Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How to Specify Non-Functional Requirements to Support Seamless Modeling? A Study Design and Preliminary Results

Context: Seamless model-based development provides integrated chains of models, covering all software engineering phases. Non-functional requirements (NFRs), like reusability, further play a vital role in software and systems engineering, but are often neglected in research and practice. It is still unclear how to integrate NFRs in a seamless model-based development. Goal: Our long-term goal is to develop a theory on the specification of NFRs such that they can be integrated in seamless model-based development. Method: Our overall study design includes a multi-staged procedure to infer an empirically founded theory on specifying NFRs to support seamless modeling. In this short paper, we present the study design and provide a discussion of (i) preliminary results obtained from a sample, and (ii) current issues related to the design. Results: Our study already shows significant fields of improvement, e.g., the low agreement during the classification. However, the results indicate to interesting points; for example, many of commonly used NFR classes concern system modeling concepts in a way that shows how blurry the borders between functional and NFRs are. Conclusions: We conclude so far that our overall study design seems suitable to obtain the envisioned theory in the long run, but we could also show current issues that are worth discussing within the empirical software engineering community. The main goal of this contribution is not to present and discuss current results only, but to foster discussions on the issues related to the integration of NFRs in seamless modeling in general and, in particular, discussions on open methodological issues.
UCID: an uncompressed color image database

Standardised image databases or rather the lack of them are one of the main weaknesses in the field of content based image retrieval (CBIR). Authors often use their own images or do not specify the source of their datasets. Naturally this makes comparison of results somewhat difficult. While a first approach towards a common colour image set has been taken by the MPEG 7 committee their database does not cater for all strands of research in the CBIR community. In particular as the MPEG-7 images only exist in compressed form it does not allow for an objective evaluation of image retrieval algorithms that operate in the compressed domain or to judge the influence image compression has on the performance of CBIR algorithms. In this paper we introduce a new dataset, UCID (pronounced "use it") - an Uncompressed Colour Image Dataset which tries to bridge this gap. The UCID dataset currently consists of 1338 uncompressed images together with a ground truth of a series of query images with corresponding models that an ideal CBIR algorithm would retrieve. While its initial intention was to provide a dataset for the evaluation of compressed domain algorithms, the UCID database also represents a good benchmark set for the evaluation of any kind of CBIR method as well as an image set that can be used to evaluate image compression and colour quantisation algorithms.
Location-Aware Index Caching and Searching for P 2 P Systems

Unstructured P2P networks remain widely deployed in filesharing systems, due to their simple features. However, the P2P traffic, mainly composed of repetitive query messages, contributes the largest portion of the Internet traffic. The principal causes of this critical issue are the search inefficiency and the construction of the P2P overlay without any knowledge of the underlying topology. In order to reduce the P2P redundant traffic and to address the limitations of existing solutions, we propose a solution that performs index caching and efficient query routing while supporting keyword search. We aim at improving the probability of finding available copies of requested files by leveraging file replication. In addition, our scheme tries to direct queries to close results, by using topological information in terms of file physical distribution. We believe that the traffic can be significantly reduced and the user experience ameliorated in terms of faster downloads, with minimum
Title: Variability and Corresponding Amplitude - Velocity Relation of Activity Propagating in One-dimensional Neural Cultures Authors: Shimshon Jacobi, Elisha Moses Affiliation: Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science Running head: Variability and Amplitude - Velocity

We investigate the propagation of neural activity along one-dimensional rat hippocampal cultures patterned in lines over Multi-Electrode Arrays. Activity occurs spontaneously or is stimulated by local electrical or chemical, with different resulting propagation velocities and firing rate amplitudes. A variability of an order of magnitude in velocity and amplitude is observed in spontaneous activity. A linear relation between velocity and amplitude is identified. We define a measure for neuron activation synchrony and find that it correlates with front velocity and is higher for electrically evoked fronts. We present a model that explains the linear relation between amplitude and velocity, which highlights the role of synchrony. The relation to current models for signal propagation in neural media is discussed.
Problem Map: An Ontological Framework for a Computational Study of Problem Formulation in Engineering Design

Studies of design cognition often face two challenges. One is a lack of formal cognitive models of design processes that have the appropriate granularity: fine enough to distinguish differences among individuals and coarse enough to detect patterns of similar actions. The other is the inadequacies in automating the recourse-intensive analyses of data collected from large samples of designers. To overcome these barriers, we have developed the problem map (P-maps) ontological framework. It can be used to explain design thinking through changes in state models that are represented in terms of requirements, functions, artifacts, behaviors, and issues. The different ways these entities can be combined, in addition to disjunctive relations and hierarchies, support detailed modeling and analysis of design problem formulation. A node‐link representation of P-maps enables one to visualize how a designer formulates a problem or to compare how different designers formulate the same problem. Descriptive statistics and time series of entities provide more detailed comparisons. Answer set programming (ASP), a predicate logic formalism, is used to formalize and trace strategies that designers adopt. Data mining techniques (association rule and sequence mining) are used to search for patterns among large number of designers. Potential uses of P-maps are computer-assisted collection of large data sets for design research, development of a test for the problem formulation skill, and a tutoring system. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4030076]
Synthetic aperture sonar imaging via one-way wave equations

