Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Erasure coding for small objects in in-memory KV storage

We present MemEC, an erasure-coding-based in-memory key-value (KV) store that achieves high availability and fast recovery while keeping low data redundancy across storage servers. MemEC is specifically designed for workloads dominated by small objects. By encoding objects in entirety, MemEC is shown to incur 60% less storage redundancy for small objects than existing replication- and erasure-coding-based approaches. It also supports graceful transitions between decentralized requests in normal mode (i.e., no failures) and coordinated requests in degraded mode (i.e., with failures). We evaluate our MemEC prototype via testbed experiments under read-heavy and update-heavy YCSB workloads. We show that MemEC achieves high throughput and low latency in both normal and degraded modes, and supports fast transitions between the two modes.
Analysing the value chain for African leafy vegetables in Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract The aim of this study has been to analyse the value chain of African leafy vegetables in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. This was done by identifying the prominent value chain actors, institutions governing the chain, the infrastructural endowments, key factors and challenges affecting the success or failure of the value chains for African leafy vegetables. Relationships among the value chain actors were weak, with transactions based mostly on spot markets. While smallholder farmers attain high gross margins, their intention to take part in the mainstream markets are prevented by lack of technical advice on production, lack of packaging and processing services, poor infrastructure, deficiency of contractual agreements between actors, and lack of access to finance. Although producers currently attain relatively higher gross margins, more benefits might be realized if government services (such as training, seed production and distribution) could either be decentralized or privatized. Future policy interventions should focus on promoting value addition along the African leafy vegetable chain, provision of cold storage facilities by municipalities closer to smallholder farmers in the rural areas and this will stabilize farm gate prices to encourage continuation of production.
Tardis

Developers who set a breakpoint a few statements too late or who are trying to diagnose a subtle bug from a single core dump often wish for a time-traveling debugger. The ability to rewind time to see the exact sequence of statements and program values leading to an error has great intuitive appeal but, due to large time and space overheads, time traveling debuggers have seen limited adoption. A managed runtime, such as the Java JVM or a JavaScript engine, has already paid much of the cost of providing core features - type safety, memory management, and virtual IO - that can be reused to implement a low overhead time-traveling debugger. We leverage this insight to design and build affordable time-traveling debuggers for managed languages. Tardis realizes our design: it provides affordable time-travel with an average overhead of only 7% during normal execution, a rate of 0.6MB/s of history logging, and a worst-case 0.68s time-travel latency on our benchmark applications. Tardis can also debug optimized code using time-travel to reconstruct state. This capability, coupled with its low overhead, makes Tardis suitable for use as the default debugger for managed languages, promising to bring time-traveling debugging into the mainstream and transform the practice of debugging.
Korean NLP2RDF Resources

The aim of Linked Open Data (LOD) is to improve information management and integration by enhancing accessibility to the existing various forms of open data. The goal of this paper is to make Korean resources linkable entities. By using NLP tools, which are suggested in this paper, Korean texts are converted to RDF resources and they can be connected with other RDF triples. It is worth noticing that to the best of our knowledge there is a few of publicy available Korean NLP tools. For this reason, the Korean NLP platform presented here will be available as open source. And it is shown in this paper that the result of this NLP platform can be used as Linked Data entities.
On Estimation and Prediction for Multivariate Multiresolution Tree-Structured Spatial Linear Models Technical Report 1102

Multiresolution tree-structured models prove to be attractive for dealing with large amounts of spatial data. With the multiresolution tree structure, a change-of-resolution Kalman filter algorithm has been devised to predict spatial processes in a computationally efficient manner (see, e.g., Huang and Cressie, 1997, Huang et al., 2002). In this article, we extend the multiresolution tree-structured model to account for multiple response variables simultaneously. Despite the increased model complexity, we derive the theoretical properties of statistical inference and develop direct and fast algorithms for computation. For spatial process prediction, we develop general theory of optimal projection and generalize the existing change-of-resolution Kalman filter to accommodate singularity. For model parameter estimation, we consider a factorization of the likelihood function to ensure computational efficiency. Moreover, under a fairly mild condition, we derive the distributional properties of both maximum likelihood estimates and restricted maximum likelihood estimates. For illustration, we analyze simulated data as well as a real data set regarding major crop distributions.
Checking app user interfaces against app descriptions

