Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic scheduling of computer tasks using genetic algorithms

We concentrate on non-preemptive hard real-time scheduling algorithms. We compare FIFO, EDLF, SRTF and genetic algorithms for solving this problem. The objective of the scheduling algorithm is to dynamically schedule as many tasks as possible such that each task meets its execution deadline, while minimizing the total delay time of all of the tasks. We present a MicroGA that uses a small population size of 10 chromosomes, running for 10 trials using a rather high mutation rate with a sliding window of 10 tasks. The steady-state GA was determined to be better than the generational GA for our MicroGA. We also present a parallel MicroGA model designed for parallel processors. The parallel MicroGA works best when migration is used to move tasks from one processor to another to even out the load as much a possible. Test cases show that the sequential MicroGA model and the parallel MicroGA model produced superior task schedules compared to other algorithms tested. <<ETX>>
Aerial robot piloted in steep relief by optic flow sensors

We have developed a new vision based autopilot able to make a micro-air vehicle automatically navigate in steep relief. It uses onboard Optic Flow sensors inspired by the housefly's Elementary Motion Detectors (EMDs) that were previously investigated at our Laboratory with electrophysiological and micro-optical techniques. The paper investigates how the ground avoidance performances of the former OCTAVE robot could be enhanced to cope with steep relief. The idea is to combine frontal and ventral OF sensors and to merge feedback and feedforward loops. In the new robot, called OCTAVE(2), a feedback loop adjusts the lift so as to keep the ventral OF constant, while a feedforward loop based on a forward looking EMD sensor serves to anticipate the steep relief. We test the new autopilot on a 100-gram tethered rotorcraft that circles indoors over an environment composed of contrasting features randomly arranged on the floor. We show that OCTAVE(2) succeeds in following a relatively steep relief (maximum slope 17deg) while navigating close to the ground (groundheight in the order of lm). This risky task is performed thanks to a minimalist electronic visual system: the OF sensor suite is lightweight (4.3-grams including the lenses), and is therefore mounted onboard.
Father involvement and children’s psychological adjustment: maternal and paternal acceptance as mediators

ABSTRACT Research has shown that father involvement and children’s perceived parental warmth contribute significantly to children’s psychological adjustment. This study examines the mediating role of parental acceptance (i.e. that of mothers and fathers) between the father’s involvement and the child’s psychological adjustment in terms of personality dispositions and behavioral problems (internalizing and externalizing). The sample was composed of 1036 non-clinical children from 9 to 19 years old (45.1% males) who completed the Parental Acceptance‒Rejection Questionnaire, the Personality Assessment Questionnaire, the Youth Self-Report, and the Father Involvement Scale. The use of a structural equation model revealed that both father involvement and parental acceptance made significant and independent contributions to children’s outcomes. However, relationships between father involvement and children’s outcomes were mediated by both paternal acceptance and paternal acceptance via maternal acceptance. Father’s residential status, and children’s sex and age were considered as moderators. The father involvement in resident fathers had a stronger impact on perceived paternal acceptance, and father involvement on children’s psychological adjustment was no longer significant for boys (not girls) when parental acceptance is considered as mediator. No age differences were found in the tested model. In conclusion, the findings show that the father’s involvement creates an interpersonal context of love and warmth by which both the father and the mother increase the child’s psychological adjustment.
Phase-compensated metasurface for conformal sectoral beam antennas

The in-phase radiation from a conformal metasurface is numerically and experimentally reported. The LC-resonant metasurface is composed of a simultaneously capacitive and an inductive grid constituted by copper strips printed on both sides of a dielectric board. The metasurface is designed to fit a curved surface by modifying its local phase. The latter phase-compensated metasurface is used as a reflector in a conformal Fabry-Perot resonant cavity antenna. Far-field measurements performed on a fabricated prototype allow showing the good performances of such a phase-compensated metasurface in restoring in-phase emissions from the conformal surface and producing a directive emission in the desired direction.
Quasi-Orthogonality via Finite-Di erencing : An Elementary Approach to Geometric Discrepancy

It is possible to place n points in d-space so that, given any two-coloring of the points, there exists a halfspace within which one color dominates the other by as much as cn 1=2d, for some constant c > 0. This result was proven in a slightly weaker form by Beck and the bound was later tightened by Alexander. It was shown to be quasi-optimal by Matou sek, Welzl, and Wernisch. The lower bound proofs are highly technical and do not provide much intuitive insight into the \large-discrepancy" phenomenon. We develop a proof technique which allows us to rederive the same lower bound in a much simpler fashion. We give a probabilistic interpretation of the result and we discuss the connection of our method to Beck's Fourier transform approach. We also provide a quasi-optimal lower bound on the discrepancy of xed-size rotated boxes, which signi cantly improves the previous bound.
Power and balancing control considerations on modular multilevel converters for battery electric vehicles