Abstract : We develop an efficient algorithm for Synthetic Aperture Sonar imaging based on the one-way wave equations. The algorithm utilizes the operator-splitting method to integrate the one-way wave equations. The well-posedness of the one-way wave equations and the proposed algorithm is shown. A computational result against real field data is reported and the resulting image is enhanced by the BV-like regularization.
A feedback predistortion technique for power amplifiers based on amplitude and phase signal processing

This paper presents a feedback predistortion technique for power amplifiers based on amplitude and phase signal processing to correct distortion in RF power amplifiers (PAs). By employing input and output signals of the power amplifier, the changes of the amplitude and phase caused by the nonlinear PA are compared in this technique. Furthermore, adjustable voltage controlled variable attenuator (VVA) and voltage controlled variable phase shifter (VVP) are used to achieve the purpose of predistortion compensation. The simulation results show that the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) suppression of over 20dB may be achieved over bandwidth of 1 MHz at 2.14GHz. The results also show an adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) improvement of about 8dB for realistic wideband code-division multiple access (WCDMA) signal. This method is a promising technique for rectifying the nonlinearity of PAs.
Characterisation of the Expression of NMDA Receptors in Human Astrocytes

Astrocytes have long been perceived only as structural and supporting cells within the central nervous system (CNS). However, the discovery that these glial cells may potentially express receptors capable of responding to endogenous neurotransmitters has resulted in the need to reassess astrocytic physiology. The aim of the current study was to characterise the expression of NMDA receptors (NMDARs) in primary human astrocytes, and investigate their response to physiological and excitotoxic concentrations of the known endogenous NMDAR agonists, glutamate and quinolinic acid (QUIN). Primary cultures of human astrocytes were used to examine expression of these receptors at the mRNA level using RT-PCR and qPCR, and at the protein level using immunocytochemistry. The functionality role of the receptors was assessed using intracellular calcium influx experiments and measuring extracellular lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity in primary cultures of human astrocytes treated with glutamate and QUIN. We found that all seven currently known NMDAR subunits (NR1, NR2A, NR2B, NR2C, NR2D, NR3A and NR3B) are expressed in astrocytes, but at different levels. Calcium influx studies revealed that both glutamate and QUIN could activate astrocytic NMDARs, which stimulates Ca2+ influx into the cell and can result in dysfunction and death of astrocytes. Our data also show that the NMDAR ion channel blockers, MK801, and memantine can attenuate glutamate and QUIN mediated cell excitotoxicity. This suggests that the mechanism of glutamate and QUIN gliotoxicity is at least partially mediated by excessive stimulation of NMDARs. The present study is the first to provide definitive evidence for the existence of functional NMDAR expression in human primary astrocytes. This discovery has significant implications for redefining the cellular interaction between glia and neurons in both physiological processes and pathological conditions.
Maximum likelihood mapping of quantitative trait loci using full-sib families.

A maximum likelihood method is presented for the detection of quantitative trait loci (QTL) using flanking markers in full-sib families. This method incorporates a random component for common family effects due to additional QTL or the environment. Simulated data have been used to investigate this method. With a fixed total number of full sibs power of detection decreased substantially with decreasing family size. Increasing the number of alleles at the marker loci (i.e., polymorphism information content) and decreasing the interval size about the QTL increased power. Flanking markers were more powerful than single markers. In testing for a linked QTL the test must be made against a model which allows for between family variation (i.e., including an unlinked QTL or a between family variance component) or the test statistic may be grossly inflated. Mean parameter estimates were close to the simulated values in all situations when fitting the full model (including a linked QTL and common family effect). If the common family component was omitted the QTL effect was overestimated in data in which additional genetic variance was simulated and when compared with an unlinked QTL model there was reduced power. The test statistic curves, reflecting the likelihood of the QTL at each position along the chromosome, have discontinuities at the markers caused by adjacent pairs of markers providing different amounts of information. This must be accounted for when using flanking markers to search for a QTL in an outbred population.
Distributed Generation Business Modelling. Busmod Project

