Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Context dependent language model adaptation

Language models (LMs) are often constructed by building multiple component LMs that are combined using interpolation weights. By tuning these interpolation weights, using either perplexity or discriminative approaches, it is possible to adapt LMs to a particular task. In this work, improved LM adaptation is achieved by introducing context dependent interpolation weights. An im-portant part of this new approach is obtaining robust estimation. Two schemes for this are described. The ﬁrst is based on MAP estimation, where either global interpolation weights are used as priors, or context dependent interpolation priors obtained from the training data. The second scheme uses class based contexts to determine the interpolation weights. Both schemes are evaluated using unsupervised LM adaptation on a Mandarin broadcast transcription task. Consistent gains in perplexity using context dependent, rather than global, weights are observed as well as reductions in character error rate.
A comparative study on optimization methods for the constrained nonlinear programming problems.

Constrained nonlinear programming problems often arise in many engineering applications. The most well-known optimization methods for solving these problems are sequential quadratic programming methods and generalized reduced gradient methods. This study compares the performance of these methods with the genetic algorithms which gained popularity in recent years due to advantages in speed and robustness. We present a comparative study that is performed on fifteen test problems selected from the literature.
Americas Conference on Information Systems ( AMCIS ) 1231-2006 Organization Adoption of Linux : An Institutional Perspective

The rapid adoption of Linux servers by organizations in recent years begs the question of whether the adoption is driven by careful considerations of organizational needs or by bandwagon phenomena. Drawing from the institutional perspective of Tolbert and Zucker (1983), this paper presents a two-stage adoption model for Linux servers and examines systematically the determinants of organizational adoption of Linux servers at each stage. It proposes that, while the adoption of Linux servers is determined by organizational factors both at early and late stages, these factors become relatively poorer predictors as Linux servers becomes more institutionalized. Moreover, as the process of adoption continues, institutional factors become more significant predictors of organizational adoption decisions. This paper contributes to theory building in IS adoption research in general and open source software adoption research in particular.
External Sorting Of Point Clouds

In recent years, points have seen increased use as a rendering primitive. This Bachelor Thesis presents and compares a number of sorting algorithms used for sorting points in a preprocessing step. This is done in order to decrease the time needed to create a point cloud model that can be rendered by the GPU in real time. Points are compared either by their position along the longest axis or by Morton order and sorted using heap sort or radix sort. An external merge sort algorithm is used for large datasets that do not completely fit into memory. The speed of the sorting process is furthermore increased by making use of parallel processing.
Quantitative quality assessment of video sequences A human-based approach

Most of the current quality assessment techniques interpret an image quality as a measure of its fidelity with another reference image, assuming the availability of that "perfect" image. It has been the concern of many researchers around the world to algorithmically assess the quality of image sequences based on human visual perception. This paper presents a novel technique for quantitatively assessing the quality of image sequences without the need for a reference image and in a way that precisely correlates to human judgement on quality. This research is a part of a larger framework that incorporates multi-objective optimisation algorithms to optimise the quality metrics of compressed videos acquired by autonomous vehicles and transmitted over low-bandwidth communication channels. Our system was trained on a dataset that involved 700 videos of 5 different categories. We validate the performance of our model and show that it highly correlates to the human subjective quality assessment.
MEDIA ARTS CENTERS AS ALTERNATIVE ARCHIVAL SPACES: INVESTIGATING THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARCHIVAL PRACTICES IN NON-PROFIT MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS

In the United States, archival institutions have prioritized the preservation of commercial and Hollywood cinema overlooking small-scale media production by non-professionals and independent media artists. Media arts centers, however, have played a pivotal role in the continued access, use, and preservation of materials produced by the communities that they serve. These non-profit media collectives were imagined as a distributed network of organizations supporting the production, exhibition and study of media; serving as information centers about media resources; and supporting regional preservation efforts. However, media arts centers have remained over-looked and unexplored by the archival field. This dissertation seeks to shift this balance, including these artist-run organizations as part of the network of archives and collecting institutions preserving independent media. Using case study methodologies this study investigated the practices at three media arts centers, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Paper Tiger Television, and the Termite Television Collective, seeking to understand the role of these organizations in the collection and preservation of independent media and the development of archival practices in non-profit media organizations. The study places each of these organizations in the wider history of media arts center movement in the United States and looks broadly at the development of archives and archival practices within these organizations. Framing media arts centers as maker-spaces and archival spaces, this dissertation argues for a critique of professional archival practices and a redefinition of the standards for preservation of audiovisual materials.
NEW PCA-BASED METHODOLOGY FOR SENSOR FAULT DETECTION AND LOCALIZATION

