Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automotive Software Development: A Model Based Approach

This article focuses on model based development of electronic control units (ECUs) in the automotive domain. The use of model-based approaches solves requirements for the fast-growing integration of formerly isolated logical functions in complex distributed networks of heavily interacting ECUs. One fundamental property of such an approach is the existence of an adequate modeling notation tailored to the specific needs of the application domain together with a precise definition of its syntax and its semantics. However, although these constituents are necessary, they are not sufficient for guaranteeing an efficient development process of ECU networks. In addition, methodical support which guides the application of the modeling notation must be an integral part of a model-based approach. Therefore we aim at developing a so-called ‘system model’ which comprises all of these constituents: the modeling language AML its mapping to the Unified Modeling Language (UML) which represents the modeling language standard for object-oriented system development as well as a system of abstraction levels which will help the AML user to achieve a well-structured development process. Within this methodical framework we outline the use of the AML in this article by illustrating a case study which comprises parts of the body car electronics within a car. Used modeling concepts are discussed in detail by showing its correlation to the UML representation and its counterpart in the metamodel. Long term goal of the project Automotive is to establish the AML as a de facto standard for the specification of embedded systems. The accompanying realisation of an integrated tool chain, comprising the tools Telelogic UML Suite /28/, ETAS ASCET-SD /27/ and Telelogic DOORS /28/ as well as the validation of the methodology by the different project partners facilitate this goal.
The Pricing of the Option Implicitly Granted by the Italian Treasury to the Specialists in the Reserved Auction Reopening

The Italian Treasury selects a group of Specialists within the Government securities primary market participants. They benefit from a set of obligations and privileges. Academic literature paid scant attention to the privilege of participation in reserved auction reopenings, i.e. the right to buy predetermined additional quantities of Government securities at the auction price. This paper attempts to price this privilege as a call option in the framework of the Cox - Ingersoll - Ross model. No matter the one-day life, it has a value significantly different from zero. Moreover, it helps to explain part of the mispricing between the primary and secondary market.
Quantitative MR imaging study of intravitreal sustained release of VEGF in rabbits.

PURPOSE To determine whether sustained elevation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the vitreous cavity causes retinal hyperpermeability [blood-retinal barrier (BRB) breakdown] before the development of retinal neovascularization (NV) and to document the kinetics of the integrity of BRB breakdown versus time. METHODS Poly(L-lactide-co-glycolide)based devices loaded with VEGF were implanted intravitreally in rabbit eyes. Contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods were used to identify and quantitate the retinal permeability at various time points after implantation. This was done with the newly developed MR tracer AngioMARK (Epix Medical, Boston, MA). After the MRI measurements, fundus photography and fluorescein angiography (FA) also were performed on the same set of animals. RESULTS At 3 days after implantation, the MR images showed a significant retinal leakage into the vitreous cavity (BRB breakdown) of the VEGF-implanted eyes. To quantitate this leakage, the permeability surface area product (PS) was measured. At 3 days, the mean PS product was 1.25 +/-0.25 x 10(-5) cm3/min. Based on the VEGF in vitro release study, this 3-day BRB breakdown corresponded to a total sustained release of 7.42 +/- 0.54 microg/ml of VEGF. The fundus and FA photographs of these VEGF-implanted eyes taken at 4 days after implantation also showed a considerable level of retinal vascular dilation and tortuosity. By 12 days after implantation, the mean PS product decreased to 5.83 +/- 1.38 x 10(-6) cm3/min. However, the retinal NV was observed only after the second week after implantation. By this time, a total of 10.70 +/- 0.92 microg/ml of VEGF was released in a sustained fashion. Also, after the retinal NV development, retinal detachment also was observed. The control eyes, however, which were implanted with blank devices, remained unchanged and normal during the entire course of this study (PS = 5.57 +/- 0.66 x 10(-7) cm3/min). CONCLUSIONS. The findings indicate that sustained delivery of elevated amounts of VEGF in the vitreous cavity induces a BRB breakdown even earlier than 3 days after implantation. This was achieved after a total sustained release of 7.42 +/- 0.54 microg/ml of VEGF. This retinal leakage regressed by more than half by the time the retinal NV developed. Furthermore, a retinal detachment occurred after this retinal NV. These results are similar to proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). The sustained elevation of VEGF in the vitreous cavity of rabbit eyes is potentially a good model to test VEGF antagonists to treat or prevent PDR in humans. The quantifiable change of BRB breakdown by the contrast-enhanced MRI method is ideal to assess the therapeutic intervention in vivo without killing the animal and may prove to be clinically useful in humans.
Object lens: a “spreadsheet” for cooperative work

