Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role-Based Induced Social Norms in Computational Multi-Agent Systems

Role-based frameworks enrich multi-agent system models with new organizational concepts: roles and groups. We present a formalization of a role-based approach in description logics serving as the common organizational model both for the development process and the management of the system. A central authority of role ontology agent is proposed in this paper. This agent performs management of the system: keeping track of the actual state of the system, querying the model and checking its social norms. Agents in the system can thus act in a sociable way especially in complicated configurations. Algorithms controlling agents in a computational intelligence modeling scenario are shown.
dSir2 mediates the increased spontaneous physical activity in flies on calorie restriction

Calorie restriction (CR) is the most effective way to increase life span and delay the onset of age-related symptoms in animals. We have previously reported that CR affects a variety of physiological phenotypes in flies and results in dramatic behavioral, physical and demographic changes. Here we show effects of low and high calorie levels on the spontaneous physical activity of flies. Wild type flies maintained on a low calorie diet exhibit higher spontaneous activity compared to flies on higher calorie diets. This increase is dependent on the presence of Sir2 since a low calorie diet does not increase the activity of dSir2 null flies. Similarly, increasing dSir2 activity by feeding flies resveratrol, a CR mimetic, increases spontaneous physical activity of flies on high caloric food. InDrosophila, spontaneous physical activity therefore closely mimics life span in its dependence on Sir2.
Age-Related Loss of Lumbar Spinal Lordosis and Mobility – A Study of 323 Asymptomatic Volunteers

Background The understanding of the individual shape and mobility of the lumbar spine are key factors for the prevention and treatment of low back pain. The influence of age and sex on the total lumbar lordosis and the range of motion as well as on different lumbar sub-regions (lower, middle and upper lordosis) in asymptomatic subjects still merits discussion, since it is essential for patient-specific treatment and evidence-based distinction between painful degenerative pathologies and asymptomatic aging. Methods and Findings A novel non-invasive measuring system was used to assess the total and local lumbar shape and its mobility of 323 asymptomatic volunteers (age: 20–75 yrs; BMI <26.0 kg/m2; males/females: 139/184). The lumbar lordosis for standing and the range of motion for maximal upper body flexion (RoF) and extension (RoE) were determined. The total lordosis was significantly reduced by approximately 20%, the RoF by 12% and the RoE by 31% in the oldest (>50 yrs) compared to the youngest age cohort (20–29 yrs). Locally, these decreases mostly occurred in the middle part of the lordosis and less towards the lumbo-sacral and thoraco-lumbar transitions. The sex only affected the RoE. Conclusions During aging, the lower lumbar spine retains its lordosis and mobility, whereas the middle part flattens and becomes less mobile. These findings lay the ground for a better understanding of the incidence of level- and age-dependent spinal disorders, and may have important implications for the clinical long-term success of different surgical interventions.
Re-Examining the Use of Network-on-Chip as Test Access Mechanism

Existing work on testing NoC-based systems advocates to reuse the on-chip network itself as test access mechanism (TAM) to transport test data to/from embedded cores. While this methodology obviously reduces the routing cost when compared to the case that dedicated test buses are introduced as TAMs, it is not clear whether it is beneficial in terms of other important factors that significantly affect test cost, e.g., testing time, test control complexity and test reliability. As a result, in this paper, we re-examine the issue of using NoC as TAM in order to facilitate designers to construct a cost-effective system test architecture based on their requirements.
Cryopreservation of Spin-Dried Mammalian Cells

