Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HAQWA: a Hash-based and Query Workload Aware Distributed RDF Store

Like most data models encountered in the Big Data ecosystem, RDF stores are managing large data sets by partitioning triples across a cluster of machines. Nevertheless, the graphical nature of RDF data as well as its associated SPARQL query execution model makes the efficient data distribution more involved than in other data models, e.g., relational. In this paper, we propose a novel system that is characterized by a trade-off between complexity of data partitioning and efficiency of query answering in cases where a query workload is known. The prototype is implemented over the Apache Spark framework, ensuring high availability, fault tolerance and scalability. This short paper presents the main features of the system and highlights the omnipresence of parallel computation across data fragmentation and allocation, encoding and query processing tasks.
MULTI-LAYER ORTHOGONAL VISUAL CODEBOOK FOR IMAGE CLASSIFICATION

Recently, Bag of Visual Words (BoW) model has shown its success in image classification and retrieval. The key idea behind the BoW model is to quantize the continuous highdimensional space of image features (e.g. SIFT [1]) to a manageable visual codebook. The quality of the visual codebook has an important impact on BoW-based methods. Different from the existing techniques, such as Kernel codebook [4] and Sparse Coding [5], we propose a novel multi-layer orthogonal codebook (MOC) generation approach. It aims at explicitly reducing quantization error by generating codebook from the feature space that is orthogonal to the existing codebook. Furthermore, we propose two simple schemes to apply the new codebook with spatial pyramid matching (SPM) [2] on image classification. Experimental results show the efficiency of our proposed MOC generation method, and the performance on image classification is comparable to the state-of-the-art techniques.
Rethinking intra-party cohesion: Towards a conceptual and analytical framework

Intra-party cohesion (IPC) is a concept extensively used to assess institutional change and behaviour in legislative and party politics. In spite of its popularity, there is confusion about its meaning mostly derived from its multidimensional nature. This article aims to clarify the understanding of this term across three different fields of research (legislative studies, party factionalism and Hirschman’s theory applied to intra-party dynamics) and to build a conceptual framework that integrates several analytical dimensions. It uses quantitative network-based analysis of bibliographic data to provide a descriptive account of connections between these fields of the literature. Based on this, it identifies major challenges in the study of IPC and reveals the necessity to investigate it beyond ideology and legislative arena. To this end, we argue and illustrate how Hirschman’s theory applied to three levels of analysis allows us to formulate a framework suitable for the study of IPC.
A Dynamic Factor Model of the Yield Curve as a Predictor of the Economy

In this paper, we propose an econometric model of the joint dynamic relationship between the yield curve and the economy to predict business cycles. We examine the predictive value of the yield curve to forecast future economic growth as well as the beginning and end of economic recessions at the monthly frequency. The proposed nonlinear multivariate dynamic factor model takes into account not only the popular term spread but also information extracted from the level and curvature of the yield curve and from macroeconomic variables. The nonlinear model is used to investigate the interrelationship between the phases of the bond market and of the business cycle. The results indicate a strong interrelation between these two sectors. The proposed factor model of the yield curve exhibits substantial incremental predictive value compared to several alternative specifications. This result holds in-sample and out-of-sample, using revised or real time unrevised data.
Implications of accounting for land use in simulations of ecosystem services and carbon cycling in Africa

their implication for the results shown are not discussed. , . , Many ’factorial’ climate simulations are performed here, that are not included in Bondeau et al. (2007), but there are only too shortly discussed at the very end of the paper. More generally, I am not sure I understood why LPJ-Guess had to be used, and croplands parameterizations from LPJ-mL included in LPJ-Guess, instead of using LPJ-mL directly ?
A relation between standard conjectures and their arithmetic analogues

In this paper we resolve the arithmetic analogues of standard conjectures for an arithmetic variety, which are proposed by Gillet and Soule, into original standard conjectures and similar conjectures for two cycle class groups. One is the homologically trivial cycles. This is well-known as conjectures about the height pairing raised by Beilinson. The other is the cycle class groups consisting of vertical cycles. We show that the conjectures for the above two cycle class groups with Grothendieck's standard conjectures imply their arithmetic analogues.
Research on the Intrusion detection mechanism based on cloud computing

People are paid more attention on Intrusion detection which as an important computer network security technology. According to the development trend of intrusion detection, Detecting all kinds of intrusions effectively requires a global view of the monitored network, we are developing a new intrusion detection mechanism based on cloud computing, which can make up for the deficiency of traditional intrusion detection, and proved to be great scalable.
A verified algorithm for detecting conflicts in XACML access control rules

