Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feature Markov Decision Processes

General purpose intelligent learning agents cycle through (complex,non-MDP) sequences of observations, actions, and rewards. On the other hand, reinforcement learning is welldeveloped for small finite state Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). So far it is an art performed by human designers to extract the right state representation out of the bare observations, i.e. to reduce the agent setup to the MDP framework. Before we can think of mechanizing this search for suitable MDPs, we need a formal objective criterion. The main contribution of this article is to develop such a criterion. I also integrate the various parts into one learning algorithm. Extensions to more realistic dynamic Bayesian networks are developed in the companion article [Hut09].
FTOP: A Library for Fault Tolerance in a Cluster

Checkpointing and rollback recovery is a simple technique for fault tolerance. The state of a process is saved on a disk file from which the process can recover on the occurrence of failure. In this paper we describe the implementation of FTOP (Fault Tolerant PVM), a coordinated checkpointing library integrated with PVM. Existing PVM applications require only minor change for incorporating fault tolerance using FTOP. FTOP provides fault tolerance mechanism that is totally transparent to the programmer. It does not require any changes to be made in the kernel. FTOP handles intransit messages, open files and routing that makes it a very useful fault tolerant library.
Auction-based bandwidth allocation and scheduling in noncooperative wireless networks

We investigate bandwidth allocation and scheduling in non-cooperative wireless networks as a mixed integer programming problem. Fast Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auction-based bandwidth allocation (FABA), incorporating relaxation-based greedy algorithm (RGA) and split-flow-based algorithm (SFA), is proposed by modifying the traditional VCG auction to make it computationally feasible. With incentives provided by FABA, the dominant strategy of any selfish node in the network is to be cooperative so that the system cost is minimized. We implement FABA via a batching-based mechanism which allocates bandwidth for all call routing requests arriving in a certain batching period simultaneously. Our simulation evaluates the performance in terms of system cost, payment-cost ratio, and setup time.
Blood and Oil: the Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency, BY MICHAEL T. KLARE, xvi + 267 pp., 24.3×15.9×2.7 cm, ISBN 0 8050 7313 2 clothbound, US$ 25.00, New York, NY, USA: Henry Holt & Co., 2004

Since September 11th 2001 and the commencement of the 'war on terror', the world's attention has been focused on the relationship between US foreign policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude oil that lie beneath the region's soil. Michael Klare traces oil's impact on international affairs since World War II, revealing its influence on the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Carter governments. He shows how America's own wells are drying up as demand increases and warns that by 2010 the US will need to import 60 per cent of its oil. And since most of this supply will have to come from chronically unstable, often violently anti-American zones - the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, Latin America and Africa - their dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military involvement.
Remote sensing image fusion using combining IHS and Curvelet transform

The information content of a single image is mainly limited by the spatial and spectral resolution of the imaging system. Current imaging systems offer a trade-off between high spatial and high spectral resolutions. No single system offers both of these characteristics. In order to obtain the both characteristics in a single image, that is high spatial and spectral resolutions, image fusion technique can be employed. Image fusion is a process of combining two or more images into an image. It can extract features from source images, and provide more information than one image can. In this research, we propose a novel method for multimodality remote sensing image fusion. As a possible remedy for this problem we propose a technique for the fusion of Panchromatic and Multispectral images based on Curvelet transform. This paper introduces new application of the curvelet in multispectral remote sensing image fusion. The methodological approaches proposed in this paper result in merged images with improved quality with respect to those obtained by IHS, DWT, wavelet à trous algorithm and ridgelet and curvelet transform. Results show proposed method preserves more spectral features with less spatial distortion.
DECENTRALIZED CONTROL OF VEHICULAR PLATOONS: IMPROVING CLOSED LOOP STABILITY BY MISTUNING

We consider decentralized control of a platoon of N identical vehicles moving in a straight line. The control objective is for each vehicle to maintain a constant velocity and inter-vehicular separation using only the local information from itself and its two nearest neighbors. Each vehicle is modeled as a double integrator. To aid the analysis, we use the conservation principles to derive a continuous partial differential equation (PDE) approximation of the discrete platoon dynamics. The PDE model is used to explain the progressive loss of closed-loop stability with increasing number of vehicles, and to devise ways to combat this loss of stability. If every vehicle uses the same controller, we show that the least stable closed-loop eigenvalue approaches zero as O( 1 N ) in the limit of a large number (N ) of vehicles. We then show how to ameliorate this loss of stability by small amounts of “mistuning”, i.e., changing the controller gains from their nominal values. We prove that with arbitrary small amounts of mistuning, the asymptotic behavior of the least stable closed loop eigenvalue can be improved to O( 1 N ). These conclusions are validated for the discrete platoon via numerical calculations.
A comparison of in situ and airborne radar observations of ocean wave directionality

