Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Software Engineering for Mobility: a Roadmap Software Engineering for Mobility: a Roadmap

The term distributed computing conjures the image of a xed network structure whose nodes support the execution of processes that communicate with each other via messages traveling along links. Peer-to-peer communication is feasible but client-server relationships dominate. More recently, servers have been augmented with brokerage capabilities to facilitate discovery of available services. Stability is the ideal mode of operation; changes are relatively slow; even in the case of failure, nodes and links are expected eventually to come back up. By contrast , mobility represents a total meltdown of all the stability assumptions (explicit or implicit) associated with distributed computing. The network structure is no longer xed, nodes may come and go, processes may move among nodes, and even programs (the code executed by processes) may evolve and change structure. The challenges and opportunities associated with this computational melee form the main subject of this paper. We seek to sort out this chaotic form of computing by focusing our attention on the formulation of a simple framework for viewing mobility, on precise deenition of terms, and on research issues mobility poses for the software engineering community.
The Impact of Business/IT Social Network Structures on IT Service Quality

In this paper, we explore the basic premise that IT service quality follows the structure of business/IT interactions and thus highlight an important organizational design issue in IT governance. Motivated by concepts used in social network theory we build a model that proposes a causal relationship between structural characteristics of social business/IT networks and IT service quality. The model is empirically evaluated and explained using case studies based on five interviews in three firms. Thus we extend the general assumption that the business/IT partnership is crucial for IT service quality by identifying structural characteristics of the network among and between business and IT staff which enhance this partnership. Important results are that strong and bridging ties at the business/IT interface are crucial for IT service quality and that a good integration of interface actors within their own unit supports IT service quality.
Implementation of perception algorithm using DataFlow paradigm

This paper presents an implementation of Perceptron algorithm using DataFlow approach. DataFlow is a new paradigm that is suitable for solving BigData problems in applications. The iterative nature of the algorithm and a large training set make it suitable for implementing on DataFlow accelerators. Also we discuss differences between ControlFlow paradigm, which is based on the von Neumann architecture, and the DataFlow paradigm, which is based on the Feynman architecture and relies on reconfigurable FPGA chips. We compare these paradigms through aspects such as speed, power dissipation and size. We provide the implementation of Perceptron algorithm using DataFlow hardware accelerator. Results show that DataFlow implementation of Perceptron algorithm is 6 times faster than the implementation on the single core Intel CPU.
Optimizing Vector-Quantization Processor Architecture for Intelligent Query-Search Applications

The architecture of a very large scale integration (VLSI) vector-quantization processor (VQP) has been optimized to develop a general-purpose intelligent query-search agent. The agent performs a similarity-based search in a large-volume database. Although similarity-based search processing is computationally very expensive, latency-free searches have become possible due to the highly parallel maximum-likelihood search architecture of the VQP chip. Three architectures of the VQP chip have been studied and their performances are compared. In order to give reasonable searching results according to the different policies, the concept of penalty function has been introduced into the VQP. An E-commerce real-estate agency system has been developed using the VQP chip implemented in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and the effectiveness of such an agency system has been demonstrated.
Face recognition with single training sample based on fuzzy decision and MSD

To improve the recognition performance of face recognition with single training sample, a face recognition algorithm based on fuzzy decision and maximum scatter difference with single training sample is proposed in this paper. With this method, each training sample is divided into several blocks to increase the number of elements in training sample set, on which the maximum scatter difference algorithm is performed to get the optimal projection matrix. Therefore, the features of training sample and testing facial images could be obtained by projecting them onto optima projection matrix achieved above. During the recognition stage, the fuzzy decision is used to classify. Extensive experiment based on ORL and FERET illustrates the feasibility of the proposed method.
F Mean Squared Error: Love It or Leave It?

or more than 50 years, the meansquared error (MSE) has been the dominant quantitative performance metric in the field of signal processing. It remains the standard criterion for the assessment of signal quality and fidelity; it is the method of choice for comparing competing signal processing methods and systems, and, perhaps most importantly, it is the nearly ubiquitous preference of design engineers seeking to optimize signal processing algorithms. This is true despite the fact that in many of these applications, the MSE exhibits weak performance and has been widely criticized for serious shortcomings, especially when dealing with perceptually important signals such as speech and images. Yet the MSE has exhibited remarkable staying power, and prevailing attitudes towards the MSE seem to range from “it’s easy to use and not so bad” to “everyone else uses it. ” So what is the secret of the MSE—why is it still so popular? And is this popularity misplaced? What is wrong with the MSE when it does not work well? Just how wrong is the MSE in these cases? If not the MSE, what else can be used? These are the questions we’ll be concerned with in this article. Our backgrounds are primarily in the field of image processing, where the MSE has a particularly bad reputation, but where, ironically, it is used nearly as much as in other areas of signal processing. Our discussion will often deal with the role of the MSE (and alternative methods) for processing visual signals. Owing to the poor performance of the MSE as a visual metric, interesting alternatives are arising in the image processing field. Our goal is to stimulate fruitful thought and discussion regarding the role of the MSE in processing other types of signals. More specifically, we hope to inspire signal processing engineers to rethink whether the MSE is truly the criterion of choice in their own theories and applications, and whether it is time to look for alternatives. © DIGITAL VISION [Zhou Wang and Alan C. Bovik]
Solvent-Free Lipase-Catalyzed Synthesis of Technical-Grade Sugar Esters and Evaluation of Their Physicochemical and Bioactive Properties