Object Lens allows unsophisticated computer users to create their own cooperative work applications using a set of simple, but powerful, building blocks. By defining and modifying templates for various semistructured objects, users can represent information about people, tasks, products, messages, and many other kinds of information in a form that can be processed intelligently by both people and their computers. By collecting these objects in customizable folders, users can create their own displays which summarize selected information from the objects in table or tree formats. Finally, by creating semiautonomous agents, users can specify rules for automatically processing this information in different ways at different times. The combination of these primitives provides a single consistent interface that integrates facilities for object-oriented databases, hypertext, electronic messaging, and rule-based intelligent agents. To illustrate the power of this combined approach, we describe several simple examples of applications (such as task tracking, intelligent message routing, and database retrieval) that we have developed in this framework.
Cleavage of a model DNA replication fork by a methyl-specific endonuclease

Epigenetic DNA methylation is involved in many biological processes. An epigenetic status can be altered by gain or loss of a DNA methyltransferase gene or its activity. Repair of DNA damage can also remove DNA methylation. In response to such alterations, DNA endonucleases that sense DNA methylation can act and may cause cell death. Here, we explored the possibility that McrBC, a methylation-dependent DNase of Escherichia coli, cleaves DNA at a replication fork. First, we found that in vivo restriction by McrBC of bacteriophage carrying a foreign DNA methyltransferase gene is increased in the absence of homologous recombination. This suggests that some cleavage events are repaired by recombination and must take place during or after replication. Next, we demonstrated that the enzyme can cleave a model DNA replication fork in vitro. Cleavage of a fork required methylation on both arms and removed one, the other or both of the arms. Most cleavage events removed the methylated sites from the fork. This result suggests that acquisition of even rarely occurring modification patterns will be recognized and rejected efficiently by modification-dependent restriction systems that recognize two sites. This process might serve to maintain an epigenetic status along the genome through programmed cell death.
Exploring Business Ecological Information with Personal Attention

In the era of Web 2.0, the amount of information has been growing exponentially, intensifying the information overload problem. The inconvenience caused by information overload not only lies in casual search by every Internet user, but also in finding business related information. Business analysts now need to explore an overwhelming amount of information in order to understand business ecosystem or technology development. This study designed a mechanism hoping to decrease the information searching cost and improve the effectiveness of information searching as well. Based on the business ecosystem identified by relation extraction technique, we combined semantically networked knowledge base to organize information of diverse sources to facilitate exploratory search. On top of that, we adopted personalization technique to filter irrelevant information, and applied spreading activation model in the business ecological knowledge. Through experimental design and evaluation, we found that users can identify more relevant information facilitated by the built system than searching only via term matching or user profile matching.
Simulations and Analysis of Nano Scale Porous Silicon Structures for Optical Sensor Applications

Recently, Porous Silicon (PS) is emerged as novel and unique material as a stable nano scale optical sensor device. In this work, one dimensional (1D) Photonic Bandgap (PBG) structures such as single layer (SL), Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR) and Microcavity (MC) using PS material are suggested as optical sensor applications. Design and simulations are relying on the Bruggeman’s Effective Medium Approximation (BEMA) and the Transfer Matrix Method (TMM) to predict the optical properties of 1DPSPBG sensor device structures. By analyzing the reflectance spectra, wavelength shift (Δλ) has been obtained, which showed good linear relationship with refractive index of the void. Sensitivity analysis showed that MC structure performs best as 1D-PSPBG optical sensor device due to its structural and optical properties. The results reported here are useful for the design and prediction of the response of optical sensor devices using 1D-PSPBG structures.
Cityware: Urban Computing to Bridge Online and Real-World Social Networks

In this paper we describe a platform that enables us to systematically study online social networks alongside their real-world counterparts. Our system, entitled Cityware, merges users’ online social data, made available through Facebook, with mobility traces captured via Bluetooth scanning. Furthermore, our system enables users to contribute their own mobility traces, thus allowing users to form and participate in a community. In addition to describing Cityware’s architecture, we discuss the type of data we are collecting, and the analyses our platform enables, as well as users’ reactions and thoughts. Author
Democracy in Australia : the Challenge of Evolving a Successful Model

