Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TQoS: Transactional and QoS-Aware Selection Algorithm for Automatic Web Service Composition

Web Services are the most famous implementation of service-oriented architectures that has brought some challenging research issues. One of these is the composition, i.e., the capability to recursively construct a composite Web service as a workflow of other existing Web services, which are developed by different organizations and offer diverse functionalities (e.g., ticket purchase, payment), transactional properties (e.g., compensatable or not), and Quality of Service (QoS) values (e.g., execution price, success rate). The selection of a Web service, for each activity of the workflow, meeting the user's requirements, is still an important challenge. Indeed, the selection of one Web service among a set of them that fulfill some functionalities is a critical task, generally depending on a combined evaluation of QoS. However, the conventional QoS-aware composition approaches do not consider the transactional constraints during the composition process. This paper addresses the issue of selecting and composing Web services not only according to their functional requirements but also to their transactional properties and QoS characteristics. We propose a selection algorithm that satisfies user's preferences, expressed as weights over QoS criteria and as risk levels defining semantically the transactional requirements. Proofs and experimental results are presented.
Factored Scales for Measuring Characteristics of College Environments

Ix 1958 Stem published a preliminary manual for a college environments inventory, called the College Characteristics Index. The inventory was based upon lB1urray’s (1938) classification of needs and contained thirty scales of ten dichotomous items each. For each hypothesized need there was a corresponding college press scale consisting of items describing pressures or activities in the college which might be satisfying to persons with the given type of need. Subsequently, Pace and Stern (1958) showed that mean press scores at five colleges, based upon undergraduate student descriptions of faculty and student pressures, differed markedly from campus to campus, and that student descriptions showed considerable agreement with faculty descriptions. One use of such scales for measuring college environments is to systematically describe ways in which learning environments differ, and to relate these environmental differences to student perform-
Power-efficient resource management for co-located virtualized web servers: A stochastic control approach

As green computing is becoming a popular computing paradigm, the issue of energy-efficient data center with performance assurance becomes increasingly important. This paper proposes a novel stochastic control approach for joint performance and power control of co-located multiple virtualized web servers. It aims at addressing the instability and inefficiency issues due to dynamic Web workloads. It features a coordinated control architecture that optimizes the resource allocation and minimizes the overall power consumption while guaranteeing the server level agreements (SLAs). Due to the interference effect among the co-located virtualized web servers and time-varying workloads, the relationship between the hardware resource assignment to different virtual servers and the web applications' performance is considered as a coupled Multi-Input-Multi-Output (MIMO) system and formulated as an robust optimization problem. Then we propose a constrained stochastic linear-quadratic controller (cSLQC) to solve this problem by optimizing the quadratic cost function subject to linear and probabilistic constraints. Experiments on our testbed server with a variety of workload patterns demonstrate the proposed control approach's effectiveness and power efficiency.
Working-class students, habitus, and the development of student roles: a Canadian case study

As their numbers at university grow, we need to gain a better understanding of the different ways in which working-class students negotiate their potential outsider status in what is often considered an essential middle-class institution. Based on data from a four-year longitudinal, qualitative study of working-class students at a Canadian university, I argue that their acceptance of the ends and means of both the academic and social demands of university contributes to the development of different student roles, which in turn affects their likelihood to succeed academically. Drawing on works by Bourdieu and Bernstein, I present four case studies of students who lived through university committed, alienated or in transition toward either commitment or alienation. I show that despite similar working-class backgrounds, study participants’ reaction to university was anything but predictable. Instead, prior socialization, clear and realistic career goals, and chance encounters at university played an important role in their approach to university life.
Food Intake Is Influenced by Sensory Sensitivity

Wide availability of highly palatable foods is often blamed for the rising incidence of obesity. As palatability is largely determined by the sensory properties of food, this study investigated how sensitivity to these properties affects how much we eat. Forty females were classified as either high or low in sensory sensitivity based on their scores on a self-report measure of sensory processing (the Adult Sensory Profile), and their intake of chocolate during the experiment was measured. Food intake was significantly higher for high-sensitivity compared to low-sensitivity individuals. Furthermore, individual scores of sensory sensitivity were positively correlated with self-reported emotional eating. These data could indicate that individuals who are more sensitive to the sensory properties of food have a heightened perception of palatability, which, in turn, leads to a greater food intake.
Adaptive Dynamic Walking of a Quadruped Robot on Natural Ground Based on Biological Concepts

