Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Active Objects in Hybrid 1

Most object-oriented languages are strong on reusability or on strong-typing, but weak on concurrency. In response to this gap, we are developing Hybrid, an object-oriented language in which objects are the active entities. Objects in Hybrid are organized into omains, and concurrent executions into activities. All object communications are based on remote procedure-calls. Unstructured sends and accepts are forbidden. To this the mechanisms of delegation and delay queues are added to enable switching and triggering of activities. Concurrent subactivities and atomic actions are provided for compactness and simplicity. We show how solutions to many important concurrent problems, such a pipelining, constraint management and “administration” can be compactly expressed using these mechanisms.
Examining The Role of Smart TVs and VR HMDs in Synchronous At-a-Distance Media Consumption

This article examines synchronous at-a-distance media consumption from two perspectives: How it can be facilitated using existing consumer displays (through TVs combined with smartphones), and imminently available consumer displays (through virtual reality (VR) HMDs combined with RGBD sensing). First, we discuss results from an initial evaluation of a synchronous shared at-a-distance smart TV system, CastAway. Through week-long in-home deployments with five couples, we gain formative insights into the adoption and usage of at-a-distance media consumption and how couples communicated during said consumption. We then examine how the imminent availability and potential adoption of consumer VR HMDs could affect preferences toward how synchronous at-a-distance media consumption is conducted, in a laboratory study of 12 pairs, by enhancing media immersion and supporting embodied telepresence for communication. Finally, we discuss the implications these studies have for the near-future of consumer synchronous at-a-distance media consumption. When combined, these studies begin to explore a design space regarding the varying ways in which at-a-distance media consumption can be supported and experienced (through music, TV content, augmenting existing TV content for immersion, and immersive VR content), what factors might influence usage and adoption and the implications for supporting communication and telepresence during media consumption.
Bidirectional multi-pair network with a MIMO relay: Beamforming strategies and lack of duality

We address the problem of a multi-user relay network, where multiple single-antenna node pairs want to exchange information by using a multiple antenna relay node. Due to the half-duplex constraint of the relay, the exchange of information takes place in two steps. In the first step, the nodes transmit their data to the relay, while in the second step, the relay is broadcasting the data by using linear and non-linear precoding strategies. We focus on the second step in this paper. We first consider the problem of maximizing the overall rate achievable using linear and dirty-paper type precoding strategies at the relay. Then, we consider minimizing the total power at the relay subject to individual SINR constraints using the same strategies at the relay. We show that the downlink-uplink duality does not hold for the setup considered here, which is a somewhat surprising result. We also show that the beamforming strategy which is optimal in the single-pair case performs very well in the multi-pair case for practically relevant SNR. The results are illustrated by numerical simulations.
Background-matching and disruptive coloration, and the evolution of cryptic coloration

Cryptic prey coloration typically bears a resemblance to the habitat the prey uses. It has been suggested that coloration which visually matches a random sample of the background maximizes background matching. We studied this previously untested hypothesis, as well as another, little studied principle of concealment, disruptive coloration, and whether it could, acting in addition to background matching, provide another plausible means of achieving camouflage. We presented great tits (Parus major) with artificial background-matching and disruptive prey (DP), and measured detection times. First, we studied whether any random sample of a background produces equally good crypsis. This turned out to not be the case. Next, we compared the DP and the best background-matching prey and found that they were equally cryptic. We repeated the tests using prey with all the coloration elements being whole, instead of some of them being broken by the prey outline, but this did not change the result. We conclude that resemblance of the background is an important aspect of concealment, but that coloration matching a random visual sample of the background is neither sufficient nor necessary to minimize the probability of detection. Further, our study lends empirical support to the principle of disruptive coloration.
Distributed monitoring and resource management for large cloud environments

Over the last decade, the number, size and complexity of large-scale networked systems has been growing fast, and this trend is expected to accelerate. The best known example of a large-scale networked system is probably the Internet, while large datacenters for cloud services are the most recent ones. In such environments, a key challenge is to develop scalable and adaptive technologies for management functions. This thesis addresses the challenge by engineering several protocols for distributed monitoring and resource management that are suitable for large-scale networked systems. The protocols are evaluated through theoretical analysis, simulation studies and testbed experimentation. The evaluation results show that the protocols achieve their respective design objectives with respect to quality, efficiency, scalability, controllability and adaptability.
D 3 . 1 . 1 Regression models of trends in streaming data

