Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analytics on public transport delays with spatial big data

The increasing pervasiveness of location-aware technologies is leading to the rise of large, spatio-temporal datasets and to the opportunity of discovering usable knowledge about the behaviors of people and objects. Applied extensively in transportation, spatial big data and its analytics can deliver useful insights on a number of different issues such as congestion, delays, public transport reliability and so on. Predominantly studied for its use in operational management, spatial big data can be used to provide insight in strategic applications as well, from planning and design to evaluation and management. Such large scale, streaming spatial big data can be used in the improvement of public transport, for example the design of public transport networks and reliability. In this paper, we analyze GTFS data from the cities of Stockholm and Rome to gain insight on the sources and factors influencing public transport delays in the cities. The analysis is performed on a combination of GTFS data with data from other sources. The paper points to key issues in the analysis of real time data, driven by the contextual setting in the two cities.
BH3-Only Protein BIM Mediates Heat Shock-Induced Apoptosis

Acute heat shock can induce apoptosis through a canonical pathway involving the upstream activation of caspase-2, followed by BID cleavage and stimulation of the intrinsic pathway. Herein, we report that the BH3-only protein BIM, rather than BID, is essential to heat shock-induced cell death. We observed that BIM-deficient cells were highly resistant to heat shock, exhibiting short and long-term survival equivalent to Bax−/−Bak−/− cells and better than either Bid−/− or dominant-negative caspase-9-expressing cells. Only Bim−/− and Bax−/−Bak−/− cells exhibited resistance to mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization and loss of mitochondrial inner membrane potential. Moreover, while dimerized caspase-2 failed to induce apoptosis in Bid−/− cells, it readily did so in Bim−/− cells, implying that caspase-2 kills exclusively through BID, not BIM. Finally, BIM reportedly associates with MCL-1 following heat shock, and Mcl-1−/− cells were indeed sensitized to heat shock-induced apoptosis. However, pharmacological inhibition of BCL-2 and BCL-XL with ABT-737 also sensitized cells to heat shock, most likely through liberation of BIM. Thus, BIM mediates heat shock-induced apoptosis through a BAX/BAK-dependent pathway that is antagonized by antiapoptotic BCL-2 family members.
An Analysis of Linux Scalability to Many Cores

This paper analyzes the scalability of seven system applications (Exim, memcached, Apache, PostgreSQL, gmake, Psearchy, and MapReduce) running on Linux on a 48- core computer. Except for gmake, all applications trigger scalability bottlenecks inside a recent Linux kernel. Using mostly standard parallel programming techniques-- this paper introduces one new technique, sloppy counters-- these bottlenecks can be removed from the kernel or avoided by changing the applications slightly. Modifying the kernel required in total 3002 lines of code changes. A speculative conclusion from this analysis is that there is no scalability reason to give up on traditional operating system organizations just yet.
Bio-signal Characteristics Detection Utilizing Frequency Ordered Wavelet Packets

An application of wavelet packet is presented for electrocardiogram (ECG) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) characteristics detection in this study. A fully automated system is developed to detect the "R" peaks which are beat designators and are used consequently to locate other ECG characteristics. They include "P", "Q", "S" and "T" waves along with "ST" segment shift. The peaks and the area under the peaks of MRS signals are also detected. The Daubechies wavelets are selected as base processing filters. Frequency ordered wavelet packets (FOWPT) is utilized to generate a time-frequency plot of the signal used for further processing. The algorithm is validated on MIT-BIH database. The proposed beat detector achieved sensitivity of 99.18%plusmn2.75 and a positive predictivity of 98.00%plusmn4.45. The "P" wave detector achieved sensitivity of 51.69% and a positive predictivity of 53.64%.
Foot placement method to change velocity of running biped robot

In this paper, a method for a biped robot to run with a velocity change by selecting its foot landing position appropriately is proposed. The zero moment point (ZMP) is used as the criteria to identify the stability of the biped robot. The ZMP is estimated by the position of the center of mass (COM) and the acceleration of the robot. This means that by setting an appropriate ZMP for the robot, the acceleration of the robot can be controlled. In this paper, ZMP is not only used for stability criteria, but also used to change the velocity in running. The ZMP is designed to reach the desired velocity of the robot, and the trajectory to change the running velocity is generated made the assumption that the ZMP is the foot landing position. By using the method, the biped robot can run stably while changing its velocity. The performance of the proposed method was verified by computer simulations.
Automatic detection of psychological distress indicators and severity assessment in crisis hotline conversations

