Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Classification of Games and Evaluation of Players - with Some Sweeping Generalizations About the Literature

In the literature of machine learning in games, we sense that while certain aspects of machine learning for game-playing purposes have been well covered, other aspects have been inadequately treated or even ignored. In particular, we see two subjects as requiring more attention: the study of imperfect-information games and the choice of evaluation methods for game-playing agents. We argue that theoretical efforts and awareness are needed in these areas, and, as a contribution to the latter of these subjects, present a set of several evaluation criteria for game-playing agents. These include criteria which 1) calculate the performance of agents when playing against certain actual or hypothetical opponents, 2) measure the similarity of strategies to game solutions, and 3) calculate the abilit y of agents to estimate the advantages or disadvantages of game states and actions. The applicabilit y and usefulness of these criteria for different situations and purposes is also discussed.
A Time-Threshold-based Channel Scheme for vertical handoff in cellular/WLAN interworking

This paper proposes a novel Time-Threshold-based Channel Scheme (TTCS) for vertical handoff in a cellular/WLAN interworking networks. In order to improve the QoS of cellular ongoing voice calls further, the proposed scheme defines priorities for ongoing cellular voice calls within the dual cellular/WLAN coverage area by using a time-threshold value and modifies channel preemption scheme of the channel Preemption Model for Vertical handoff (PMV) scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme eliminates DVH of prioritized ongoing cellular voice calls while keeping system performance and utilization of the bandwidth when carried traffic load is relatively lighter compared with PMV scheme.
Adaptive Iris Recognition Method Based on the Marr Wavelet Transform Coefficients

1 Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant No.60672078 Abstract—This paper presents an adaptive iris recognition method based on the Marr wavelet transform coefficients. Firstly, it locates the iris and fits the contour of lower eyelid, then makes normalization to the iris image and gets 512 columns multiplying 64 rows rectangular iris image that ensures the effective iris area adaptively. Secondly, it makes one dimension Marr wavelet transform row by row to the iris image in the effective iris area, and gets a series of wavelet transform coefficients of different scales and gets the distribution figure of these coefficients of different scales. Thirdly, it makes binary codes to the iris image according to the coefficients of different scales and figures the iris pattern by iris codes. Finally, it sorts the different iris patterns by auto accommodated pattern matching method and gives the recognition results. Many experiments show the recognition rates of this method can reach 99.704% that can meet the demand of iris recognition.
Evolution of near extremal black holes

Near extreme black holes can lose their charge and decay by the emission of massive BPS charged particles. We calculate the greybody factors for low energy charged and neutral scalar emission from four and five dimensional near extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black holes. We use the corresponding emission rates to obtain ratios of the rates of loss of excess energy by charged and neutral emission, which are moduli independent, depending only on the integral charges and the horizon potentials. We consider scattering experiments, finding that evolution towards a state in which the integral charges are equal is favoured, but neutral emission will dominate the decay back to extremality except when one charge is much greater than the others. The implications of our results for the agreement between black hole and D-brane emission rates and for the information loss puzzle are then discussed.
Multiobjective Robust Control via Youla Parametrization

Using Youla Parametrization and Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI) a Multiobjective Robust Control (MRC) design for continuous linear time invariant (LTI) systems with bounded uncertainties is described. The design objectives can be a combination of H∞-, H2-performances, constraints on the control signal, etc. Based on an initial stabilizing controller all stabilizing controllers for the uncertain system can be described by the Youla parametrization. Given this representation, all objectives can be formulated by independent Lyapunov functions, increasing the degree of freedom for the control design.
Forwarding Links without Browsing Links in Online Social Networks

