Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implications of Motion Planning: Optimality and k-survivability

We study motion planning problems, finding trajectories that connect two configurations of a system, from two different perspectives: optimality and survivability. For the problem of finding optimal trajectories, we provide a model in which the existence of optimal trajectories is guaranteed, and design an algorithm to find approximately optimal trajectories for a kinematic planar robot within this model. We also design an algorithm to build data structures to represent the configuration space, supporting optimal trajectory queries for any given pair of configurations in an obstructed environment. We are also interested in planning paths for expendable robots moving in a threat environment. Since robots are expendable, our goal is to ensure a certain number of robots reaching the goal. We consider a new motion planning problem, maximum k-survivability: given two points in a stochastic threat environment, find n paths connecting two given points while maximizing the probability that at least k paths reach the goal. Intuitively, a good solution should be diverse to avoid several paths being blocked simultaneously, and paths should be short so that robots can quickly pass through dangerous areas. Finding sets of paths with maximum k-survivability is NP-hard. We design two algorithms: an algorithm that is guaranteed to find an optimal list of paths, and a set of heuristic methods that finds paths with high
Is there an Anti-politics of Electricity? Access to the Grid and Reduced Political Participation in Africa

Electricity is often argued to be a catalyst for a country’s industrialization an d the social development of its citizens, but little is known about the political consequences of providing electric power to people. Contributing to literatures on the politics of public service provision and participation, we investigate the relationship between electricity and three measures of political participation: voting, political contacting, and collective action. Our comparative analysis leverages data from 36 countries collected in five rounds of Afrobarometer surveys between 2002 and 2015 (N ≈ 160,000). Counterintuitively, we find that individuals with access to electricity participate less than those without access to electricity. This relationship is particularly strong for those living in democratic regimes, and with respect to non-electoral forms of participation. We hypothesize that having electricity access is associated with an “anti - politics” leading some citizens to retreat from engagement with the state to things such as the middle-class comforts of cold drinks, cooled air, and television.
Wicked Cool Java: Code Bits, Open-Source Libraries, and Project Ideas

Wicked Cool Java contains 101 fun, interesting, and useful ways to get more out of Java. This isn't intended as a Java tutorial--it's targeted at developers and system architects who have some basic Java knowledge but may not be familiar with the wide range of libraries available. Full of example code and ideas for combining them in useful projects, this book is perfect for hobbyists, and professionals will find tips and open-source projects to enhance their code and make their jobs easier. Topics include converting a non-XML text structure into XML using a parser generator, experimenting with a Java simulator for the Cell Matrix, creating dynamic music and sound in Java, working with open-source class libraries for scientific and mathematical applications, and many more.
Study on Cross-Cultural Knowledge Sharing in Offshore IT Outsourcing

In this paper,we analyzed the impacts of the cultural and work values differences between supplier and client on knowledge sharing and outsourcing performance,proposed some hypotheses,and presented a theoretical model.We designed a questionnaire and conducted a survey in the firms that are engaged in the business of offshore IT services outsourcing in Xi'an Software Park.With the help of SPSS17.0 and AMOS17.0 software tools,we made statistical analysis of the data collected in the questionnaire survey and derived empirical results,on the basis of which we provided some strategies on cross-cultural knowledge sharing in offshore IT services outsourcing.
Pricing Interest Rate Swap Subject to Bilateral Counterparty Risk

This paper presents an analytical model for valuing interest rate swaps, subject to bilateral counterparty credit risk. The counterparty defaults are modeled by the reduced-form model as the first jump of a time-inhomogeneous Poisson process. All quantities modeled are market-observable. The closed-form solution gives us a better understanding of the impact of the credit asymmetry on swap value, credit value adjustment, swap rate and swap spread.
Non-negative matrix factorization extended by sparse code shrinkage and by weight sparsification

Properties of a novel algorithm called non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), are studied. NMF can discover substructures and can provide estimations about the presence or the absence of those, being attractive for completion of missing information. We have studied the working and learning capabilities of NMF networks. Performance was improved by adding sparse code shrinkage (SCS) algorithm to remove structureless noise. We have found that NMF performance is considerably improved by SCS noise filtering. For improving noise resistance in the learning phase, weight sparsification was studied; a sparsifying prior was applied on the NMF weight matrix. Learning capability versus noise content was measured with and without sparsifying prior. In accordance with observation made by others on independent component analysis, we have also found that weight sparsification improved learning capabilities in the presence of Gaussian noise.
Place field plasticity and directionality in a spatial memory task.

