Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Matching With Minimal Priority Rights

I study two prominent strategyproof matching rules when strict priorities over objects are given exogenously: the Deferred Acceptance Rule (DA) and the Top Trading Cycle Rule With Inheritance (TTC). It is well known that the DA rule is stable while the TTC rule is efficient, but not vice versa, and that these two properties cannot be reconciled. The primary innovation of the paper is the introduction of a new weaker concept of stability, Individual Trade Stability, which allows for trading the priorities for objects, a property that is satisfied by both the DA and TTC rules, as well as by all the hybrid rules of these two matching rules that I propose, called Deferred Trading Cycle Rules. The main result is a characterization of the class of Deferred Trading Cycle Rules by Individual Trade Stability, Constrained Efficiency, and an invariance property called Lower Invariance. The characterized class of matching rules include the DA and TTC rules as the two extreme rules in the class. ∗Department of Economics, Concordia University and CIREQ, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada; e-mail: spapai@alcor.concordia. ca †I would like to thank Justin Leroux, Jim Schummer, Utku Unver, and Licun Xue for comments and discussions. Financial support from the Canada Research Chair fund is greatly appreciated.
Asia's Odd Men Out: Australia, Japan, and the Politics of

Australia and Japan have frequently had difficult relationships with their neighbours. This paper suggests that when seen in their specific historical contexts, the fact that Australia and Japan have become ‘Asia’s odd men out’ is unsurprising. The central argument of this paper is that the consolidation and institutionalisation of regions is in large part a political exercise that reflects, and is informed by, discrete national conversations. Until and unless such national discourses align with wider transnational developments, regional processes are unlikely to prosper. An examination of Japan’s and Australia’s respective attempts to engage with and define their region reveals just how problematic this process can be.
Model-Based Development of Neural Prostheses for Movement

Neural prostheses for restoration of limb movement in paralyzed and amputee patients tend to be complex systems. Subjective intuition and trial-and-error approaches have been applied to the design and clinical fitting of simple systems with limited functionality. These approaches are time consuming, difficult to apply in larger scale, and not applicable to limbs under development with more anthropomorphic motion and actuation. The field of neural prosthetics is in need of more systematic methods, including tools that will allow users to develop accurate models of neural prostheses and simulate their behavior under various conditions before actual manufacturing or clinical application. Such virtual prototyping would provide an efficient and safe test-bed for narrowing the design choices and tuning the control parameters before actual clinical application. We describe a software environment that we have developed to facilitate the construction and modification of accurate mathematical models of paralyzed and prosthetic limbs and simulate their movement under various neural control strategies. These simulations can be run in real time with a stereoscopic display to enable design engineers and prospective users to evaluate a candidate neural prosthetic system and learn to operate it before actually receiving it.
Enforcing Application-level Security in Modern Operating Systems

Security is an increasingly important consideration in system design, but classic protection mechanisms have proved unable to deal with current security problems. Increasingly untrustworthy software, including active Web code and malicious or remotely exploited applications, means that it is no longer sufficient to protect users from each other. We explore a range of proposals for per-application protection, identifying criteria used to evaluate these proposals for both security and usability considerations. We consider approaches that seek to preserve the classic operating system environment as well as approaches that introduce user-level security or act below the operating system using virtual machines. We also examine the extent of object sharing between commonly used applications, because the amount and types of sharing affect the complexity of per-application security policies.
Introduction and establishment of fluoroquinolone-resistant Shigella sonnei into Bhutan

Shigella sonnei is a major contributor to the global burden of diarrhoeal disease, generally associated with dysenteric diarrhoea in developed countries but also emerging in developing countries. The reason for the recent success of S. sonnei is unknown, but is likely catalysed by its ability to acquire resistance against multiple antimicrobials. Between 2011 and 2013, S. sonnei exhibiting resistance to fluoroquinolones, the first-line treatment recommended for shigellosis, emerged in Bhutan. Aiming to reconstruct the introduction and establishment of fluoroquinolone-resistant S. sonnei populations in Bhutan, we performed whole-genome sequencing on 71 S. sonnei samples isolated in Bhutan between 2011 and 2013.We found that these strains represented an expansion of a clade within the previously described lineage III, found specifically in Central Asia. Temporal phylogenetic reconstruction demonstrated that all of the sequenced Bhutanese S. sonnei diverged from a single ancestor that was introduced into Bhutan around 2006. Our data additionally predicted that fluoroquinolone resistance, conferred by mutations in gyrA and parC, arose prior to the introduction of the founder strain into Bhutan. Once established in Bhutan, these S. sonnei had access to a broad gene pool, as indicated by the acquisition of extended-spectrum β-lactamase-encoding plasmids and genes encoding type IV pili. The data presented here outline a model for the introduction and maintenance of fluoroquinolone-resistant S. sonnei in a new setting. Given the current circulation of fluoroquinolone-resistant S. sonnei in Asia, we speculate that this pattern of introduction is being recapitulated across the region and beyond.
A methodological review of the Greek Annual Industrial Survey

