Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parallelizing secure linear programming

Information sharing in supply chain management can dramatically improve the performance of the supply chain. Although many such problems can be modeled and efficiently solved using linear programming (LP), security requirements prevent their implementation in the traditional way. Companies are simply reluctant to exchange such sensitive information. Secure multi‐party computation can help by realizing protocols with guaranteed security. However, efficiency is a major concern. Parallel computing presents an opportunity to improve performance utilizing inherent parallel secure operations. This work focuses on practical approaches to privacy preserving parallel protocols for collaborative LP. First, it theoretically compares the approach of parallelizing a secure algorithm and securing a parallel algorithm. Their complexity being equal we implemented the simpler choice: parallelizing a secure algorithm. Different synchronization methods for the implementation are compared under different network conditions. Given the best implementation, the performance is almost independent of the network conditions, but parallelization, i.e. number of threads, needs to be adapted to such conditions. We present and evaluate an adaptive scheduling algorithm for the dynamic selection of the number of threads, such that it's not necessary to statically and up‐front determine the number for optimal speed‐up. The algorithm can even deal with varying network conditions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Using Resampling Techniques to Measure the Effectiveness of Providers in Workers ' Compensation Insurance

We use resampling techniques to analyze tile impact of provklers on workers' compensation costs taking into consideration inherent differences in claim populations between providers. Resampling techniques provide a nonparametric determination of a statistic's distribution and a measure of effectiveness that is not sensitive to deviations from the assumptions underlying most parametric statistical procedures. These techniques are applied to a subset of an extensive nationwide database of workers' compensation claims to demonstrate the methods.
Database Development and Analysis of Spoken Hindi Hybrid Words Using Endpoint Detection

This paper describes the database develop ment of spoken Hindi Hybrid words. The main focus i s on the analysis of spoken Hindi Hybrid Words by using endpoint detection algorithm. The development is done i n the robust environment. Male and Female speakers are selected from different states to analyze the acoustical var iation in their utterances. Various emotions such as normal, happy, anger and surprise are taken for analysis of speec h signal. Endpoint detection algorithm is used for the analysis purpos e of various parameters such as Total Duration of t ime, Number of samples, Root Mean Square value and Mean Power (Int ensity) in air of speech signal.
Liderazgo pedagógico y dirección escolar en contextos desfavorecidos

This study aims to raise awareness of the need for headteachers to be able to practice school leadership, especially in schools in underprivileged areas. A mixed methodology approach was used, including a survey of a sample of 282 teachers and interviews with 14 headteachers from disadvantaged schools in western Andalusia. Most of the headteachers interviewed display good school leadership, but there is still a tendency towards so-called academic freedom and individualism in teaching practice. The age of the teachers and their length of experience influence headteachers’ supervision of teaching. Headteachers should be given greater powers and specific continuous training should be provided for those in charge of disadvantaged schools to enable them to implement collaborative culture.
Diferenças de conhecimento prévio e processos de estudo: interaçoes entre nível de expertise e aprendizagem

This qualitative and exploratory research analyzed how prior knowledge may influence the learning processes. The research was conducted through the analysis of learning procedures carried out by individuals using material with content they master and material content they do not master. Six participants were interviewed individually at length on the ways in which they related to both texts. Results suggest that prior consolidated knowledge is a major influence on learning process, affecting information recognition, learning speed, participants’ metacognitive capacity, the need of informational support to maintain learning process and aspects of instructional support regarding formal teaching situations. In addition, results indicate the importance of teaching actions, especially the diagnostic facet of learning evaluation, to improve learning opportunities to learners reach a mastery level.
ZEN2: a narrow J-band search for z∼ 9 Lyα emitting galaxies directed towards three lensing clusters

We present the results of a continuing survey to detect Ly alpha emitting galaxies at redshifts z similar to 9: the z equals nine' (ZEN) survey. We have obtained deep VLT Infrared Spectrometer and Array Camera observations in the narrow J-band filter NB119 directed towards three massive lensing clusters: Abell clusters 1689, 1835 and 114. The foreground clusters provide a magnified view of the distant Universe and permit a sensitive test for the presence of very high redshift galaxies. We search for z similar to 9 Ly alpha emitting galaxies displaying a significant narrow-band excess relative to accompanying J-band observations that remain undetected in Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) optical images of each field. No sources consistent with this criterion are detected above the unlensed 90 per cent point-source flux limit of the narrow-band image, F-NB = 3.7 x 10(-18) erg s(-1) cm(-2). To date, the total coverage of the ZEN survey has sampled a volume at z similar to 9 of approximately 1700 comoving Mpc(3) to a Lya emission luminosity of 10(43) erg s(-1). We conclude by considering the prospects for detecting z similar to 9 Ly alpha emitting galaxies in light of both observed galaxy properties at z 7.
Free Space Computation from Stochastic Occupancy Grids based on Iconic Kalman Filtered Disparity Maps

