Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do vegetation boundaries display smooth or abrupt spatial transitions along environmental gradients? Evidence from the prairie-forest biome boundary of historic Minnesota, USA

Questions: Two alternative mechanisms of abrupt vegetation change across ecological boundaries have been proposed: (1) concomitantly abrupt gradients in physical environmental variables and vegetation across the boundary, and (2) gradual environmental gradients that vegetation responds to in a non-linear or threshold manner. Here, we evaluate spatial patterns of climate and vegetation across a grassland–forest biome boundary to examine evidence in favour of either of these alternatives. Location: Minnesota, USA. Methods: Vegetation data represented the presence of prairie vs. forest vegetation in Minnesota from 1847 to 1908, generally prior to European settlement of the region, while the climatic variables represented an index of long-term average moisture availability (precipitation minus potential evapotranspiration (P – PET). Using linear and sigmoidal regression models, we evaluated spatial patterns of change in vegetation, climate and vegetation–climate relationships across 22 transects (170–400 km) oriented perpendicular to the biome boundary. We alsoevaluated boundary characteristics in light of dominant topographical controls and position along the boundary. Results: Vegetation followed a sigmoidal pattern of change across the boundary, with mean boundary width of ca. 100 km. The P – PET increased by ca. 100 mm across the boundary following a comparatively smooth pattern of change. Climate–vegetation relationships were clearly non-linear across the boundary, indicating these variables did not change in a common spatial pattern. Regional topographical controls modified relationships between vegetation and climate along the length of the boundary. Conclusions: Our results document strong non-linear relationships between the presence of forest vegetation and its dominant climate control across a grassland–forest biome boundary. An average change of ca. 100 mm in P – PET moving across the boundary is about 40% of the long-term mean annual range of this variable, suggesting that modest changes to P – PET may potentially cause substantial shifts in the location of the prairie–forest boundary.
Performance analysis of sleeping attacks in wireless sensor networks

Denial of sleeping is a novel type of potential attacks in wireless networks. The object of the attack is a sensor nodepsilas power supply. To make sensors inexpensive so that they can be economically deployed in large numbers, they generally have very limited battery capability. Thus, a lifetime of a sensor is degraded under Denial of Sleeping attack. In this paper a novel implementation of the attack is investigated. A mathematical model for performance analysis for Denial of Sleeping attack is offered. Counteracting against the intrusion is discussed.
Power minimization and QoS feasibility region in the multiuser MIMO broadcast channel with imperfect CSI

The aim of this work is to jointly achieve individual rate requirements and minimum total transmit power in a Multi User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) Broadcast Channel (BC). Data streams are transmitted from a multi-antenna base station to several independent and non-cooperative multi-antenna users. Perfect Channel-State-Information (CSI) is known at the receivers and it is fed back to the transmitter, where partial CSI is used for the design of linear transmit filters. Employing a duality between Multiple Access Channel (MAC) and BC w.r. t. the average Mean Square Error (MSE) and identifying standard interference functions, we propose an algorithmic joint solution for the transmit filter design and the power allocation. Additionally, we describe the feasibility region in the average MMSE domain. This result allows for checking the convergence of the algorithm for given Quality of Service (QoS) constraints.
On Local Invariants of Totally Real Surfaces

Abstract A class of totally real surface singularities is introduced for which one can define local topological invariants. The main result yields an algebraic estimate for the self-intersection index of a totally real germ. It is derived from an algebraic upper estimate for the index of a quasi-homogeneous vector field which generalizes the previously known estimates in terms of the so-called Petrovsky numbers.
Area impact analysis of via-configurable regular fabric for digital integrated circuit design

Transistor regular layout (TRL) has been considered a more lithography-reliable approach for digital integrated circuit design than the most conventional standard cell design. However, the impact in circuit area seems to be unavoidable due to the loss in design flexibility. Hence, the decision in applying such design strategy depends not only on the expected yield improvement but also on the careful evaluation of circuit penalty. This paper presents an extensive analysis and discussion about area impact of TRL design style in comparison to the standard cell one. Several benchmark circuits were mapped by addressing specific cell libraries built for this purpose. Experimental results demonstrated that efficient TRL templates may minimize significantly the area overhead.
How voice augmentation supports elderly web users

