Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mapping the Need for Mobile Collaboration Technologies: A Fit Perspective

With the growing popularity of mobile technologies and the increasing use of groups within organizations, it is important to understand the collaboration contexts where mobile collaboration technologies MCTs are essential. This is especially critical given the high cost associated with the acquisition and implementation of MCTs and the need to make an informed decision regarding the appropriateness of MCTs. In this paper, the authors address this issue by first drawing on real life-based collaboration scenarios and examining the technology requirements of groups; second, comparing the features offered by MCTs with those of FTF and two types of CMCTs; third, proposing a collaboration environment-technology fit perspective in realizing optimal usage of a collaboration technology; and fourth, creating the Group Collaboration Technology Repertoire Grid, which maps the "ideal" collaboration technologys repertoire for each type of collaboration environment. The grid highlights the collaboration environments that would need MCTs and provides managers or organizational group leaders the ability to map their collaboration environments into a specific category and thus more easily decide on the particular collaboration technology repertoire that would be most beneficial.
Robustness of Auditory Teager Energy Cepstrum Coefficients for Classification of Pathological and Normal Voices in Noisy Environments

This paper focuses on a robust feature extraction algorithm for automatic classification of pathological and normal voices in noisy environments. The proposed algorithm is based on human auditory processing and the nonlinear Teager-Kaiser energy operator. The robust features which labeled Teager Energy Cepstrum Coefficients (TECCs) are computed in three steps. Firstly, each speech signal frame is passed through a Gammatone or Mel scale triangular filter bank. Then, the absolute value of the Teager energy operator of the short-time spectrum is calculated. Finally, the discrete cosine transform of the log-filtered Teager Energy spectrum is applied. This feature is proposed to identify the pathological voices using a developed neural system of multilayer perceptron (MLP). We evaluate the developed method using mixed voice database composed of recorded voice samples from normophonic or dysphonic speakers. In order to show the robustness of the proposed feature in detection of pathological voices at different White Gaussian noise levels, we compare its performance with results for clean environments. The experimental results show that TECCs computed from Gammatone filter bank are more robust in noisy environments than other extracted features, while their performance is practically similar to clean environments.
HaptiCase: Back-of-Device Tactile Landmarks for Eyes-Free Absolute Indirect Touch

Using a smartphone for touch input to control apps and games mirrored to a distant screen is difficult, as the user cannot see where she is touching while looking at the distant display. We present HaptiCase, an interaction technique that provides back-of-device tactile landmarks that the user senses with her fingers to estimate the location of her finger in relation to the touchscreen. By pinching the thumb resting above the touch- screen to a finger at the back, the finger position is transferred to the front as the thumb touches the screen. In a study, we compared touch performance of different landmark layouts with a regular landmark-free mobile device. Using a land- mark design of dots on a 3x5 grid significantly improves eyes-free tapping accuracy and allows targets to be as small as 17.5 mm---a 14% reduction in target size---to cover 99% of all touches. When users can look at the touchscreen, land- marks have no significant effect on performance. HaptiCase is low-cost, requires no electronics, and works with unmodified software.
Research Statement 2 Multicore Platform Design Challenges

The continued scaling of silicon fabrication technologies ha enabled the integration of dozens of processing cores on a single chip in the next computer generation. Our ab ility to exploit such computational power, however, is checkmated not only by limitations of parallelism extrac ion techniques, but furthermore by increasing levels of execution uncertainty within the system. As device feature siz s scale below 45nm, reliability has rapidly moved to the forefront of concerns for leading semiconductor comp anies, with the main challenge being the scaling of system performance while meeting power and reliability b udgets. To make things worse, such an unreliable computational fabric is used to concurrently execute an inc reasing number of applications that constantly vie for execution resources, thus furthermore making the executio n environment more dynamic and unpredictable. The unreliability in the electronic fabric, in conjunction with the unpredictability in the execution process, results in frequent renegotiation of computational resour ces at run-time.Execution adaptivity thus becomes the cornerstone of the research challenges for future multi core systems. To attain this goal in a cost-effective manner while at the same time delivering maximum computatio n efficiency and predictable worst-case performance, I have proposed a set of compiler-directed run-time optimization techniques in my doctoral work. I extract intensive static program information to guide arch itectural component redevelopment and dynamic execution reorganization, thus effectively compensating for the lack of global program visibility at run-time within negligible cost. Specifically, I propose several tightly-c oupled techniques for future multicore systems in order to 1) maximallymitigate sources of uncertainty through cost-effective temperatur e reduction and communication acceleration techniques, 2) preciselydetect resource variations, especially the ones induced by device fa lures, and3) quickly reconfigure the execution upon a resource variation in a predictable man ner with no reliance on spare units.
Comparative evaluation of OFDMA and SC-FDMA based transmission systems