In order to determine whether hippocampal units display firing which is modulated by the demands of a spatial memory task rats were trained in an enclosed "cue controlled environment" (CCE) consisting of four platforms and six spatial cues that identified one of the four platforms as the goal. Rats learned to select the goal platform at the end of the trial even when the cues defined the goal platform were removed mid-way through the trial. In a previous study (O’Keefe and Speakman, 1987a) place fields were shown to be controlled by the spatial cues such that rotation of the cues caused concomitant rotation of the fields. They also found that the place fields continued to fire after removal of the cues. Thus although the place fields were controlled by the six spatial cues they were not dependent on them. In the present study we confirm the above findings and report two new responses. Some hippocampal place units were observed to increase or initiate place specific firing after cue removal. Others decreased or ceased place specific firing after cue removal. Thus place field location and place field intensity appears to be governed by the presence or absence of the six spatial cues. Previous work has shown that place fields show directionality when a rat traverses an open field in a restricted and stereotypical manner (McNaughton et al, 1983a; Marcus et al, 1995). Rats trained on the CCE spatial memory task were shaped to run in a raster pattern to insure uniform platform coverage. The place fields recorded in this situation were found to display directionality oriented with respect to the six spatial cues. Moreover the directionality of place fields was found to persist after the six spatial cues were removed. Thus place field directionality appears to be initially configured by the six spatial cues but is subsequently independent of them. O’Keefe and Speakman (1987a) examined error trials in which the rat failed to choose the goal platform. They found that the place field firing displayed by the hippocampus before the rat chose a platform could be used to predict the
Fast Clustering-Based Anonymization Algorithm for Data Streams

In order to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information and protect users’ privacy,the generalization and suppression of technology is often used to anonymize the quasi-identifiers of the data before its sharing.Data streams are inherently infinite and highly dynamic which are very different from static datasets,so that the anonymization of data streams needs to be capable of solving more complicated problems.The methods for anonymizing static datasets cannot be applied to data streams directly.In this paper,an anonymization approach for data streams is proposed with the analysis of the published anonymization methods for data streams.This approach scans the data only once to recognize and reuse the clusters that satisfy the anonymization requirements for speeding up the anonymization process.Experimental results on the real dataset show that the proposed method can reduce the information loss that is caused by generalization and suppression and also satisfies the anonymization requirements and has low time and space complexity.
A NOVEL WAY TO ANALYZE COMPETITIVE PERFORMANCE OF ONLINE ALGORITHMS——INSTANCE TRANSFORMATION BASED METHOD

A competitive analysis method for online algorithms is developed based on the idea of instance transformation.The method begins with an arbitrary instance,and transforms the instance along the direction of its performance ratio increasing,moreover the eventual instance after transformation shows a more special structure of which we can take advantage to analyze its performance ratio.This presented method is applied on a single machine online scheduling problem of minimizing the total weighted completion time.We give an alternative proof of an existing conclusion about the competitive performance.
Converging voice and data networks : analysing the challenges, critical success factors and consequences through a case study

Despite the benefits of converging voice and data networks, organisations are slow to embark on network convergence projects, as project success remains a challenge. The general theoretical literature on this subject is inadequate, and as a result, many organisations are unprepared and unaware of the challenges surrounding the convergence of voice and data networks, resulting in a large number of unsuccessful initiatives. As a result, this study is specifically concerned with the challenges, critical success factors and consequences influencing the implementation success of voice and data convergence projects. The qualitative research methodology and case study research approach used in this study aim to enhance organisations’ understanding of converging voice and data networks by developing a theoretical framework. Through the analysis of existing literature and an in-depth case study, the study brought certain findings to the fore. The initial analysis of the data revealed themes specific to the challenges, critical success factors and consequences of network convergence, while in-depth analysis across the data provided valuable insight into possible relationships between these factors. The study demonstrated that advances in technology have eliminated previously cited implementation challenges like security, questionable value proposition and reliability of converged networks. Furthermore, it became clear that reducing costs is no longer sufficient as a business case for converging voice and data networks. Organisations expect value-adding features like unified communication and enabling employees to work from home as a product of network convergence. It is within this context and for this reason that companies need to enhance their understanding of network convergence in order to overcome the challenges, understand the critical success factors and prepare for the consequences of converging voice and data networks.
A Novel Non-contact Heart Rate Estimation Algorithm and System with User Identification