The paper reports on a project to make a quadruped robot walk with medium forward speed on irregular terrain in an outdoor environment using a neural system model. The necessary conditions for stable dynamic walking on irregular terrain in general are proposed, and the neural system is designed by comparing biological concepts with those necessary conditions described in physical terms. A PD-controller is used at joints to construct a virtual spring—damper system as the visco-elasticity model of a muscle. The neural system model consists of a CPG (central pattern generator), responses and reflexes. A response directly and quickly modulates the CPG phase, and a reflex directly generates joint torque. The state of the virtual spring—damper system is switched, based on the CPG phase. In order to make a self-contained quadruped (called Tekken2) walk on natural ground, several new reflexes and responses are developed in addition to those developed in previous studies. A flexor reflex prevents a leg from stumbling on small bumps and pebbles. A sideways stepping reflex stabilizes rolling motion on a sideways inclined slope. A corrective stepping reflex/response prevents the robot from falling down in the case of loss of ground contact. A crossed flexor reflex helps a swinging leg keep enough clearance between the toe and the ground. The effectiveness of the proposed neural system model control and especially the newly developed reflexes and responses are validated by indoor and outdoor experiments using Tekken2. A CPG receives sensory feedback as a result of motions induced by reflexes, and changes the period of its own active phase. Since a CPG has the ability of mutual entrainment with pitching motion of legs and rolling motion of the body in addition, the consistency between motion of a leg temporally modified by a reflex and motions of the other legs is maintained autonomously. It is shown that CPGs can be the center of sensorimotor coordination, and that the neural system model simply defining the relationships between CPGs, sensory input, reflexes and mechanical system works very well even in complicated tasks such as adaptive dynamic walking on unstructured natural ground.
The Challenges of Migration from 2 D to 3 D Internet ( 3 DI )

The Internet world as we know it today has undergone far-reaching changes since its early days while becoming a critical communications underpinning our economic performance and social welfare. The 3D Internet is poised to replace the 2D Internet as we know it today. This paper takes a look at the two types of Internet, advantages and disadvantages and the future of the present Internet as we know it.
‘Behave yourself!’ Examining meanings assigned to children with socio‐emotional difficulties

Day‐care, the context of this research, is a significant service in Finland because every child under compulsory school age (7 years) has the right to municipal day‐care once the parental allowance period ends. Finnish day‐care is generally organised by municipalities as part of the social services. It is inclusive by nature, as there are no separate kindergartens with only special needs children. Such children are mostly in ordinary groups; only 1% are in special groups. Children with socio‐emotional difficulties have been a challenge for the Finnish day‐care and comprehensive school system for decades. In both educational systems such children are experienced as problems. This article deals with the discourse of day‐care personnel about these children and examines the meanings behind this language.
Contour Propagation Using Feature-Based Deformable Registration for Lung Cancer

Accurate target delineation of CT image is a critical step in radiotherapy treatment planning. This paper describes a novel strategy for automatic contour propagation, based on deformable registration, for CT images of lung cancer. The proposed strategy starts with a manual-delineated contour in one slice of a 3D CT image. By means of feature-based deformable registration, the initial contour in other slices of the image can be propagated automatically, and then refined by active contour approach. Three algorithms are employed in the strategy: the Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF), Thin-Plate Spline (TPS), and an adapted active contour (Snake), used to refine and modify the initial contours. Five pulmonary cancer cases with about 400 slices and 1000 contours have been used to verify the proposed strategy. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed strategy can improve the segmentation performance in the pulmonary CT images. Jaccard similarity (JS) mean is about 0.88 and the maximum of Hausdorff distance (HD) is about 90%. In addition, delineation time has been considerably reduced. The proposed feature-based deformable registration method in the automatic contour propagation improves the delineation efficiency significantly.
Reactive nitrogen transport and photochemistry in urban plumes over the North Atlantic Ocean

