Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A prototype of a spoken dialog system based on statistical models

We present in this paper a prototype of a spoken dialog system. One of the characteristics of this system is that most of the modules (speech recognition, understanding and dialog manager) are based on statistical models. The system has the possibility of easily change the task or the language by means of interchanging the different modules. We present in this case a dialog task consisting of booking of sports facilities in the University.
The behrens‐fisher problem revisited: A bayes‐frequentist synthesis

The Behrens‐Fisher problem concerns the inference for the difference between the means of two normal populations whose ratio of variances is unknown. In this situation, Fisher's fiducial interval differs markedly from the Neyman‐Pearson confidence interval. A prior proposed by Jeffreys leads to a credible interval that is equivalent to Fisher's solution but it carries a different interpretation. The authors propose an alternative prior leading to a credible interval whose asymptotic coverage probability matches the frequentist coverage probability more accurately than the interval of Jeffreys. Their simulation results indicate excellent matching even in small samples.
Attacking and Repairing the Improved ModOnions Protocol-Tagging Approach

In this paper, we present a new class of attacks against an anonymous communication protocol, originally presented in ACNS 2008. The protocol itself was proposed as an improved version of ModOnions, which exploits universal re-encryption in order to avoid replay attacks. However, ModOnions allowed the detour attack, introduced by Danezis to re-route ModOnions to attackers in such a way that the entire path is revealed. The ACNS 2008 proposal addressed this by using a more complicated key management scheme. The revised protocol is immune to detour attacks. We show, however, that the ModOnion construction is highly malleable and this property can be exploited in order to redirect ModOnions. Our attacks require detailed probing and are less efficient than the detour attack, but they can nevertheless recover the full onion path while avoiding detection and investigation. Motivated by this, we present modifications to the ModOnion protocol that dramatically reduce the malleability of the encryption primitive. It addresses the class of attacks we present and it makes other attacks difficult to formulate.
Improved normal iterative closest point algorithm with multi-information

In this paper we present a novel method called color support Normal Iterative Closest Point (color NICP) to recursively align point clouds. First of all, the matching criterion of NICP is improved based on the uncertainty analysis on the feature points and L∗a∗b∗ color space. Secondly, a six-dimensional k-d tree based nearest neighbor search is used to match corresponding points between the clouds. Our algorithm takes advantage of not only the 3D structure, but also the texture information of color image. Extensive experiments show that our color NICP algorithm improves the robustness and precision of point cloud registration.
A Multiple Measures Model for Documenting Teacher and Program Effectiveness

One of the most difficult challenges facing teacher educators is evaluating the knowledge, skills, and attributes necessary for professional growth and responsibility for teaching. Currently two viewpoints for preparing highly qualified teachers seem to be influencing policy. One view represented by Darling-Hammond’s research (1999), suggests that regulation of teacher education, state licensing, professional accountability, and compensation are important factors for strengthening teacher quality. A second view, offered by Chester Finn from research completed by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation (cited in Berry, Hoke, and Hirsch, 2004), emphasizes less prescriptive paths such as alternative certification practices and aptitude testing to attract more qualified candidates to the profession. What seems to be established is that competent teachers are essential to the learning process. Sanders and Rivers (1998) found that effective teachers directly and positively impact the quality of teaching and, more importantly, student learning in classrooms. As a result, the stakes are high for students; their learning may be directly enhanced or damaged by the quality and effectiveness of their teachers’ practices. [excerpt]
Pitch modulation in emotional speech by non-emotive factors : case studies

Automatic affect recognition (AAR) from speech is often investigated ignoring extraneous, non-emotive prosodic information. In reality, spontaneous speech contains a multitude of non-emotive cues that modulate pitch/F0. This paper presents an investigation of how stress placement influences utterance duration and aggregated F0 measures mean, minimum, and range that are used in AAR. The second part of the analysis examines whether we can identify stress placement in emotive speech from F0 contours sufficiently reliably that it can be accounted for in AAR. The investigation uses sample utterances from an emotional speech corpus, which includes as variables three emotion categories (neutral, angry, and happy) crossed with two placements of stress. The lexical content of the sentences also varied, either matching or mismatching the emotional expression, and this condition was also included in the analysis. Results show that stress placement distorts the relationships between the emotional categories and the measures that include aggregated F0 and utterance duration. Likewise, the expressed emotions influenced contour shapes so that they did not correlate in a reliable way with accentuation. In contrast, there was little evidence that lexical content influenced any of the results.
Cell dynamics in the adult mouse olfactory epithelium: a quantitative autoradiographic study

