Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Model for Competition and Cooperation among Cloud Providers

Having received significant attention in the industry, the cloud market is nowadays fiercely competitive with many cloud providers. On one hand, cloud providers compete against each other for both existing and new cloud users. To keep existing users and attract newcomers, it is crucial for each provider to offer an optimal price policy which maximizes the final revenue and improves the competitive advantage. The competition among providers leads to the evolution of the market and dynamic resource prices over time. On the other hand, cloud providers may cooperate with each other to improve their final revenue. Based on a service level agreement, a provider can outsource its users' resource requests to its partner to reduce the operation cost and thereby improve the final revenue. This leads to the problem of determining the cooperating parties in a cooperative environment. This paper tackles these two issues of the current cloud market. First, we solve the problem of competition among providers and propose a dynamic price policy. We employ a discrete choice model to describe the user's choice behavior based on his obtained benefit value. The choice model is used to derive the probability of a user choosing to be served by a certain provider. The competition among providers is formulated as a noncooperative stochastic game where the players are providers who act by proposing the price policy simultaneously. The game is modelled as a Markov Decision Process whose solution is a Markov Perfect Equilibrium. Then, we address the cooperation among providers by presenting a novel algorithm for determining a cooperation strategy that tells providers whether to satisfy users' resource requests locally or outsource them to a certain provider. The algorithm yields the optimal cooperation structure from which no provider unilaterally deviates to gain more revenue. Numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed models.
Influence Analysis by Heterogeneous Network in MOOC Forums: What can We Discover?

With the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) in recent years, discussion forums there have become one of the most important components for both students and instructors to widely exchange ideas. And actually MOOC forums play the role of social learning media for knowledge propagation. In order to further understand the emerging learning settings, we explore the social relationship there by modeling the forum as a heterogeneous network with theories of social network analysis. We discover a specific group of students, named representative students, who feature large engagement in discussions and large aggregation of the majority of the whole forum participation, except the large learning behavior or the best performance. Based on these discoveries, to answer representative students’ threads preferentially could not only save time for instructors to choose target posts from all, but also could propagate the knowledge as widespread as possible. Furthermore if extra attention is paid to representative students in the sight of their behavior, performance and posts, instructors could readily get feedback of the teaching quality, realize the major concerns in forums, and then make measures to improve the teaching program. We also develop a real-time and effective visualization tool to help instructors achieve these.
Radio resource optimization for the half-duplex relay-assisted multiple access channel

We study the achievable rates of cooperative transmission in the multiple access Gaussian channel when the assisting relays are half-duplex and all terminals are power constrained. We define the problem of assigning the radio resources to the first and second phase of the cooperative transmission in order to get the maximum achievable rate region, for TDMA, FDMA and superposition coding. We show that the problems are convex and evaluate the optimum solution.
Counselling in the context of suicidal ideation in Malaysia

i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iii DEDICATION . iv TABLE OF CONTENTS . v LIST OF FIGURES . ix LIST OF TABLES . ix CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 Chekhov’s Ivanov . 1 Situating my research curiosity . 2 Malaysian cultural landscape . 5 Relational way of communication patterns . 6 Family values and parenting practices . 9 The burden of suicide in Malaysia . 10 Preparing counsellors for meeting with clients experiencing suicidal ideation: Counsellor education in Malaysia . 15 The research questions . 18 Social constructionism: Language and its role in knowledge construction . 19 Overviews of the upcoming chapters . 21 CHAPTER TWO: PHILOSOPHICAL LANDSCAPE OF THIS STUDY . 23 Introduction . 23 Deconstruction . 25 Foucault: Power/knowledge and discourse . 28 Power relations in counselling . 30 Biopower. 31 Disciplinary power. 33 Power-knowledge relations and discourse. 35 Positioning theory and agency . 37 Counselling as an ethical practice: Levinasian and Derridean ethical framework . 39 CHAPTER THREE: LITERATURE REVIEW . 42 Introduction . 42 The development of counselling as a profession . 42 Understanding suicide in the Malaysian context . 43 Suicide and the law . 44
Learning proposal for front-vehicle detection

It has been proven that a small set of generated candidate windows can speed up the classical sliding windows object detection. To prevent rear-end collisions and accidents, we provide a novel approach to get front-vehicle proposal for vehicle detection. Observing that on road the front vehicle has obvious edges, the proposed method stands on precise edge features detected by Structured Edge detector. With the help of integral image, we can find the proposals quickly, and linear SVM is adopted to rank the proposals. Using Non-Maximal Suppression(NMS), we can balance the numbers of the proposals and the precision. In particular, given less than several hundreds proposals per image, our method can achieve over 93.3% recall at an overlap threshold of 0.7 per image within 1 second which is really challenging.
The human mitochondrial ribosome recycling factor is essential for cell viability