This paper examines the current status of e-democracy initiatives in Australia and considers the factors that might contribute to the evolution of a successful model of e-democracy in the Australian context. In particular, it examines whether any analogies can be drawn from the world of e-business which has transitioned from an over-hyped boom and then bust in the early years into a steadier and sustained growth in more recent times. The paper concludes that, despite some valiant efforts by e-democracy enthusiasts, we have yet to hit on an edemocracy model that truly engages the Australian populace. Nevertheless, the analogy from e-business suggests that, given the right model(s) and the right environment, it can still be possible to deliver real benefits via e-democracy.
Minimal dataset for Network Intrusion Detection Systems via MID-PCA: A hybrid approach

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) monitor internet traffic to detect malicious activities. Unfortunately, the amount of data that must be analyzed by NIDS is too large. Several feature selection and feature extraction techniques have been proposed to reduce the size of data. Few are focused on finding exactly by how much the dataset should be reduced. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the finding of that finite amount of data required for successful intrusion detection. A new hybrid algorithm MID-PCA combining PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and mRMR (minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance - MID evaluation criteria) is proposed. PCA is first applied to the original dataset. Then, mRMR-MID is applied to the intermediary output to further reduce redundancy and maximize relevancy. An exhaustive evaluation of the MID-PCA algorithm is conducted with the KDD Cup'99, a used widely dataset in the network security community. MID-PCA performance was compared to that of PCA and mRMR using two classifiers namely J48 (C4.5) and BayesNet. Experimental results assert the effectiveness of the newly proposed algorithm MID-PCA for NIDS feature extraction compared with PCA and Mutual Information. The newly proposed MID-PCA shows better performance and classification accuracies with reduced datasets of only 4 dimensions for BayesNet (99.77%) and 6 dimensions for J48 (99.94%). This is an improvement over PCA which achieves similar classification accuracy with 12 principal components (twelve dimensions). An extension of this paper will conduct broader experiments using other datasets, then compare results to that of several well known feature reduction algorithms to confirm the superiority of MID-PCA.
Identification and characterization of an inner ear-expressed human melanoma inhibitory activity (MIA)-like gene (MIAL) with a frequent polymorphism that abolishes translation.

To discover new cochlea-specific genes as candidate genes for nonsyndromic hearing impairment, we searched in The Institute of Genome Research database for expressed sequence tags isolated from the cochlea only. This led to the cloning and characterization of a human gene named melanoma inhibitory activity-like (MIAL; HGMW-approved symbol OTOR alias MIAL) gene. In situ hybridization revealed MIAL expression in a cell layer beneath the sensory epithelium of cochlea and vestibule of human fetal inner ear. No other human tissue, except fetal brain, showed expression of MIAL when analyzed by in situ hybridization or reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. The cDNA of the mouse homologue was also cloned and mapped about 80 cM from the top of mouse chromosome 2. In mouse, Mial was also expressed in the cochlea and the vestibule of the inner ear, as well as in brain, eye, limb, and ovary. Expression in mammalian cell cultures showed that MIAL is translated as an approximately 15-kDa polypeptide that is assembled into a covalently linked homodimer, modified by sulfation, and secreted from the cells via the Golgi apparatus. In the human MIAL gene, a frequent polymorphism was discovered in the translation initiation codon (ACG instead of ATG). Of 505 individuals, 48 (9.5%) were ATG/ACG heterozygous and 1 (0.2%) was homozygous for ACG. No MIAL protein was synthesized in cells transfected with cDNA of the ACG allele. The inner ear-restricted expression pattern and the existence of an inactive allele suggest that MIAL may contribute to inner-ear dysfunction in humans.
On the improvement of transient performance in tracking control for discrete-time systems with input saturation and disturbances

In this paper, we present an enhanced composite nonlinear feedback (CNF) control technique for discrete-time systems with input saturation and with external disturbances. The conventional CNF control is proved to be capable of yielding better transient performance in tracking control for systems with input saturation. However, when the given system has external disturbances as in most of practical situations, the conventional CNF control would yield some steady state errors in the resulting output response. The enhanced CNF technique presented is an extension of the conventional one. It retains good transient properties as those of the conventional CNF control and at the same time has an additional capacity of eliminating steady state bias due to unknown constant disturbances.
The Design and Evaluation of a MIMO-OFDM Benchmark

The combination of MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) and OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) is considered as a key technology of next wireless communication. In this paper, a MIMO-OFDM benchmark compliant to IEEE 802.16e standard is developed and evaluated on YHFT-DSP/700. We provide a detailed a detailed analysis of computation requirement, parallelism, memory requirement and intrinsic operations of the core algorithms along with the interaction between the components. The goal of this paper is to provide a high-level analysis of the architectural implications of one protocol that need to be accommodated in a programmable platform for software defined radio.
Quasi-pipelined hash circuits

