Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Introduction: Cross-national policy convergence: concepts, approaches and explanatory factors

Abstract Although there is an increasing number of studies on policy convergence (in recent years especially in the context of Europeanization and globalization research), we still have a rather limited understanding of this phenomenon. This deficit can be not only traced back to a lack of empirical findings, but is also the result of the heterogeneous and partially inconsistent theoretical literature on policy convergence. Although policy convergence constitutes a central concept in comparative public policy, it is not always consistently used and mixed up with related but not equivalent concepts. It is thus a basic objective of this paper to clarify the analytical relationship between policy convergence and related concepts used in the literature. Moreover, different approaches for the assessment and measurement of policy convergence will be presented. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of causes of policy convergence.
Face recognition by myopic baby neural networks

Do we need to assume that face recognition represents an innate ability to explain the fact that newborns are able to discriminate mother from stranger? Indeed if we consider that faces are highly similar, that newborns possess poor visual acuity and contrast sensitivity, and that they cannot resolve high spatial frequencies, this ability seems paradoxical. However, this paradox might come from the fact that we evaluate the complexity of the task performed by newborns through our adult experience. A less biased way of evaluating the complexity of a perceptual task is to simulate the task via an arti cial neural network (Abdi, Valentin & Edelman, 1999; Abdi, Valentin, Edelman & O'Toole, 1995). The performance of such a model depends both on the learning algorithm implemented and on the number and perceptual characteristics of the stimuli on which the learning algorithm is applied. By manipulating these two factors, Valentin, Abdi, Edelman and Nijdam (1996) showed that the ability of newborns to recognize the faces of their caretakers is less paradoxical than it rst seemed. In a series of simulations, they compared the ability of an autoassociative memory trained with two di erent learning algorithms: Hebbian vs. Widrow-Ho . The neural network task was to recognize an increasing number of faces presented in various perceptual conditions. The Hebbian and Widrow-Ho learning algorithms vary in their level of complexity and, in their ability to process subtle information. Hebbian learning is an unsupervised learning algorithm based essentially on the processing of low spatial frequency information. On the other hand, Widrow-Ho is supervised, and the small adjustments occurring during learning permit the processing of high spatial frequency information. As a consequence, the performance of these algorithms varies in opposite way when the number of encountered faces varies. When only a few faces are learned, a Hebbian trained
Core congestion is inherent in hyperbolic networks

We investigate the impact the negative curvature has on the traffic congestion in large-scale networks. We prove that every Gromov hyperbolic network $G$ admits a core, thus answering in the positive a conjecture by Jonckheere, Lou, Bonahon, and Baryshnikov, Internet Mathematics, 7 (2011) which is based on the experimental observation by Narayan and Saniee, Physical Review E, 84 (2011) that real-world networks with small hyperbolicity have a core congestion. Namely, we prove that for every subset $X$ of vertices of a $\delta$-hyperbolic graph $G$ there exists a vertex $m$ of $G$ such that the disk $D(m,4 \delta)$ of radius $4 \delta$ centered at $m$ intercepts at least one half of the total flow between all pairs of vertices of $X$, where the flow between two vertices $x,y\in X$ is carried by geodesic (or quasi-geodesic) $(x,y)$-paths. A set $S$ intercepts the flow between two nodes $x$ and $y$ if $S$ intersect every shortest path between $x$ and $y$. Differently from what was conjectured by Jonckheere et al., we show that $m$ is not (and cannot be) the center of mass of $X$ but is a node close to the median of $X$ in the so-called injective hull of $X$. In case of non-uniform traffic between nodes of $X$ (in this case, the unit flow exists only between certain pairs of nodes of $X$ defined by a commodity graph $R$), we prove a primal-dual result showing that for any $\rho>5\delta$ the size of a $\rho$-multi-core (i.e., the number of disks of radius $\rho$) intercepting all pairs of $R$ is upper bounded by the maximum number of pairwise $(\rho-3\delta)$-apart pairs of $R$.
The Invest-and-Accrue Model of Conscientiousness