Online social networks(OSNs) become important platforms of information diffusion. People forward links pointing to interesting content, and share them with friends. Browsing links is generally considered as the previous step for forwarding links. However, few studies have confirmed this hypothesis before. The deep understanding of forwarding links can help OSNs to improve current forwarding mechanism, and allow people to read more information and forward more links. In this paper, we study the relationship between forwarding links and browsing links. We crawled a connected graph component of 42.1 million users, and 2.1 billion links forwarded by them. Moreover, we collected browsing records of 50,000 active users. Based on these datasets, we observe that 42% of users forward more than 50% of links without browsing links. Browsing links is often unnecessary for forwarding links. This finding changes the traditional concept of link dissemination in OSNs. We also find that when users directly forward links, they have more time to leave more comments and forward more links, which promotes the spreading of links. OSNs should encourage people to read snippets and directly forward links. Keywords-Forwarding links, online social networks, measurement
A Resilient Failure Evaluation and Patch-up (R-FEP) Algorithm for Heterogeneous Distributed Databases

Blocking methodologies sometimes fail to stop malicious things. Attacks on data oriented applications are a serious threat as per the database management systems concern. The required objective of such environment is to find out the mean time attacks and patch up the failures within the stipulated time. This manuscript represents a failure (attacked) evaluation and patch up instances in distributed database systems. The problems like partition, transaction commitment, and failures state that recovery is much more challenging in databases. This manuscript focuses on the challenges and makes an efficient concern with respect to distributed failure evaluation and recovery.
Line-preserving hole-filling for 2D-to-3D conversion

Many 2D-to-3D conversion techniques rely on image-based rendering methods in order to synthesize 3D views from monoscopic images. This leads to holes in the generated views due to previously occluded objects becoming visible for which no texture information is available. Approaches attempting to alleviate the effects of these artifacts are referred to as hole-filling. This paper proposes a method which determines a non-uniform deformation of the stereoscopic view such that no holes are visible. Additionally, an energy term is devised, which prevents straight lines in the input image from being bent due to the non-uniform image warp. This is achieved by constructing a triangle mesh, which approximates the depth map of the input image and by integrating a set of detected lines into it. The line information is incorporated into the underlying optimization problem in order to prevent bending of the lines. The evaluation of the proposed algorithm on a comprehensive dataset with a variety of scenes shows that holes are efficiently filled without obvious background distortions.
Probiotics (VSL#3) Prevent Endothelial Dysfunction in Rats with Portal Hypertension: Role of the Angiotensin System

Aims Portal hypertension characterized by generalized vasodilatation with endothelial dysfunction affecting nitric oxide (NO) and endothelium-dependent hyperpolarization (EDH) has been suggested to involve bacterial translocation and/or the angiotensin system. The possibility that ingestion of probiotics prevents endothelial dysfunction in rats following common bile duct ligation (CBDL) was evaluated. Methods Rats received either control drinking water or the probiotic VSL#3 solution (50 billion bacteria.kg body wt−1.day−1) for 7 weeks. After 3 weeks, rats underwent surgery with either resection of the common bile duct or sham surgery. The reactivity of mesenteric artery rings was assessed in organ chambers, expression of proteins by immunofluorescence and Western blot analysis, oxidative stress using dihydroethidium, and plasma pro-inflammatory cytokine levels by flow cytometry. Results Both NO- and EDH-mediated relaxations to acetylcholine were reduced in the CBDL group compared to the sham group, and associated with a reduced expression of Cx37, Cx40, Cx43, IKCa and SKCa and an increased expression of endothelial NO synthase (eNOS). In aortic sections, increased expression of NADPH oxidase subunits, angiotensin converting enzyme, AT1 receptors and angiotensin II, and formation of ROS and peroxynitrite were observed. VSL#3 prevented the deleterious effect of CBDL on EDH-mediated relaxations, vascular expression of connexins, IKCa, SKCa and eNOS, oxidative stress, and the angiotensin system. VSL#3 prevented the CBDL-induced increased plasma TNF-α, IL-1α and MCP-1 levels. Conclusions These findings indicate that VSL#3 ingestion prevents endothelial dysfunction in the mesenteric artery of CBDL rats, and this effect is associated with an improved vascular oxidative stress most likely by reducing bacterial translocation and the local angiotensin system.
Micro helicopter control: LMI approach vs SOS approach

