Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Framework of Cross-Layer Superposition Coded Multicast for Robust IPTV Services over WiMAX

A cross-layer design (CLD) framework for robust and efficient video multicasting over IEEE 802.16 (or WiMAX) is introduced. In the framework, multiple description coding on scalable video bitstreams at the source for achieving multi-resolution robustness is jointly designed with superposition coding (i.e., multi-resolution modulation) on multicast signals at the channel to overcome the channel diversity problem in wireless multicast. The resulting cross-layer coded multicast signals enable us to recover some lost bitstreams in high quality layers, which is not possible if multi-resolution modulation is used alone for multicasting as in previous works. Simulation results show that indeed our joint design outperforms the scheme using only superposition coded multicast by achieving better video quality for users under multi-user channel diversity.
Combining D2K and JGAP for Efficient Feature Weighting for Classification Tasks in Music Information Retrieval

Music classification continues to be an important component of music information retrieval research. An underutilized tool for improving the performance of classifiers is feature weighting. A major reason for its unpopularity, despite its benefits, is the potentially infinite calculation time it requires to achieve optimal results. Genetic algorithms offer potentially sub-optimal but reasonable solutions at much reduced calculation time, yet they are still quite costly. We investigate the advantages of implementing genetic algorithms in a parallel computing environment to make feature weighting an affordable instrument for researchers in MIR.
Glomerular filtration rate measured by 99mTc‐DTPA renal dynamic imaging is significantly lower than that estimated by the CKD‐EPI equation in horseshoe kidney patients

Gate's glomerular filtration rate (gGFR) measured by 99mTc‐DTPA renal dynamic imaging and estimated GFR (eGFR) estimated by the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration (CKD‐EPI) equation are two indexes used to evaluate renal function. However, little is known about whether gGFR can be used to accurately assess renal function in horseshoe kidney (HSK) patients with renal fusion anomalies.
Convex Coding

Inspired by recent work on convex formulations of clustering (Lashkari & Golland, 2008; Nowozin & Bakir, 2008) we investigate a new formulation of the Sparse Coding Problem (Olshausen & Field, 1997). In sparse coding we attempt to simultaneously represent a sequence of data-vectors sparsely (i.e. sparse approximation (Tropp et al., 2006)) in terms of a "code" defined by a set of basis elements, while also finding a code that enables such an approximation. As existing alternating optimization procedures for sparse coding are theoretically prone to severe local minima problems, we propose a convex relaxation of the sparse coding problem and derive a boosting-style algorithm, that (Nowozin & Bakir, 2008) serves as a convex "master problem" which calls a (potentially non-convex) sub-problem to identify the next code element to add. Finally, we demonstrate the properties of our boosted coding algorithm on an image denoising task.
Fission Risk or Inertia? towards an Evolutionary-ecological Model of Human Capital Decisions

The evolutionary-ecological model presented here introduces a new concept, ‘fission’, in order to highlight the possibility of economically rational outcomes manifesting inert demand for human capital. The apparent paradox between the availability of skilled labour and an unresponsiveness of employers to its availability is shown to be the consequence of employer risk avoidance in the presence of ‘fission’, the dis-mantling or splitting of the employer’s company that may occur if it accumulates a critical mass of skilled labour who are capable of ‘spinning off’ to create a separate and potentially competing company. ‘Fission’ is likely to undermine an existing unit’s expected fitness and thus explain why employers are reluctant to hire top educated and skilled individuals. It is assumed here that when an additional top worker enters the firm, the risk of fission increases. Moreover, there is a real possibility that the nucleus of the incumbent firm ends up with no elements, that is, all the top workers will leave the firm (radical fission) instead of the firm diminishing but continuing with a positive number (partial fission). The “fission argument” implicitly assumes that there is a ‘threshold’ range of top skilled or top educated workers needed to run a plant. To the left and to the right of this range, the establishment’s fitness decreases. Statistical evidence, using a logit specification, based on data of the Portuguese textiles, provides estimates that seem to corroborate the fission hypothesis.
Dez anos de Consumer Culture Theory: delimitações e aberturas

O ano de 2015 marcou 10 anos da publicacao do artigo Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty years of research, por Arnould e Thompson (2005), no Journal of Consumer Research. O trabalho procurava compilar as pesquisas de orientacao cultural produzidas desde a decada de 1980 dentro do campo de marketing. Ao criar uma marca capaz de evidenciar coesao entre trabalhos que antes recebiam chancela de interpretativos ou pos-modernos, o artigo terminou por catalisar a legitimidade desse tipo de pesquisa e fez florescer uma comunidade de pesquisadores ativa e diversificada
An Efficient Proportionate Affine Projection Algorithm for Echo Cancellation