Psychological health disorders pose a growing threat to society. Disorders such as Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI), are often under-diagnosed and under-treated. Crisis hotlines are often the last resort for people who, from the lack of proper treatment, are considering suicide or intend to harm themselves or others. This paper describes a system that automatically analyzes online crisis hotline chats to (1) extract fine-grained distress indicators that map to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV codes, and to (2) perform triage classification based on the severity of distress. For distress detection, we present several approaches which leverage annotator rationales and dialogue structure to improve classification performance, demonstrating significant gains over a state-of-the-art approach from literature. For triage classification, we demonstrate early detection capability for the most severe triage code. We evaluate our work on a large corpus of chats from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' online Crisis Hotline.
SQL-like big data environments: Case study in clinical trial analytics

Big Data deals with enormous volumes of complex and exponentially growing data sets from multiple sources. With rapid growth in technology, we are now able to generate immense amount of data in almost any field imaginable including physical, biological and biomedical sciences. With the diversity and amount of data in health care industry there is an increasing need to evaluate the components in big data frameworks and gauge their adaptability to analytics techniques. However, a key step in adapting big data tools is the portability of relational databases to big data environment. Since SQL is considered to be the de-facto language for interactive queries, in this paper, we evaluate the performance of SQL-like big data solutions for the portability of existing relational databases. Our work focuses on benchmarking multiple SQL-like big data technologies over Hadoop based distributed file system (HDFS) for Study Data Tabulation Model (SDTM) used in clinical trial databases for improving the efficiency of research in clinical trials. We use publically available clinical trial data (from National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)), which follows SDTM, as a test bed to measure key parameters like usability, adaptability, modularity, robustness and efficiency of these solutions. With the intention to demonstrate how current clinical trial functionality can be replicated on a big data backend with high SQL-like functionality, we evaluate several types of ad-hoc SQL queries.
Winner-update algorithm for nearest neighbor search

This paper presents an algorithm, called the winner-update algorithm, for accelerating the nearest neighbor search. By constructing a hierarchical structure for each feature point in the l/sub p/ metric space, this algorithm can save a large amount of computation at the expense of moderate preprocessing and twice the memory storage. Given a query point, the cost for computing the distances from this point to all the sample points can be reduced by using a lower bound list of the distance established from Minkowski's inequality. Our experiments have shown that the proposed algorithm can save a large amount of computation, especially when the distance between the query point and its nearest neighbor is relatively small. With slight modification, the winner-update algorithm can also speed up the search for k nearest neighbors, neighbors within a specified distance threshold, and neighbors close to the nearest neighbor.
The Comparison Study of Water-Rock Interaction Before and During the Artificial Recharge

The water-rock interaction during the artificial recharge is an important influencing factor of groundwater environment quality in the recharged aquifer. The hydro geochemical simulation and indoor experiment were used to study the mechanism of water-rock interaction in the recharge aquifer before and during the artificial recharge respectively. The results of the research showed that the original water-rock interaction during the groundwater runoff in the recharged aquifer before the artificial recharge were dissolution of dolomite, k-feldspar, anorthite, halite, gypsum and precipitation of calcite and illite and the reaction amounts were 0.1207~0.2300nmol/L, 0.1721~0.5074 nmol/L, 0.0975~0.1053 nmol/L, 0.3363~0.3673 nmol/L, 0.0021~0.0063 nmol/L, 0.1117~0.3011 nmol/L and 0.2868~0.8457 nmol/L respectively, During the artificial recharge, the TDS(Total Dissolved Solids) of the mixed water decreased and the water type became Na-Ca-HCO3-Cl from Na-Cl-HCO3 with the increase of proportion of the recharge water affected by the mixing and in the same proportion of the recharge water, the TDS of the mixed water increased and the concentrations of the major ions showed increasing trend affected by the water-rock interaction, during the artificial recharge, Ca2+ and HCO3-originated from the dissolution of calcite and dolomite, but before the the artificial recharge, Ca2+ originated from the dissolution of anorthite, Mg2+ originated from the dissolution of dolomite and Na+ originated from the dissolution of halite both during and before the artificial recharge, with the increase of proportion of the recharge water, pH decreased and pE increased nonlinearly in the mixed water and there was a negative correlation and the correlation coefficient was 0.99 between the pH and pE in the mixed water. This study provides necessary basis for the overall developing of artificial recharge technology and the guarantee of security and stability of the groundwater environment.
Elements of the randomized combinatorial file structure