The molecular mechanism of human mitochondrial translation has yet to be fully described. We are particularly interested in understanding the process of translational termination and ribosome recycling in the mitochondrion. Several candidates have been implicated, for which subcellular localization and characterization have not been reported. Here, we show that the putative mitochondrial recycling factor, mtRRF, is indeed a mitochondrial protein. Expression of human mtRRF in fission yeast devoid of endogenous mitochondrial recycling factor suppresses the respiratory phenotype. Further, human mtRRF is able to associate with Escherichia coli ribosomes in vitro and can associate with mitoribosomes in vivo. Depletion of mtRRF in human cell lines is lethal, initially causing profound mitochondrial dysmorphism, aggregation of mitoribosomes, elevated mitochondrial superoxide production and eventual loss of OXPHOS complexes. Finally, mtRRF was shown to co-immunoprecipitate a large number of mitoribosomal proteins attached to other mitochondrial proteins, including putative members of the mitochondrial nucleoid.
Exploring the emergence of traditional healer organizations: the case of an ethno-medical association in Bolivia

ABSTRACT The purpose of this research was to explore the phenomenon of the emergence of ethno-medical organisations among traditional healers from the late twentieth century. A case study was carried out on the Bolivian organisation Kallawayas sin Fronteras (KASFRO). According to the findings, KASFRO has been founded to demand formal recognition and inclusion in the national health system. Following historical discrimination against traditional medical heritage and the supremacy of the allopathic medical system, new trends of worldwide legitimisation of indigenous people's rights, as well as the worldwide acceptance of non-Western medical systems, were identified as crucial factors in the emergence of KASFRO. As a civil society organisation, KASFRO has been found to be a platform of social capital development which enables both, bonding within the Kallawaya community as well as with other traditional healer organisations (THO's), and bridging with governmental entities, which eventually led to the recognition of traditional doctors as professionals in Bolivia. These findings corroborate the roles of nongovernmental and nonprofit organisations as agents of political and social change, serving the preservation of medical ancestral cultures.
Multi-modal diffeomorphic registration using mutual information : Application to the registration of CT and MR pulmonary images

In this paper, we present a new algorithm to register multimodal images using mutual information in a fully diffeomorphic framework. Our driving motivation is to define a one-to-one mapping in CT/MR 3D pulmonary images acquired from patients with empyema. Due to the large amount of respiratory motion and the presence of strong pathologies, preserving the invertibility of the deformations can be challenging using non-diffeomorphic registration, but would be ensured using a diffeomorphic registration approach. Our main contribution is to propose a computationally tractable technique to estimate the gradients of mutual information in this context. This task can be particularly time consuming since the gradients of mutual information are computed voxel-wise but depend on the information contained in the whole images. Our strategy is then integrated into the Log-Domain Diffeomorphic Demons formalism, making it the first method simultaneously using exponential maps to encode the deformations and mutual information to compare the images. We finally test the whole algorithm on seven CT/MR image volumes of the chest. Results show that the estimated deformations are similar to those obtained using free-form deformations, with the additional property to always estimate invertible deformations.
Hybrid Deliberative Reactive Navigation System for Mobile Robots Using ROS and Fuzzy Logic Control

Autonomous navigation involves solving problems of perception, localization, planning and control. Based on how these problems can be solved it is possible to have a deliberative, reactive or deliberative-reactive (hybrid) navigation. Additionally, navigation must meet security requirements for both the robot and humans operating in the same workspace. Thus, a navigation system for differential hybrid mobile robots in structured environments was designed, which integrates the advantages of a high level deliberative planner with a reactive low-level control and easing some of its weaknesses. For this, a fuzzy logic controller was implemented. The proposed system was tested with a simulated robot Amigobot with a Kinect sensor using V-REP and ROS.
USNA: A Dual-Classifier Approach to Contextual Sentiment Analysis

This paper describes a dual-classifier approach to contextual sentiment analysis at the SemEval-2013 Task 2. Contextual analysis of polarity focuses on a word or phrase, rather than the broader task of identifying the sentiment of an entire text. The Task 2 definition includes target word spans that range in size from a single word to entire sentences. However, the context of a single word is dependent on the word’s surrounding syntax, while a phrase contains most of the polarity within itself. We thus describe separate treatment with two independent classifiers, outperforming the accuracy of a single classifier. Our system ranked 6th out of 19 teams on SMS message classification, and 8th of 23 on twitter data. We also show a surprising result that a very small amount of word context is needed for high-performance polarity extraction.
Hydrodynamic Force on Acoustically Driven Bubble in Sulfuric Acid