This paper presents a comparison result of micro helicopter control via a typical linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach and a sum of squares (SOS) approach. First we construct a dynamical model of a micro helicopter and convert it to a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model. Next, this paper summarizes a recent developed SOS design approach for polynomial fuzzy control systems based on polynomial Lyapunov functions. We emphasize that the SOS design approach to polynomial fuzzy control systems is more general than that based on the existing LMI design approaches to T-S fuzzy control systems. The control results of a micro helicopter show that the SOS design approach provides better control results than the LMI design approach.
Forecasting industrial production: the role of information and methods

One of the main tasks of the economy watcher is to extract reliable signals from highfrequency indicators to provide the decision-maker with an early picture of the short-term economic situation. The index of industrial production (IPI) is probably the most important and widely analysed high-frequency indicator, given the relevance of manufacturing activity as a driver of the whole business cycle. This can be seen by the extensive comments and reactions of business analysts as soon as the IPI is published. Indeed, the IPI is a crucial variable in the forecasting process of the short-term evolution of GDP in most countries (see Golinelli and Parigi (2007) for an application to the G7 countries).
Genic Interaction Extraction from MEDLINE Abstracts - A Case Study

This paper describes the system that we designed for solving the \Learning Language in Logic" Challenge task 2005 (LLL’05) concerning the extraction of directed genic interactions from sentences in Medline abstracts. We see this task as a classi(cid:12)-cation problem: the system must separate the interacting pairs of genes/proteins from the non-interacting ones, and it achieves this by learning a model from the training data given in the form of positive and negative examples. Each example of gene/protein interactions found in the given Medline abstracts is described linguistically by a set (chain) of syntactic relations, which constitute (most part of) the annotations accompanying the abstracts. The key task in the present work was the selection of those features that best describe the training and test examples. Such feature include: the ‘root’ and the ‘head’ word of the syntactic chain/tree associated to the example, the (number of) positive and negative examples \close to" a certain instance according to a conveniently de(cid:12)ned distance measure, etc. To learn the classi(cid:12)cation model from the training data, we used di(cid:11)erent classi(cid:12)ers implemented in the WEKA library (Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis): the naive Bayes classi(cid:12)er, Bayes belief networks, radial basis function networks, support vector machines (SVMs) and ADA Boost. Our best result was 58.7% F-measure on the entire dataset, and it was obtained using the naive Bayes classi(cid:12)er. This result proved to be second best compared to the results reported by the participants at the LLL’05 Challenge task.
An asynchronous low-power innovative network-On-chip including design-for-test capabilities

The demands of scalable, low latency and power efficient System-On-Chip interconnect cannot be satisfied only by point-to-point or shared-bus interconnects. By providing more bandwidth at reasonable power consumption, new communication infrastructures like NoCs seem promising, but are still limited by implementation issues. We present in this paper an Asynchronous Network-on- Chip architecture with two main innovations. Firstly, an automatic power regulation scheme is proposed to dynamically save leakage and dynamic power consumption. Secondly, due to the current lack of testing methodology for asynchronous logic, we propose a novel DfT solution to allow acceptance of the asynchronous NoC. The proposed architecture has been fully implemented in a STMicroelectronics CMOS 65nm technology, integrated in a complex test-chip and fabricated.
Transepithelial resistance in human bestrophin-1 stably transfected Madin–Darby canine kidney cells