Modular multilevel converters with embedded battery cells are suitable candidates to improve the energy conversion efficiency of battery electric vehicles. In this new topology, the series connection of the battery cells is obtained by means of H-bridge modules, allowing the highest flexibility for the discharge and recharge of each individual battery cell. This objective can be achieved in practice only when a suitable control algorithm is designed to control at the same time the generation of the desired output voltages and the state of charge of cells. This paper discusses some aspects of the balancing algorithm of the battery cells including the cross-balancing between the converter's arms and the design of the control loop for symmetric three-phase output voltages. Simulations results applied to a city car confirm the theoretical considerations and illustrate the main features of the proposed control algorithm.
Effects of Electrical and Physical Properties of Barefaced terrain on Backscatter Response

We investigate the effect of moisture on the dielectric permittivity and surface roughness with backscatter response from four different barefaced terrain. They represent four classes in the Wentworth grain size classification scale. We improve on previous technique used to remotely identify oil sand reservoirs through accurate modeling of the terrain electromagnetic (EM) reflectivity. First we derived the spectroscopic finger print of the four sample classes at high resolution (8cm) covering near-infrared and mid-infrared EM regions to investigate the electrochemical bonds present. Then we varied the moisture level of the samples to observe the variation in dielectric permittivity to provide new information on the electrical properties of the sand terrain. Finally development of 3D EM computer models to investigate the complex relationship between barefaced terrain properties with the Radar back scatter response is outlined. The spectroscopic survey observed the reststrahlen effect due to the presence of quartz while calibrated measurements of dielectric response was achieved. Keywords—Backscatter, Barefaced terrain, Beach Sand, Computer Simulation, Loamy sand, Wentworth Classification, Dielectric constant
A five-miRNA signature with prognostic and predictive value for MGMT promoter-methylated glioblastoma patients

Although O(6)-methylguanine DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) promoter methylation status is an important marker for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), there is considerable variability in the clinical outcome of patients with similar methylation profiles. The present study aimed to refine the prognostic and predictive value of MGMT promoter status in GBM by identifying a micro (mi)RNA risk signature. Data from The Cancer Genome Atlas was used for this study, with MGMT promoter-methylated samples randomly divided into training and internal validation sets. Data from The Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas was used for independent validation. A five miRNA-based risk signature was established for MGMT promoter-methylated GBM to distinguish cases as high- or low-risk with distinct prognoses, which was confirmed using internal and external validation sets. Importantly, the prognostic value of the signature was significant in different cohorts stratified by clinicopathologic factors and alkylating chemotherapy, and a multivariate Cox analysis found it to be an independent prognostic marker along with age and chemotherapy. Based on these three factors, we developed a quantitative model with greater accuracy for predicting the 1-year survival of patients with MGMT promoter-methylated GBM. These results indicate that the five-miRNA signature is an independent risk predictor for GBM with MGMT promoter methylation and can be used to identify patients at high risk of unfavorable outcome and resistant to alkylating chemotherapy, underscoring its potential for personalized GBM management.
3GPP MBMS MOBILE-TV SERVICES USING H.264/AVC TEMPORAL SCALABILITY AND LAYERED TRANSMISSION

The deployment of mobile multimedia broadcast services like Mobile TV over cellular networks has just started. The coverage in terms of delivered quality per receiver is an important measure to evaluate the experienced quality. In order to provide a reasonable quality for all receivers in a network cell, we analyze graceful degradation techniques in Rel. 6 of 3rd Generation Partnership Project's (3GPP) Multimedia Broadcast and Multicast Services (MBMS). We show the benefits of using H.264/AVC temporal scalability in an existing system for graceful degradation in order to add coverage for users in poor reception conditions, although at a reduced level of quality. For that we define assessment techniques for measuring the quality coverage describing the amount of users reached with a certain media play-out quality. We connect this quality coverage to a measure for used network cell capacity giving the used network resources for 3GPP Rel. 6 network cells. We evaluate graceful degradation under simulated 3GPP Rel. 6 network conditions showing the benefits of graceful degradation for 3GPP MBMS mobile television services.
The Optimal Prevention of Epidemics1