— Using a force balanced translational-radial dynamics, phase space of the moving single bubble sonoluminescence (m-SBSL) in 85% wt sulfuric acid has been numerically calculated. This phase space is compared with that of single bubble sonoluminescence (SBSL) in pure water which has been calculated by using the mere radial dynamics. It is shown that in 85% wt sulfuric acid, in a general agreement with experiment, the bubble’s positional instability threshold lays under the shape instability threshold. At the onset of spatial instability of moving sonoluminescing (SL) bubble in 85% wt sulfuric acid, temporal effects of the hydrodynamic force on the bubble translational-radial dynamics have been investigated. The appearance of non-zero history force on the moving SL bubble is because of proper condition which was produced by high viscosity of acid. Around the moving bubble collapse due to the rapid contraction of the bubble wall, the inertial based added mass force overcomes the viscous based history force and induces acceleration on the bubble translational motion.
2 Lossy Wave Propagation through a Graded Interface to a Negative Index Material – Case of Constant Impedance

We investigate the transmission and reflection properties at the interfaces between the lossy positive-index materials (PIM) and negative-index materials (NIM) with graded permittivity and permeability. We present an exact analytical solution to Helmholtz’ equation for the oblique incidence on profile with the graded real parts of permittivity and permeability profile changing according to a hyperbolic tangent function. Thereafter we restrict our considerations to a special case of the normal incidence and present an exact analytical solution to Helmholtz' equation for a lossy case The simple analytical solutions and graphical results for the field intensity along the graded structure are presented. The model allows for arbitrary temporal dispersion.
On-Manifold Preintegration Theory for Fast and Accurate Visual-Inertial Navigation

Current approaches for visual-inertial navigation (VIN) are able to attain highly accurate state estimation via nonlinear optimization. However, real-time optimization quickly becomes infeasible as the trajectory grows over time; this problem is further emphasized by the fact that inertial measurements come at high rate, hence leading to fast growth of the number of variables in the optimization. In this paper, we address this issue by preintegrating inertial measurements between selected keyframes into single relative motion constraints. Our first contribution is a preintegration theory that properly addresses the manifold structure of the rotation group. We formally discuss the generative measurement model as well as the nature of the rotation noise and derive the expression for the maximum a posteriori state estimator. Our theoretical development enables the computation of all necessary Jacobians for the optimization and a-posteriori bias correction in analytic form. The second contribution is to show that the preintegrated IMU model can be seamlessly integrated into a visual-inertial pipeline under the uni- fying framework of factor graphs. This enables the application of incremental-smoothing algorithms and the use of a structureless model for visual measurements, which avoids optimizing over the 3D points, further accelerating the computation. We perform an extensive evaluation of our monocular VIN pipeline on real and simulated datasets. The results confirm that our modelling effort leads to accurate state estimation in real-time, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches.
Development of a mid-power core (35 kW) dedicated to inverters for aerospace applications

This paper presents the power core developed for the 70kW inverter dedicated for future aeronautical applications in the frame of the MOET program, a FP6 European Integrated Project [1]. Description, principle of operation and experimental results are presented. Considered as a major sub-assembly of the inverter, attention has been paid on the design and preliminary tests of the power core. Electrical, thermal, mechanical and EMC tests have been performed as a pre-qualification of the device. Inverter results have been already presented in [2] but specific power core results will be presented in this paper. For DC to AC conversion, technologies improvement and specific integration allow reducing weight and volume and increase the inverter power density for the first time up to 5kW/kg for the dedicated application.
DIGITAL GAMES

The chapter aims at socializing the results of the investigation that the Gamebook Guardiões da Floresta (Gamebook Guardians of the Forest) had as an interactive, ludic, and mediator environment for stimulation of executive functions for children 8-12 years of age. The research was of a qualitative nature, characterized as a collaborative process of development and research on children, in the Municipal School Roberto Santos, Salvador, Bahia, having participant observation and sensitive listening as investigative devices. The results point to the necessity of giving feedback to the environment and also the continuity through this second part with neuropsychological evaluation before and after the interaction with the Gamebook in order to strengthen the evidences for this media contribution as a learning environment.
Waist-to-Hip Ratio, Dyslipidemia, Glycemic Levels, Blood Pressure and Depressive Symptoms among Diabetic and Non-Diabetic Chinese Women: A Cross-Sectional Study