The current review synthesizes and builds from the extant literature to help explain how and why conscientiousness predicts a vast array of positive life outcomes. Toward this end, we present the Invest-and-Accrue model of conscientiousness, which describes conscientiousness as a disposition toward “investing” in ways that allow for future success. The value of this model is made apparent in its applicability across different life domains, as well as its potential for describing how individuals can change on conscientiousness throughout the life span. Moreover, the model can help explain why conscientiousness is relatively unique from other Big Five traits in its ability to predict positive life outcomes seemingly in any domain. In sum, this model should prove valuable for researchers across psychological disciplines, by providing an organizing framework from which to make connections across findings in personality, social, developmental, organizational, and educational psychology.
Operating system support for mobile agents

The TACOMA project is concerned with implementing operating system support for agents, processes that migrate through a network. Two TACOMA prototypes have been completed; this paper outlines our experiences in building and using them. A mechanism for exchanging electronic cash was explored, as well as agent-based schemes for scheduling and fault-tolerance.
Process Migration for Resilient Applications TR 11-004

The notion of resiliency is concerned with constructing mission-critical distributed applications that are able to operate through a wide variety of failures, errors, and malicious attacks. A number of approaches have been proposed in the literature based on fault tolerance achieved through replication of resources. In general, these approaches provide graceful degradation of performance to the point of failure but do not guarantee progress in the presence of multiple cascading and recurrent attacks. Our approach is to dynamically replicate message-passing processes, detect inconsistencies in their behavior, and restore the level of fault tolerance as a computation proceeds. This paper describes novel operating system support for automated, scalable, and transparent migration of message-passing processes. The technology is a fundamental building block upon which to develop resilient distributed applications and has been implemented on a multi-core blade server. To quantify the performance overhead of the technology, we benchmark three distributed application exemplars. Each exemplar is representative of a class of applications solved with a particular decomposition strategy.
0 10 75 49 v 1 2 6 Ju l 2 00 1 Mirror Options

In this work we present a new family of options (mirror options) specially crafted to satisfy the necessities of aggressive speculators. The main ideas behind mirror options are: 1) A product that can be adjusted by the holder to agree with his/her market view at any time during its life. 2) The holder’s right to make an arbitrary number of those adjustments without penalizing costs. After defining mirror options as ‘super-versions’ of standard options we derive general formulae for their value in the case where the payoff is a monotonic function of the underlying (which is the case in calls, puts, futures, spreads etc.). We briefly discuss also their valuation for general payoffs and the American case. Finally we analyze the situation where the number of allowed adjustments is restricted and we point out directions for further developments. UB-ECM-PF 01/07 July 2001 manzano@ecm.ub. es 1
Measurements of Relative Phase in Two-Component Bose-Einstein Condensates [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1543 (1998)]

We have measured the relative phase of two Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) using a time-domain separated-oscillatory-field condensate interferometer. A single two-photon coupling pulse prepares the double condensate system with a well-defined relative phase; at a later time, a second pulse reads out the phase difference accumulated between the two condensates. We find that the accumulated phase difference reproduces from realization to realization of the experiment, even after the individual components have spatially separated and their relative center-of-mass motion has damped.
Design consideration for Augmented Reality book-based application for collaborative learning environment

This paper is aimed to present the design and development of Augmented Reality (AR) book based application for collaborative learning purposed. AR interfaces contain a rich and complex type of object and interaction. The concept of co-existence of virtual information and physical objects of AR enhance the learning environment. However, the potential of AR to support collaborative learning is just begin to be explored. To design and develop an effective AR book based learning application; social interaction, communication and engagement are considered as key successful factors in developing an application to support collaborative learning process since collaboration involves the mutual engagement of group members in social interaction where the collaborators shared their knowledge and skills to achieve or solve the problem together.
Disruption of a conserved region of Xist exon 1 impairs Xist RNA localisation and X-linked gene silencing during random and imprinted X chromosome inactivation

