Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Student-centered Pedagogy and Real-world Research: Using Documents as Sources of Data in Teaching Social Science Skills and Methods

This teaching note describes the design and implementation of an activity in a 90-minute teaching session that was developed to introduce a diverse cohort of first-year criminology and sociology students to the use of documents as sources of data. This approach was contextualized in real-world research through scaffolded, student-centered tasks focused on archival material and contemporary estate agents’ brochures so as to investigate changes in the suburbs that surround a university in north London. To contribute to the growing discussion on pedagogic dialogical spaces in teaching research methods, we provide empirical evidence of students’ greater engagement via group work and the opportunity to draw on experiential knowledge in analyzing sources. Beyond stimulating students’ engagement with research skills and methods, the data also show the value of our approach in helping students develop their analytical skills, particularly through a process of comparison and contrast.
Prefrontal Cortex Haemodynamics and Affective Responses during Exercise: A Multi-Channel Near Infrared Spectroscopy Study

The dose-response effects of the intensity of exercise upon the potential regulation (through top-down processes) of affective (pleasure-displeasure) responses in the prefrontal cortex during an incremental exercise protocol have not been explored. This study examined the functional capacity of the prefrontal cortex (reflected by haemodynamics using near infrared spectroscopy) and affective responses during exercise at different intensities. Participants completed an incremental cycling exercise test to exhaustion. Changes (Δ) in oxygenation (O2Hb), deoxygenation (HHb), blood volume (tHb) and haemoglobin difference (HbDiff) were measured from bilateral dorsal and ventral prefrontal areas. Affective responses were measured every minute during exercise. Data were extracted at intensities standardised to: below ventilatory threshold, at ventilatory threshold, respiratory compensation point and the end of exercise. During exercise at intensities from ventilatory threshold to respiratory compensation point, ΔO2Hb, ΔHbDiff and ΔtHb were greater in mostly ventral than dorsal regions. From the respiratory compensation point to the end of exercise, ΔO2Hb remained stable and ΔHbDiff declined in dorsal regions. As the intensity increased above the ventilatory threshold, inverse associations between affective responses and oxygenation in (a) all regions of the left hemisphere and (b) lateral (dorsal and ventral) regions followed by the midline (ventral) region in the right hemisphere were observed. Differential activation patterns occur within the prefrontal cortex and are associated with affective responses during cycling exercise.
Simulation of a deformable human body for virtual try-on

This paper presents a mass-spring model for real-time simulation of a deformable human body. A new type of springs that show collective behaviour was developed, which model the "matter" inside the object and make it approximately preserve its volume without the need of explicit volume computations during the simulation as it is done in conventional methods. Experiments on bodies with a different number of triangles show the low computational complexity, which is linear to the number of surface triangles. Results of applying the method in a system for virtual try-on of jeans are shown at the end of the paper.
The mixing rate of Markov chains, an isoperimetric inequality, and computing the volume

A. Sinclair and M. Jerrum (1988) derived a bound on the mixing rate of time-reversible Markov chains in terms of their conductance. The authors generalize this result by not assuming time reversibility and using a weaker notion of conductance. They prove an isoperimetric inequality for subsets of a convex body. These results are combined to simplify an algorithm of M. Dyer et al. (1989) for approximating the volume of a convex body and to improve running-time bounds. <<ETX>>
Tate's Thesis

These are an approximation of what was covered in lecture in 18.786 Number theory II at MIT during the first month or so of Spring 2015. This PDF file is divided into sections; the instructions for viewing the table of contents depend on which PDF viewer you are using. The syllabus for the semester was • Tate's thesis • Galois cohomology • An introduction to Galois representations (as much as we have time for) but these notes cover only Tate's thesis. We discuss both the number field and global function field cases, and also the subsequent reformulation by Deligne using Land factors. 1. The prototype: analytic continuation and functional equation of the Riemann zeta function Recall the Riemann zeta function, defined for Re s > 1 by ζ(s) := prime p
Distributed Learning for Stochastic Generalized Nash Equilibrium Problems

This paper examines a stochastic formulation of the generalized Nash equilibrium problem where agents are subject to randomness in the environment of unknown statistical distribution. We focus on fully distributed online learning by agents and employ penalized individual cost functions to deal with coupled constraints. Three stochastic gradient strategies are developed with constant step-sizes. We allow the agents to use heterogeneous step-sizes and show that the penalty solution is able to approach the Nash equilibrium in a stable manner within <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$O(\mu _\text{max})$</tex-math></inline-formula>, for small step-size value <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu _\text{max}$</tex-math></inline-formula> and sufficiently large penalty parameters. The operation of the algorithm is illustrated by considering the network Cournot competition problem.
Coupling Use Cases and Class Models

