Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integration of a road erosion model, WARSEM, with a catchment sediment delivery model, CatchMODS

Road surface erosion is increasingly recognised as a potentially important source of suspended sediment delivered to streams and other water bodies, particularly in forested catchments. As a result, several models have been developed to estimate erosion rates and sediment delivery from unsealed roads. However, few studies have integrated such models or their outputs into catchment-scale sediment models so that a more complete simulation of sediment yields from a catchment can be achieved. This paper describes the integration of a road erosion model, WARSEM, into a catchment-scale sediment delivery model, CatchMODS, using two coastal catchments in southeastern Australia as case studies. The integration process involved the testing of the comparability of sediment delivery rates predicted by the WARSEM and CatchMODS models using geochemical sediment tracing techniques, and the incorporation of the WARSEM outputs into the CatchMODS framework. This study provides comprehensive information on the sources of suspended sediment in the Moruya-Deua and Tuross River catchments, and also, and more importantly, describes a method that can be applied to similar studies that aim at integrating road erosion modelling for the purpose of catchment-scale erosion and sediment delivery assessment. The annual erosion and sediment delivery rates from unsealed roads in the study catchments were modelled using WARSEM, and the sediment yields from hillslope, gully and streambank erosion were estimated using CatchMODS. Geochemical sediment tracing was employed to test the comparability of CatchMODS and WARSEM using the Goodenough Gully subcatchment as a case study. The results suggest that the level of agreement between the modelling and tracing results is 97% and that the models are comparable. Subsequently, the WARSEM outputs were directly integrated into the sediment routing equation in CatchMODS without modification. The results of the integrated sediment model suggested that road erosion accounts for 9% and 10% of the total sediment yields in the Moruya-Deua and Tuross River catchments, respectively. The integration of WARSEM and CatchMODS can be a useful tool for catchment managers to investigate the potential impacts of comprehensive management options including road, landuse and riparian management on sediment yields at a catchment scale.
PSO-Based OFDM Adaptive Power and Bit Allocation for Multiuser Cognitive Radio System

The Cognitive Radio (CR) can take full advantage of the spectrum by enabling second user (SU) to access idle radio channel licensed by primary user (PU) to improve spectrum utilization. The Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) provides a feasible network air interface scheme for CR with the flexibility of distributing power and bit to achieve tremendous data rate with the least power. And the mutual interference is a limiting factor that should be taken into account due to the non-orthogonality of their transmit signals. And in this paper we analyze the theoretical system capacity with available sub-channels, subject to interference tolerance and power ceiling appointed by PU in a downlink OFDM-Based CR multiuser scenario, and employ a Particle Swarm Optimization-Based (PSO) algorithm to achieve the resource allocation.
Structural and functional brain imaging in the assessment of prodromal Alzheimer's disease

Multiple biomarkers have proved sensitive to AD and MCI, a potential prodromal stage of AD. These include patterns of regional cerebral atrophy and hypometabolism detected by MR imaging and FDG-PET1 and quantification of specific proteins in the CSF. There is active research aimed at identifying automated methodologies able to extract accurate classification indexes. Such indexes should be fit for identifying AD patients as early as possible. The noticeable growth in the number of candidate biomarkers poses the question on which one can add more value to the routinely performed episodic memory tests. A key contribution to biomarker findings came from the recent availability of large multi-centers studies supported by the Alzheimers Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) and the European Alzheimer's Disease Consortium (EADC). In our work we shall briefly review the status of MRI and PET biomarkers findings and we will detail the recent advances in automatic image analysis ongoing in the MAGIC-5 project.
Generating Funny Dialogue between Robots based on Japanese Traditional Comedy Entertainment

Numerous studies have examined entertainments robots that communicate with people, but it is difficult for robots to communicate smoothly with people. We specifically examine communication with robots based on a humorous dialogue between entertainment robots. At this time, scenarios consisting of humorous dialogue must be produced for robots to use. In this paper, we propose a system that generates humorous dialogue scenarios automatically from web news articles in real time. Japan has a traditional humorous comedy called "Manzai", a kind of standup comedy. Manzai typically consists of two comedians performing humorous dialogue. We use the Manzai metaphor in our system. Our generated Manzai scenario consists of fluffy patter and dialogue filled with misunderstanding in three parts: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. The Introduction includes a greeting and presentation of the theme of the original web content. The Body includes component of four types used to generate funny dialogue. The Conclusion includes automatically generated riddles related to words in news from the internet. We create entertainment robots to amuse people with our generated humorous robot dialogue scenario.
Biometric Authentication Using Kekre's Wavelet Transform

