Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Learning similarities for linear classification: theoretical foundations and algorithms. (Apprentissage de similarités pour la classification linéaire: fondements théoriques et algorithmes)

La notion de metrique joue un role clef dans les problemes d’apprentissage automatique tels que la classification, le clustering et le ranking. L’apprentissage a partir de donnees de metriques adaptees a une tâche specifique a suscite un interet croissant ces dernieres annees. Ce domaine vise generalement a trouver les meilleurs parametres pour une metrique donnee sous certaines contraintes imposees par les donnees. La metrique apprise est utilisee dans un algorithme d’apprentissage automatique dans le but d’ameliorer sa performance. La plupart des methodes d’apprentissage de metriques optimisent les parametres d’une distance de Mahalanobis pour des vecteurs de features. Les methodes actuelles de l’etat de l’art arrivent a traiter des jeux de donnees de tailles significatives. En revanche, le sujet plus complexe des series temporelles multivariees n’a recu qu’une attention limitee, malgre l’omnipresence de ce type de donnees dans les applications reelles. Une importante partie de la recherche sur les series temporelles est basee sur la dynamic time warping (DTW), qui determine l’alignement optimal entre deux series temporelles. L’etat actuel de l’apprentissage de metriques souffre de certaines limitations. La plus importante est probablement le manque de garanties theoriques concernant la metrique apprise et sa performance pour la classification. La theorie des fonctions de similarite (ℰ , ϓ, T)-bonnes a ete l’un des premiers resultats liant les proprietes d’une similarite a celles du classifieur qui l’utilise. Une deuxieme limitation vient du fait que la plupart des methodes imposent des proprietes de distance, qui sont couteuses en terme de calcul et souvent non justifiees. Dans cette these, nous abordons les limitations precedentes a travers deux contributions principales. La premiere est un nouveau cadre general pour l’apprentissage conjoint d’une fonction de similarite et d’un classifieur lineaire. Cette formulation est inspiree de la theorie de similarites (ℰ , ϓ, τ) -bonnes, fournissant un lien entre la similarite et le classifieur lineaire. Elle est convexe pour une large gamme de fonctions de similarite et de regulariseurs. Nous derivons deux bornes de generalisation equivalentes a travers les cadres de robustesse algorithmique et de convergence uniforme basee sur la complexite de Rademacher, prouvant les proprietes theoriques de notre formulation. Notre deuxieme contribution est une methode d’apprentissage de similarites basee sur DTW pour la classification de series temporelles multivariees. Le probleme est convexe et utilise la theorie des fonctions (ℰ , ϓ, T)-bonnes liant la performance de la metrique a celle du classifieur lineaire associe. A l’aide de la stabilite uniforme, nous prouvons la consistance de la similarite apprise conduisant a la derivation d’une borne de generalisation.
Optimal management of two ecologically interacting deer species—reality matters, beliefs don't

The aim of this paper is to analyze the optimal management of two ecologically interdependent, competing species, roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and fallow deer (Dama dama). To this end, we develop a numerical stage‐structured model, accounting for species‐specific life history characteristics, gender, and stage‐specific hunting values. Two contrasting management regimes are considered: optimal joint management of the two species and management where the decision maker is ignorant about interspecific competition. Results from our case study show that the presence of interspecific competition reduces roe deer population size and harvest by 30% and 47%, respectively, and reduces the net present value by 9%. High interspecific competition could lead to the exclusion of the roe deer from the area. In contrast, ignorance about the level and consequences of interspecific competition has no impact on harvest decisions and revenues. The explanation is the higher hunting benefits for fallow deer.
Integrating Aircraft Flows in the Terminal Area with no Radar Vectoring

