Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Study on Attribute-Based Taxonomy for Music Information Retrieval

ABSTRACT We propose an attribute-based taxonomy approach to providing alternative labels to music. Labels, such as genre, are often used as ground-truth for describing song similarity in music information retrieval (MIR) systems. A consistent labelling scheme is usually a key in determining quality of classifier learning in training and performance in testing of an MIR system. We examine links between conventional genre-based taxonomies and acoustical attributes available in text-based descriptions of songs. We show that the vector representation of each song based on these acoustic attributes enables a framework for unsupervised clustering of songs to produce alternative labels and quantitative measures of similarity between songs. Our experimental results demonstrate that this new set of labels are meaningful and classifiers based on these labels achieve similar or better results than those designed with existing genre-based labels. 1. I NTR ODUC
Reasons for the failure of government IT projects in Pakistan: A contemporary study

After the introduction of information technology (IT), the government needs to take the initiative to start IT projects for the automation of government process to the citizen. Statistics show that a high number of government IT projects fail and only 15 percent e-government projects are successful. In this study, we will answer this research question, what are the reasons for failure of IT projects in the government sector organization in Pakistan and how to overcome these issues? This research was conducted through a literature review, 20 articles from journals and conferences were selected through keywords for the period of ten years from 2003 to 2013. For suggestions, we have followed the same structured search procedure. We found and select articles with our keywords, after reading abstract and conclusion. Our study has described four factors for the failure of IT projects in government sector organizations in Pakistan. These factors are Technology, Management, Politics and Finance. The technology factor can be reduced by providing latest ICT infrastructure with an expert to run and maintain it. Management issues can be resolved by hiring an experienced, skilled and highly motivated project manager to complete a project successfully. Government should make new laws and regulations to help the implementation of these projects and bureaucracy should eliminate any power struggle during and after the implementation. The budget should be allocated before the start of the project to complete it on time. Our research study has provided guidelines to policy makers for automation of government organizations in Pakistan. By considering these suggestions, successful government projects can be achieved.
Influence of Temperature on Fracture Mechanisms of Magnesium Composites

Magnesium alloy AZ91 (9 % Al, 1 % Zn, 0.2 % Mn in wt.%) with different reinforcements has been used to study fracture mechanisms and crack development. SiC particles and /or Saffil fibres were used as the reinforcement. Fracture surfaces of specimens prepared by impact tests in the temperature range from room temperature to 300 °C were investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM). Possible mechanisms of fracture are discussed in the relation to the test temperature.
Applying multi level processing for robust geometric lane feature extraction

Lane feature extraction is a function which is needed for example for autonomous driving and driver assistance systems. For example Lane Departure Warning and Lane Keeping rely on information provided by a lane estimation algorithm. One important step of the lane estimation procedure is the extraction of measurements or detections which can be used to estimate the shape of the road or lane. These detections are generated by white lane markers or the road border itself. Additionally traffic rules can be derived if a system is able to distinguish for example between solid and dashed lane marks as well as between the different types of lane marks itself (length, thickness). Every state estimation filter needs a properly defined model and reliable measurements to work correctly. This paper presents an approach to extract reliable lane mark measurements using multi level feature extraction [1] and classification. Geometric features will be generated for lane mark candidates and used for the distinction between true and false lane mark detections.
Subcritical Crack Growth in Single-crystal Silicon Using Micromachined Specimens

A micromachined specimen with a test section only 150-μm thick was developed for investigating subcritical crack growth in silicon. Crack growth rates in the range 10^−4–10^−10 m/s were measured as a function of applied stress intensity ( v–K curves) during tests in humid air and dry nitrogen lasting up to 24 h. The fracture toughness, K _Ic of {110} silicon was also measured at 1.15 ± 0.08 MPa m^1/2. While some evidence MPa-m^1/2 of subcritical crack growth appeared to occur in the region 0.9 K _Ic < K > 0.98 K _Ic, the extremely high crack growth exponent ( n 100) and the high ratio of the apparent stress corrosion threshold, K _Iscc, to the fracture toughness, K _Iscc/ K _Ic > 0.9, suggests that no clear evidence exists for a stress corrosion process in silicon exposed to humid air.
Statistical timing yield improvement of dynamic circuits using negative capacitance technique

