Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Birdcall Retrieval from Environmental Acoustic Recordings Using Image Processing

Acoustic recordings of the environment provide an effective means to monitor bird species diversity. To facilitate exploration of acoustic recordings, we describe a content-based birdcall retrieval algorithm. A query birdcall is a region of spectrogram bounded by frequency and time. Retrieval depends on a similarity measure derived from the orientation and distribution of spectral ridges. The spectral ridge detection method caters for a broad range of birdcall structures. In this paper, we extend previous work by incorporating a spectrogram scaling step in order to improve the detection of spectral ridges. Compared to an existing approach based on MFCC features, our feature representation achieves better retrieval performance for multiple bird species in noisy recordings.
Long-Distance Quantum Key Distribution over Telecom Fiber

Long-Distance Quantum Key Distribution over Telecom Fiber Lei-Lei Huang Master of Applied Science Graduate Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering University of Toronto 2006 We present two long-distance quantum key distribution (QKD) systems over telecom fiber. The first one is the Sagnac QKD system implementing standard BB84 protocol. Novel polarization-insensitive phase modulators are used to simplify the conventional architecture. We are able to achieve a stable quantum bit error rate of 4-6.5% over 40km fiber loop over one hour without recalibration. The second one is the fiber-based QKD system using Gaussian-modulated coherent states. We have overcome the challenges imposed by the requirements for high detector sensitivity, long-term stability, and low signal crosstalk. Our GMCS QKD system is the first practical fiber-based one-way demonstration and is able to achieve a sifted secret key rate of 15.5kbits/s over a transmission distance of 5km fiber . Experimental QKD is still in its infancy. The results presented in this thesis represent a significant step forward towards the practical QKD over conventional fiber networks.
Round-robin tournaments with minimum number of breaks and two teams per club

We study round-robin tournaments for 2n teams. Here n is either interpreted as the number of clubs, each having two teams, or the number of strength groups with two teams each. For even n we give a construction of a single round-robin tournament for 2n teams with 2n - 2 breaks, where the teams of the same club have complementary home-away patterns and play against each other in the first round. If the pairs of teams are strength groups, then a cyclic permutation of the constructed schedule results in a group-balanced tournament.
A hardware / software co-designed virtual machine to support multiple ISAs

In the recent years, dynamic binary translation has become a hot research area. Besides supporting legacy binary code and ISA virtualization, it enables innovative co-designed microarchitectures and allows transparent binary instrumentation. The dynamic nature of the translation usually incurs extra execution overhead and many research works had proposed software and hardware solutions to minimize the overhead [1, 2]. In this paper, we analyze our dynamic binary translator (StarDBT) performance and depict the main sources of overhead in details. We classify the translation operations and associated overhead into five major categories, and quantify their contribution to the overall overhead. Based on the analysis and detailed evaluation, we identify and point out the most promising solutions to address the overhead problem. We believe this study is an important first step toward the grand goal of zero-overhead dynamic binary translation.
Selective Effects of the Anticancer Drug Yondelis (ET-743) on Cell-Cycle Promoters

Yondelis is a potent DNA-binding anticancer drug isolated from the tunicate Ecteinascidia turbinata currently undergoing phase III clinical trials. We and others have shown selective inhibition to the transcriptional induction of several genes. We tested the hypothesis that Yondelis specifically targets cell-cycle genes. Our analysis on endogenous and transfected reporter systems revealed complex patterns of transcriptional inhibition and, surprisingly, activation. Other inducible systems—the metallothionein and the CYP3A4 promoters—were little affected. We assayed whether interference of DNA binding of the common nuclear factor Y (NF-Y) activator was responsible for the observed inhibition: in vivo chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis in NIH3T3 and HCT116 cells indicates that NF-Y binding is little affected by Yondelis addition. Finally, histone acetylation was modestly affected only on Cdc2 and cyclin B2 but not on other repressed promoters. These data prove that Yondelis is not a general inhibitor of inducible genes, and its selective effects are exerted downstream from transcription factors binding and histone acetyl transferases recruitment.
Inductive Displacement Sensor for Force Measuring in Humanoid Robotic Application: Testing the Invariance on Angular Displacement

Abstract— A planar displacement inductive sensor, usable in robotics, is presented in the paper. The sensor is composed of two sensor elements. The first sensor element detects vertical displacement while the second sensor element detects horizontal displacement. Combining information from these two sensor elements, it is possible to determine displacement in a plane. Sensor element is a pair of meander coils. One coil is a fixed coil and has the input while the other coil is short-circuited and moves in x-z plane. The variation of input inductance between coils serves as a measure of displacement. The goal of this paper is to show that the variation of the input inductance is invariant to angular displacement of a moving coil, which is important for implementation of the sensor in humanoid robot’s foot. Calculated results were obtained using a new simulation tool developed in MATLAB.
A problem classification approach in business service management