This paper reports on a series of small-scale experiments conducted with air traffic controllers. The objective was to assess benefits and limits of a method to integrate aircraft flows in the terminal area. The principle is to achieve the aircraft sequence on a point (with conventional direct-to instructions) using predefined legs at iso-distance to this point for path shortening or stretching. Open loop radar vectors (heading instructions) were no longer used and aircraft remained on lateral navigation mode. The method was found feasible, comfortable, safe and accurate although less flexible than today. Predictability was increased, workload and communications were reduced. The inter-aircraft spacing on final was as accurate as today, while descent profiles were improved. The flow of traffic was more orderly with a contained and predefined dispersion of trajectories. All these elements should contribute to improving safety.
Climate change scenarios for the Nordic countries

A climate change scenario for the Nordic countries has been defined for application in hydrological models in the Nordic research project 'Climate Change and Energy Production' The scenario is based on a subjective evaluation of several recent results from global coupled atmosphere and ocean general circulation models (GCMs) and on a statistical downscaling of the model results. The scenario specifies a warming rate which ranges from 0.3"C per decade for Iceland and the Faeroe Islands to 0.45"C per decade for eastern Finland and the northernmost parts of Sweden. There are marked seasonal and regional differences in the warming rate. Summer warming is relatively uniform over the area, ranging from 0.25"C per decade in Iceland and the Faeroe Islands to 0.3"C per decade in Finland. Winter warming is more variable, ranging from 0.35"C per decade in the North Atlantic area to 0.6"C per decade in Finland. Precipitation is increased by 3 to 6% per degree of warming, yielding an increase ranging from 1 % per decade during the summer season in Finland, Sweden and eastern Norway to 2.5% per decade during the winter season in western Norway. Climate in the Nordic countries is characterized by low-frequency natural variability on decadal time scales which is thought to be partly driven by changes in the thermohaline circulation of the North Atlantic. Future behaviour of the North Atlantic ocean circulation is highly uncertain, and model predictions of climate development in this part of t h e world are perhaps more difficult than for most other regions. Other sources of uncertainty in GCM model computations apply to the North Atlantic region as well as to other regions of the world, e.g. coarse model resolution, somewhat arbitrary coupling of the ocean and the atmosphere and uncertain parameterizations of clouds and precipitation. In view of these difficulties, the scenario must be considered an extremely uncertain, although plausible, description of what might happen in the future rather than a prediction of what most likely will happen.
Rebuilding beluga stocks in West Greenland

Decisions about sustainable exploitation levels of marine resources are often based on inadequate data, but are nevertheless required for practical purposes. We describe one exception where abundance estimates spanning 30 years and catch data spanning more than 40 years were used in a Bayesian assessment model of belugas Delphinapterus leucas off West Greenland. The model was updated with data from a visual aerial survey on the wintering ground in 2012. Methods that take account of stochastic animal availability by using independent estimates of forward and perpendicular sighting distances were used to estimate beluga abundance. A model that appears to be robust to the presence of a few large groups yielded an estimate of 7456 belugas (cv = 0.44), similar to a conventional distance‐sampling estimate. A mark–recapture distance analysis that corrects for perception and availability bias estimated the abundance to be 9072 whales (cv = 0.32). Increasing distance of beluga sightings from shore was correlated with decreasing sea ice cover, suggesting that belugas expand their distribution offshore (i.e. westward in this context) with the reduction of coastal sea ice. A model with high (0.98) adult survival estimated a decline from 18 600 (90% CI: 13 400, 26 000) whales in 1970 to 8000 (90% CI: 5830, 11 200) in 2004. The decline was probably a result of a period with exceptionally large catches. Following the introduction of catch limits in 2004, the model projects an increase to 11 600 (90% CI: 6760, 17 600) individuals in 2020 (assuming annual removals of 294 belugas after 2014). If the annual removal level is fixed at 300 individuals, a low‐survival (0.97) model predicts a 75% probability of an increasing population during 2015–2020. Reduced removal rates due to catch limits and the more offshore, less accessible distribution of the whales are believed to be responsible for the initial signs of population recovery.
The Need for Actions Against Polypharmacy in Older People With Frailty

