Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recognizing activities and identifying users based on tabletop activities with load cells

There have been several studies on object detection and activity recognition on a table conducted thus far. Most of these studies use image processing with cameras or a specially configured table with electrodes and an RFID reader. In private homes, methods using cameras are not preferable since cameras might invade the privacy of inhabitants and give them the impression of being monitored. In addition, it is difficult to apply the specially configured system to off-the-shelf tables. In this work, we propose a system that recognizes activities conducted on a table and identifies which user conducted the activities with load cells only. The proposed system uses four load cells installed on the four corners of the table or under the four legs of the table. User privacy is protected because only the data on actions through the load cells is obtained. Load cells are easily installed on off-the-shelf tables with four legs and installing our system does not change the appearance of the table. The results of experiments using a table we manufactured revealed that the weight error was 38 g, the position error was 6.8 cm, the average recall of recognition for four activities was 0.96, and the average recalls of user identification were 0.65 for ten users and 0.89 for four users.
Women in Computing & Information Systems

While technology has advanced in more recent decades, women have not shared in the successes that computer information systems has provided. Without the help of many significant female role models in computer information systems education, business, and industry, young women still hold the belief that computer and information science is an unattractive and “geeky” field of study. However, it should not be assumed that women historically have not had role models in computing, for the exemplary model was provided by the contributions of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. Contemporary organizations have come into existence to help bring women into the computing and information systems discipline. These organizations have brought attention to the so-called cyber feminism movement. More than ever, resources and awareness need to be directed toward recruiting middle school-aged girls to study computing and information systems during their school years and beyond their graduation from high school. Female computing professionals need to become readily accessible to such students, and more programs like the ALICE project need to be created to draw focus young women’s attention on the potential that women can have in the field of computer and information science.
The antibacterial peptide from Bombyx mori cecropinXJ induced growth arrest and apoptosis in human hepatocellular carcinoma cells

CecropinXJ is a cationic antimicrobial peptide originally isolated from the larvae of Bombyx mori. The anticancer effect of cecropinXJ has been reported in various tumor cells, including leukemia, gastric and esophageal cancer cells. However, the activity of cecropinXJ on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its underlying mechanism have not been investigated to date. Therefore, the present study investigated the efficacy and associated mechanism of cecropinXJ in Huh-7 cells. Flow cytometric analysis was performed to determine the presence of cell cycle arrested and apoptotic cells. CecropinXJ significantly inhibited the growth of Huh-7 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner. CecropinXJ treatment for 24 h induced S cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, in addition to loss of the mitochondrial membrane potential, in hepatoma cells. CecropinXJ induced HCC cell apoptosis by activating caspase-3 and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase. Furthermore, cecropinXJ downregulated the expression of B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2), while upregulated the expression of Bcl-2-associated death promoter and Bcl-2-associated X protein. In conclusion, the results of the present study suggest that cecropinXJ may be an active anti-HCC agent and provide novel insights into the mechanism of cecropinXJ.
A corpus-based analysis of context effects on metaphor comprehension

This article describes our attempts to shed light on the relationship between results from psycholinguistic research on the effects of context on metaphor comprehension and the nature of metaphor as it occurs in naturally occurring text. The hypothesis underlying this work is that the facilitation and inhibition effects observed in laboratory subjects reflect the patterns of co-occurrence of various kinds of contexts with metaphoric language in the environment. We take a three part approach to exploring this hypothesis: a rational analysis of the notion of a context effect, an empirical corpus-based effort to fill out that rational analysis, and a reconsideration of the pertinent psycholinguistic results with respect to that analysis. Finally, we present a proposal for a mechanistic model that is in accord with the results of this analysis.
Latent Semantic Transliteration using Dirichlet Mixture

Transliteration has been usually recognized by spelling-based supervised models. However, a single model cannot deal with mixture of words with different origins, such as "get" in "piaget" and "target". Li et al. (2007) propose a class transliteration method, which explicitly models the source language origins and switches them to address this issue. In contrast to their model which requires an explicitly tagged training corpus with language origins, Hagiwara and Sekine (2011) have proposed the latent class transliteration model, which models language origins as latent classes and train the transliteration table via the EM algorithm. However, this model, which can be formulated as unigram mixture, is prone to overfitting since it is based on maximum likelihood estimation. We propose a novel latent semantic transliteration model based on Dirichlet mixture, where a Dirichlet mixture prior is introduced to mitigate the overfitting problem. We have shown that the proposed method considerably outperform the conventional transliteration models.
Decolonizing mobile media: Mobile Internet appropriation in a Guaraní community