In this paper we focus on the most critical portion of the transition from an user-oriented requirements description to an object-oriented domain model, namely the mapping of use cases onto classes and operations in the class model. Since thorough documentation of if and how both models co-operate is rarely found, requirements traceability is aggravated and systematic testing for completeness respectively consistency becomes impossible. To overcome this serious problems a rigorous transition process is proposed. Firstly, use cases are refined in a goal-directed manner resulting in hierarchies of single steps. Then each use case step which corresponds to an interaction with the system envisaged is connected to the underlying class model. More precisely, it is linked to all classes of which objects must exist prior to or may be manipulated during the step’s execution as well as to the class/operation pair triggered by the step. The integrated model is elaborated in the spirit of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) along with a corresponding modeling methodology.
User-centered reduction of the semantic gap in content-based image retrieval

Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) systems provide a way to search for images which are not annotated with text, by using image features such as color, shape and texture. The problem with this approach is the semantic gap. User semantics, their abstract idea of what they expect from search results, are hard to relate to the concrete image features. This article gives several pointers to reduce this semantic gap. Reducing the semantic gap can be done by using algorithms which incorporate user semantics, and give users more influence on the search process. Promising developments are automated annotation, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and user influence on the execution of algorithms: assigning weights to features and giving relevance feedback.
Design and realization of semantic extension information retrieval mechanism

The traditional keyword-based retrieval has failed to represent the semantic contained in the content and has led to many problems. This study proposed a semantic extension information retrieval mechanism for knowledge retrieval. The mechanism can achieve the following objectives: (1)to store the domain ontology by using multi-way tree;(2) to index the literature with ontology annotation technology;(3) to analyze the latent semantics of user' query through semantic extension;(4)to reorder the full-text retrieval results to filter out the irrelevant information. Finally, the experimental results verify the benefits of the proposed mechanism in performance testing.
An improved Method for Obstacle Avoidance for Mobile Robot Navigation

The article describes the development of a new obstacle avoidance method obtained by combining the potential field method and three point comparison method to overcome the local minima limitation of the exiting potential field method. The proposed method is used to guide the robot in a partially known 2-D environment to reach the target with a collision-free path and minimum traveling distance. The performance of this proposed method was tested on a mobile robot in simulated environments with different levels of obstacles. The results obtained were encouraging.
Improved Security of Audit Trail Logs in Multi-Tenant Cloud Using ABE Schemes

Cloud computing is delivery of services rather than a product and among different cloud deployment models, the public cloud provides improved scalability and cost reduction when compared to others. Security and privacy of data is one of the key factors in transitioning to cloud. Typically the cloud providers have a demilitarized zone protecting the data center along with a reverse proxy setup. The reverse proxy gateway acts as initial access point and provides additional capabilities like load balancing, caching, security monitoring capturing events, syslogs related to hosts residing in the cloud. The audit-trail logs captured by reverse proxy server comprise important information related to all the tenants. While the PKI infrastructure works in cloud scenario it becomes cumbersome from manageability point of view and they lack flexibility in providing controlled access to data. In this paper we evaluate risks associated with security and privacy of audit logs produced by reverse proxy server. We provide a two-phase approach for sharing the audit-logs with users allowing fine- grained access. In this paper we evaluate certain Identity-Based and Attribute-Based Encryption schemes and provide detailed analysis on performance.
The role of personal control motivation in the processing and categorization of racially and gender ambiguous faces

The need for personal control, or perceived control over one’s life, stems from the broader human need to perceive the world as nonrandom, orderly and structured. When people lack personal control, they can defend their overarching belief in an orderly and structured world by seeking out external sources of control and structure. Social categories are one such source of structure because they hierarchically order individuals into discrete groups that differ in terms of status and power. The overarching goal of this doctoral dissertation research was to examine if the basic motive for personal control underlies the processing and categorization of racially and gender ambiguous faces. In Studies 1A through 1C, I pretested a set of prototypical male and female faces, create and pretest a set of gender ambiguous faces, and pilot test a measure of ambiguous face processing and categorizations. In Study 2, I created and pretested a set of racially ambiguous faces. In Studies 3A and 3B, I established the association between individual differences in need for personal control and heuristic ambiguous face processing in the domains of race and gender. In Study 4, I pretested a manipulation of personal control to
Angiogenic network formation in the developing vertebrate trunk