This paper presents a method for determining the free space in a scene as viewed by a vehicle-mounted camera. Using disparity maps from a stereo camera and known camera motion, the disparity maps are first filtered by an iconic Kalman filter, operating on each pixel individually, thereby reducing variance and increasing the density of the filtered disparity map. Then, a stochastic occupancy grid is calculated from the filtered disparity map, providing a top-down view of the scene where the uncertainty of disparity measurements are taken into account. These occupancy grids are segmented to indicate a maximum depth free of obstacles, enabling the marking of free space in the accompanying intensity image. The test shows successful marking of free space in the evaluated scenarios in addition to significant improvement in disparity map quality.
Routing for enhancing source-location privacy in wireless sensor networks of multiple assets

In wireless sensor networks, a node that reports information gathered from adjacent assets should relay packets appropriately so that its location context is kept private, and thereby helping ensure the security of the assets that are being monitored. Unfortunately, existing routing methods that counter the local eavesdropping-based tracing deal with a single asset, and most of them suffer from the packet-delivery latency as they prefer to take a separate path of many hops for each packet being sent. In this paper, we propose a routing method, greedy perimeter stateless routing-based source-location privacy with crew size w (GSLP-w), that enhances location privacy of the packet-originating node (i.e., active source) in the presence of multiple assets. GSLP-w is a hybrid method, in which the next-hop node is chosen in one of four modes, namely greedy, random, perimeter, and retreat modes. Random forwarding brings the path diversity, while greedy forwarding refrains from taking an excessively long path and leads to convergence to the destination. Perimeter routing makes detours that avoid the nodes near assets so that they cannot be located by an adversary tracing up the route path. We study the performance of GSLP-w with respect to crew size w (the number of packets being sent per path) and the number of sources. GSLP-w is compared with phantom routing-single path (PR-SP), which is a notable routing method for source-location privacy and our simulation results show that improvements from the point of the ratio of safety period and delivery latency become significant as the number of source nodes increases.
Cochlear Implant Signal Processing ICs

The nucleus freedom cochlear implant system enables a profoundly deaf person to hear. The system consists of a surgically implanted stimulator and a battery-powered external sound processor. The processor is based on a 0.18 mum CMOS ASIC containing four DSP cores. The signal processing includes a two-microphone adaptive beamformer, a 22-channel quadrature FFT filterbank, multi-band automatic gain control, a psycho-acoustic masking model and non-linear compression. The key design challenge was power consumption.
Communication, Credibility and Negotiation Using a Cognitive Hierarchy Model

The cognitive hierarchy model is an approach to decision making in multi-agent interactions motivated by laboratory studies of people. It bases decisions on empirical assumptions about agents’ likely play and agents’ limited abilities to second-guess their opponents. It is attractive as a model of human reasoning in economic settings, and has proved successful in designing agents that perform eectively in interactions not only with similar strategies but also with sophisticated agents, with simpler computer programs, and with people. In this paper, we explore the qualitative structure of iterating best response solutions in two repeated games, one without messages and the other including communication in the form of non-binding promises and threats. Once the model anticipates interacting with suciently sophisticated agents with a suciently high probability, reasoning leads to policies that disclose intentions truthfully, and expect credibility from the agents they interact with, even as those policies act aggressively to discover and exploit other agents’ weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. Non-binding communication improves overall agent performance in our experiments.
Uniform precision ultrasound strain imaging

Ultrasound strain imaging is becoming increasingly popular as a way to measure stiffness variation in soft tissue. Almost all techniques involve the estimation of a field of relative displacements between measurements of tissue undergoing different deformations. These estimates are often high resolution, but some form of smoothing is required to increase the precision, either by direct filtering or as part of the gradient estimation process. Such methods generate uniform resolution images, but strain quality typically varies considerably within each image, hence a trade-off is necessary between increasing precision in the low-quality regions and reducing resolution in the high-quality regions. We introduce a smoothing technique, developed from the nonparametric regression literature, which can avoid this trade-off by generating uniform precision images. In such an image, high resolution is retained in areas of high strain quality but sacrificed for the sake of increased precision in low-quality areas. We contrast the algorithm with other methods on simulated, phantom, and clinical data, for both 2-D and 3-D strain imaging. We also show how the technique can be efficiently implemented at real-time rates with realistic parameters on modest hardware. Uniform precision nonparametric regression promises to be a useful tool in ultrasound strain imaging.
Analog control of a high-speed atomic force microscope scanner