Dynamic logic circuits are considered the best choice for high performance applications due to their relatively high speed. These high performance applications have strict timing constraints. Moreover, process variations create a large variability in the dynamic circuit delay in scaled technologies impacting the timing yield. In this paper, the negative capacitance is adopted, for the first time, for statistical timing yield improvement under process variations. Simulation results show that the adoption of the negative capacitance at the output of a 16-input dynamic NOR gate improves the timing yield by reducing the dynamic circuit delay. In addition, the negative capacitance adoption results in power saving of 10% and reduces the delay variability by 57.6%.
Constant-envelope omni-directional transmission with diversity in massive MIMO systems

The common signals in public channels of cellular networks should be transmitted omni-directionally from the base station to guarantee reliable coverage. In this paper, we propose a transmission scheme for public channels in massive MIMO systems based on the precoding-extended Alamouti code. This proposed space-time code has the following four features: 1) the transmitted signal is omni-directional, i.e., its DFT has constant-envelope; 2) the transmitted signal on each antenna has constant-envelope to achieve the highest power-efficiency; 3) the maximum diversity order 2 can be obtained; 4) it is easy for downlink channel estimation at the user side. Furthermore, we propose two different constellation designs for the two symbols in this space-time code, i.e., these two symbols can be modulated independently or jointly. The independent design has the advantage in fast decoding while the joint design has the advantage in superior performance. Simulations verify the effectiveness of our scheme.
Open Graphs and Computational Reasoning

We present a form of algebraic reasoning for computational objects which are expressed as graphs. Edges describe the flow of data between primitive operations which are represented by vertices. These graphs have an interface made of half-edges (edges which are drawn with an unconnected end) and enjoy rich compositional principles by connecting graphs along these half-edges. In particular, this allows equations and rewrite rules to be specified between graphs. Particular computational models can then be encoded as an axiomatic set of such rules. Further rules can be derived graphically and rewriting can be used to simulate the dynamics of a computational system, e.g. evaluating a program on an input. Examples of models which can be formalised in this way include traditional electronic circuits as well as recent categorical accounts of quantum information.
Concise Review: Next‐Generation Cell Therapies to Prevent Infections in Neutropenic Patients

High‐dose chemotherapy is accompanied by an obligate period of neutropenia. Resulting bacterial and fungal infections are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in neutropenic patients despite prophylactic antimicrobials and hematopoietic growth factor supplements. Replacing neutrophils in the patient through transfusion of donor cells is a logical solution to prevent fulminant infections. In the past, this strategy has been hampered by poor yield, inability to store collected cells, and possible donor morbidity caused by granulocyte colony‐stimulating factor injections and apheresis. Today, neutrophil‐like cells can be manufactured in the laboratory at the clinical scale from hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells enriched from umbilical cord blood. This article reviews the rationale for focusing research efforts toward ex vivo neutrophil production and explores clinical settings for future trials.
Modified AODV routing protocol to improve security and performance against black hole attack

A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is a collection of autonomous nodes that have the ability to communicate with each other without having fixed infrastructure or centralized access point such as a base station. This kind of networks is very susceptible to adversary's malicious attacks, due to the dynamic changes of the network topology, trusting the nodes to each other, lack of fixed substructure for the analysis of nodes behaviors and constrained resources. One of these attacks is black hole attack. In this attack, malicious nodes inject fault routing information to the network and lead all data packets toward themselves, then destroy them all. In this paper, we propose a solution, which enhances the security of the Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol to encounter the black hole attacks. Our solution avoids the black hole and the multiple black hole attacks. The simulation results using the Network Simulator NS2 shows that our protocol provides better security and better performance in terms of the packet delivery ratio than the AODV routing protocol in the presence of one or multiple black hole attacks with marginal rise in average end-to-end delay and normalized routing overhead.
Assessing cortical functional connectivity by partial directed coherence: simulations and application to real data

The aim of this paper is to test a technique called partial directed coherence (PDC) and its modification (squared PDC; sPDC) for the estimation of human cortical connectivity by means of simulation study, in which both PDC and sPDC were studied by analysis of variance. The statistical analysis performed returned that both PDC and sPDC are able to estimate correctly the imposed connectivity patterns when data exhibit a signal-to-noise ratio of at least 3 and a length of at least 27 s of nonconsecutive recordings at 250 Hz of sampling rate, equivalent, more generally, to 6750 data samples
Fabrication of aluminum nitride barrier SIS mixer devices using nitrogen plasma diluted by noble gases