Does the advertised behavior of apps correlate with what a user sees on a screen? In this paper, we introduce a technique to statically extract the text from the user interface definitions of an Android app. We use this technique to compare the natural language topics of an app’s user interface against the topics from its app store description. A mismatch indicates that some feature is exposed by the user interface, but is not present in the description, or vice versa. The popular Twitter app, for instance, spots UI elements that al- low to make purchases; however, this feature is not mentioned in its description. Likewise, we identified a number of apps whose user interface asks users to access or supply sensitive data; but this “feature” is not mentioned in the description. In the long run, analyzing user interface topics and comparing them against external descriptions opens the way for checking general mismatches between requirements and implementation.
Image Distortion Correction in fMRI: A Quantitative Evaluation

A well-recognized problem with the echo-planar imaging (EPI) technique most commonly used for functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies is geometric distortion caused by magnetic field inhomogeneity. This makes it difficult to achieve an accurate registration between a functional activation map calculated from an EPI time series and an undistorted, high resolution anatomical image. A correction method based on mapping the spatial distribution of field inhomogeneities can be used to reduce these distortions. This approach is attractive in its simplicity but requires postprocessing to improve the robustness of the acquired field map and reduce any secondary artifacts. Furthermore, the distribution of the internal magnetic field throughout the head is position dependent resulting in an interaction between distortion and head motion. Therefore, a single field map may not be sufficient to correct for the distortions throughout a whole fMRI time series. In this paper we present a quantitative evaluation of image distortion correction for fMRI at 2T. We assess (i) methods for the acquisition and calculation of field maps, (ii) the effect of image distortion correction on the coregistration between anatomical and functional images, and (iii) the interaction between distortion and head motion, assessing the feasibility of using field maps to reduce this effect. We propose that field maps with acceptable noise levels can be generated easily using a dual echo-time EPI sequence and demonstrate the importance of distortion correction for anatomical coregistration, even for small distortions. Using a dual echo-time series to generate a unique field map at each time point, we characterize the interaction between head motion and geometric distortion. However, we suggest that the variance between successively measured field maps introduces additional unwanted variance in the voxel time-series and is therefore not adequate to correct for time-varying distortions.
Real Time Filtering of Tweets Using Wikipedia Concepts and Google Tri-gram Semantic Relatedness

Abstract : This paper describes our participation in the mobile notification and email digest tasks in the TREC 2015 Mircoblog track. The tasks are about monitoring Twitter stream and retrieving relevant tweets to users interest profiles. Interest profiles contain the description of a topic that the user is interested in receiving relevant posts in real-time. Our proposed approach extracts Wikipedia concepts for profiles and tweets and applies a corpus-based word semantic relatedness method to assign tweets to their relevant profiles. This approach is also used to determine whether two tweets are semantically similar which in turn prevents the retrieval of redundant tweets.
A study on high-κ gate stack for MOS-FET

At submicron range below 45 nm technology for MOS transistors, leakage power dissipation is a critical concern other than dynamic and short circuit power dissipation. This happens due to the effect of low level dielectric property of Silicon dioxide (SiO2) gate insulator. It has been observed that the leakage power dissipation is reduced further to a large extent using high-κ dielectric. In this paper, we will study the nature of high-κ dielectric material in lower submicron NMOS Technology using “MINIMOS-NT Global TCAD” simulation software. The role of leakage current for a few high-k gate materials in singular and in stacks will be determined from the transfer characteristics of a MOS transistor. The study has been extended to Gate Stack dielectric materials for NMOS. Some interesting results have been presented here, using some high-k dielectric materials.
Evaluation of Fibrous Cap Rupture of Atherosclerotic Carotid Plaque with Thin-Slice Source Images of Time-of-Flight MR Angiography.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the ability of source image of time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography (TOF-MRA) in the detection of fibrous cap rupture of atherosclerotic carotid plaques. MATERIALS AND METHODS From the database of radiological information in our hospital, 35 patients who underwent carotid MR imaging and subsequent carotid endoarterectomy within 2 weeks were included in this retrospective study. MR imaging included thin-slice time-of-flight MR angiography, black-blood T1- and T2-weighted imaging. Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were calculated for the detection of fibrous cap rupture with source image of TOF-MRA. The Cohen k coefficient was also calculated to quantify the degree of concordance of source image of TOF-MRA with histopathological data. RESULTS Sensitivity, specificity and accuracy in the detection of fibrous cap rupture were 90% (95%CI: 81-98), 69% (95%CI: 56-82) and 79% (95%CI: 71-87) with a k value of 0.59. The false positives (n = 15) were caused by partial-volume averaging between fibrous cap and lumen at the shoulder of carotid plaque. The false negatives (n = 5) were underestimated as partial thinning of fibrous cap. CONCLUSION Source image of TOF-MRA can be useful in the detection of fibrous cap rupture with high sensitivity, but further technical improvement should be necessary to overcome shortcomings causing image degradation.
Further validation of the Daily Living Tasks Dependent on Vision: identification of domains