[1] Photochemical and transport processes involving reactive nitrogen compounds were studied in plumes of urban pollutants using measurements obtained from the NOAA WP-3 aircraft during the ICARTT study in July and August 2004. Observations close to Boston and New York City were used to characterize urban emissions, and plume transport and transformation processes were studied in aged plumes located up to 1000 km downwind from the east coast of North America. Pollution was observed primarily below 1.5 km altitude in well-defined layers that were decoupled from the marine boundary layer. In aged plumes located over the North Atlantic Ocean, the nitric acid (HNO3) mixing ratios were large (up to 50 ppbv), and HNO3 accounted for the majority of reactive nitrogen. Plume CO and reactive nitrogen enhancement ratios were nearly equivalent in fresh and aged plumes. Efficient transport of HNO3 explained the observed trace gas ratios and abundances. Without substantial HNO3 loss, the ratio of HNO3 to NOx was between 13 and 42 in most highly aged plumes and sometimes exceeded calculated photochemical steady state values. Box model calculations that include nighttime reactions that convert NOx to HNO3 reproduce the observations. Photolysis and OH oxidation of over 10 ppbv of HNO3 that was in the troposphere for days resulted in reformation of hundreds of pptv of NOx, which is sufficient to maintain photochemical ozone production. Efficient transport of HNO3 over the North Atlantic Ocean for days carried both HNO3 and NOx far from their continental sources and increased their photochemical influence.
Architecture of a Context-Aware Vertical Handover Decision Model and Its Performance Analysis for GPRS - WiFi Handover

The common desire to be connected "anytime, anywhere, anyway, and to anything" leads to explosive growth of mobile computing and speedy emergence of new wireless technologies, applications, and devices in recent years. In this array of heterogeneous systems, intelligent handover (HO) decision, beyond traditional ones that are based on only signal strength, is needed so that terminals can select the best option available from diverse networks and services as per user requirements. In the process, it would enable user applications to switch automatically between active interfaces that best suit them based on application requirements and interface capabilities, and to use multiple radio interfaces simultaneously. To fulfill the above requirements, this paper describes the architecture of a context-aware vertical HO decision model suitable for multimode mobile devices in heterogeneous networks and evaluates its performance for vertical HO between GPRS and WiFi.
The appeal of rough‐and‐tumble play in televised professional football

In a factorial design varying (1) the degree of roughness/violence of a play (low, intermediate, and high), (2) several particular plays within this classification, and (3) sex of viewer, the enjoyment of televised plays of professional football was investigated. The plays were taken from a large pool of plays drawn from numerous games and involving numerous teams. In a pretest, a strong differentiation in the selection plays' degree of roughness/violence was secured. At the same time, the plays were matched on several other, potentially contaminating stimulus dimensions. The enjoyment of plays was found to increase with the degree of their apparent roughness/violence. However, this relationship was significant for male viewers only. It was not reliable for females. There were no appreciable sex differences in the enjoyment of plays featuring low and intermediate levels of roughness. Highly violent plays, in contrast, were significantly more enjoyed by males than by females. The findings suggest that, at .
Multimedia wireless interactive and collaborative telecom services

UMTS is expected to allow the users to collaborate and participate to a common live activity through their mobile multimedia terminal equipment. Users and operators are looking forward the development of new interactive and collaborative applications such as interactive games on mobile phones. We develop an approach and a model to tackle technological locks and offer the opportunity to operators to provide their users with applications where they participate to a common live activity. We present our collaborative model for wireless adaptive and reconfigurable environments (COMWARE) and its implementation architecture, which aims to provide UMTS users a QoS support for collaborative applications. This model aims to reconcile openness and QoS requirements for collaborative relationships using wireless multimedia systems. For interactive collaborative applications, logical requirements should ensure synchronization between the displayed scenes of the same scenario on a set of UMTS equipment and the management of precedency to deal with interaction applications such for interactive games. COMWARE integrates QoS provision and management.
Choice of step-size for consensus protocol in changing conditions via stochastic approximation type algorithm

In the paper a multi-agent network system of different computing nodes is considered. A problem of load balancing in the network is addressed. The problem is formulated as consensus achievement problem and solved via local voting protocol. Agents exchange information about their states in presence of noise in communication channels. At certain moment network system topology changes and new step size of control protocol is chosen to meet new conditions. Step size adjustment is done by stochastic approximation type algorithm. Analytically obtained optimal step size values are given. Simulation example demonstrating step size adjustment is provided.
Unstructured Audio Classification for Environment Recognition

