Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short Papers Breakpoint Detection Using Covariance Propagation

This paper presents a novel statistical approach for detecting breakpoints from chain encoded digital arcs. An arc point is declared as a breakpoint if the estimated orientations of the two fitted lines of the two arc segments immediately to the right and left of the arc point are significantly statistically different. The major contributions of this research include developing a method for analytically estimating the covariance matrix of the fitted line parameters and proposing a perturbation model to characterize the perturbation associated with each arc point. Index Terms—Corner detection, arc segmentation, error propagation. ———————— F ————————
In the eye of the beholder. Voter perceptions of party policy shifts: the case of Germany

It is normatively desirable that parties’ policy positions match the views of the party’s supporters, because in Western democracies citizens are primarily represented by and through parties. As of today there is only weak and inconsistent empirical evidence that voters actually perceive parties ideological shifts. In this paper we test the simple proposition that voters perceive and react to parties on policy shifts only on issue concerns relevant to them at a given time while remaining oblivious to shifts in policy positions on issues that they do not consider relevant. Using rich individual-level panel data from Germany for the period 1998-2013, this paper’s ndings suggest that the eect of saliency on voters’ perceptions of policy changes depends on the issue being considered. We also nd that politically knowledgeable voters are not more likely to perceive party policy changes than their less politically sophisticated counterparts and that the same pattern holds for voters with higher levels of party identication. However, our analysis also reveals that the ‘true’ changes
Provable security of the modified encrypting file system for Microsoft Windows

EFS is the encryption mechanism for Microsoft Windows. In this paper, by introducing two additional hash functions, we present a security-improved variant of the original EFS scheme. The minor modification has almost negligible effect on the performance of the operating system. Then we apply the Fujisaki-Okamoto's technique to prove its security against adaptive chosen ciphertext attacks in the random oracle model. Compared with the more confidence in the security for EFS in Microsoft Windows, the minor modification and the minor cost incremental is worthwhile, we believe.
Effective Music Retrieval by Sequential Pattern-Based Alignment

Due to the rapid growth of music data, how to effectively and efficiently retrieve the interested music piece has been an attractive issue in recent years. In traditional music retrieval systems, the most popular way is to retrieve the music piece by matching query terms and music profiles like file name, artist and so on. However, this type of music retrieval systems suffers from problem of semantic gap. To aim at this problem, in this paper, we propose a new method named Pattern-Based Music Retrieval named PBMR that exploits temporal continuities of acoustical content to represent the musical features. That is, a music piece in this work is first converted into a pattern string by two-stage clustering. Thereupon the similarity between two music pattern strings is calculated by alignment-like algorithm. The experimental evaluations show that our proposed perceptual patterns are sensitive for listening and temporal continuities are helpful to identifying the similarities between music pieces.
Navigating in process model repositories and enterprise process information

Although process-aware information systems have been adopted in enterprises for many years, they still do not properly link the business processes they implement with related enterprise process information (e.g., guidelines, checklists, templates, and e-mails). On one hand, process management technology is used to design, implement, enact, and monitor processes. On the other, enterprise process information is spread over various sources like shared drives, databases, and enterprise information systems. As a consequence, users often manually link process information with particular process objects (e.g., using process portals). What is needed instead, however is an integrated access to both processes and related enterprise process information. This paper establishes such a link by introducing an integrated navigation space for process model collections and related enterprise process information. In particular, this navigation space allows process participants to flexibly navigate within process model collections, single process models, and related process information. In turn, this enables advanced end-user support for process repositories.
Fast Pedestrian Detection Using a Cascade of Boosted Covariance Features

Efficiently and accurately detecting pedestrians plays a very important role in many computer vision applications such as video surveillance and smart cars. In order to find the right feature for this task, we first present a comprehensive experimental study on pedestrian detection using state-of-the-art locally extracted features (e.g., local receptive fields, histogram of oriented gradients, and region covariance). Building upon the findings of our experiments, we propose a new, simpler pedestrian detector using the covariance features. Unlike the work in [1], where the feature selection and weak classifier training are performed on the Riemannian manifold, we select features and train weak classifiers in the Euclidean space for faster computation. To this end, AdaBoost with weighted Fisher linear discriminant analysis-based weak classifiers are designed. A cascaded classifier structure is constructed for efficiency in the detection phase. Experiments on different datasets prove that the new pedestrian detector is not only comparable to the state-of-the-art pedestrian detectors but it also performs at a faster speed. To further accelerate the detection, we adopt a faster strategy-multiple layer boosting with heterogeneous features-to exploit the efficiency of the Haar feature and the discriminative power of the covariance feature. Experiments show that, by combining the Haar and covariance features, we speed up the original covariance feature detector [1] by up to an order of magnitude in detection time with a slight drop in detection performance.
Critical Integrated Raman Scattering Intensity near the cubic-tetragonal phase transition in Strontium Titanate

