Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring Economic Resilience to Natural Disasters with Big Economic Transaction Data

This research explores the potential to analyze bank card payments and ATM cash withdrawals in order to map and quantify how people are impacted by and recover from natural disasters. Our approach defines a disaster-affected community's economic recovery time as the time needed to return to baseline activity levels in terms of number of bank card payments and ATM cash withdrawals. For Hurricane Odile, which hit the state of Baja California Sur (BCS) in Mexico between 15 and 17 September 2014, we measured and mapped communities' economic recovery time, which ranged from 2 to 40 days in different locations. We found that -- among individuals with a bank account -- the lower the income level, the shorter the time needed for economic activity to return to normal levels. Gender differences in recovery times were also detected and quantified. In addition, our approach evaluated how communities prepared for the disaster by quantifying expenditure growth in food or gasoline before the hurricane struck. We believe this approach opens a new frontier in measuring the economic impact of disasters with high temporal and spatial resolution, and in understanding how populations bounce back and adapt.
Randomized Language Models via Perfect Hash Functions

We propose a succinct randomized language model which employs a perfect hash function to encode fingerprints of n-grams and their associated probabilities, backoff weights, or other parameters. The scheme can represent any standard n-gram model and is easily combined with existing model reduction techniques such as entropy-pruning. We demonstrate the space-savings of the scheme via machine translation experiments within a distributed language modeling framework.
PRRT2 Mutations Are Related to Febrile Seizures in Epileptic Patients

Previous studies reported that the proline-rich transmembrane protein 2 (PRRT2) gene was identified to be related to paroxysmal kinesigenic dyskinesia (PKD), infantile convulsions with PKD, PKD with migraine and benign familial infantile epilepsy (BFIE). The present study explores whether the PRRT2 mutation is a potential cause of febrile seizures, including febrile seizures plus (FS+), generalized epilepsy with febrile seizures plus (GEFS+) and Dravet syndrome (DS); thus, it may provide a new drug target for personalized medicine for febrile seizure patients. We screened PRRT2 exons in a cohort of 136 epileptic patients with febrile seizures, including FS+, GEFS+ and DS. PRRT2 genetic mutations were identified in 25 out of 136 (18.4%) febrile seizures in epileptic patients. Five loss-of-function and coding missense mutations were identified: c.649delC (p.R217Efs*12), c. 649_650insC (p.R217Pfs*8), c.412C>G (p.Pro138Ala), c.439G>C (p.Asp147His) and c.623C>A (p.Ser208Tyr). PRRT2 variants were probably involved in the etiology of febrile seizures in epileptic patients.
European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) 5-15-2012 IMPACT AND DIFFUSION OF SENTIMENT IN PUBLIC COMMUNICATION ON FACEBOOK

In recent years, political parties and politicians have begun to use public Facebook “pages” not only for the purpose of self-presentation but also to aim at entering into direct dialogues with citizens and enabling political discussions. Not only the owner of the page but also any people who are politically interested can create politically relevant postings on the “Wall” of the page. These “Wall posts” often exhibit sentiment associated with certain political topics, political parties or politicians. In this paper, we seek to examine whether sentiment occurring in Wall posts on public political Facebook pages has an effect on feedback in terms of the quantity of triggered comments. Based on a data set of 5,626 Wall posts from Facebook pages of German political parties and politicians, we find different significant relationships between the quantity of words indicating positive and negative emotions in a Wall post and the number of its corresponding comments. Furthermore, our results show that positive as well as negative emotions might diffuse in the subsequent comments.
On the tradeoff region of secure exact-repair regenerating codes

We consider the {n, k, d, l) secure exact-repair regenerating code problem, which generalizes the {n, k, d) exact-repair regenerating code problem with the additional constraint that the stored file needs to be kept information-theoretically secure against an eavesdropper, who can access the data transmitted to regenerate a total of l different failed nodes. For all known results on this problem, the achievable tradeoff regions between the normalized storage capacity and repair bandwidth have a single corner point, achieved by a scheme proposed by Shah, Rashmi and Kumar (the SRK point). Since the achievable tradeoff regions of the exact-repair regenerating code problem without any secrecy constraints are known to have multiple corner points in general, these existing results suggest a phase-change-like behavior, i.e., enforcing a secrecy constraint (l ≥ 1) immediately reduces the tradeoff region to one with a single corner point. In this work, we first show that when the secrecy parameter l is sufficiently large, the SRK point is indeed the only corner point of the tradeoff region. However, when £ is small, we show that the tradeoff region can in fact have multiple corner points. In particular, we establish a precise characterization of the tradeoff region for the (7, 6, 6,1) problem, which has exactly two corner points. Thus, a smooth transition, instead of a phase-change-type of transition, should be expected as the secrecy constraint is gradually strengthened.
Genome to Kinome: Species-Specific Peptide Arrays for Kinome Analysis