We describe the formalization of a correctness proof for a conflict detection algorithm for XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language). XACML is a standardized declarative access control policy language that is increasingly used in industry. In practice it is common for rule sets to grow large, and contain unintended errors, often due to conflicting rules. A conflict occurs in a policy when one rule permits a request and another denies that same request. Such errors can lead to serious risks involving both allowing access to an unauthorized user as well as denying access to someone who needs it. Removing conflicts is thus an important aspect of debugging policies, and the use of a verified algorithm provides the highest assurance in a domain where security is important. In this paper, we focus on several complex XACML constructs, including time ranges and integer intervals, as well as ways to combine any number of functions using the boolean operators and, or, and not. The latter are the most complex, and add significant expressive power to the language. We propose an algorithm to find conflicts and then use the Coq Proof Assistant to prove the algorithm correct. We develop a library of tactics to help automate the proof.
Cognitive performance in irritable bowel syndrome: evidence of a stress-related impairment in visuospatial memory

Background Central nervous system (CNS) dysfunction is a prominent feature of the functional gastrointestinal (GI) disorder, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). However, the neurobiological and cognitive consequences of key pathophysiological features of IBS, such as stress-induced changes in hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA)-axis functioning, is unknown. Our aim was to determine whether IBS is associated with cognitive impairment, independently of psychiatric co-morbidity, and whether cognitive performance is related to HPA-axis function. Method A cross-sectional sample of 39 patients with IBS, a disease control group of 18 patients with Crohn's disease (CD) in clinical remission and 40 healthy age- and IQ-matched control participants were assessed using the Paired Associates Learning (PAL), Intra-Extra Dimensional Set Shift (IED) and Spatial Working Memory (SWM) tests from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) and a computerized Stroop test. HPA-axis function was determined by measuring the cortisol awakening response (CAR). Results IBS patients exhibited a subtle visuospatial memory deficit at the PAL six- pattern stage (p = 0.03), which remained after psychiatric co-morbidity was controlled for (p = 0.04). Morning cortisol levels were lower in IBS (p = 0.04) and significantly associated with visuospatial memory performance within IBS only (p = 0.02). Conclusions For the first time, altered cognitive function on a hippocampal-mediated test of visuospatial memory, which was related to cortisol levels and independent of psychiatric co-morbidity, has been identified in IBS. Visuospatial memory impairment may be a common, but currently neglected, component of IBS. Further elucidation of the nature of this impairment may lead to a greater understanding of the underlying pathophysiology of IBS, and may provide novel therapeutic approaches.
Bitplane Based Wyner-Ziv Coding using Unequal Error Protection

In this paper, we discuss a novel approach to distributed video coding (DVC) using bitplane based unequal error protection. Distributed video coding (DVC) has recently attracted a vast amount of attention from the video coding community all around the world, since it could prove very well suited for some applications where low-complexity encoders are a must. The primary feature of DVC is its modified complexity balance in the encoder and decoder, in contrast to its traditional competitors. When considering each pixel of the frame, out of the 8 bits it constitutes, each bit position has a different significance decreasing gradually from the MSB to the LSB. Therefore a scheme which protects the initial bitplanes better would undoubtedly be desirable. Here we propose to protest each bitplane considering its significance using variable memory length in the encoder. Since increasing the memory length results in higher computational complexity, the optimum mix of the memory length is to be evaluated for the codec to operate within the conceptual restrictions of low-complex encoder in DVC. In this paper, the proposed codec is compared for peformance with another DVC codec which uses a fixed memory length over the whole sequence with comparable complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed method outperforms its fixed memory length counterpart t by a significant margin
The Co-Presence of Clarity and Ambiguity in Strategic Corporate Communication – An Exploratory Study

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to examine the co-presence of clarity and ambiguity in the formulation, interpretation and implementation of corporate communication strategies. Following a growing scholarly interest in how ambiguity can be seen as a productive strategic resource in strategy work, this article focuses on the interdependency of clarity and ambiguity in corporate communication strategies. Through an exploratory study, using interpretive discourse analysis of interviews with employees at a corporate communication department, the present article analyses how the employees perceived the writing, reading, and enactment of their organisation’s new corporate communication strategy. The analysis reveals that the employees sometimes use shared understandings to produce ambiguity in relation to engagement and responsibility, and how they use ambiguity to create a shared understanding of objectives and practices. Though this co-presence might cause the members to feel a lack of ownership, it does not impede the department’s ability to execute strategy-work.
Real-time Interactive Simulation of Smoke Using Discrete Integrable Vortex Filaments

We present a fluid solver for the real-time interactive simulation of inviscid, ideal fluid flow. The simulation is based on the evolution of discrete vortex filaments, which allow a dramatic increase of detail and performance compared to traditional methods used in Computer Graphics. As a fully lagrangian method the simulation is not restricted to a fixed domain and does not suffer from numerical dissipation. Vortex filaments arise naturally in real flows and thus provide an excellent building block for modelling realistic smoke. We present a GPU-based implementation which allows the interactive experimentation with 3D fluid flow on desktop computers and also in distributed immersive virtual environments.
The effect of hydrogen on the surface segregation of phosphorus in epitaxially grown relaxed Si0.7Ge0.3 films by rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition

