Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identifying Defining Aspects of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome via Unsupervised Machine Learning and Feature Selection

In this work we propose an unsupervised machine learning method of predicting chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) based on the k-means algorithm using self-reported questionnaire responses. We first suggest a method of determining the presence of a symptom based on its frequency and severity using an unsupervised dynamic thresholding approach. This threshold is used to diagnose subjects with 54 symptoms related to CFS. Based on these diagnoses, k-means is used to predict the presence of CFS. We find that k-means does not have significantly worse predictive diagnostic accuracy than commonly used CFS case definitions. After applying supervised feature selection, k-means achieves significantly better diagnostic accuracy than any of the case definitions examined. We use these results to suggest the basis for an empirically founded CFS case definition.
Emitter localization under multipath propagation using a likelihood function decomposition that is linear in target space

The passive non-cooperative localization and tracking of mobile terminals in urban scenarios, called blind mobile localization (BML), is a highly demanding task which occurs for instance in safety, emergency and security applications with non-subscribed phone user locations. Due to the urban environment and physical propagation effects multiple signals which have traveled along different multipaths are received by the observer station. In this paper it is shown how a decomposed likelihood function can be adapted and used to solve the tracking and localization task. An existing decomposition of the range-bearing likelihood function, which is linear in target space, is applied to BML by using a ray-tracer simulation. Furthermore, the approximation of the decomposed likelihood function is discussed in terms of implementation issues. Finally, a ray-tracing simulation and a simulation of the estimation process are used to numerically compare the proposed likelihood function and an existing assignment based approach, both integrated in an SMC implementation of the intensity filter (iFilter).
Experiences of student veterans with social anxiety and avoidance: A qualitative study

ABSTRACT Eight-to-ten percent of returning combat veterans report symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), of which 7–13% also report symptoms of Social Anxiety Disorder. Both disorders are characterized by maladaptive patterns of social functioning, which can have significant effects on the lives of returning combat veterans and increase suicidal risk. The objective of the present study was to identify elements of the lived experience of college student veterans experiencing social anxiety and avoidance. Twelve student veterans with post-9/11 active duty service were interviewed about their lived experiences with social anxiety/avoidance within the framework of phenomenological theory. Data was analyzed using multilevel coding and theme analysis. Analysis of interview themes (n = 12) clarified university campus environments that induce social anxiety/avoidance and the impact on personal and professional relationships, learning, and navigation of physical space. Implications of this study include addressing student veterans’ needs through clinical intervention and further representative research on prevalence rates of these risk factors in various university and community college settings.
A search for charged massive stable particles at DO

A search for charged massive stable particles has been performed with the DØ detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. The signature is two particles reconstructed as muons, but with speed and invariant mass inconsistent with beam-produced muons. No excess of events is observed and limits are set on the production cross-section for pair-produced stable stau sleptons based on 390 pb of data. Limits vary from 0.06 pb to 0.62 pb, depending on the stau mass, and are the strictest Tevatron limits to date. Mass limits are also set for stable charginos. The limits are 140 GeV for a higgsino-like chargino and 174 GeV for a gaugino-like chargino. These are currently the best limits to date for stable charginos.
Functional Correlation of Trophinin Expression with the Malignancy of Testicular Germ Cell Tumor

Trophinin is a membrane protein that is potentially involved in human embryo implantation by mediating homophillic cell adhesion between trophoblastic cells and endometrial cells. Trophinin expression by maternal cells may be induced by the embryo that secretes human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Because the process of tumor metastasis resembles that of trophoblast invasion and proliferation during embryo implantation, we hypothesized that testicular cancers that synthesize hCG express trophinin thus becoming aggressive trophoblast-like cells. We screened paraffin-embedded orchiectomy specimens of 158 patients with testicular germ cell tumor by immunohistochemistry using antitrophinin antibody. This screening identified trophinin-positive specimens with the frequencies 39 of 91 (43%) in stage I, 14 of 24 (58%) in stage II, and 41 of 43 (95%) in stage III (P < 0.001). Thus, trophinin expression positively correlates with clinical stage. Remarkably, trophinin was found in all of the cases (33 of 33) with lung metastasis. The levels of serum hCG-β were significantly higher in the patients with trophinin-positive tumors than those with trophinin-negative tumors (P = 0.004). To determine whether trophinin promotes aggressiveness of the cell, trophinin-negative human seminona cell line JKT-1 was stably transfected with a mammalian expression vector containing trophinin cDNA. In vitro assays revealed that trophinin-expressing JKT-1-Tro cells are more invasive than JKT-1-mock cells, whereas there are no differences between JKT-1-Tro and JKT-1-mock in their proliferation activity. Upon orthotopic inoculation to athymic nude mice, JKT-1-Tro cells exhibited i.p. metastases in all of the mice (n = 5), whereas JKT-1-mock produced no metastases (n = 5). These results suggest strongly that trophinin enhances invasiveness of the cells and promotes metastasis of testicular germ cell tumor.
Bare-Metal Container: Direct Execution of a Container Image on a Remote Machine with an Optimized Kernel