Technical-grade oleic acid esters of sucrose and fructose were prepared using solvent-free biocatalysis at 65 °C, without any downstream purification applied, and their physicochemical and bioactivity-related properties were evaluated and compared to a commercially available sucrose laurate emulsifier. To increase the conversion of sucrose and fructose oleate, prepared previously using solvent-free lipase-catalyzed esterification catalyzed by Rhizomucor miehei lipase (81% and 83% ester, respectively), the enzymatic reaction conditions was continued using CaSO4 to control the reactor’s air headspace and a lipase (from Candida antarctica B) with a hydrophobic immobilization matrix to provide an ultralow water activity, and high-pressure homogenation, to form metastable suspensions of 2.0–3.3 micron sized saccharide particles in liquid-phase reaction media. These measures led to increased ester content of 89% and 96% for reactions involving sucrose and fructose, respectively. The monoester content among the esters decreased from 90% to <70% due to differences in regioselectivity between the lipases. The resultant technical-grade sucrose and fructose lowered the surface tension to <30 mN/m, and possessed excellent emulsification capability and stability over 36 h using hexadecane and dodecane as oils, comparable to that of sucrose laurate and Tween® 80). The technical-grade sugar esters, particularly fructose oleate, more effectively inhibited gram-positive foodborne pathogens (Lactobacillus plantarum, Pediococcus pentosaceus and Bacillus subtilis). Furthermore, all three sugar esters displayed antitumor activity, particularly the two sucrose esters. This study demonstrates the importance of controlling the biocatalysts’ water activity to achieve high conversion, the impact of a lipase’s regioselectivity in dictating product distribution, and the use of solvent-free biocatalysis to important biobased surfactants useful in foods, cosmetics, personal care products, and medicine.
Neutrino physics and the mirror world: How exact parity symmetry explains the solar neutrino deficit, the atmospheric neutrino anomaly, and the LSND experiment.

Important evidence for neutrino oscillations comes from the solar neutrino deficit and the atmospheric neutrino anomaly. Further evidence for \ensuremath{\nu}${\mathrm{\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\mu}}}$\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\nu}${\mathrm{\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}}}_{\mathit{e}}$ oscillations has been reported at LAMPF using the LSND detector. All of these anomalies require new physics. We show that all of these anomalies can be explained if the standard model is enlarged so that an unbroken parity symmetry can be defined. This explanation holds independently of the actual model for neutrino masses. Thus, we argue that parity symmetry is not only a beautiful candidate for a symmetry beyond the standard model, but it can also explain the known neutrino physics anomalies.
Self-Referential Dysfunction and Default-Mode Hyperactivation in Psychophysiological Insomnia Patients: A Case-Control fMRI Study

Psychophysiological insomnia (PI) is one of the most frequent sleep disorders. In this study we tested whether differences in terms of neural activation are present between a group of PI patients and a healthy-control group while they are exposed to idiosyncratic ruminations and worries, evoked visually by words, so as to explore their hypothetical link with default-mode network (DMN) dysfunction in PI. We recruited five PI patients diagnosed according to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders, version 2 (ICSD-2) of American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and five age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Patients were recruited at the outpatient Sleep Medicine Centre of the Coimbra University Hospital Centre. We used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) block-design paradigm where the participants visualized lists of words related to past/present and future concerns and also emotionally neutral words. The results suggested that the PI patients showed a failure of the DMN to deactivate. Moreover, when these patients were exposed to words concerning both past/present ruminations and future worries, there was a pronounced and significant over-recruitment of brain areas related to DMN and self-referential processing when they were compared to healthy volunteers. The differences between the patient and control groups were also evident in self-report measures. In sum, despite the relatively small sample size, our study clearly suggests that in PI there is a dysfunction in brain regions pertaining to self-referential processing, which is corroborated by an overall pattern of hyperarousal in brain regions comprising the DMN. These data may be useful in the improvement of pathophysiological models, diagnostic and therapeutic interventions for insomnia.
The aromatic/arginine selectivity filter of NIP aquaporins plays a critical role in substrate selectivity for silicon, boron, and arsenic

