Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Systematic Exploration of Collocation Profiles

The central issue in corpus-driven linguistics is the detection and description of patterns in language usage. The features that constitute the notion of a pattern can be computed to a certain extent by statistical (collocation) methods, but a crucial part of the notion may vary depending on applications and users. Thus, typically, any computed collocation cluster will have to be interpreted hermeneutically. Often it might be captured by a generalized, more abstract pattern. We present a generic process model that supports the recognition, interpretation, and expression of the patterns inside and of the relations between clusters. By this, clusters can be merged virtually according to any notion of a 'pattern', and their relations can be exploited for different applications
A Blueprint for Constructing Peer-to-Peer Systems Robust to Dynamic Worst-Case Joins and Leaves

Until now, the analysis of fault tolerance of peer-to-peer systems usually only covers random faults of some kind. Contrary to traditional algorithmic research, faults as well as joins and leaves occurring in a worst-case manner are hardly considered. In this paper, we devise techniques to build dynamic peer-to-peer systems which remain fully functional in spite of an adversary which continuously adds and removes peers. We exemplify our algorithms on a pancake topology and present a system which maintains peer degree and network diameter O(log n/log log n), where n is the total number of peers in the system
Decision Tree Construction in Fixed Dimensions: Being Global is Hard but Local Greed is Good

We study the problem of nding optimal linear decision trees for classifying a set of points in IR d partitioned into concept classes, where d is a xed, but arbitrary, constant. We show that optimal decision tree construction is NP-complete, even for 3-dimensional point sets. Nevertheless, we can prove a number of interesting approximation bounds on the use of random sampling for nding optimal splitting hyperplanes in greedy decision tree constructions. We give experimental evidence that, while providing asymptotic guarantees on split quality, this random sampling approach behaves as good in practice as uniform randomization strategies that do not provide such guarantees. Finally, we provide experimental justiication for coupling this random sampling strategy with locally-greedy \hill climbing" methods.
Is There Evidence to Support Use of Premixed or Prandial Insulin Regimens in Insulin-Naive or Previously Insulin-Treated Type 2 Diabetic Patients?

Regarding the question of how to use insulin in type 2 diabetes, a systematic review conforming to methods of the Cochrane collaboration was published in 2006 (1). This review included studies published in Medline until May 2004. The analysis compared insulin monotherapy with combination therapy with insulin and oral hypoglycemic agent (OHA) in previously insulin-naive patients. With use of the methods detailed in the review (1), 13 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) could be identified and included 1,811 participants with a mean age of 60 years and duration of diabetes of 10 years. The authors concluded that bedtime NPH insulin combined with oral antihyperglycemic agents provides glycemic control comparable with that provided by insulin monotherapy with twice daily insulin or basal/bolus insulin regimens but is associated with less weight gain if metformin is used. However, since May 2004 there has been an exponential increase in the number of patients participating in RCTs comparing basal insulin plus OHA with other insulin regiments with similar OHA (vide infra). Such studies have become possible thanks to the development of rapid- and long-acting insulin analogs and commercial support for studies addressing insulin therapy. This review focuses on comparison of different insulin treatment regimens in both insulin-naive (first objective) and previously insulin-treated (second objective) patients with type 2 diabetes. We wished to examine whether there is an advantage (glycemic control, weight gain, or hypoglycemia) of using premixed and basal-bolus regimens with or without OHA compared with basal insulin and OHA. For the first objective, we used the principles outlined in the previous Cochrane review (1) to compare glycemic control between basal insulin/OHA and other regimens. The latter included regimens with premixed insulin twice daily with or without OHA or regimens using prandial insulin three times daily or multiple insulin injection therapy (basal and prandial three times …
A Broadband MIMO-OFDM Demonstrator : Design , Implementation and Measurement Results

We present an experimental broadband wireless 4×4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) space-time-blockcoded (STBC) OFDM system based on an extension of the IEEE 802.11a/g physical layer (PHY) to multiple-antenna scenarios. A general description of the hardware architecture of the demonstrator is shown. The FPGA and DSP-based algorithms implemented at the transmit and receive sides are defined and compared to traditional single-antenna designs. Real measurement results over different spatial diversity schemes are finally presented to illustrate the effective gains obtained from the use of multiple transmit and receive antennas in a multicarrier system.
Soft interference cancellation and channel estimation in uncoded asynchronous DS-CDMA system

The conventional interference cancellation receiver is subject to performance degradation due to incorrect decisions on interference subtracted from the received signal. This paper aims at deriving algorithms to improve the performance of interference cancellation and channel estimation in an uncoded asynchronous DS-CDMA system with orthogonal modulation. Two soft cancellation schemes, one based on the maximum a posterior (MAP), the other based on the nonlinear minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion are presented and proved to be superior to the conventional PIC scheme with minor increase in complexity. Furthermore, the best system performance (2dB gain in a 21-user system) is observed when the derived soft information is also used for channel estimation.
Interrelationships of interleukin-8 with interleukin-1beta and neutrophils in vaginal fluid of healthy and bacterial vaginosis positive women.