Container technology has become popular in HPC applications because it offers easy customization and quick execution. However, container technology does not allow kernel-level optimization. It does not allow changing a kernel as well as loading/unloading a kernel module, thus it prevents the extraction of full performance on a target machine. In addition, container technology is designed for multi-tenancy and makes difficult to measure exact performance and power consumption for an application on a target machine. Bare-Metal Container (BMC) solves these problems by a mechanism that offers a suitable kernel for a container image and boots it on a remote physical machine. The application can occupy the physical machine and utilize the full performance. It is implemented by remote machine management technologies (WakeupOnLAN, Intel AMT, and IPMI), and a network bootloader. The power consumption is also measured, and the user knows the good combination among application, kernel and target machine. Although BMC requires the overhead of kernel booting, HPC applications can improve performance, which surpasses the overhead. The experiments showed the effect of kernel optimizations for CPU (Hyper Threading), memory (Transparent Huge Pages), and network (Receive Flow Steering) from a low power CPU (Celeron) to a high speed CPU (Xeon).
Text Segmentation with LDA-Based Fisher Kernel

In this paper we propose a domain-independent text segmentation method, which consists of three components. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is employed to compute words semantic distribution, and we measure semantic similarity by the Fisher kernel. Finally global best segmentation is achieved by dynamic programming. Experiments on Chinese data sets with the technique show it can be effective. Introducing latent semantic information, our algorithm is robust on irregular-sized segments.
The structural and scaling properties of nearby galaxy clusters. II. The M-T relation

Using a sample of ten nearby ($z\lesssim 0.15$), relaxed galaxy clusters in the temperature range [2–9]$~\rm keV$, we have investigated the scaling relation between the mass at various density contrasts ($\delta=2500,1000,500,200$) and the cluster temperature. The masses are derived from NFW-type model fits to mass profiles, obtained under the hydrostatic assumption using precise measurements, with , at least down to $\delta=1000$. The logarithmic slope of the M – T relation is well constrained and is the same at all δ , reflecting the self-similarity of the mass profiles. At $\delta=500$, the slope of the relation for the sub-sample of hot clusters ($kT>3.5~\rm keV$) is consistent with the standard self-similar expectation: $\alpha= 1.49\pm0.15$. The relation steepens when the whole sample is considered: $\alpha=1.71\pm0.09$. The normalisation of the relation is discrepant (by ~30 per cent), at all density contrasts, with the prediction from purely gravitation based models. Models that take into account radiative cooling and galaxy feedback are generally in better agreement with our data. We argue that remaining discrepancies, in particular at low δ , are more likely due to problems with models of the ICM thermal structure rather than to an incorrect estimate of the mass from X-ray data.
A study of a single robot interacting with groups of children in a rotation game scenario

We tested the hypothesis that children are more attentive to a robot if the robot appears to be interested in the children. In addition, we investigated if and how the quality and quantity of a child's attentive behaviour varies with the distance to the robot, reflecting the notion of "social spaces". Hereto, 16 groups of up to 10 children each were engaged in a play scenario in which they had to move closer to a robot over 6 successive rounds. The robot was endowed with a "camera eye" and an arm and hand. The camera could either be nonmoving ("static") or actively "searching" ("active searching"), giving the impression it was trying to select a child to focus on. Likewise, the arm and hand could either be fixed in a permanent pointing position ("permanent pointing") or actively rise to point selectively at a particular child when it stopped facing it ("selective pointing"). The results showed that: 1) the mean frequency of overall attentive behaviour by the children (including attention towards other children) was significantly higher when the robot was not selectively pointing at the children and independent of the state of the camera; 2) "looking at" was the most frequently scored attentive activity for the children and was mainly targeted to the robot, but not correlated with any of their other attentive activities; 3) there was an interaction effect between the state of the camera and of the pointer: looking at the robot by the children occurred significantly more often when the camera and the arm were consistent in signaling apparent interest (i.e. camera "active searching" and hand "selectively pointing" or camera "static" and hand "permanently pointing"); and 4) there was no demonstrable effect of distance to the robot on the overall attentive behaviour of the children.
Neural Alpha Dynamics in Younger and Older Listeners Reflect Acoustic Challenges and Predictive Benefits

