Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Information-Processing Channels in the Tactile Sensory System: A Psychophysical and Physiological Analysis

Channels in touch -- Identification of specific neural systems responsible for mechanoreception -- Duplex model of mechanoreception -- Spatial and temporal summation in the P system -- The neural bases of the tactile systems -- Anatomy of tactile receptors -- Neurophysiology of tactile receptors and their nerve fibers -- Neural bases of the P and NP systems -- Four neural systems mediate the detection of vibratory stimuli -- Frequency selectivity of a neural system is determined by its receptors -- From neural systems to information-processing channels -- Sensation-magnitude enhancement occurs within but not across channels -- Multichannel model of tactile sensitivity -- The psychophysical tuning curve -- Testing the multichannel model through experiments on adaptation and masking -- Adaptation reveals the existence of tactile channels -- Masking occurs within but not across channels -- Testing the multichannel model through experiments on sensory learning -- Properties of tactile channels -- The frequency selectivity of channels -- Temporal summation and temporal acuity -- Spatial acuity -- Edge detection -- Spatial summation -- Effects of observer characteristics -- Effects of aging on the sensitivity of tactile channels -- Effects of the menstrual cycle -- The functional roles of channels -- Channels enhance the detectability of stimuli -- Channels enhance the discriminability of stimuli -- The functional roles of the individual tactile channels -- The decibel scale -- The functional role of the PC channel -- The functional role of the RA channel -- The functional role of the SA I channel -- The functional role of the SA II channel -- Specialization of channels -- Channel interactions -- Summation of sensation magnitude across channels -- The perception of texture -- Role of attention in the enhancement and summation of sensation magnitude -- Interactions between tactile channels and other somatosensory submodalities.
Facilitating FPGA Reconfiguration through Low-level Manipulation

The process of FPGA reconfiguration is to recompile a design and then update the FPGA configuration correspondingly. Traditionally, FPGA design compilation follows the way how hardware is compiled for achieving high performance, which requires a long computation time. How to efficiently compile a design becomes the bottleneck for FPGA reconfiguration. It is promising to apply some techniques or concepts from software to facilitate FPGA reconfiguration. This dissertation explores such an idea by utilizing three types of low-level manipulation on FPGA logic and routing resources, i.e. relocating, mapping/placing, and routing. It implements an FMA technique for “fast reconfiguration”. The FMA makes use of the software compilation technique of reusing pre-compiled libraries for explicitly reducing FPGA compilation time. Based the software concept of Autonomic Computing, this dissertation proposes to build an Autonomous Adaptive System (AAS) to achieve “self-reconfiguration”. An AAS absorbs the computing complexity into itself and compiles the desired change on its own. For routing, an FPGA router is developed. This router is able to route the MCNC
Development of News Publishing System Using DASH Standard

Because of the real-time change of network bandwidth, traditional news website seriously affects the quality of the experience of the user to watch the news video. Aiming at the above problems, this paper proposes a news publishing system based on DASH technology. Based on the basic functions of the news website, combined with the DASH technology, the client can request the appropriate rate of video segments to the server according to the current bandwidth, even if the network bandwidth changes in real time, the client can also smoothly play the news video. The verification results show that the system is practical and high quality of users watching the news video, and meets the needs of users on the news website.
Security of Gas Supply with the ProGasNet Simulator: an Uncertainty & Sensitivity Analysis Exercise

Security of gas supply is a crucial stake for the European countries. The ProGasNet simulator has been developed by the European Commission to study the vulnerability of the gas network to different threats. With the simulator the European gas network (or a portion of the network) can be modelled. But several uncertainties are present in the models. Therefore, it is important to analyse the impact of these uncertainties on the model-based inferences. This report presents an uncertainty and sensitivity exercise of the security of gas supply model of an anonymised EU gas transmission network of several members. The uncertainty analysis shows that, for some scenarios of gas supply disruption, due to the uncertainties in the input parameters it cannot be clearly concluded whether the network is reliable (i.e. can supply the demand of the countries) or not. The sensitivity analysis points out the uncertain inputs mostly responsible for this lack of precision. It is found that priority should be given to the better assessment of the peak demand of the studied countries if one wants to get reliable results. Additionally, the study also highlights areas where the studied infrastructure can be improved.
Fundamentals, Prospects and Challenges for Totally Functional Programming Style

—General recursive definitions contribute to the complexity of programming. This complexity could be reduced by reliance on established, well-understood programming patterns. Catamorphism-based recursion patterns simplify programming with little practical loss in expressive capability compared to general recursion, including the capability of defining new recursion patterns. Partial application of catamorphisms, sub-catamorphic recursion patterns and methods to symbolic data allows a comprehensive replacement of symbolic data with functional, or what we describe as “zoetic”, representations that inherently adopt the benefits of catamorphism-based programming. The considerable promise of this “Totally Functional” style confronts us with some exciting technical challenges.
The Informational Content of High-Frequency Option Prices