A XYZ scanner is designed for fast and high resolution atomic force microscopy. The objective of this paper is to achieve a large scanning bandwidth along the X and Y axis of the scanner. Finite element analysis of the designed scanner is reported along with the experimental determination of the dynamics. Both suggest the presence of first resonant modes around 8.8 kHz and 8.9 kHz along the X and Y axis respectively. Actuating the scanner at frequencies beyond 1% of the first resonance causes mechanical vibrations and hence degradation of the images generated. Controllers are designed, using the Integral Resonant Control methodology, to damp the resonant modes, to enable fast actuation. Due to the large bandwidth of the designed scanner, a Field Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) is used for analog implementation of the controllers. High resolution images are generated at faster scanning rates in closed loop.
Sensory Deprivation as an Experimental Model of Psychosis

The development of novel experimental models of schizophrenia and psychosis are critical to developing a better understanding of these complex and poorly understood disorders. Existing approaches such as animal and drug models have major limitations to their use. An alternative approach to modelling psychosis is proposed, built upon the premise of continuum theory, focusing on ‘high risk’ hallucination prone individuals from within the healthy population. A systematic review considered existing non-pharmacological approaches for inducing psychosis-like experiences (PLE’s) in such individuals. The thesis then addressed how one such method, short-term sensory deprivation, can successfully induce transient psychosis-like experiences (PLE’s) in this population. The Revised Hallucinations Scale (RHS: Morrison et al. 2002) was found to accurately predict individuals most likely to experience PLE’s in sensory deprivation. Individual differences that may contribute to reports of PLE’s were explored: the most powerful predictor of PLE’s in sensory deprivation was verified to be hallucination proneness. Additional personality traits such as fantasy proneness and suggestibility were not implicated. A revised four factor structure for the RHS was also developed, using Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling (ESEM). This model showed improved fit to the original non-replicable factor structure. The ESEM approach is arguably more appropriate than traditional factor analysis for modelling data with high inter-factorial correlations. Quantitative Electroencephalogram (EEG) data was collected in order to establish whether this approach could provide a robust neurophysiological correlate for psychosis-like experiences. Initial pilot data suggested hallucination prone individuals may be characterised by reduced levels of theta, alpha and beta activity, alongside elevated levels of cortical hyper-excitability. These findings support weakened inhibitory processing theories of psychosis. Overall, sensory deprivation was found to have the potential to contribute significantly to our understanding of psychosis, and could be utilised effectively on a stand-alone basis, or as an adjunct to existing animal and drug models.
Unit testing in multi-agent systems using mock agents and aspects

In this paper, we present a unit testing approach for MASs based on the use of Mock Agents. Each Mock Agent is responsible for testing a single role of an agent under successful and exceptional scenarios. Aspect-oriented techniques are used, in our testing approach, to monitor and control the execution of asynchronous test cases. We present an implementation of our approach on top of JADE platform, and show how we extended JUnit test framework in order to execute JADE test cases.
Lefschetz fibration structures on knot surgery 4-manifolds

In this article we study Lefschetz fibration structures on knot surgery 4-manifolds obtained from an elliptic surface E(2) using Kanenobu knots $K$. As a result, we get an infinite family of simply connected mutually diffeomorphic 4-manifolds coming from a pair of inequivalent Kanenobu knots. We also obtain an infinite family of simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds, each of which admits more than one inequivalent Lefschetz fibration structures of the same generic fiber.
Spatially Explicit Landscape-Level Ecological Risks Induced by Land Use and Land Cover Change in a National Ecologically Representative Region in China

Land use and land cover change is driven by multiple influential factors from environmental and social dimensions in a land system. Land use practices of human decision-makers modify the landscape of the land system, possibly leading to landscape fragmentation, biodiversity loss, or environmental pollution—severe environmental or ecological impacts. While landscape-level ecological risk assessment supports the evaluation of these impacts, investigations on how these ecological risks induced by land use practices change over space and time in response to alternative policy intervention remain inadequate. In this article, we conducted spatially explicit landscape ecological risk analysis in Ezhou City, China. Our study area is a national ecologically representative region experiencing drastic land use and land cover change, and is regulated by multiple policies represented by farmland protection, ecological conservation, and urban development. We employed landscape metrics to consider the influence of potential landscape-level disturbance for the evaluation of landscape ecological risks. Using spatiotemporal simulation, we designed scenarios to examine spatiotemporal patterns in landscape ecological risks in response to policy intervention. Our study demonstrated that spatially explicit landscape ecological risk analysis combined with simulation-driven scenario analysis is of particular importance for guiding the sustainable development of ecologically vulnerable land systems.
Positive affect as a moderator of liking effects on trust and attraction