Emphasizing the contribution of Professor Roger A Cowley, FRS to the Theory of Raman Scattering from crystals, the development of the Theory of Raman Scattering since 1928 has been briefly discussed. Some experimental studies of Strontium Titanate using Inelastic Neutron Scattering, Raman Scattering, Electro-paramagnetic resonance measurement and X-ray & Gamma Ray techniques has been briefly discussed. Using Schwabl’s semi-phenomenological theory for the soft mode and central peak, we have developed (a) a one-phonon Green’s function exhibiting the three peaked structure and (b) a two phonon Green’s function involving one hard mode under damped quasiharmonic phonon and one three peaked soft-mode phonon.
BCSearch: fast structural fragment mining over large collections of protein structures

Resources to mine the large amount of protein structures available today are necessary to better understand how amino acid variations are compatible with conformation preservation, to assist protein design, engineering and, further, the development of biologic therapeutic compounds. BCSearch is a versatile service to efficiently mine large collections of protein structures. It relies on a new approach based on a Binet–Cauchy kernel that is more discriminative than the widely used root mean square deviation criterion. It has statistics independent of size even for short fragments, and is fast. The systematic mining of large collections of structures such as the complete SCOPe protein structural classification or comprehensive subsets of the Protein Data Bank can be performed in few minutes. Based on this new score, we propose four innovative applications: BCFragSearch and BCMirrorSearch, respectively, search for fragments similar and anti-similar to a query and return information on the diversity of the sequences of the hits. BCLoopSearch identifies candidate fragments of fixed size matching the flanks of a gaped structure. BCSpecificitySearch analyzes a complete protein structure and returns information about sites having few similar fragments. BCSearch is available at http://bioserv.rpbs. univ-paris-diderot.fr/services/BCSearch.
Perception-guided power minimization for color sequential displays

This paper presents an algorithm for minimizing power consumption of backlights in color sequential displays. The proposed algorithm reduces power consumption by scaling the luminous intensity of the red, green, and blue backlights independently according to the image histograms of each color field. The algorithm consists of two phases. The first phase, chromaticity scaling, finds the optimal ratios of red, green, and blue backlights subject to a perceived color difference constraint. The second phase, luminance scaling, finds the optimal dimming factor subject to a perceived lightness difference constraint. The perceived color and lightness differences are measured by the CIELAB Color Difference Equation ΔE*ab, a standard metric for measuring color variation. The proposed method can be applied to RGB LED-backlit LCDs as well. Within limited perceivable difference ΔE*ab ≤ 2, up to 64% of power consumption can be reduced for the benchmark images.
On the rapid TeV flaring activity of Markarian 501

Aims. We investigate the one-zone SSC model of TeV blazars in the presence of electron acceleration. In this picture, electrons achieve their maximum energy as the acceleration saturates due to a combination of synchrotron and inverse Compton scattering losses. Methods. We solve the spatially averaged kinetic equations that describe the simultaneous evolution of particles and photons, obtaining the multiwavelength spectrum as a function of time. Results. We apply the model to the rapid flare of Mrk 501 of July 9, 2005 as observed by the MAGIC telescope, and derive the relevant parameters for the pre-flare quasi-steady-state and the states during the flare. We demonstrate that a hard lag flare can be obtained with parameters well inside the range expected for this source. In particular, a high value of Doppler factor appears necessary.
Alpha2‐adrenoceptor mediated co‐release of dopamine and noradrenaline from noradrenergic neurons in the cerebral cortex

Previous results suggest that extracellular dopamine (DA) in the rat cerebral cortex originates from dopaminergic and noradrenergic terminals. To further clarify this issue, dialysate DA, dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) and noradrenaline (NA) were measured both in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and in the occipital cortex (OCC), with dense and scarce dopaminergic projections, respectively. Moreover, the effect of the α2‐adrenoceptor antagonist RS 79948 and the D2‐receptor antagonist haloperidol on extracellular DA, DOPAC and NA was investigated. Extracellular DA and DOPAC concentrations in the OCC were 43% and 9%, respectively, those in the mPFC. Haloperidol (0.1 mg/kg i.p.) increased DA and DOPAC (by 35% and 150%, respectively) in the mPFC, but was ineffective in the OCC. In contrast, RS 79948 (1.5 mg/kg i.p.) increased NA, DA and DOPAC, both in the mPFC (by approximately 50%, 60% and 130%, respectively) and the OCC (by approximately 50%, 80% and 200%, respectively). Locally perfused, the DA transporter blocker GBR 12909 (10 µm) was ineffective in either cortex, whereas desipramine (DMI, 100 µm) markedly increased extracellular NA and DA in both cortices. The weak haloperidol effect on DA efflux was not enhanced after DA‐ and NA‐transporter blockade, whereas after DMI, RS 79948 markedly increased extracellular NA, and especially DA and DOPAC in both cortices. The results support the hypothesis that most extracellular DA in the cortex is co‐released with NA from noradrenergic terminals, such co‐release being primarily controlled by α2‐adrenoceptors.
Language Dynamics and Capitalization using Maximum Entropy