We have used time-lapse multiphoton microscopy of living Tg(fli1:EGFP)y1 zebrafish embryos to examine how a patterned, functional network of angiogenic blood vessels is generated in the early vertebrate trunk. Angiogenic vascular sprouts emerge from the longitudinal trunk axial vessels (the dorsal aorta and posterior cardinal vein) in two spatially and temporally distinct steps. Dorsal aorta-derived sprouts form an initial primary network of vascular segments, followed by emergence of vein-derived secondary vascular sprouts that interact and interconnect dynamically with the primary network to initiate vascular flow. Using transgenic silent heart mutant embryos, we show that the gross anatomical patterning of this network of vessels does not require blood circulation. However, our results suggest that circulatory flow dynamics play an important role in helping to determine the pattern of interconnections between the primary network and secondary sprouts, and thus the final arterial or venous identity of the vessels in the functional network. We discuss a model to explain our results combining genetic programming of overall vascular architecture with hemodynamic determination of circulatory flow patterns.
Evidence of early disk-locking among low-mass members of the Orion Nebula Cluster (Corrigendum)

Context. We present new high-resolution spectroscopic observations for 91 pre-main sequence stars in the Orion Nebular Cluster (ONC) with masses in the range 0.10−0.25 Mcarried out with the multi-fiber spectrograph flames attached to the UT2 at the Paranal Observatory. Aims. Our aim is to better understand the disk-locking scenario in very low-mass stars. Methods. We have derived radial velocities, projected rotational velocities, and full width at 10% of the Hα emission peak. Using published measurements of infrared excess (Δ(IC − K)), as disk tracer and equivalent width of the nead-infrared Ca ii line λ8542, mid-infrared difference (3.6)-(8.0) μm derived by Spitzer data, and 10% Hα width as diagnostic of the level of accretion, we looked for any correlation between projected angular rotational velocity divided by the radius (v sini/R) and presence of disk and accretion. Results. For 4 low-mass stars, the cross-correlation function is clearly double-lined, indicating that the stars are SB2 systems. The distribution of rotation periods derived from our v sini measurements is unimodal with a peak of a few days, in agreement with previous results for M 0.3) show an abrupt drop in their rotation rates by a factor of ∼5. On the other hand, only a partial correlation between v sini and accretion is observed when other indicators are used. The X-ray coronal activity level (logLX/Lbol) shows no dependence on v sini/R, suggesting that all stars are in a saturated regime limit. The critical velocity is probably below our v sini detection limit of 9 km s −1 . Conclusions. The ONC low-mass stars in our sample, close to the hydrogen burning limit, at present do not seem to be locked, but the clear correlation we find between rotation and infrared color excess suggests that they were locked once. In addition, the percentage of accretors seems to scale inversely to the stellar mass.
Studies on contact sex pheromones of the caridean shrimp Palaemonetes pugio: II. The role of glucosamine in mate recognition

Abstract The role of surface glycoproteins in mate recognition of the shrimp Palaemonetes pugio was studied using mating bioassays and fluorescence microscopy. Our data indicate that a glycoprotein associated with female shrimp functions in mate recognition in P. pugio. This glycoprotein is likely to be a glucosamine or an N-acetylglucosamine-containing glycoprotein complemented by a lectinlike receptor on males. Significantly fewer copulations occurred in seawater augmented with glucosamine as compared to seawater augmented with glucose. Thus, it is likely that glucosamine competitively inhibits mate recognition by binding male receptors and significantly reducing recognition of parturial females. The antennal lagellum of decapod crustaceans has long been considered to be chemotactile with bimodal, touch/taste receptors. The fluorescent dye, Lucifer Yellow, is incorporated into antennal setae from the surrounding seawater. Furthermore, the fluorescent dye, DiI, stained neural tissues at the base of the antennal setae. Taken together, these results are consistent with a bimodal, sensory function. When fluo-treated male antennal setae were exposed to the carapace of postmolt, parturial females, an immediate and significant increase in fluorescence intensity was observed, suggesting that Ca2+ likely acts as a second messenger for the receptor system. Fluo-labeled antennal setae of both males and females showed larger increases in intracellular Ca2+ levels when exposed to glucosamine as compared to glucose. The effects produced by glucosamine were sexually dimorphic, with male setae displaying a significantly greater mean overall change in fluorescence intensity than female setae. The dimorphic response observed suggests that glucosamine or a related compound serves as a female signal (i.e., contact sex pheromone) in mate recognition.
Six New Galactic Orbits of Globular Clusters in a Milky Way-Like Galaxy

Absolute proper motions for six new globular clusters have recently been determined. This motivated us to obtain the Galactic orbits of these six clusters both in an axisymmetric Galactic potential and in a barred potential, such as that of our Galaxy. Orbits are also obtained for a Galactic potential that includes spiral arms. The orbital characteristics are compared and discussed for these three cases. Tidal radii and destruction rates are also computed and discussed.
On-line signature verification using LPC cepstrum and neural networks