Providing safe and effective drug therapy to older patients is challenging for physicians since there is not sufficient evidence to support the efficacy of these drugs and this population is susceptible to adverse drug reactions. Special consideration is needed when treating patients who require nursing care or who are at a stage prior to disability (i.e., frailty) because they may have limited life expectancies, complications, or organ dysfunction. Polypharmacy refers to the condition in which a patient is taking many drugs and, thus, is at an increased risk of adverse events. Although it is difficult to avoid polypharmacy in older people with frailty, the periodic review of drugs and reduction of dose or discontinuation of potentially inappropriate medications are needed to address this problem. This article reviews the association between frailty and polypharmacy and counteractions against polypharmacy in patients with frailty.
Accès à de l'information en mobilité par l'image pour la visite de Musées: Réseaux profonds pour l'identification de gestes et d'objets. (Information Access in mobile environment for museum visits: Deep Neraul Networks for Instance and Gesture Recognition)

Dans le cadre du projet GUIMUTEIC, qui vise a equiper les visiteurs de musees d'un outils d'aide a la visite equipe d'une camera, cette these adresse le probleme d'acces a l'information en mobilite.On s'interesse a comment rendre l'information a propos des œuvres accessible et automatique aux visiteurs de lieux touristiques.Elle s'inscrit dans le cadre du projet GUIMUTEIC, qui vise a equiper les visiteurs de musees d'un outil d'aide a l'acces a l'information en mobilite.Etre capable de determiner si le visiteur desire avoir acces a l'information signifie identifier le contexte autour de lui, afin de fournir une reponse adaptee, et reagir a ses actions.Ceci souleve les problematiques d'identification de points d'interets, pour determiner le contexte, et d'identification de gestes de utilisateurs, pour repondre a ses demandes.Dans le cadre du notre projet, le visiteur est donc equipe d'une camera embarquee.L'objectif est de fournir un solution a l'aide a la visite, en developpant des methodes de vision pour l'identification d'objet, et de detection de gestes dans les videos a la premiere personne.Nous proposons dans cette these une etude de la faisabilite et de l'interet de l'aide a la visite, ainsi que de la pertinence des gestes dans le cadre de l'interaction avec un systeme embarque.Nous proposons une nouvelle approche pour l'identification d'objets grâce a des reseaux de neurones profonds siamois pour l'apprentissage de similarite entre les images, avec apprentissage des regions d'interet dans l'image.Nous explorons egalement l'utilisation de reseaux a taille reduite pour le detection de gestes en mobilite.Nous presentons pour cela une architecture utilisant un nouveau type de bloc de convolutions, pour reduire le nombre de parametres du reseau et permettre son utilisation sur processeur mobile.Pour evaluer nos propositions, nous nous appuyons sur plusieurs corpus de recherche d'image et de gestes, cree specialement pour correspondre aux contraintes du projet.
The Co-movement between Output and Prices: Evidence from Iran

This paper employs a multivariate dynamic conditional correlation GARCH model, which is developed by Engle (2001, 2002), to detect the timing and nature of changes in the comovement between Iranian output and prices for the periods after Iran–Iraq war , known as imposed war . The results showed that there is a weak correlation between output and prices after imposed war and varies periodically and changes from positive to negative after imposed war and changes from negative to positive again after 2009 crisis in Iran. We conclude that there is a contagion effect of the price index on output. The predominantly negative output-price co-movement suggests that the overall price level was typically countercyclical rather than procyclical. These findings imply the presence of aggregate supply versus aggregate demand shocks and sticky prices. Supply shocks are the main causes of stagflation. To solve the problem of stagflation, governments must adopt policies to push out the aggregate supply curve
Mixed H/He bursts in SAX J1748.9–2021 during the spectral change of its 2015 outburst