In XX female mammals a single X chromosome is inactivated early in embryonic development, a process that is required to equalise X-linked gene dosage relative to XY males. X inactivation is regulated by a cis-acting master switch, the Xist locus, the product of which is a large non-coding RNA that coats the chromosome from which it is transcribed, triggering recruitment of chromatin modifying factors that establish and maintain gene silencing chromosome wide. Chromosome coating and Xist RNA-mediated silencing remain poorly understood, both at the level of RNA sequence determinants and interacting factors. Here, we describe analysis of a novel targeted mutation, XistINV, designed to test the function of a conserved region located in exon 1 of Xist RNA during X inactivation in mouse. We show that XistINV is a strong hypomorphic allele that is appropriately regulated but compromised in its ability to silence X-linked loci in cis. Inheritance of XistINV on the paternal X chromosome results in embryonic lethality due to failure of imprinted X inactivation in extra-embryonic lineages. Female embryos inheriting XistINV on the maternal X chromosome undergo extreme secondary non-random X inactivation, eliminating the majority of cells that express the XistINV allele. Analysis of cells that express XistINV RNA demonstrates reduced association of the mutant RNA to the X chromosome, suggesting that conserved sequences in the inverted region are important for Xist RNA localisation.
An improved method of term weighting for text classification

In text classification, term weighting methods design appropriate weights to the given terms to improve the text classification performance. Traditional algorithm of term weighting only considers about tf (term frequency), idf (inverse document frequency) and so on, and this approach simply thinks low frequency terms are important, high frequency terms are unimportant, so it designs higher weights to the rare terms frequently. In this paper, we present an effective term weighting approach to avoid the deficiency of the traditional approach, and make use of kNN classifiers to classify over widely-used benchmark data set Reuters-21578. The experimental results prove that the new approach can improve the accuracy of classification.
Electroacupuncture Prevents Ovariectomy-Induced Osteoporosis in Rats: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Background Electroacupuncture (EA) treatment has been shown to increase bone mineral density (BMD) in ovariectomised (OVX) rats; however, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Objective To systematically evaluate the effects of EA on OVX rats and the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway. Methods Three-month-old female Sprague–Dawley rats were randomly divided into three different groups (n=10 each): sham operated control (sham operated), ovariectomy (OVX) and ovariectomy with EA treatment (OVX+EA). Rats in the OVX+EA group received 12-week EA treatments. Results Serum bone-specific alkaline phosphatase level (p<0.01), BMD of the proximal femoral metaphysis and the fifth lumbar (L5) vertebral body (both, p<0.05) and maximum load and energy to failure of L5 vertebral body (both p<0.01) were significantly higher in the OVX+EA group than in the OVX group. Trabecular area, trabecular width and trabecular number were significantly higher in the OVX+EA group by 66.9%, 29.2% and 30.3%, respectively, than in the OVX group (all, p<0.01). Trabecular separation was 31.9% lower in the OVX+EA group than in the OVX group (p<0.01). Quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerised chain reaction indicated that the expressions of mRNAs for low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 5 and β-catenin were significantly increased in the OVX+EA group, as compared with the OVX group (p<0.01 and p<0.05, respectively). Conclusion This study demonstrates that EA can prevent OVX-induced bone loss and deterioration of bone architecture and strength by stimulating the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway. These findings suggest that EA may bet a promising adjunct method for inhibiting OVX-induced osteoporosis in clinical settings.
Hybrid approach for efficient Multiple ontology mapping