The surface segregation of phosphorus in relaxed Si0.7Ge0. 3 epitaxial films grown on Si (100) substrates by rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition was investigated in this letter. The effect of the growth temperature on phosphorus segregation was studied experimentally and examined using a two-state model. As the growth temperature is reduced, phosphorus segregation is greatly suppressed, and we report an extremely sharp phosphorus turn-off slope of 6 nm/dec at 500 °C. The sharper slopes at low temperatures are explained by a modified two-state model which includes the effect of increased surface coverage of hydrogen at low temperatures.
Integration of intonation in F0 trajectory prediction using MSD-HMMs

Present study in speech synthesis places more and more emphasis on the spectral continuities and diverse prosodic effects. The trainable HMM-based speech synthesis method tends to generate more continuous spectral structures than the traditional unit selection method. However, the F0 trajectory generated by HMM-based speech synthesis is often excessively smoothed and lacks prosodic variance. This paper proposed an approach to improve the effect of F0 trajectory prediction in mandarin speech synthesis in the framework of multi-space probability distribution HMMs (MSD-HMMs). In the proposed approach, the intonation, which is predicted by context-dependent decision trees, is integrated to the F0 trajectory generated by the MSD-HMMs as a weighted bias term. The experiments indicate that it has an encouraging improvement in the prosodic effectiveness of Mandarin speech synthesis.
Effect of Barbell Weight on the Structure of the Flat Bench Press

Abstract Król, H and Gołaś, A. Effect of barbell weight on the structure of the flat bench press. J Strength Cond Res 31(5): 1321–1337, 2017—In this study, we have used the multimodular measuring system SMART. The system consisted of 6 infrared cameras and a wireless module to measure muscle bioelectric activity. In addition, the path of the barbell was measured with a special device called the pantograph. Our study concerns the change in the structure of the flat bench press when the weight of the barbell is increased. The research on the bench press technique included both the causes of the motion: the internal structure of the movement and the external kinematic structure showing the effects of the motion, i.e., all the characteristics of the movement. Twenty healthy, male recreational weight trainers with at least 1 year of lifting experience (the mean ± SD = 3.3 ± 1.6 years) were recruited for this study. The subjects had a mean body mass of 80.2 ± 8.6 kg, an average height of 1.77 ± 0.08 m, and their average age was 24.7 ± 0.9 years. In the measuring session, the participants performed consecutive sets of a single repetition of bench pressing with an increasing load (about 70, 80, 90, and 100% of their 1 repetition maximum [1RM]). The results showed a significant change in the phase structure of the bench press, as the barbell weight was increased. While doing the bench press at a 100% 1RM load, the pectoralis major changes from being the prime mover to being the supportive prime mover. At the same time, the role of the prime mover is taken on by the deltoideus anterior. The triceps brachii, in particular, clearly shows a greater involvement.
IMAGE DUPLICATION AND ROTATION DETECTION METHODS FOR STORAGE UTILIZATION

Data storage is growing rapidly without surprise for nowadays. There are several reasons that contribute to it are improper maintained and used including image duplication and inappropriate image. In order to solve the problems above, this paper proposed to enhance face detection (V-J) for inappropriate image and scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) for image duplication method. However, the enhancement of face detection (V-J) method is needed due to limited rotation detection. With the limitation above, this paper proposed simple rotation method to overcome the problem. Besides that, the SIFT method is also limited to the speed performance. In order to overcome the speed performance above, this paper also proposed to reduce the dimension of SIFT so that it increase the speed performance. With the enhancement above show that the proposed resulted better compared to previous researcher’s methods. Hence, the proposed methods above have been proposed as pattern detection algorithms used for storage utilization.
Copper induction and differential expression of laccase in Aspergillus flavus

Aspergillus flavus was isolated from soil and exhibited laccase activity under both constitutive and copper induced conditions. Spiking the medium with 1 mM copper sulfate resulted in an increase in the activity which reached 51.84 U/mL, a distinctive protein band was detected at 60 kDa. The extracellular enzyme was purified 81 fold using gel filtration chromatography and resulted in two different laccase fractions L1 and L2, the latter had a higher enzymatic activity which reached 79.57 U/mL and specific activity of 64.17 U/μg protein. The analysis of the spectrum of the L2 fraction showed a shoulder at 330 nm which is characteristic for T2/T3 copper centers; both copper and zinc were detected suggesting that this is an unconventional white laccase. Primers of laccase gene were designed and synthesized to recover specific gene from A. flavus . Sequence analysis indicated putative laccase (Genbank ID: JF683612) at the amino acid level suggesting a close identity to laccases from other genera containing the copper binding site. Decolorization of textile waste water under different conditions showed possible application in bioremediation within a short period of time. The effect of copper on A. flavus was concentration dependent.
Frequency-Dependent Pathloss in the Ultrawideband Indoor Channel

