Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimizing the energy efficiency of short term ultra reliable communications in vehicular networks

We evaluate the use of HARQ schemes in the context of vehicle to infrastructure communications considering ultra reliable communications in the short term from a channel capacity stand point. We show that it is not possible to meet strict latency requirements with very high reliability without some diversity strategy and propose a solution to determining an optimal limit on the maximum allowed number of retransmissions using Chase combining and simple HARQ to increase energy efficiency. Results show that using the proposed optimizations leads to spending 5 times less energy when compared to only one retransmission in the context of a benchmark test case for urban scenario. In addition, we present an approximation that relates most system parameters and can predict whether or not the link can be closed, which is valuable for system design.
Dynamic group recommendation with modified collaborative filtering and temporal factor

Group recommendation, which provides a group of users with information items, has become increasingly im( portant in both the workspace and people's social activities. Because users change their preferences or interests over time, the dynamics and diversity of group members is a challenging problem for group recommendation. In this article, we introduce a novel group recommendation method via fusing the modified collaborative filtering methodology with the temporal factor in order to, solve the dynamics problem. Meanwhile, we also put forward a new method of eliminating sparse problem so as to improve the accuracy of recommendation. We have tested our method in the music recommendation domain. Experimental results indicate the proposed group recommender method provides better performance than an original method and gRecs. The result of efficiency and scalability test also shows our method is usable.
User Comment Analysis for Android apps and CSPI Detection with Comment Expansion

Along with the exponential growth on markets of mobile apps, comes the serious public concern about the security and privacy issues. User comments serves as a valuable source of information for evaluating a mobile app, for both new users and developers. However, for the purpose of evaluation on the security/privacy aspects of an app, user comments are not always directly useful. Most of the comments are about issues like functionality, missing feature or just pure emotional expression. Therefore, further efforts are required in order to identify those Comments with Security/Privacy Issues (CSPI) for future evaluation. In this paper, a dataset of comments is collected from Google Play, and a two dimensional label system is proposed to describe those CSPI within it. A supervised multi-label learning method utilizing comment expansion is adopted to detect different types of CSPI described by this label system. Experiments on the collected dataset shows that the proposed method outperforms the method without the comment expansion.
Semi-supervised Learning of Classifiers : Theory , Algorithms for Bayesian Network Classifiers and Application to Human-Computer Interaction

Automatic classification by machines is one of the basic task s required in any pattern recognition and human computer int action applications. In this paper we discuss training prob abilistic classifiers with labeled and unlabeled data. We pr ovide a new analysis which shows under what conditions unlabeled data c an be used in learning to improve classification performance . W also show that if the conditions are violated, using unlabel ed data can be detrimental to classification performance. We discuss the implications of this analysis to a specific type of probabili stic classifiers, Bayesian networks, and propose a new struc ture learning algorithm that can utilize unlabeled data to improve classi fication. Finally, we show how the resulting algorithms are s uccessfully employed in two applications related to human-computer int action and pattern recognition; facial expression recog nition and face detection.
Intelligent Maps for Autonomous Kilometer-Scale Science Survey

We present a new approach for site survey by autonomous surface robots. In our method the agent constructs an intelligent map, a multi-scale model of the explored environment incorporating in situ and remote sensing data. The agent learns the model’s parameters on the fly and exploits its predictions to guide adaptive navigation and sampling. In this manner the agent can respond appropriately to novel correlations, resource constraints and execution errors. Rover tests at Amboy Crater, California demonstrate improved performance over non-adaptive strategies for a geologic survey task.
Modeling posterior probabilities using the linear exponential family

A commonly used distribution on the probability simplex is the Dirichlet distribution. In this paper we present the linear exponential family as an alternative. The distribution is known in the statistics community, but we present in this paper a numerically stable method to compute its parameters. Although the Dirichlet distribution is known to be a good Bayesian prior for probabilities we believe this paper shows that the linear exponential model offers a good alternative in other contexts, such as when we want to use posterior probabilities as features for automatic speech recognition. We show how to incorporate posterior probabilities as additional features to an existing GMM, and show that the resulting model gives a 0.6% relative gain on a broadcast news speech recognition system. Index Terms: Linear Exponential Family, Simplex, Divided Difference, Partition Function
Event-based model Predictive control for the cooperation of distributed agents

This paper proposes an event-based framework for the control of a team of cooperating distributed agents. The agents are dynamically decoupled and they are controlled locally by Nonlinear Model Predictive Controllers (NMPC). The event-driven framework allows for triggering the solution of the optimal control problem of the NMPC only when it is needed. The scheduling of the control updates for each of the agents depends on an error of the state information received from the neighboring agents. Sufficient conditions for triggering are provided and the results are illustrated through a simulated example.
Transmission Network Parameters Estimated From HIV Sequences for a Nationwide Epidemic