This paper is a comprehensive examination of the methodological evolution of the Annual Industrial Survey from its initiation in 1958 until 2010. Emphasis is given to the compliance of the survey with international methodological standards and to its conformity to relevant widely stipulated and accepted regulations. The existing literature using AIS data highlights its contribution to studies in several fields of economic research, going beyond those concerning the manufacturing sector, as well as to policy making.
A Fatal Attraction: Public Television and Politics in Italy

Chapter 1 Foreword Chapter 2 Acknowledgments Chapter 3 Introduction: Public Service Broadcasting: The Party System and Democracy Chapter 4 1 Democracy in Italy (1945-2003) Chapter 5 2 RAI and the Party System (Part I) Chapter 6 3 RAI and the Party System (Part II) Chapter 7 4 Lottizzazione: A Normal Practice for Public Service Journalists Chapter 8 Conclusion: Political Power and the Media Chapter 9 Glossary Chapter 10 Bibliography
Evaluation and Comparison of Multiple Aligners for Next-Generation Sequencing Data Analysis

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology has rapidly advanced and generated the massive data volumes. To align and map the NGS data, biologists often randomly select a number of aligners without concerning their suitable feature, high performance, and high accuracy as well as sequence variations and polymorphisms existing on reference genome. This study aims to systematically evaluate and compare the capability of multiple aligners for NGS data analysis. To explore this capability, we firstly performed alignment algorithms comparison and classification. We further used long-read and short-read datasets from both real-life and in silico NGS data for comparative analysis and evaluation of these aligners focusing on three criteria, namely, application-specific alignment feature, computational performance, and alignment accuracy. Our study demonstrated the overall evaluation and comparison of multiple aligners for NGS data analysis. This serves as an important guiding resource for biologists to gain further insight into suitable selection of aligners for specific and broad applications.
Detection of obstructive sleep apnea in pediatric subjects using surface lead electrocardiogram features.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To investigate the feasibility of detecting obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in children using an automated classification system based on analysis of overnight electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings. DESIGN Retrospective observational study. SETTING A pediatric sleep clinic. PARTICIPANTS Fifty children underwent full overnight polysomnography. INTERVENTION N/A. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Expert polysomnography scoring was performed. The datasets were divided into a training set of 25 subjects (11 normal, 14 with OSA) and a withheld test set of 25 subjects (11 normal, 14 with OSA). Features, calculated from the ECG of the 25 training datasets, were empirically chosen to train a modified quadratic discriminant analysis classification system. The selected configuration used a segment length of 60 seconds and processed mean, SD, power spectral density, and serial correlation measures to classify segments as apneic or normal. By combining per-segment classifications and using receiver-operator characteristic analysis, a per-subject classifier was obtained that had a sensitivity of 85.7%, specificity of 90.9%, and accuracy of 88% on the training datasets. The same decision threshold was applied to the withheld datasets and yielded a sensitivity of 85.7%, specificity of 81.8%, and accuracy of 84%. The positive and negative predictive values were 85.7% and 81.8%, respectively, on the test dataset. CONCLUSIONS The ability to correctly identify 12 out of 14 cases of OSA (with the 2 false negatives arising from subjects with an apnea-hypopnea index less than 10) indicates that the automated apnea classification system outlined may have clinical utility in pediatric patients.
Preparing Data For The Data Lake

Data preparation is increasingly becoming one of the biggest challenges in processing big data. While recent tools such as Tamer and Trifacta address the problem of integrating and cleaning the datasets as they come in, preparing these datasets for efficient processing over a variety of query workloads is still challenging. In this talk, I will discuss these challenges and describe our tool which allows for fine-grained data preparation, via a data preparation plan, and efficiently runs this plan while uploading the data to HDFS.
Particle filtering for range-based localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

