Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Voices to reckon with: perceptions of voice identity in clinical and non-clinical voice hearers

The current review focuses on the perception of voice identity in clinical and non-clinical voice hearers. Identity perception in auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) is grounded in the mechanisms of human (i.e., real, external) voice perception, and shapes the emotional (distress) and behavioral (help-seeking) response to the experience. Yet, the phenomenological assessment of voice identity is often limited, for example to the gender of the voice, and has failed to take advantage of recent models and evidence on human voice perception. In this paper we aim to synthesize the literature on identity in real and hallucinated voices and begin by providing a comprehensive overview of the features used to judge voice identity in healthy individuals and in people with schizophrenia. The findings suggest some subtle, but possibly systematic biases across different levels of voice identity in clinical hallucinators that are associated with higher levels of distress. Next we provide a critical evaluation of voice processing abilities in clinical and non-clinical voice hearers, including recent data collected in our laboratory. Our studies used diverse methods, assessing recognition and binding of words and voices in memory as well as multidimensional scaling of voice dissimilarity judgments. The findings overall point to significant difficulties recognizing familiar speakers and discriminating between unfamiliar speakers in people with schizophrenia, both with and without AVH. In contrast, these voice processing abilities appear to be generally intact in non-clinical hallucinators. The review highlights some important avenues for future research and treatment of AVH associated with a need for care, and suggests some novel insights into other symptoms of psychosis.
Minimizing the Maximal Rank

In computer vision, many problems can be formulated as finding a low rank approximation of a given matrix. Ideally, if all elements of the measurement matrix are available, this is easily solved in the L2-norm using factorization. However, in practice this is rarely the case. Lately, this problem has been addressed using different approaches, one is to replace the rank term by the convex nuclear norm, another is to derive the convex envelope of the rank term plus a data term. In the latter case, matrices are divided into sub-matrices and the envelope is computed for each subblock individually. In this paper a new convex envelope is derived which takes all sub-matrices into account simultaneously. This leads to a simpler formulation, using only one parameter to control the trade-of between rank and data fit, for applications where one seeks low rank approximations of multiple matrices with the same rank. We show in this paper how our general framework can be used for manifold denoising of several images at once, as well as just denoising one image. Experimental comparisons show that our method achieves results similar to state-of-the-art approaches while being applicable for other problems such as linear shape model estimation.
Bearing-Constrained Formation Control using Bearing Measurements

This paper studies distributed control of bearing-constrained multiagent formations using bearing-only measurements. In order to analyze bearing-constrained formations, we first present a bearing rigidity theory that is applicable to arbitrary dimensions. Based on the proposed bearing rigidity theory, we investigate distributed bearing-only formation control in arbitrary dimensions in the presence of a global reference frame whose orientation is known to each agent. Using a Lyapunov approach, we show that the control law stabilizes infinitesimally bearing rigid formations almost globally and exponentially. The results are demonstrated with simulation examples.
A Trust Framework for Pervasive Computing Environments

In this paper, we present a flexible, manageable, and configurable trust scheme for the security of pervasive computing applications. Our intention is to develop a trust framework capable of recognizing the difference between “pure” and “managed” ad hoc network structure, and capable of operating in either situation or a combination of both. Our trust framework will minimize the effects of malicious recommendations related to trust from other devices and have the capability to transfer security functionality from devices with limited computing resources to other secure and powerful devices. The presented framework allows administrators to customize trust-related settings in an effort to create a more secure and functional network. Within our framework, wireless devices are broken down into different categories based upon available resources and desired security functionalities. A device’s categorization determines its security functionalities and interactions with neighboring devices. By using this flexible framework, administrators can customize devices based upon the network’s environment.
MPIGate: A Solution to Use Heterogeneous Networks for Assisted Living Applications

Existing sensors and actuators, that can be used in an AAL (ambient assisting living) environment, work on heterogeneous network protocols, e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth, EIB/KNX and Zigbee. For a given sensor/actuator, the choice of its underlying communication protocol is optimized according to its bandwidth and/or energy needs. However, integrating sensors/actuators of heterogeneous network protocols into an AAL system arises interoperability problems. In this paper, we present MPIGate, a multi-protocol gateway and interface for assisted living applications. Besides its multiple communication drivers for supporting the different protocols, MPIGate also proposes a database for storing the last updated sensor data as well as an user interface for both transparent data access and easy application development. MPIGate has been deployed in a smart home technical test bed at our LORIA labs. We presents some first results and discuss the lessons learnt.
On the Cohomology of Locally Symmetric Spaces and of their Compactifications

This expository article is an expanded version of talks given at the "Current Developments in Mathematics, 2002" conference. It gives an introduction to the (generalized) conjecture of Rapoport and Goresky-MacPherson which identifies the intersection cohomology of a real equal-rank Satake compactification of a locally symmetric space with that of the reductive Borel-Serre compactification. We motivate the conjecture with examples and then give an introduction to the various topics that are involved: intersection cohomology, the derived category, and compactifications of a locally symmetric space, particularly those above. We then give an overview of the theory of L-modules and micro-support (see math.RT/0112251) which was developed to solve the conjecture but has other important applications as well. We end with sketches of the proofs of three main theorems on L-modules that lead to the resolution of the conjecture. The text is enriched with many examples, illustrations, and references to the literature.
Will this #hashtag be popular tomorrow?