New evolving standards of the cellular systems, like e.g. Long Term Evolution (LTE), WiMax and Advanced LTE, consider Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex Access (OFDMA) as a mature and suitable solution to cope with the Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) due to the multi-path propagation. However, a major drawback of OFDMA which largely limited its application in the real environment is large envelope fluctuation which results in strong nonlinear distortion due to the nonlinear characteristic of power amplifier (PA). One possible solution to tackle this problem has been introduced by the the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) consortium. This solution is based on spreading the base-band modulated signal before the application of OFDMA by using Discrete Fourier Transformation (DFT) that leads eventually to lower envelope fluctuation in comparison with that of OFDMA. The presented method is widely recognized as Single Frequency Division Multiplex (SC-FDMA). This paper aims to provide general comparison of both conventional OFDMA and SC-FDMA and draws important conclusions from this comparison.
Object-oriented programming with flavors

This paper describes Symbolics' newly redesigned object-oriented programming system, <italic>Flavors. Flavors</italic> encourages program modularity, eases the development of large, complex programs, and provides high efficiency at run time. <italic>Flavors</italic> is integrated into Lisp and the Symbolics program development environment. This paper describes the philosophy and some of the major characteristics of Symbolics' <italic>Flavors</italic> and shows how the above goals are addressed. Full details of <italic>Flavors</italic> are left to the programmers' manual, <italic>Reference Guide to Symbolics Common Lisp. (5)</italic>
DUALITY FOR LINEAR CHANCE-CONSTRAINED OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS

In this paper we deal with linear chance-constrained opti- mization problems, a class of problems which naturally arise in practical applications in finance, engineering, transportation and scheduling, where decisions are made in presence of uncertainty. After giving the determin- istic equivalent formulation of a linear chance-constrained optimization problem we construct a conjugate dual problem to it. Then we provide for this primal-dual pair weak sucient conditions which ensure strong duality. In this way we generalize some results recently given in the litera- ture. We also apply the general duality scheme to a portfolio optimization problem, a fact that allows us to derive necessary and sucient optimality conditions for it.
An investigation of the acute and chronic effects of ketamine on cognition.

The work presented in this thesis aimed to investigate the consequences and causes of ketamine abuse and compare them with the acute effects of the drug. Seven experimental chapters report the findings of a total of 9 studies: 5 with ketamine users, 3 administering ketamine to healthy volunteers and 1 with psychosis-prone individuals. Acute studies with volunteers demonstrated ketamine-induced impairments to item recognition, source memory, controlled semantic processing, working memory and procedural learning. There was also a suggestion of a disruption in self-monitoring but perceptual priming and executive functioning were largely preserved. Ketamine was subjectively reinforcing in healthy volunteers. Suggested chronic effects of ketamine in drug users included deficits in source memory and controlled semantic processing indicative of a degraded semantic store. Following substantial reduction in ketamine use, semantic function appeared to recover whilst episodic and attentional impairments appeared persistent. Overall, this thesis suggested that ketamine, both acutely and chronically, produces selective cognitive impairments, particularly to those functions that require integration of contextual information. The implications of this thesis are drawn out for an acute versus 'chronic' model of psychosis. Chronic deficits in ketamine users may reflect neurological changes associated with repeated NMDA- receptor antagonism and hence may be more similar to changes observed in the later stages of schizophrenia, whereas acute ketamine may better model the acute phase. Persisting cognitive impairments are of concern in light of the burgeoning population of ketamine users.
Mode selection, user pairing, subcarrier allocation and power control in full-duplex OFDMA HetNets

Full duplex heterogeneous networks are considered as a mean of boosting the performance of future wireless communication networks. In this paper, we study full duplex orthogonal division multiple access (OFDMA) heterogeneous network. In our model, each node will operate either in full duplex or half duplex multiuser MIMO. In addition, each user will attempt to connect to the macro base station or one of the available small cell access points. Moreover, it is assumed that there exist strict transmission power constraints on each transmitting node and each user. Accordingly, a joint resource allocation problem which maximizes the aggregate network's throughput by considering mode selection, user pairing, subcarrier allocation and power control is proposed. Additionally, the performance of our proposed scheme is evaluated indicating the effects of different system parameters on the system performance. Finally, our proposed scheme's performance is compared with that of a network which operates in full-duplex only or half-duplex only.
Reactive whole-body control for humanoid balancing on non-rigid unilateral contacts