The dynamics of cell genesis in the olfactory epithelium of the adult mouse were investigated using 3H-thymidine autoradiography. Mice were injected once with 3H-thymidine, and their olfactory epithelia were examined 7, 14, 30, 60, and 90 d later. The number of silver grains over each nucleus was counted, and the relative distance from the basement membrane was measured for each labeled nucleus. At 7 and 14 d, the average number of labeled cells in each section was about 20 per mm. By 30 d, and for the following 60 d, the average number of labeled cells was only about 6 per mm. Thus, most cells labeled by the injection died 2–4 weeks after injection. When the labeled cells were compared by nuclear grain density, time after injection (the “survival period”), and distance of the nucleus from the basement membrane (the “migration distance”), it was apparent that there was a small population of “nonmigrating” cells that remained close to the basement membrane. These cells, at first heavily labeled, divided a second time about 60 d after the 3H-thymidine injection, indicated by a significant decrease in nuclear grain density. This nonmigrating, slowly dividing basal cell is probably the neural stem cell, which gives rise to another stem cell and an olfactory neuron precursor by an asymmetric division. When the relative numbers of nonmigrating and migrating cells were compared, the results indicated that, after the asymmetric division, there are at least 2 or 3 rapid, symmetric divisions of the precursor cells, producing many immature receptor cells. Most of these die within 4 weeks of the 3H-thymidine injection. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A Review Of Various Attacks On Biometrics System And Their Known Solutions

In the current digital world we have various authentication systems which identify an individual. For example biometrics authentication system, knowledge based authentication system, token based authentication system. These systems have their own advantages and disadvantages. One system removes the disadvantages of other. A biometrics system is known as one of the robust system. But it also falls into several of attacks, which have been discussed in this paper. Also the known solution has been discussed. So that we can make a more robust authentication
Global stability of congestion controllers for the internet

We consider a single link accessed by a single source which responds to congestion signals from the network. The design of controllers for such sources in the presence of feedback delay has received much attention recently. In this paper we present conditions for the global, asymptotic stability and semi-global exponential stability of congestion controllers which are natural extensions of earlier linearized analysis of such systems. Our result on exponential stability provides the missing link in the proof of how one obtains a single deterministic congestion control equation from a system with many congestion-controlled sources and random disturbances. Using numerical examples, we compare the conditions on the congestion-control parameters obtained using local and global stability analysis.
Ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation: evidence from two sites in Bangladesh

Ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation (EbA) involve the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services to help people adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. This research looks at two components of effective EbA: ecosystem resilience and the maintenance of ecosystem services. It assesses EbA effectiveness in terms of how such approaches support community adaptive capacity and resilience at two sites in Bangladesh: Chanda Beel wetland and Balukhali Village in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Research findings suggest that more attention should be paid to EbA as an important climate-change response. Results show that the many diverse natural resources available and utilized at each site have increased the number of different subsistence and livelihood options available in the community and hence local adaptive capacity, especially for poorer households. Major structural shifts in ecosystem functioning observed at each site to date can be attributed primarily to non-climate-change-related factors, although climate-change-related factors increasingly threaten to dramatically alter ecosystems, especially in Chanda Beel. Such shifts have important consequences for adaptive capacity and have led to a number of trade-offs. The lack of effective institutions, good governance and enabling policy at both sites has limited potential resilience gains from sound ecosystem management.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image segmentation by fuzzy c- means clustering technique with thresholding for iceberg images

Fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm is widely used for image segmentation. The purpose of clustering is to identify natural groupings of data from a large data set, which results in concise representation of system’s behavior. It can be used to detect icebergs regardless of ambient conditions like rain, darkness and fog. As a result SAR images can be used for iceberg surveillance. In this paper we have investigate FCM with thresholding for iceberg image segmentation for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. The results showed that the assessment parameters; mean and entropy have lower values for efficient segmentation.
The Definition of a Tunneling Strategy between Adaptive Learning and Reputation-based Group Activities

We investigate the integration of LECOMPS, a web-based e-learning environment for the automated construction and adaptive delivery of learning paths, and SOCIALX, a web-based system for shared e-learning activities, which exploits a reputation system to provide feedback to its participants. Our overall goal is the integration of personalized and collaborative learning to support the Vygotskij's educational theory of proximal development. Therefore we propose a two-way tunneling strategy: the LECOMPS student model is used to select the set of social activities (met in SOCIALX) according to the present individual learner state of knowledge, on the other hand, the solution of exercises, and the associated reputation derived in SOCIALX, is used to update the LECOMPS student model. In particular, we present a mapping between the student model and the definition of Vygotskij's concepts of Autonomous Problem Solving and Proximal Development regions, with the aim to provide the learner with better guidance during the taking of the course.
Congress and Foreign Policy