In these days, the wearable devices have been developed for measuring biological data effectively. However, wearable devices have tissue allege and noise problem. Also, it is impossible for a remote center to identify the person whose data are measured by wearable devices, which could trigger a communication problem over treatment. To solve these problems, biometric measurement based on a non-contact method, such as face image sequencing is necessary. This makes it possible to measure biometric data without any operation and side effects. This system can monitor the biological signals of people in real time without allege and noise and simultaneously identify them. In this paper, we propose an authentication process while measuring biometric data, through a non-contact method.
Color harmony : experimental and computational modeling

Since the consumption of digital media exploded in the last decade, making aesthetic pictures quickly - with or without artistic expertise - is more than ever a research topic. Different axis of investigations remain possible: high resolution, high dynamic range or wide color gamut. Additionally to these objective image properties, more perceptual and artistic insights could be of benefit to any user manipulating pictures. In such context, this thesis deals with the topic of Color Harmony. The literature related to this topic is limited, but involves many different scientific areas: color science, image processing and psychology and so on. The validity of collected data is questionable due to their limitation to two- or three-colors patches. The models fitted from these data remain non-exploitable on natural pictures. Other models depicting rules or areas on color wheel lack scientific guidelines for their utilization. Nonetheless, some algorithms employing color harmony theory and models as a core concept showed up in the literature, but suffered from being quantitatively tested and validated. In this thesis, two views are put in perspective in order to respond to the previous statements: an experimental and a computational approaches. The conducted experiment allowed observing some effects with an eye-tracking protocol, never applied before with a task on color harmony assessment. From the collected data of our experimental work, we designed a method to generate a ground truth, which would serve to the validation of the two proposed computational methods. First, we improved an existing architecture for automatic color harmonization and demonstrated exhaustively the benefit of our approach. As a second computational contribution, a novel quality metric is introduced that integrates the concepts of visual masking and color harmony. Thus, we may predict which areas would be perceived harmonious regarding its neighborhood and then the potential masking effects. As a last contribution, two editing tools made accessible the color harmony theory through a hidden formulation of it and a user-friendly and intuitive interface.
High-Trusted-Software-Oriented Automatic Testing for Integer Overflow Bugs

This paper presents an automatic testing method,DAIDT(dynamic automatic integer-overflow detection and testing),for finding integer overflow fatal bugs in binary code.DAIDT can thoroughly test the binary code and automatically find unknown integer overflow bugs without necessarily knowing their symbol tables.It is formally proved in this paper that DAIDT can theoretically detect all the high-risk integer overflow bugs with no false positives and no false negatives.In additional,any bugs find by DAIDT can be replayed.To demonstrate the effectiveness of this theory,IntHunter has been implemented.It has found 4 new high risk integer overflow bugs in the latest releases of three high-trusted applications(two Microsoft WINS services in Windows 2000 and 2003 Server,Baidu Hi Instant Messager) by testing each for 24 hours.Three of these bugs allow arbitrary code execution and have received confirmed vulnerabilities numbers,CVE-2009-1923,CVE-2009-1924 from Microsoft Security Response Center and CVE-2008-6444 from Baidu.
On the design of reliable and scalable networked systems

For many years, multiserver1 operating systems have been demonstrating, by their design, high dependability and reliability. However, the design has inherent performance implications which were not easy to overcome. Until now the context switching and kernel involvement in the message passing was the performance bottleneck for such systems to get broader acceptance beyond niche domains. In contrast to other areas of software development where fitting the software to the parallelism is difficult, the new multicore hardware is a great match for the multiserver systems. We can run individual servers on different cores. This opens more room for further decomposition of the existing servers and thus improving dependability and live-updatability. We discuss in general the implications for the multiserver systems design and cover in detail the implementation and evaluation of a more dependable networking stack. We split the single stack into multiple servers which run on dedicated cores and communicate without kernel involvement. We think that the performance problems that have dogged multiserver operating systems since their inception should be reconsidered: it is possible to make multiserver systems fast on multicores. 1Operating systems implemented as a collection of userspace processes (servers) running on top of a microkernel
Technology Research of Heterogeneous Databases Integration Based on Web Services

From the problems which enterprise information integration faces,analyze the goal and problems of enterprise application integration and the technologies of heterogeneous databases integration at present in the first.Then,based on them,provide heterogeneous databases integration framework based on Web Services and describe the important technologies of realizing process.At last,an example is given to show how the approach is used in factual project.
Implementation of B-spline Wavelets Program Based on MATLAB