Hashtags are widely used in Twitter to define a shared context for events or topics. In this paper, we aim to predict hashtag popularity in near future (i.e., next day). Given a hashtag that has the potential to be popular in the next day, we construct a hashtag profile using the tweets containing the hashtag, and extract both content and context features for hashtag popularity prediction. We model this prediction problem as a classification problem and evaluate the effectiveness of the extracted features and classification models.
SUBSTRATA PREPARED FROM BONE MATRIX FOR CHONDROGENESIS IN TISSUE CULTURE

The literature on chondrogenesis in vitro is rich in knowledge of the products of differentiation but presents little information about agents which may initiate cartilage cell differentiation or conditions which control cartilage tissue morphogenesis . Pre-vious investigations by our research group (18, 19) demonstrate that the character of the substratum may control differentiation. For example, an outgrowth of mesenchymal cells from muscle on to nonbiologic substrata (plastic or millipore membrane) produces fibrous connective tissue cell differentiation, while outgrowths on to a special preparation of undenatured, demineralized rat bone matrix differentiates into cartilage (30). If the substratum consists of bone matrix denatured by demineralization in a solution of 0 . 6 N HCI in 70% alcohol, the mesenchymal cells differentiate only into fibrous connective tissue (30). This communi-cation demonstrates experimental modifications of a bone matrix substratum which either permit, retard, or prevent differentiation of cartilage .
Interactive execution of distributed algorithms

DAJ (Distributed Algorithms in Java) is a framework for writing Java programs to implement distributed algorithms. The programs display the data structures at each node and enable the user to interactively construct scenarios. In a learning situation, active interactive execution is preferable to passively watching an animation. Programs have been implemented for commonly taught algorithms, including the Byzantine generals, mutual exclusion, termination, and snapshots. Adding a program for another algorithm requires only general Java programming experience, as the GUI aspects are encapsulated.
North American droughts of the mid to late nineteenth century: a history, simulation and implication for Mediaeval drought

Unlike the major droughts of the twentieth century that are readily identified in the instrumental record, similar events in the nineteenth century have to be identified using a combination of proxy data, historical accounts and a sparse collection of early instrumental records. In the USA, three distinct periods of widespread and persistent drought stand out in these records for the latter half of the nineteenth century: 1856-1865, 1870-1877 and 1890-1896. Each of these events is shown to coincide with the existence of an anomalously cool, La Nifia-like tropical Pacific. To examine the physical mechanisms behind these droughts two ensembles of simulations with an atmosphere general circulation model (AGCM) were generated: the first forces an AGCM with the observed history of Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) everywhere from 1856 to 2001 (the GOGA experiment), the second forces the AGCM only with tropical Pacific SSTs, being coupled to a two-layer entraining mixed layer (ML) ocean elsewhere (the POGA-ML experiment). Owing to a sparsity of instrumental precipitation data at this time, proxy evidence from tree rings is used as verification. A comparison of modelled soil moisture with tree-ring reconstructions of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), a proxy for soil moisture, from the North American Drought Atlas is made. Both the POGA-ML and GOGA ensemble means capture the three multi-year droughts of the mid to late nineteenth century, indicating that the droughts were SST forced. The similarity of the POGA-ML and GOGA simulations implies that the component of each drought signal that is forced by the SST is driven ultimately by the La Nifia-like tropical Pacific. The global atmosphere-ocean context of each of the mid to late-nineteenth century droughts reveals a zonally and hemispherically symmetric pattern consistent with forcing from the tropics. In addition, Rossby wave propagation from the cooler equatorial Pacific amplifies dry conditions over the USA. Finally, using published coral data for the last millennium to reconstruct a NINO 3.4 history, the modern-day relationship between NINO 3.4 and North American drought is applied to recreate two of the severest Mediaeval ‘drought epochs’ in the western USA. The large-scale spatial similarity to the Drought Atlas data demonstrates the potential link between a colder eastern equatorial Pacific and the persistent North American droughts of the Mediaeval period.
Weather effect on DEM derived by InSAR