This chapter considers the relationship between the legislative and executive branches on foreign policy matters. The Constitution assigns both Congress and the president important powers in the realm of foreign and military policy. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, to raise armies, to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and, in the case of the Senate, the power to ratify treaties and concur in the appointment of ambassadors. It is Congress, moreover, that must appropriate the funds to pay for military and foreign policy initiatives. Over the decades, however, Congress's ability to contend with the executive in the foreign policy realm has gradually declined as presidents have used their power of initiative to marginalize the legislative branch.
Chapter 1 DISTRIBUTED ACTIVE MULTI-CAMERA NETWORKS

We present the IBM Smart Surveillance System that uses a distributed architecture to manage a heterogeneous network of active cameras. This system consists of a distributed network of cameras, each with local processing that interprets video to detect and track moving objects. The system performs multi-camera tracking as objects pass through the fields of view of different cameras, and actively acquires rich, highresolution data by actively tracking objects of interest with Pan-TiltZoom cameras. The multi-resolution data is stored in a shared index that can be browsed and searched live or post-hoc from a remote location, visualizing very low bandwidth video or activity meta data.
Improving Code Maintainability: A Case Study on the Impact of Refactoring

It is a fact that a lot of software is written by people without a formal education in software engineering. As an example, material scientists often capture their knowledge in the form of simulation software that contains sophisticated algorithms representing complex physical concepts. Since software engineering is typically not a core skill of these scientists, there is a risk that their software becomes unmaintainable once it reaches a substantial size or structural complexity. This paper reports on a case study in which software engineers consulted magnetics researchers in refactoring their simulation software. This software had grown to 30 kloc of Java and was considered unmaintainable by the stakeholders of the research project. The case study describes the process of refactoring a system under the guidance of a software engineer with results supported by static analysis and software metrics. It shows how software engineers evaluated and selected refactorings to apply to the system using their expert judgment with input from static analysis tools and discusses the outcome of refactoring as evaluated by code owners and reported via static analysis metrics.
Less Annotation on Personalized Activity Recognition Using Context Data

Miscellaneous mini-wearable devices (e.g. wristbands, smartwatches, armbands) have emerged in our life, capable of recognizing activities of daily living, monitoring health information, so on. Conventional activity recognition (AR) models deployed inside these devices are generic classifiers learned offline from abundant data. Transferring generic model to user-oriented model requires time-consuming human effort for annotations. To solve this problem, we propose SS-ARTMAP-AR, a self-supervised incremental learning AR model updated from surrounding information such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, GSM data without user's annotation effort. Experimental results show that SS-ARTMAP-AR can gradually adapt individual users, become more incremental intelligence.
Post-hoc Manipulations of Vector Space Models with Application to Semantic Role Labeling

In this paper, we introduce several vector space manipulation methods that are applied to trained vector space models in a post-hoc fashion, and present an application of these techniques in semantic role labeling for Finnish and English. Specifically, we show that the vectors can be circularly shifted to encode syntactic information and subsequently averaged to produce representations of predicate senses and arguments. Further, we show that it is possible to effectively learn a linear transformation between the vector representations of predicates and their arguments, within the same vector space.
An on-line gravity estimation method using inverse gravity regressor for robot manipulator control

When a robotic manipulator is controlled, computing gravity force of the robot is the primary issue. Exact model parameters are not easy to be known in the practical robot system due to the uncertainty of the robot dynamics. Hence, the gravity force is presented by a combination of gravity regressor and robot dynamic parameters and is compensated by the estimation of uncertain robot dynamic parameters. Previous researches conducted estimation by using transpose of gravity regressor and full form of dynamic parameters which is not general form however this paper estimates the gravity force using the generalized gravity regressor which is regardless of the dimension and structure of the robot under the quasi-static state. Once the estimation is completed, the estimated value can be used to compute the gravitational force and control the robot. It is shown that the generalized decomposition of gravity regressor and estimation process. The results are validated through an experiment by implementing the algorithm on an upper-body dual arm robot.
Role of extracellular nucleotide phosphohydrolysis in intestinal ischemia‐reperfusion injury