Attitude similarity effects on attraction appear to be mediated sequentially by positive affect, inferred attraction, and trust. That is, the first two supposedly distal mediators influence each other in building trust, a mediator proximal to attraction. However, the correlational nature of data reported heretofore precludes definitive conclusions about sequential dependency between the two distal mediators. In the research reported, therefore, the authors manipulated positive affect in the participants (Time 1) and liking of the partner for them (Time 2), and measured trust before attraction. As predicted, liking effects on trust and attraction were stronger when positive affect in the participants was high than when it was low. Importantly, the interaction effect in trust fully mediated the interaction effect in attraction.
Design and Implementation of Networking Virtualization for Cluster File Systems

An effective network layer which reduces cluster file system complexity is definitely needed in cluster computing environments where more than thousands of nodes are connected on a variety of different networks. Therefore, widely used cluster file systems such as Lustre, PVFS2, and GlusterFS provide networking virtualization layer. Through networking virtualization layer, each node accesses other nodes using a single interface over a variety of networks. However, previous networking virtualization technologies are complicated and not portable. In this paper, we propose a simple, portable, and socket-like networking virtualization layer that operates on user-mode. We also evaluate our virtualization layer using benchmark tools.
Research Paper No . 2009 / 21 Entrepreneurship and Welfare

We examine returns to entrepreneurship using a standard measure of welfare, the percapita consumption expenditure. The analysis, using quantile regressions, reveals the existence of a welfare hierarchy in occupations. The results suggest that, across the welfare distribution, entrepreneurs who employ others have the highest returns in terms of consumption, while those entrepreneurs who work for themselves, that is, selfemployed individuals, have slightly lower returns than the salaried employees. However, self-employment entails higher returns than casual labor and a relative escape from poverty.
Natural trans fat, dairy fat, partially hydrogenated oils, and cardiometabolic health: the Ludwigshafen Risk and Cardiovascular Health Study.

This editorial refers to ‘ Trans -fatty acids and mortality in patients referred for coronary angiography: the Ludwigshafen Risk and Cardiovascular Health Study’[†][1], by M.E. Kleber et al . , on page 1072. Kleber and colleagues have investigated levels of trans -fatty acids (TFAs) in erythrocyte membranes and risk of total mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and sudden cardiac death (SCD) in a convenience cohort of German patients hospitalized for angiography.1 After multivariable adjustment, they found that higher levels of total TFAs, and specifically C16 : 1n-7t, were associated with lower risk of SCD (for C16:1n-7t, ∼37% lower risk in the top tertile, compared with the bottom). No other significant associations were identified, including for total TFAs or C16:1n-7t and total or cardiovascular mortality, or for C18:1t or C18:2t and total mortality, cardiovascular mortality, or SCD. How should these findings be interpreted, and what are their implications? In any research study—whether in vitro science, animal experiment, metabolic study, clinical trial, or observational epidemiology—the devil is in the details. Such crucial details are frequently overlooked in our modern age of compressed news, internet, and social media reporting. In this case, the first important detail is the population studied. TFA levels were not measured in a general community, but in patients with chest pain or a positive non-invasive cardiac stress test who were hospitalized for coronary angiography between 1997 and 2000 at a tertiary care centre. Accordingly, these were not generally healthy individuals: for instance, at baseline, 73% had high blood pressure, 50% were taking lipid-lowering medication, and 40% had diabetes. Such patients would often be conscious of their symptoms and health prior to hospitalization, and consequently have altered … [1]: #fn-2
The aesthetic awareness display: a new design pattern for ambient information systems

Ambient Information Systems are designed as everyday, peripheral information sources that visualise useful data in a way that can be attended to when possible. Importantly these displays need to be designed to seamlessly fit into their environment and should not interrupt an individual from their primary task. The first Ambient Information System, known as the "Dangling String" was described in the literature in 1996. Since this time a number of different systems have been reported. In this paper we re-examine the concepts, definitions and background to this field that have developed over the last 20 years by performing a detailed narrative review of the field. As a result we provide a detailed discussion on the key design features or dimensions that have been used to help categorise and evaluate such displays. We also examine 36 previously reported Ambient Information Systems and categorise them in terms of an existing taxonomy of design patterns for such systems. A benefit of this taxonomy approach is that it helps us identify an underutilised design area for these displays and leads us to propose a new design pattern, known as the "Aesthetic Awareness Display" to assist in the design of these systems. This type of Ambient Display uses metaphors in order to encode a few data elements into an aesthetically pleasing display with the goal of raising general awareness about the data.