Nodulin-26-like intrinsic proteins (NIPs) of the aquaporin family are involved in the transport of diverse solutes, but the mechanisms controlling the selectivity of transport substrates are poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the aromatic/arginine (ar/R) selectivity filter influences the substrate selectivity of two NIP aquaporins; the silicic acid (Si) transporter OsLsi1 (OsNIP2;1) from rice and the boric acid (B) transporter AtNIP5;1 from Arabidopsis; both proteins are also permeable to arsenite. Native and site-directed mutagenized variants of the two genes were expressed in Xenopus oocytes and the transport activities for Si, B, arsenite, and water were assayed. Substitution of the amino acid at the ar/R second helix (H2) position of OsLsi1 did not affect the transport activities for Si, B, and arsenite, but that at the H5 position resulted in a total loss of Si and B transport activities and a partial loss of arsenite transport activity. Conversely, changes of the AtNIP5;1 ar/R selectivity filter and the NPA motifs to the OsLsi1 type did not result in a gain of Si transport activity. B transport activity was partially lost in the H5 mutant but unaffected in the H2 mutant of AtNIP5;1. In contrast, both the single and double mutations at the H2 and/or H5 positions of AtNIP5;1 did not affect arsenite transport activity. The results reveal that the residue at the H5 position of the ar/R filter of both OsLsi1 and AtNIP5;1 plays a key role in the permeability to Si and B, but there is a relatively low selectivity for arsenite.
Recommender system based on user functional requirements using Euclidean fuzzy

Customer often feels difficult to describe what he needs when he intends to buy a high-tech product with complex features, such as smartphone, notebook, camera, PC, car, server, etc. It is because the most of users are less familiar with the technical features of this product types. However, most recommender systems had been developed still directly refer to product features when extracting user's requirement. Naturally, users often express their needs based on functional requirements (need smartphone for gaming, reading e-book, online activity, etc). Considering the problems, this paper proposes a new approach for products recommendation based on functional requirements of product, to produce the more properly recommendation. Our proposed approach uses mapping between functional requirements, components product and supporting features of component. We utilize Euclidean fuzzy concept for calculating the similarity between user requirements and product features. The domain of our recommender system is smartphone area. The evaluation of the approach shows that the computation was accurate for 92.67%. The proposed approach also gives a more flexible recommendation process, since it considers the products that have better quality than the quality level that user wants.
Streptococcus pyogenes SpyCEP Influences Host-Pathogen Interactions during Infection in a Murine Air Pouch Model

Streptococcus pyogenes is a major human pathogen worldwide, responsible for both local and systemic infections. These bacteria express the subtilisin-like protease SpyCEP which cleaves human IL-8 and related chemokines. We show that localization of SpyCEP is growth-phase and strain dependent. Significant shedding was observed only in a strain naturally overexpressing SpyCEP, and shedding was not dependent on SpyCEP autoproteolytic activity. Surface-bound SpyCEP in two different strains was capable of cleaving IL-8. To investigate SpyCEP action in vivo, we adapted the mouse air pouch model of infection for parallel quantification of bacterial growth, host immune cell recruitment and chemokine levels in situ. In response to infection, the predominant cells recruited were neutrophils, monocytes and eosinophils. Concomitantly, the chemokines KC, LIX, and MIP-2 in situ were drastically increased in mice infected with the SpyCEP knockout strain, and growth of this mutant strain was reduced compared to the wild type. SpyCEP has been described as a potential vaccine candidate against S. pyogenes, and we showed that surface-associated SpyCEP was recognized by specific antibodies. In vitro, such antibodies also counteracted the inhibitory effects of SpyCEP on chemokine mediated PMN recruitment. Thus, α-SpyCEP antibodies may benefit the host both directly by enabling opsonophagocytosis, and indirectly, by neutralizing an important virulence factor. The animal model we employed shows promise for broad application in the study of bacterial pathogenesis.
Claims Maps: Treasure Maps for Scenario-Based Design

Design representations express the state of a design with respect to a followed design procedure. Scenario-Based Design (SBD) is an HCI usability engineering process that leverages claims, knowledge units encapsulating tradeoffs associated with design features. HCI students need to express the concepts and rationale in their interface design related to SBD, but the lack of a design representation and tool inhibits expressing key details. We present claims maps as a representation to show the connections established between claims as a result of the SBD process. An evaluation in a introductory course shows students can identify claim types, associate system goals to features, gain insight into potential evaluation plans, and do find greater utility in using claims maps.
PHYTOHORMONE LEVELS OF DROUGHT ‐ ACCLIMATED LAUREL SEEDLINGS IN SEMIARID CONDITIONS