Marrying bioinformatics and phosphorylation assays enables the empirical analysis of kinomes of multiple species. Tools for conducting high-throughput kinome analysis do not exist for many species. For example, two commonly used techniques for monitoring phosphorylation events are phosphorylation-specific antibodies and peptide arrays. The majority of phosphorylation-specific antibodies are for human or mouse targets, and the construction of peptide arrays relies on information from phosphorylation databases, which are similarly biased toward human and mouse data. This is a substantial obstacle because many species other than mouse represent important biological models. On the basis of the observation that phosphorylation events are often conserved across species with respect to their relative positioning within proteins and their biological function, we demonstrate that it is possible to predict the sequence contexts of phosphorylation events in other species for the production of peptide arrays for kinome analysis. Through this approach, genomic information can be rapidly used to create inexpensive, customizable, species-specific peptide arrays for high-throughput kinome analysis. We anticipate that these arrays will be valuable for investigating the conservation of biological responses across species, validating animal models of disease, and translating research to clinical applications.
The prosody of negative ‘yeah’

Normally, yeah has positive polarity, but with a change in prosody, it can convey a negative stance (e.g., polite disagreement/rejection). This study examines acoustic-prosodic features of ‘negative yeahs’ in a stance-rich corpus of collaborative tasks. Four categories are identified based on degree of agreement/acceptance and distinguished by an interaction between pitch and intensity: while two groups have low, flat pitch, and two have high domed or dipping contours, this division is cross-cut by intensity, again low-flat vs. high domed. These patterns show that fine-grained stance analysis can reveal word-level acoustic patterns that are not apparent in coarser approaches.
Speaker independent isolated digit recognition using hidden Markov models

A method for speaker independent isolated digit recognition based on modeling entire words as discrete probabilistic functions of a Markov chain is described. Training is a three part process comprising conventional methods of linear prediction coding (LPC) and vector quantization of the LPCs followed by an algorithm for estimating the parameters of a hidden Markov process. Recognition utilizes linear prediction and vector quantization steps prior to maximum likelihood classification based on the Viterbi algorithm. Vector quantization is performed by a K-means algorithm which finds a codebook of 64 prototypical vectors that minimize the distortion measure (Itakura distance) over the training set. After training based on a 1,000 token set, recognition experiments were conducted on a separate 1,000 token test set obtained from the same talkers. In this test a 3.5% error rate was observed which is comparable to that measured in an identical test of an LPC/DTW (dynamic time warping) system. The computational demand for recognition under the new system is reduced by a factor of approximately 10 in both time and memory compared to that of the LPC/DTW system. It is also of interest that the classification errors made by the two systems are virtually disjoint; thus the possibility exists to obtain error rates near 1% by a combination of the methods. In describing our experiments we discuss several issues of theoretical importance, namely: 1) Alternatives to the Baum-Welch algorithm for model parameter estimation, e.g., Lagrangian techniques; 2) Model combining techniques by means of a bipartite graph matching algorithm providing improved model stability; 3) Methods for treating the finite training data problem by modifications to both the Baum-Welch algorithm and Lagrangian techniques; and 4) Use of non-ergodic Markov chains for isolated word recognition. We note that the experiments reported here are the first in which a direct comparison is made between two conceptually different (i.e. parametric and non-parametric) methods of treating the non-stationarity problem in speech recognition by implicitly dividing the speech signal into quasi-stationary intervals.
FEASIBILITY OF DISTINGUISHING SUPERVISORS' POLICIES IN EVALUATION OF SUBORDINATES BY USING RATINGS OF SIMULATED JOB INCUMBENTS,

Abstract : Supervisors in 4 specialties differed in the importance they attached to selected qualifications in subordinates, when these subordinates were known to them only by patterns of trait scores. The technical problems considered in the statistical analyses involve some recent developments in the application of regression techniques. Groups of 50 supervisors in AFSCs 43171, 43190, 64670, and 64770 rated a set of 250 profiles of trait scores representing subordinates in AFSCs 43151, 43171, 64650, and 64750. Each supervisor assigned 250 worthto-the-Air Force ratings, using a 9-point scale and fixed allotments of each value. These ratings served as criteria, with the trait scores as predictors, providing a regression equation for each rater (his policy). Using the Judgment Analysis (JAN) technique, the policies were grouped, and the loss in prediction computed when moving from 50 different equations (policies) to a single equation for a given specialty. Average predictions were high, and the grouping loss small. Comparing JAN to factor analysis techniques, it was concluded that the JAN method was efficient, but that a factor strategy method aided in qualitative interpretation of rater policies. Demographic and personal data collected on the raters showed no meaningful relationship to their policies.
Using SIMD registers and instructions to enable instruction-level parallelism in sorting algorithms