Coherence plays a significant role in constructing an accurate Digital Elevation Models (DEM) derived from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar technique. The quality of coherence is often envisaged to be controlled substantially by the magnitude of baseline, wavelength and time span. However, weather conditions (i.e. rainfall) during SAR acquisitions would also cause pronounced effects on the coherence image. For this reason, this study evaluated the impacts of rainfall, and wind conditions in term of weather condition. This study demonstrated the effect of rainfall overwhelming those main factors conducted in Sydney of New South Wales and Gippsland Plain of Victoria at Australia. Differential InSAR was performed in advance to identify any atmospheric effect or subsidence events in the study area. Since these would also cause significant impacts on the coherence image. After that, general InSAR processing chain was carried out to produce coherence image of each tandem pair. At last, the impacts of weather effects on coherence were examined by comparing the local weather information during the SAR acquisitions. Comparatively speaking, under different environmental condition, a Tandem pair with shorter baseline did not definitely yield better coherence than another did in the given land cover. This might be by virtue of high rainfall record received during the acquisitions of that shorter baseline tandem pair.
Equivolumetric partition of solid spheres with applications to orientation workspace analysis of robot manipulators

Orientation workspace analysis is a critical issue in the design of robot manipulators, especially the spherical manipulators. However, there is a lack of effective methods for such analysis, because the orientation workspace of a robot manipulator is normally a subset of SO(3) (the special orthogonal group) with a complex boundary. Numerical approaches appear more practical in actual implementations. For numerical analysis, a finite partition of the orientation workspace in its parametric domain is necessary. It has been realized that the exponential coordinates parameterization is more appropriate for finite partition. With such a parameterization, the rigid body rotation group, i.e., SO(3), can be mapped to a solid sphere D3 of radius pi with antipodal points identified. A novel partition scheme is proposed to geometrically divide the parametric domain, i.e., the solid sphere D3 of radius pi, into finite elements with equal volume. Subsequently, the volume of SO(3) can be numerically computed as a weighted volume sum of the equivolumetric elements, in which the weightages are the element-associated integration measures. In this way, we can simplify the partition scheme and also reduce the computation efforts, as the elements in the same partition layer (along the radial direction) have the same integration measure. The effectiveness of the partition scheme is demonstrated through analysis of the orientation workspace of a three-degree-of-freedom spherical parallel manipulator. Numerical convergence on various orientation workspace measures, such as the workspace volume and the global condition index, are obtained based on this partition scheme
Moderating Effects of Extroversion and Neuroticism on Sleep Deprivation and Cyberloafing

Cyberloafing is the voluntary acts of individuals using their companies’ Internet access for non-work related purposes during working hours. This study examines the impact of sleep deprivation on cyberloafing as measured objectively by time spent by individuals on non-work-related-computing. More specifically, we investigated the effect of individuals’ bed time and wake time after sleep onset (WASO) on time spent on cyberloafing. In general, individuals’ bed time and WASO significantly predict the time spent on cyberloafing. We also examined the moderating effect of extroversion on the relationship between time-to-bed and time spent on cyberloafing (supported); and the moderating effect of neuroticism on the relationship between WASO and time spent on cyberloafing (not supported). Implications of our findings are discussed.
Minimizing energy consumption of multiple-processors-core systems with simultaneous task allocation, scheduling and voltage assignment

In this paper, we tackle the problem of minimizing the energy consumption of multiple-processors-core system using multiple variable supply voltages. Given a set of tasks and their dependency, and a set of target processors, we propose an optimal formulation of carrying out task allocation on processors, task scheduling and voltage assignment for each task concurrently using mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). An iterative divide-and conquer approach is introduced to reduce the run time for large set of tasks. Experimental results show that hy using the proposed approach, significant energy reductions are achieved over the existing methods.
Smyd1 Facilitates Heart Development by Antagonizing Oxidative and ER Stress Responses

Smyd1/Bop is an evolutionary conserved histone methyltransferase previously shown by conventional knockout to be critical for embryonic heart development. To further explore the mechanism(s) in a cell autonomous context, we conditionally ablated Smyd1 in the first and second heart fields of mice using a knock-in (KI) Nkx2.5-cre driver. Robust deletion of floxed-Smyd1 in cardiomyocytes and the outflow tract (OFT) resulted in embryonic lethality at E9.5, truncation of the OFT and right ventricle, and additional defects consistent with impaired expansion and proliferation of the second heart field (SHF). Using a transgenic (Tg) Nkx2.5-cre driver previously shown to not delete in the SHF and OFT, early embryonic lethality was bypassed and both ventricular chambers were formed; however, reduced cardiomyocyte proliferation and other heart defects resulted in later embryonic death at E11.5-12.5. Proliferative impairment prior to both early and mid-gestational lethality was accompanied by dysregulation of transcripts critical for endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. Mid-gestational death was also associated with impairment of oxidative stress defense—a phenotype highly similar to the previously characterized knockout of the Smyd1-interacting transcription factor, skNAC. We describe a potential feedback mechanism in which the stress response factor Tribbles3/TRB3, when directly methylated by Smyd1, acts as a co-repressor of Smyd1-mediated transcription. Our findings suggest that Smyd1 is required for maintaining cardiomyocyte proliferation at minimally two different embryonic heart developmental stages, and its loss leads to linked stress responses that signal ensuing lethality.
Statistical pattern recognition for real-time image edge detection on FPGA

