Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating the performance of ANTMANET protocol for MANET

Location based protocols use the information of node's position to route the data. Routing the data in this case does not mean choosing the shortest path. It means choosing the available path based on the location information, this is one of the reasons that these protocols may fail the routing task in mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) where the mobility of the nodes and the dynamic topology makes the routing task more difficult. Alternatively, the ANT colony optimization (ACO) based protocols will successfully find the shortest path to any desired destination in a MANET. To achieve reliable routing in MANET, these protocols extensively uses the control packets, consequently this will this will increase the network overhead. In this paper we present performance evaluation of ANTMANET, which is a novel MANET routing protocol based on the ACO algorithm. It utilizes the location information to minimize the search areas, which have great impact on improving the network overhead. It is observed that our bio-inspired protocol has outperformed AODV and LANMAR on different evaluation criteria such as delay, network overhead, while using the random-waypoint max-speed mobility model.
Estimating Articulated Human Motion with Covariance Scaled Sampling

We present a method for recovering three-dimensional (3D) human body motion from monocular video sequences based on a robust image matching metric, incorporation of joint limits and non-self-intersection constraints, and a new sample-and-refine search strategy guided by rescaled cost-function covariances. Monocular 3D body tracking is challenging: besides the difficulty of matching an imperfect, highly flexible, self-occluding model to cluttered image features, realistic body models have at least 30 joint parameters subject to highly nonlinear physical constraints, and at least a third of these degrees of freedom are nearly unobservable in any given monocular image. For image matching we use a carefully designed robust cost metric combining robust optical flow, edge energy, and motion boundaries. The nonlinearities and matching ambiguities make the parameter-space cost surface multimodal, ill-conditioned and highly nonlinear, so searching it is difficult. We discuss the limitations of CONDENSATION-like samplers, and describe a novel hybrid search algorithm that combines inflated-covariance-scaled sampling and robust continuous optimization subject to physical constraints and model priors. Our experiments on challenging monocular sequences show that robust cost modeling, joint and self-intersection constraints, and informed sampling are all essential for reliable monocular 3D motion estimation.
Master ’ s Thesis Visualization of File Relations in Software Systems with Adjacency Matrices

Over time there may have arisen unwanted differences between the contrived design and the actual implementation of a software system. To detect the differences, it is necessary to be aware of the system’s current structure and behavior. Companies usually don’t have the current information at hand, because software code ages, systems grow larger and employees (knowledge) leave. It is quite tedious to manually reconstruct a software system’s structure and behavior by reasoning about the system and by unraveling the system’s code. That is why aids are needed to get a better and easier insight in a system’s structure and behavior. Graph drawings are one way to visualize system information, i.e., the interdependencies between components. The most common graph representation is the node-link diagram. However, the graphs can grow incommensurably large, such that these diagrams become incomprehensible. Adjacency matrices are a new, alternative way to visualize graphs. The visualization metaphor of matrix representations is in this thesis used to visualize a system’s dependencies that exist on the file level. By using a hierarchical structure of a software system, it is possible to create surveyable matrices that visualize the relations that exist in a specific part of the system. By zooming in on a specific part of a matrix, a more detailed view of the corresponding part of the system is provided. Van Ham created a tool that displays the call relations between the files of a software product by making use of this visualization metaphor ([1], [2]). Inspired by Van Ham’s work, a web based tool was created for TIOBE Software, in which some essential conceptual changes were carried through. One change concerns arbitrary level nestings, which leaves the users more free on the definition on their systems’ structures. The metaphor is strengthened by the matrices’ independent axes, which enable users also to zoom in on columns and rows. Furthermore, the tool provides features that allow users to apply rules and to perform what-if scenarios on their systems and to introduce alternative system structures. The resulting tool is demonstrated for several of TIOBE Software’s customers. These customers’ own software systems were examined during these demonstrations. The tool is quite promising, so can be concluded from the evaluations of the given demonstrations.
Scholarly Communication in Scientific Research Practice – A Study of Computer Sciences Faculty

This study explores computer scientists' modes of communication within scientific inquiry. Situated in a socially constructed research practice, the findings provide a focused view of the collective use of two sets of communication mechanisms – electronic information mechanisms and interpersonal communication channels – within a technology-intensive field. These results are theoretically and pragmatically interesting for both scholarly communication research and library and information professionals. They suggest that to understand scholarly communication, exploring social cues embedded in the real world practice will yield valuable information, while the detailed examination of research practice may provide a resource for the general design of systems to support collaborative scientific work.
Aspect-Oriented Web Service Composition: A Petri Net Based Approach