A file structure designed to provide rapid, random access with minimum storage overhead is presented. Storage and retrieval are achieved by direct attribute combination-to-address transformation thereby negating the necessity for large file dictionaries or list-pointer structures. The attribute combination-to-address transformation is conceptually similar to key-to-address transformation techniques, but the transformation is not limited to operations on a single key but operates on the combination of several independent keys (or any subset of the combination) describing an item or request.A storage and retrieval system utilizing the combinatorial file structure is developed. Storage and retrieval results derived from a simulated document library of 4000 items are presented. The new file organization is shown to have marked value with respect to minimum storage overhead and high retrieval speed.
Embedded local feature based background modeling for video object detection

Background modeling has been one of the approaches for detecting foreground in a video. The challenge is when some of the entities of background are dynamic instead of being static. In this paper, we propose a feature embedding scheme to model background having some dynamic objects and varying illumination conditions. The two local feature extracting operators such as Local Binary Pattern (LBP) operator and Gabor filter have been appropriately embedded to model texture backgrounds with dynamic entities. The embedding has been in non linear frame work and the notion of information theoretic measure has been used to take care of the above two condition in the background. This background model has learned to efficiently model the background of the video. The performance of the proposed feature embedded algorithm has been found to be better than those of Huerta et al.'s [11] algorithm and Heikkila et al.'s [12] algorithm. Simulation results have been presented for video frames of PETS sequences.
Using citizen science in environmental justice: participation and decision-making in a Southern California waste facility siting conflict

ABSTRACT Uses of science by environmental justice (EJ) activists reflect struggles to challenge professional scientific expertise, achieve fair outcomes, and effectively participate in decision-making processes. This qualitative research analyses the relationship between citizen science and EJ in a new waste facility siting conflict in urban Los Angeles, namely connections between citizen science and four dimensions of EJ: fair distribution, respect and recognition, participation in decision-making, and community capabilities. Citizen science is one tactic in EJ, yet little research investigates its role in a new facility siting conflict, particularly in relation to multi-faceted EJ goals. The research reveals opportunities for individual empowerment and community capacity building using citizen science, and a small measure of improved respect and recognition for participants who brought their own knowledge, research, and voices to the table. At the same time, the work identifies limitations on citizen science to improve local participatory procedures and decision-making, which also constricted the achievement of outcomes most desired by the EJ group: to prevent approval and construction of the new waste facility. This paper argues that uses of citizen science contributed to partial achievement of EJ goals, while hindered by governance processes that call for public participation yet shield decision-makers from substantive engagement with the volume or content of that participation.
ON THE THEORY OF SCALAR PAIR PRODUCTION BY A POTENTIAL BARRIER

The problem of the scalar pair production by a one-dimensional vector-potential A μ (x 3 ) is reduced to the S-matrix formalism of the theory with an unstable vacuum. Our choice of in- and out-states does not coincide with that of other authors and we argue extensively in favor of our choice. We show that the norm of a solution of the wave equation is determined by one of the amplitude of its asymptotic form for x 3 →±∞. For the constant electric field we obtain the scalar particle propagator in terms of the stationary states and show that with our choice of in- and outstates it has the form dictated by the general theory. PACS: 11.55Ds; 12.20Ds; 03.80+r
Error Performance of Concatenated Superorthogonal Space-Time-Frequency Trellis Coded MIMO-OFDM System

In this paper, we investigate the performance of serially concatenated convolutional code with super-orthogonal space-time trellis code (SOSTTC) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) over frequency selective fading channels. We consider both recursive systematic convolutional code (RSC) and non-recursive convolutional code (NRC) as the outer code, and 16-state QPSK SOSTTC as the inner code. Employing these, two concatenated schemes consisting of single convolutional outer code and two serially concatenated convolutional outer codes are proposed. We evaluate the performance of the concatenated schemes by means of computer simulations with maximum a posteriori (MAP) algorithm based iterative decoding. Simulation results indicate that the performance of the proposed concatenated schemes improved significantly when compared with schemes without concatenation under the same channel condition.
Synthetic speech detection using temporal modulation feature

Voice conversion and speaker adaptation techniques present a threat to current state-of-the-art speaker verification systems. To prevent such spoofing attack and enhance the security of speaker verification systems, the development of anti-spoofing techniques to distinguish synthetic and human speech is necessary. In this study, we continue the quest to discriminate synthetic and human speech. Motivated by the facts that current analysis-synthesis techniques operate on frame level and make the frame-by-frame independence assumption, we proposed to adopt magnitude/phase modulation features to detect synthetic speech from human speech. Modulation features derived from magnitude/phase spectrum carry long-term temporal information of speech, and may be able to detect temporal artifacts caused by the frame-by-frame processing in the synthesis of speech signal. From our synthetic speech detection results, the modulation features provide complementary information to magnitude/phase features. The best detection performance is obtained by fusing phase modulation features and phase features, yielding an equal error rate of 0.89%, which is significantly lower than the 1.25% of phase features and 10.98% of MFCC features.
Rate-maximized transceiver optimization for multi-antenna Device-to-Device communications

