Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Distortion-Based Intra-Rate Estimation for H.264/AVC Rate Control

Rate distortion of Intra-frame (I-frame) plays a significant role in controlling video quality for H.264/AVC. This letter presents an adaptive distortion-based Intra-rate estimation (ADIE) algorithm for H.264/AVC rate control. In this algorithm, a new rate control model is established based on the distortion by taking image complexity, buffer status, and scene change into consideration. After adaptively updating this model, our proposed algorithm is capable of providing more accurate estimation for the quantization step (Qstep) of the I-frame than other conventional methods. Experimental results show that the proposed method can significantly improve video quality (up to 1.62 dB average PSNR performance), while achieving an accurate output bit rate. More importantly, it provides a more stable visual quality which is a result of keeping the buffer occupancy steadier than other existing rate control algorithms.
Enhancement of Planning Ability by Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

The functional neuroanatomy of executive function critically involves the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been established as a noninvasive tool for transient modulation of cortical function. Here, we examined the effects of tDCS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex on planning function by using the Tower of London task to evaluate performance during and after anodal, cathodal (1 mA, 15 min), and sham tDCS in 24 healthy volunteers. The key finding was a double dissociation of polarity and training phase: improved performance was found with cathodal tDCS applied during acquisition and early consolidation, when preceding anodal tDCS, but not in the later training session. In contrast, anodal tDCS enhanced performance when applied in the later sessions following cathodal tDCS. Our results indicate that both anodal and cathodal tDCS can improve planning performance as quantified by the Tower of London test. Most importantly, these data demonstrate training-phase-specific effects of tDCS. We propose that excitability decreasing cathodal tDCS mediates its early beneficial effect through noise reduction of neuronal activity, whereas a further adaptive configuration of specific neuronal connections is supported by excitability enhancing anodal tDCS in the later training phase by enhanced efficacy of active connections. This gain of function was sustained in a follow-up 6 and 12 months after training. In conclusion, the specific coupling of stimulation and training phase interventions may support the treatment of cognitive disorders involving frontal lobe functions.
Preseason preparation training and endothelial function in elite professional soccer players

Aim To examine whether a high volume of soccer-specific training can lead to endothelial activation and/or dysfunction in professional soccer players due to exercise-induced oxidative stress. Methods Twenty-three (15 nonsmokers and eight smokers) healthy, elite male professional soccer players (mean age: 25.2±4.3 years, BMI: 23.1±1.3 kg/m2, fat: 7.8%±2.6%) were selected for this study. All participants had a full clinical and laboratory evaluation. von Willebrand factor antigen (vWf Ag) plasma levels were measured on two different occasions: 1 day before the beginning of the preseason preparation period and after 7 weeks of strenuous exercise. Results Mean vWf Ag plasma levels were significantly decreased from 95.1%±26% to 88.3%±27.2% at the end of the experimental period (P=0.018), suggesting a potential beneficial effect on the endothelium of these athletes. Further analysis showed that age greater than 29 years with an age range from 29 to 34 years can not impair this effect (P>0.05). Conclusion Strenuous exercise did not lead to endothelium activation or dysfunction in well-trained elite soccer players. On the contrary, it seemed to produce a beneficial effect on the endothelium of these players.
Food sovereignty

What does food sovereignty look like? Raj Patel Hannah Arendt observed that the first right, above all others, is the right to have rights. In many ways, Via Campesina's call for food sovereignty is precisely about invoking a right to have rights over food. But it's unclear quite how to cash out these ideas. This Grassroots Voices section examines some of the difficulties involved in parlaying the right to have rights about food systems into practical solutions.
Psychoacoustically-Adapted Patchwork Algorithm for Watermarking

For the digital watermarking patchwork algorithm originally given by Bender et al, this paper proposes two improvements applicable to audio watermarking. First, the watermark embedding strength is psychoacoustically adapted, using the Bark frequency scale. Second, whereas previous approaches leave the samples which do not correspond to the data untouched, in this paper, these are modified to reduce the probability of misdetection, a method called full index embedding. In simulations, the proposed combination of these two proposed methods has higher resistance to a variety of attacks that prior algorithms.
Permuted Product and Importance-Sampling Estimators for Regenerative Simulations

In a previous paper we introduced a new variance-reduction technique for regenerative simulations based on permuting regeneration cycles. In this paper we apply this idea to new classes of estimators. In particular, we derive permuted versions of likelihood-ratio derivative estimators for steady-state performance measures, importance-sampling estimators of the mean cumulative reward until hitting a set of states, and Tin estimators for steady-state ratio formulas. Empirical results are presented that show signiicant variance reductions in some cases.
Special Education Teacher Candidates and Mentors: Case Studies of Collaboration in Pre-Service Field Experiences.