An on-line signature verification scheme based on linear prediction coding (LPC) cepstrum and neural networks is proposed. Cepstral coefficients derived from linear predictor coefficients of the writing trajectories are calculated as the features of the signatures. These coefficients are used as inputs to the neural networks. A number of single-output multilayer perceptrons (MLPs), as many as the number of words in the signature, are equipped for each registered person to verify the input signature. If the summation of output values of all MLPs is larger than the verification threshold, the input signature is regarded as a genuine signature; otherwise, the input signature is a forgery. Simulations show that this scheme can detect the genuineness of the input signatures from a test database with an error rate as low as 4%
Maximum Volume Clustering

The large volume principle proposed by Vladimir Vapnik, which advocates that hypotheses lying in an equivalence class with a larger volume are more preferable, is a useful alternative to the large margin principle. In this paper, we introduce a clustering model based on the large volume principle called maximum volume clustering (MVC), and propose two algorithms to solve it approximately: a soft-label and a hard-label MVC algorithms based on sequential quadratic programming and semi-denite programming, respectively. Our MVC model includes spectral clustering and maximum margin clustering as special cases, and is substantially more general. We also establish the nite sample stability and an error bound for soft-label MVC method. Experiments show that the proposed MVC approach compares favorably with state-of-the-art clustering algorithms.
Prognostic Value of Nuclear Area in Intestinal Type of Gastric Cancer

Background and purpose: The incidence of gastric cancer decreases but despite declining, it still remains the second cause of death of all malignancies worldwide. Morphometric methods are independent prognostic variables in various cancers and there have been encouraging results in using it for estimating the prognosis of gastric cancer. Aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of nuclear area (morphometric method), on the survival of patients with intestinal type of gastric cancer. Materialsandmethods: Seventy-four patients who had undergone gastric resections for adenocarcinoma of the stomach in the University Hospital Center, Rijeka, Croatia, were analyzed in this study. None had received pre-operative radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Age, gender, tumor size, tumor depth into the stomach wall (T-category) presence or absence of metastases to regional lymph nodes (N-category) or distant organs (M-category) and nuclear area of tumor cells were estimated. All patients were followed up for at least 36 months or to death. Results: Univariate analysis showed that gender (P = 0.009), nuclear area (P = 0.017), TNM (P = 0.001) and size of the tumor (P = 0.024) have influence on the survival. Patients age at the time of diagnosis showed no influence on the survival in univariate analysis (P = 0.089). In multivariate analysis only TNM (P = 0.048) and size of the tumor (P = 0.020) are independent prognostic factors for planning further therapy. Conclusions: According to our results, reliable prognostic factors in patients with intestinal type of gastric cancer are still TNM and size of the tumor; nuclear area showed no influence on the outcome of the disease.
A Hybrid Model for Explaining Older Adults' Continuance Intention Toward SNSs

Due to the rapid growth of social net services (SNSs), research into SNSs continuance usage has recently emerged as an important issue in information systems adaption. This study develops an integrated model based on the expectation-confirmation model (ECM), the technology acceptance model (TAM), and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), and apply them into the context of older adults' continuance intention toward SNSs. The hypothesized model is validated empirically using a sample collected from 250 older adults who had prior experience with SNSs and was tested against the proposed research model using structure equation modeling. Analysis results demonstrate that satisfaction has the most significant effect on older adults' continuance intention, followed by perceived usefulness, attitude, subject norm and perceived behavioral control. The results of these findings for SNSs practitioners are discussed at the end of this work.
Equilibrium in a Dynamic Limit Order Market

We provide an algorithm for solving for equilibrium in a dynamic limit order market. Our model relaxes many of the restrictive assumptions in the prior literature, leading to a more realistic framework for policy experiments on market design. We formulate a limit order market as a stochastic sequential game and use a simulation technique based on Pakes and McGuire (2001) to find a stationary equilibrium. Given the stationary equilibrium, we generate artificial time series and perform comparative dynamics. We explicitly determine investor welfare in our numerical solution. We find that the effective spread is {\it negatively} correlated with transactions costs and uncorrelated with welfare. As one policy experiment, we evaluate the effect of changing tick size.
Customisable Model Transformations Based on Non-Functional Requirements

The model-to-model (M2M) transformation stage in a model-driven engineering (MDE) tool chain is used to bridge the large semantic gap between problem-domain abstractions and software artifacts. This transformation is typically specified in a closed, monolithic way. Since no two systems have identical requirements, some work has been done to create explicit support for customisation of the transformation process based on functional requirements. The same is not true for non-functional requirements.The contribution of this paper is a customizable M2M transformation process that takes as an input the users priorities, in terms of non-functional properties, to select between design trade-offs in the transformation. These trade-offs are expressed as contrasting architectural styles, which describe common patterns of interactions and constraints with well understood non-functional implications. The target of the M2M transformation is an architecture description language (ADL) that can be used to express styles. Model checking tools can be used to ensure that styles are adhered to during the entire MDE process. This early work focuses on describing contrasting architectural styles that address distribution issues, such as fault tolerance.