Background. Many studies of sexual behavior have shown that individuals vary greatly in their number of sexual partners over time, but it has proved difficult to obtain parameter estimates relating to the dynamics of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission except in small-scale contact tracing studies. Recent developments in molecular phylodynamics have provided new routes to obtain these parameter estimates, and current clinical practice provides suitable data for entire infected populations. Methods. A phylodynamic analysis was performed on partial pol gene sequences obtained for routine clinical care from 14 560 individuals, representing approximately 60% of the HIV-positive men who have sex with men (MSM) under care in the United Kingdom. Results. Among individuals linked to others in the data set, 29% are linked to only 1 individual, 41% are linked to 2–10 individuals, and 29% are linked to ≥10 individuals. The right-skewed degree distribution can be approximated by a power law, but the data are best fitted by a Waring distribution for all time depths. For time depths of 5–7 years, the distribution parameter ρ lies within the range that indicates infinite variance. Conclusions. The transmission network among UK MSM is characterized by preferential association such that a randomly distributed intervention would not be expected to stop the epidemic.
Higher Fat Content in Breastmilk Expressed Manually: A Randomized Trial.

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the effect of milk expression method (manual expression versus electric pump) on the composition of breastmilk. STUDY DESIGN Data on 21 mothers of 21 newborns 48-72 hours postdelivery were collected and analyzed. The women were randomly assigned to express breastmilk manually followed by pump, or in reverse order. The fat, carbohydrate, and protein contents of the milk samples were analyzed using a human milk analyzer (Miris AB, Uppsala, Sweden). RESULTS The fat and energy contents of milk obtained through manual expression were higher than those obtained by pump (p=0.024 and p=0.04, respectively, by the Wilcoxon signed rank test). There were no significant differences in protein or carbohydrate content of milk obtained by either method of expression. The difference in fat content between milk obtained by the two methods was not correlated with mother's age, delivery method, gestational age at delivery, parity, or the interval between delivery and the time the sampled milk was obtained. CONCLUSIONS Manually expressed human milk had higher fat content than milk expressed by electric pump. We speculate that this difference is due to the presence of hindmilk in the manually expressed milk because the technique of massaging the breast during manual expression is more likely than the pump to eject hindmilk, which has been shown to have higher fat content than foremilk.
Rheological properties of polypropylene/high‐density polyethylene blend melts. I. Capillary flow properties

Three kinds of isotactic polypropylenes (PP) with different melt flow indexes (MFIs) were melt-blended with three kinds of high-density polyethylenes (HDPE) with different MFI using a screw extruder, and the morphologies and capillary flow properties such as flow curve, entrance effect, Barus effect, and melt fracture were studied. When HDPE contents were 70 wt % or above and PP particles formed the disperse phase, the size of the particles decreased with decreasing viscosity of PP. When HDPE contents were 30 wt % or below and HDPE particles formed the disperse phase, the size of the particles was minimum when the viscosities of PP and HDPE were similar. The die swell ratios of the blends were higher than those of the components. On the other hand, the entrance correction coefficients of the blends were intermediate between those of the components. There was no correlation between the die swell ratio and the entrance corretion coefficient. Therefore, it is not always appropriate to regard the entrance correction coefficient as a measure of melt elasticity in the case of inhomogeneous polymer systems such as PP/HDPE blend.
Breeding for reduced post-harvest seed dormancy in switchgrass: registration of TEM-LoDorm switchgrass germplasm.

The switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) germplasm line TEM-LoDorm (Reg. No. GP-98, PI 636468) was developed by the USDA-ARS in cooperation with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and was released in May 2007. TEM-LoDorm has reduced post-harvest seed dormancy and was developed to provide breeders with a germplasm source to improve germination and stand establishment. The cultivar Alamo was used as a base population, and TEM-LoDorm was developed using four cycles of recurrent selection. During the first three cycles, recently harvested seed from about 200 entries were germinated to evaluate immediacy of germination. Seedlings from seed that germinated within 3 to 14 d were used to establish a polycross nursery to produce seed for the next cycle of selection. Twenty-four plants in the cycle 3 crossing block that produced seed with the most rapid germination rate were dug and used to establish cycle 4 crossing blocks. Over a 2-yr period, germination of recently harvested seed from most of these 24 plants was significantly (P < 0.05) higher than seed from unselected Alamo; some plants were 10 or more times higher than Alamo. Equal quantities of seed from these 24 plants were bulked to constitute TEM-LoDorm germplasm.
Obstacles to freedom and privacy by design