Currently, the electric industry is undergoing a complete transformation and restructuring due to the concurrent convergence of deregulation and the advent of Distributed Generation (DG). Some years ago, electricity was produced in some big power plants and a few vertically integrated electric utilities covered all the steps in the electricity supply: generation, transmission, distribution and supply.
Collaborative visualization: a review and taxonomy

We present a brief review of 42 collaborative visualization systems, grouped into four application areas: collaborative problem-solving environments, virtual reality environments, multi-player online games and multi-user enabling of single user applications. The systems are then compared by five attributes: number of simultaneous users, user access control, communication architecture, type of transmitted data and user synchronization. We review the characteristic properties of each application area, overall trends in characteristics and recommend improvements for future systems. The taxonomy of visualization and accompanying bibliography are available on-line via the RAVE project pages by Grimstead, I.J., (2005), with on-line references hyper-linked where available.
Utilizing Image Scales Towards Totally Training Free Blind Image Quality Assessment

A new approach to blind image quality assessment (BIQA), requiring no training, is proposed in this paper. The approach is named as blind image quality evaluator based on scales and works by evaluating the global difference of the query image analyzed at different scales with the query image at original resolution. The approach is based on the ability of the natural images to exhibit redundant information over various scales. A distorted image is considered as a deviation from the natural image and bereft of the redundancy present in the original image. The similarity of the original resolution image with its down-scaled version will decrease more when the image is distorted more. Therefore, the dissimilarities of an image with its low-resolution versions are cumulated in the proposed method. We dissolve the query image into its scale-space and measure the global dissimilarity with the co-occurrence histograms of the original and its scaled images. These scaled images are the low pass versions of the original image. The dissimilarity, called low pass error, is calculated by comparing the low pass versions across scales with the original image. The high pass versions of the image in different scales are obtained by Wavelet decomposition and their dissimilarity from the original image is also calculated. This dissimilarity, called high pass error, is computed with the variance and gradient histograms and weighted by the contrast sensitivity function to make it perceptually effective. These two kinds of dissimilarities are combined together to derive the quality score of the query image. This method requires absolutely no training with the distorted image, pristine images, or subjective human scores to predict the perceptual quality but uses the intrinsic global change of the query image across scales. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated across six publicly available databases and found to be competitive with the state-of-the-art techniques.
Guided Play: Automatic Stereotypical Behavior Analysis and Intervention during Play

Restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRB) are a core symptom and an early marker of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Despite technologies for detecting certain forms of RRB, assessment and intervention for RRB still heavily rely on professional experience and effort. This paper presents an ongoing investigation of a technology that uses instrumented games or toys as platforms to assess RRB and facilitate behavior intervention during play. The design and implementation of a prototype for the iPad are discussed. The same technology can be applied to tangible objects such as smart toys for a natural player-computer interface.
Reducing the Gate Count of Bitslice DES

(cid:2) This paper describes various techniques to reduce the num(cid:4) ber of logic gates needed to implement the DES S(cid:4)boxes in bitslice soft(cid:4) ware(cid:3) Using standard logic gates(cid:5) an average of (cid:6)(cid:7) gates per S(cid:4)box was achieved(cid:5) while an average of (cid:6)(cid:8) was produced when non(cid:4)standard gates were utilized(cid:3) This is an improvementover the previous best result(cid:5) which used an average of (cid:7)(cid:8) non(cid:4)standard gates(cid:3)
Novel adaptive dynamic surface control of nonlinear systems

A novel adaptive dynamic surface control (DSC) with recursive error surface is proposed for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems in strict-feedback form. The problem of explosion of terms in traditional backstepping design is eliminated by utilizing dynamic surface control. Furthermore, the maximum value of the norm of the ideal weighting vector in neural network (NN) systems is considered as the estimation parameter, such that only one parameter is adjusted regardless of the number of the NN nodes in whole design procedure. In particular, By designing recursive error surface, the tracking error in the preceding step is considered into the next control law so that the design synthesizes the interaction of the tracking error in each subsystem. The problem for DSC being fragile to the perturbation of its own parameters is avoided. Via constructing new Lyapunov function, the semi-global stability of the close-loop system is proved. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the control scheme.
FOXO3a mediates the cytotoxic effects of cisplatin in colon cancer cells