We propose the option realized variance as an observable variable to summarize the information from high-frequency option data. This variable aggregates intraday option returns from midquote prices to compute an option’s total variability for a given day, providing additional information about the jump activity in the data generating process. Using the S&P 500 index time series and options data, this paper documents the performance of this realized measure in predicting the index realized variance as well as the equity and variance risk premiums. We estimate an option pricing model and analyze its parameter estimates. Our results show that excluding high-frequency option information produces significant differences in variance jump parameters, estimated risk premiums, and option pricing errors. This paper was accepted by Tyler Shumway, finance.
Observer-Identification: A Potential Threat to the Validity of Self-Identified Race and Ethnicity

The federal government mandates that school personnel select race and ethnicity identifiers for students who do not provide that information. This process is called “observer identification,” and it poses a potential threat to the validity of self-identified race/ethnicity data because (a) evidence from other fields suggests that about 40% of the time, observer identification does not match self-identification of some of the fastest growing racial/ethnic groups in the K–12 population; (b) state and local guidelines for observer identification vary greatly; and (c) the Department of Education does not record how often observer identification is used, but there is good reason to suspect that the practice is widespread.
6tisch Zero-Touch Secure Join protocol

This document describes a Zero-touch Secure Join (ZSJ) mechanism to enroll a new device (the "pledge") into a IEEE802.15. 4 TSCH network using the 6tisch signaling mechanisms. The resulting device will obtain a domain specific credential that can be used with either 802.15. 9 per-host pair keying protocols, or to obtain the network- wide key from a coordinator. The mechanism describe here is an augmentation to the one-touch mechanism described in [I-D.ietf-6tisch- minimal-security], and is a profile of the constrained voucher mechanism [I-D.ietf-anima-constrained-voucher].
The Research of the Parallel Computing Development from the Angle of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the development of parallel computing, distributed computing and grid computing. The development of cloud computing makes parallel computing come into people’s lives. Firstly, this paper expounds the concept of cloud computing and introduces two several traditional parallel programming model. Secondly, it analyzes and studies the principles, advantages and disadvantages of OpenMP, MPI and Map Reduce respectively. Finally, it takes MPI, OpenMP models compared to Map Reduce from the angle of cloud computing. The results of this paper are intended to provide a reference for the development of parallel computing.
Bloom Filters for ReduceBy, GroupBy and Join in Thrill

Thrill is a prototype of a high-performance general purpose big data processing framework. In the Reduce operation, which is similar to Reduce in MapReduce, Thrill performs an all-to-all hash based data shuffle of large amounts of data. Elements only occuring on a single worker could however be reduced locally without shuffling them. To find these elements, we propose a detection algorithm based on distributed single-shot Bloom filters to efficiently detect a large portion of these elements. Additionally, we implemented an SQL-style InnerJoin operator for Thrill. For the InnerJoin operator it is not possible to perform local reduction before the hash based data shuffle. Therefore we implemented an augmented version of our detection algorithm, which detects the worker with the highest number of total occurences for each key. In order to reduce the amount of total network traffic, this worker is determined as the shuffle target for that key. We use multiple algorithmic micro-benchmarks on the AWS EC2 computing cluster to benchmark the performance of our implementations in the Thrill framework. In communication-heavy benchmarks, such as median computation and the TPC-H4 database join query, we can improve the running time by a factor of 1.5 up to 10 by using duplicate detection. In the WordCount and PageRank algorithms performed on real world data we can lower the amount of network traffic while keeping a comparable running time. Acknowledgments We would like thank the AWS Cloud Credits for Research program for making the experiments in Chapter 7 possible. Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich diese Arbeit selbständig verfasst und keine anderen, als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel benutzt, die wörtlich oder inhaltlich übernommenen Stellen als solche kenntlich gemacht und die Satzung des Karlsruher Instituts für Technologie zur Sicherung guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis in der jeweils gültigen Fassung beachtet habe. Karlsruhe, den 12.01. 2017
Can Simulation Improve EMR Implementation? Application to Medication Reconciliation