This article studies the optimal intertemporal allocation of resources devoted to the prevention of deterministic epidemics that admit an endemic steadystate. In a stylized ‘yeoman-farmer’ economy, the dynamics of the optimal prevention depends on the interplay between the epidemiological characteristics of the disease, the labour productivity and the intergenerational equity. A minimal level of labour productivity is shown to be necessary to reduce in the long run the prevalence rate of the epidemic. If this threshold is not reached, the prevention is then at best temporary, simply slowing down the spread of the epidemic disease. However, it may not optimal to undertake temporary prevention. Conversely, if labour productivity is sufficiently high, permanent allocation of resources to prevention is feasible but not necessarily optimal. If it is the case, the prevention monotonically increases with time for low initial prevalence rate, while it is decreasing or hump-shaped otherwise. Finally, paths that yield to the eradication of the epidemic disease are considered. Upon existence, such paths are optimal if the pure discount rate is sufficiently low. JEL Classification: I18, C61
Fe b 20 02 Far-Infrared photometry of a statistical sample of late-type Virgo Cluster galaxies 1

We present deep diffraction-limited far-infrared (FIR) strip maps of a sample of 63 galaxies later than S0 and brighter than BT 16.8, selected from the Virgo Cluster Catalogue of Binggeli, Sandage & Tammann (1985). The ISOPHOT instrument on board the Infrared Space Observatory was used to achieve sensitivities typically an order of magnitude deeper than IRAS in the 60 and 100μm bands and to reach the confusion limit at 170μm. The averaged 3σ upper limits for integrated flux densities of point sources at 60, 100 and 170μm are 43, 33 and 58mJy, respectively. 54 galaxies (85.7%) are detected at least at one wavelength, and 40 galaxies (63.5%) are detected at all three wavelengths. The highest detection rate (85.7%) is in the 170μm band. In many cases the galaxies present address: The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Str. , Pasadena, 91101 California, USA; email:popescu@ociw.edu Otto-Hahn Fellow of the Max Planck Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany Research Associate, The Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, Str. Cuţitul de Argint 5, Bucharest, Romania present affiliation: The University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio 43606-3390, USA
Palmprint Recognition Based on Discriminative Local Binary Patterns Statistic Feature

In on-line palmprint recognition tasks, texture based feature extraction methods are widely adopted for palmprint representation, owing to their high performance. Gabor filter bank is among the most promising texture information extraction tool because of its multi-scale and multi-orientational characteristics. However, it is both time and memory intensive to convolve palm images with a bank of filters to extract features. In this paper, a novel palmprint texture representation is proposed, discriminative local binary patterns statistic (DLBPS), which is extracted for palmprint recognition. In this approach, a palmprint is firstly divided into non-overlapping and equal-sized regions, which are then labeled into Local Binary Patterns (LBP) independently. By calculating these patterns' distribution, the statistic features of the palmprint texture are attained. Subsequently, the Discriminative Common Vectors (DCV) algorithm is applied for dimensionality reduction of the feature space and solution of the optional discriminative common vectors. Finally, Euclidean distance and the nearest neighbor classifier are used for palmprint classification. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DLBPS palmprint representation, which brings both high recognition accuracy rate and high speed benefits.
(Not) yet another policy for scalable video delivery to mobile users

In this work, we provide a methodology to analyze optimal adaptation policies for scalable video delivery in mobile environments. Typically, download policies for adaptive video are tuned to very specific system settings. The aim of this work is not to propose a new policy, but instead to understand how the optimal policy changes according to the operating environment and the system characteristics of a mobile video client. Armed with this insight, we can design or adapt policies for SVC adaptive video delivery for a broader range of settings. Using a semi-Markov decision process (SMDP), we find optimal video retrieval policies for a single user, subject to different limits on buffer capacity and different wireless environments. We apply a decision tree classifier to the output of the SMDP to derive simple approximate policies for 55 scenarios and use these to derive high-level rules on the relationship between optimal download policy and the underlying channel settings. For example, we show that the optimal policy is more conservative in slowly varying channels, and becomes more greedy in fast changing channels, and that instantaneous channel state is relevant to the decision-making process only in a setting with a very limited buffer capacity and slow-varying channel.
Enhancing relevance feedback in image retrieval using unlabeled data

Relevance feedback is an effective scheme bridging the gap between high-level semantics and low-level features in content-based image retrieval (CBIR). In contrast to previous methods which rely on labeled images provided by the user, this article attempts to enhance the performance of relevance feedback by exploiting unlabeled images existing in the database. Concretely, this article integrates the merits of semisupervised learning and active learning into the relevance feedback process. In detail, in each round of relevance feedback two simple learners are trained from the labeled data, that is, images from user query and user feedback. Each learner then labels some unlabeled images in the database for the other learner. After retraining with the additional labeled data, the learners reclassify the images in the database and then their classifications are merged. Images judged to be positive with high confidence are returned as the retrieval result, while those judged with low confidence are put into the pool which is used in the next round of relevance feedback. Experiments show that using semisupervised learning and active learning simultaneously in CBIR is beneficial, and the proposed method achieves better performance than some existing methods.
Knowledge Sources for Textual CBR