Image edge detection is a fundamental process in computer vision. Image edges represent the major fraction of information in an image. Traditional edge-detection techniques focus on the gradient calculation method. In this paper, for the first time, the statistical pattern recognition method is used to detect the edge after the real-time image was processed via the median filtering method and implemented on FPGA. In comparison to the Sobel algorithm, the proposed method has superior anti-noise capability.
Bluesaver: A Multi-PHY Approach to Smartphone Energy Savings

WiFi effectively has two extremes: low power consumption and high latency, or low latency and high power consumption. WiFi Power Save Mode saves energy by trading added latency for less power consumption. Minimal latency but maximum power, on the other hand, is consumed with WiFi Active Mode. While research has advanced in mitigating these extremes, certain types of network traffic such as constant bitrate streaming make the contrast unavoidable. We introduce Bluesaver, which provides low latency and low energy by maintaining a Bluetooth and WiFi connection simultaneously. Bluesaver is designed at the MAC layer and is able to opportunistically select the most efficient connection for packets while still assuring acceptable latency. We implement Bluesaver on an Android phone and Access Point and show that we can save more than 25% energy over existing solutions and attain the capability of quickly adapting to changes in network traffic.
International Journal of Advances in Electrical and Electronics Engineering Design of Ultra Wideband Antenna with Ebg to Improve the Gain

A novel shape of microstrip UWB planar monopole with enhanced gain using EBG structure is presented. The popularity of microstrip antennas are increasing day by day because of easy analysis and fabrication, and their attractive radiation characteristics microstrip antenna using simple electromagnetic band gap (EBG) substrate has higher gain than conventional microstrip antenna. In this paper we propose to mushroom like Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) structure with different diameter of vias was designed to analyze the behavior of the EBG structure. Mushroom-like electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structures exhibit unique electromagnetic properties that have led to a wide range of electromagnetic device applications and a simple, compact EBG microstrip antenna is proposed
Relationship Between Muscle Sympathetic Nerve Activity and Diurnal Blood Pressure Profile

The physiological mechanisms mediating the variability and diurnal rhythm of blood pressure are unclear. We tested the hypothesis that resting sympathetic activity is linked to the variability characteristics and 24-hour profile of ambulatory blood pressure measurements. We evaluated the relationship between muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) and the level, variability, and nocturnal fall of ambulatory blood pressure in 69 normal men. Subjects were subdivided according to the tertiles of MSNA distributions. Mean 24-hour blood pressure was not significantly different across the 3 groups. Compared with subjects in the first tertile (lowest MSNA, <18 bursts/min), subjects in the third tertile (highest MSNA, >25 bursts/min) had significantly greater daytime blood pressure variability, whether expressed as absolute values (10.2±0.5 versus 8.1±0.4 mm Hg for systolic blood pressure and 9.4±0.4 versus 7.2±0.4 mm Hg for diastolic blood pressure;P <0.01 for both comparisons) or as variation coefficients (8.1±0.4% versus 6.6±0.3% for systolic blood pressure and 12.7±0.7% versus 10.1±0.6% for diastolic blood pressure;P <0.01 for both comparisons). Subjects in the third tertile also had a more striking absolute and percentage fall in systolic blood pressure from daytime to nighttime than subjects in the first tertile (17±2 versus 10±2 mm Hg, P =0.02, or 13±1% versus 8.2±1.4%, P =0.02). In conclusion, higher resting measurements of sympathetic traffic are associated with greater daytime blood pressure variability and a more marked nocturnal decline in blood pressure in normal subjects. These findings suggest that sympathetic neural mechanisms may contribute importantly to the regulation of blood pressure over the 24-hour period.
Face Recognition – Lenovo VeriFace Login Application

Biometric applications are increasing in modern system’s security. Face recognition has gained popularity in computer login as a replacement to traditional password technology. Different vendors’ solutions are available with variation in quality a nd specifications. This study is based on a set of experiments with a commercial application (Lenovo VeriFace) for measuring certain parameters with respect to its face recognition technology. This includes aliveness detection, spectacles, male vs female, light and distance variations. Analysis of the experiment data showed various points of improvements that need further work. Overall, the tested system was found less acceptable for people with glasses, under poor light and increased distan ce.