Medication reconciliation refers to the process of using multiple sources of information to identify the most accurate list of all medications a patient is taking, and using this list to provide correct medications to the patient for the current setting of care (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [CMS], 2014, Institute for Safe Medication Practices [ISMP], 2005; Institute for Healthcare Improvement [IHI], 2017). Although there is considerable research on perceptions about medication reconciliation and opportunities to improve the process, there is a need to use objective measures to understand how this definition is interpreted by providers. We used a simulation study to investigate the process of performing medication reconciliation with oncology providers in an academic medical center. Contrary to our hypothesis we found that rather than the broad medical category of the medication (cancer-related vs. non-cancer condition vs. supplements), providers were more likely to elicit details about medications that were newly added to the electronic medical record. We discuss implications in terms of system redesign and patient safety.
Colonialism and Malay Masculinity: Malay Satire as Observed in the Novel Kawin-Kawin

ABSTRAK Makalah ini menilai Kawin-Kawin sebagai sebuah satira, dan suatu cara membentuk kritikan sosial terhadap masyarakat Melayu. Penilaian terhadap kesesuaian genre seperti ini harus mengambilkira sasaran dan juga kedudukan konteks budaya novel tersebut, iaitu ugama Islam. Perbincangan ini dibentuk dalam kerangka feminis pascakolonial untuk mengenalpasti dominasi budaya dengan lelaki diberi kelebihan dari segi kuasa dan kawalan perjanjian undang-undang seperti dalam kontrak mut’ah, manakala perempuan hanya menjadi objek keseronokan seksual lelaki. Pembacaan dominasi budaya ini merangkumi analisis aspek hegemoni maskuliniti dan kolonialisme dalam penulisan sastera Melayu yang boleh dianggap pascakolonial. Kedua-dua aspek ini mempunyai persamaan dari segi fungsi dan kesan ke atas kumpulan yang terpinggir. Ugama Islam dan wanita adalah dua kategori yang diliputi dalam perbahasan operasi kolonialisme dan maskuliniti Melayu. Perbincangan ini ditutup dengan isu yang berkait dengan penilaian semula aspek kesusasteraan dalam penulisan Melayu dan tentang perlunya penulis Melayu merenggangkan penulisan mereka daripada kerangka sastera Barat agar dapat keluar daripada pengaruh kolonialisme.
An Entropy Gain Ratio-based Algorithm for Community Detection in Mobile Social Networks

Community structure is one of the important properties of complex networks, and many algorithms have been proposed to detected community based on optimization of Modularity Q. In this article, A more effective theoretic model based information gain ratio (IGA) that combines optimizing modularity and reduce the ratio of information entropy is proposed. IGA algorithms reaches better community detecting results than information entroy-based and FastGN algorithm on both computer generated by benchmark graphs and real mobile social networks. According to experimental result compared the others cluster methods in different datasets, our method tries to detecting community with low information entropy and keeping not far-off modularity.
Extending the power and dynamic performance of a power electronic Hardware-in-the-Loop system through "inverter cumulation"

Power electronic Hardware-in-the-Loop systems require high power capability and dynamic response simultaneously. Due to the physical limitation of semiconductor, it is difficult to construct a system based on single type device. A superimposition of characteristics of various devices can be a good solution for the performance extending requirements. Magnetically coupling of identical or different inverters in various topologies -- Inverter Cumulation, is the main contribution of this dissertation.
Sustainability Reporting as a Tool to Improve Transparency towards Stakeholders. Exploring Reporting Practices in the Imaging Industry

The complexity that characterizes the international competitive system has enhanced the call for transparent reporting and the dissemination of information concerning social and environmental impact being implemented by firm. Recently, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was developed in order to respond to the specific needs to measure the environmental impact of firm’s products and processes in terms of resources consumption and pollution along their entire life cycle. This study can contribute to strengthening of the understanding, to promote discussion on the current state of the art of sustainability reports and to verify the development of the tools of corporate sustainability management to assess the environmental and social impact, in particular in the imaging industry. The paper proceeds as follows. First, it examines the literature on the sustainability reporting, corporate reputation as an intangible asset. Second, after the literature review it provides a descriptive and critical knowledge linking LCA, corporate reputation and sustainability reporting. Finally, the attention will be focused on the analysis of Canon, Epson, Nikon and Sony’s sustainability reports in order to better understand if sustainability reporting tools based on LCA approach are useful to improve transparency towards stakeholders and if these tools are suitable to generate value and improve corporate reputation. Conclusions and implications for further research will end the paper.
Network coding: performance analysis and robust design in multi-hop wireless mesh networks