This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu. Recommended Citation Schulte, Rebecca Lynn, "Special Education Teacher Candidates and Mentors: Case Studies of Collaboration in Pre-service Field Experiences" (2013). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 1028.
Negative Beta Encoder

A new class of analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analog (D/A) converters using a flaky quantiser, called the $\beta$-encoder, has been shown to have exponential bit rate accuracy while possessing a self-correction property for fluctuations of the amplifier factor $\beta$ and the quantiser threshold $\nu$. The probabilistic behavior of such a flaky quantiser is explained as the deterministic dynamics of the multi-valued R\'enyi map. That is, a sample $x$ is always confined to a contracted subinterval while successive approximations of $x$ are performed using $\beta$-expansion even if $\nu$ may vary at each iteration. This viewpoint enables us to get the decoded sample, which is equal to the midpoint of the subinterval, and its associated characteristic equation for recovering $\beta$ which improves the quantisation error by more than $3{dB}$ when $\beta>1.5$. The invariant subinterval under the R\'enyi map shows that $\nu$ should be set to around the midpoint of its associated greedy and lazy values. %in terms of its quantisation MSE (mean square error). Furthermore, a new A/D converter is introduced called the negative $\beta$-encoder, which further improves the quantisation error of the $\beta$-encoder. A two-state Markov chain describing the $\beta$-encoder suggests that a negative eigenvalue of its associated transition probability matrix reduces the quantisation error.
Party Politics and Local Government

1. Introduction: Party politics: An unwelcome partisan presence or a democratic necessity? 2. Representation: The party or the people? 3. Local parties and local politics: A democratic necessity or a sectional interest 4. The political party group The Leviathan of local politics 5. Local party groups and the national party 6. Party political exchanges 7. The councillor, the citizen and the community: crises of representation 8. Political Executives in local government: A challenge to the primacy of the party group 9. Directly elected Mayors: A new political dynamic or a tired hack? 10. Political parties: Dominating local politics
Simple Tabulation, Fast Expanders, Double Tabulation, and High Independence

Simple tabulation dates back to Zobrist in 1970 who used it for game playing programs. Keys are viewed as consisting of c characters from some alphabet Φ. We initialize c tables h<sub>0</sub>, . , h<sub>c-1</sub> mapping characters to random hash values. A key x = (x<sub>0</sub>, . , x<sub>c-1</sub>) is hashed to h<sub>0</sub>[x<sub>0</sub>]⊕· · ·⊕h<sub>c-1</sub>[x<sub>c-1</sub>], where ⊕ denotes bit-wise exclusive-or. The scheme is extremely fast when the character hash tables h<sub>i</sub> are in cache. Simple tabulation hashing is not even 4-independent, but we show here that if we apply it twice, then we do get high independence. First we hash to some intermediate keys that are 6 times longer than the original keys, and then we hash the intermediate keys to the final hash values. The intermediate keys have d = 6c characters from Φ. We can then view the hash function as a highly unbalanced bipartite graph with keys on one side, each with edges to d output characters on the other side. We show that this graph has nice expansion properties, and from that it follows that if we perform another level of simple tabulation on the intermediate keys, then the composition is a highly independent hash function. More precisely, the independence we get is |Φ|Ω<sup>(1/c)</sup>. In our O-notation, we view both |Φ| and c is going to infinity, but with c much smaller than |Φ|. Our space is O(c|Φ|) and the hash function is evaluated in O(c) time. Siegel [FOCS'89, SICOMP'04] has proved that with this space, if the hash function is evaluated in o(c) time, then the independence can only be o(c), so our evaluation time is best possible for Ω(c) independence-our independence is much higher if c = |Φ|<sup>o(1/c)</sup>. Siegel used O(c)<sup>c</sup> evaluation time to get the same independence with similar space. Siegel's main focus was c = O(1), but we are exponentially faster when c = ω(1). Applying our scheme recursively, we can increase our independence to |Φ|<sup>Ω(1)</sup> with o(c<sup>logc)</sup> evaluation time. Compared with Siegel's scheme this is both faster and higher independence. Siegel states about his scheme that it is “far too slow for any practical application”. Our scheme is trivial to implement, and it does provide realistic implementations of 100-independent hashing for, say, 32-bit and 64-bit keys.
Content planning and generation in continuous-speech spoken dialog systems∗