Most contemporary processors offer some version of Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) machinery - vector registers and instructions to manipulate data stored in such registers. The central idea of this paper is to use these SIMD resources to improve the performance of the tail of recursive sorting algorithms. When the number of elements to be sorted reaches a set threshold, data is loaded into the vector registers, manipulated in-register, and the result stored back to memory. Three implementations of sorting with two different SIMD machineries - x86-64's SSE2 and G5's AltiVec - demonstrate that this idea delivers significant speed improvements. The improvements provided are orthogonal to the gains obtained through empirical search for a suitable sorting algorithm [11]. When integrated with the Dynamically Tuned Sorting Library (DTSL) this new code generation strategy reduces the time spent by DTSL up to 22% for moderately-sized arrays, with greater relative reductions for small arrays. Wall-clock performance of d-heaps is improved by up to 39% using a similar technique.
Impact Analysis of Directional Antennas and Multiantenna Beamformers on Radio Transmission

The impact of directional antennas and multiantenna beamformers on radio transmission is formulated in terms of the gain of the Rician -factor, the reduction of the root-mean-squared delay spread, and the gain of the signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver for Rician fading channels in multipath environments. The analysis is based on a double-directional channel model. For the analytical formulation, the joint channel spectrum is assumed to be decomposable into separate spectra in time and angular domains. By way of illustration, closed-form expressions for the impact of hypothetical cosine-shaped antenna patternsand conventional beamformers are derived for channels with uniform angular spectra and an exponential decaying delay spectrum. The impact factors are explicitly related to the antenna beamwidth and the number of antenna elements. In addition, the effect of misalignment between the antenna main beam and the direct path is included in the analysis. The quantitative analysis given in this paper is important for radio system design, particularly for the design of antennas and multiantenna beamformer configurations.
Coherence Controller Architectures for Scalable Shared-Memory Multiprocessors

Scalable distributed shared-memory architectures rely on coherence controllers on each processing node to synthesize cache-coherent shared memory across the entire machine. The coherence controllers execute coherence protocol handlers that may be hardwired in custom hardware or programmed in a protocol processor within each coherence controller. Although custom hardware runs faster, a protocol processor allows the coherence protocol to be tailored to specific application needs and may shorten hardware development time. Previous research shows minimal increase in application execution time due to protocol processors over custom hardware. With the advent of SMP nodes and faster processors and networks, the trade-off between custom hardware and protocol processors needs to be reexamined. This paper studies the performance of custom hardware and protocol-processor-based coherence controllers in SMP-node-based CC-NUMA systems on applications from the SPLASH-2 suite. Using realistic parameters and detailed models of state-of-the-art system components, it shows that the occupancy of coherence controllers can limit the performance of applications with high communication requirements, where the execution time using commodity protocol processors can be twice as long as using custom hardware. We also investigate the effect of varying several architectural parameters that influence the communication characteristics of the applications and the underlying system on coherence controller performance. We identify measures of applications' communication requirements and their impact on performance. We also study the potential of improving the performance of coherence controllers by separating or duplicating critical components.
Car Agene: Constructing and Joining Maximum Likelihood Genetic Maps*

Genetic mapping is an important step in the study of any organism. An accurate genetic map is extremely valuable for locating genes or more generally either qualitative or quantitative trait loci (QTL). This paper presents a new approach two important problems in genetic mapping: automatically ordering markers to obtain a multipoint maximum likelihood map and building a multipoint maximum likelihood map using pooled data from several crosses. The approach is embodied in an hybrid algorithm that mixes the statistical optimization algorithm EM with local search techniques which have been developed in the artificial intelligence and operations research communities. An efficient implementation of the EM algorithm provides maximum likelihood recombination fractions, while the local search techniques look for orders that maximize this maximum likelihood. The specificity of the approach lies in the neighborhood structure used in the local search algorithms which has been inspired by an analogy between the marker ordering problem and the famous traveling salesman problem. The approach has been used to build joined maps for the wasp Trichogramma brassicae and on random pooled data sets. In both cases, it compares quite favorably with existing softwares as far as maximum likelihood is considered as a significant criteria.
An exploratory analysis of occupational stress amongst Chefs in Ireland : The adverse consequences for their personal life