The effect of acclimation to drought in seedlings of Mediterranean evergreen sclerophyll Laurus nobilis L. (laurel) was studied in semiarid field conditions. The phytohormones abscisic acid (ABA), gibberellic acid (GA 3), zeatin (Z) and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) contents, plant water potential, photochemical efficiency, and morphological characters were determined. Seedlings were acclimated to drought in nursery where half of the plants were subjected to water deficit (50 % of field capacity) during 5 months. The other half was irrigated regularly at field capacity and served as controls. Then seedlings were transplanted to semiarid field conditions around Urla (Aegean Region-Turkey) while exposed to drought stress. Measurements were done ten months after transplanting. Plant water potential reached-2.5 MPa in acclimated seedlings and-1.5 MPa in non-acclimated controls. GA 3 and Z contents of leaves were higher in acclimated seedlings as compared to control ones, while ABA was not changed. On the contrary, IAA content of the leaves of acclimated seedlings was reduced. The photochemical efficiency of PSII in acclimated seedlings was maintained at a higher level than in controls, while leaf area and plant height were 204 Yildiz Aktas et al.
A chaotic memristor circuit

We propose and analyze a circuit comprising of three memristors, three switches and a driver. The circuit computes the logistic map and thus acts as an example of a simple memristive circuit with chaotic behavior. For the analysis of the circuit we also describe how analog computation can be performed with certain type of voltage controlled memristors. Simulation results validating the theory are presented.
The 10 th Workshop on Multimodal Corpora : Combining Applied and Basic Research Targets Workshop Programme

This paper presents an attempt to continuously annotate the emotion and status of multimodal corpora for understanding psychotherapeutic interviews. The collected continuous annotations are then used as the signal data to find change points in the dialogues. Our target dialogues are carried between clients with some psychological problems and their therapists. We measured two values, namely the degree of the dialogue progress and the degree of clients being listened to. The first value reflects the goal-oriented nature of the target dialogues. The second value corresponds to the idea of active listening that is considered as an important aspect in psychotherapy. We have modified an existing continuous emotion annotation toolkit that has been created for tracking generic emotion of dialogues. By applying a change point detection algorithm on the obtained annotations, we evaluated the validity and utility of the collected annotation based on our method.
Visual Analysis of Weblog Content

In recent years, one of the advances of the World Wide Web is social media and one of the fastest growing aspects of social media is the blogosphere. Blogs make content creation easy and are highly accessible through web pages and syndication. With their growing influence, a need has arisen to be able to monitor the opinions and insight revealed within their content. In this paper we describe a technical approach for analyzing the content of blog data using a visual analytic tool, IN-SPIRE, developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. We highlight the capabilities of this tool that are particularly useful for information gathering from blog data.
3-tier dynamically adaptive power-aware motion estimator for h.264/AVC video encoding

The limitation of energy in portable communication/entertainment devices necessitates the reduction of video encoding complexity. The H.264/AVC video coding standard is one of the latest video codecs and features a complex Motion Estimation scheme that accounts for a major part of the encoder energy. We therefore present a power-aware Motion Estimator for H.264 that adapts at run time according to the available energy level. We perform a set of adaptations at different Processing Stages of Motion Estimation. Our results show that in case of CIF videos (typically used in portable devices; but our approach is equally applicable to other video resolutions too), we achieve an average energy reduction of 52 times and 27 times as compared to UMHexagonS and EPZS respectively. This energy saving comes at the cost of an average loss of only 0.39 dB in Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR: an objective quality measure) and 23% increase in area (synthesized for 90 nm technology).
How Mindset Matters: The Direct and Indirect Effects of Employees’ Mindsets on Job Performance

Individuals vary in their mindsets – their implicit beliefs regarding the malleability of human attributes. Because mindset influences responses to achievement situations, we hypothesize that employees with a more incremental mindset (i.e., believing that human attributes can be changed through effort and hard work) will have higher job performance and better relationships with their manager. We found that employees with a more incremental mindset have higher job performance. Also, when their manager has a strong learning goal orientation, employees with a more incremental mindset have a higher quality relationship with their manager, which, in turn, positively relates to their job performance.
TCP over On-Board IP Networks with High Bit Error Rate and Frequent Link Outages

Network mobility standard released by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which allow the deployment of TCP/IP networks onboard a vehicle and maintain continuous network connectivity to the Internet through a mobile router. It enables the passengers travelling on public transports can avail the efficient mobile computing facility on move. It is challenging task to ensure network performance due to vulnerable nature of wireless link and network mobility. In this paper, a performance analysis of onboard networks is conducted with different transport protocols. It has been shown that high bit error rate and disruptions degrade network throughput. The performance of these protocols was obtained from the ns-2 simulations. Simulations were designed to test the protocols in non-congested environments. The performance of the protocols was measured based on the throughput parameter.