Network coding is an innovative idea to boost the capacity of wireless networks. However, there are not enough analytical studies on throughput and end-to-end delay of network coding in multi-hop wireless mesh network that incorporates the specifications of IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function. In this dissertation, we utilize queuing theory to propose an analytical framework for bidirectional unicast flows in multi-hop wireless mesh networks. We study the throughput and end-to-end delay of inter-flow network coding under the IEEE 802.11 standard with CSMA/CA random access and exponential back-o↵ time considering clock freezing and virtual carrier sensing, and formulate several parameters such as the probability of successful transmission in terms of bit error rate and collision probability, waiting time of packets at nodes, and retransmission mechanism. Our model uses a multi-class queuing network with stable queues, where coded packets have a non-preemptive higher priority over native packets, and forwarding of native packets is not delayed if no coding opportunities are available. The accuracy of our analytical model is verified using computer simulations. Furthermore, while inter-flow network coding is proposed to help wireless networks approach the maximum capacity, the majority of research conducted in this area is yet to fully utilize the broadcast nature of wireless networks, and to perform e↵ectively under poor channel quality. This vulnerability is mostly caused by assuming fixed route between the source and destination that every packet should travel through. This assumption not only limits coding opportunities, but can also cause bu↵er overflow at some specific intermediate nodes. Although some studies considered scattering of the flows dynamically in the network, they still face some limitations. This dissertation explains pros and cons of some prominent research in network coding and proposes a Flexible and Opportunistic Network Coding scheme (FlexONC) as a solution to such issues. Moreover, this research discovers that the conditions used in previous studies to combine packets of di↵erent flows are overly optimistic and would a↵ect the network performance adversarially. Therefore, we provide a more accurate set of rules for packet encoding. The experimental results show that FlexONC outperforms previous methods especially in networks with high bit error rates, by better utilizing redundant packets permeating the network, and benefiting from precise coding conditions.
Estimating Transfer Multiplier using Spending on Rural Development Programs in India

Rural development programs in India are implemented for a variety of reasons. A key question is whether such transfer spending by the government is consequential for the local economic activity. This chapter estimates the multiplicative effects of rural transfer spending on state agricultural output using a novel dataset of statewise expenditure on all major rural development programs that were operational between 1980-2010. Using government reports as narrative evidence we show that the principal motivation to introduce a new scheme is either (i) to replace old inefficient programs or (ii) to address a deep-rooted social or economic issue that has not been addressed by any existing program. Importantly, the introduction of a new scheme is largely independent of the current or prospective output fluctuations. Using this narrative evidence we isolate the “introductory variation” that occurs every time a new program is introduced as a measure of change in transfer spending that is exogenous to local output fluctuations. The results suggest that local variations in rural transfer spending can be quite consequential for the local economic activity in rural areas.
Numerical methods for stochastic dynamic programming with application to hydropower optimization

Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP) is a powerful approach applicable to nonconvex and stochastic stagewise problems. We investigate the impact of the formulation of the subproblems and of the choice of optimization method used to solve them on the overall performance of SDP in the context of hydropower reservoir management. We report numerical results on real systems and compare a number of state-of-the-art solvers. In one set of tests, subproblems feature nonlinear hydropower production constraints, while in a second set, the latter are approximated with linear constraints. Our results show that, when linear hydropower constraints are acceptable during policy computation, a Sequential Linear Programming (SLP) approach requires the lowest number of function evaluations while being the most robust in terms of number of subproblems solved successfully. On the other hand, IPOPT exhibits the best performance during the simulation phase in the presence of nonlinear hydropower constraints, where SLP is less reliable. A combination of SLP for policy computation using linear hydropower constraints with IPOPT in the simulation phase using nonlinear hydropower constraints results in an improvement of the average annual cumulative cost reduces the total run time by a factor of about 3.3 compared to IPOPT alone using nonlinear hydropower constraints during both phases.
The Application of Artificial Intelligence Technology in Sports Competition

In order to respond to the call of the country to build a strong sports country, the workers in the sports industry should speed up the pace of sports development. Artificial intelligence is a high-end industry, but also a key technology to guide the construction of sports power. Artificial intelligence technology can not only help social development, but also help human autonomy and self-reliance development. The combination of artificial intelligence technology and sports has been common, the future application scope will be more and more extensive, the integration will be deeper and deeper, this paper takes the sports competition as an example, This paper briefly analyzes the application advantage and application status of artificial intelligence technology in sports competition.
MannaSim: A NS-2 Extension to Simulate Wireless Sensor Network

A Wireless Sensor Network is a special kind of ad hoc network characterized by a large amount of nodes distributed over a real world environment, in order to monitor and send relevant data to an access point. In this paper, we present a framework for wireless sensors network simulation that was implemented as an extension for Network Simulator 2. This framework provides a way to configure the environment of the simulation by choosing parameters like the topology of the network, kind of data dissemination, type of routing protocol, hardware capacity and initial energy power of the sensor nodes. In order to demonstrate MannaSim’s results, we also present a wireless sensor network scenario in which the proposed tool was used to simulate. Through the results provided by MannaSim, it was possible to choose the best configuration for the proposed scenario. Keywords–Wireless Sensor Network; Network Simulator (NS-2); Simulation Framework.