FP7-ICT Strategic Targeted Research Project (STREP) ICT-2011-287863 TrendMiner Deliverable D3.1. 1 (WP3.1) We present initial work on building predictive financial and political opinion models. We address various concerns including: a large scale text data preprocessing tool; a scalable mapreduce based test setup for algorithm development; time series data models and processing; financial and political time series data via web APIs; a regression model for financial data and correlation analysis for political data. Keyword list: text processing, tokenisation, language detection, stemming, twitter, regression, correlation, financial, political Copyright c © 2012 University of Southampton Project Delivery Date Contractual Date Nature Reviewed By Web links Dissemination TrendMiner No. 287863 May 1, 2012 May 1, 2012 Deliverable Thierry Declerck & Mauro Navarra http://github.com/sinjax/trendminer PU TrendMiner Consortium This document is part of the TrendMiner research project (No. 287863), partially funded by the FP7-ICT Programme. DFKI GmbH Language Technology Lab Stuhlsatzenhausweg 3 D-66123 Saarbrcken Germany Contact person: Thierry Declerck E-mail: declerck@dfki.de University of Sheffield Department of Computer Science Regent Court, 211 Portobello St. Sheffield S1 4DP UK Contact person: Kalina Bontcheva E-mail: K.Bontcheva@dcs.shef. ac.uk University of Southampton Southampton SO17 1BJ UK Contact person: Mahensan Niranjan E-mail: mn@ecs.soton. ac.uk Ontotext AD Polygraphia Office Center fl.4, 47A Tsarigradsko Shosse, Sofia 1504, Bulgaria Contact person: Atanas Kiryakov E-mail: naso@sirma.bg Internet Memory Research 45 ter rue de la Rvolution F-93100 Montreuil France Contact person: France Lafarges E-mail: contact@internetmemory.org Sora Ogris and Hofinger GmbH Linke Wienzeile 246 A-1150 Wien Austria Contact person: Christoph Hofinger E-mail: ch@sora.at Eurokleis S.R. L. Via Giorgio Baglivi, 3 Roma RM 00161 Italia Contact person: Francesco Belini E-mail: info@eurokleis.com Hardik Fintrade Pvt Ltd. 227, Shree Ram Cloth Market, Opposite Manilal Mansion, Revdi Bazar, Ahmedabad 380002 India Contact person: Suresh Aswani E-mail: m.aswani@hardikgroup.com
Predicting Survival after Liver Transplantation Based on Pre-Transplant MELD Score: a Systematic Review of the Literature

The model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) score is used to stratify candidates for liver transplantation based on objective measures of disease severity. MELD has been validated as a predictor of wait-list mortality in transplantation candidates and has been postulated as a predictor of post-transplant survival. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictive value of the pre-transplantation MELD score on post-transplant survival from relevant existing studies. A systematic review and critical appraisal was performed using Cochrane guidelines. PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science were searched for articles published in the English language since 2005 using a structured search strategy. There were 3058 discrete citations identified and screened for possible inclusion. Any study examining the relationship between pre-transplant MELD and post-transplant survival in the general transplant population was included. Thirty-seven studies met these criteria and were included in the review. Studies were all case series that typically involved stratified analyses of survival by MELD. They represented 15 countries and a total of 53,691 patients. There was significant clinical heterogeneity in patient populations across studies, which precluded performance of a meta-analysis. In 15 studies, no statistically significant association between MELD and post-transplant survival was found. In the remaining 22, some association was found. Eleven studies also measured predictive ability with c-statistics. Values were below 0.7 in all but two studies, suggesting poor predictive value. In summary, while the majority of studies reported an association between pre-transplantation MELD score and post-transplant survival, they represented a low level of evidence. Therefore, their findings should be interpreted conservatively.
Unified harmonics based method to reduce reactive power of the dual active bridge converter

In order to improve the efficiency of the dual active bridge (DAB) converter for a wide operating range, a novel unified-harmonics analysis based control strategy under 3-level modulated phase-shift framework is proposed. The mathematic model of the transmission power of the DAB converter is derived and the zero-voltage-switch soft-switching region is presented. Compared with piecewise time domain model, the expressions are simplified and easy online implementation. Then, a reactive-power-minimization method and its control implementation are presented. Both of the simulation and experiment results verify the feasibility of the proposed control method.
A neural blackboard architecture of sentence structure