Objectives To explore the relationship between depressive symptoms and waist-to-hip ratio, dyslipidemia, glycemic levels or blood pressure among diabetic and non-diabetic Chinese women. Methods 11,908 women aged ≥40 years were enrolled in this cross-sectional study, including 2,511 with type 2 diabetes and 9,397 without. Depressive symptoms (defined as having mild-to-severe depressive symptoms) were assessed by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) diagnostic algorithm. The prevalence and the odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for having depressive symptoms were estimated using logistic regression analysis. Results The age-adjusted prevalence of depressive symptoms was significantly higher in non-diabetic subjects with waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) ≥0.9 (8.6%, age-adjusted OR 1.51 [95% CI 1.17, 1.95]), total cholesterol (TC)>6.22 mmol/L (8.8%, 1.58 [1.16, 2.15]), and Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) ≥6.00 mmol/L (7.7%, 1.69 [1.34, 2.14]), while it was significantly lower in non-diabetic subjects with diastolic blood pressure (DBP) between 80 to 89 mmHg (6.2%, 0.78 [0.64, 0.95]). These relationships remained significant even after controlling for multiple factors (WHR ≥0.9: multivariable-adjusted OR 1.39 [95% CI 1.07, 1.80]; TC>6.22 mmol/L: 1.56 [1.14, 2.12]; HbA1c ≥6.00 mmol/L: 1.64 [1.30, 2.08]; DBP 80-89 mmHg: 0.78 [0.64, 0.95]). However, no significant trend between depressive symptoms and WHC, TC, HbA1c, DBP was observed in diabetic women, and no significant trend relationship between depressive symptoms and BMI, WC, TG, or SBP was observed in both non-diabetic and diabetic women. Moreover, the prevalence of depressive symptoms was significantly higher in previously-diagnosed diabetes, compared with non-diabetic subjects, while no significant differences were observed between newly-diagnosed diabetes and non-diabetic subjects. Conclusion The present study showed a relationship between WHR, TC, HbA1c, DBP and depressive symptoms among non-diabetic women, while no significant relationship between them was observed among diabetic women, even after controlling for multiple confounding factors.
Variation and its determinants: A corpus-based study of German schwa in the letters of Goethe

Abstract This paper studies some factors governing the presence or absence of word-final schwa in German. To obtain data as homogeneous as possible we focus on three adverbs outside morphological paradigms, namely, heut(e) ‘today’, gern(e) ‘willingly’, and bald(e) ‘soon’, in one particular text type, the letters written by one and the same person, the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Apart from lexical differences between the items studied and change over time, various phonological factors are shown to be important, most prominently the accent pattern of the following word (schwa tends to be present if the first syllable of the following word is accentuated), foot structure, and the initial segment of the following word. Statistical analyses, both for the individual factors and their (potential) interactions, reveal significant patterns at work behind the variation. For gern(e) the most important factors are purely phonological while for heut(e) the type of the following boundary and the position in the sentence is crucial.
A parallel direct solver for large sparse highly unsymmetric linear systems

The need to solve large sparse linear systems of equations efficiently lies at the heart of many applications in computational science and engineering. For very large systems when using direct factorization methods of solution, it can be beneficial and sometimes necessary to use multiple processors, because of increased memory availability as well as reduced factorization time. We report on the development of a new parallel code that is designed to solve linear systems with a highly unsymmetric sparsity structure using a modest number of processors (typically up to about 16). The problem is first subdivided into a number of loosely connected subproblems and a variant of sparse Gaussian elimination is then applied to each of the subproblems in parallel. An interface problem in the variables on the boundaries of the subproblems must also be factorized. We discuss how our software is designed to achieve the goals of portability, ease of use, efficiency, and flexibility, and illustrate its performance on an SGI Origin 2000, a Cray T3E, and a 2-processor Compaq DS20, using problems arising from real applications.
Detailed Surface Geometry and Albedo Recovery from RGB-D Video under Natural Illumination

In this paper we present a novel approach for depth map enhancement from an RGB-D video sequence. The basic idea is to exploit the photometric information in the color sequence. Instead of making any assumption about surface albedo or controlled object motion and lighting, we use the lighting variations introduced by casual object movement. We are effectively calculating photometric stereo from a moving object under natural illuminations. The key technical challenge is to establish correspondences over the entire image set. We therefore develop a lighting insensitive robust pixel matching technique that out-performs optical flow method in presence of lighting variations. In addition we present an expectation-maximization framework to recover the surface normal and albedo simultaneously, without any regularization term. We have validated our method on both synthetic and real datasets to show its superior performance on both surface details recovery and intrinsic decomposition.
Pure audio McGurk effect

In the experiments described in this paper, [aba] and [aga] speech sequences are combined in such a way that an [ada] stimuli is obtained, referring to the well-known McGurk effect. But contrary to the standard experiments, where audio [aba] and visual [aga] stimuli are combined, only audio signals are considered here, resulting in what is called a pure audio McGurk effect. The processing consists in modelling the audio signals by the classical linear prediction model and then linearly combining the [aba] and [aga] sequence LP filters that model the contribution of the vocal tract before resynthesis. The relation of the experiments with the problem of data representation and the nature of the audio-visual integration space is discussed.