The paper proposed a range-based particle filtering localization method for static WSN (Wireless Sensor Network). In the method, every blind node in WSN localizes itself through local distance measurements. So the method is parallel. With the development of hardware, RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) measurements were already hardwired in some chips, and then almost no extra hardware was required when the measurement stratagem was adopted. Firstly, the state-space function of localization in a static WSN was proposed in the paper. And the measurement noise model was particularly studied. Because of the non-linear and non-Gaussian model, particle filter was adopted as a suitable localization algorithm for the application. Static nodes bring some new problems to us. So important steps in a particle filter were specifically illustrated in the paper, including: initialization, prediction, sequential importance sampling and the resampling. Software simulations were done in the paper to demonstrate the effect of the proposed method. A blind node was selected as a sample to illustrate the convergence of the particle filter. And some problems emerged in the simulation were also analyzed. After that, it showed a result about localization in a 100 nodes network by the proposed method.
Diversity and multiplexing tradeoff of beamforming for MIMO channels

This work derives a tight upper bound on the diversity and spatial multiplexing gain for MIMO systems when the transmitter has perfect channel knowledge, generalizing the pioneering work of Zheng and Tse developed in the context of no channel state information at the transmit side. This result is obtained looking at the channel performance limits when both the SNR and the transmission rate tend to infinity, such that the relation between the rate and the capacity is constant. This result is then particularized for the optimal single beamforming scheme illustrating the performance loss incurred by any coding scheme based on this structure in the diversity versus rate tradeoff.
Inspection of Wave Propagation Due to Partial Discharge Occurring in Current Transformer Using 3-D Finite Difference Time Domain Based Technique

This work aims to investigate the impact of a Partial Discharge (PD) pulse happening in the insulator conductor of a Current Transformer (CT) in a metallic tank filled with mineral oil. Finite Difference Time domain (FDTD, being an acceptable computation technique in the electromagnetic (EM) domain, is utilized for the simulation of the transient waves due to the PD pulse at different locations. The electric field intensity distribution at different planes is visualized. Analysis estimated both the optimal position of a sensor for PD detection and the dominant frequency enclosing the signals. Simulation run results are coded and recorded using Matlab. Observation of the PCOLOR outputs is discussed.
On Finding Pareto-Optimal Solutions Through Dimensionality Reduction for Certain Large-Dimensional Multi-Objective Optimization Problems

Many real-world applications of multi-objective optimization involve a large number (10 or more) of objectives. Existing evolutionary multi-objective optimization (EMO) methods are applied only to problems having smaller number of objectives (about five or so) for the task of finding a well-representative set of Pareto-optimal solutions, in a single simulation run. Having adequately shown this task, EMO researchers/practitioners must now investigate if these methodologies can really be used for a large number of objectives. The major impediments in handling large number of objectives relate to stagnation of search process, increased dimensionality of Pareto-optimal front, large computational cost, and difficulty in visualization of the objective space. These difficulties, do and would continue to persist, in M -objective optimization problems, having an M -dimensional Pareto-optimal front. In this paper, we propose an EMO procedure for solving those large-objective (M) problems, which degenerate to possess a lowerdimensional Pareto-optimal front (lower than M). Such problems may often be observed in practice, as ones with similarities in optimal solutions for different objectives – a matter which may not be obvious from the problem description. The proposed method is a principal component analysis (PCA) based EMO procedure, which progresses iteratively from the interior of the search space towards the Pareto-optimal region by adaptively finding the correct lower-dimensional interactions. The efficacy of the procedure is demonstrated by solving up to 30-objective optimization problems.
Mapping logical Bayesian networks to probabilistic logic programs with distribution semantics

A significant part of current research on (inductive) logic programming deals with probabilistic logical models. Over the last decade many logics or languages for representing such models have been introduced. There is currently a great need for insight into the relationships between all these languages. One kind of languages are those that extend probabilistic models with elements of logic, such as the language of Logical Bayesian Networks (LBNs). Some other languages follow the converse strategy of extending logic programs with a probabilistic semantics, often in a way similar to that of Sato’s distribution semantics. In this paper we define a mapping from LBNs to probabilistic logic programs with the distribution semantics.
Video Caption Detection Algorithm Based on Multiple Instance Learning

Over the last few decades, multiple-instance learning (MIL) has been successfully utilized to solve the content-based image/video retrieval (CBIR/CBVR) problem, in which a bag corresponds to a video scene and an instance corresponds to a frame caption. However, existing feature representation schemes are not effective enough to use MIL to detect video caption frames from news video, which hinders the practical applications of CBVR. This paper presents an algorithm that regards the video frames containing caption as a bag. It detects, localizes and extracts video caption frames using multiple-instance learning (MIL) automatically. Experimental results show that the proposed method can detect, localize, and extract video caption frames with more high accuracy.
Adaptive Gaussian mixture model based on feedback mechanism