Humanoid robots are expected to act in human environments, where some of the contacts can be non-rigid. A fairly large amount of work has been devoted to the whole-body control of humanoids under rigid contacts, but few of them take into account non-rigid contacts. Indeed, the handling of unknown compliant contacts to achieve goal directed actions and whole-body balance remains a challenge. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a control mechanism that solves whole-body tasks under non-rigid contacts. It is a reactive control approach that automatically regulates contact forces and whole-body motions based on the motion of contact points without the awareness of the rigidity properties of the contact material. Verification of this approach is conducted through experiments on the iCub humanoid robot in simulation.
Hostname addresing in heterogeneous mobile ad hoc networks

In this paper, we propose a concrete schema to answer the imperative issue of hostname addressing in heterogeneous mobile ad hoc networks. The proposed addressing mechanism enables the MANET users to seamlessly communicate with any destination using its name rather than its IP address. These enhancements are introduced to AODV routing protocol and evaluated on an actual ad hoc network testbed. The results illustrate that proposed mechanism enables AODV to perform better than conventional AODV routing protocol along with features like user-friendliness and bettered accessibility.
The Adherence to Initial Processes of Care in Elderly Patients with Acute Venous Thromboembolism

Background We aimed to assess whether elderly patients with acute venous thromboembolism (VTE) receive recommended initial processes of care and to identify predictors of process adherence. Methods We prospectively studied in- and outpatients aged ≥65 years with acute symptomatic VTE in a multicenter cohort study from nine Swiss university- and non-university hospitals between September 2009 and March 2011. We systematically assessed whether initial processes of care, which are recommended by the 2008 American College of Chest Physicians guidelines, were performed in each patient. We used multivariable logistic models to identify patient factors independently associated with process adherence. Results Our cohort comprised 950 patients (mean age 76 years). Of these, 86% (645/750) received parenteral anticoagulation for ≥5 days, 54% (405/750) had oral anticoagulation started on the first treatment day, and 37% (274/750) had an international normalized ratio (INR) ≥2 for ≥24 hours before parenteral anticoagulation was discontinued. Overall, 35% (53/153) of patients with cancer received low-molecular-weight heparin monotherapy and 72% (304/423) of patients with symptomatic deep vein thrombosis were prescribed compression stockings. In multivariate analyses, symptomatic pulmonary embolism, hospital-acquired VTE, and concomitant antiplatelet therapy were associated with a significantly lower anticoagulation-related process adherence. Conclusions Adherence to several recommended processes of care was suboptimal in elderly patients with VTE. Quality of care interventions should particularly focus on processes with low adherence, such as the prescription of continued low-molecular-weight heparin therapy in patients with cancer and the achievement of an INR ≥2 for ≥24 hours before parenteral anticoagulants are stopped.
Flowers of the First Law

Continuing our examination of “the flowers of the First Law” (http://www.mii.ucla.edu/causality/? p=1354), this posting looks at one of the most crucial questions in causal inference: “How generalizable are our randomized clinical trials? ” Readers of this blog would be delighted to learn that one of our flowers provides an elegant and rather general answer to this question. I will describe this answer in the context of transportability theory (http://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/stat ser/r400reprint.pdf), and compare it to the way researchers have attempted to tackle the problem using the language of ignorability. We will see that ignorability-type assumptions are fairly limited, both in their ability to define conditions that permit generalizations, and in our ability to justify them in specific applications.
Improved ACLR by Cancellation Carrier Insertion in GFDM Based Cognitive Radios

Generalized Frequency Division Multiplexing (GFDM) is a recent multicarrier modulation technique with low out-of-band radiation that makes it an attractive choice for the PHY layer of cognitive radio. In orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) the out of band leakage is around -13 dB; with raised cosine or root raised cosine pulses, the out of band leakage of a GFDM system is -35 dB. To improve the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) even further, a technique of inserting cancellation carriers is implemented. Cancellation carriers are inserted at the vicinity of interference avoidance notch and are designed such that these cancellation carriers mitigate the interference from other subcarriers to the adjacent band. With this technique the out of band leakage is lowered to around -65 dB. This stunning improvement in the GFDM adjacent channel leakage ratio satisfies stringent FCC requirements for cognitive radio transmissions in TV white space scenarios.
FCAST: Object Delivery for the Asynchronous Layered Coding (ALC) and NACK-Oriented Reliable Multicast (NORM) Protocols

This document introduces the FCAST reliable object (e.g., file) delivery application. It is designed to operate either on top of the underlying Asynchronous Layered Coding (ALC) / Layered Coding Transport (LCT) reliable multicast transport protocol or the NACK- Oriented Reliable Multicast (NORM) transport protocol.
Approximations for the Random Coding Exponent of Correlated Fading Channels with Differential Detection