We present a neural architecture for sentence representation. Sentences are represented in terms of word representations as constituents. A word representation consists of a neural assembly distributed over the brain. Sentence representation does not result from associations between neural word assemblies. Instead, word assemblies are embedded in a neural architecture, in which the structural (thematic) relations between words can be represented. Arbitrary thematic relations between arguments and verbs can be represented. Arguments can consist of nouns and phrases, as in sentences with relative clauses. A number of sentences can be stored simultaneously in this architecture. We simulate how probe questions about thematic relations can be answered. We discuss how differences in sentence complexity, such as the difference between subject-extracted versus object-extracted relative clauses and the difference between right-branching versus center-embedded structures, can be related to the underlying neural dynamics of the model. Finally, we illustrate how memory capacity for sentence representation can be related to the nature of reverberating neural activity, which is used to store information temporarily in this architecture.
A recognition method with parametric trajectory synthesized using direct relations between static and dynamic feature vector time series

Parametric trajectory models have been proposed to exploit this time-dependency. However, parametric trajectory modeling methods are unable to take advantage of efficient HMM training and recognition methods. We have proposed a new speech recognition technique that generates a speech trajectory using an HMM-based speech synthesis method. This method generates an acoustic trajectory by maximizing the likelihood of the trajectory while taking into account the relation between the cepstrum, delta-cepstrum, and delta-delta cepstrum. In this paper, we extend our method to a general formulation including variance training procedure. Speaker independent speech recognition experiments show that the proposed method is effective for speech recognition.
Biography in the study of public administration: towards a portrait of a Whitehall mandarin

ABSTRACT This paper reports on part of an on-going interview-based study of the eight permanent secretaries who served at the Department for Education from 1976 to 2012. Following a discussion of the relevance of biography to the study of public sector administrators, it presents a portrait of Sir Tim Lankester. Based on his own account and that of relevant others it draws on a four-stage career model to describe his life before and during his time as a civil servant. Centring on his career as permanent secretary in three it considers, inter alia, his working relationship with his Secretaries of State; his view of the role of permanent secretary; his policy contribution; and, his style and achievements. Following an examination of the merits of such research, the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the possible contribution of prosopography and a call for ethnographic studies of public administration.
Strategic Impacts of Technology SwitchOver : Who benefits from electronic coordination ?

The introduction of new digital production and distribution technologies may alter the firms’ strategy sets, as they are not able to commit credibly to quantity strategies anymore. Mixed oligopoly markets may emerge where some companies compete in prices, while others adjust their quantities. Using an approach first published by Reinhard Selten (1971) and developed further by Richard Cornes and Roger Hartley (2001), I calculate the Nash equilibrium of such an N -person game in a linear specification. Then I discuss the strategic effect of a technology switch-over on market performance and social welfare. A firm that introduces new technology suffers a strategic disadvantage, while consumers benefit. JEL–classification: D 43, L 13
A Novel Full Adder Cell Based on Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistors

Presenting a novel full adder cell will be increases all the arithmetic logic unit performance. In this paper, We present two new full adder cell designs using carbon nanotube field effect transistors (CNTFETs). In the first design we have 42 transistors and 5 pull-up resistance so that we have achieved an improvement in the output parameters. Simulations were carried out using HSPICE based on the CNTFET model with 0.9V VDD. The denouments results in that we have a considerable improvement in power, Delay and power delay product than the previous works.
A DEVS library for rail operations simulation

Detailed yet computationally efficient simulation models are needed to support the design and operation of modern rail infrastructure systems. LIBROS-II is a model component library for microscopic rail operations simulation. Basic rail elements are modeled as atomic DEVS models which are further aggregated into more elaborate rail component models. The latter can in turn be used modularly for the composition of rail network systems of arbitrary complexity in a detailed, efficient, and rigorous way. This paper explains the communication principles in the model and gives an overview of vehicle detection and control system simulation. To enhance its usability, LIBROS-II is augmented with CRMB, a model generator capable of inferring structural and behavioral features of a rail network from standard CAD data.
The Relationship Between Aggressive Communication Traits and Organizational Assimilation

This study used theory of independent mindedness as a framework to examine the role of aggressive communication traits in organizational assimilation. Both employee traits and their perception of supervisor traits were examined. Results indicated that employees who are indirect verbally aggressive report lower levels of familiarity with coworkers, acculturation, involvement, job competence, and role negotiation. Additionally, employees who perceive their supervisors as higher in argumentativeness, low in verbal aggressiveness, and low in indirect interpersonal aggressiveness report higher levels of familiarity with coworkers, familiarity with supervisors, acculturation, recognition, involvement, and role negotiation.
Comparison of Branch History and Branch Correlated Prediction Techniques