Established on the basis of the vectors,arrays,and matrix,and facing the calculation language of the science and engineering,MATLAB provides a convenient and efficient tool for the study of science and calculation of engineering.The paper introduces the constructions of B-spline and B-spline wavelet,and procedures which protract the graphes of of B-spline and B-spline wavelet with MATLAB language.
Modeling Cognitive Processes with Neural Reinforcement Learning

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have seen renewed interest in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Recent advances in improving the performance of ANNs open up an exciting new avenue for cognitive neuroscience research. Here, we propose that ANNs that learn to solve complex tasks based on reinforcement learning, can serve as a universal computational framework for analyzing the neural and behavioural correlates of cognitive processing. We demonstrate this idea on a challenging probabilistic categorization task, where neural network dynamics are linked to human behavioural and neural data as identical tasks are solved.
STUDY OF OBJECT DETECTION IMPLEMENTATION USING MATLAB

Object detection is most prevalent step of video analytics. Performance at higher level is greatly depends on accurate performance of object detection. Various platforms are being used for designing and implementation of object detection algorithm. It includes C programming, MATLAB and Simulink, open cv etc. Among these, MATLAB programming is most popular in students and researchers due to its extensive features. These features include data processing using matrix, set of toolboxes and Simulink blocks covering all technology field, easy programming, and Help topics with numerous examples. This paper presents the implementation of object detection and tracking using MATLAB. It demonstrates the basic block diagram of object detection and explains various predefined functions and object from different toolboxes that can be useful at each level in object detection. Useful toolboxes include image acquisition, image processing, and computer vision. This study helps new researcher in object detection field to design and implement algorithms using MATLAB.
Investing in Opportunities for All Croatia Country Gender Assessment

The Croatia Country Gender Assessment reviewed the state of equality between women and men in Croatia in endowments, economic opportunities, and voice and agency. Overall, the country has made progress on including gender equality both institutionally and legally into its policy agenda. Certain indicators of gender equality remain strong, such as equitable primary and secondaryschool enrollment for boys and girls. A closer look reveals areas that need to be improved, such as equality in the labor market, women's entrepreneurship and role in politics and business, the situation of Roma women, rural and urban disparities, care work distribution between men and women, and the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people.The most significant gap is in access to economic opportunities, with a large number of women, youth, retirees, and minorities excluded from the labor market. Sustainable and effective solutions for this complex issue lie in a whole of government effort covering education andskills development, including retraining and lifelong learning; equity in healthcare; provision of care services to enable women to enter the labor market; and inclusive entrepreneurship. The findings are in line with some of the issues raised in the Croatia Systematic Country Diagnostic of the World Bank; this assessment unpacks these issues in more detail and identifies additional areas for attention. The World Bank could use its engagement with the Government of Croatia to advocate for these issues, and to look for entry points in its current portfolio and pipeline. To this end, a Gender Roadmap has been developed under the Country Partnership Framework (2019-2024) that will focus on how some of the gender gaps could be reduced through the Bank's current and future engagements, and progress tracked periodically. It shows a commitment by the Bank to follow up on the findings and the recommendations arising from this assessment. The conclusions have been arrived at using mixed methods, supplementing quantitative sources with qualitative tools. The assessment is also innovative in highlighting the intersectionality of overlapping disadvantages arising from social and spatial exclusion. It does this by bringing in voices of the youth, elderly women, Roma, and LGBTI from Slavonia (one of the least-developed parts of the country), and Zagreb (the most developed). For instance, the cumulative disadvantages for an elderly rural woman in less-developed Slavonia is not the same as that for a woman of similar age in the capital Zagreb.
Interference in geoelectric field observation from the current of a direct-current grounding electrode

Abstract: The existence of ultrahigh voltage direct-current (UHVDC) transmission lines impacts geoelectric field observation (GFO), which further disturbs earthquake observation and prediction. We proposed a mathematic method based on a 3-dimensional layered soil model to calculate the interference and conducted GFO experiments at observatories and field observation sites during the live debugging of a ±800 kV UHVDC transmission line to verify the method. The results obtained by using the proposed method are in good accordance with the experimental results and the maximum error is no more than 15%. Moreover, the experiment proves that grounding current is a decisive factor in the interference from a transmission line to GFO.