Vaginal innate immunity in response to microbial perturbation is still poorly understood and could be crucial for protection from adverse outcomes. We investigated the relationship between interleukin (IL)-8, IL-1beta and neutrophils in vaginal fluid obtained from 60 healthy women and 51 women who were bacterial vaginosis (BV) positive. Concentrations of IL-8 and IL-1beta were highly correlated with counts of neutrophils in vaginal fluid of the entire population examined (111 subjects). Vaginal IL-1beta concentrations were significantly higher (P < 0.001) in BV positive women. There was no significant difference in IL-8 levels or number of neutrophils between healthy controls and BV positive women. None of the healthy controls with high neutrophil counts (> or =75th percentile, 14 average count per field) had high concentrations of IL-1beta (> or =75th percentile, 220 pg/ml), whereas 84% of BV positive women with high neutrophil counts had high IL-1beta concentrations (P < 0.001). On the contrary, no difference in the percentage of subjects with elevated concentrations of IL-8 (> or =75th percentile, 2842 pg/ml) was found between healthy and BV positive women with high numbers of neutrophils (55.5% of healthy versus 53% of BV positive women). Our findings show that BV causes a large increase in IL-1beta concentrations which is not paralleled by an increase in IL-8 concentrations in vaginal fluid, suggesting that BV-associated factors more specifically dampen IL-8 rather than IL-1beta. The lack of an increase in IL-8 may explain the absence of an increase in neutrophil numbers in most women exposed to abnormal vaginal colonization (BV).
Spectral and cepstral projection bases constructed by independent component analysis

The present paper addresses the question of the efficiency of Independent Component Analysis (ICA) as a statistical process for deriving optimal representational bases for the projection of spectrum and cepstrum in the context of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). Several decorrelation strategies have been applied on the log-spectrum and cepstrum to fulfill the practical need of a diagonal covariance HMM for uncorrelated features. In our work we question the optimality of a fixed decorrelation strategy as DCT and follow an emerging trend in ASR that designs projection bases based on the statistics of speech. We differentiate our approach from the second order statistics of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), Linear Discrimination Analysis (LDA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) by proposing an alternative data-driven approach based on Higher Order Statistics.
Parking Reservation - application dedicated for car users based on telecommunications APIs

The main objective of this paper is proposition simple, easy to implementation and low cost solution dedicated for parking lots reservation. The presented application uses Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) as an communication channel between driver and parking system. USSD communication proposed in this paper is more efficient and comfortable for the end user in comparison with SMS used in many existing parking solutions. System is integrated with communication service provider infrastructure using Service Delivery Platform exposed APIs for telecommunication network in Internet. Application can be launched on every phone and does not require Internet access on mobile phone side.
First Experiences with TIRA for Reproducible Evaluation in Information Retrieval

The verifiability and comparability of computational exper iments is a major shortcoming in scientific publications, even at top c nferences. In recent years, various services emerged that try to address this problem by providing a global platform where researche s can upload programs along with experiment results. However, th ese platforms are not well accepted, partly due to their inheren t topdown character: a single institution prescribes the format s and technologies to be used. We argue that a community-wide evaluati on platform can evolve only from an ongoing bottom-up effort. For the field of information retrieval we have been undertaki ng concrete steps to launch and foster this idea with TIRA [4]. H ere, we present the concept and an implementation of a web-based e xperimentation environment that greatly simplifies mainten ance and publishing of executable experiments for a research group. TIRA’s system architecture retains researcher’s full control ove r th ir research assets; moreover, no constraints with respect to dat a formats or programming technologies are prescribed. We see several reasons for researchers to publish their experiments as a web se rvice with TIRA, namely, to simplify their experiment design and e xecution, to gain credibility, and to easily disseminate result s. This paper reports on experiences from developing TIRA towards our goal. Design goals are reviewed, existing evaluat ion platforms are analyzed, and the architecture of our current implementation is presented. In particular, we present insights from the first widespread use of TIRA at the PAN series of internationa l plagiarism detection competitions in 2012. Altogether, our re view is promising: the design decisions underlying TIRA are both po werful and flexible enough to cope with the widely varying progra mming preferences of the researchers.
Should All Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma with Paranasal Sinus Invasion Be Staged as T3 in the Intensity-Modulated Radiotherapy Era? A Study of 1811 Cases

