Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improving ecophysiological simulation models to predict the impact of elevated atmospheric CO(2) concentration on crop productivity.

BACKGROUND Process-based ecophysiological crop models are pivotal in assessing responses of crop productivity and designing strategies of adaptation to climate change. Most existing crop models generally over-estimate the effect of elevated atmospheric [CO2], despite decades of experimental research on crop growth response to [CO2]. ANALYSIS A review of the literature indicates that the quantitative relationships for a number of traits, once expressed as a function of internal plant nitrogen status, are altered little by the elevated [CO2]. A model incorporating these nitrogen-based functional relationships and mechanisms simulated photosynthetic acclimation to elevated [CO2], thereby reducing the chance of over-estimating crop response to [CO2]. Robust crop models to have small parameterization requirements and yet generate phenotypic plasticity under changing environmental conditions need to capture the carbon-nitrogen interactions during crop growth. CONCLUSIONS The performance of the improved models depends little on the type of the experimental facilities used to obtain data for parameterization, and allows accurate projections of the impact of elevated [CO2] and other climatic variables on crop productivity.
The Unheralded Value of the Multiway Rendezvous: Illustration with the Production Cell Benchmark

The multiway rendezvous introduced in Theoretical CSP is a powerful paradigm to achieve synchronization and communication among a group of (possibly more than two) processes. We illustrate the advantages of this paradigm on the production cell benchmark, a model of a real metal processing plant, for which we propose a compositional software controller, which is written in LNT and LOTOS, and makes intensive use of the multiway rendezvous.
Risk in modern IT service landscapes: Towards a dynamic model

The “Cloud Computing” paradigm is gaining ground with new IT service providers and traditional IT out-sourcing providers alike. Customers want to use cloud computing solutions with all their advertised advantages and without the hassle of traditional long term outsourcing migration and contracting. Risk is at the center of attention when dealing with the adoption of cloud services. Because of the security concerns and the consequential reservations towards the acceptance of public cloud computing platforms, a lot has been done to improve security and trust in these environments. However, most of the implementations and research regarding this issue is concerning technical security risks with a focus on preventing perimeter-based attacks. Security and trust issues beyond perimeter based security risks have gained little attention. This paper identifies the need to look beyond technical issues and turns the attention to improving compliance and governance in cloud environments. In this process the focus is set on the discontinuity cap between existing methods to identify and evaluate IT risks and the treatment of these risks with Service Level Agreements. To close this cap a model for a dynamic view on current IT risk is proposed to comply with modern IT environments that are composed of an ampleness of different services. The model has a strong corporate context and will help companies to evaluate their current risk exposure and thus make better decisions when choosing their services.
Retrotransposition creates sloping shores: a graded influence of hypomethylated CpG islands on flanking CpG sites

Long interspersed elements (LINEs), through both self-mobilization and trans-mobilization of short interspersed elements and processed pseudogenes, have made an indelible impact on the structure and function of the human genome. One consequence is the creation of new CpG islands (CGIs). In fact, more than half of all CGIs in the genome are associated with repetitive DNA, three-quarters of which are derived from retrotransposons. However, little is known about the epigenetic impact of newly inserted CGIs. We utilized a transgenic LINE-1 mouse model and tracked DNA methylation dynamics of individual germline insertions during mouse development. The retrotransposed GFP marker sequence, a strong CGI, is hypomethylated in male germ cells but hypermethylated in somatic tissues, regardless of genomic location. The GFP marker is similarly methylated when delivered into the genome via the Sleeping Beauty DNA transposon, suggesting that the observed methylation pattern may be independent of the mode of insertion. Comparative analyses between insertion- and non-insertion-containing alleles further reveal a graded influence of the retrotransposed CGI on flanking CpG sites, a phenomenon that we described as “sloping shores. ” Computational analyses of human and mouse methylomic data at single-base resolution confirm that sloping shores are universal for hypomethylated CGIs in sperm and somatic tissues. Additionally, the slope of a hypomethylated CGI can be affected by closely positioned CGI neighbors. Finally, by tracing sloping shore dynamics through embryonic and germ cell reprogramming, we found evidence of bookmarking, a mechanism that likely determines which CGIs will be eventually hyper- or hypomethylated.
Development of Science-Industry Relationships in the Context of Knowledge Creation