In the various approaches of web service compositions proposed by the researcher, Aspect Oriented Web Service Composition (AOWSC) is the most formal way of composition. Composition is a set of relevant candidate web service, synchronously tied up with each other, delivered to the requestor at run time based on the service request. In par with aspect orientation, the candidate web services are developed as aspects, dynamically selected at run time based on the service request, composed through a weaving mechanism and thus handle composition. The weaving mechanism is the heart of AOWSC, as it specifies the order in which the candidate web service has to be synchronously presented with respect to each other. The paper also projects this formal approach of aspect oriented web service composition by using Petri Net algebra.
Solvent Composition is Critical for Carbodiimide Cross-Linking of Hyaluronic Acid as an Ophthalmic Biomaterial

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is one of the most important ophthalmic biomaterials, while also being used for tissue engineering and drug delivery. Although chemical cross-linking is an effective way to improve the material performance, it may as a consequence be detrimental to the living cells/tissues. Given that the cross-linking efficiency is mediated by the solvent composition during the chemical modification, this study aims to explore the stability and biocompatibility of carbodiimide cross-linked HA in relation to material processing conditions by varying the acetone/water volume ratio (from 70:30 to 95:5) at a constant 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethyl aminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) concentration of 100 mM. Our results indicated that after the EDC treatment in the presence of an acetone/water mixture (85:15, v/v), the HA hydrogel membranes have the lowest equilibrium water content, the highest stress at break and the greatest resistance to hyaluronidase digestion. Live/Dead assays and pro-inflammatory cytokine expression analyses showed that the cross-linked HA hydrogel membranes, irrespective of the solvent composition, are compatible with human RPE cell lines without causing toxicity and inflammation. However, it should be noted that the test samples prepared by the cross-linking in the presence of acetone/water mixtures containing 70, 75, and 95 vol % of acetone slightly inhibit the metabolic activity of viable ARPE-19 cultures, probably due to the alteration in the ionic interaction between the medium nutrients and polysaccharide biomaterials. In summary, the water content, mechanical strength and RPE cell proliferative capacity strongly depends on the solvent composition for carbodiimide cross-linking of HA materials.
Improved Biogeography-Based Optimization Based on Affinity Propagation

To improve the search ability of biogeography-based optimization (BBO), this work proposed an improved biogeography-based optimization based on Affinity Propagation. We introduced the Memetic framework to the BBO algorithm, and used the simulated annealing algorithm as the local search strategy. MBBO enhanced the exploration with the Affinity Propagation strategy to improve the transfer operation of the BBO algorithm. In this work, the MBBO algorithm was applied to IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2015 benchmarks optimization problems to conduct analytic comparison with the first three winners of the CEC 2015 competition. The results show that the MBBO algorithm enhances the exploration, exploitation, convergence speed and solution accuracy and can emerge as the best solution-providing algorithm among the competing algorithms.
LETTER Special Section on Electronic Displays Color Reproduction Model for Varying Illumination Conditions

We investigated the effect of viewing conditions on human visual perception of colorfulness and constructed a mathematical model for colorfulness by fitting regression curves to LUTCHI color appearance data. This model enables the simple and effective prediction of the relative appearance attribute of colorfulness as a function of brightness and saturation, taking into account a range of viewing conditions, and hence provides a method of image reproduction for home display systems that can be easily adapted according to indoor viewing conditions. key words: color appearance, colorfulness, brightness, saturation
Vocabulary Acquisition and Vocabulary Assessment of Young Iranian EFL Learners

This study aimed at investigating the vocabulary acquisition and vocabulary assessment of young Iranian leaners studying English as a foreign language. It discusses the issues and factors tied to vocabulary acquisition and assessment through observation and instruction. To this end, students’ performance as well as their achievements were required to be assessed. Researchers selected the most appropriate instrument, a teacher-created test, and observed the classroom dynamics as well as the students’ feedback each session. The participants including sixty seven boys and girls (male= 35, and female = 32) aged 9-10 were all native speakers of Persian language and were studying English in three branches of an English Language Institute of the city of Shiraz. Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test were administered to analyze the test results. According to the results obtained from the quantitative data, there was no significant difference between boys and girls performance in regards with vocabulary acquisition. Further, oral and written assessments were recognized as the most proper testing methods for young Iranian EFL learners.
Brief Online Classroom Behavior Management Training for Teachers to Address Male Student Behavioural Issue in Chennai, India