This paper studies the impact of written language variations and the way it affects the capitalization task over time. A discriminative approach, based on maximum entropy models, is proposed to perform capitalization, taking the language changes into consideration. The proposed method makes it possible to use large corpora for training. The evaluation is performed over newspaper corpora using different testing periods. The achieved results reveal a strong relation between the capitalization performance and the elapsed time between the training and testing data periods.
Studying and Classification of the Most Significant Malicious Software

As the cost of information processing and Internet accessibility falls, most organizations are becoming increasingly vulnerable to potential cyber threats which its rate has been dramatically increasing every year in recent times. In this paper, we study, discuss and classify the most significant malicious software: viruses, Trojans, worms, adware and pornware which have made step forward in the science of Virology.
Instantaneous Cross-Correlation Analysis of Neural Ensembles with High Temporal Resolution

Antonio R. C. Paiva, Il Park, Jose C. Pŕincipe, and Justin C. Sanchez 1 Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT arpaiva@sci.utah. edu 2 Center for Perceptual System and Institute for Neuroscience, University of Texas, Austin, TX memming@austin.utexas. edu 3 Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL principe@cnel.ufl. edu 4 Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL jcsanchez@miami.edu
Study the Performance Limits of IEEE 802 . 11 Wirelesses LANs Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering

i List of Figures . v List of Tables . vii 1 Thesis Introduction . 1 1.1 Wireless Networks . 1 1.2 Motivation for Study the Performance Limits . 1 1.3 Outline of the Thesis . 2 1.4 Abbreviations . 3 2 IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks . 4 2.
Lacrimal Silicone Intubation for Anatomically Successful but Functionally Failed External Dacryocystorhinostomy

PURPOSE To investigate the efficacy of lacrimal silicone intubation for the management of epiphora in patients who have previously undergone anatomically successful dacryocystorhinostomy (DCR). METHODS The authors recruited 13 patients (4 male, 9 female) who had persistent epiphora after an anatomically successful primary external DCR and conducted lacrimal silicone intubation through the dacryocystorhinostomy site. RESULTS Mean patient age was 54.2 years (range 42-80) and mean follow-up was 13.8 months (range 6-30). Epiphora was resolved in all 13 patients following silicone intubation. Spontaneous tube extrusion occurred in three patients, but a new one was easily reintubated. CONCLUSIONS Lacrimal silicone intubation is a simple safe and effective procedure for patients with epiphora even after anatomically successful DCR.
Planning for community: understanding diversity in resident experiences and expectations of social connections in a new urban fringe housing estate, Australia

ABSTRACT Master-planned estates are a major source of new housing for growing cities. Much research finds these residential developments lack genuine social connections between residents despite marketing of ‘close-knit’ community. Selandra Rise is a new residential development on the urban fringe of Melbourne, Australia. The estate was planned with a focus on community infrastructure and resident well-being. The resident population was younger and more culturally diverse than most other master-planned community case studies. A longitudinal research design was used to explore resident understanding, experiences and needs relating to place-based community. Interviews were conducted with residents before moving to the estate and 9–18 months after moving. Some residents considered community as an amenity provided by the master-planned environment that did not require their social participation. Others aspired to make social connections with neighbours but had varying levels of success. Past experiences which contributed to aspirations for connecting with local community, and the ways that these aims were realised or hindered, are discussed. Understanding diverse resident expectations of community and insights from their lived experience are used to make recommendations for planning new neighbourhoods and designing community development programmes.
Spatial intra-tumour heterogeneity in acquired resistance to targeted therapy complicates the use of PDX models for co-clinical cancer studies

Targeted therapy in the treatment of cancer has produced great clinical successes. However, with these came the challenge of acquired resistance. Melanoma, a cancer that carries one of the highest mutational burdens, displays great complexity in mutational acquired resistance with a notable degree of inter‐tumoural heterogeneity. In this issue of EMBO Molecular Medicine, Kemper et al ( ) describe the identification of multiple, partly novel resistance mechanisms present in one patient and within a single metastasis, where one mutation could be traced back to a pre‐treatment lesion. Importantly, the observed intra‐tumoural “spatial” heterogeneity can impact on the interpretability of patient‐derived xenografts, and this might have implications particularly for co‐clinical treatment studies.
PSYCHOSIS: "Experimental" and Real