Aim: To examine the Daily Living Tasks Dependent on Vision (DLTV), a visual function questionnaire for domain structure, and redundancy. Method: 235 subjects underwent full ophthalmic assessment and completed the DLTV questionnaire by interview. Principal component analysis with varimax rotation and item response theory (IRT) were used to assign the items to domains. The internal consistency of each domain was examined using Cronbach’s alpha. Redundancy was assessed by regressing each item in a domain against the remainder of items in that domain. Results: Four domains were identified. Domain 1 was formed by nine items, which after applying IRT were seen to be among the most difficult questions in the instrument. Domain 2 contained eight items, all of which fell in the easier half of the instrument on applying IRT. Domain 3 contained only three items, all of which were among the easier questions and appear to deal with peripheral vision function. Domain 4 consisted of two items dealing with adaptation to light and dark conditions. Cronbach’s alpha for each domain was 0.96, 0.93, 0.73, 0.66. Redundancy was found to be present in domain 1, which was therefore reduced by two items, with little effect on internal consistency. Conclusions: The authors believe using the domains identified in this report will optimise the information provided by patients on their ability to function on visually demanding tasks.
Nonparametric maximum likelihood estimation of the structural mean of a sample of curves

A random sample of curves can be usually thought of as noisy realisations of a compound stochastic process X(t) e Z{W(t)}, where Z(t) produces random amplitude variation and W(t) produces random dynamic or phase variation. In most applications it is more important to estimate the so-called structural mean μ(t) e E{Z(t)} than the crosssectional mean E{X(t)}, but this estimation problem is difficult because the process Z(t) is not directly observable. In this paper we propose a nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator of μ(t). This estimator is shown to be √n-consistent and asymptotically normal under the assumed model and robust to model misspecification. Simulations and a realdata example show that the proposed estimator is competitive with landmark registration, often considered the benchmark, and has the advantage of avoiding time-consuming and often infeasible individual landmark identification. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.
Call Centers with Delay Information: Models and Insights

This section supports the paragraph “Effect of θ on the optimal announcement coverage β∗” in Section 5 of the main paper Jouini et al. (2011). We would like to see how the call center performance measures under the optimal announcement coverage β∗ are different from those under other β values. In other words, does it matter that a manager chooses a β that would be different from the optimal one, and to what extent? We consider Model 2 under the update case (θ = 0) with the same parameters as those in Table 1 of the main paper: μ = 1, γ = 0.5, α0 = 5%, (s, λ) = (3,3), (5,5), (20,20), and (100,100). We compute the performance measures of Model 2 for different β, β =10%, 20%, . , 90%. Note from Table 1 of the main paper that for all call center sizes, β =90% is approximately optimal. The results are given in Table 1, and in Figures 1(a)-1(d). From Table 1, we see that there are considerable changes in the performance measures when we announce delays other than those under the optimal announcement coverage. These changes are particularly apparent when the pooling effect is absent. The pooling effect improves the performance measures thereby reducing the sensitivity to the choice of β. For s = 3, P is divided by around 10 when moving from β = 10% to β = 90%. However for s = 100, it is only divided by around 2. In summary, for all call center sizes, all
Exposing Digital Video Forgery by Detecting Motion-Compensated Edge Artifact

In the digital multimedia era, it is becoming increasingly important to ensure the integrity and authenticity of the enormous amount of the video data. To detect the effect of frame-deletion, which is one of the common and simple forgery methods in video streams, a new approach based on motion-compensated edge artifact is proposed in this paper. It introduces the factor of motion-compensated edge artifact to measure the changes of correlation between adjacent frames, and can locate the break point of frame-deletion in the stream. Experimental results show that our approach achieves promising effect in video forgery detection. KeywordsDigital Tampering; Digital Video Forensics; Frame-deletion ;Motion-Compensated Edge Artifact
Ethical Challenges in the Care of Emerging Diseases: A Systematic Literature Review

Background and Aim : Management of emerging diseases requires an ethical approach to the control and care of these diseases. An ethical approach has been emphasized. The present study aimed to determine the ethical challenges in the care of emerging diseases. Materials and Methods: In this systematic review, using the three-step method, articles that published in English were retrieved using main keywords in the Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science databases from 1970 to 2017. Then, the articles with inclusion criteria were studied and analyzed. Out of the 5833 retrieved articles, 20 articles were reviewed. Analyzing the articles and extracting the data was done by two expired researchers simultaneously, as well as, evaluating the quality of the articles in order to increase the validity and reliability of the study. In terms of study type, 16 articles were descriptive (80%) and 4 cases (20%) were qualitative studies. Findings: The main ethical challenges identified included: patient rights, respect for patient autonomy, patient privacy, obligation of the patient care, reciprocity principle, accountability and responsibility of the states, and prevention of the patient stigmatization and discrimination. Conclusion: The findings highlights the need to consider ethical considerations in planning and taking care for emerging diseases. The inclusion of professional ethics training in the management of emerging diseases and ethical decision-making in epidemics in the curriculum of health care providers is recommended for better management of these diseases. Please cite this article as: Dehghan Nayeri N, Taghavi T, Shali M. Ethical Challenges in the Care of Emerging Diseases: A Systematic Literature Review. Bioethics Journal 2017; 7(26): 85-96.
Towards a Memetic Feature Selection Paradigm [Application Notes]