SAX J1748.9–2021 is a transiently accreting X-ray millisecond pulsar. It is also known as an X-ray burster source discovered by Beppo-SAX. We analyzed the persistent emission and type-I X-ray burst properties during its 2015 outburst. The source changed from hard to soft state within half day. We modeled the broadband spectra of the persistent emission in the (1–250) keV energy band for both spectral states using the quasi-simultaneous INTEGRAL and Swift data. The broadband spectra are well fitted by an absorbed thermal Componization model, COMPPS, in a slab geometry. The best-fits for the two states indicate significantly different plasma temperature of 18 and 5 keV and the Thomson optical depths of three and four, respectively. In total, 56 type-I X-ray bursts were observed during the 2015 outburst, of which 26 detected by INTEGRAL in the hard state, 25 by XMM-Newton in the soft state, and five by Swift in both states. As the object transited from the hard to the soft state, the recurrence time for X-ray bursts decreased from ≈2 to ≈1 h. The relation between the recurrence time, Δtrec, and the local mass accretion rate per unit area onto the compact object, ṁ, is fitted by a power-law model, and yielded as best fit at Δtrec ∼ ⟨ṁ⟩−1.02±0.03 using all X-ray bursts. In both cases, the observed recurrence times are consistent with the mixed hydrogen and helium bursts. We also discuss the effects of type-I X-ray bursts prior to the hard to soft transition.
Efficacy and safety of pregabalin versus amitriptyline in patients with painful diabetic neuropathy

Background: Painful diabetic neuropathy is a common complication of long standing diabetes mellitus. Amitriptyline is commonly used to treat painful diabetic neuropathy. Pregabalin has been shown to be effective in the treatment of painful diabetic neuropathy with lesser adverse effects. Sustained release (SR) of pregabalin has the advantage of once daily dosing and a better patient compliance. Hence, this study was planned to compare the efficacy and safety of pregabalin-SR with amitriptyline in painful diabetic neuropathy. Methods: It is a prospective, open labelled, randomized controlled study. A total of 80 patients diagnosed with painful diabetic neuropathy based on Diabetic neuropathy symptom score and Michigan neuropathy screening instrument, were randomized into two groups to receive amitriptyline and pregabalin SR. Amitriptyline was started at 25mg OD and pregabalin SR 75mg OD for 6 weeks with optional dose titration. Patients were assessed for pain relief by using visual analogue scale and an overall improvement in their general condition by patient’s global impression of change scale. Adverse drug reactions were recorded on each follow up. Results: All patients had significant improvement in pain relief in both the treatment groups. The median VAS (visual analogue scale) score was slightly higher in pregabalin SR group (25 vs 22) however it was not statistically significant. Intergroup comparison did not show any significant differences between the treatment groups. Good and moderate pain relief were noted in 37(92.5%) and 3(7.5%) patients on amitriptyline and 36 (90%) and 4 (10%) patients on pregabalin SR respectively. The common adverse effects reported in amitriptyline group were drowsiness (27.5%) and dry mouth (17.5%) and in pregabalin-SR group were drowsiness (15%) and dizziness (5%). No serious adverse event was reported in either of the groups. Conclusions: In patients with painful diabetic neuropathy both amitriptyline and pregabalin-SR are equally effective in alleviating pain and improving the patient’s general condition, but pregabalin-SR has the advantage of fewer adverse effects and convenient dosage timing.
Radio Environment Map Construction by Kriging Algorithm Based on Mobile Crowd Sensing

In the IoT era, 5G will enable various IoT services such as broadband access everywhere, high user and devices mobility, and connectivity of massive number of devices. Radio environment map (REM) can be applied to improve the utilization of radio resources for the access control of IoT devices by allocating them reasonable wireless spectrum resources. However, the primary problem of constructing REM is how to collect the large scale of data. Mobile crowd sensing (MCS), leveraging the smart devices carried by ordinary people to collect information, is an effective solution for collecting the radio environment information for building the REM. In this paper, we build a REM collecting prototype system based on MCS to collect the data required by the radio environment information. However, limited by the budget of the platform, it is hard to recruit enough participants to join the sensing task to collect the radio environment information. This will make the radio environment information of the sensing area incomplete, which cannot describe the radio information accuracy. Considering that the Kriging algorithm has been widely used in geostatistics principle for spatial interpolation for Kriging giving the best unbiased estimate with minimized variance, we utilize the Kriging interpolation algorithm to infer complete radio environment information from collected sample radio environment information data. The interpolation performance is analyzed based on the collected sample radio environment information data. We demonstrate experiments to analyze the Kriging interpolation algorithm interpolation results and error and compared them with the nearest neighbor (NN) and the inverse distance weighting (IDW) interpolation algorithms. Experiment results show that the Kriging algorithm can be applied to infer radio environment information data based on the collected sample data and the Kriging interpolation has the least interpolation error.
An Efficient Aerobic Oxidation of Alcohols to Aldehydes and Ketones with TEMPO/Ceric Ammonium Nitrate as Catalysts