IT is vital to business success or survival, IT provide not just technology but also a service. The objective of problem management is to minimize the impact of problems on the organization, which is an essential element for business service management. Supervised learning algorithms have been used for problem classification, but they rely on predefined classes and require each problem belongs to each category which sometimes is unreasonable. Moreover, with uncertainty, they may lead to poor quality. This paper proposes an uncertain fuzzy clustering problem classification approach based on partition. It does not rely on predefined classes and class-labeled training examples and allows that one problem can belongs to two or more categories by using fuzzy analysis and this approach use the expected sum of squared errors (E(SSE)) as its objective function instead of the sum of squared errors (SSE) to reduce uncertainty of data. This approach is unsupervised and automatic and is accurater than the others.
Preserving the Past , Enjoying the Present and Facing the Future : Interaction Design and Family Archives

Digital archives of personal memories are becoming increasingly technically feasible, but there remain significant interaction design challenges. These challenges must be addressed before these archives will present interactive experiences that are attractive and emotionally engaging. In this paper, we present a research and design study of the Living Memory Box, a device and service to assist families in preserving memories in a variety of media forms. Through a series of ethnographic interviews and focus groups, we have developed recommendations for the design and development of future personal memory systems. Major improvements, which specifically address our findings, must be considered by future researchers in the coordination of interaction design and technological developments .
3rd International Congress 'Restoration of (wheeled) mobility in SCI rehabilitation: State of the art III': its background

‘Restoration of (wheeled) mobility in SCI rehabilitation’ was the theme of a recent International Congress in Amsterdam, April 2004. ‘Restoration of mobility in spinal cord injury’ in its ultimate form would be to take away the cause of the mobility limitation, i.e. curing the spinal cord injury (SCI). Despite a large and basic research effort on neural regeneration, on spinal cord repair and on damage preventive – early intervention – strategies [30,52], there is no cure for spinal cord damage available today. In contrast to the strong financial research stimuli and the growing expectations on the success of neural repair as a cure for SCI, today’s reality is that SCI is non-curable.
HEMOLYSIS CONSIDERED AS A PROGRESSIVE REACTION IN A HETEROGENEOUS SYSTEM

It is demonstrated, without the use of special assumptions, that red cells are heterogeneous with respect to their resistance to at least certain lysins, that the reaction between the cell components and the lysin is virtually irreversible in some cases but reversible, although to different extents, in others, and that the lysin initiates a process in the cell which is not adequately described by the terms reversible and irreversible, but rather by the term progressive. Progressive reactions, i.e. reactions which cannot be stopped once they are well under way, may be looked for in systems which have structure, and in which local reactions occurring at strategic points lead to disproportionate results.
Improving detection of familial hypercholesterolaemia in primary care using electronic audit and nurse‐led clinics

Abstract Rationale, aims and objectives In the UK fewer than 15% of familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) cases are diagnosed, representing a major gap in coronary heart disease prevention. We wished to support primary care doctors within the Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) to implement NICE guidance (CG71) and consider the possibility of FH in adults who have raised total cholesterol concentrations, thereby improving the detection of people with FH. Methods Utilizing clinical decision support software (Audit+) we developed an FH Audit Tool and implemented a systematic audit of electronic medical records within GP practices, first identifying all patients diagnosed with FH or possible FH and next electronically flagging patients with a recorded total cholesterol of >7.5 mmol L−1 or LDL‐C > 4.9 mmol L−1 (in adults), for further assessment. After a 2‐year period, a nurse‐led clinic was introduced to screen more intensely for new FH index cases. We evaluated if these interventions increased the prevalence of FH closer to the expected prevalence from epidemiological studies. Results The baseline prevalence of FH within Medway CCG was 0.13% (1 in 750 persons). After 2 years, the recorded prevalence of diagnosed FH increased by 0.09% to 0.22% (1 in 450 persons). The nurse advisor programme ran for 9 months (October 2013–July 2014) and during this time, the recorded prevalence of patients diagnosed with FH increased to 0.28% (1 in 357 persons) and the prevalence of patients ‘at risk and unscreened’ reduced from 0.58% to 0.14%. Conclusions Our study shows that two simple interventions increased the detection of FH. This systematic yet simple electronic case‐finding programme with nurse‐led review allowed the identification of new index cases, more than doubling the recorded prevalence of detected disease to 1 in 357 (0.28%). This study shows that primary care has an important role in identifying patients with this condition.
A TAXONOMY OF MODULAR GRIME IN DESIGN PATTERNS