Conditional branch instructions are recognized as major impediments for high performance processors. These branches are control dependencies that cause stalls in a processor's execution and keep the processor from reaching maximum performance. The goal of branch prediction is to allow the processor to resolve the outcome of a branch early. This prediction prevents a branch from causing a stall and allows the processor to perform speculative execution before the outcome of a branch is determined. Branch prediction plays an important role in the processor because a single issue processor will encounter one branch approximately every five instructions. In a n -issue processor, branches will arrive up to n times faster requiring a multiple issue processor to predict a branch every issue cycle. The goal of this paper is to provide a comparative study of two dynamic branch prediction techniques: branch history based prediction and correlated branch prediction. The details of these techniques will be explained and compared. Results of program trace simulations from a study done by McFarling are presented to show the effectiveness of these prediction techniques. It will be shown that overall the correlated techniques perform better than simple history based techniques but require higher implementation costs to be effective.
Morphing with Laplacian coordinates and spatial-temporal texture

In this paper, we present a novel method to address the trajectory problem in 2D shape morphing based on the Laplacian coordinates (LCs). Although the LCs capture the geometric details of a shape, they are built in the global coordinate system and thus not rotation invariant [1, 7]. By adding rotation coherence constraints to as-rigid-as-possible transformations applied on the LCs, we make the intermediate morphing shapes highly appealing. Our method successfully alleviates local self-intersections. We also propose to interpolate the textures bounded by simple closed curves using a spatialtemporal structure. In previous texture morphing techniques, textures are usually encoded using triangulations [2]. Therefore, the morphing results depend on the quality of these triangulations. Given two simple closed curves and their interpolated shapes in the time domain, we construct uniformly distributed streamlines, which build a oneto-one mapping between the source and target textures, instead of encoding the textures using triangulation. The resulting mapping makes neighboring pixels morph coherently.
Suggestive Contours Over Point-Set Implicits

This paper presents a system that combines large point-set implicit surfaces with fast line-based rendering. We devised a new process for extracting suggestive contours quickly by using particles scattered throughout the surface to identify areas of interest, followed by clustering and line-ﬁtting. Furthermore, we improve on state-of-the-art meth-ods for extracting silhouettes and feature-lines by harnessing the descriptive power of the surface representation. This provides heuristics for fast determination of curvature and allows for the local regeneration of shape-depicting line elements after editing operations. While visual examples illustrate the high quality of the drawings obtained with our application, as well as the high detail it can provide for more complex models, run-times show comparatively higher performance over similar approaches for the same number of points.
Image enhancement and a quantitative index using fuzzy sets

The membership function for implementing the enhancement algorithm as described by Pal and King (1981, 1983) is modified here. The modified version enables one to avoid using contrast intensification (INT) operators for enhancement and has been found significantly to reduce the time of computing the algorithm in addition to providing a better approximation to the standard S and Π membership functions. To give a quantitative evaluation of their relative performances, an edge ambiguity index has also been defined through fuzzy measures in a set. The value of the index is maximum for image input and decreases as the ambiguity in detecting edges diminishes. The δ(X) value, as expected, is also found to increase with increasing standard deviation of the noise injected on X.
Community Structures Are Definable in Networks: A Structural Theory of Networks

We found that neither randomness in the ER model nor the preferential attachment in the PA model is the mechanism of community structures of networks, that community structures are universal in real networks, that community structures are definable in networks, that communities are interpretable in networks, and that homophyly is the mechanism of community structures and a structural theory of networks. We proposed the notions of entropy- and conductance-community structures. It was shown that the two definitions of the entropy- and conductance-community structures and the notion of modularity proposed by physicists are all equivalent in defining community structures of networks, that neither randomness in the ER model nor preferential attachment in the PA model is the mechanism of community structures of networks, and that the existence of community structures is a universal phenomenon in real networks. This poses a fundamental question: What are the mechanisms of community structures of real networks? To answer this question, we proposed a homophyly model of networks. It was shown that networks of our model satisfy a series of new topological, probabilistic and combinatorial principles, including a fundamental principle, a community structure principle, a degree priority principle, a widths principle, an inclusion and infection principle, a king node principle and a predicting principle etc. The new principles provide a firm foundation for a structural theory of networks. Our homophyly model demonstrates that homophyly is the underlying mechanism of community structures of networks, that nodes of the same community share common features, that power law and small world property are never obstacles of the existence of community structures in networks, that community structures are {\it definable} in networks, and that (natural) communities are {\it interpretable}.