Online Web applications have become widespread and have made our daily life more convenient. However, older adults often find such applications inaccessible because of age-related changes to their physical and cognitive abilities. Two of the reasons that older adults may shy away from the Web are fears of the unknown and of the consequences of incorrect actions. We are extending a voice-based augmentation technique originally developed for blind users. We want to reduce the cognitive load on older adults by providing contextual support. An experiment was conducted to evaluate how voice augmentation can support elderly users in using Web applications. Ten older adults participated in our study and their subjective evaluations showed how the system gave them confidence in completing Web forms. We believe that voice augmentation may help address the users' concerns arising from their low confidence levels.
The Dorothy Project: An Open Botnet Analysis Framework for Automatic Tracking and Activity Visualization

Botnets, networks of compromised machines remotely controlled and instructed to work in a coordinated fashion, have had an epidemic diffusion over the Internet and represent one of today's most insidious threat. In this paper, we present an open framework called Dorothy that permits to monitor the activity of a botnet. We propose to characterize a botnet behavior through a set of parameters and a graphical representation. In a case study, we infiltrated and monitored a botnet named siwa collecting information about its functional structure, geographical distribution, communication mechanisms, command language and operations.
Critical review of literature on corporate governance and the cost of capital: The value creation perspective

Corporate governance encompasses a broad spectrum of mechanisms intended to mitigate agency risk by increasing the monitoring of managements' actions, limiting managers' opportunistic behaviour, and improving the quality of firms' information flows. A torrent of literature explains that corporate governance mechanisms are able to enhance a firm's value. A firm's value is commonly measured using either market or accounting performance measures. Alternatively, a value is created when a firm enjoys a reduction in its cost of capital. Theoretically, firms that have robust monitoring devices including strong protection of stakeholders' rights will be able to limit the extent of managerial power abuse and prudently allocate resources. This type of firm should have lower risk and access to cheaper sources of capital than other firms. This paper aimed to provide a critical review of literature on the effect of corporate governance on the cost of capital emphasising on the value creation perspective of corporate governance.
AN ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL CAPITAL IN EMPOWERMENT COMMUNITY AT UNINHABITABLE HOUSE’S RENOVATION FUND ONWEST BANDUNG REGENCY

Purpose of Study: Cihampelas village, Cihampelas sub-district, West Bandung Regency is the most village that gets the social fund for the renovation of the house which is uninhabitable “Rumah Tidak Layak Huni” (RTLH). This village could inventory the uninhabitable houses properly so that in this village, there are around 334 renovations of uninhabitable houses. These RTLH renovations program is the program that aims to improve the economic life of the society by prioritizing the society self-reliance through build mutual cooperation and togetherness. By this empowerment then, the community empowerment organization “Kelompok Swadaya Masyarakat” (KSM) became the coordinator of the program. The apparatus and companion consultant saw that KSM Cihampelas village, growth slowly unlike another village, but for the uninhabitable renovation they were effective and on target. Meanwhile, another village has so many problems in that community empowerment organization (KSM). In this analysis, the writer uses the qualitative method with study cases approach. The writer uses social capital theory, they are; trust, social norm and social networking. This community empowerment organization (KSM) who became the bearer in this program, has a leader or a chairman that collective collegial, so that all of the decisions can be taken from consensus. Although, from West Bandung’s apparatus and companion con- the sultant point of view, Cihampelas tend to be slow, and slow progress, but the Cihampelas’ KSM very strong and trusted highly by the society towards this KSM.Although, from West Bandung’s apparatus and companion consultant point of view, Cihampelas tend to be slow, and slow progress, the Cihampelas’ KSM very strong and trusted highly by the society towards this KSM. Methodology: In the data collecting technique, the writer uses an observation technique, deep interview, focus group discussion (FGD), interpretation approach, and library research. In data validation testing, the writer uses the triangulation technique by check, re-check and crosscheck for data that get from the theory, methodology, and writer perception. The resulting analysis shows that from three variables of social capital that analyzed by study cases at Cihampelas village for the fund of the uninhabitable program (RTLH), indicate that this village was succeeded in managing this program because they could explore the local wisdom which exists in these villages. Results: This case proves that kinship culture which builds from this fund program at the society in this analysis, shows the culture of helping each other, trusting and knowing also caring, especially in facing the house renovation problems. Implications/Applications: KSM highly respected by the society, since they know that the management does not get the incentive from anywhere, but because of their good intention to make the village and the environment more comfortable. Even the network is good enough because of the togetherness.
The Determinants of Labour Force Status among Indigenous Australians