Software designs decay over time. While most studies focus on decay at the system level, this research studies design decay on well understood micro architectures, design patterns. Formal definitions of design patterns provide a homogeneous foundation that can be used to measure deviations as pattern realizations evolve. Empirical studies have shown modular grime to be a significant contributor to design pattern decay. Modular grime is observed when increases in the coupling of design pattern classes develop in ways unintended by the original designer. Further research is necessary to formally categorize distinct forms of modular grime. We identify three properties of coupling relationships that are used to classify subsets of modular grime. A taxonomy is presented which uses these properties to group modular grime into six disjoint categories. We gather data from three open source software systems to test hypotheses about the significance of grime buildup for each of the six taxonomy categories. The results reveal that one form of modular grime is more apt to develop than others. This was observed in all the systems in the study. We also found that some types of modular grime show insignificant growth while others vary between systems. We conclude that certain types of modular grime are more likely to contribute to design pattern decay.
280 Birds with One Stone: Inducing Multilingual Taxonomies from Wikipedia using Character-level Classification

We propose a novel fully-automated approach towards inducing multilingual taxonomies from Wikipedia. Given an English taxonomy, our approach first leverages the interlanguage links of Wikipedia to automatically construct training datasets for the isa relation in the target language. Character-level classifiers are trained on the constructed datasets, and used in an optimal path discovery framework to induce high-precision, high-coverage taxonomies in other languages. Through experiments, we demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art, heuristics-heavy approaches for six languages. As a consequence of our work, we release presumably the largest and the most accurate multilingual taxonomic resource spanning over 280 languages.
Adaptive Local Spatiotemporal Features from RGB-D Data for One-Shot Learning Gesture Recognition

Noise and constant empirical motion constraints affect the extraction of distinctive spatiotemporal features from one or a few samples per gesture class. To tackle these problems, an adaptive local spatiotemporal feature (ALSTF) using fused RGB-D data is proposed. First, motion regions of interest (MRoIs) are adaptively extracted using grayscale and depth velocity variance information to greatly reduce the impact of noise. Then, corners are used as keypoints if their depth, and velocities of grayscale and of depth meet several adaptive local constraints in each MRoI. With further filtering of noise, an accurate and sufficient number of keypoints is obtained within the desired moving body parts (MBPs). Finally, four kinds of multiple descriptors are calculated and combined in extended gradient and motion spaces to represent the appearance and motion features of gestures. The experimental results on the ChaLearn gesture, CAD-60 and MSRDailyActivity3D datasets demonstrate that the proposed feature achieves higher performance compared with published state-of-the-art approaches under the one-shot learning setting and comparable accuracy under the leave-one-out cross validation.
Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate

Drawing on both laboratory experiments and the real world of America's presidential, gubernatorial, and congressional races, the authors show that negative advertising drives down voter turnout - in some cases dramatically - and that political consultants intentionally use ads for this very purpose. In the 1992 presidential election, by the authors' calculation, over 6 million votes were lost to negative campaigns. Negative ads work better for Republicans than for Democrats, and better for men than for women; unfortunately, negative ads also work better in general than positive ones, so attacking has become nearly universal. Republican primary campaigns increasingly set the tone for our national general elections, and they do so with relentless attacks. Everyone, even a war hero like Colin Powell, is fair game, and few reputations can emerge unscathed. The result of such a bitter contest is that independent voters, who are disproportionately well educated and open minded, are repulsed by the entire system and have been converted to non-voting apathetics. We are losing some of our best citizens, and pandering to the extremists who remain.
Cracking BING and Beyond

The problem, generic objectness proposal, aims to reduce the candidate windows for object detection tasks. The popular evaluation criterion for related methods is detection-rate/windows-amount(DR-#WIN), where DR is the percentage of groundtruth objects covered by proposal windows. An object is considered “covered” by a window only if the strict PASCAL-overall criterion [3] is satisfied (the intersection of a proposal window and the object rectangle is not smaller than half of their union, so we call it “0.5-criterion” for short). Under the DR-#WIN evaluation framework, BING [2] in CVPR2014, obtains the best performance on the VOC2007 test set. It recalls 96.2% objects with only 1,000 proposal windows. The more surprising is the method is totally a realtime one. The authors of BING suggest that, after being resized to a fixed size (8× 8), almost all annotated rectangle regions share a common characteristics in gradients [2]. This commonness is captured by a template W learned from training images with a linear SVM. Besides this, the subtle differences between diverse width/height configurations are captured in a re-weighting model. Therefore BING consists of two stages: calculating W in stage I, and learning the re-weighting model in stage II. Furthermore, BING uses smart bitwise operations to calculate the inner product of W and candidate windows, so to improve the efficiency. We designed several templates by hands to substitute W , to verify whether templates play a key role in BING. These templates become less correlated to W in turn, but their performances on VOC 2007 test set are very close, see Fig.1. a. Next we discarded any templates and directly assigned the scores of stage I with uniformly random values (we call this method RAND-SCORE). Surprisingly, the performance of RANDSCORE is even very close to BING, as shown in Fig.1. b. It is clear that these templates do not have as strong significance as suggested in [2]. Then what on earth makes BING performing so well? To get the deep insight, we finished a theoretical analysis from the view of combinatorial geometry. We try to construct a small set of windows to “cover” all legal rectangles (we call it a full cover set). This is an atypical covering problem in combinatorial geometry [1]. We proposed four lemmas to solve it in the full paper. In conclusion, for an image of the width M and height N, we can use s(i, j)windows of the width 2i · √ 2 and height 2 j · √ 2 to cover all 2i ≤ w ≤ 2i+1,2 j ≤ h ≤ 2 j+1 rectangle regions, where s(i, j) = ⌈ M−2i ( 1− √ 2 2 ) ·2i· √ 2 ⌉ · ⌈ N−2 j ( 1− √ 2 2 ) ·2 j · √ 2 ⌉. Suppose the image size
A noise PSD and cross-PSD estimation for two-microphone speech enhancement systems