This study reports an alternative approach to achieve vitrification where cells are pre-desiccated prior to cooling to cryogenic temperatures for storage. Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells suspended in a trehalose solution were rapidly and uniformly desiccated to a low moisture content (<0.12 g of water per g of dry weight) using a spin-drying technique. Trehalose was also introduced into the cells using a high-capacity trehalose transporter (TRET1). Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to examine the uniformity of water concentration distribution in the spin-dried samples. 62% of the cells were shown to survive spin-drying in the presence of trehalose following immediate rehydration. The spin-dried samples were stored in liquid nitrogen (LN2) at a vitrified state. It was shown that following re-warming to room temperature and re-hydration with a fully complemented cell culture medium, 51% of the spin-dried and vitrified cells survived and demonstrated normal growth characteristics. Spin-drying is a novel strategy that can be used to improve cryopreservation outcome by promoting rapid vitrification.
Trade-offs between mobility and density for coverage in wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we study the coverage problem for hybrid networks which comprise both static and mobile sensors. We consider mobile sensors with limited mobility, i.e., they can move only once over a short distance. Such mobiles are simple and cheap compared to sophisticated mobile robots. In conventional static sensor networks, for a random deployment, the sensor density should increase as <i>O</i>(log <i>L</i> + <i>k</i> log log <i>L</i>) to provide <i>k</i>-coverage in a network with a size of <i>L</i>. As an alternative, an all mobile sensor network can provide <i>k</i>-coverage over the field with a constant density of <i>O</i>(<i>k</i>), independent of network size <i>L</i>. We show that the maximum distance that any mobile sensor will have to move is <i>O</i>(1 over √<i>k</i> log <sup>3 over 4</sup> (<i>kL</i>)). We then propose a hybrid network structure, comprising static sensors and a small fraction of <i>O</i>(1 over √(<i>k</i>)) of mobile sensors. For this network structure, we prove that <i>k</i>-coverage is achievable with a constant sensor density of <i>O</i>(<i>k</i>), independent of network size <i>L</i>. Furthermore, for this hybrid structure, we prove that the maximum distance which any mobile sensor has to move is bounded as <i>O</i>(log<sup>3 over 4</sup> <i>L</i>). We then propose a distributed relocation algorithm, where each mobile sensor only requires local information in order to optimally relocate itself and characterize the algorithm's computational complexity and message overhead. Finally, we verify our analysis via extensive numerical evaluations.
The HuGENetTM HuGE Review Handbook, version 1.0

Provide a one-page structured synopsis of the issues discussed in the items below with a brief statement on each of these items. If possible, supply keywords, including the name(s) of the gene(s), the name(s) of the disease(s) or disorder(s), the word ‘epidemiology’ and the term ‘systematic review’ or ‘meta-analysis’.
Effect of smoking reduction on lung cancer risk.

CONTEXT Many smokers are unable or unwilling to completely quit smoking. A proposed means of harm reduction is to reduce the number of cigarettes smoked per day. However, it is not clear whether this strategy decreases the risk for tobacco-related diseases. OBJECTIVE To assess the effects of smoking reduction on lung cancer incidence. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Observational population-based cohort study with up to 31 years of follow-up from the Copenhagen Centre for Prospective Population Studies, which administrates data from 3 longitudinal studies conducted in Copenhagen and suburbs, the Copenhagen City Heart Study, the Copenhagen Male Study, and the Glostrup Population Studies, Denmark. Participants were 11,151 men and 8563 women (N = 19,714) aged 20 to 93 years, who attended 2 consecutive examinations with a 5- to 10-year interval between 1964 and 1988. Participants underwent a physical examination and completed self-filled questionnaires about lifestyle habits. The study population was divided into 6 groups according to smoking habits: continued heavy smokers (> or =15 cigarettes/d), reducers (reduced from > or =15 cigarettes/d by minimum of 50% without quitting), continued light smokers (1-14 cigarettes/d), quitters (stopped between first and second examination), stable ex-smokers, and never smokers. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Incident primary lung cancer cases assessed by record linkage with the National Cancer Registry until December 31, 2003. RESULTS There were 864 incident lung cancers during follow-up. Using Cox regression, the adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for lung cancer in reducers was 0.73 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.54-0.98) compared with persistent heavy smokers. The HR for light smokers was 0.44 (95% CI, 0.35-0.56); for quitters, HR 0.50 (95% CI, 0.36-0.69), for stable ex-smokers, HR 0.17 (95% CI, 0.13-0.23), and for never smokers, HR 0.09 (95% CI, 0.06-0.13). CONCLUSION Among individuals who smoke 15 or more cigarettes per day, smoking reduction by 50% significantly reduces the risk of lung cancer.
Emotional Agents need Formal Models of Emotion

Embedding a computational model of emotion in virtual agents is beneficial in a variety of domains. These domains include gaming, VR training, HCI and electronic tutors. Although these domains have different motives for embedding such a model, they share the same overall approach. Once the requirements for the agent are clear, first an emotion theory is chosen as basis for the computational model. Second, the model is implemented and embedded into the virtual agent. Candidate emotion theories are mostly cognitive, i.e. appraisal theories. Furthermore, theories used for this purpose are mostly structural descriptions -usually represented by text and tables- of the relations between events, evaluations of events and emotions. Structural descriptions are abstract, but computational models are concrete. In this paper we explain the nature of the gap between the level of abstraction of these structural descriptions of appraisaltheories and computational models of emotion. We also show that this gap introduces several important problems that make it hard to evaluate the consistency between a computational model of emotion and the appraisal theory it is based on. Lastly, we propose a formalism to narrow this gap, which can be used to describe the structure of appraisal. We believe that our formalism stimulates the consistency of computational models based on appraisal theories and thereby increases the potential and plausibility of emotions in virtual agents and robots.
Learning Paraphrase Identification with Structural Alignment