My thesis aims to contribute towards building autonomous agents that are able to understand their surrounding environment through the use of both audio and visual information. To capture a more complete description of a scene, the fusion of audio and visual information can be advantageous in enhancing the system’s context awareness. The goal of this work is on the characterization of unstructured environmental sounds for understanding and predicting the context surrounding of an agent. Most research on audio recognition has focused primarily on speech and music. Less attention has been paid to the challenges and opportunities for using audio to characterize unstructured environments. Unlike speech and music, which have formantic structures and harmonic structures, environmental sounds are considered unstructured since they are variably composed from different sound sources. My research will investigate challenging issues in characterizing environmental sounds such as the development of appropriate features extraction algorithm and learning techniques for modeling the dynamics of the environment. A final aspect of my research will consider the decision making of an autonomous agent based on the fusion of visual and audio information.
A membrane glycoprotein, Sec12p, required for protein transport from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi apparatus in yeast

SEC12, a gene that is required for secretory, membrane, and vacuolar proteins to be transported from the endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi apparatus, has been cloned from a genomic library by complementation of a sec12 ts mutation. Genetic analysis has shown that the cloned gene integrates at the SEC12 locus and that a null mutation at the locus is lethal. The DNA sequence predicts a protein of 471 amino acids containing a hydrophobic stretch of 19 amino acids near the COOH terminus. To characterize the gene product (Sec12p) in detail, a lacZ- SEC12 gene fusion has been constructed and a polyclonal antibody raised against the hybrid protein. The antibody recognizes Sec12p as a approximately 70-kD protein that sediments in a mixed membrane fraction that includes endoplasmic reticulum. Sec12p is not removed from the membrane fraction by treatment at high pH and high salt and is not degraded by exogenous protease unless detergent is present. Glycosylation of Sec12p during biogenesis is indicated by an electrophoretic mobility shift of the protein that is influenced by tunicamycin and by imposition of an independent secretory pathway block. We suggest that Sec12p is an integral membrane glycoprotein with a prominent domain that faces the cytoplasm where it functions to promote protein transport to the Golgi apparatus. In the process of transport, Sec12p itself may migrate to the Golgi apparatus and function in subsequent transport events.
Identification of significant features in DNA microarray data

DNA microarrays are a relatively new technology that can simultaneously measure the expression level of thousands of genes. They have become an important tool for a wide variety of biological experiments. One of the most common goals of DNA microarray experiments is to identify genes associated with biological processes of interest. Conventional statistical tests often produce poor results when applied to microarray data owing to small sample sizes, noisy data, and correlation among the expression levels of the genes. Thus, novel statistical methods are needed to identify significant genes in DNA microarray experiments. This article discusses the challenges inherent in DNA microarray analysis and describes a series of statistical techniques that can be used to overcome these challenges. The problem of multiple hypothesis testing and its relation to microarray studies are also considered, along with several possible solutions. WIREs Comput Stat 2013, 5:309–325. doi: 10.1002/wics.1260
Enhancing the Reflexivity of System Innovation Projects With System Analyses

Networks aiming for fundamental changes bring together a variety of actors who are part and parcel of a problematic context. These system innovation projects need to be accompanied by a monitoring and evaluation approach that supports and maintains reflexivity to be able to deal with uncertainties and conflicts while challenging current practices and related institutions. This article reports on experiences with reflexive process monitoring (RPM)—an approach that has been applied in several networks in the Dutch agricultural sector, which strive for sustainable development. Particular attention is paid to conducting system analyses—a core element of the methodology. The first results show that system analyses indeed have the potential to enhance reflexivity if carried out collectively. However, regular patterns of thinking and acting within projects interfere in subtle ways with the new knowledge generated and limit the transformation of the reflexive feedback and insights into action.
Combining Time and Intensity Effects in Assessing Operator Information-Processing Load

A quantitative description of the human information processor is required for predicting operator workload and performance from the simulated task time line data generated by task network models and related methods. Although many models of workload exist, few appear to be well founded in theory or to provide a satisfactory basis for a quantitative representation of operator load. Adherents of both time-and intensity-based models of operator load individually claim success for their methods. which might suggest that both factors are operating in determining operator workload and performance. This paper describes a study that explicitly investigates the relationship between a time-based factor and an intensity-based factor (amount of information to be processed) within a simulated air traffic control environment. A model is developed that posits that the load on the human information-processing system results directly from the ratio of the time necessary to process the required information to the time allowable for making a decision. This ratio, which can be identified with time pressure, determines subjective estimates of workload as well as operator performance. The model is tested against the data from the air traffic control simulation.