Nowadays the ability to innovate is the key factor in creating the innovative firm (in the micro-scale) or innovative economy (in a wider prospect). The important part of innovation system are universities where well-educated and well-skilled personnel, armed with the appropriate knowledge, competencies and equipment of academic research centres has the opportunity to discover new phenomena, and turn them into innovations. Lucrative relations of science and industry caused the emergence of new science types. These are post-academic and industrial sciences. The results of scientific research conducted within the post-academic or industrial science are company-dedicated solutions or inventions, which may be used after prior commercialization. The desired effect of cooperation between university and industry are commercialized effects of scientific research. There are various methods of universityindustry cooperation. The goal of the article is to show the development and changes of university-industry relations on selected literature and empirical examples.
Agent Usage Patterns: Bridging the Conceptual Gap between Agent-based Applications and Middleware

We present a concept for facilitating the development of agent applications called agent usage patterns. These patterns are meant to bridge the conceptual gap that currently exists between the programmer and agent-based middleware systems. We analyze each pattern's potential for improving performance, reliability, and security. Finally, we describe some preliminary experiments: we present a stock-trading distributed application whose agent-based implementation results in reduced communication delay.
TEMPORAL BAG-OF-WORDS: A GENERATIVE MODEL FOR VISUAL PLACE RECOGNITION USING TEMPORAL INTEGRATION

: This paper presents an original approach for visual place recognition and categorization. The simple idea behind our model is that, for a mobile robot, use of the previous frames, and not only the one, can ease recognition. We present an algorithm for integrating the answers from different images. In this perspective, scenes are encoded thanks to a global signature (the context of a scene) and then classiﬁed in an unsupervised way with a Self-Organizing Map. The prototypes form a visual dictionary which can roughly describe the environment. A place can then be learnt and represented through the frequency of the prototypes. This approach is a variant of Bag-of-Words approaches used in the domain of scene classiﬁcation with the major difference that the different “words” are not taken from the same image but from temporally ordered images. Temporal integration allows us to use Bag-of-Words together with a global characterization of scenes. We evaluate our system with the COLD database. We perform a place recognition task and a place categorization task. Despite its simplicity, thanks to temporal integration of visual cues, our system achieves state-of-the-art performances.
An overview of physical analysis of nanosize conductive path in ultrathin SiON and high-к gate dielectrics in nanoelectronic devices

Dielectric breakdown in advanced gate stacks in state-of-the-art Si nanoelectronic devices has been one of the key front-end reliability concerns for further CMOS technology downscaling. In this paper, we present the latest findings in using physical analysis techniques such as transmission electron microscopy (TEM)/electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS)/energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and ballistic-electron-emission microscopy (BEEM) to study the morphology and chemical nature of nanosize structural defects formed in the dielectrics across the different phases of the overall degradation process. The correlation study between the localized physical changes in the material associated with a breakdown path and the electrical characteristics of the device in the post-BD regime is realized by the ultimate resolving power of the high resolution nanoscale physical characterization tools. Various physical defects associated with the trap generation, percolation path formation and post-breakdown wear-out of the dielectric material are identified and studied. The influence and extent of the different types of defects that are responsible for various unique gate current leakage signatures such as random telegraphic noise (RTN), digital-to-analog breakdown transition, switching of percolation conduction and ultrafast transient failure owing to filamentation are reviewed. The implications of the physical studies on the feasibility of advanced high-к metal gate stacks are also addressed.
Information Mining with the IBM Intelligent Miner Family

Information mining refers to the process of extracting previously unknown, comprehensible, and actionable information from any source including transactions, documents, e-mail, web pages, and other, and using it to make crucial business decisions. The two most pervasive types of information are structured data and text, therefore information mining includes data mining and text mining.The IBM Intelligent Miner Family that comprises the IBM Intelligent Miner for Data and the IBM Intelligent Miner for Text, provide the most advanced and comprehensive set of solutions for information mining in the industry. This document describes the information mining operations and techniques as they are implemented in the IBM Intelligent Miner Family, and highlights the applications that have proven to provide competitive advantages in many enterprises world-wide.
WebTracer: Evaluating Web Usability with Browsing History and Eye Movement

This paper describes a WWW site evaluation tool, WebTracer, which can record user's gazing points, a user’s operational data, and the screen image of browsed pages. In addition, the WebTracer can replay a user’s browsing operations. In an evaluation experiment, we record without interruption, a user's browsing operations using WebTracer. The average execution time per task in the experiment was 2 minutes and 48 seconds. We interviewed users by applying the usability-testing-support function based on a replay and summary of the WebTracer. The average time required for an interview was 19 minutes. 16 comments on the average were obtained for the execution time. The experimental results show that the various summarized user-operational data were helpful for getting more comments about web usability from the subjects .
Impacts of imperfect channel estimation and multipath fading on forward-link performance in CDMA distributed antenna systems