Proportionate-type normalized least-mean-square algorithms were developed in the context of echo cancellation. In order to further increase the convergence rate and tracking, the ¿proportionate¿ idea was applied to the affine projection algorithm (APA) in a straightforward manner. The objective of this letter is twofold. First, a general framework for the derivation of proportionate-type APAs is proposed. Second, based on this approach, a new proportionate-type APA is developed, taking into account the ¿history¿ of the proportionate factors. The benefit is also twofold. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the classical one (achieving faster tracking and lower misadjustment). Besides, it also has a lower computational complexity due to a recursive implementation of the ¿proportionate history¿.
Ordered Enumeration Method

Integer programming algorithms based on the ordered enumeration method are described. Combining dynamic programming and branch and bound ideas in one efficient computational process, S. S. Lebedev implemented his method for solving integer linear programming problems in 1968. A number of ordered enumeration algorithms were developed since the 1970's. The author has been actively involved in this research and the paper presents several such algorithms, extended application and parallelization of the method. Most papers on this highly competitive combinatorial method of discrete optimization are written in Russian and little known to researchers and educators not familiar with the language.
Diffusion of innovations over multiplex social networks

The ways in which an innovation (e.g., new behaviour, idea, technology, product) diffuses among people can determine its success or failure. In this paper, we address the problem of diffusion of innovations over multiplex social networks where the neighbours of a person belong to one or multiple networks (or layers) such as friends, families, or colleagues. To this end, we generalise one of the basic game-theoretic diffusion models, called networked coordination game, for multiplex networks. We present analytical results for this extended model and validate them through a simulation study, finding among other properties a lower bound for the success of an innovation. While simple and leading to intuitively understandable results, to the best of our knowledge this is the first extension of a game-theoretic innovation diffusion model for multiplex networks and as such it provides a basic framework to study more sophisticated innovation dynamics.
Louis Working Paper Series Beyond the Numbers : An Analysis of Optimistic and Pessimistic Language in Earnings Press Releases

In this paper, we examine whether managers use optimistic and pessimistic language in earnings press releases to provide information about expected future firm performance to the market, and whether the market responds to optimistic and pessimistic language usage in earnings press releases after controlling for the earnings surprise and other factors likely to influence the market*s response to the earnings announcement. We use textual-analysis software to measure levels of optimistic and pessimistic language for a sample of approximately 24,000 earnings press releases issued between 1998 and 2003. We find a positive (negative) association between optimistic (pessimistic) language usage and future firm performance and a significant incremental market response to optimistic and pessimistic language usage in earnings press releases. Results suggest managers use optimistic and pessimistic language to provide credible information about expected future firm performance to the market, and that the market responds to managers' language usage.
A mechanical feedback system for linear colliders to compensate fast magnet motion

For high luminosity, all linear collider schemes under study require very low emittance beams. When transverse beam dimensions of the opposing linacs become very small, high beam position stability is necessary to maintain high luminosity. For the 500 GeV c.m. S-band collider SBLC uncorrelated rms quadrupole vibrations must be smaller than some 70 nm and have to be reduced to 20 nm for the 1 TeV upgrade. An inexpensive mechanical stabilization scheme based on geophones, piezocrystals and a digital feedback system has been successfully tested. It damps quadrupole motions in a frequency range of 2-30 Hz by factors up to 4, such that remaining magnet motions may be within tolerance limits. Based on a geophone with noise level below 1 nm, it is likely that this system may allow stabilization below the 10 nm level.
Can Market Power Influence Employment, Wage Inequality and Growth?

We introduce an efficiency-wage mechanism into an innovation-driven growth model. Due to informational problems, the labour market is segmented and homogeneous workers may be employed either in a non-competitive intermediate sector or in a competitive research one. We analyse the impact that variations in the monopoly power of the intermediate firms may have on unemployment, wage inequality and growth. We find that the lower the product market competition in the intermediate sector, the higher the research employment, the lower the intermediate sector employment, the higher the aggregate growth rate. Growth and inequality are negatively correlated whereas growth and unemployment are positively correlated. The last two results are obtained through numerical simulations.
How do code refactorings affect energy usage?

