes a sequence of vector Gaussian sources, where the vectors are i.i. d. across the spatial dimension and correlated across the temporal dimension. The encoder output can depend on all source vectors observed up to that time but not on any future source vectors. The decoder is required to reconstruct the source vectors instantaneously and within a quadratic distortion constraint of D, except those source vectors that either appear during the erasure periods or a recovery period of W following each erasure burst. We focus on time-invariant encoders and establish upper and lower bounds on the minimum compression rate R(L, B, W, D). Our lower bound is obtained by making connection to a Gaussian multi-terminal source coding problem. The upper bound is based on distributed source coding, but requires a careful analysis of the achievable rate. Numerical comparisons indicate that the proposed technique provides significant gains over other baseline schemes.
Strictly convex corners scatter

We prove the absence of non-scattering energies for potentials in the plane having a corner of angle smaller than $\pi$. This extends the earlier result of Bl{\aa}sten, P\"aiv\"arinta and Sylvester who considered rectangular corners. In three dimensions, we prove a similar result for any potential with a circular conic corner whose opening angle is outside a countable subset of $(0,\pi)$.
Guided-MLESAC: faster image transform estimation by using matching priors

MLESAC is an established algorithm for maximum-likelihood estimation by random sampling consensus, devised for computing multiview entities like the fundamental matrix from correspondences between image features. A shortcoming of the method is that it assumes that little is known about the prior probabilities of the validities of the correspondences. This paper explains the consequences of that omission and describes how the algorithm's theoretical standing and practical performance can be enhanced by deriving estimates of these prior probabilities. Using the priors in guided-MLESAC is found to give an order of magnitude speed increase for problems where the correspondences are described by one image transformation and clutter. This paper describes two further modifications to guided-MLESAC. The first shows how all putative matches, rather than just the best, from a particular feature can be taken forward into the sampling stage, albeit at the expense of additional computation. The second suggests how to propagate the output from one frame forward to successive frames. The additional information makes guided-MLESAC computationally realistic at video-rates for correspondence sets modeled by two transformations and clutter.
Track Down HW Function Faults Using Real SW Invariants

System level functional verification by running real software stack on FPGA prototype is essential for achieving a high quality design. But it is hard to find the exact source of hardware function faults while running large closed source system software fails. This paper proposes the idea of tracking down faults through real system software control flow invariants with current trace output hardware support. It captures qualified control flow invariant trace in reference execution and test trace; and tracks down faults through comparing offline invariant trace and test trace. The approach can deal with both deterministic and nondeterministic execution. We implemented the proof of concept in full system simulator Bochs. Our experimentation with the real closed source MS Windows XP suggests that the approach is effective in tracking down hardware function faults.