Semantic similarity of text plays an important role in many NLP tasks. It requires using both local information like lexical semantics and structural information like syntactic structures. Recent progress in word representation provides good resources for lexical semantics, and advances in natural language analysis tools make it possible to efficiently generate syntactic and semantic annotations. However, how to combine them to capture the semantics of text is still an open question. Here, we propose a new alignment-based approach to learn semantic similarity. It uses a hybrid representation, attributed relational graphs, to encode lexical, syntactic and semantic information. Alignment of two such graphs combines local and structural information to support similarity estimation. To improve alignment, we introduced structural constraints inspired by a cognitive theory of similarity and analogy. Usually only similarity labels are given in training data and the true alignments are unknown, so we address the learning problem using two approaches: alignment as feature extraction and alignment as latent variable. Our approach is evaluated on the paraphrase identification task and achieved results competitive with the state-of-the-art.
THE PUBLIC SECTOR IN THE UNITED STATES AND GERMANY: COMPARATIVE ASPECTS IN AN EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE

According to its constitution, Germany is a federal and not a unitary state. The Basic Law (Grundgesetz) prescribes a detailed and clear division of public authority and tasks between the federal (Bund), state (Lander) and local/municipal level (Gemeinden). At first glance one would therefore expect, as in other federal states, such as the United States, Canada, or Australia, employment relations to be characterized by a rather decentralized structure, especially in the public sector.
A high voltage Dickson charge pump in SOI CMOS

An improved charge pump that utilizes a MOSFET body diode as a charge transfer switch is discussed. The body diode is characterized and a body diode model is developed for simulating the charge pump circuit. An increase in voltage pumping gain for a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) Dickson charge pump is demonstrated when compared with a traditional bulk CMOS Dickson charge pump. A 6-stage Dickson charge pump was designed to produce a 20 V output from a 3.3 V supply, using a 4 MHz, two-phase non-overlapping clock signal driving the charge pump. The design was fabricated in a 0.35 /spl mu/m partially depleted SOI CMOS process. An efficiency of 72% is achieved at a load current of approximately 20 /spl mu/A.
BCDR : A BREAST CANCER DIGITAL REPOSITORY

This paper outlines the first Portuguese “Breast Cancer Digital Repository” (BCDR-FMR), a comprehensive annotated repository including digital content (digitized film mammography images) and associated metadata (clinical history, segmented lesions BI-RADS classified, image-based descriptors, biopsy proven, etc.). BCDR-FMR establish a novel reference to develop breast cancer computer-aided detection / diagnosis methods and for training medical students, formed physicians and other medical-related professionals.
Measuring and Documenting Outcomes: Going beyond Tradition in Program Evaluation.

The evaluation of systemic educational reforms entails a paradigm shift among evaluators who must change the lens through which they look at the reforms. This paper proposes methodological and design alternatives to measure nontraditional outcomes, such as changes in policy, over the lifespan of the reforms. Systemic reforms include intended and unintended outcomes and the actual outcomes that result. Outcomes of educational reform can also be organized in terms of whether they result from top-down or bottom-up approaches. A research approach to measuring reform outcomes will be more methodologically sound if the variables of interest are measured in multiple ways. By comparing findings using multiple qualitative and quantitative data collection strategies, evaluators can identify trends and lead reformers to midcourse corrections when needed. By defining outcomes and measuring those outcomes, evaluators and reformers will be driving the reforms. (Contains 17 references.) (SLD) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and improvement EDUC ONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 1",ek,rwe L. sr PRDE ID Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. PR SSI RCSE COMM PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY pofmozciyi 16, TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Measuring and Documenting Outcomes: Going Beyond Tradition in Program Evaluation
How Effective are Proximity Scores in Term Dependency Models?