Textual CBR applications address issues that have traditionally been dealt with in the Information Retrieval community, namely the handling of textual documents. As CBR is a knowledge-based technique, the question arises where items of knowledge may come from and how they might contribute to the implementation of a Textual CBR system. In this paper, we will show how various pieces of knowledge available in a speciic domain can be utilized for acquiring the knowledge required for a CBR system.
Exploration of Highly Accurate Path Prediction Mechanism Using Detailed Path History

Prediction mechanism is the key to achieve high performance using speculative multithreading. High prediction accuracy can be expected to improve the effectiveness of speculative multithreading. In this research, we focus on the frequency of program paths in loops. To identify the multiple paths in loops, we introduce extensive history information. The N-bit history information represents 2 to the Nth power minus 1 paths, and the predictor selects a path for the next thread from these paths. We show that the proposed path prediction mechanism increases the prediction accuracy by up to 7.6 percent compared to the conventional prediction mechanism using 1-bit history information.
Multiple Parallel Memory Systems in the Brain of the Rat

A theory of multiple parallel memory systems in the brain of the rat is described. Each system consists of a series of interconnected neural structures. The "central structures" of the three systems described are the hippocampus, the matrix compartment of the dorsal striatum (caudate-putamen), and the amygdala. Information, coded as neural signals, flows independently through each system. All systems have access to the same information from situations in which learning occurs, but each system is specialized to represent a different kind of relationship among the elements (stimulus events, responses, reinforcers) of the information that flows through it. The speed and accuracy with which a system forms a coherent representation of a learning situation depend on the correspondence between the specialization of the system and the relationship among the elements of the situation. The coherence of these stored representations determines the degree of control exerted by each system on behavior in the situation. Although they process information independently the systems interact in at least two ways: by simultaneous parallel influence on behavioral output and by directly influencing each other. These interactions can be cooperative (leading to similar behaviors) or competitive (leading to different behaviors). Experimental findings consistent with these ideas, mostly from experiments with rats, are reviewed.
Multispacer Sequence Typing Relapsing Fever Borreliae in Africa

Background In Africa, relapsing fevers are neglected arthropod-borne infections caused by closely related Borrelia species. They cause mild to deadly undifferentiated fever particularly severe in pregnant women. Lack of a tool to genotype these Borrelia organisms limits knowledge regarding their reservoirs and their epidemiology. Methodology/Principal Findings Genome sequence analysis of Borrelia crocidurae, Borrelia duttonii and Borrelia recurrentis yielded 5 intergenic spacers scattered between 10 chromosomal genes that were incorporated into a multispacer sequence typing (MST) approach. Sequencing these spacers directly from human blood specimens previously found to be infected by B. recurrentis (30 specimens), B. duttonii (17 specimens) and B. crocidurae (13 specimens) resolved these 60 strains and the 3 type strains into 13 species-specific spacer types in the presence of negative controls. B. crocidurae comprised of 8 spacer types, B. duttonii of 3 spacer types and B. recurrentis of 2 spacer types. Conclusions/Significance Phylogenetic analyses of MST data suggested that B. duttonii, B. crocidurae and B. recurrentis are variants of a unique ancestral Borrelia species. MST proved to be a suitable approach for identifying and genotyping relapsing fever borreliae in Africa. It could be applied to both vectors and clinical specimens.
A novel approach to inoperable or recurrent rectal cancer by chemoembolization. A new arrow in our quiver?

Purpose Assess the feasibility, safety and efficacy of TACE with irinotecan loaded micro particles (debiri) for the treatment of locally advanced rectal cancer patients. Results We assessed the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS). The tool is designed to assess nine common symptoms in cancer patients: pain, tiredness, nausea, depression, anxiety, drowsiness, appetite, wellbeing and shortness of breath. The ESAS score was 7 in 10/12 (83%) patients before treatment and 6 in 2/12 (16.5%) patients. After treatment in 6/12 (50%) patients the score dropped to 3; 3/12 (33%) reported 4, 1/12 (8%) reported 2. All patients experienced local control disease with a degree of citoreduction; in 4 cases (33%) we observed outstanding responses with a dramatic reduction in the tumors size which led us to surgical radical resections. Materials and methods We run a prospective mono-institutional study where we recruited, 12 non- consecutive patients with histology confirmation of rectal cancer, inoperable and not treatable due to severe comorbidities, or pelvic recurrence/progression after curative treatment, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and/or surgery. Their performance status (PS) ECOG was 2-3. Twelve patients (10 male and 2 female) with a median age 71 (range 56-89) were recruited in the study. Conclusions The study has met the primary endpoint and showed encouraging activity. Debiri could be a possible option for locally advanced/inoperable or recurred rectal cancer patients. Further trials are warranted to validate this methodic in early stages.