The Internet has been a valuable resource for many indigenous groups as a vehicle for self-representation. In this paper, we describe how the installation of a Wi-Fi signal in a Guaraní community in Greater Buenos Aires—as part of the community leader’s decolonizing media projects—generated issues within the community. While much indigenous media research concerns the politics of cultural representation, we consider the politics of everyday, intracommunity mobile communication practices. Firstly, our findings show how the choice of communication medium can become a political issue. An upsurge in mobile-mediated communication within the community contributed to the decline of face-to-face deliberations, which were the mainstay of communal sharing arrangements and which held a central position in understandings of Guaraní culture. Secondly, our findings show how discrepancies between users’ communication preferences and the readily available mobile media services can generate a use barrier by deterring users from obtaining the skills needed to effectively appropriate or transform mobile media services. Familiarity with a few mainstream social media apps not only reinforced imaginaries of the Internet as a nonindigenous space but also generated set ideas of what the Internet supports in terms of communicative form—social networking—and content type—mainstream media. In the end, the community leader’s decolonizing projects, aimed at using social media for community media dissemination, were not only rejected by community members but also undermined by the dynamics of mobile media practices in the community. We argue that limited mobile technology skills combined with commercially oriented mobile media services can hinder creative and adaptable mobile media practices, and in turn, undermine decolonizing mobile appropriations.
Product Technology Maturity Prediction Based on TRIZ Technical Evolution Theory

It is critical for enterprise decision-makers to predict the technology maturity of product. The forecast result directly related to the research and development (R&D)decision-making. This paper introduces a new approach towards the product technology maturity assessment, product technology maturity prediction based on TRIZ technical evolution theory, and take MP3 player as an example to introduce the implementation of this methods.
Mobile Manipulation — A Mobile Platform Supporting a Manipulator System for an Autonomous Robot

In this article different approaches for the integration of mobility and manipulation are discussed and a new concept for the realisation of this integration on a mobile two-arm system is presented. The testbed to which the developed concepts are applied is KAMRO, the Karlsruhe Autonomous Mobile Robot. The mobile platform of this robot system has three degrees of freedom (DoF), two translational ones and one rotational, that result from the omnidirectional drive system. The platform is equipped with ultrasonic sensors for collision avoidance. The manipulator system consists of two PUMA-type manipulators with six DoF, which are mounted on the platform in a hanging configuration. Each manipulator is equipped with a force-/torque sensor with an integrated electric gripper for tactile operations and a hand-eye camera for the enhancement of the object recognition.
A comparative study on multiple active spatial modulation in MIMO systems

In this paper, as an alternative to Space Time Block Code (STBC), Vertical Bell Lab Layered Space Time (V-BLAST) etc, a spatial modulation (SM) scheme with multiple active antennas, named as Multiple Active Spatial Modulation (MA-SM) is introduced. A system with minimum number of active transmit antennas is used to achieve high diversity, high transmission rate and multiplexing gain. The system is optimized by maximizing the inter-symbol distance and hence reduce the interchannel interference (ICI) and inter antenna interference (IAI). To reduce the decoding complexity, a near optimal maximum likelihood decoding is proposed. In this paper, a comparative study is made among the system Multiple Active Spatial modulation (MA-SM), Space Time Block Code (STBC), Vertical Bell Lab Layered Space Time (V-BLAST) and Generalized Spatial Modulation (GSM) based on the modulation schemes such as BPSK, 16-QAM etc.
Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals as biometrics in securing Wireless Body Area Network

A recent trend in the field of biometrics is ECG-based, where electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are used as input to the biometric system. Previous work has shown that ECG has a good potential, which can be used alone as a biometric parameter or in combination with some other parameters for greater accuracy, due to its main key properties. This paper presents a study on the applicability of ECG signals in securing Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) communications. We study the permanence and the distinctiveness properties of ECG signals on 10 random patients. The Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) are applied on the ECG signals obtained from MIT-BIH Normal Synus Rhythm (nsrdb) public database. The experimental results are presented, which exhibit that ECG signal can be utilized properly to achieve better security performance under the stringent constraints of WBAN sensors. Thus, it is believed that the system can naturally secure the information transmission within WBAN, where other techniques use hardware and software to achieve the same purpose.
Resource Allocation Guidelines-Configuring a large telecommunication application

Changing the architecture of the Ericsson Billing Gateway application has shown to solve the problem with dynamic memory management that decreased the performance. The new architecture that is focused on processes instead of threads showed increased performance. It also allowed for the possibility to adjust the process / thread configuration towards the network topology and hardware. Measurements of different configurations showed the importance of an accurate configuration and also that certain guidelines could be established based on the results.
AIRPORTS AND PROPERTY VALUES: A SURVEY OF RECENT EVIDENCE. IN: AIR TRANSPORT