When teachers require on-going coaching in the management of students’ behaviours, Tele-Education may be used to bridge this competency gap. India’s education policy has had considerable success in increasing students, from rural and disadvantaged areas, participating and completing secondary schooling. However, it has also resulted in higher numbers of students with challenging classroom behaviours. Behavior management is not well addressed in the current national plan and little training is provided to teachers. Previous research on students defined the behavioural management issues as well as the skills requirements for teachers to manage and provide positive behavioural management. As a result, three brief online training modules were developed and three real time behavior management case discussions were provided to assist teachers (n = 10) to manage challenging behaviours by male students (n = 50) in a pre and post intervention single group design. The Tele-Educational intervention increased teacher application of behavior management principles and improved classroom behavior in young males, suggesting potential for the approach to be utilised in other parts of India or in other countries where there is a need for this training.
Graphical approaches for multiple comparison procedures using weighted Bonferroni, Simes, or parametric tests

The confirmatory analysis of pre‐specified multiple hypotheses has become common in pivotal clinical trials. In the recent past multiple test procedures have been developed that reflect the relative importance of different study objectives, such as fixed sequence, fallback, and gatekeeping procedures. In addition, graphical approaches have been proposed that facilitate the visualization and communication of Bonferroni‐based closed test procedures for common multiple test problems, such as comparing several treatments with a control, assessing the benefit of a new drug for more than one endpoint, combined non‐inferiority and superiority testing, or testing a treatment at different dose levels in an overall and a subpopulation. In this paper, we focus on extended graphical approaches by dissociating the underlying weighting strategy from the employed test procedure. This allows one to first derive suitable weighting strategies that reflect the given study objectives and subsequently apply appropriate test procedures, such as weighted Bonferroni tests, weighted parametric tests accounting for the correlation between the test statistics, or weighted Simes tests. We illustrate the extended graphical approaches with several examples. In addition, we describe briefly the gMCP package in R, which implements some of the methods described in this paper.
Long-Term Relations Between Children’s Language, the Home Literacy Environment, and Socioemotional Development From Ages 3 to 8

ABSTRACT Research Findings: This study investigated the long-term interrelations among children’s language competencies, their home literacy environment (HLE), and 3 aspects of socioemotional development from ages 3 to 8, controlling for characteristics of the child and family. For this sample of 547 typically developing German children, parents and teachers reported on cooperative behavior, physical aggression, and emotional self-regulation. Language was assessed using established test instruments. HLE was operationalized by the number of books in the household, the frequency of shared book reading, and an observation during shared book reading. Path analyses supported effects of language and HLE at age 3 on all 3 indicators of socioemotional development over the 5-year period. An additional mediational analysis revealed different patterns of results depending on the aspect of socioemotional competency under study. Although the effect of early language and HLE at age 3 on cooperative and (low) aggressive behavior at age 8 was partially mediated by language at age 5, children’s early language at age 3 was the best predictor of the development of emotional self-regulation. Practice or Policy: Findings identify a rich HLE and proper language skills as protective factors for socioemotional development in not-at-risk children; these factors should be further established in social skills training.
Reduced-reference image quality assessment in modified reorganized DCT domain

The objective of reduced-reference (RR) image quality assessment (IQA) is to evaluate the perceptual quality of the distorted image with only partial information of the reference image. A novel RR IQA which calculates the information entropy in the modified reorganized discrete cosine transform (RDCT) domain is introduced in this paper. Firstly, on the sender side, the modified RDCT is applied to decompose the reference image into 10 sub-bands, which accords with the channel decomposition property of human visual system (HVS). Subsequently, the information entropy of selective sub-bands is extracted as features of reference image. Finally, on the receiver side, the same procedure is employed to the distorted image, and the difference of features between reference and distorted image is fused to generate the quality measure of distorted image. The experimental results demonstrates that our proposed RR IQA can outperform the state-of-the-art RR IQAs and even the full-reference IQA.
Homeostatic sleep regulation in adolescents.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To examine the effects of total sleep deprivation on adolescent sleep and the sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) and to study aspects of sleep homeostasis. DESIGN Subjects were studied during baseline and recovery sleep after 36 hours of wakefulness. SETTING Four-bed sleep research laboratory. PARTICIPANTS Seven prepubertal or early pubertal children (pubertal stage Tanner 1 or 2 = Tanner 1/2; mean age 11.9 years, SD +/- 0.8, 2 boys) and 6 mature adolescents (Tanner 5; 14.2 years, +/- 1.4, 2 boys). INTERVENTIONS Thirty-six hours of sleep deprivation. MEASUREMENTS All-night polysomnography was performed. EEG power spectra (C3/A2) were calculated using a Fast Fourier transform routine. RESULTS In both groups, sleep latency was shorter, sleep efficiency was higher, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep stage 4 was increased, and waking after sleep onset was reduced in recovery relative to baseline sleep. Spectral power of the NREM sleep EEG was enhanced after sleep deprivation in the low-frequency range (1.6-3.6 Hz in Tanner 1/2; 0.8-6.0 Hz in Tanner 5) and reduced in the sigma range (11-15 Hz). Sleep deprivation resulted in a stronger increase of slow-wave activity (EEG power 0.6-4.6 Hz, marker for sleep homeostatic pressure) in Tanner 5 (39% above baseline) than in Tanner 1/2 adolescents (18% above baseline). Sleep homeostasis was modeled according to the two-process model of sleep regulation. The build-up of homeostatic sleep pressure during wakefulness was slower in Tanner 5 adolescents (time constant of exponential saturating function 15.4 +/- 2.5 hours) compared with Tanner 1/2 children (8.9 +/- 1.2 hours). In contrast, the decline of the homeostatic process was similar in both groups. CONCLUSION Maturational changes of homeostatic sleep regulation are permissive of the sleep phase delay in the course of adolescence.
Polynomial Rewritings for Linear Existential Rules