Speech comprehension in multitalker situations is a notorious real-life challenge, particularly for older listeners. Younger listeners exploit stimulus-inherent acoustic detail, but are they also actively predicting upcoming information? And further, how do older listeners deal with acoustic and predictive information? To understand the neural dynamics of listening difficulties and according listening strategies, we contrasted neural responses in the alpha-band (∼10 Hz) in younger (20–30 years, n = 18) and healthy older (60–70 years, n = 20) participants under changing task demands in a two-talker paradigm. Electroencephalograms were recorded while humans listened to two spoken digits against a distracting talker and decided whether the second digit was smaller or larger. Acoustic detail (temporal fine structure) and predictiveness (the degree to which the first digit predicted the second) varied orthogonally. Alpha power at widespread scalp sites decreased with increasing acoustic detail (during target digit presentation) but also with increasing predictiveness (in-between target digits). For older compared with younger listeners, acoustic detail had a stronger impact on task performance and alpha power modulation. This suggests that alpha dynamics plays an important role in the changes in listening behavior that occur with age. Last, alpha power variations resulting from stimulus manipulations (of acoustic detail and predictiveness) as well as task-independent overall alpha power were related to subjective listening effort. The present data show that alpha dynamics is a promising neural marker of individual difficulties as well as age-related changes in sensation, perception, and comprehension in complex communication situations.
Fair optimization of mesh-connected WLAN hotspots

In Wireless mesh networks mesh access points MAPs forward traffic wirelessly towards users or Internet gateways. A user device usually connects to the MAP with the strongest signal, as such MAP should guarantee the best quality of service. However, this connection policy may lead to: i unfairness towards users that are distant from gateways; ii uneven distribution of users to MAPs; and iii inefficient use of network paths. We present a new model and solution approach to the problem of assigning users to MAPs and routing the data within the mesh network with the objective of providing max-min fair throughput. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem MILP. Because of the inherent complexity of the problem, real size instances cannot be solved to optimality within the time limits for online optimization. Therefore, we propose an original heuristic solution algorithm for the resulting MILP. Both numerical comparisons and network simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed heuristic. For random networks, the heuristic achieves 98% of the optimal solution. Network simulations show that in medium-sized networks, the number of users with at least 1Mbit/s minimum end-to-end rate increases by 550% when compared with the classical signal-strength based association. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Modified Space Vector Pulse Width Modulation for Modified Z-Source Inverter

The peak need of alternative energy resource to satisfy the demand in energy also elicited the research in the area of power converters. The Z-Source Converter which can be used for both current and voltage sources is used for both buck and boost operation in various renewable energy applications like wind and solar energy conversion system. To improve the operation of the converter further, different topologies are being proposed. The T-source inverter is the modified form of Z-source inverter with the reduced number of passive components. The paper proposes the modified space vector pulse width modulation for the modified Z-source inverter or T-source inverter. The performance of the T-source inverter is analyzed based on the gate pulse fed by the modified space vector pulse width modulation generator. The system level simulation is performed using MATLAB/SIMULINK software. The increase in energy demand on the other hand triggers the research on power converters. The various renewable energy resources like wind, solar, tidal, etc can be used with maximum efficiency by using appropriate power converter. As the availability of these resources is greatly uncertain the power conversion system relies on the suitable power converter and controller unit such that they deliver constant output voltage with constant frequency. The z-source inverter designed by F.Z. Peng in the year 2003 overcomes the difficulties in conventional voltage and current source inverters. The major advantage of the Z-source inverter is that it can be used for both current and voltage sources without any change in circuit design. Besides both buck and boost operation can be accomplished using-source inverter. The power conversion stages also get reduced resulting in improved efficiency of the system in energy conversion process. To improve the performance of the inverter further different topologies of Z-source inverter has been proposed by various researchers by different possible combination of arrangement of passive components. Among different topologies of Z-source inverter, the topology that is being considered for analysis is T-source inverter. As the inverter is derived from the root of Z-source inverter and the arrangement of passive components looks like the alphabet 'T', the inverter is called modified Z-source inverter or T-source inverter. The boost operation of the inverter is achieved using the concept of shoot-through time period. Different PWM techniques are available in literatures to control the gating pulse to the inverter switches. The method considered throughout the paper for analysis is space vector pulse width modulation. …
A Constructive Approach to Information Systems Security Training: An Action Research Experience