Bestrophin-1 (Best1) is a transmembrane protein, found in the basolateral plasma membrane of retinal pigmented epithelial cells. The exact structure and functions of Best1 protein are still unclear. The protein is thought to be a regulator of ion channels, or an ion channel itself: it was shown to be permeable for chloride, thiocyanate, bicarbonate, glutamate and γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Mutations in the gene for Best1 are leading to best vitelliform macular dystrophy (BVMD) and are found in several other types of maculopathy. In order to obtain additional information about Best1 protein, we determined cell polarization of a stably transfected Madin–Darby canine kidney cell line II (MDCK II) cell line, expressing human Best1. We measured the transepithelial resistance of transfected and non-transfected MDCK cells by voltmeter EVOM, over 10 days at 24 hour intervals. The first few days (first–fourth day) both cell lines showed the same or similar values of transmembrane resistance. As expected, on the fifth day the non-transfected cells showed maximum value of epithelial resistance, corresponding to the forming of monolayer. The transfected cells showed maximum value of transepithelial resistance on the ninth day of their cultivation. Phalloidin staining of actin demonstrated the difference in actin arrangements between transfected and non-transfected cells due to Best1. As a consequence of actin rearrangement, Best1 strongly affects the transepithelial resistance of polarizing stably transfected MDCK cells. Our results suggest that Best1 protein has an effect on transepithelial resistance and actin rearrangements of polarized stably transfected MDCK cells.
Cancer-Induced Alterations of NK-Mediated Target Recognition: Current and Investigational Pharmacological Strategies Aiming at Restoring NK-Mediated Anti-Tumor Activity

Despite evidence of cancer immune-surveillance, which plays a key role in tumor rejection, cancer cells can escape immune recognition through different mechanisms. Thus, evasion to Natural killer (NK) cell-mediated anti-tumor activity is commonly described and is mediated by various mechanisms, mainly cancer cell-induced down-regulation of NK-activating receptors (NCRs, NKG2D, DNAM-1, and CD16) as well as up-regulation of inhibitory receptors (killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors, KIRs, NKG2A). Alterations of NK cells lead to an impaired recognition of tumor cells as well as a decreased ability to interact with immune cells. Alternatively, cancer cells downregulate expression of ligands for NK cell-activating receptors and up-regulate expression of the ligands for inhibitory receptors. A better knowledge of the extent and the mechanisms of these defects will allow developing pharmacological strategies to restore NK cell ability to recognize and lyse tumor cells. Combining conventional chemotherapy and immune modulation is a promising approach likely to improve clinical outcome in diverse neoplastic malignancies. Here, we overview experimental approaches as well as strategies already available in the clinics that restore NK cell functionality. Yet successful cancer therapies based on the manipulation of NK cell already have shown efficacy in the context of hematologic malignancies. Additionally, the ability of cytotoxic agents to increase susceptibility of tumors to NK cell lysis has been studied and may require improvement to maximize this effect. More recently, new strategies were developed to specifically restore NK cell phenotype or to stimulate NK cell functions. Overall, pharmacological immune modulation trends to be integrated in therapeutic strategies and should improve anti-tumor effects of conventional cancer therapy.
Slow food events as a high yield strategy for rural tourism destinations: The case of Bario, Sarawak

Purpose – For years, the community in Bario has chosen to organize a slow food and cultural festival annually to draw tourists to Bario. The aim of this paper is to explore the staging of slow food events as a high‐yield strategy for rural tourism destinations and how they can be used to move a destination up the value chain in responsible rural tourism practices.Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted an interpretative approach. Participant observation and 15 in‐depth interviews with local and foreign tourists were conducted to elicit responses before, during and after the event. In addition, photography and videography were also employed.Findings – Findings revealed that the event was seen by many as a catalyst for the provision and development of infrastructural development. More importantly, 67 percent of the foreign tourists interviewed state that the price of goods and services at the event are reasonable and affordable, given the unique cultural experience during the festival in Bario. Thes.
Soft regulation and responsible nanotechnological development in the European Union: Regulating occupational health and safety in the Netherlands