Thirteen empirical studies of airport noise and property values have been conducted using cross-sectional housing data from the 1960s and 1970s. These studies are based on the hedonic price model. In the present paper, the empirical results from these studies are summarized in the form of a noise depreciation sensitivity index, which is the ratio of the price of quiet to the price of an average or basic house and lot. The range of values for this index provides a means of evaluating the consistency of the studies and their results. The objective is to clarify the technique of benefit measurement that underlies property values studies and to survey the results systematically. Evaluation of the marginal implicit price function over the range of noise exposures and property values produces a locus of equilibrium outcomes that reflect both supply and demand forces. Benefit estimation can be conducted if the change in noise exposure levels is small and if partial equilibrium assumptions can be assumed to hold. Results from the thirteen studies indicate noise discounts in the range of 0.4 to 1.1% per decibel, with the higher values occurring in high-income areas. Although all of the studies show some error or bias, the weight of the evidence is consistent with the orthodox economic theory of land rents.
Why Capital does not Migrate to the South : A New Economic Geography Perspective

This paper explains why capital does not ow from the North to the South the Lucas Paradox with a New Economic Geography model that incorporates mobile capital, immobile labour, and productively heterogeneous rms. In contrast to neoclassical theories, the results show that even a small di¤erence in the ex-ante productivity distribution between North and South can a have huge impact on the location of rms. Despite di¤erences in aggregate capital to labour ratios, wage and rental rates continue to be the same in both locations. The paper also analyses the e¤ects of risk on industrial locations, and shows why low tech industries tend to migrate to the South, while high techindustries continue to locate in the North.
Head pose estimation by imperceptible structured light sensing

We describe a method of estimating head pose in space by imperceptible structured light sensing. Firstly, through elaborate pattern projection strategy and camera-projector synchronization, pattern-illuminated images of the subject and the corresponding scene-texture image are captured under imperceptible patterned illumination. 3D positions of the key facial feature points are then derived by a combined use of (1) the 2D facial feature points in the scene-texture image that are localized by AAM, and (2) the point cloud generated by structured light sensing. Eventually, the head orientation and translation are estimated by SVD of a correlation matrix that is generated from the 3D corresponding feature point pairs over the various image frames. Extensive experiments show that the proposed method is effective, accurate, and fast in 6-DOF head pose estimation, making it suitable for use in real-time applications.
A parallel splitting method for weakly coupled monotone inclusions

A parallel splitting method is proposed for solving systems of coupled monotone inclusions in Hilbert spaces. Convergence is established for a wide class of coupling schemes. Unlike classical alternating algorithms, which are limited to two variables and linear coupling, our parallel method can handle an arbitrary number of variables as well as nonlinear coupling schemes. The breadth and flexibility of the proposed framework is illustrated through applications in the areas of evolution inclusions, dynamical games, signal recovery, image decomposition, best approximation, network flows, and variational problems in Sobolev spaces.
Dynamic memory optimization and parallelism management for OpenCL

Recently, multiprocessor platforms have become trends for achieving high performance. OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is one of the programming standards for heterogeneous multiprocessors, and provides portability for these platforms. Our research focuses on platforms with CPUs and GPUs since GPUs are now widespread in use. On such a platform, two programming issues may affect the performance on GPU computing significantly. One is the work load distribution and another is the employment of GPU memory hierarchy. To fully utilize the characteristics of GPUs, programmers have to be not only proficient at parallel programming but also familiar with hardware specifications. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a compilation pass to automatically perform optimizations for OpenCL kernels. Our compilation pass will transform an input naïve kernel function with optimizations, including kernel function analysis, work-group rearrangement, memory coalescing, and work-item merge. In addition, our framework is implemented on a runtime system so that it may dynamically adjust the optimizing parameters according to the hardware specifications. Considering the execution time, the optimized kernels generated by our design may have significant performance improvement over the naïve versions. Although the optimizations performed in runtime may incur time overheads, the overheads may be covered by intensive kernel computation or massive input data in most cases.
Social Event Detection Via Sparse Multi-modal Feature Selection and Incremental Density Based Clustering

Combining items from social media streams, such as Flickr photos and Twitter tweets, into meaningful groups can help users contextualise and effectively consume the torrents of information now made available on the social web. This task is made challenging due to the scale of the streams and the inherently multimodal nature of the information to be contextualised. We present a methodology which approaches social event detection as a multi-modal clustering task. We address the various challenges of this task: the selection of the features used to compare items to one another; the construction of a single sparse affinity matrix; combining the features; relative importance of features; and clustering techniques which produce meaningful item groups whilst scaling to cluster large numbers of items. In our best tested configuration we achieve an F1 score of 0.94, showing that a good compromise between precision and recall of clusters can be achieved using our technique.
Characterization of human lens major intrinsic protein structure.