Technology that inherently protects civil liberties is a nice idea in theory. In practice, however, it may be difficult to achieve. For example, Cranor and Wright [1] show that it can be difficult for software designers to control, or even influence, the ways in which their systems are used. Nonetheless, it is clear that generally a system is more likely to protect freedom and privacy if it is designed with that goal in mind than if it is not.
Extending Laser Bending for the Generation of Convex Shapes

A summary about the present process understanding of the laser bending technology is given. Three different bending mechanisms are distinguished. Experimental results showing that at certain parameters an instability behaviour can occur are discussed. A bending mechanism is suggested which explains the stability behaviour. It is shown that laser bending can be extended in order to generate convex shapes, which means a bending away from the laser beam. The possibility of bending towards the laser beam or of bending away from the laser beam opens new ranges of applications, two of which are introduced in this paper.
Extracting wind parameters from high frequency ground wave radar backscatter

A method of wind speed extraction using the position of the second order Doppler peaks has been developed. The derived expression is rooted in existing and proven theoretical models. The time dependent nature of wind-wave spectral growth has also been addressed. Both models are now being tested extensively on real HF radar data, with preliminary results showing the methods to be quite promising.
Physiological and symptomatic responses to cycling and walking in intermittent claudication

To shed light on the potential efficacy of cycling as a testing modality in the treatment of intermittent claudication (IC), this study compared physiological and symptomatic responses to graded walking and cycling tests in claudicants. Sixteen subjects with peripheral arterial disease (resting ankle:brachial index (ABI) < 0·9) and IC completed a maximal graded treadmill walking (T) and cycle (C) test after three familiarization tests on each mode. During each test, symptoms, oxygen uptake (VO2), minute ventilation (VE), respiratory exchange ratio (RER) and heart rate (HR) were measured, and for 10 min after each test the brachial and ankle systolic pressures were recorded. All but one subject experienced calf pain as the primary limiting symptom during T; whereas the symptoms were more varied during C and included thigh pain, calf pain and dyspnoea. Although maximal exercise time was significantly longer on C than T (690 ± 67 vs. 495 ± 57 s), peak VO2, peak VE and peak heart rate during C and T were not different; whereas peak RER was higher during C. These responses during C and T were also positively correlated (P<0·05) with each other, with the exception of RER. The postexercise systolic pressures were also not different between C and T. However, the peak decline in ankle pressures from resting values after C and T were not correlated with each other. These data demonstrate that cycling and walking induce a similar level of metabolic and cardiovascular strain, but that the primary limiting symptoms and haemodynamic response in an individual's extremity, measured after exercise, can differ substantially between these two modes.
Selective Writeback: Reducing Register File Pressure and Energy Consumption

Much of the complexity in today's superscalar microprocessors stems from the need to maintain the speculatively produced results within the on-chip storage components until these results can be safely discarded without endangering the reconstruction of the precise state or impeding the recovery from possible branch misspeculations. For this, modern designs use large, heavily-ported physical register files (RFs) to increase the instruction throughput. The high complexity and power dissipation of such RFs mainly stem from the need to maintain each and every result for a large number of cycles after the result generation. We observed that a significant fraction (about 45%) of the result values are delivered to their consumers via the bypass network (consumed ldquoon-the-flyrdquo) and are never read out from the destination registers. In this paper, we first formulate conditions for identifying such transient values and describe their microarchitectural implementation; then we propose a technique to avoid the writeback of such transient values into the RF. With 64-entry integer and floating point register files, our technique achieves an 11% performance improvement and 29% reduction in the RF energy consumption compared to the baseline machine with the same number of registers. Furthermore, for the same performance target, the selective writeback scheme results in a 38% reduction in the energy consumption of the RF compared to the baseline machine.
Multilevel Full-Chip Routing With Testability and Yield Enhancement

We propose a multilevel full-chip routing algorithm that improves testability and diagnosability, manufacturability, and signal integrity for yield enhancement. Two major issues are addressed. 1) The oscillation ring test (ORT) and its diagnosis scheme for interconnects based on the popular IEEE Standard 1500 are integrated into the multilevel routing framework to achieve testability enhancement. We augment the traditional multilevel framework of coarsening and uncoarsening by introducing a preprocessing stage that analyzes the interconnect structure for better resource estimation before the coarsening stage, and a final stage after uncoarsening that improves testability to achieve 100% interconnect fault coverage and maximal diagnosability. 2) We present a heuristic to reduce routing congestion to optimize the multiple-fault probability, chemical-mechanical polishing- and optical proximity correction-induced manufacturability, and crosstalk effects, for yield improvement. Experimental results on the Microelectronics Center for North Carolina benchmark circuits show that the proposed ORT method achieves 100% fault coverage and the optimal diagnosis resolution for interconnects. Further, the multilevel routing algorithm effectively balances the routing density to achieve 100% routing completion.
Sketch and paint-based interface for highlight modeling