It is well established that Indigenous Australians are heavily over-represented among Australia’s most disadvantaged citizens. An important component of this disadvantage is the limited and often unsuccessful engagement of Indigenous people with the labour market. To better understand this reality, the present paper explores the forces which influence the labour market status of Indigenous people. For this purpose, multinomial logit regression analysis is used to model labour force status as a function of factors relating to geography, demographic characteristics, education, health, culture, crime and housing issues. The analysis is conducted utilising the 2002 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS). The paper gives particular attention to geographic issues, revealing significant variations between the determinants of labour force status in non-remote and remote areas. The results demonstrate the relevance of a wide range of factors in determining the probability of employment among Indigenous people, highlighting the complex array of issues which should be considered in attempts to increase employment.
Choosing an Appropriate Modelling Framework for Analysing Multispecies Co-culture Cell Biology Experiments

In vitro cell biology assays play a crucial role in informing our understanding of the migratory, proliferative and invasive properties of many cell types in different biological contexts. While mono-culture assays involve the study of a population of cells composed of a single cell type, co-culture assays study a population of cells composed of multiple cell types (or subpopulations of cells). Such co-culture assays can provide more realistic insights into many biological processes including tissue repair, tissue regeneration and malignant spreading. Typically, system parameters, such as motility and proliferation rates, are estimated by calibrating a mathematical or computational model to the observed experimental data. However, parameter estimates can be highly sensitive to the choice of model and modelling framework. This observation motivates us to consider the fundamental question of how we can best choose a model to facilitate accurate parameter estimation for a particular assay. In this work we describe three mathematical models of mono-culture and co-culture assays that include different levels of spatial detail. We study various spatial summary statistics to explore if they can be used to distinguish between the suitability of each model over a range of parameter space. Our results for mono-culture experiments are promising, in that we suggest two spatial statistics that can be used to direct model choice. However, co-culture experiments are far more challenging: we show that these same spatial statistics which provide useful insight into mono-culture systems are insufficient for co-culture systems. Therefore, we conclude that great care ought to be exercised when estimating the parameters of co-culture assays.
Protecting Small Flows from Large Ones for Quality of Service

A simple strategy for improving Quality of Service is to protect small flows from large ones, by finding a small number of large flows, separating them from the remaining traffic, and giving the small flow traffic priority over these large flows. This is a very powerful technique because it is known that a small proportion of all flows (e.g. 0.1%) contain a large proportion of all bytes (e.g. 20%). Many questions arise when this method of managing performance is considered. These questions are investigated by means of a mathematical model of traffic and of queueing in routers. One particular question is particularly emphasized in this paper: how should the size of flows be measured?
The influence of achievement goal orientation, self-efficacy on allocation of study time

The influence of achievement goal orientation and self-efficacy on allocation of study time are explored in this study. 96 senior high School students are investigated through RJR paradigm and materials (meaningful and meaningless associated Chinese word-pairs). The result shows that: (1) Achievement goal orientation has prominent influence on allocation of study time. (2) Self-efficacy has prominent influence on allocation of study time. (3) Achievement goal orientation and self-efficacy have different interactions on allocation of study time. (4) There are interactions between achievement goal orientation and self-efficacy.
Mass transfer in amperometric biosensors based on nanocomposite thin films of redox polymers and oxidoreductases

Abstract : Mass transfer in nanocomposite hydrogel thin films consisting of alternating layers of an organometallic redox polymer (RP) and oxidoreductase enzymes was investigated. Multilayer nanostructures were fabricated on gold surfaces by the deposition of an anionic self-assembled monolayer of 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid, followed by the electrostatic binding of a cationic redox polymer, poly[vinylpyridine Os( bis -bipyridine) 2 Cl-co-allylamine], and an anionic oxidoreductase. Surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared external reflection spectroscopy (FTIR-ERS), ellipsometry and electrochemistry were employed to characterize the assembly of these nanocomposite films. Simultaneous SPR/electrochemistry enabled real time observation of the assembly of sensing components, changes in film structure with electrode potential, and the immediate, in situ electrochemical verification of substrate-dependent current upon the addition of enzyme to the multilayer structure. SPR and FTIR-ERS studies also showed no desorption of polymer or enzyme from the nanocomposite structure when stored in aqueous environment occurred over the period of three weeks, suggesting that decreasing in substrate sensitivity were due to loss of enzymatic activity rather than loss of film compounds from the nanostructure.
Refining the construct of narcissistic personality disorder: diagnostic criteria and subtypes.