Nb/Al–AlNx/Nb SIS junctions have been fabricated by various RF plasma nitridation techniques. The reproducibility of the RNAproduct from batch to batch was improved by diluting the N2 plasma with He or Ar. For the He+N2 process, a power-law relation between the RNA product and the nitridation time was found to hold along 100-106Ω μm2, which implies that the thickness of the barrier grows logarithmically during the time it is exposed to the plasma. By applying a pulse-time-modulated RF power, we were able to slow down the nitridation significantly. Finally, we present the results of preliminary RF measurements. The Nb/Al–AlNx/Nb SIS mixers were tested at around 150GHz and 350GHz, and showed noise performances comparable to those of Nb/Al–AlOx/Nb SIS mixers.
Towards modeling legitimate and unsolicited email traffic using social network properties

Identifying unsolicited email based on their network-level behavior rather than their content have received huge interest. In this study, we investigate the social network properties of large-scale email networks generated from real email traffic to reveal the properties that are indicative of spam as opposed to the expected legitimate behavior. By analyzing the structural and temporal properties of the email networks we confirm that legitimate email traffic generates a small-world, scale-free network similar to other social networks. However, email traffic as a whole contains unsolicited email, thus the structure of email networks deviates from that of social networks. Our study points out the distinctive characteristics of spam traffic and reveals that the anomalies in the structural properties of email networks are due to the unsocial behavior of spam.
Combining Morphosyntactic Enriched Representation with n-best Reranking in Statistical Translation

The purpose of this work is to explore the integration of morphosyntactic information into the translation model itself, by enriching words with their morphosyntactic categories. We investigate word disambiguation using morphosyntactic categories, n-best hypotheses reranking, and the combination of both methods with word or morphosyntactic n-gram language model reranking. Experiments are carried out on the English-to-Spanish translation task. Using the morphosyntactic language model alone does not results in any improvement in performance. However, combining morphosyntactic word disambiguation with a word based 4-gram language model results in a relative improvement in the BLEU score of 2.3% on the development set and 1.9% on the test set.
Prediction of crack growth direction by Strain Energy Sih's Theory on specimens SEN under tension-compression biaxial loading employing Genetic Algorithms

Crack growth direction has been studied in many ways. Particularly Sih's strain energy theory predicts that a fracture under a three-dimensional state of stress spreads in direction of the minimum strain energy density [1]. In this work a study for angle of fracture growth was made, considering a biaxial stress state at the crack tip on SEN specimens. The stress state applied on a tension-compression SEN specimen is biaxial one on crack tip, as it can observed in figure 1. A solution method proposed to obtain a mathematical model considering genetic algorithms, which have demonstrated great capacity for the solution of many engineering problems. From the model given by Sih one can deduce the density of strain energy stored for unit of volume at the crack tip as From equation (1) a mathematical deduction to solve in terms of θ of this case was developed employing Genetic Algorithms, where θ is a crack propagation direction in plane x-y. Steel and aluminium mechanical properties to modelled specimens were employed, because they are two of materials but used in engineering design. Obtained results show stable zones of fracture propagation but only in a range of applied loading.
Document Classification Algorithm Based on NPE and PSO

With many potential applications in document management and Web searching, document classification has recently gained more attention. To efficiently resolve this problem, an efficient document classification algorithm based on neighborhood preserving embedding (NPE) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed in this paper. The document features are first extracted by the NPE algorithm, then the PSO classifier is used to classify the documents into semantically different classes. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves much better performance than other related classification algorithms.
Twitter Users #CodeSwitch Hashtags! #MoltoImportante #wow

When code switching, individuals incorporate elements of multiple languages into the same utterance. While code switching has been studied extensively in formal and spoken contexts, its behavior and prevalence remains unexamined in many newer forms of electronic communication. The present study examines code switching in Twitter, focusing on instances where an author writes a post in one language and then includes a hashtag in a second language. In the first experiment, we perform a large scale analysis on the languages used in millions of posts to show that authors readily incorporate hashtags from other languages, and in a manual analysis of a subset the hashtags, reveal prolific code switching, with code switching occurring for some hashtags in over twenty languages. In the second experiment, French and English posts from three bilingual cities are analyzed for their code switching frequency and its content.
The F423Y Mutation in the pfmdr2 Gene and Mutations N51I, C59R, and S108N in the pfdhfr Gene Are Independently Associated with Pyrimethamine Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum Isolates