Information systems (IS) security breaches cause significant losses to organizations worldwide. Many approaches have been introduced in order to improve employees’ security behavior. Earlier research shows that only seven out of 59 approaches are based on sound theoretical background, and the research in the area of IS security awareness and security behavior has neglected the use of relevant theories of psychology, pedagogy and management. The lack of utilizing theories may have a negative impact on the effectiveness of IS security training and on understanding how to change and improve employees’ security behavior towards compliance to organizational information security policies. In this paper we describe a theoretically grounded approach to IS security training based on constructivism. The approach is empirically validated in a telecommunications company. The results show that the approach has a positive impact on employees’ security behavior.
Business Intelligence in College: A Teaching Case with Real Life Puzzles

In this study we report from an introductory Bachelor course in Business Intelligence and reflect on the learning process. Our focus is how to make Business Intelligence education more fun and motivating for the students, while at the same time providing the BI lecturer with some examples from real life. We conducted a small action research study in a university college with a class of third year e-business students. Drawing on principles from Problem-Based Learning and PuzzleBased Learning, we employed a framework of real life puzzles. Each puzzle consists of real life problems, real life data, and real life solutions. Our main contribution is that the real life puzzle approach is a powerful method to teach Business Intelligence concepts and processes. We argue that the similarities between the BI process and the puzzle solving process prepare the students for Business Intelligence learning, in an indirect way. Through the gradual realization on how these puzzles work, the students are able to connect the logical structures of puzzles with the rational way of BI queries. This prepares the students for Business Intelligence learning, and also for practice in working life. This insight should be of interest to any lecturer of BI.
Study on a low cost, high quality hybrid scaling algorithm

Image scaling plays an important role in digital image processing. It is widely applied in all sorts of display terminals. A new scaling method was proposed in this paper. The method combines traditional nearest neighbor and bilinear methods in a simple but effective way. The hybrid algorithm was discussed based on analysis of its idea origin. Multiple input interpolation method was put forward for improving image quality in down scaling. FPGA based hardware design was fulfilled. Experiments shows that the algorithm has good features of fine-edge, changeable smoothness and low cost of hardware resource. It is very suitable for applications that require good image quality with low hardware cost
EVIDENCE FOR MICRONUTRIENT LIMITATION OF BIOLOGICAL SOIL CRUSTS: IMPORTANCE TO ARID-LANDS RESTORATION

Desertification is a global problem, costly to national economies and human societies. Restoration of biological soil crusts (BSCs) may have an important role to play in the reversal of desertification due to their ability to decrease erosion and enhance soil fertility. To determine if there is evidence that lower fertility may hinder BSC recolonization, we investigated the hypothesis that BSC abundance is driven by soil nutrient concentrations. At a regional scale (north and central Colorado Plateau, USA), moss and lichen cover and richness are correlated with a complex water–nutrient availability gradient and have approximately six-fold higher cover and approximately two-fold higher species richness on sandy soils than on shale-derived soils. At a microscale, mosses and lichens are overrepresented in microhabitats under the north sides of shrub canopies, where water and nutrients are more available. At two spatial scales, and at the individual species and community levels, our data are consistent with t.
Order and containment in concurrent system design

This dissertation considers the difficulty of modeling and designing complex, concurrent systems. The term concurrent is used here to mean a system consisting of a network of communicating components. The term complex is used here to mean a system consisting of components with different models of computation such that the communication between different components has different semantics according to the respective interacting models of computation. Modeling and designing a concurrent system requires a clear understanding of the types of relationships that exist between the components found within a concurrent system. Two particularly important types of relationships found in concurrent systems are the order relation and the containment relation. The order relation represents the relative timing of component actions within a concurrent system. The containment relation facilitates human understanding of a system by abstracting a system's components into layers of visibility. The consequence of improper management of the order and containment relationships in a complex, concurrent system is deadlock. Deadlock is an undesirable halting of a system's execution and is the most challenging type of concurrent system error to debug. The contents of this dissertation show that no methodology is currently available that can concisely, accurately and graphically model both the order and containment relations found in complex, concurrent systems. The result of the absence of a method suitable for modeling both order and containment is that the prevention of deadlock is very difficult. This dissertation offers a solution to this problem with the introduction of the diposet.
Joint Exploration of Hardware Prefetching and Bandwidth Partitioning in Chip Multiprocessors

In this paper, we propose an analytical model-based study to investigate how hardware prefetching and memory bandwidth partitioning impact Chip Multi-Processors (CMP) system performance and how they interact. The model includes a composite prefetching metric that can help determine under which conditions prefetching can improve system performance, a bandwidth partitioning model that takes into account prefetching effects, and derives weighted speedup optimum bandwidth partition sizes for different cores. Simulation results show that selective prefetching, guided by the composite prefetching metric, coupled with dynamic bandwidth partitioning can improve system performance by 19.5% and 21.8% on a dual-core CMP and quad-core CMP respectively.