Focusing on the traditional Gaussian mixture model suffers from slow learning and lack of accuracy, this paper proposes an adaptive Gaussian mixture model based on feedback mechanism. It models each pixel as an adaptive mixture of Gaussians, uses the information of foreground to advance model update based on feedback mechanism and selects the number of components of Gaussian mixture model adaptively to reduce convergence time of model update. Additionally, to improve model's ability of anti-disturbance and make it more accurately, a method of partial color similarity based on foreground matching is proposed. Experimental results demonstrate the algorithms our proposed is effective, low of algorithm complexity and robust.
Mining User Deliberation and Bias in Online Newsgroups: A Dynamic View

Social media is changing many different aspects of our lives. By participating in online discussions, people exchange opinions on various topics, shape their stances, and gradually form their own characteristics. In this paper, we propose a framework for identifying online user characteristics and understanding the formation of user deliberation and bias in online newsgroups. In the first section of the paper, we propose a dynamic user-like graph model for recognizing user deliberation and bias automatically in online newsgroups. In addition, we evaluate our identification results with linguistic features and implement this model in our SINCERE system as a real-time service. In the second section, after applying this model to two large online newsgroups, we analyze the influence of early discussion context on the formation of user characteristics. Our conclusion is that user deliberation and bias are a product of situations, not simply dispositions: confronting disagreement in unfamiliar circumstances promotes more consideration of different opinions, while recurring conflict in familiar circumstances evokes close-minded behavior and bias. Based on this observation, we also build a supervised learning model to predict user deliberation and bias at an early online life-stage. Our results show that having only the first three months of users' interaction data generates an F1 accuracy level of around 70% in predicting user deliberation and bias in online newsgroups. This work has practical significance for people who design and maintain online newsgroups. It yields new insights into opinion diffusion and has wide potential applications in politics, education, and online social media.
Skills and Competencies Needed for the Hong Kong Hotel Industry

ABSTRACT The tourism industry is one of the main sources of income to Hong Kong. If qualified employees provide better service, Hong Kong can potentially attract even more visitors. The training of new recruits and existing staff is therefore vital, but views on the value and the type of training vary amongst the stakeholders. This study of the views of hotel human resources managers revealed that they considered that people who were interested in developing their career in the hospitality industry must be prepared to start at the bottom. The hotel human resources managers strongly believe that employees must have a positive service-mind and commitment to the industry with a certain degree of working experience. Employers perceived these were important components to success for every member of staff, rather than having a good educational background. Such qualifications will raise the status of the hotel industry in general and enhance the status of the service providers as professionals.
A Study of the Behavior of Magnetic

The behavior of an idealized magnetic microactuator is modeled and analyzed. A two parameter mass-spring model is shown to exhibit a bifurcation from one to three steady states as the geometry of the device is altered. In addition we obtain solutions of the differential equation governing the motion of a forced elastic membrane and find similar phenomena. Stability analysis determines that in the case of three steady states that two are stable and one is unstable.
Immunodeficiency Virus Resistant to Rectal Transmission of Human Levels of Intestinal Engraftment and Are Cells from Human Cord Blood Show Low + Mice Transplanted with CD

Published Ahead of Print 8 October 2008. 2008, 82(24):12145. DOI: 10.1128/JVI.01105-08. J. Virol. Thomas Brunner and Roberto F. Speck Erika Schlaepfer, Nadine Gehre, Stephan Regenass, Ursula Hofer, Stefan Baenziger, Mathias Heikenwalder, Immunodeficiency Virus Resistant to Rectal Transmission of Human Levels of Intestinal Engraftment and Are Cells from Human Cord Blood Show Low + Mice Transplanted with CD34 − / − c γ − / − RAG2
Precision fabrication techniques and analysis on high-Q evanescent-mode resonators and filters of different geometries

High-Q evanescent-mode resonators and filters are realized by both silicon micromachining and layer-by-layer polymer processing. Capacitively loaded cavities can be reduced to a size much smaller than a wavelength, but still have a much higher unloaded Q than lumped elements. The loaded resonators are utilized for reduced-size filters with a low insertion loss enabled by the relatively high-Q factor. The small fabrication tolerances of silicon micromachining and polymer stereolithography processing enable the realization of highly loaded evanescent-mode resonators and filters. A 14-GHz resonator micromachined in silicon has a volume of 5 mm /spl times/ 5 mm /spl times/ 0.45 mm, representing a resonant frequency reduction of 66.8% compared to an empty cavity of the same dimensions. The polymer-based fabrication is used to create resonators of different three-dimensional geometries with Q's up to 1940 and frequency reductions up to 49.9%. An insertion loss of 0.83 dB is measured in a 1.69% bandwidth filter created by polymer processing with a frequency reduction of 47% compared to an unloaded cavity. The frequency sensitivity to fabrication tolerances of these structures is also analyzed.