The directional spectrum of a fully arisen ∼3 m sea as measured by an experimental airborne radar, the NASA Ku-band radar ocean wave spectrometer (ROWS), is compared to reference pitch-roll buoy data and to the classical SWOP (stereo wave observation project) spectrum for fully developed conditions. The ROWS spectrum, inferred indirectly from backscattered power measurements at 5-km altitude, is shown to be in excellent agreement with the buoy spectrum. Specifically, excellent agreement is found between the two nondirectional height spectra, and mean wave directions and directional spreads as functions of frequency. This agreement is found despite certain discrepancies between the radar and buoy angular harmonics which are believed to be due to buoy instrumental effects. A comparison of the ROWS and SWOP spectra shows the two spectra to be very similar, in detailed shape as well as in terms of the gross spreading characteristics. Both spectra are seen to exhibit bimodal structures which accord with the Phillips' resonance mechanism. This observation is thus seen to support Phillips' contention that the SWOP modes were indeed resonance modes, not statistical artifacts.
A multimethod study of information quality in wiki collaboration

In this article, the author presents the results of a two-phase, multimethod study of wiki-based collaboration in an attempt to better understand how peer-produced collaboration is done well in wiki environments. Phase 1 involves an in-depth case study of the collaborative processes surrounding the development of the Wikipedia article on the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. The rich data collected are used to develop an initial set of testable hypotheses of factors that enhance the quality of peer-produced information in wiki environments. Phase 2 tests these theories through a quantitative analysis of the collaborative features associated with 188 similar articles that Wikipedia considered for recognition as their best (i.e., the top 0.1%). Four collaborative features are examined for their effects on quality: volume of contributor activity, type of contributor activity, number of anonymous contributors, and top contributor experience. Volume of contributor activity is the only feature that is unsupported, a particularly interesting result because previous literature connects that factor most clearly to success in wiki-based collaboration. Implications are discussed.
Development and Characterization of Stable Sediment-Free Anaerobic Bacterial Enrichment Cultures That Dechlorinate Aroclor 1260

ABSTRACT We have developed sediment-free anaerobic enrichment cultures that dechlorinate a broad spectrum of highly chlorinated polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The cultures were developed from Aroclor 1260-contaminated sediment from the Housatonic River in Lenox, MA. Sediment slurries were primed with 2,6-dibromobiphenyl to stimulate Process N dechlorination (primarily meta dechlorination), and sediment was gradually removed by successive transfers (10%) to minimal medium. The cultures grow on pyruvate, butyrate, or acetate plus H2. Gas chromatography-electron capture detector analysis demonstrated that the cultures extensively dechlorinate 50 to 500 μg/ml of Aroclor 1260 at 22 to 24°C by Dechlorination Process N. Triplicate cultures of the eighth transfer without sediment dechlorinated 76% of the hexa- through nonachlorobiphenyls in Aroclor 1260 (250 μg/ml) to tri- through pentachlorobiphenyls in 110 days. At least 64 PCB congeners, all of which are chlorinated on both rings and 47 of which have six or more chlorines, were substrates for this dechlorination. To characterize the bacterial diversity in the enrichments, we used eubacterial primers to amplify and clone 16S rRNA genes from DNA extracted from cultures grown on acetate plus H2. Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of 107 clones demonstrated the presence of Thauera-like Betaproteobacteria, Geobacter-like Deltaproteobacteria, Pseudomonas species, various Clostridiales, Bacteroidetes, Dehalococcoides of the Chloroflexi group, and unclassified Eubacteria. Our development of highly enriched, robust, stable, sediment-free cultures that extensively dechlorinate a highly chlorinated commercial PCB mixture is a major and unprecedented breakthrough in the field. It will enable intensive study of the organisms and genes responsible for a major PCB dechlorination process that occurs in the environment and could also lead to effective remediation applications.
MEMS comb-drive electret energy harvester charged after packaging

A MEMS electret energy harvester charged with soft X-ray after packaging is investigated, which should improve the long-term stability of electrets. A charging model for estimation of accurate charging time is developed, by considering attenuation of the soft X-ray at the lid material. The present model is verified with surface potential measurements of electrets. With a prototype MEMS electret energy harvester packaged with 0.1mm-thick aluminum lid, vertical electret on the comb drives has been uniformly charged with soft X-ray photoionization, and up to 1.99 μW has been obtained at 601 Hz and 2.0 g oscillation, which shows the effectiveness of 29%.
Redeploying mobile wireless sensor networks with virtual forces