In this paper, we propose an efficient noise power and noise cross-power spectral density estimation method for distributed microphones. The proposal can be combined with coherence based two-microphone noise reduction systems. It utilizes a minimum statistic based noise PSD estimator for each channel and a joint voice activity detector. Evaluation results show that the voice activity detection significantly improves the individual estimates.
The Influence of Estrogens on the Biological and Therapeutic Actions of Growth Hormone in the Liver

GH is main regulator of body growth and composition, somatic development, intermediate metabolism and gender-dependent dimorphism in mammals. The liver is a direct target of estrogens because it expresses estrogen receptors which are connected with development, lipid metabolism and insulin sensitivity, hepatic carcinogenesis, protection from drug-induced toxicity and fertility. In addition, estrogens can modulate GH actions in liver by acting centrally, regulating pituitary GH secretion, and, peripherally, by modulating GHR-JAK2-STAT5 signalling pathway. Therefore, the interactions of estrogens with GH actions in liver are biologically and clinically relevant because disruption of GH signaling may cause alterations of its endocrine, metabolic, and gender differentiated functions and it could be linked to dramatic impact in liver physiology during development as well as in adulthood. Finally, the interplay of estrogens with GH is relevant because physiological roles these hormones have in human, and the widespread exposition of estrogen or estrogen-related compounds in human. This review highlights the importance of these hormones in liver physiology as well as how estrogens modulate GH actions in liver which will help to improve the clinical use of these hormones.
A Model-Based Framework for Security Configuration Analysis

Misconfiguration is one of the common causes of security failures today. Properly configuring a complex system, however, is a tedious and error-prone process, especially for users without domain expertise. The system may contain multiple components that must be configured independently, but interact with each other in subtle ways, leading to undesirable behaviors. This paper describes a framework for modeling and analyzing security properties of computer systems with complex configuration structures. A key idea behind our approach is a method for specifying modular descriptions of individual component configuration and composing them for global analysis. We applied our framework to construct a configuration analysis tool for the Apache web server, and demonstrated that our approach can be used to detect security vulnerabilities in the configuration of real-world web sites.
Multi-frequency energy harvesting using thick-film piezoelectric cantilever

Due to the fact that the ambient vibration sources are random and unpredictable, the design of energy harvesters responding to multi-frequency is desirable. In this paper, an array lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thick-film cantilevers were designed and fabricated to demonstrate the possibility of harvesting vibration energy from different frequencies. Two configurations of multi-cantilever were fabricated in a form that elevated from the substrate as free-standing structures. One having six cantilevers of constant width but different lengths and another having five cantilevers of constant length but different widths. The experimental results show a magnitude of voltage at around 70 mV in a range of frequency between 220 Hz to 520 Hz which is in a good agreement with simulation results.
Visual speech synthesis from 3D video

In this paper we describe a parameterisation of lip movements which maintains the dynamic structure inherent in the task of producing speech sounds. A stereo capture system is used to reconstruct 3D models of a speaker producing sentences from the TIMIT corpus. This data is mapped into a space which maintains the relationships between samples and their temporal derivatives. By incorporating dynamic information within the parameterisation of lip movements we can model the cyclical structure, as well as the causal nature of speech movements as described by an underlying visual speech manifold. It is believed that such a structure will be appropriate to various areas of speech modeling, in particular the synthesis of speech lip movements.
The Government of Scotland: Public Policy Making After Devolution

List of Tables List of Figures Preface 1. Public Policy and Devolution 2. The New Scottish Political System 3. Publics, Parties and Elections 4. The Policy Environment 5. Government and Parliament 6. Intergovernmental Policy Making 7. Getting and Spending 8. Policy Making in Practice 9. New Politics, New Policies? Bibliography Index