The frequency-dependent pathloss characteristics of an indoor radio channel are investigated over the FCC-allocated ultrawideband (UWB) frequency range (3.1-10.6 GHz). Complex channel transfer functions are measured under a variety of propagation conditions. The dispersion index is introduced as a measure of the frequency-dependence pathloss and is estimated for each measured channel response. Its first order statistics exhibit significant deviation from the nominal value. The small-scale spatial analysis of the dispersion index reveals a periodic structure for vertically polarized channels. Fractional calculus is used to demonstrate the impact of this dispersion on system performance, and the consequent signal waveform distortion is evaluated.
BDNF and NT‐3 increase excitatory input connectivity in rat hippocampal cultures

The neurotrophic factors brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and neurotrophin‐3 (NT‐3) have been shown to promote excitatory and inhibitory synapse development. However, a quantitative analysis of their influence on connectivity has proven in general difficult to achieve. In this work we use a novel experimental approach based on percolation concepts that provides a quantification of the average number of connections per neuron. In combination with electrophysiological measurements, we characterize the changes in network connectivity induced by BDNF and NT‐3 in rat hippocampal cultures. We show that, on the one hand, BDNF and NT‐3 accelerate the maturation of connectivity in the network by about 17 h. On the other hand, BDNF and NT‐3 increase the number of excitatory input connections by a factor of about two, but without modifying the number of inhibitory input connections. This scenario of a dominant effect on the excitation is supported by the analysis of spontaneous population bursts in cultures treated with either BDNF or NT‐3, which show burst amplitudes that are insensitive to the blockade of inhibition. A leaky integrate‐and‐fire model reproduces the experimental results well.
Radon transform on finite symmetric spaces

The Radon transform belongs to the area of Inverse Problems. The reconstruction of a function from its projection or averages is a central point of study. Besides having direct applications in medical tomography, geophysics, there are also applications in signal processing, statistics and probability. Hence, it is useful to consider discretized versions of the Radon transform.
Closed-loop system identification of cardiovascular control mechanisms in diabetic autonomic neuropathy

The primary focus of this thesis is on the presentation of a sensitive, quantitative method that requires minimal subject cooperation for the assessment of the autonomic nerve damage frequently associated with diabetes mellitus. The method employs a system identification procedure to estimate the open-loop couplings between the beat-tobeat fluctuations in heart rate, arterial blood pressure, and instantaneous lung volume described in a closed-loop model of short-term cardiovascular control mechanisms. This model contains four couplings, two (ILV->HR and BAROREFLEX) of which are considered autonomically mediated; one (ILV-,ABP), mechanically mediated; and the other (CIRCULATORY MECHANICS), primarily mechanically mediated but also autonomically influenced. The model also includes two noise perturbations. These couplings are estimated with data collected non-invasively from both control subjects and subjects with diabetes mellitus. The subjects with diabetes mellitus are divided into three groups based on current accepted tests for the assessment of autonomic nervous function. The results show marked differences in ILV--HR and BAROREFLEX and minor differences in CIRCULATORY MECHANICS across the control and three diabetic groups. Just as important, there are no significant differences in ILV--ABP across these four groups. This study suggests that this closed-loop system identification procedure may provide a powerful tool for the assessment of autonomic neuropathy in patients with diabetes mellitus. This thesis additionally presents a preliminary investigation on the nonlinear dynamics involved in short-term cardiovascular control mechanisms. In particular, a nonlinear system identification procedure is implemented to estimate the effects of the squared and cross product terms of arterial blood pressure and instantaneous lung volume on normal heart rate variability. The results indicate that these particular nonlinear terms do not play a significant role in the generation of heart rate variability. Thesis Supervisor: Richard J. Cohen Title: Professor, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Exploring the intuitiveness of iconic, textual and icon with texts signs for designing user-intuitive web interfaces

Web interface signs such as navigation links, command buttons, thumbnails, small images, and icons are crucial elements of web user interfaces, which act as a communication artifact between the computer and the human (user). In other words, users interact with a web interface via interface signs. Designing intuitive interface sign become essential to make an effective human-computer interaction (HCI). But, a very limited HCI research has been focused on interface sign to design them intuitive for end users. In this paper, an extensive empirical user study was carried out through semi-structured interviews. The study found a set of underlying features for HCI practitioners to design intuitive interface signs in order to construct web interfaces intuitive for end users.