I SHALL ATTEMPT to present a theory of psychosis centered around the topics of cognitive structure, emotion, role, cultural norms, and communication, and to relate my theory to the cultural revolution through which we ale now passing, with comparative references to past revolutions. The contribution of the psychedelic drugs in understanding both "psychotic" and "normal" behavior will be described according to this author's convictions, which have much in common with those focused on "transcendental" experiences, but also with those which have placed drug experiences and behavior in the "model psychosis" context. The presentation is necessarily sketchy, because psychosis involves many problems interlocked in such a way that they must be solved simultaneously rather than piecemeal, in any reasonably adequate theory. Many readers, however, have doubtless been
Large‐deviations/thermodynamic approach to percolation on the complete graph

We present a large‐deviations/thermodynamic approach to the classic problem of percolation on the complete graph. Specifically, we determine the large‐deviation rate function for the probability that the giant component occupies a fixed fraction of the graph while all other components are “small. ” One consequence is an immediate derivation of the “cavity” formula for the fraction of vertices in the giant component. As a byproduct of our analysis we compute the large‐deviation rate functions for the probability of the event that the random graph is connected, the event that it contains no cycles and the event that it contains only small components. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 2007
Deficient anchoring – a potential link between perceptual and cognitive difficulties among learning impaired individuals

Dyslexia – a substantial difficulty in acquiring fl uent and efficient reading – is the most common form of learning disability, present in more than 80% of the individuals diagnosed with learning problems (Snow, Burns, & Gr iffin, 1998). While early academic research described dyslexia as a visual di sorder, "congenital word blindness" (e.g., Morgan, 1896; Orton, 1928), studi es in the last 40 years revealed that a major obstacle in learning to read involves the a uditory system and particularly the phonological system. Phonological processing relate s to processing of speech sounds, including the smallest components, phonemes. Indivi duals with dyslexia have difficulties mapping (or consistently matching) bet w en letters (the basic visual elements in reading) and the phonemes they represen t ( e Shaywitz, Morris, & Shaywitz, 2008; Vellutino, Fletcher, Snowling, & Sc anlon, 2004 for recent reviews). Dyslexic individuals also have difficulties in verb al working memory (e.g. their verbal span in terms of the number of digits they can accu rately repeat is smaller than expected from their age, education and non-verbal i nte ligence) and in rapid naming of letters, digits and other symbols. The attempt t o describe these characteristics as reflecting a single core deficit led to the "phonol ogical deficit hypothesis", which suggests that dyslexics' core deficit resides in th eir poor representations of speech constituents, i.e. phonological representations (Sn owli g, 2000).
Control Approach for Self-Healing Power Systems : A Conceptual Overview

The deregulated markets and other factors are pushing power systems to their limits accentuating the need for more robust control. This paper presents a conceptual overview of a control approach for supporting a self-healing power system based on a distributed autonomous architecture and a set of coordinated closed loop controls. The proposed architecture is modular and scalable from the viewpoints of organizational, geographical and functional aspects and is applicable to systems ranging from small interconnections to continental-scale power grids. The approach calls for autonomous intelligent functional agents distributed throughout the system at various levels of control hierarchy. This paper further defines the framework for the coordination of the closed loop controls and the corresponding analytical tasks. The tasks are grouped into various execution cycles that collectively cover real-time operations of the power grid starting from hour-ahead scheduling of the market and other resources to rapid control of power system transients.
A Tutorial on Multi-Label Learning

Multi-label learning has become a relevant learning paradigm in the last years due to the increasing number of fields where it can be applied and also to the emerging number of techniques that are being developed. This paper presents an up-to-date tutorial about multi-label learning that introduces the paradigm and describes the main contributions developed. Evaluation measures, fields of application, trending topics and resources are also presented.
Software visualisation through video games

A educational computer game, Conveyor, was designed and developed as part of an investigation into the use of games to teach software development at a tertiary level. The puzzle game requires players to sort random input objects of particular shapes and colours into the correct outputs by programming the solution. An integrated analytics system collects data about how players engage with the game, such as the time taken and number of reattempts at each level. The game was tested on a group of 39 electrical engineering and game design students, many of whom had not programmed before. 80% of participants completed all 9 levels of the game. The minimum average time for a level was around 20 seconds with an average of 2 attempts, whilst the most difficult level took an average of 7 minutes over 3 attempts to complete. These results indicate that the game provided a good, but not overwhelming, challenge for the desired audience. A survey was used to collect qualitative feedback from the audience. The game was judged to be both fun and rewarding, but is too instructive and the user interface was deemed confusing. Further work conducted includes a simple test before and after the game is played, to judge the effect of the game on students' understanding.