Cisplatin is a conventional chemotherapeutic agent that binds covalently to purine DNA bases and mediates cellular apoptosis. A better understanding of the downstream cellular targets of cisplatin will provide information on its mechanism of action and help to understand the mechanism of drug resistance. In this study, we have investigated the effects of cisplatin in a panel of colon carcinoma cell lines and the involvement of the phosphoinositide-3-kinase/forkhead/winged helix box class O (FOXO) pathway in cisplatin action and resistance. Cisplatin-sensitive and cisplatin-resistant cell lines have been characterized in cell viability, flow cytometry, and clonogenic assays. The main components of the phosphoinositide-3-kinase/protein kinase B pathway, particularly FOXO3a, have been analyzed in sensitive and resistant cells on cisplatin treatment. Interestingly, in sensitive cells, cisplatin induces FOXO3a dephosphorylation and nuclear translocation, and expression of its target genes, whereas in resistant cells the effect of cisplatin on FOXO3a is incomplete. Consistent with this, protein kinase B/FOXO signaling axis modulators triciribine and psammaplysene A sensitize the resistant HT29 cells to cisplatin treatment. Critically, knockdown of FOXO3a expression using small interfering RNA rescues sensitive SW620 cells from cisplatin-induced short- and long-term cell death. Together, our findings suggest that FOXO3a is a relevant mediator of the cytotoxic effects of cisplatin in colon cancer cells. [Mol Cancer Ther 2008;7(10):3237–46]
Exponential Stabilization of a Wheeled Mobile Robot Via Discontinuous Control

A. Astolfl^ stabilizing control laws are smooth in the polar coordinates system, whereas are discontinuous, although bounded (see Remark 5) in the cartesian one. The potentiality of the polar description have been partially exploited in the work of Badreddin and Mansour [6] , Astolfi [2, 4, 3] , and Casahno et al. | 9 | . The former introduced for the first time the polar representation and proposed, for the kinematic model, a linear, fuzzy-tuned, state feedback control guarantying local asymptotic stability. The second exploited in detail the peculiarity of the kinematic polar representation and pointed out some geometrical properties of such a description and why the Theorem of Brockett does not apply lo it. The latter designed, always for the kinematic system, a globally exponentially stabilizing, nonlinear, state feedback control law and discussed some geometrical issues of the closed-loop trajectories, e.g., the curvature of the floor paths. Further results can be also found in [11]. One of the features of the nonlinear control law presented in [9], as well as of other control laws (see e.g. [8, 15, 14, 17]) is that, when initialized in certain configurations, the robot is not able to reach the final position without inverting the direction of its motion, thus moving along discontinuous paths. Moreover, almost all the aforementioned results make u.se of kinemaUc models, rather than dynamic ones. This raises the questions about the applicability of such kinematic controllers in real applications.
Hierarchies of Belief and Interim Rationalizability

In games with incomplete information, conventional hierarchies of belief are incomplete as descriptions of the players' information for the purposes of determining a player's behavior. We show by example that this is true for a variety of solution concepts. We then investigate what is essential about a player's information to identify behavior. We specialize to two player games and the solution concept of interim rationalizability. We construct the universal type space for rationalizability and characterize the types in terms of their beliefs. Infinite hierarchies of beliefs over conditional beliefs , which we call Delta-hierarchies, are what turn out to matter. We show that any two types in any two type spaces have the same rationalizable sets in all games if and only if they have the same Delta-hierarchies.
MN-MATE

Recent advent of manycore system increases needs for larger but faster memory hierarchy. Emerging next generation memories such as on-chip DRAM and nonvolatile memory (NVRAM) are promising candidates for replacement of DRAM-only main memory. Combined with the manycore trends, it gives an opportunity to rethink conventional resource management system with a memory hierarchy for a single cloud node. In an attempt to mitigate the energy and memory problems, we propose MN-MATE, an elastic resource management architecture for a single cloud node with manycores, on-chip DRAM, and large size of off-chip DRAM and NVRAM. In MN-MATE, the hypervisor places consolidated VMs and balances memory among them. Based on the monitored information about the allocated memory, a guest OS co-schedules tasks accessing different types of memory with complementary access intensity. Polymorphic management of DRAM hierarchy accelerates average memory access speed inside each guest OS. A guest OS reduces energy consumption with small performance loss based on the NVRAM-aware data placement policy and the hybrid page cache. A new lightweight kernel is developed to reduce the overhead from the guest OS for scientific applications. Experiment results show that our techniques in MN-MATE platform improve system performance and reduce energy consumption.
Is the Time Right for Swarm Sensing in the Ocean ?

Although the last several decades have seen tremendous growth in ocean technology and our ability to sense the ocean’s interior, most would agree that there is much to gain from having both higher spatial and temporal sampling. In this article I propose that a “next generation” of smaller, less expensive, more capable vehicles with even smaller, potentially less expensive, and more accurate sensors will open views into phenomena that we can only poorly sample right now. Moreover, I suggest that this generation of new vehicles is almost within grasp and that our community should make a concerted effort to foster the development of these ocean exploration tools that promise to sample phenomena with unprecedented accuracy and resolution.