PURPOSE To determine the primary covalent structure of human lens major intrinsic protein (MIP) in lenses of varying age. METHODS MIP was isolated from single human lenses of various ages (7- 86 years) by homogenization of the lenses, followed by centrifugation and urea washes of the membranes. Proteins present in the membrane preparation were reduced, alkylated, and cleaved by CNBr. Peptide fragments were fractionated by reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography, and the primary structures of the peptides were determined by tandem mass spectrometry and Edman sequencing. RESULTS Complete coverage of the human MIP sequence was observed in the form of CNBr fragments. In addition, peptide structures resulting from in vivo heterogeneous N- and C-terminal cleavage were characterized. The amount of intact MIP decreased with lens age; however, the pattern of truncation did not change from 7 to 86 years. The major site of phosphorylation was identified as serine 235. Asparagine residues 246 and 259 were completely deamidated by age 7 years. CONCLUSIONS The major structural modifications of human lens MIP have been determined. Human MIP is heterogeneously modified in lenses ranging in age from 7 to 86 years of age by N- and C-terminal truncation, phosphorylation, and deamidation, resulting in decreased levels of native intact MIP with age.
An Analysis Framework of Factors Influencing China Software and Information Service Offshore Outsourcing

Offshore outsourcing has become popular because of cost or skill advantage. China is considered as one of major global software and information service offshore destinations, but it cannot compete with India right now. Based on literature review, this paper first presents an overview of the industry. Then 38 service providers in China are investigated to give a firm-level analysis of the industry. A framework of factors influencing the industry is presented. Influence factors are classified into macro factors, middle factors, and micro factors, each of which is analyzed in detail. It is concluded that China software and information service offshore outsourcing industry is of great potential, but needs marketing and advertising.
Physical Embodiment Can Produce Robot Operator’s Pseudo Presence

Recent studies have focused on humanoid robots for improving distant communication. When a user talks with a remote conversation partner through a humanoid robot, the user can see the remote partner’s body motions with physical embodiment but not the partner’s current appearance. The physical embodiment existing in the same room with the user is the main feature of humanoid robots, but the effects on social telepresence, i.e. the sense of resembling face-to-face interaction, had not yet been well demonstrated. To find the effects, we conducted an experiment in which subjects talked with a partner through robots and various existing communication media (e.g. voice, avatar and video chats). As a result, we found that the physical embodiment enhances social telepresence. However, in terms of the degree of social telepresence, the humanoid robot remained at the same level as the partner’s live-video, since presenting partner’s appearance also enhances social telepresence. To utilize the anonymity of a humanoid robot, we proposed the way that produces pseudo presence that is the sense of interacting with a remote partner when they are actually interacting with an autonomous robot. Through the second experiment, we discovered that the subjects tended to evaluate the degree of pseudo presence of a remote partner based on their prior experience of watching the partner’s body motions reproduced by a robot. When a subject interacted with an autonomous robot after interacting with a teleoperated robot (i.e., a remote operator) that is identical with the autonomous robot, the subjects tended to feel as if they were talking with a remote operator.
Molecular characterization and transcription of the histone H2B gene from the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi

The structure, genomic organization and transcription of the gene encoding histone H2B in the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi have been studied. This gene consists of a 746‐nucleotlde unit, tandemly repeated at least 18 times in each of two clusters. DNA probes corresponding to histones H2B and H3 hybridized to different chromosomes revealing that the genes coding for these two histones are not physically linked in the genome of T. cruzi. The primary transcription product of the H2B gene is processed by trans‐splicing and polyadenylation. Inhibition of DNA synthesis with aphidicolin resulted in the reduction of histone H2B mRNA to undetectable levels in about two hours, suggesting that its abundance is regulated throughout the cell cycle as it occurs in other eukaryotes. in addition, a concomitant inhibition of translation by cycloheximide reverted this effect indicating that de novo protein synthesis is required for RNA instability. Histone mRNA abundance was dependent on the life‐cycle stage of T. cruzi: abundant in amastigotes and epimastigotes, the dividing forms in the host cell and the insect vector, respectively, white undetected in trypomastigotes, the parasite's non‐dividing life stage.