Researchers interested in constructing conversational agents that can interact naturally in relatively complex domains face a unique set of constraints. Generation must take place in real, or near-real, time. The language coverage must be extensive, and language use must be varied. A grammar-based approach can be both slow and awkward. On the other hand, it is difficult to provide the required language coverage using templates. In this paper we propose an architecture for generation that combines these two approaches, capitalizing on their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses. In the process, we attempt to answer the question, “How far can templates take us? ”
International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Computational and Applied Sciences ( IJETCAS ) www . iasir

Data is growing at an enormous rate and mining this data is becoming a herculean task. Association Rule mining is one of the important algorithms used in data mining and mining frequent itemset is a crucial step in this process which consumes most of the processing time. Parallelizing the algorithm at various levels of computation will not only speed up the process but will also allow it to handle scalable data. This paper proposes a model to parallelize the frequent itemset mining process without additional load of using multiprocessors using high performance computing. GPU have been used which offer better performance at significantly low cost and are also energy efficient as compared to multi-core multiprocessors.
OBDD extraction from VHDL gate level descriptions at design elaboration

The paper deals with a declarative interface for VHDL in general and the use of such an interface for OBDD based verification of VHDL gate level designs in particular. It presents a solution that enables OBDD verification without external manipulation of the netlist which is well integrated into the standard VHDL environment. The information required for OBDD based VHDL verification, existing and possible future VHDL uses and some advantages of a general declarative interface are illustrated. First experiments with such an interface revealed the advantages of in-place OBDD extraction and helped identify good candidates for VHDL extensions.
Cluster adaptive training of average voice models

Hidden Markov model based text-to-speech systems may be adapted so that the synthesised speech sounds like a particular person. The average voice model (AVM) approach uses linear transforms to achieve this while multiple decision tree cluster adaptive training (CAT) represents different speakers as points in a low dimensional space. This paper describes a novel combination of CAT and AVM for modelling speakers. CAT yields higher quality synthetic speech than AVMs but AVMs model the target speaker better. The resulting combination may be interpreted as a more powerful version of the AVM. Results show that the combination achieves better target speaker similarity when compared with both AVM and CAT while the speech quality is in-between AVM and CAT.
Towards an Optimal Viewpoint in Third-Person out-of-body Experiences

Human vision underlies natural constraints. Field of view, perceived wavelength, angular resolution, or perspective are just a few. Combining a head-mounted display with a camera can overcome some of these limitations and constraints. We investigate the field of view, which is created by presenting a third person view to the wearer of the head-mounted display. We propose an automatic camera positioning that may provide a better overview to the user compared to a manual positioning.
Design and analysis of two modified Colpitts VCOS with and without transformer feedback

In this paper, design and analysis of two modified Colpitts voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) with or without transformer feedback are presented. The loaded quality factors of these two VCOs are analyzed, and the result is the use of transformer feedback in the Colpitts oscillator decreases the loaded quality factor. Two K-band VCOs with and without transformer feedback using 0.5-μm GaAs enhancement/depletion pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (E/D-PHEMT) process are presented for the phase noise evaluation. Operating at a dc supply voltage of 2 V, the former consumes a dc power of 68 mW, exhibits a tuning range of 0.3 GHz and a phase noise of −128 dBc/Hz at 10-MHz offset. While the latter consumes a dc power of 32 mW, exhibits a tuning range of 1.2 GHz and a phase noise of −130 dBc/Hz at 10MHz offset. Both of them occupy a chip size of 1 × 1 mm2 including the RF and DC pads.
Listeria Monocytogenes – characterization of strains isolated from clinical severe cases

Listeria monocytogenes became an increasing pathogen involved more frequently in sporadic severe illnesses and outbreaks of foodborne infections. This study investigates in vitro susceptibility of 26 strains of Listeria monocytogenes isolated from the clinical specimens collected between March 2009 and November 2013, from 24 patients hospitalized in three medical institutions in Bucharest. All isolates were tested by disk diffusion method to 15 antimicrobial agents, by using disk diffusion tests. Among the 26 clinical L. monocytogenes isolates tested, no multidrug resistant strains were detected, but 18 (72%) were found to be resistant to at least one clinically relevant antibiotic. Among them, 18 clinical isolates were resistant against ciprofloxacin also. Resistance to Ciprofloxacin was particularly noticed to the strains in Romania. Serological and molecular typing by Multiplex PCR method detected two molecular types 1/2 a, 3a and 1/2 b, 3b, as to the more frequent isolated among studied cases. These types of L. monocytogenes could be associated to the higher pathogenic activity of immunodeficient patients.
Feeding-back : join a group to talk back to the developers ! A feedback session on NVivo