Context: Code refactoring's benefits to understandability, maintainability and extensibility are well known enough that automated support for refactoring is now common in IDEs. However, the decision to apply such transformations is currently performed without regard to the impacts of the refactorings on energy consumption. This is primarily due to a lack of information and tools to provide such relevant information to developers. Unfortunately, concerns about energy efficiency are rapidly becoming a high priority concern in many environments, including embedded systems, laptops, mobile devices, and data centers. Goal: We aim to address the lack of information about the energy efficiency impacts of code refactorings. Method: We conducted an empirical study to investigate the energy impacts of 197 applications of 6 commonly-used refactorings. Results: We found that refactorings can not only impact energy usage but can also increase and decrease the amount of energy used by an application. In addition, we also show that metrics commonly believed to correlate with energy usage are unlikely to be able to fully predict the impact of applying a refactoring. Conclusion: The results from this and similar studies could be used to augment IDEs to help software developers build more energy efficient software.
“After my husband’s circumcision, I know that I am safe from diseases”: Women’s Attitudes and Risk Perceptions Towards Male Circumcision in Iringa, Tanzania

While male circumcision reduces the risk of female-to-male HIV transmission and certain sexually transmitted infections (STIs), there is little evidence that circumcision provides women with direct protection against HIV. This study used qualitative methods to assess women’s perceptions of male circumcision in Iringa, Tanzania. Women in this study had strong preferences for circumcised men because of the low risk perception of HIV with circumcised men, social norms favoring circumcised men, and perceived increased sexual desirability of circumcised men. The health benefits of male circumcision were generally overstated; many respondents falsely believed that women are also directly protected against HIV and that the risk of all STIs is greatly reduced or eliminated in circumcised men. Efforts to engage women about the risks and limitations of male circumcision, in addition to the benefits, should be expanded so that women can accurately assess their risk of HIV or STIs during sexual intercourse with circumcised men.
Different expression of large-conductance calcium-activated K+ channels in human internal mammary and radial arteries.

AIMS In this study, we investigated and compared the electrophysiological and molecular properties of large-conductance Ca(2+)-activated K(+) (BK(Ca)) channels between human internal mammary arteries (IMA) and radial arteries (RA). METHODS AND RESULTS IMA and RA sections were obtained from 79 patients (including 9 females) undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery. We examined the effects of K(+) channel blockers tetraethylammonium (TEA), iberiotoxin (IBTX), and 4-aminopyridine (4-AP) on isolated smooth muscle cells (SMCs) using patch clamping. Both TEA (1 mM) and IBTX (0.1 µM) significantly decreased K(+) currents in IMA SMCs and RA SMCs, while 4-AP (1 mM) only had a weak effect. IBTX had a greater K(+)-blocking effect on IMA SMCs than on RA SMCs. Consistently, TEA and IBTX evoked significant constriction of both intact vascular rings. IBTX had a greater constrictor effect on IMA rings (18.5 ± 6.7%, n= 8) than on RA rings (10.6 ± 3.1%, n= 8), P< 0.05. RT-PCR and western blot analysis demonstrated that gene and protein expression of the α-subunit of BK(Ca) channels from IMA was greater than that from RA. CONCLUSION The density of BK(Ca) channels is greater in human IMA than in RA resulting in greater BK(Ca) currents in SMCs from IMA. This may partly explain the finding of less spasm in IMA grafts than in RA grafts. Our results may be of value in determining the best anti-spasm agent to use peri-operatively.
Views: Synthesizing fine-grained concurrency control

Fine-grained locking is often necessary to increase concurrency. Correctly implementing fine-grained locking with today's concurrency primitives can be challenging—race conditions often plague programs with sophisticated locking schemes. We present views, a new approach to concurrency control. Views ease the task of implementing sophisticated locking schemes and provide static checks to automatically detect many data races. A view of an object declares a partial interface, consisting of fields and methods, to the object that the view protects. A view also contains an incompatibility declaration, which lists views that may not be simultaneously held by other threads. A set of view annotations specify which code regions hold a view of an object. Our view compiler performs simple static checks that identify many data races. We pair the basic approach with an inference algorithm that can infer view incompatibility specifications for many applications. We have ported four benchmark applications to use views: portions of Vuze, a BitTorrent client; Mailpuccino, a graphical email client; jphonelite, a VoIP softphone implementation; and TupleSoup, a database. Our experience indicates that views are easy to use, make implementing sophisticated locking schemes simple, and can help eliminate concurrency bugs. We have evaluated the performance of a view implementation of a red-black tree and found that views can significantly improve performance over that of the lock-based implementation.
of Electrical and Computer

In this paper, we develop methods to reduce interconnect delay and noise caused by coupling. First, we introduce two novel problems that deal with coupling { the Coupling-Free Routing (CFR) Problem and the Maximum Coupling-Free Layout (MAX-CFL) Problem. We argue that these problems are useful in both global and detailed routing. Then, we develop algorithms to eeciently solve the problems. Our experimental results show that the algorithms work eeec-tively on real data.
Towards Bendable Augmented Maps