Wireless Sensor Networks should be self-organized to enhance the coverage after an initial random deployment. Virtual Forces Algorithm, VFA, is one of the most efficient algorithms proposed in the literature. Simulation results prove that the use of this algorithm does not achieve full coverage and connectivity in some cases, even when the number of sensors is sufficient. Because of that, our contribution is to propose some improvement to ensure coverage, connectivity and fault-tolerance, while saving energy. Our final proposed version Dth_Lmax_Serialized_V FA achieves the performance criteria previously cited by serializing and limiting nodes moves as well as increasing the robustness degree.
Fast Lighting/Rendering Solution for Matching a 2D Image to a Database of 3D Models: "LightSphere"

We describe a method for object recognition with 2D image queries to be identified from among a set of 3D models with known pose. The main target application is face recognition. The 3D models consist of both shape and color texture information, and the 2D queries are color camera images. The kernel of the method consists of a lookup table that associates 3D surface normals with expected image brightness, modulo albedo, for a given query. This lookup table is fast to compute, and is used to render images from the models for a sum of square difference error measure. Using a data set of 42 face models and 1764 (high quality) query images under 7 poses and 6 lighting conditions, we achieve average recognition accuracy of about 80%, with more than 90% in several posellighting conditions. The method is extremely fast compared to those that involve finding eigenvectors or solving constrained equation systems.
The Vesicle- and Target-SNARE Proteins That Mediate Glut4 Vesicle Fusion Are Localized in Detergent-insoluble Lipid Rafts Present on Distinct Intracellular Membranes*

Insulin stimulates the fusion of intracellular vesicles containing the glucose transporter Glut4 with the plasma membrane in adipocytes and muscle cells. Glut4 vesicle fusion is thought to be catalyzed by the interaction of the vesicle solubleN-ethyl-maleimide-sensitive fusion protein attachment protein receptor VAMP2 with the target solubleN-ethyl-maleimide-sensitive fusion protein attachment protein receptors SNAP-23 and syntaxin 4. Here, we use combined membrane fractionation, detergent solubility, and sucrose gradient flotation to demonstrate that the large majority (>70%) of SNAP-23 and a significant proportion of syntaxin 4 (∼35%) are associated with plasma membrane lipid rafts in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Furthermore, VAMP2 is shown to be concentrated in lipid rafts isolated from intracellular membranes. Insulin stimulation had no effect on the plasma membrane raft association of SNAP-23 or syntaxin 4 but promoted VAMP2 insertion into plasma membrane rafts. Immunofluorescence analysis revealed that SNAP-23 was clustered at the plasma membrane and almost completely segregated from the transferrin receptor. SNAP-23 distribution seemed to be distinct from caveolin-1, and clusters of SNAP-23 were dispersed after cholesterol extraction with methyl-β-cyclodextrin, suggesting that the majority of SNAP-23 is associated with non-caveolar, cholesterol-rich lipid rafts. The results described implicate lipid rafts as important platforms for Glut4 vesicle fusion and suggest the hypothesis that such rafts may represent a spatial integration point of insulin signaling and membrane traffic.
Domain-Specific Keyphrase Extraction

Keyphrases are an important means of document summarization, clustering, and topic search. Only a small minority of documents have author-assigned keyphrases, and manually assigning keyphrases to existing documents is very laborious. Therefore it is highly desirable to automate the keyphrase extraction process. This paper shows that a simple procedure for keyphrase extraction based on the naive Bayes learning scheme performs comparably to the state of the art. It goes on to explain how this procedure's performance can be boosted by automatically tailoring the extraction process to the particular document collection at hand. Results on a large collection of technical reports in computer science show that the quality of the extracted keyphrases improves significantly when domain-specific information is exploited.
Content-based Navigation in a Mini-world Web Title Content-based Navigation in a Mini-world Web Primary Author(s) Date

Several database query languages have recently been developed to locate and retrieve documents in the vast network of World-Wide Web pages. These languages combine path expressions, which specify the structure of a path through the network to the desired information, with content predicates, which force the path to pass through pages with particular content. The straightforward implementation of these languages is based on breadthrst search of the network, with heavy reliance placed on the user's understanding of network topology to both direct and constrain the search via the appropriate use of the path expressions. In this paper we describe a system that removes the reliance on path expressions to safeguard the search during a query and enables the user to navigate by re ning content rather than by specifying structure. Our system uses a cost-constrained model for query evaluation. Links between pages are assigned costs. The user controls how far a query can navigate by specifying a permissible cost for each path. Only paths that are within the user-given cost are navigated during query evaluation. We show how to implement content-based navigation by assigning a low cost to links that lead from more general to more specialized content and high cost to links that lead from more specialized to more general content. Our implementation has an e cient, scalable architecture which requires no changes to HTTP servers, and utilizes standard relational database technology to evaluate a query.
Fine scale variations of surface water chemistry in an ephemeral to perennial drainage network