We formulate the random coding exponent for single and multiple antennae systems on a flatfading additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel with differential encoding and multiple-symbol differential detection (MSDD). Noting the intractability of the computation of the exponent for code lengths of interest, we propose the use of an approximated channel model based on the fact that the observation window of the MSDD metric is usually chosen to be much smaller than the coherence time of the fade. This approximation allows a drastic reduction in complexity. We achieve further simplifications by using a block-fading model that is equiva lent, in terms of the coding exponent, to the true continuous fading process. We then apply this optimized algorithm to investigate the relative contributions of spatial and temporal fading diversity in i mproving channel reliability for moderate code lengths.
A domain-specific middleware layer using AOSD: next-generation digital news publishing

In this demonstrator we illustrate the design and development of a domain-specific middleware layer for supporting a publishing infrastructure. The design of the middleware layer is based on an aspect-oriented architecture which has been iteratively defined by applying state-of-the-art aspect-oriented methods. The demonstrator shows the implementation and deployment of the middleware layers on top of JBoss, using the JBoss AOP framework.
What Do Physicians Know About Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus and When Did They Know It? A Survey of 284 Physicians

Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is a relatively new neurologic disorder first described by Salamon Hakim of Bogotá, Colombia, in 1965. NPH is characterized by three symptoms — impaired gait, incontinence and dementia — and an anatomic abnormality, i.e., enlargement of the cerebral ventricles, which can be seen on computerized tomographic or magnetic resonance imaging. Surprisingly, the intracranial pressure is normal. The first author of this article, a Yale Medical School faculty member, developed NPH over the decade from 1992 to 2002, during which it was erroneously diagnosed as cerebral atrophy and/or Parkinson’s disease. On recognizing the lack of awareness of NPH by physicians, he initiated a survey to explore this problem. He interviewed 166 practicing physicians who graduated from 50 American and 33 foreign medical schools, using a one-page, 10-point questionnaire (Part I). Almost one-third of the physicians had never heard of NPH. One-fifth had learned of NPH in medical school, and about half learned of it after medical school. Because there were insufficient physicians surveyed from 1986 to 2005, we recruited 118 additional physicians from the 20 Yale Medical School graduating classes from 1986 through 2005 (Part II). Two-thirds of them had learned of NPH in medical school, and one-fourth during residency and fellowship. Seven percent had never heard of NPH. The significance of these studies is discussed.
Bimanual Coordination Learning with Different Augmented Feedback Modalities and Information Types

Previous studies have shown that bimanual coordination learning is more resistant to the removal of augmented feedback when acquired with auditory than with visual channel. However, it is unclear whether this differential “guidance effect” between feedback modalities is due to enhanced sensorimotor integration via the non-dominant auditory channel or strengthened linkage to kinesthetic information under rhythmic input. The current study aimed to examine how modalities (visual vs. auditory) and information types (continuous visuospatial vs. discrete rhythmic) of concurrent augmented feedback influence bimanual coordination learning. Participants either learned a 90°-out-of-phase pattern for three consecutive days with Lissajous feedback indicating the integrated position of both arms, or with visual or auditory rhythmic feedback reflecting the relative timing of the movement. The results showed diverse performance change after practice when the feedback was removed between Lissajous and the other two rhythmic groups, indicating that the guidance effect may be modulated by the type of information provided during practice. Moreover, significant performance improvement in the dual-task condition where the irregular rhythm counting task was applied as a secondary task also suggested that lower involvement of conscious control may result in better performance in bimanual coordination.
Low Power SRAM with Boost Driver Generating Pulsed Word Line Voltage for Sub-1V Operation

Instability of SRAM memory cells derived from the process variation and lowered supply voltage has recently been posing significant design challenges for low power SoCs. This paper presents a boosted word line voltage scheme, where an active bodybiasing controlled boost transistor generates a pulsed word line voltage by capacitive coupling only when accessed. Simulation results have shown that the proposed approach not only shortens the access time but mitigates the impact of Vth variation on performance even at ultra low supply voltage less than 0.5 V.
Monolinguals' and Bilinguals' Use of Language in Forming Novel Object Categories

Monolinguals and bilinguals differ along a number of dimensions, including way they label existing object categories (Pavlenko & Malt, 2011). In the present study, we ask whether English monolinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and English-Spanish bilinguals also differ in the way they use language when forming novel categories. Previous research with monolinguals shows that a shared label encourages children (e.g., Waxman & Markow, 1995) and adults (e.g., Lupyan, Rakison, & McClelland, 2007) to place objects together. Our results further demonstrate that when two objects shared a Licit Word label like “zeg,” monolinguals and bilinguals alike are encouraged to group them together. Illicit Words like “gxz,” on the other hand, only influence the categorization decisions of bilinguals. Thus, bilinguals appear to be more flexible in their use of linguistic information in categorization. Neither group made use of non-linguistic cues (patterned frames), suggesting a unique role for language in category formation.