In computer graphics, highlights capture much of the appearance of light reflection off a surface. They are generally limited to pre-defined models (e.g., Phong, Blinn) or to measured data. In this paper, we introduce new tools and a corresponding highlight model to provide computer graphics artists a more expressive approach to design highlights. For each defined light key-direction, the artist simply sketches and paints the main highlight features (shape, intensity, and color) on a plane oriented perpendicularly to the reflected direction. For other light-and- view configurations, our system smoothly blends the different user-defined highlights. Based on GPU cabilities, our solution allows real-time editing and feedback. We illustrate our approach with a wide range of highlights, with complex shapes and varying colors. This solution also demonstrates the simplicity of introduced tools.
Total attenuation coefficient of intralipid dilutions for discrete laser wavelengths between 405 and 1315 nm

The experimental investigations on different aspects of optical tomography require the knowledge of the optical parameters of tissues and tissue-like phantoms in order to unambiguously interpret the experimental data and specify characteristic inhomogeneities in tissue diagnostics. The main optical parameters of interest are the absorption coefficient, the scattering, backscattering, and reduced-scattering coefficients, the total attenuation (extinction) coefficient and the anisotropy factor. In this work, we extend our investigations of the optical properties of tissuemimicking phantoms, such as Intralipid-20% fat emulsion, using an approach we have developed recently based on the peculiarities of laser radiation beams propagating through semi-infinite turbid media. The dependence of the total attenuation coefficient on the Intralipid concentration, for laser radiation wavelengths λ=405, 672, 850, and 1314 nm, is studied, by using a set of phantoms consisting of different dilutions of Intralipid in distilled water. The experimental results for the extinction are in agreement with our previous results and with empiric formulae found by other authors concerning the wavelength dependence of the scattering coefficient of Intralipid -10% and Intralipid - 20%. They are also in agreement with known data of the water absorptance. As a whole, the results obtained in this work confirm the consideration of the experimental phantoms as semi-infinite media. They also confirm and extend theoretical and experimental results obtained previously, and reveal advantages of using longer wavelengths for deeper diagnostics of tissues and mimic turbid media.
Pattern Recognition and Categorization 1

Four experiments are reported which attempt to determine how people make classifications when categories are defined by sets of exemplars and not by logical rules. College students classified schematic faces into one of two categories each composed of five faces. One probability model and three distance models were tested. The predominant strategy, as revealed by successful models, was to abstract a prototype representing each category and to compare the distance of novel patterns to each prototype, emphasizing those features which best discriminated the two categories. Bruner (1957) assumed that all perceptual experience is the end product of a categorization process. Whatever is perceived achieves its meaning from a class of percepts with which it is grouped. By a category he meant a rule for classifying objects as equivalent. The rule must specify the critical properties of the stimuli, the manner in which these are combined, the weights assigned various properties, and the acceptance limits for each category. Bruner also believed that there was no reason to assume that laws governing inferences of this kind were discontinuous as one moved from perceptual to more conceptual activities. In contrast , Neisser (1967) has argued that some kinds of perceptual experience (such as visual tracking) may be more analogue than categorical. None the less, other forms of perception are clearly categorical since pattern recognition primarily involves the classification of stimuli into mutually exclusive categories. The purpose of this article is to investigate how classification is accomplished. Given two classes of patterns defined by sets of exemplars, we may ask what kind of decision processes do Ss use to classify new pat-'This article is based on a dissertation submitted to the Graduate School, University of California, Los Angeles, in partial fulfill ment of the requirements for the PhD degree. I would like to thank my Chairman, Professor Morton P. Friedman, for his guidance and encouragement throughout my graduate study and the members of my Committee for their suggestions concerning the improvement of the disserta-tion. Daniel Rourke's contribution to the scaling study was greatly appreciated.
Asynchronous dual descent for separable network optimisation

This study is concerned with the class of convex network optimisation problems forming the Network Utility Maximisation (NUM) framework. Dual decomposition is commonly used to decompose the NUM problem into smaller problems that can be solved locally by the nodes. The typical dual descent techniques suffer however from slow convergence and require the distributed computations to be synchronised. Yet global node synchronisation is a difficult task in self-organised ad-hoc networks, where preference is given to asynchronous protocols. The algorithm proposed in this study proceeds sequentially and asynchronously for each node to local projected gradient descents, combined with local step-size selection routines of the type Armijo. Global convergence is ensured provided that the gradient of the dual function is Lipschitz continuous. Scaling the gradient to the local Newton directions accelerates the process and guarantees linear convergence. The proposed algorithm is tested on the problem of maximum-lifetime routing of a wireless sensor network.