This work proposes a new methodology for sensor fault detection and localization using principal component analysis (PCA). A new index is proposed in order to detect simple and multiple faults affecting the dependent and independent process variables. A new iterative selection method of principal component number is presented. This method determines a model allowing the detection of faults without a priori knowledge of their natures. The fault localization is carried out using hierarchical contribution plots applied to the proposed detection index. The performance of this approach becomes poor for a bad partitioning of the variables into blocs. A new partitioning method is proposed to identify correctly all the faults affecting the process. The whole proposed results were applied to a non linear noisy system subjected to simple and multiple faults.
TRANSACTIONS ON PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS , TO APPEAR IN 1999 1 The Timed Asynchronous Distributed System Model

| We propose a formal de nition for the timed asynchronous distributed system model. We present extensive measurements of actual message and process scheduling delays and hardware clock drifts. These measurements con rm that this model adequately describes current distributed systems such as a network of workstations. We also give an explanation of why practically needed services, such as consensus or leader election, which are not implementable in the time-free model, are implementable in the timed asynchronous system model. Keywords|timed model, systemmodel, failure model, distributed systems, asynchronous systems, synchronous systems, measurements, communication by time.
Speaker recognition using phoneme-specific GMMs

This paper compares three approaches to building phoneme-specific Gaussian mixture model (GMM) speaker recognition systems on the NIST 2003 Extended Data Evaluation to a baseline GMM system covering all of the phonemes. The individual performance of any given phoneme-specific GMM system falls below the performance of the baseline GMM, but fusing the top 40 performing scores of the individual phoneme systems at the 8 conversation train condition resulted in an equal error rate of 1.7%, which is a 2.6% absolute reduction in equal error rate from the baseline system. Further investigation showed complementary information across the three model building approaches as error rates dropped on a per phoneme basis when these systems were fused.
Refocusing images captured from a stereoscopic camera

Traditional photography projects a 3D scene to a 2D image without recording the depth of each local region, which prevents users from changing the focus plane of a photograph once it has been taken. To tackle this problem, Ng et al. [2005] presented light-field cameras that record all focus planes of a scene and synthesized the refocused image using ray tracing. Nevertheless, the captured photographs are of low resolution because the image sensor is divided into sub-cells. Levin et al. [2007] embedded a coded aperture on the camera lens and recover depth information from blur patterns in a single image. However, the coded aperture blocks around 50% of light. Their system requires longer exposition time when taking pictures. Liang et al. [2008] also embedded a coded aperture on the camera lens to capture the scene but with multiple exposures. It produces high quality depth maps yet is not suitable to hand-held devices. Recently, Microsoft Kinect directly estimates the depth information using infrared light, which works only in a indoor environment.
Genetic Polymorphism Associated Prefrontal Glutathione and Its Coupling With Brain Glutamate and Peripheral Redox Status in Early Psychosis.

BACKGROUND Oxidative stress and glutathione (GSH) metabolism dysregulation has been implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. GAG-trinucleotide repeat (TNR) polymorphisms in the glutamate-cysteine ligase catalytic gene (GCLC), the rate-limiting enzyme for GSH synthesis, are associated with schizophrenia. In addition, GSH may serve as a reserve pool for neuronal glutamate (Glu) through the γ-glutamyl cycle. The aim of this study is to investigate brain [GSH] and its association with GCLC polymorphism, peripheral redox indices and brain Glu. METHODS Magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to measure [GSH] and [Glu] in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of 25 early-psychosis patients and 33 controls. GCLC polymorphism was genotyped, glutathione peroxidases (GPx) and glutathione reductase (GR) activities were determined in blood cells. RESULTS Significantly lower [GSHmPFC] in GCLC high-risk genotype subjects were revealed as compared to low-risk genotype subjects independent of disease status. In male subjects, [GSHmPFC] and blood GPx activities correlate positively in controls (P = .021), but negatively in patients (P = .039). In GCLC low-risk genotypes, [GlumPFC] are lower in patients, while it is not the case for high-risk genotypes. CONCLUSIONS GCLC high-risk genotypes are associated with low [GSHmPFC], highlighting that GCLC polymorphisms should be considered in pathology studies of cerebral GSH. Low brain GSH levels are related to low peripheral oxidation status in controls but with high oxidation status in patients, pointing to a dysregulated GSH homeostasis in early psychosis patients. GCLC polymorphisms and disease associated correlations between brain GSH and Glu levels may allow patients stratification.
Incorporation of dietary [14C]arachidonic acid and [3H]eicosapentaenoic acid into tissue lipids during absorption of a fish oil emulsion.