ABSTRACT Screening for in vitro susceptibility to pyrimethamine and sequencing of the pfmdr2 and pfdhfr genes were performed in 140 Plasmodium falciparum isolates. The risk of in vitro resistance to pyrimethamine was analyzed with a logistic regression model. The mutation F423Y in pfmdr2 (odds ratio [OR] = 2.12 [confidence interval {CI}, 1.02 to 4.59]; P = 0.0489) and the mutation N51I, C59R, or S108N in pfdhfr (OR = 42.34 [CI, 5.52 to 324.61]; P = 0.0003) were independently associated with in vitro resistance to pyrimethamine.
The use of Rocuronium in a Patient with Cystic Fibrosis and End-Stage Lung Disease Made Safe by Sugammadex Reversal

While the pharmacology of sugammadex has been extensively reviewed, there is limited literature regarding its use in specific clinical settings. Several case reports describe its use in patients with the potential for postoperative respiratory dysfunction; in the settings of myasthenia gravis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and myotonic dystrophy. We describe the use of sugammadex in a patient with severe bronchiectasis related to cystic fibrosis who required neuromuscular block for percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy insertion. The use of rocuronium for neuromuscular block was preferred in order to avoid the potential complications associated with the use of suxamethonium. However, we wished to ensure complete neuromuscular block reversal for this short duration procedure in this high-risk patient and also to avoid the side-effects of traditional reversal agents. We therefore planned in advance to use sugammadex for neuromuscular block reversal, and this approach proved successful. Overall, the combination of rocuronium and sugammadex improved perioperative surgical and anaesthetic management in this patient.
Runx2 is essential for larval hyobranchial cartilage formation in Xenopus laevis

The vertebrate transcription factor protein Runx2 is regarded as a “master regulator” of bone formation due to the dramatic loss of the osseous skeleton in the mouse homozygous knockout. However, Runx2 mRNA also is expressed in the pre‐hypertrophic cartilaginous skeleton of the mouse and chicken, where its developmental function is largely unknown. Several tiers of Runx2 regulation exist in the mouse, any of which may account for its seeming biological inactivity during early stages of skeletogenesis. Unlike mouse and chicken, zebrafish require Runx2 function in early cartilage differentiation. The present study reveals that the earlier functional role of Runx2 in cartilage differentiation is shared between zebrafish and Xenopus. A combination of morpholino oligonucleotide injections and neural crest transplants indicate that Runx2 is involved in differentiation of the cartilaginous hyobranchial skeleton in the frog, Xenopus laevis. Additionally, in situ hybridizations show runx2 mRNA expression in mesenchymal precursors of the cartilaginous skull, which reveals the earliest pre‐patterning of these cartilages described to date. The early distribution of runx2 resolves the homology of the larval suprarostral plate, which is one of the oldest controversies of anuran skull development. Together these data reveal a shift in Runx2 function protein during vertebrate evolution towards its exclusive roles in cartilage hypertrophy and bone differentiation within the amniote lineage. Developmental Dynamics 236:1650–1662, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Reevaluation and Reduction of a PCR Bias Caused by Reannealing of Templates

ABSTRACT We reevaluated the bias toward a 1:1 ratio of products in multitemplate PCR used in ecological studies and showed that the template reannealing at the annealing step would not cause the bias; however, the preferential homoduplex formation during temperature decrease from denaturation to annealing step would cause the bias.
Adherence to Mediterranean diet and risk of developing diabetes: prospective cohort study

Objective To assess the relation between adherence to a Mediterranean diet and the incidence of diabetes among initially healthy participants. Design Prospective cohort study with estimates of relative risk adjusted for sex, age, years of university education, total energy intake, body mass index, physical activity, sedentary habits, smoking, family history of diabetes, and personal history of hypertension. Setting Spanish university department. Participants 13 380 Spanish university graduates without diabetes at baseline followed up for a median of 4.4 years. Main outcome measures Dietary habits assessed at baseline with a validated 136 item food frequency questionnaire and scored on a nine point index. New cases of diabetes confirmed through medical reports and an additional detailed questionnaire posted to those who self reported a new diagnosis of diabetes by a doctor during follow-up. Confirmed cases of type 2 diabetes. Results Participants who adhered closely to a Mediterranean diet had a lower risk of diabetes. The incidence rate ratios adjusted for sex and age were 0.41 (95% confidence interval 0.19 to 0.87) for those with moderate adherence (score 3-6) and 0.17 (0.04 to 0.75) for those with the highest adherence (score 7-9) compared with those with low adherence (score <3). In the fully adjusted analyses the results were similar. A two point increase in the score was associated with a 35% relative reduction in the risk of diabetes (incidence rate ratio 0.65, 0.44 to 0.95), with a significant inverse linear trend (P=0.04) in the multivariate analysis. Conclusion Adherence to a Mediterranean diet is associated with a reduced risk of diabetes.