This paper proposes an enhanced method for personal authentication based on finger Knuckle Print using Kekre's wavelet transform (KWT). Finger-knuckle-print (FKP) is the inherent skin patterns of the outer surface around the phalangeal joint of one's finger. It is highly discriminable and unique which makes it an emerging promising biometric identifier. Kekre's wavelet transform is constructed from Kekre's transform. The proposed system is evaluated on prepared FKP database that involves all categories of FKP. The total database of 500 samples of FKP. This paper focuses the different image enhancement techniques for the pre-processing of the captured images. The proposed algorithm is examined on 350 training and 150 testing samples of database and shows that the quality of database and pre-processing techniques plays important role to recognize the individual. The experimental result calculate the performance parameters like false acceptance rate (FAR), false rejection rate (FRR), True Acceptance rate (TAR), True rejection rate (TRR). The tested result demonstrated the improvement in EER (Error Equal Rate) which is very much important for authentication. The experimental result using Kekre's algorithm along with image enhancement shows that the finger knuckle recognition rate is better than the conventional method.
The Effect of Ergotamine and Dihydroergotamine on Cerebral Blood Flow in Man

The effects of ergotamine and dihydroergotamine on cerebral blood now was investigated 4 hours after i.v. injection as these drugs might be of importance for migraine treatment. Eight normal male volunteers (not suffering from migraine) received 0.5 mg ergotamine and 1 mg dihydroergotamine i.v. Cerebral blood flow was measured by the xenon‐133 inhalation method and single—photon—emission computerized tomography before and after intravenous acetazolamide administration (1 g). Cerebral blood flow was measured before and 4 hours after ergotamine and dihydroergotamine administration. Strain—gauge measurements of toe—arm systolic gradients were used to monitor the effect of the drug on leg arteries. Mean hemispheric and regional cerebral blood flow was unchanged after either drug (mean ± SEM, ml/100 g/min): for ergotamine, 57 ± 3 before and 57 ± 3 at 4 hours; for dihydroergotamine, 54 ± 2 before and 55 ± 2 at 4 hours. The acetazolamide response was unchanged as well. Only ergotamine decreased the toe—arm systolic gradient significantly (22 mm Hg at maximum after 240 minutes; p < 0.02). Thus, our study did not support the belief that ergot alkaloids should be withheld from patients during attacks of classic migraine, but this has to be investigated further. The discrepancy in the peripheral effects of ergotamine and dihydroergotamine might also be of clinical Importance. (Stroke 1987;18:120–123)
Structure and composition of the cytoskeleton of nucleated erythrocytes I. The presence of microtubule-associated protein 2 in the marginal band

The marginal band (MB) of nucleated erythrocytes is composed of a bundle of microtubules that encircles the cell immediately beneath the plasma membrane. When cells are lysed in buffer containing Triton X-100 the MB microtubules remain intact, and the nucleus remains suspended at the cell center by a filamentous network called the trans-MB material that connects the nucleus to the peripheral MB. When these lysed cells are prepared for indirect immunofluorescence by use of an antibody to chick brain microtubule-associated protein 2 (MAP 2), intense staining of the MB results; no staining is evident in the areas occupied by the nucleus or the trans-MB material. Controls demonstrate that the staining is specific, because no staining occurs with fluorescent goat antirabbit serum alone or when nonimmune serum is used as the first antibody. Furthermore, the fluorescence of the MB is not affected by pretreatment of the immune serum with purified tubulin, but staining is prevented by pretreatment of the immune serum with purified MAP 2. To determine which protein component of the MB was responsible for the positive immunofluorescence results, 125I-protein A staining was used after the protein components of the isolated cytoskeleton had been resolved by SDS-polyacrylamide gels. Controls showed that the antiserum could react on SDS gels with MAP 2 from purified chick brain microtubules. The results with the cytoskeletal proteins demonstrated that the antiserum reacted only with a high molecular weight protein having a molecular weight similar, but not identical, to that of chick brain MAP 2. Thus, it is concluded that a protein with antigenic characteristics similar to those of chick brain MAP 2 is a component of the MB. The results are discussed in terms of the possible function of MAP 2 in the MB.
Semi-Automated Analysis of Protocols From Novices and Experts Solving Physics Problems

PDP (Protocol Diaqnostic Program) is a proqram for analyzing think-aloud protocols of subjects solvinq elementary physics problems *. Two versions of PDP implement models of problem solving behaviour at novice and intermediate levels of expertise. In order to compare the behaviour of the models with think-aloud protocols of subjects, PDP is equiped with a think-aloud component, which communicates with a human coder. Any discrepancies between the behaviour of the model and the subject activate a diaqnostic component, which identifies the deviation and may redirect the behaviour of the model. The output of the system is an analysis of a protocol in terms of the computational model, annotated with possible discrepancies between model and subject. Results obtained by analyzing a number of protocols of experts and novices are presented.
A Mammalian Homolog of the Yeast LCB1 Encodes a Component of Serine Palmitoyltransferase, the Enzyme Catalyzing the First Step in Sphingolipid Synthesis*