A preferential incorporation of dietary arachidonic acid (20:4, n-6) into chyle lipoprotein phospholipids, a relative resistance of 20:4 esters of chyle triacylglycerol (TG) to hydrolysis by lipoprotein lipase, a preferential utilization of 20:4 for phospholipid acylation, and a low rate of oxidation of 20:4 are factors that may contribute to the differences seen in the incorporation into tissue lipids between absorbed 20:4 and the predominant dietary 16-18 carbon fatty acids. In this study we fed [14C]20:4 and [3H]eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5, n-3) as free fatty acids in a fish oil emulsion to rats and analyzed the radioactivity in different tissue lipids after 1, 2, and 4 h. The purpose was to examine the degree of similarity in the fate of the two major eicosanoid precursors during the absorption of a fish oil meal. The recovery after 2 and 4 h of 14C exceeded that of 3H in lipids of small intestine, serum, liver, heart, kidneys, and spleen. The differences increased with time, e.g., the liver contained 9.7 (+/- 0.7)% 3H and 17.9 (+/- 1.4)% of the 14C (P less than 0.001), and the upper half of the small intestine 10.0 (+/- 0.8)% of the 3H and 22.8 (+/- 1.1)% of the 14C (P less than 0.001) after 4 h. The 14C and 3H radioactivity per g tissue after 4 h ranked as follows: liver and brown adipose tissue greater than kidneys greater than heart, lungs, spleen, and serum greater than colon greater than white adipose tissue and testes, the differences between tissues being up to 50-fold. There were up to fourfold variations in the 14C/3H ratios between tissues after 4 h, the highest value being observed in the heart and the lowest in white adipose tissue. Of the radioactivity retained in liver and intestine, more 14C and 3H was in phospholipids and less in triacylglycerol (TG), the differences being largest in the liver, e.g., after 4 h 57.6 (+/- 0.8)% of the 14C and 29.9 (+/- 0.9)% of the 3H (P less than 0.001) in the liver was in phosphatidylcholine (PC). In both intestine and liver the highest 14C/3H ratios were found in phosphatidylinositiol (PI). Also phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) contained more 14C than 3H but the quantitative differences were relatively small after 4 h. In heart the proportions of 3H and 14C found in PE and PI did not differ, whereas more of the 14C was in PC and more of the 3H was in cardiolipin and phosphatidylserine. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Responsibility to Protect and Sovereignty

The responsibility to protect ('R2P') principle articulates the obligations of the international community to prevent conflict occurring, to intervene in conflicts, and to assist in rebuilding after conflicts. The doctrine is about protecting civilians in armed conflicts from four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. This book examines interventions in East Timor, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Kosovo. The chapters explore and question UN debates with respect to the doctrine both before and after its adoption in 2005; contrasting state attitudes to international military intervention; and what takes place after intervention. It also discusses the ability of the Security Council to access reliable information and credible and transparent processes to enable it to make a determination on the occurrence of atrocities in a Member State. Questioning whether there is a need to find a closer operational link between the responsibilities to prevent and react and a normative link between R2P and principles of international law, the contributions examine the effectiveness of the framework of R2P for international decision-making in response to mass atrocity crimes and ask how an international system to deal with threats and mass atrocities can be developed in the absence of a central authority. This book will be valuable to those interested in international law, human rights, and security, peace and conflict studies
FRAILTYPACK : An R package for the analysis of correlated survival data with frailty models using the penalized likelihood estimation

Frailty models are very useful for analysing correlated survival data, when observations are clustered into groups or for recurrent events. The aim of this article is to present the new version of an R package called frailtypack. This package allows to fit Cox models and four types of frailty models (shared, nested, joint, additive) that could be useful for several issues within biomedical research. It is well adapted to the analysis of recurrent events such as cancer relapses and/or terminal events (death or lost to follow-up). The approach uses a maximum penalized likelihood estimation. Right-censored or left-truncated data are considered. It also allows stratification and time-dependent covariates during analysis.
Epirubicin, cisplatin, and protracted venous infusion of 5-fluorouracil for advanced gastric carcinoma.

To evaluate the activity and safety of a combination chemotherapy with epirubicin, cisplatin, and a protracted venous infusion of 5-fluorouracil (ECF) in unresectable or metastatic gastric cancer, a phase II study was performed. Thirty-five chemotherapy-naive patients were given ECF. Epirubicin (50 mg/m(2) intravenous, i.v. ) and cisplatin (60 mg/m(2) i.v. ) were administered every three weeks during a continuous intravenous infusion of 5-fluorouracil (250 mg/m(2) /day) using infusion pump. One complete response and 19 partial responses (response rate=62%) were achieved. Eight patients remained stable, whereas in four patients the disease progressed. The median duration of response was 22 weeks (95% confidence interval, 18-27 weeks). The median survival for all patients was 10 months (95% confidence interval, 6-14 months), with a 1-yr survival rate of 40%. A total of 184 cycles of chemotherapy were administered. Grade 3 or 4 emesis occurred in 3%, mucositis in 2%, anemia in 10%, and leukopenia in 3% of the cycles. Central venous catheter complications that required line removal occurred in 37% (n=13) of the patients. No patient died of toxicity. Overall, the ECF regimen showed high anti-tumor activity with a tolerable toxicity pattern.
NEURAL NETWORK BASED AUTOMATIC THRESHOLD SELECTION FOR AN INDUSTRIAL VISION SYSTEM