Although temporal variation in headwater stream chemistry has long been used to document baseline conditions and response to environmental drivers, less attention is paid to fine scale spatial variations that could yield clues to processes controlling stream water sources. We documented spatial and temporal variation in water composition in a headwater catchment (41 ha) at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, NH, USA. We sampled every 50 m along an ephemeral to perennial stream network as well as groundwater from seeps and 35 shallow wells across varying flow conditions. Groundwater influences on surface water in this region have not been considered to be important in past studies as relatively coarse soils were assumed to be well drained in steep catchments with flashy runoff response. However, seeps displayed perennial discharge, upslope accumulated areas (UAA) smaller than those for channel initiation sites and higher pH, Ca and Si concentrations than streams, suggesting relatively long groundwater residence time or long subsurface flow paths not bound by topographic divides. Coupled with a large range in groundwater chemistry seen in wells, these results suggest stream chemistry variation reflects the range of connectivity with, and quality of, groundwater controlled by hillslope hydropedological processes. The magnitude of variations of solute concentrations seen in the first order catchment was as broad as that seen at the fifth order Hubbard Brook Valley (3519 ha). Reduction in variation in solute concentrations with increasing UAA suggested a representative elementary area (REA) value of less than 3 ha in the first order catchment, compared with 100 ha for the fifth order basin. Thus, the REA is not necessarily an elementary catchment property. Rather, the partitioning of variation between highly variable upstream sources and relatively homogenous downstream characteristics may have different physical significance depending on the scale and complexity of the catchment under examination. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
On Joining Graphs

In the graph database literature the term "join" does not refer to an operator used to merge two graphs. In particular, a counterpart of the relational join is not present in existing graph query languages, and consequently no efficient algorithms have been developed for this operator. This paper provides two main contributions. First, we define a binary graph join operator that acts on the vertices as a standard relational join and combines the edges according to a user-defined semantics. Then we propose the "CoGrouped Graph Conjunctive $\theta$-Join" algorithm running over data indexed in secondary memory. Our implementation outperforms the execution of the same operation in Cypher and SPARQL on major existing graph database management systems by at least one order of magnitude, also including indexing and loading time.
Media technologies and learning in the starcraft esport community

Interest-driven Internet communities often use an assemblage of media technologies to support knowledge creation and learning. In this paper, we examine the uneven functions of these media technologies in meeting the learning needs of online game players. StarCraft is an online game and electronic sport where millions around the world compete in virtual battlegrounds. To become better players, gamers actively share strategies in online forums, wiki, videos, and in person. We conducted participant observation of a StarCraft community known as Teamliquid. We performed 24 in-depth interviews with professional gamers, editors, game commentators, and community leaders. We found that the novice learners generally learned from, and participated in, public media channels, whereas the StarCraft experts congregated in small teams in which members learn from each other within private media channels and in person. We use the concepts of informational media and socially-oriented media to describe the general learning needs supported by media technologies.
Inhibition of Sphingomyelin Synthesis Reduces Atherogenesis in Apolipoprotein E–Knockout Mice

Background—In clinical studies, sphingomyelin (SM) plasma levels correlated with the occurrence of coronary heart disease independently of plasma cholesterol levels. We hypothesized that inhibition of SM synthesis would have antiatherogenic effects. To test this hypothesis, apolipoprotein E (apoE)–knockout (KO) mice were treated with myriocin, a potent inhibitor of serine palmitoyltransferase, the rate-limiting enzyme in SM biosynthesis. Methods and Results—Diet-admix treatment of apoE-KO mice with myriocin in Western diet for 12 weeks lowered SM and sphinganine plasma levels. Decreases in sphinganine and SM concentrations were also observed in the liver and aorta of myriocin-treated animals compared with controls. Inhibition of de novo sphingolipid biosynthesis reduced total cholesterol and triglyceride plasma levels. Cholesterol distribution in lipoproteins demonstrated a decrease in &bgr;-VLDL and LDL cholesterol and an increase in HDL cholesterol. Oil red O staining of total aortas demonstrated reduction of atherosclerotic lesion coverage in the myriocin-treated group. Atherosclerotic plaque area was also reduced in the aortic root and brachiocephalic artery. Conclusions—Inhibition of de novo SM biosynthesis in apoE-KO mice lowers plasma cholesterol and triglyceride levels, raises HDL cholesterol, and prevents development of atherosclerotic lesions.