Worldwide, soft regulation like codes of conduct and benchmarks have been introduced to cope with the uncertain risks and benefits of nanotechnologies. However, it seems that these regulations are facing effectiveness problems. For instance, the European Commission’s 2008 Nano Code of Conduct has not yet been implemented in the member states. Using the analytical framework of responsive regulation this article explores effectiveness problems of soft regulation that has been established to reduce exposure to nanomaterials at the workplace. The article builds on ongoing research on the effects of voluntary regulation that applies to occupational activities with nanomaterials in the Netherlands. The evaluation of this rich governance arrangement offers indications of potential effectiveness problems. A tentative lesson of the research is that soft regulation can contribute to responsible nanotechnological development if it is specific enough to meet the needs of the regulated parties, if rule compliance is supported by financial and professional resources, and if it is embedded in a culture of social responsible partners, knowledgeable vigilance and adaptation.
Minimax rates of convergence for high-dimensional regression under ℓq-ball sparsity

Consider the standard linear regression model y = Xß∗ + w, where y ∊ R<sup>n</sup> is an observation vector, X ∊ R<sup>n×d</sup> is a measurement matrix, ß∗ ∊ R<sup>d</sup> is the unknown regression vector, and w ~ N (0, σ<sup>2</sup>Ι) is additive Gaussian noise. This paper determines sharp minimax rates of convergence for estimation of ß∗ in l<inf>2</inf> norm, assuming that β∗ belongs to a weak l<inf>b</inf>-ball B<inf>q</inf>(ñ<inf>q</inf>) for some q ∊ [0,1]. We show that under suitable regularity conditions on the design matrix X, the minimax error in squared l<inf>2</inf>-norm scales as R<inf>q</inf>(log d ÷ n)<sup>1 −q÷2</sup>. In addition, we provide lower bounds on rates of convergence for general l<inf>p</inf> norm (for all p ∊ [l,+∞], p ≠ q). Our proofs of the lower bounds are information-theoretic in nature, based on Fano's inequality and results on the metric entropy of the balls B<inf>q</inf>(R<inf>q</inf>). Matching upper bounds are derived by direct analysis of the solution to an optimization algorithm over B<inf>q</inf>(R<inf>q</inf>). We prove that the conditions on X required by optimal algorithms are satisfied with high probability by broad classes of non-i.i. d. Gaussian random matrices, for which RIP or other sparse eigenvalue conditions are violated. For q = 0, t<inf>1</inf>-based methods (Lasso and Dantzig selector) achieve the minimax optimal rates in t<inf>2</inf> error, but require stronger regularity conditions on the design than the non-convex optimization algorithm used to determine the minimax upper bounds.
Bidirectional Dopamine Modulation of GABAergic Inhibition in Prefrontal Cortical Pyramidal Neurons

Dopamine regulates the activity of neural networks in the prefrontal cortex that process working memory information, but its precise biophysical actions are poorly understood. The present study characterized the effects of dopamine on GABAergic inputs to prefrontal pyramidal neurons using whole-cell patch-clamp recordings in vitro. In most pyramidal cells, dopamine had a temporally biphasic effect on evoked IPSCs, producing an initial abrupt decrease in amplitude followed by a delayed increase in IPSC amplitude. Using receptor subtype-specific agonists and antagonists, we found that the initial abrupt reduction was D2 receptor-mediated, whereas the late, slower developing enhancement was D1 receptor-mediated. Linearly combining the effects of the two agonists could reproduce the biphasic dopamine effect. Because D1 agonists enhanced spontaneous (sIPSCs) but did not affect miniature (mIPSCs) IPSCs, it appears that D1 agonists caused larger evoked IPSCs by increasing the intrinsic excitability of interneurons and their axons. In contrast, D2 agonists had no effects on sIPSCs but did produce a significant reduction in mIPSCs, suggestive of a decrease in GABA release probability. In addition, D2 agonists reduced the postsynaptic response to a GABAA agonist. D1 and D2 receptors therefore regulated GABAergic activity in opposite manners and through different mechanisms in prefrontal cortex (PFC) pyramidal cells. This bidirectional modulation could have important implications for the computational properties of active PFC networks.