Hash functions are an important cryptographic primitive. They are used to obtain a fixed-size fingerprint, or hash value, of an arbitrary long message. We focus particularly on the class of dedicated hash functions, whose general construction is presented; the peculiar arrangement of sequential and combinational units makes the application of pipelining techniques to these constructions not trivial. We formalize an optimization technique called quasi-pipelining, whose goal is to optimize the critical path and thus to increase the clock frequency in dedicated hardware implementations. The SHA-2 algorithm has been previously examined by Dadda et al, with specific versions of quasi-pipelining; a full generalization of the technique is presented, along with application to the SHA-1 algorithm. Quasi-pipelining could be as well applied to future hashing algorithms, provided they are designed along the same lines as those of the SHA family.
Software Development for the Kinematic Analysis of a Lynx 6 Robot Arm

— The kinematics of manipulators is a central problem in the automatic control of robot manipulators. Theoretical background for the analysis of the 5 Dof Lynx-6 educational Robot Arm kinematics is presented in this paper. The kinematics problem is defined as the transformation from the Cartesian space to the joint space and vice versa. The Denavit-Harbenterg (D-H) model of representation is used to model robot links and joints in this study. Both forward and inverse kinematics solutions for this educational manipulator are presented, An effective method is suggested to decrease multiple solutions in inverse kinematics. A visual software package, named MSG, is also developed for testing Motional Characteristics of the Lynx-6 Robot arm. The kinematics solutions of the software package were found to be identical with the robot arm’s physical motional behaviors.
Barzilai-Borwein Step Size for Stochastic Gradient Descent

One of the major issues in stochastic gradient descent (SGD) methods is how to choose an appropriate step size while running the algorithm. Since the traditional line search technique does not apply for stochastic optimization algorithms, the common practice in SGD is either to use a diminishing step size, or to tune a fixed step size by hand, which can be time consuming in practice. In this paper, we propose to use the Barzilai-Borwein (BB) method to automatically compute step sizes for SGD and its variant: stochastic variance reduced gradient (SVRG) method, which leads to two algorithms: SGD-BB and SVRG-BB. We prove that SVRG-BB converges linearly for strongly convex objective functions. As a by-product, we prove the linear convergence result of SVRG with Option I proposed in [10], whose convergence result is missing in the literature. Numerical experiments on standard data sets show that the performance of SGD-BB and SVRG-BB is comparable to and sometimes even better than SGD and SVRG with best-tuned step sizes, and is superior to some advanced SGD variants.
Hardware acceleration of retinal blood vasculature segmentation

Retinal vessel tree extraction is a complex and computationally intensive task used in several medical and biometric applications. The emergence of portable biometric authentication applications, as well as on-site biomedical diagnostics, raises the need for hardware-accelerated, power-efficient architectures that can satisfy the performance and accuracy requirements of retinal vessel tree extraction. As such, this paper presents a VLSI implementation of a retina vessel segmentation system, in an attempt to illustrate the advantages and performance benefits that result from a dedicated VLSI solution. The proposed design implements an unsupervised, vessel segmentation algorithm, which utilizes match filtering with signed integers to enhance the difference between the blood vessels and the rest of the retina. The design simplifies the process of obtaining a binary map of the vessel tree by using parallel processing and efficient resource sharing, thus offering real-time performance. FPGA-based simulation results indicate significant performance improvements (up to 90x) when compared to existing hardware and software implementations.
Self-calibrating a real-time monocular 3 d facial capture system

This paper addresses the problem of obtaining 3d detailed reconstructions of human faces in real-time and with inexpensive hardware. We present an algorithm based on a monocular multi-spectral photometric-stereo setup. This system is known to capture high-detailed deforming 3d surfaces at high frame rates and without having to use any expensive hardware or synchronized light stage. However, the main challenge of such a setup is the calibration stage, which depends on the lights setup and how they interact with the specific material being captured, in this case, human faces. For this purpose we develop a self-calibration technique where the person being captured is asked to perform a rigid motion in front of the camera, maintaining a neutral expression. Rigidity constrains are then used to compute the head’s motion with a structure-from-motion algorithm. Once the motion is obtained, a multi-view stereo algorithm reconstructs a coarse 3d model of the face. This coarse model is then used to estimate the lighting parameters with a robust estimator which allows for detailed realtime 3d capture of faces. The calibration procedure is validated with two real sequences.