Despite the growing glamorisation of the chef profession in recent years through various television documentaries, there is a shortage of chefs in Ireland. The profession while attracting new entrants to train in the area is failing to retain them (Irish Examiner 2012). Gibbons and Gibbons (2007) completed research in Northern Ireland which examined the causes and consequences of occupational stress for chefs. The research findings noted that chefs working in Northern Ireland were experiencing high levels of occupational stress and the causes included role overload, bullying, and poor relationship with manager and poor working conditions e.g. cramped working environment. This research seeks to expand on the research conducted by Gibbons and Gibbons (2007) to examine occupational stress amongst chefs in the Republic of Ireland. The research will look at both the causes and consequences of stress for this group and seek to provide recommendations on foot of its findings. The research sample consists of three in-depth interviews, with experienced chef managers who have worked in this area for fifteen years on average. The interviews were conducted over a period of three weeks and were recorded and transcribed for the purposes of analysis. A thematic approach was taken to identification of causes and consequences of occupational stress. The findings suggest that poor relationship with manager, physically working environment and lack of training are some of the causes while not being able to switch off after work, not enough time for other activities and not sufficient time for significant others and friends were included in the findings for consequences. The dissertation concludes with a number of practical recommendations for both individuals and employers. These include regular discussions between subordinates and managers, reasonable accommodations for pregnant employees and introduction of wellbeing classes. These measures should help reduce occupational stress. The author suggests that future research may include researching occupational stress for junior chefs and from the perspective of the employer to ascertain their level of awareness of the stress levels experienced by staff and the measures in place to assist them.
The SMT-LIB Standard Version 2.0

The SMT-LIB initiative is an international effort, supported by research groups worldwide, with the two-fold goal of producing an extensive on-line library of benchmarks and promoting the adoption of common languages and interfaces for SMT solvers. This paper introduces Version 2 of the SMT-LIB Standard. This is a major upgrade of the previous Version 1.2 which, in addition to simplifying and extending the languages of that version, includes a new command language for interfacing with SMT solvers.
Severe Acute Respiratory Illness Deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Role of Influenza: A Case Series From 8 Countries

Abstract Background. Data on causes of death due to respiratory illness in Africa are limited. Methods. From January to April 2013, 28 African countries were invited to participate in a review of severe acute respiratory illness (SARI)–associated deaths identified from influenza surveillance during 2009–2012. Results. Twenty-three countries (82%) responded, 11 (48%) collect mortality data, and 8 provided data. Data were collected from 37 714 SARI cases, and 3091 (8.2%; range by country, 5.1%–25.9%) tested positive for influenza virus. There were 1073 deaths (2.8%; range by country, 0.1%–5.3%) reported, among which influenza virus was detected in 57 (5.3%). Case-fatality proportion (CFP) was higher among countries with systematic death reporting than among those with sporadic reporting. The influenza-associated CFP was 1.8% (57 of 3091), compared with 2.9% (1016 of 34 623) for influenza virus–negative cases (P < .001). Among 834 deaths (77.7%) tested for other respiratory pathogens, rhinovirus (107 [12.8%]), adenovirus (64 [6.0%]), respiratory syncytial virus (60 [5.6%]), and Streptococcus pneumoniae (57 [5.3%]) were most commonly identified. Among 1073 deaths, 402 (37.5%) involved people aged 0–4 years, 462 (43.1%) involved people aged 5–49 years, and 209 (19.5%) involved people aged ≥50 years. Conclusions. Few African countries systematically collect data on outcomes of people hospitalized with respiratory illness. Stronger surveillance for deaths due to respiratory illness may identify risk groups for targeted vaccine use and other prevention strategies.
The Apoptosis-Necrosis Continuum: Insights from Genetically Altered Mice

Apoptosis can be defined as a carefully regulated process, characterized by specific morphologic and biochemical features. It is initiated by both physiologic and pathologic stimuli, and its full expression requires a signaling cascade in which caspase activation plays a central role. Knockout mice lacking key genes encoding proteins constituting the core apoptotic cascade have helped us to establish the functional hierarchy of the mechanisms controlling apoptosis in animal development and, to a lesser extent, in disease. Induced mutant mice have also revealed the intimate crosstalk between apoptotic and other homeostatic pathways and have defined distinct temporal and tissue-specific roles of individual apoptotic effectors. Eliminating genes controlling caspase-dependent apoptosis can convert an apoptotic phenotype to a necrotic one, both in vitro and in vivo. This suggests that necrosis and apoptosis represent morphologic expressions of a shared biochemical network through both caspase-dependent mechanisms as well as non-caspase-dependent effectors such as cathepsin B and apoptosis-inducing factor. The cell death program, whether by apoptosis or necrosis, is mediated through an integrated cascade, which can be accessed at multiple sites, and propagated through numerous branch points. An understanding of the physiologic conditions that influence these decisions is required to adequately prevent, or induce, cell death.