Three different kinds assumptions are often used for representing the shape of a paper:rigid, foldable and nonrigid. Nonrigid surface detection is intensively explored as challenging topics which addresses two problems: recovering the paper shape and estimating the camera pose. The state-of-the-art researches try to solve both problems robustly for real time purpose. We propose an augmented reality application that use a nonrigid detection method to recover the shape of the bendable paper using dots as keypoints and estimate the camera pose simultaneously. Our approach recovers the multi-planarity of the paper as the initial shape and iteratively approximates the surface shape. The multi-planarity is estimated by using the tracking by descriptor update method that uses the correspondence between captured and reference keypoints. We then optimize the shape using the progressive finite newton optimization method.
Energy Efficient Relaying within a Cell: Multi Path versus Shortest Path Routing

Using a linear model to formulate and solve the minimum power joint schedule and routing problem in a single cell network, we study a next generation relay aided cellular network to derive energy efficient routing schemes and, through simulation, we assess the performance of the simpler to implement shortest path routing scheme versus the more complex multi path option.
Correcting User Guided Image Segmentation

We tackle the problem of segmenting an image into planes given user input. Using a supervised learning approach, we develop an algorithm that adjusts the user input towards true plane segmentations, under the restriction that images have vertical boundary lines. We begin by collecting images for the training set consisting of hallways, buildings, stairs, rooms, etc. Users are then asked to draw dots on the image to indicate the locations of the intersection between neighboring planes. We then apply our supervised learning algorithm to predict the true location of the planes. Thus, we propose a method to infer the boundaries of planes from a single image given user input.
Using Sparse Coding for Answer Summarization in Non-Factoid Community Question-Answering

We focus on the task of summarizing answers in community ques-tion-answering (CQA). While most previous work on answer sum-marization focuses on factoid question-answering, we focus on non-factoid question-answering. In contrast to factoid CQA with a short and accurate answer, non-factoid question-answering usually re-quires passages as answers. The diversity, shortness and sparse-ness of answers form interesting challenges for summarization. To tackle these challenges, we propose a sparse coding-based summa-rization strategy, in which we can effectively capture the saliency of diverse, short and sparse units. Specifically, after transferring all candidate answer sentences into vectors, we present a coordinate descent learning method to optimize a loss function to reconstruct the input vectors as a linear combination of basis vectors. Experi-mental results on a benchmark data collection confirm the effective-ness of our proposed method in non-factoid CQA summarization. Our method is shown to significantly outperform the state-of-the-art in terms of ROUGE metrics.
Power constrained design of multiprocessor interconnection networks

The paper considers the power constrained design of orthogonal multiprocessor interconnection networks. The authors present a detailed model of message latency as a function of topology, technology architecture, and power. This model is then used to analyze a number of interesting scenarios, providing a sound engineering basis for interconnection network design in these cases. For example, they have observed that under a fixed power constraint, the network dimension which achieves minimal latency is a slowly growing function of system size. In addition, as they increase the available power per node for a fixed system size, the dimension at which message latency is minimized shifts towards higher dimensional networks.
On the ICI Mitigation Techniques in High Mobility Mimo-OFDM Systems with Parallel ICI Cancellation Under Various Normalized Doppler Spreads

The signals of LF and VLF are rapidly alternated by the earth's surface; and there are various propagation models currently used by the wireless industry for signal transmission within the frequency range 150-1800 MHz. Hata-Okumura two rays model are one of them. This paper addresses the problem of Inter Carrier Interference (ICI) arising from the Doppler shift caused by the high mobility in areas covered by OFDM based systems via High Altitude Platforms (HAPs). The proposed scheme presented in this paper is for Doppler assisted channel estimation with the parallel interference cancellation with decision statistical combining scheme (PIC-DSC) for high mobility MIMO-OFDM systems to improve the ICI cancellation which is essential in enhancing the BER performance which induces a large frequency offset error. The simulation results shows that the outperforms convergence characteristic of channel estimation with the PIC-DSC interference cancellation scheme - under various normalized Doppler spreads (e.g., normalized Doppler spread of 0.1 and 0.025) at SNR 20dB and 30dB - has better symbol error rate (SER). The algorithm is efficiently mitigates ICI under Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation showing Bit Error Rate (BER) performance analysis and compared with other existing schemes.
Data and text mining Automatic assignment of biomedical categories : toward a generic approach

Motivation: We report on the development of a generic text categorization system designed to automatically assign biomedical categories to any input text. Unlike usual automatic text categorization systems, which rely on data-intensivemodels extracted from large sets of training data, our categorizer is largely data-independent. Methods: In order to evaluate the robustness of our approach we test the system on two different biomedical terminologies: the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and the Gene Ontology (GO). Our lightweight categorizer, based on two rankingmodules, combines a pattern matcher and a vector space retrieval engine, and uses both stems and linguistically-motivated indexing units. Results and Conclusion: Results show the effectiveness of phrase indexing for both GO and MeSH categorization, but we observe the categorization power of the tool depends on the controlled vocabulary: precision at high ranks ranges from above 90% for MeSH to ,20% for GO, establishing a new baseline for categorizers based on retrieval