Serine palmitoyltransferase (SPT; EC2.3.1.50) catalyzes the initial step dedicated to sphingolipid biosynthesis and is thought to be a key enzyme for regulating cellular sphingolipid content. For SPT activity, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae requires two genes, LCB1 andLCB2. We isolated mammalian LCB1 cDNA homologs from mouse and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells and anLCB2 cDNA homolog from CHO cells. The mammalian LCB1 proteins are predicted to have about 35% amino acid identity to the yeast Lcb1 protein, whereas the CHO LCB2 protein is predicted to have about 40% amino acid identity to the yeast Lcb2 protein. Northern blot analysis of mRNA isolated from various mouse tissues revealed that the tissue distribution of both LCB1 and LCB2messengers followed a similar pattern. Transfection of an SPT-defective CHO mutant strain with a CHO LCB1-expressing plasmid restored both SPT activity and de novo sphingolipid synthesis to the wild type levels, whereas transfection of the mutant strain with a CHO LCB2-expressing plasmid did not exhibit any recovery effects, indicating that the SPT defect in the mutant cells is specifically complemented by the CHO LCB1 homolog. Furthermore, when the SPT-defective mutant cells were transfected with a plasmid encoding a His6-tagged CHO LCB1 protein, SPT activity bound to a Ni2+-immobilized resin. These results indicate that the CHO LCB1 homolog encodes a component of SPT.
Will they stay?: turnover intentions of future federal cyber corps members

ABSTRACT Although significant research has been conducted on the turnover intentions of IT professionals once they are engaged in an employment relationship, not much is known about the ex-ante turnover intentions of future IT professionals. This is particularly true for the professional sub-population of cyber security workers. In this study we propose a model based on Agarwal et al. (2007) that examines the factors that influence turnover intentions of future IT professionals who have made the commitment to work for the federal government as members of the federal cyber corps. As Argawal et al. (2007) point out, although researchers are able to identify factors that drive turnover intentions once an individual is already engaged in an employment relationship, little is known about the ex-ante intentions of new IT workforce entrants. Our model takes affective commitment, public service motivation, role stressors (role ambiguity, role conflict), and preferred variety as antecedents of turnover intention. In addition to the contribution to the turnover intention literature, this study will add to the emerging body of knowledge on service corps programs. Given the increasing prominence of these programs (e.g. AmeriCorps) a thoughtful examination of the potential short- and long-term impact is warranted. We expect to present empirical results during the conference.
Early modality-specific somatosensory cortical regions are modulated by attended visual stimuli: interaction of vision, touch and behavioral intent

Bimodal interactions between relevant visual and tactile inputs can facilitate attentional modulation at early stages in somatosensory cortices to achieve goal-oriented behaviors. However, the specific contribution of each sensory system during attentional processing and, importantly, how these interact with the required behavioral motor goals remains unclear. Here we used electroencephalography and event-related potentials (ERPs) to test the hypothesis that activity from modality-specific somatosensory cortical regions would be enhanced with task-relevant bimodal (visual-tactile) stimuli and that the degree of modulation would depend on the difficulty of the associated sensory-motor task demands. Tactile stimuli were discrete vibrations to the index finger and visual stimuli were horizontal bars on a computer screen, both with random amplitudes. Streams of unimodal (tactile) and crossmodal (visual and tactile) stimuli were randomly presented and participants were instructed to attend to one type of stimulus (unimodal or crossmodal) and responses involved either an indication of the presence of an attended stimulus (detect), or the integration and summation of two stimulus amplitudes using a pressure-sensitive ball (grade). Force-amplitude associations were learned in a training session, and no feedback was provided during the task. ERPs were time-locked to tactile stimuli and extracted for early modality-specific components (P50, P100, N140). The P50 was enhanced with bimodal (visual-tactile) stimuli that were attended to. This was maximal when the motor requirements involved integration of the two stimuli in the grade task and when the visual stimulus occurred before (100 ms) the tactile stimulus. These results suggest that visual information relevant for movement modulates somatosensory processing as early as the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and that the motor behavioral context influences this likely through interaction of top-down attentional and motor preparatory systems with more bottom-up crossmodal influences.
Optimization of humanoid walking controller: Crossing the reality gap

Humanoid locomotion remains a challenge because of the inherent instability of such robotic platforms. Inspired from observations on animals, Central Pattern Generators have been proposed to support the generation of rhythmic patterns able to make a robot smoothly walk while requiring few computational power. Nevertheless, tuning such controllers is challenging, in particular because small irregularities in the walking pattern easily make the robot fall. Optimization algorithms can be used to tune them in simulation, but the transfer of such solutions to the real robot raises the reality gap problem, as a solution efficient in simulation may well be inefficient in reality. It is proposed here to use the transferability approach to solve this problem. Its principle is to learn a model of the transferability between simulation and reality while doing several evaluations on the real robot. This model is then used to estimate how well a controller will transfer onto the real robot and the optimization process tries to optimize it besides other cost functions related to locomotion and tested in simulation only. The approach has been applied to the DARWIN-OP robot.
The Surface of 2003 EL61 in the Near-Infrared