The study of performance in distributed antenna (DA) systems has recently received considerable attention and some conclusions have been drawn. However, most of them are based on the ideal channel estimation assumption and analyzed in flat fading channels. In this paper we investigate the impact of imperfect channel estimation on the forward-link outage performance in CDMA DA systems in multipath fading environment. A detailed analytical model based on a hybrid signal combining method is presented and exact outage probability expression is derived. Our investigation shows that the effect of imperfect channel estimates varies with system load. Furthermore, we find that for forward-link of DA systems, if simulcasting is employed, macrodiversity can decrease both the sensitivity of performance to channel estimation errors and the outage probability, which is contrary to the conclusion drawn based on the ideal channel estimation assumption. Keywords—forward-link; distributed antenna systems; imperfect channel estimation; multipath fading
Optimal sequences that maximize the information theoretic sum capacity of symbol asynchronous CDMA systems

The optimal signature sequences that maximize the sum capacity of a direct sequence CDMA system are characterized in the general case of symbol delay profile and user power constraints. It is shown that the optimal sum capacity of the symbol asynchronous system equals that of the symbol synchronous system with the same user power constraints. With the optimal signature sequence set, the maximum sum capacity is achieved with white Gaussian input signals. The existence of the optimal signature sequence set is proved by the proposal of an explicit construction method for arbitrary user delay profiles and power constraints.
Involvement of Long Chain Fatty Acid Elongation in the Trafficking of Secretory Vesicles in Yeast

Members of the synaptobrevin/VAMP family of v-SNAREs are thought to be essential for vesicle docking and exocytosis in both lower and higher eukaryotes. Here, we describe yeast mutants that appear to bypass the known v-SNARE requirement in secretion. Recessive mutations in either VBM1 or VBM2, which encode related ER-localized membrane proteins, allow yeast to grow normally and secrete in the absence of Snc v-SNAREs. These mutants show selective alterations in protein transport, resulting in the differential trafficking and secretion of certain protein cargo. Yet, processing of the vacuolar marker, carboxypeptidase Y, and the secreted protein, invertase, appear normal in these mutants indicating that general protein trafficking early in the pathway is unaffected. Interestingly, VBM1 and VBM2 are allelic to ELO3 and ELO2, two genes that have been shown recently to mediate the elongation of very long chain fatty acids and subsequent ceramide and inositol sphingolipid synthesis. Thus, the v-SNARE requirement in constitutive exocytosis is abrogated by mutations in early components of the secretory pathway that act at the level of lipid synthesis to affect the ability of secretory vesicles to sort and deliver protein cargo.
A Bio-inspired Apodal and Modular Robot

Reconfigurable modular robotics is based on the use of autonomous units that can be attached in many ways to exert different kinds of functions. The main idea consists on the robot's capacity to adapt to unexpected environmental circumstances and execute its mission. The current work's goal is the adaptation of the mechanical system for the apodal movement, based on bio-inspired configuration of a snake for search and rescue situations on debris. Some aspects of the movement are described, followed by the definition and development of the robot's structure, aiming for low cost production and easy replacement of the modules. Simulations and experimental tests were conducted to evaluate the robot's performance.
Insomnia in Sweden: A Population-Based Survey

Aims. Estimate the prevalence of insomnia and examine effects of sex, age, health problems, sleep duration, need for treatment, and usage of sleep medication. Methods. A sample of 1,550 subjects aged 18–84 years was selected for a telephone interview. The interview was completed by 1,128 subjects (72.8%). Results. 24.6% reported insomnia symptoms. Insomnia disorder, that is, insomnia symptoms and daytime consequences, was reported by 10.5%. The prevalence was similar among all age groups, with the exception of women aged 40–49 years who demonstrated a significantly higher prevalence, 21.6%. Having at least one physical or psychiatric disorder was reported by 82.8% of subjects with insomnia disorder. Mean sleep duration for subjects with insomnia disorder was 5.77 hours on weeknights and 7.03 hours on days off/weekends. The corresponding figures for subjects without insomnia disorder were 7.04 hours and 7.86 hours, respectively. Among those with insomnia disorder 62.5% expressed a need for treatment, and 20.0% used prescribed sleep medication regularly. Conclusions. Insomnia disorder is highly prevalent in the population. There are significant associations between insomnia disorder and physical and psychiatric disorders. A majority of subjects with insomnia disorder expressed a need for treatment, indicating a public health problem.
Combine Approach for Speech and Gesture Recognition