Extracellular adenosine has been implicated as an innate antiinflammatory metabolite, particularly during conditions of limited oxygen availability such as ischemia. Because extracellular adenosine generation is primarily produced via phosphohydrolysis from its precursor molecule adenosine‐monophosphate (AMP) through the enzyme ecto‐5′‐nucleotidase (CD73), we examined the contribution of CD73‐dependent adenosine production in modulation of intestinal ischemia‐reperfusion (IR) injury. Following transcriptional and translational profiling of intestinal tissue that revealed a prominent induction of murine CD73, we next determined the role of CD73 in protection against intestinal IR injury. Interestingly, pharmacological inhibition or targeted gene deletion of CD73 significantly enhanced not only local intestinal injury, but also secondary organ injury, following IR as measured by intestinal and lung myeloperoxidase, aspartate and alanine aminotransferase, interleukin (IL) ‐1, IL‐6, and histological injury. To confirm the role of CD73 in intestinal adenosine production, we measured adenosine tissue levels and found that they were increased with IR injury. In contrast, CD73‐deficient (cd73−/−) mice had lower adenosine levels at baseline and no increase with IR injury. Finally, reconstitution of cd73−/− mice or treatment of wild‐type mice with soluble 5′‐nucleotidase was associated with significantly lower levels of injury. These data reveal a previously unrecognized role of CD73 in attenuating intestinal IR‐mediated injury. —Hart, M. L. , Henn, M. , Köhler, D. , Kloor, D. , Mittelbronn, M. , Gorzolla, I. C. , Stahl, G. L. , Eltzschig, H. K. Role of extracellular nucleotide phosphohydrolysis in intestinal ischemia‐reperfusion injury. FASEB J. 22, 2784–2797 (2008)
Secrecy transmission capacity of decentralized wireless networks

Secure communication over large-scale decentralized wireless networks is an extremely challenging task due to the cost and difficulty in establishing secret keys among all the nodes in a distributed manner. For this reason, the notion of physical layer security has recently drawn significant attention, which may assist with key exchange and provide an additional layer of protection in such networks. In this paper, we investigate how the physical layer security constraints affect the network throughput. We consider a random network in which the legitimate and eavesdropper nodes are located according to independent Poisson point processes. We introduce a new metric “secrecy transmission capacity” to characterize the network throughput in terms of the area spectral efficiency of secure transmissions, subject to constraints on both the quality of service and the level of security. This capacity framework allows us to quantitatively study the throughput cost of physical layer security constraints. We observe that the throughput cost of achieving a moderate level of security is quite low, while throughput must be significantly sacrificed to realize a highly secure network.
How a computer actor influences the time-efficiency of a meeting

A computer actor can influence a meeting. By using a computer actor, we can try to make a meeting more timeefficient. But it’s unknown what kind of operations a computer actor must perform in order to increase the efficiency of a meeting. In three experiments, it has been researched how the efficiency of a meeting could be increased. It appears that how more intrusive a computer actor acts, how more the efficiency of a meeting increases.
A Parameter Study of Type II Supernova Light Curves Using 6 M☉ He Cores

Results of numerical calculations of Type II supernova light curves are presented. The model progenitor stars have 6 M☉ cores and various envelopes, originating from a numerically evolved 20 M☉ star. Five parameters that affect the light curves are examined: the ejected mass, the progenitor radius, the explosion energy, the 56Ni mass, and the extent of 56Ni mixing. The following effects have been found: (1) the larger the progenitor radius, the brighter the early-time light curve, with little effect on the late-time light curve; (2) the larger the envelope mass, the fainter the early light curve and the flatter the slope of the late light curve; (3) the larger the explosion energy, the brighter the early light curve and the steeper the slope of the late light curve; (4) the larger the 56Ni mass, the brighter the overall light curve after 20-50 days, with no effect on the early light curve; and (5) the more extensive the 56Ni mixing, the brighter the early light curve and the steeper the late light curve. The primary parameters affecting the light-curve shape are the progenitor radius and the ejected mass. The secondary parameters are the explosion energy, 56Ni mass, and 56Ni mixing. I find that while in principle the general shape and absolute magnitude of a light curve indicate a unique set of parameters, in practice it is difficult to avoid some ambiguity in the parameters. I find that the nickel-powered diffusion wave and the recombination of helium produce a prominent secondary peak in all our calculations. The feature is less prominent when compositional mixing, both 56Ni mixing and mixing between the hydrogen and helium layers, occurs. The model photospheric temperatures and velocities are presented, for comparison to observation.