This presentation demonstrates the evolution of qualitative analysis in one academic department as use of NUD*IST software increased. Most of the research conducted in the department is funded by federal grants, and thus is very focused on answering specific research questions regarding health behavior and health-related decision making in a short time frame (often less than 12 months from project start-up to project final report). While methodologies commonly used in a grounded theory approach are utilized, the research usually is based on one of a number of theories of health behavior (Social Cognitive Theory, Theory of Planned Behavior, Theory of Reasoned Action, Social Ecological Model, etc.) rather than grounded theory. Thus the researcher undertakes analysis of the focus group transcripts or interviews looking for answers to the research questions and approaches coding initially from the perspective of the theory in use in the study. Using examples from studies of women’s health-related decisions at mid-life, barriers and enablers of women’s participation in physical activity, evaluation of a capacitybuilding intervention, and women’s analysis of HIV risk in sexual relationships, this presentation will examine how the extraction of meaning from data changed as the research teams moved from N4 to NVivo 2. Initially (N4) data were coded at appropriate nodes using the software, but extraction of meaning from the data was regarded as a manual (and quite time-consuming! ) process. In the more recent studies, the NVivo Assay tool was used extensively to guide the investigation of specific relationships in the data, making the extraction of meaning from the transcripts much more efficient. In addition, the value of the Attributes in both N6 and NVivo has been more fully explored and has changed the approach to transcription from distinguishing only between moderator and participant in focus groups to identifying each speaker and using the Case function in NVivo to track each participant’s contributions to the discussion. Though evolving, the research teams have not yet utilized the Merge program in NVivo and reasons for this reluctance will be discussed. Actual examples from these projects showing the evolution of our qualitative analysis will be shared in this presentation.
Investigating on Mobile Ad-Hoc Network to Transfer FTP Application

Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is the collection of mobile nodes without requiring of any infrastructure. Mobile nodes in MANET are operating as a router and MANET network topology can change quickly. Due to nodes in the network are mobile and thus can move randomly and organize arbitrarily regardless of the directions that generate great complexity in routing traffic from source to destination. To communicate with other nodes MANET nodes contain multiple applications and it needs the different level of data traffic. While data communicate different routing protocols require whereas every node must act as a router. Nowadays, different routing protocols have available for MANET. MANET protocols designed and implemented at the network layer have vital roles that affect the application running at the application layer. In this paper, the performance of On Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and Geographic Routing Protocol (GRP) will be evaluated. The main purpose of this research is to analyze the performance of MANET routing protocols to identify “Which routing protocol has ability to provide the best performance to transfer FTP Application in high mobility case under low, medium and high density scenario? ”. The performance analyze with respect to Average End-to-End Delay, Media Access Delay, Network Load, Retransmission Attempt and Throughput. All simulations have been done using OPNET. On the basis of results show that the GRP gives better performance in End-to-End Delay, Media Access Delay, and Retransmission Attempt when varying network size and provide the best Throughput in small and medium network size. Simulation results verify that AODV gives better Throughput in a large network and lower Network Load in small and medium network size compared to GRP. DSR produces low Average Network load as compared to other protocols. The overall study of the FTP application shows that the performance of theses routing protocols differences by varying number of nodes and node speed. This paper results will produce enough information to identify the best routing protocol for MANET to transfer FTP application.
Computer vision aided OFDM-based standards detection and classification technique for cognitive radio systems

This paper presents an innovative spectrum sensing scheme for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals based on enhancing the performance of the popular autocorrelation detectors (AD) using non-linear image processing methods. These methods improve the detection accuracy of the AD under particular false-alarm constraints. The proposed scheme is used in the detection of two OFDM systems, Long Term Evolution (LTE) and DVB terrestrial digital TV (DVB-T) under low signal to noise ratio (SNR) channel conditions. Results obtained show significant improvement in correct signals detection/classification up to 18% and 48% at a false-alarm of 5% and low SNR conditions equal to -18dB, using the combined AD and image processing scheme for the detection of LTE and DVB-T signals, respectively.
Influencia del apoyo social sobre el estrés y la satisfacción vital en padres de niños con cáncer desde una perspectiva multidimensional

Objective: To analyse how the social support of parents with children diagnosed with oncological disease influences stress perception and quality of life. Method: 112 parents whose children suffer oncological pathologies received treatment in Malaga. They belonged to an association of parents with children affected by this disease. Results: According to sources used, perception of family support decreases the stress frequency, friends support is also an important aid alleviating the stress. In addition, support from a partner improves parents’ well-being. There are different types of support: firstly, instrumental support, which reduces the frequency of parents’ stress; secondly, informational support reducing stress related to the effort that parents must exert; thirdly, the most important variable to get quality of life is emotional support. To conclude: The multidimensional analysis of social support allows us to analyse the complexity of social support taking place during oncological illnesses in children. Practical implications come as a result from this study.