OBJECTIVE Narcissistic personality disorder has received relatively little empirical attention. This study was designed to provide an empirically valid and clinically rich portrait of narcissistic personality disorder and to identify subtypes of the disorder. METHOD A random national sample of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists (N=1,201) described a randomly selected current patient with personality pathology. Clinicians provided detailed psychological descriptions of the patients using the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-II (SWAP-II), completed a checklist of axis II diagnostic criteria, and provided construct ratings for each axis II personality disorder. Descriptions of narcissistic patients based on both raw and standardized SWAP-II item scores were aggregated to identify, respectively, the most characteristic and the most distinctive features of narcissistic personality disorder. RESULTS A total of 255 patients met DSM-IV criteria for narcissistic personality disorder based on the checklist and 122 based on the construct ratings; 101 patients met criteria by both methods. Q-factor analysis identified three subtypes of narcissistic personality disorder, which the authors labeled grandiose/malignant, fragile, and high-functioning/exhibitionistic. Core features of the disorder included interpersonal vulnerability and underlying emotional distress, along with anger, difficulty in regulating affect, and interpersonal competitiveness, features that are absent from the DSM-IV description of narcissistic personality disorder. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that DSM-IV criteria for narcissistic personality disorder are too narrow, underemphasizing aspects of personality and inner experience that are empirically central to the disorder. The richer and more differentiated view of narcissistic personality disorder suggested by this study may have treatment implications and may help bridge the gap between empirically and clinically derived concepts of the disorder.
Why the Naive Bayes approximation is not as Naive as it appears

The Naive Bayes approximation and associated classifier is widely used in machine learning and data mining and offers very robust performance across a large spectrum of problem domains. As it depends on a very strong assumption - independence among features - this has been somewhat puzzling. Various hypotheses have been put forward to explain its success and moreover many generalizations have been proposed. In this paper we propose a set of "local" error measures - associated with the likelihood functions for particular subsets of attributes and for each class - and show explicitly how these local errors combine to give a "global" error associated to the full attribute set. By so doing we formulate a framework within which the phenomenon of error cancelation, or augmentation, can be quantitatively evaluated and its impact on classifier performance estimated and predicted a priori. These diagnostics also allow us to develop a deeper and more quantitative understanding of why the Naive Bayes approximation is so robust and under what circumstances one expects it to break down.
Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning in Robot Control

The use of reinforcement learning in robotics suffers greatly from the curse of dimensionality, stemming from the necessity of a high DOF in a robot to solve even the simplest tasks. This paper gives an overview over several attempts to decrease this problem using a hierarchical structure of reinforcement learning, an evaluation of the problems that arise with such approaches and possible solutions.
A Pattern Language for the Object Oriented Design of Concurrent and Distributed Information Systems with Applications to Computer Integrated Manufacturing

This paper presents G an object oriented framework of reusable classes and a methodology for developing of distributed information systems G is presented as a set of design patterns structured to form a pattern language Following the intuitions of the architect Christopher Alexander a design has been considered formed by patterns of relationships between elements where each pattern is by itself a rule to enable a design choice from a problem requirement Indeed these patterns always come from a language a pattern language with which a certain class of problems can be approached These ideas have been transferred to the eld of object oriented design where elements are objects and patterns indicate clusters of cooperating objects linked by certain relationships that can repeatedly be found in the solution of a class of problems this allows us to call G a pattern language that is patterns are ordered and structured in such a way to help the designer in his her decision and to manage at the proper moment the di erent issues which he she encounters The objective of this approach is to raise reusability in object oriented design from the component to the architectural level and to o er a conceptual reference model for concurrent and distributed architectures
Modeling and analysis of a multilevel caching in distributed database systems

Caching frequently asked queries is an effective way to improve the performance of both centralized and distributed database systems. Intensive works have been done in this area to propose different query caching techniques and to evaluate their performance. However, most of these works were confined to caching previous query results in a single-level caching architecture. Evaluations of these works were based on simulations. In [D.S. Elzanfally et al., 2003], we proposed a new query caching technique for caching both query results and execution plans in a multilevel caching architecture. The centralized version of this technique was evaluated and the results were reported in [D.S. Elzanfally et al., 2003]. In this paper, we present an analytical model to evaluate the performance of the proposed technique in distributed database systems.
Linear Arrow-Debreu market equilibrium

We study the linear Arrow-Debreu’s model and derive a fix point method to find the market equilibrium. The convergence of this method is proved, while the speed is unknown. Besides that, properties about utility distribution and the partition of buyers are also studied. I. PROBLEM DEFINITION The problems of market equilibrium were initially studied in the domain of mathematical economics. We study Arrow-Debreu’s model [1] and Fisher’s Model [2].