Background: Currently, there is no uniform consensus regarding the appropriate staging for invasion of the paranasal sinuses in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). In the current AJCC staging system for NPC, paranasal sinus invasion is defined within the T3 classification. However, according to the Chinese 2008 staging system, which is also widely used in the regions where NPC is endemic in China, paranasal sinus invasion is classified as T4 disease. Methods: Patients (n = 1811) with non-metastatic, histologically-proven NPC treated with intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) were retrospectively analyzed. Results: Paranasal sinus invasion was identified in 289/1811 patients (16.0%). Multivariate analysis revealed ethmoid sinus invasion (HR, 2.889; 95% CI, 1.362-6.131; P = 0.006) and maxillary sinus invasion (HR, 3.110; 95% CI, 1.439-6.721; P = 0.004) were independent prognostic factors for local relapse-free survival (LRFS). T3 patients with ethmoid sinus or maxillary sinus invasion had similar 3-year LRFS (83.6% vs. 92.2%, P = 0.132) as T4 patients, and had poorer LRFS (83.6% vs. 98.3%, P = 0.006) than T3 patients with sphenoid sinus invasion alone. Also, T3 patients with sphenoid sinus invasion alone had similar 3-year LRFS (98.3 vs. 96.4%, P = 0.391) as T3 patients without paranasal sinus invasion, and a trend toward higher LRFS (98.3% vs. 92.2%, P = 0.065) than T4 patients. Conclusion: In patients underwent IMRT, tumors with ethmoid sinus or maxillary sinus invasion had a higher risk of local failure than those with sphenoid sinus invasion alone. Sphenoid sinus invasion alone should be classified as T3 disease and ethmoid sinus or maxillary sinus involvement as T4 disease in the current AJCC staging system for NPC.
Problematic gaming behavior among adolescents and young adults : relationship between gaming behavior and health

The aim of the study was to describe and explain the problematic gaming behavior and the relationship between the digital gaming behavior (gaming time, medium, genres and motives), health (psychological, social and physical) and problematic gaming behavior among young people aged from 13 to 24 years. Information received can be used for developing practices to identify individuals with problematic gaming behavior, promote their lifestyle change and subsequently to increase knowledge of the nature of the condition within healthcare education. In this study, digital games means electronic games that can be played through console, computer, network and mobile devices. In the first sub-study, a systematic literature review with synthesis from previous empirical studies (n = 50) about the health outcomes related to problematic gaming behavior was conducted. In the second sub-study, cross-sectional and national survey design with a randomly selected sample (N = 3 000) was used to identify problematic gaming behavior and to examine its associations with the digital gaming behavior (gaming time, genres and motives) and health (psychological, social and physical) among Finnish adolescents and young adults (n = 293). In the third sub-study, a descriptive, regional cross-sectional study was conducted to examine adolescents’ (n = 560) digital gaming behavior and its relationship to problematic gaming behavior symptoms. The data from empirical studies two and three were collected by using an internet-based survey. Statistical methods were used to analyse the data. The findings of the systematic review and empirical study showed that problematic gaming behavior was especially related to adverse psychosocial health outcomes, namely, anxiety, depression and a preference for online social interaction. Problematic gaming behavior was also linked to the use of a cluster of games-characterized features of role playing, action, progression and strategy. Moreover, the gaming motives, such as entertainment achievement, social and escapism, correlated significantly to problematic gaming behavior. Among the sample of adolescents, the blended family structure might predict problematic gaming behavior symptoms. The study significantly added understanding of gaming and health characteristics in the role of problematic gaming behavior among young people. The findings may help to advance in the areas of screening and counselling for PGB.
Template Based Key Finding from audio

A model for template based key finding from audio is presented and two methods that implement this model are compared. Templates are computed from a weighted combination of spectra obtained from sound recordings of monophonic musical notes. Individual weights of notes contributing to the templates are determined by profiles representing tonal hierarchies in Western music. Key determination is based on the correlations between spectral summary information obtained from audio input and the precomputed templates. The first method that implements the template based model utilizes a pure spectral representation and the second uses a chroma based representation. An overall evaluation of the model and comparison between the two methods are shown using a test audio collection. Performance results are presented for different profiles and a variety of analysis durations. Results are encouraging and show that template based models are viable for key finding from audio.
CocoViz: Towards Cognitive Software Visualizations

Understanding software projects is a complex task. There is an increasing need for visualizations that improve comprehensiveness of the evolution of a software system. This paper discusses our recent work in software visualization with respect to metaphors. Our goal is to use simple and well-known graphical elements known from daily life such as houses, spears, or tables to allow a user a quick and intuitive understanding of a given visualization via their proportions. We present a software metrics configurator that handle different metaphors and allows optimizations to their graphical representation. The results so far show that large systems can be visualized effectively with metaphor glyphs, yet more case studies and more metaphor glyphs are required for a better understanding for offering a simple and cognitive visual understanding of a software system.
A challenging test for convergence accelerators: summation of a series with a special sign pattern.