Gesture and Speech based human Computer interaction is attractive attention across various areas such as pattern recognition, computer vision. Thus kind of research areas find many kind of application in Multimodal HCI, Robotics control, Sign language recognition. This paper presents head and hand Gesture as well as Speech recognition system for human computer interaction (HCI). This kind of vision based system can show the capability of computer. Which understand and responding to the hand and head gesture also for Speech in form of sentence. This recognition system consists of two main modules namely 1.Gesture recognition 2.Speech recognition, Gesture recognition consists of various phases. i. image capturing, ii. Feature extraction of gesture iii. Gesture modeling (Direction, Position, generalized), 2.Speech recognition consists of various phases i. taking voice signals ii. Spectral coding iii. Unit matching (BMU) iv. Lexical decoding v. syntactic, semantic analysis. Compared with many existing algorithms for gesture and speech recognition.
Successful and Unsuccessful Attacks: Evaluating the Stability of the East Asian Currencies

The key objective of our study is to re-examine again the stability of selected East Asian currencies. Had there been any other attacks on these currencies prior to their meltdowns in 1997? Equally important, have the currencies stabilized during the post-1997 crisis? To address these questions, we adopt the concept of exchange market pressure (EMP) index of Kaminsky, Lizondo, and Reinhart (1998). Due to non-normality of the statistical distribution of the EMP indices in general, this study applies the Extreme Value Theory (EVT) as proposed by Huisman, Koedijk, Kool, and Palm (2001). Lastly, we document events that arguably contribute to speculative attacks on these currencies.
A study of stock volatility in the context of factor volatility models for large datasets : factor analysis and forecasting

This thesis is a study of stock volatility adopting two factor volatility models for large datasets: the orthogonal GARCH model and the stochastic volatility factor model. An application is made to the constituent stocks of five Asian indexes. Factor analysis and volatility forecasting exercise are carried out. Chapter 1 is an empirical application of the orthogonal GARCH model to Asian stock returns. Correlation analysis, eigenvalue and eigenvector analysis and several diagnostic tests are carried out. Our results show that using large number of principal components cannot guarantee an improvement in capturing dynamics. Moreover, GARCH(l,l) is the appropriate specification for the principal components of stock returns of some datasets. An empirical example of how GARCH analysis of all series in the entire dataset can be summarised by a univariate GARCH analysis of the first principal component is also provided. Chapter 2 is a factor analysis using stochastic volatility factor models. In contrast to the first part of the study, common factors are estimated from large datasets of Asian stock volatilities via principal components. Correlation analysis of stock volatilities is performed. Examinations of the dynamics of factor estimates and their explanatory power are also carried out. Our results
Diagonal Dominance of SPD Matrices

We prove two sharp, easily computable lower bounds on the diagonal entries of a Symmetric Positive Definite matrix A. The bounds hold uniformly over all binormalized A’s (i.e., the l1 norm of every row is approximately one; this can be achieved by a fast diagonal scaling algorithm [3]) with a moderate number of non-zeros per row. This includes all sparse SPD matrices arising from discretized PDEs. Our bounds apply to error analysis of direct and iterative methods for linear systems, and imply the algebraic smoothing property of Gauss-Seidel relaxation, essential for the convergence of algebraic multigrid.
On target localization with communication costs via tensor completion: A multi-modal approach

The problem of active target detection using low rank methods is explored. In prior work, a strategy was proposed based on matrix completion for randomly sampling a field combined with binary search to localize a target. Herein, two innovations are explored: the consideration of tensor-completion in order to exploit multi-modal data and the examination of the costs associated with communication. In particular, the random samples are collected in neighborhoods wherein the quality of the observation is a function of the distance of the sampling point to the centroid of the neighborhood. Due to the tradeoff between communication quality and sampling quality, there is an optimal neighborhood size.
Noise Suppression in 94 GHz Radar-Detected Speech Based on Perceptual Wavelet Packet

A millimeter wave (MMW) radar sensor is employed in our laboratory to detect human speech because it provides a new non-contact speech acquisition method that is suitable for various applications. However, the speech detected by the radar sensor is often degraded by combined noise. This paper proposes a new perceptual wavelet packet method that is able to enhance the speech acquired using a 94 GHz MMW radar system by suppressing the noise. The process is as follows. First, the radar speech signal is decomposed using a perceptual wavelet packet. Then, an adaptive wavelet threshold and new modified thresholding function are employed to remove the noise from the detected speech. The results obtained from the speech spectrograms, listening tests and objective evaluation show that the new method significantly improves the performance of the detected speech.
Calculating with lenses: optimising bidirectional transformations

This paper presents an equational calculus to reason about bidirectional transformations specified in the point-free style. In particular, it focuses on the so-called lenses as a bidirectional idiom, and shows that many standard laws characterising point-free combinators and recursion patterns are also valid in that setting. A key result is that uniqueness also holds for bidirectional folds and unfolds, thus unleashing the power of fusion as a program optimisation technique. A rewriting system for automatic lens optimisation is also presented, to prove the usefulness of the proposed calculus.