In this paper, we investigate the performance enhanced transceiver design in a Device-to-Device (D2D) communication system underlaying a cellular network. The problem of joint transmitter and receiver optimization via maximizing the entire D2D and cellular transmission rate is considered. Due to the non-convexity of the primal problem, we resort to decomposing the problem into a sequence of standard convex quadratic programs. An iterative sequential optimization algorithm is accordingly presented for joint transceiver design at both the base station and the device terminals. Computer simulations convinced the performance enhancement of our proposed scheme compared with conventional transmission schemes.
Exponential lower bounds on fixed-size psd rank and semidefinite extension complexity

There has been a lot of interest recently in proving lower bounds on the size of linear programs needed to represent a given polytope P. In a breakthrough paper Fiorini et al. [Proceedings of 44th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing 2012, pages 95-106] showed that any linear programming formulation of maximum-cut must have exponential size. A natural question to ask is whether one can prove such strong lower bounds for semidefinite programming formulations. In this paper we take a step towards this goal and we prove strong lower bounds for a certain class of SDP formulations, namely SDPs over the Cartesian product of fixed-size positive semidefinite cones. In practice this corresponds to semidefinite programs with a block-diagonal structure and where blocks have constant size d. We show that any such extended formulation of the cut polytope must have exponential size (when d is fixed). The result of Fiorini et al. for LP formulations is obtained as a special case when d=1. For blocks of size d=2 the result rules out any small formulations using second-order cone programming. Our study of SDP lifts over Cartesian product of fixed-size positive semidefinite cones is motivated mainly from practical considerations where it is well known that such SDPs can be solved more efficiently than general SDPs. The proof of our lower bound relies on new results about the sparsity pattern of certain matrices with small psd rank, combined with an induction argument inspired from the recent paper by Kaibel and Weltge [arXiv:1307.3543] on the LP extension complexity of the correlation polytope.
Digital Parameterizable VHDL Module for Multilevel Multiphase Space Vector PWM

The multilevel multiphase technology combines the benefits of multilevel converters and multiphase machines. Recently, a new multilevel multiphase space vector pulsewidth modulation algorithm that is valid for any number of levels and phases was developed. In this paper, a generic digital VHDL module for such an algorithm is presented. This module is parameterizable in relation to the number of levels, the number of phases, and the number of bits of fractional part of the reference vector. It is also technology independent, reusable, and modular. This circuit has been tested by implementation in a field-programmable gate array, with the goal of a balance of speed and area optimization. It was tested by using a five-level five-phase inverter feeding an induction motor.
Double Bootstrap Confidence Intervals in the Two‐Stage DEA Approach

Contextual factors usually assume an important role in determining firms' productive efficiencies. Nevertheless, identifying them in a regression framework might be complicated. The problem arises from the efficiencies being correlated with each other when estimated by Data Envelopment Analysis, rendering standard inference methods invalid. Simar and Wilson (2007) suggest the use of bootstrap algorithms that allow for valid statistical inference in this context. This article extends their work by proposing a double bootstrap algorithm for obtaining confidence intervals with improved coverage probabilities. Moreover, acknowledging the computational burden associated with iterated bootstrap procedures, we provide an algorithm based on deterministic stopping rules, which is less computationally demanding. Monte Carlo evidence shows considerable improvement in the coverage probabilities after iterating the bootstrap procedure. The results also suggest that percentile confidence intervals perform better than their basic counterpart.
Why Are OST Workers Dedicated--or Not? Factors That Influence Commitment to OST Care Work.

Commonly identified challenges with the OST workforce include retention and lack of education and experience (Asher, 2012; Khashu & Dougherty, 2007; The After-School Corporation [TASC], 2009). Asher (2012) raises some of the challenges with this part-time workforce and starts to explore job satisfaction and career development issues. OST workers serve as potential educational change agents and make significant contributions to children’s development, but they often see their jobs as transient rather than as part of a career path (Razavi, 2007; Richardson, 2012). Their positive contributions and job satisfaction are rarely studied, in part because of the nature of the OST workforce and workplace (Asher, 2012). OST care workers not only