The dominant retrieval models in information retrieval systems today are variants of TF×IDF, and typically use bag-of-words processing in order to balance recall and precision. However, the size of collections continues to increase, and the number of results produced by these models exceeds the number of documents that can be reasonably assessed. To address this need, researchers and commercial providers are now looking at more expensive computational models to improve the quality of the results returned. One such method is to incorporate term proximity into the ranking model. We explore the effectiveness gains achievable when term proximity is a factor used in ranking algorithms, and explore the relative effectiveness of several variants of the term dependency model. Our goal is to understand how these proximity-based models improve effectiveness.
Phonetics : The key to high quality speech recognition and synthesis

Linguistic knowledge has been maligned by speech recognition researchers in the past as being harmful to good performance. However an examination of the advances in speech recognition and speech synthesis shows that many of them were made by incorporating linguistic knowledge into the systems. The most useful type of knowledge is of a quantitative, rather that qualitative nature. This is precisely the type of knowledge provided by phonetics research. In speech recognition the recent advances have come from context dependent phonetic modeling, tree splitting of models based on phonological rules, vocal tract normalization, and adaptation to speaker characteristics. In speech synthesis the progress has come from diphone, triphone and large units, sums of products duration models, advanced text processing which distinguishes new from given words, prosodic models and new waveform concatenation methods. All of these methods are deeply based on phonetics. Examples are given from vowel coarticulation studies, prosodic studies and phonology which show the importance of phonetic knowledge in speech technology
Software reliability prediction model based on PSO and SVM

Software reliability prediction classifies software modules as fault-prone modules and less fault-prone modules at the early age of software development. As to a difficult problem of choosing parameters for Support Vector Machine (SVM), this paper introduces Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to automatically optimize the parameters of SVM, and constructs a software reliability prediction model based on PSO and SVM. Finally, the paper introduces Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method to reduce the dimension of experimental data, and inputs these reduced data into software reliability prediction model to implement a simulation. The results show that the proposed prediction model surpasses the traditional SVM in prediction performance.
Origins of tropical‐wide SST biases in CMIP multi‐model ensembles

Long‐standing simulation errors limit the utility of climate models. Overlooked are tropical‐wide errors, with sea surface temperature (SST) biasing high or low across all the tropical ocean basins. Our analysis based on Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) multi‐model ensembles shows that such SST biases can be classified into two types: one with a broad meridional structure and of the same sign across all basins that is highly correlated with the tropical mean; and one with large inter‐model variability in the cold tongues of the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic. The first type can be traced back to biases in atmospheric simulations of cloud cover, with cloudy models biasing low in tropical‐wide SST. The second type originates from the diversity among models in representing the thermocline depth; models with a deep thermocline feature a warm cold tongue on the equator. Implications for inter‐model variability in precipitation climatology and SST threshold for convection are discussed.
Speech transcription in multiple languages

The paper summarizes recent work underway at LIMSI on speech-to-text transcription in multiple languages. The research has been oriented towards the processing of broadcast audio and conversational speech for information access. Broadcast news transcription systems have been developed for seven languages, and it is planned to address several other languages in the near term. Research on conversational speech has mainly focused on the English language, with some initial work on French, Arabic and Spanish. Automatic processing must take into account the characteristics of the audio data, such as needing to deal with the continuous data stream, specificities of the language and the use of an imperfect word transcription for accessing the information content. Our experience thus far indicates that at today's word error rates, the techniques used in one language can be successfully ported to other languages, and most of the language specificities concern lexical and pronunciation modeling.
Hate Crimes in Cyberspace

Some see the internet as a Wild West where those who venture online must be thick-skinned enough to ensure verbal attacks in the name of free speech protection. Danielle Keats Citron rejects this view. Cyber-harassment is a matter of civil rights law, and legal precedents as well as social norms of decency and civility must be leveraged to stop it.
Networked control of mobile robots using switched systems theory

In this paper, a switching static state feedback controller is designed for the posture stabilization of a wheeled mobile robot which is controlled over a communication network. The control problem is formulated as the asymptotic stabilization of a continuous time-delay switched system. By efficient computation, less conservative sufficient condition is derived to determine the switching controller gains by the solution of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the advantages and applicability of the proposed scheme.
Matching cylindrical panorama sequences using planar reprojections

This paper presents a matching scheme for large set of omnidirectional images sequentially captured in an urban environment. Most classical image matching methods when applied to cylindrical panoramas taken in large environments does not always produce a sufficient number of matches. In this work, our objective is to making sure that the full set of panoramas remains as connected as possible at all geographical locations even if only a few panoramas sharing the same view of the scene are available. For this matter, we present a matching strategy that augments the accuracy and the number of match points in the context of urban panorama matching. To improve matching results, the method simulates different local transformations at chosen view directions of the panoramas. We show that our matching scheme improves the matching result on the specific panoramas where the classical methods fail to find a sufficient number of matches. This conclusion is supported by real-world experiments performed on 8017 pairs of images coming from 763 different images.