We report the detection of crystalline water ice on the surface of 2003 EL61. Reflectance spectra were collected from the Gemini North telescope in the 1.0 to 2.4 μm wavelength range and from the Keck telescope across the 1.4-2.4 μm wavelength range. The signature of crystalline water ice is obvious in all data collected. Like the surfaces of many outer solar system bodies, the surface of 2003 EL61 is rich in crystalline water ice, which is energetically less favored than amorphous water ice at low temperatures, suggesting that resurfacing processes may be taking place. The near-infrared color of the object is much bluer than a pure water ice model. Adding a near-infrared blue component such as hydrogen cyanide or phyllosilicate clays improves the fit considerably, with hydrogen cyanide providing the greatest improvement. The addition of hydrated tholins and bitumens also improves the fit, but is inconsistent with the neutral V - J reflectance of 2003 EL61. A small decrease in reflectance beyond 2.3 μm may be attributable to cyanide salts. Overall, the reflected light from 2003 EL61 is best fit by a model of 2/3-4/5 pure crystalline water ice and 1/3-1/5 near-infrared blue component such as hydrogen cyanide or kaolinite. The surface of 2003 EL61 is unlikely to be covered by significant amounts of dark material such as carbon black, as our pure ice models reproduce published albedo estimates derived from the spin state of 2003 EL61.
The gender gap in political knowledge : is it all about guessing? : an experimental approach

This article analyzes the extent to which the format and the ‘Do not know’ protocol of political knowledge questions influence the size of the gender gap. By using a set of experiments that manipulated the DK protocol and the format (open vs. closed) of political knowledge questions in a face to face representative survey of the Spanish population, we show that the format of the questions (open versus closed) is not relevant in explaining the gender gap. DK protocols, however, influence outspoken levels of political knowledge differently for men and women. DK discouraging protocols tend to encourage the emergence of hidden knowledge among women, whereas they mostly boost guessing among men. This finding suggests that the meaning and the use of the DK option appear to be gender biased.
Dynamic Models in Moses for Online Adaptation

Abstract A very hot issue for research and industry is how to effectively integrate machine translation (MT) within computer assisted translation (CAT) software. This paper focuses on this issue, and more generally how to dynamically adapt phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT) by exploiting external knowledge, like the post-editions from professional translators. We present an enhancement of the Moses SMT toolkit dynamically adaptable to external information, which becomes available during the translation process, and which can depend on the previously translated text. We have equipped Moses with two new elements: a new phrase table implementation and a new LM-like feature. Both the phrase table and the LM-like feature can be dynamically modified by adding and removing entries and re-scoring them according to a time-decaying scoring function. The final goal of these two dynamically adaptable features is twofold: to create additional translation alternatives and to reward those which are composed of entries previously inserted therein. The implemented dynamic system is highly configurable, flexible and applicable to many tasks, like for instance online MT adaptation, interactive MT, and context-aware MT. When exploited in a real-world CAT scenario where online adaptation is applied to repetitive texts, it has proven itself very effective in improving translation quality and reducing post-editing effort.
The Applicability of Existing Metrics for Software Security

With the increasing inclination of people to use software systems for most of the purposes, comes a major challenge for software engineers – the engineering of secure software systems. The concept of ―Computer Security‖ is being heavily researched and this perfectly makes sense in a world where e-commerce and egovernance are becoming the norms of the day. Along with their potential for making life easier and smarter for people, these systems also carry with them the danger of insecurity. Because any software system is an outcome of some software engineering process it makes sense to incorporate security considerations during the software engineering processes. This is easier said than done because traditional software engineering approaches are requirements driven and pay very little, if any, attention to security. Tom DeMarco [1] stated, ―You can’t control what you can't measure. ‖ This clearly states the importance of metrics in software engineering. Traditional software metrics do not address the issue of security well and now with security becoming an imperative necessity of most software systems, these metrics have to be adapted to take into account the security aspect. The paper discusses the applicability of some established metrics for the security aspect.
Organization of complex networks without multiple connections

We find a new structural feature of equilibrium complex random networks without multiple and self-connections. We show that if the number of connections is sufficiently high, these networks contain a core of highly interconnected vertices. The number of vertices in this core varies in the range between const x N1/2 and const x N2/3, where is the number of vertices in a network. At the birth point of the core, we obtain the size-dependent cutoff of the distribution of the number of connections and find that its position differs from earlier estimates.