We consider the scenario of ontology-based query answering. It is generally accepted that true scalability in this setting can only be achieved via query rewriting, which in turn allows for the exploitation of standard RDBMSs. In this work, we close two open fundamental questions related to query rewriting. We establish that linear existential rules are polynomially combined rewritable, while full linear rules are polynomially (purely) rewritable; in both cases, the target query language consists of first-order or non-recursive Datalog queries. An immediate consequence of our results is that DLR-LiteR, the extension of DL-LiteR with n-ary roles, is polynomially combined rewritable.
Higher quality requirements specifications through natural language patterns

In most current industrial software engineering projects, the majority of requirements documents are written almost entirely in natural language. However, specifying the requirements in natural language has one major drawback, namely the inherent imprecision, i.e., ambiguity, incompleteness, and inaccuracy, of natural language. Since the requirements document forms the basis of the whole development process, such defects can have severe consequences for the whole project. Therefore, it is important to deal with these defects in a requirements specification right from the start. We present an approach for reducing the problem of imprecision in natural language requirements specifications with the use of natural language patterns, which allow formulating requirements sentences in a less ambiguous, more complete, and more accurate way. To ensure the applicability of our approach we based our patterns on a metamodel for requirements statements for embedded systems. With this metamodel, we ensure that all forms of requirements statements are described with the patterns. We validated the effectiveness of the patterns by using them to rewrite a substantial, previously written, requirements specification to eliminate its imprecisions.
The Insufficiency Intake of Dietary Micronutrients Associated with Malnutrition-Inflammation Score in Hemodialysis Population

The relations between dietary micronutrient, nutritional status and inflammation in hemodialysis patients are still unclear. A cross-sectional study was performed in hemodialysis population. 75 hemodialysis patients from South China participated in the dietary and nutritional assessment. Clinical and dietary data were collected. Nutritional status was assessed by Malnutrition-Inflammation Score (MIS) in addition to related anthropometric measurements. And according to the MIS score, the whole hemodialysis patients were divided into normal nutrition group and malnutrition group. The results showed that mid arm circumference (MAC) negatively correlated with MIS (r = −0.425; P = 0.002). The area under the ROC curve (AUC) for MAC was 0.737 (0.614–0.859). Comparing with the normal nutritional group, lower dietary selenium (Se), copper (Cu), iodine (I) and manganese (Mn) intake were observed among patients with malnutrition (P<0.05). While no significant differences of diverse vitamins were found. In conclusion, MAC was effective indicator for assessing nutritional and inflammatory status (P<0.05). The reduction of dietary Se, Cu, I and Mn intake level may be alarming markers for malnutrition and inflammatory status in hemodialysis patients.
Signal perception and belief updating

textabstractThis paper introduces a theory of signal perception to study how people update their beliefs. By allowing perceived signals to deviate from actual signals, we identify the probability that people miss or misread signals, giving indices of conservatism and confirmatory bias. In an experiment, we elicited perceived signals from choices and obtained a structural estimation of the indices. The subjects were conservative and acted as if they missed 65% of the signals they received. Also they exhibited confirmatory bias by misreading 17% of the signals contradicting their prior beliefs.
A modified NLDA algorithm

Null space linear discriminant analysis (NLDA) and linear discriminant analysis based on generalized singular value decomposition (LDA/GSVD) are two popular linear discriminant analysis (LDA) methods that can solve Small Sample Size (SSS) problem. In this paper we present the relation between NLDA and LDA/GSVD under a mild condition, and propose a modified NLDA (MNLDA) algorithm. By both theoretical analysis and experimental results on ORL and FERET face databases, the proposed MNLDA has been proved to have the same discriminating power as LDA/GSVD and to be more efficient than LDA/GSVD.