Automatic threshold selection is one of the most important processes in industrial vision systems. In this study, a neural network is designed to select the threshold value automatically for an industrial vision system. A conveyor, which consists of a camera and a capture card, is designed for experimental study. The system has been tested for different objects, which are selected in a database. The online working feature of neural network makes this solution popular unlike the highly mathematical structure and time-consuming feature of conventional threshold selection methods. The results of experimental studies have been presented with their results.
Map Displays for Information Retrieval

The focus of this article is to develop a map display for information retrieval. Through an examination of relationships among visual displays, information retrieval, and browsing, advantages of visual displays for information retrieval are characterized as (1) the ability to convey a large amount of information in a limited space, (2) the potential to reveal semantic relationships of terms and documents, and (3) the facilitation of browsing and perceptual inferences on retrieval interfaces. These advantages are further demonstrated through a map display generated by a neural network's self-organizing algorithm. The map display detects complex relationships among given documents, and reveals the relationships through a spatial arrangement of terms abstracted from the documents. The map display also provides interactive tools to allow the user to interact with the underlying information. Examples of the map displays show that such map displays can be used both as an overview tool and an access or exploration tool, and the map displays will likely increase the amount of information that the user is willing to browse.
Coded modulation DPSK on fading channels

Coded modulation for differentially encoded PSK with non-coherent reception on flat fading channels is considered. We derive theoretical limits on the performance and show how to design multilevel coding schemes and bit-interleaved coded modulation. Since Gray labeling is not possible for multiple symbol differential detection and PSK constellations, bit-interleaved coded modulation exhibits severe degradation compared to the multilevel coding approach. By means of simulations, where turbo codes are used as component codes, the theoretical considerations are confirmed and we show how close theoretical limits of differentially encoded PSK transmission over flat fading channels can be approached by applying properly designed coded modulation schemes.
DefScriber: a hybrid system for definitional QA

Much of the effort in Question Answering (QA) has gone into building short answer QA systems, which answer questions for which the correct answer is a single word or short phrase. However, there are many questions which are better answered with a longer description or explanation. Definitional QA is a developing research area [1] concerned with a subclass of these questions, namely questions of the form “What is X? ” DefScriber is a fully implemented system that generates multi-sentence definitions to answer such questions from Internet documents, using an innovative combination of goal-driven and data-driven techniques.
An Automated System for Analyzing Impact of Faults in IP Telephony Networks

The widespread use of IP telephony (IPT) has introduced corresponding management issues related to the diagnosis and impact analysis of faults in the IPT network. There are complex logical relationships between the various elements present in the IPT network ranging from call processing engines, PSTN voice gateways, and conferencing and voice mail servers, to endpoints like IP-based handsets. Without an understanding of these complex relationships, traditional element-oriented network fault-management applications are inadequate to assess IPT service impact in the presence of a network or system fault. In this paper, we present a proposal for determining the root cause and assessing the impact of a fault in an IPT network on voice services and end users by automatically executing a series of diagnostic tests from various probe points in the network, and correlating the resulting information with the faults reported from the network. We use a CIM-based model of the IPT network to aid the diagnostic and impact assessment process
Fingerprint Matching using Enhanced Shape Context

Shape context, a robust descriptor for point pattern matching, is applied in fingerprint matching by enhancing with minutiae type and angle details. A modified matching cost between shape contexts, by including the application specific contextual information, improves the accuracy of matching when compared with the original definition. To reduce computation for practical use, a simple pre-processing step termed elliptical region filtering is applied in removing spurious minutiae prior to matching. Empirical experiments conducted on a database of fingerprint images confirmed the improvements in accuracy and speed attained by the proposed method.
Yield curve fitting : A new methodology

The overall objective of this paper is to introduce a new methodology of fitting zerocoupon yield curves. Toward this end, Chebyshev polynomials are incorporated into a quantity called the interest cumulator and then subjected to a minimisation procedure to yield parameters that subsequently maps out zero-coupon yield curves. This methodology is applied to Australian coupon bond data to estimate such yield curves. Several innovations are discerned: (i) the minimisation program based upon the logarithmic norm is found to be superior to the standard form based upon the price norm; (ii) Chebyshev polynomials possess desirable properties that improve the econometrics of yield curve fitting; (iii) the empirical results reveal exceptional goodness of fit; and (iv) to my knowledge these are the first published Australian zero-coupon yield curves.