Secondary benzylic alcohols with an alkyl chain are oxidized faster than simple benzyl alcohols. However the reaction time is prolonged, when the alkyl chain is replaced by a bulky phenyl ring such as benzhydrol and 9-hydroxyfluorene. All the benzyl and benzylic alcohols give yields >90%. Allylic alcohols without steric hindrance react faster to give excellent yield (>80%). The present method is superior to others currently available due to its relatively short reaction times and excellent yields.
February 2018 Bio-inspired all-optical artificial neuromast for 2 D flow sensing

We present the design, fabrication and testing of a novel all-optical 2D flow velocity sensor, inspired by a fish lateral line neuromast. This artificial neuromast consists of optical fibres inscribed with Bragg gratings supporting a fluid force recipient sphere. Its dynamic response is modelled based on the Stokes solution for unsteady flow around a sphere and found to agree with experimental results. Tuneable mechanical resonance is predicted, allowing a deconvolution scheme to accurately retrieve fluid flow speed and direction from sensor readings. The optical artificial neuromast achieves a low frequency threshold flow sensing of 5 mm s−1 and 5 μm s−1 at resonance, with a typical linear dynamic range of 38 dB at 100 Hz sampling. Furthermore, the optical artificial neuromast is shown to determine flow direction within a few degrees. PAPER 2018 Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. RECEIVED
Secularism or Democracy?: Associational Governance of Religious Diversity

Gevestigde liberaaldemocratische instituties en beleid staan door nieuwe religieuze minderheden, met name moslims, onder toenemende druk. Het lijkt alsof praktische politiek en politieke theorie moeten kiezen tussen een volledig geseculariseerde staat - een strikte scheiding tussen staat/politiek en volledig geprivatiseerde godsdiensten, gebaseerd op een geidealiseerd model van de VS of van Frans-republikeinse laicite - enerzijds, of verzuilde systemen van selectieve samenwerking tussen staat en kerken anderzijds. Secularism or Democracy presenteert een nieuwe conceptuele, theoretische en praktische benadering van oude en recente problemen in de omgang met religieuze diversiteit. Het verbindt ethische en politiek-filosofische perspectieven met constitutioneel recht, geschiedenis, godsdienst-sociologie en -antropologie, en vergelijkend institutionalisme. Voorstellen uit de traditie van associatieve democratie - een vrijzinnige, flexibele versie van een democratisch, institutioneel pluralisme - bieden een 'derde weg' die belooft de tekortkomingen van de dominante modellen in theorie en praktijk te vermijden.
Does the Use of Mobile Devices (Tablets and Smartphones) Affect Stated Choice Behavior in Web Surveys? An Application to Environmental Valuation

Web surveys are becoming increasingly popular in survey research. Compared with face-to-face, telephone and mail surveys, web surveys may contain a different and new source of measurement error and bias: the type of device that respondents use to answer the survey questions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that tests whether the use of mobile devices affects survey characteristics and stated preferences in a web-based choice experiment. The web survey was carried out in Germany with 3,400 respondents, of which 12 per cent used a mobile device (i.e. tablet or smartphone), and comprised a stated choice experiment on externalities of renewable energy production using wind, solar and biomass. Our main finding is that survey characteristics such as interview length and acquiescence tendency are affected by the device used. In contrast to what might be expected, we find that, compared with respondents using desktop computers and laptops, mobile device users spent more time to answer the survey and are less likely to be prone to acquiescence bias. In the choice experiment, mobile device users tended to be more consistent in their stated choices, and there are differences in willingness to pay between both subsamples.