Slowly convergent series that have special sign patterns have been used in testing the efficiency of convergence accelerat ion methods. In this paper, we study the series Sm,n = P∞=0 (−1) ek/mf (k+1)2n+1 when m ≥ 1 ,n ≥ 0, which has m positive terms followed by m negative terms periodically. Using special functions, we first derive its sum in simple terms involving only the Riemann Zeta function and trigonometric functions. With the exact sum available, we next use this series to test the efficiency of various nonlinear convergence acceleration methods in summing it numerically. We conclude that the Shanks transformation and the Levin—Sidi d (m) -transformation are two acceleration methods that produce highly accurate approximations to the sum of Sm,n, the latter being the more effective.
Response Time Behavior of Distributed Voting Algorithmsfor Managing Replicated

Voting is a simple and yet eeective way of managing replicated data in distributed systems. In this paper we analyze its response time behavior. We investigate a technique for obtaining the access time distribution for requests that access replicated data maintained by the distributed system. The technique is based on Petri net modeling and can be used to estimate the reliability of real-time applications which must access replicated data with a deadline requirement.
A Unified Probabilistic Model of Note Combinations and Chord Progressions

This paper presents a unified simultaneous and sequential model for note combinations and chord progressions. In chord progression analysis, n-gram models have often been used for modeling temporal sequences of chord labels (e.g., C major, D minor, and E# seventh). These models require us to specify the value of n and define a limited vocabulary of chord labels. On the other hand, our model is designed to directly modeling temporal sequences of note combinations without specifying the value of n, because we aim to use our model as a prior distribution on musical notes in polyphonic music transcription. To do this, we extend a nonparametric Bayesian n-gram model that was designed for modeling sequences of words in the field of computational linguistics. More specifically, our model can accept any combinations of notes as chords and allows each chord appearing in a sequence to have an unbounded and variable-length context. All possibilities of n are taken into account when predicting a next chord given precedent chords. Even when an unseen note combination (chord) emerges, we can estimate its n-gram probability by referring to its 0-gram probability, i.e., the combinatorial probability of note components. We tested our model by using the ground-truth chord annotations and automatic chord recognition results of the Beatles songs.
A Chiral Cascade via Backreacting D7-branes with Flux

In the context of AdS/CFT, we consider a cascading theory with an arbitrarily large number of chiral flavors. In the UV the theory can be considered as a chiral flavoring of the Klebanov-Tseytlin solution, and exhibits a duality wall. Instead in the IR, due to the rich dynamics, it safely flows to a non-cascading theory. We engineer the field theory through intersecting D7-branes with world-volume gauge flux on a conifold with 3-form fluxes, and we find new fully backreacted solutions of Type IIB Supergravity plus branes. We match the field theory cascade with supergravity by computing Page charges and interpreting Seiberg dualities as large gauge transformations of the background. Eventually we give an interpretation of the chiral zero modes arising at the intersection of the D7-branes with flux.
Integrating Topic Modeling with Word Embeddings by Mixtures of vMFs

Gaussian LDA integrates topic modeling with word embeddings by replacing discrete topic distribution over word types with multivariate Gaussian distribution on the embedding space. This can take semantic information of words into account. However, the Euclidean similarity used in Gaussian topics is not an optimal semantic measure for word embeddings. Acknowledgedly, the cosine similarity better describes the semantic relatedness between word embeddings. To employ the cosine measure and capture complex topic structure, we use von Mises-Fisher (vMF) mixture models to represent topics, and then develop a novel mix-vMF topic model (MvTM). Using public pre-trained word embeddings, we evaluate MvTM on three real-world data sets. Experimental results show that our model can discover more coherent topics than the state-of-the-art baseline models, and achieve competitive classification performance.
Impact of Discrimination on Health among Adolescent Immigrant Minorities in Europe: The Role of Perceived Discrimination by Police and Security Personnel

Previous research has shown negative effects of discrimination on ethnic minority members’ health and well-being. In this study, we examined cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of discrimination by members of the police and security personnel over and above other types of discrimination and ethnic victimization on the health of immigrant minority students from three different European countries (N = 4,334 immigrant students from 580 ethnically mixed school classes in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden). Results indicate that perceptions of ethnic victimization in the school (measured via social network data) as well as three types of discrimination outside school (discrimination in clubs, public transportation as well as by the police and private security) are associated with current and future negative health outcomes (i.e., psychosomatic problems) in immigrant minority students. Among the different types of discrimination, discrimination by the police and private security personnel was most common and had the most negative effect on immigrant minority students’ health. Practical and political implications of our findings as well as differences in discrimination and violence by the police between the US and Europe are discussed.