Feature selection has become the focus of many real-world application oriented developments and applied research in recent years. With the rapid advancement of computer and database technologies, problems "with hundreds and thousands of variables or features are now ubiquitous in pattern recognition, data mining, and machine learning [1], [2]. In this article, we consider two real-world feature selection applications: gene selection in cancer classification based on microarray data and band selection for pixel classification using hyperspectral imagery data.
Impact of aviation on climate: research priorities.

Though presently small in magnitude, aviation's future impact on climate will likely increase with the absence of effective mitigation measures. With the exception of CO2 emissions, climate impacts of aviation emissions are quite uncertain, and there are scientific gaps that need to be addressed to guide decision making. An objective of the Next Generation Air Transportation System is to limit or reduce aviation's impact on climate. Therefore, the Federal Aviation Administration has developed the Aviation Climate Change Research Initiative (ACCRI) to address key scientific gaps and reduce uncertainties while providing timely scientific input to advance and implement mitigation measures. This paper provides a brief overview of the priority-driven research areas that ACCRI has identified and that need to be pursued to better characterize aviation's impact on climate change.
Eye tracking and usability research: An introduction to the special issue

Undoubtedly, there is a great potential for the eye movement research community with the ECEM as faceto-face platform and the JEMR as open access journal to bridge the gap between basic knowledge and experimental procedures, on the one hand, and the idiosyncratic requirements for a successful application of eye tracking, on the other. The current special issue of the journal is a representative – though non exhaustive – selection of recent studies that attempt to reach exactly this goal, i.e. bringing expertise in eye movement research to application domains.
Crystalline Representations for GL(2) over Quadratic Imaginary Fields

Let K be a quadratic imaginary field and π an irreducible regular algebraic cuspidal automorphic representation of GL(2,AK). Under the assumption that the central character χπ is isomorphic to its complex conjugate, Taylor et al. associated p-adic Galois representations ρπ,p : GK → GL(2,Qp) which are unramified except at finitely many places, and such that the truncated L-function of the Galois representation equals the truncated L-function of π. We extend this result to include crystallinity of the Galois representation at p, under some restrictions on π (we require distinct Satake parameters). We first follow Kisin and Lai in constructing geometric families of finite slope overconvergent Siegel modular forms. This is achieved by defining overconvergent Siegel modular forms geometrically, and then showing that an Atkin-Lehner operator acts completely continuously on the space of such forms. Geometric families are then defined using eigenvarieties. We exhibit, in a rigid neighborhood of a theta lift of the representation π, a dense set of classical Siegel modular forms whose associated Galois representations are crystalline at p. Using this dense set of classical points we construct an analytic Galois representation in the chosen neighborhood of the theta lift. Finally, we appeal to a theorem of Kisin to show that crystalline periods at the dense set of classical points extend to the theta lift of π.
Merging the Minnaert-$k$ Parameter With Spectral Unmixing to Map Forest Heterogeneity With CHRIS/PROBA Data

The Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (CHRIS) mounted onboard the Project for Onboard Autonomy (PROBA) spacecraft is capable of sampling reflected radiation at five viewing angles over the visible and near-infrared regions of the solar spectrum with high spatial resolution. We combined the spectral domain with the angular domain of CHRIS data in order to map the surface heterogeneity of an Alpine coniferous forest during winter. In the spectral domain, linear spectral unmixing of the nadir image resulted in a canopy cover map. In the angular domain, pixelwise inversion of the Rahman-Pinty-Verstraete (RPV) model at a single wavelength at the red edge (722 nm) yielded a map of the Minnaert-k parameter that provided information on surface heterogeneity at a subpixel scale. However, the interpretation of the Minnaert-k parameter is not always straightforward because fully vegetated targets typically produce the same type of reflectance anisotropy as non-vegetated targets. Merging both maps resulted in a forest cover heterogeneity map, which contains more detailed information on canopy heterogeneity at the CHRIS subpixel scale than is possible to realize from a single-source optical data set.