Enormous information available on the Web creates a demand for automatic ways of processing and analyzing data. Semantic Web technologies are used to provide automatic ways of web data processing by integrating several heterogeneous knowledge bases available on the web. Information integration of a domain includes the process of mapping and merging of ontologies. In the semantic web applications, ontologies are used as knowledge representation models. Automatic integration of ontologies is a difficult task as they are developed for different contexts by different developers. Ontologies from same domain may differ in their syntax, semantics and also in their structure. Information processing across ontologies in a semantic web is possible only when they are semantically mapped to each other. In this paper, we have proposed a hybrid automatic ontology mapping algorithm for mapping OWL based ontologies. The proposed mapping algorithm uses syntax semantics and structural mappings of entities present in the contributing ontologies. The mapping algorithm is tested for mapping university ontologies downloaded from web. The result shows that our approach outperforms existing mapping techniques in terms of the evaluation measures precision and F-measure.
Use of 3D Head Shape for Personalized Binaural Audio

Natural-sounding reproduction of sound over headphones requires accurate estimation of an individual’s Head-Related Impulse Responses (HRIRs), capturing details relating to the size and shape of the body, head and ears. A stereo-vision face capture system was used to obtain 3D geometry, which provided surface data for boundary element method (BEM) acoustical simulation. Audio recordings were filtered by the output HRIRs to generate samples for a comparative listening test alongside samples generated with dummy-head HRIRs. Preliminary assessment showed better localization judgements with the personalized HRIRs by the corresponding participant, whereas other listeners performed better with dummy-head HRIRs, which is consistent with expectations for personalized HRIRs. The use of visual measurements for enhancing users’ auditory experience merits investigation with additional participants.
2 8 Fe b 20 05 Metric Diophantine approximation and ‘ absolutely friendly ’ measures

Let W (ψ) denote the set of ψ-well approximable points in Rd and let K be a compact subset of Rd which supports a measure μ. In this short note, we show that if μ is an ‘absolutely friendly’ measure and a certain μ–volume sum converges then μ(W (ψ) ∩K) = 0. The result obtained is in some sense analogous to the convergence part of Khintchines classical theorem in the theory of metric Diophantine approximation. The class of absolutely friendly measures is a subclass of the friendly measures introduced in [2] and includes measures supported on self similar sets satisfying the open set condition. We also obtain an upper bound result for the Hausdorff dimension of W (ψ) ∩K.
Voice source cepstrum coefficients for speaker identification

We propose a novel feature set for speaker recognition that is based on the voice source signal. The feature extraction process uses closed-phase LPC analysis to estimate the vocal tract transfer function. The LPC spectrum envelope is converted to cepstrum coefficients which are used to derive the voice source features. Unlike approaches based on inverse-filtering, our procedure is robust to LPC analysis errors and low-frequency phase distortion. We have performed text-independent closed-set speaker identification experiments on the TIMIT and the YOHO databases using a standard Gaussian mixture model technique. Compared to using mel- frequency cepstrum coefficients, the misclassification rate for the TIMIT database reduced from 1.51% to 0.16% when combined with the proposed voice source features. For the YOHO database the mis- classification rate decreased from 13.79% to 10.07%. The new feature vector also compares favourably to other proposed voice source feature sets.
Multimedia Supplementation to a Cooking Recipe Text for Facilitating Its Understanding to Inexperienced Users

Assisting culinary activities for inexperienced users has been considered as an important task in most existing works in the field. On the other hand, recipe texts are becoming available on the Internet in increasing numbers. However, they tend to be written simply by mostly non-professional people, and thus are sometimes difficult for an inexperienced person to follow the steps and manage to cook as they are supposed to. In this paper, we propose a method that detects difficult descriptions for an inexperienced user in an existing text recipe, and supplements them with multimedia contents including text information extracted from a large number of recipes, and also images and video clips on certain kinds of cooking operations, to facilitate the understanding of the recipe. Experimental results showed promising ability of the proposed method to assist inexperienced users understand the descriptions in a recipe.
On the high coherence of kHz quasi-periodic oscillations

We have carried out a systematic study of the properties of the kilo-Hertz quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO) observed in the X-ray emission of the neutron star low-mass X-ray binary 4U1608-52, using archival data obtained with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. We have investigated the quality factor, Q, of the oscillations (defined as the ratio of the frequency of the QPO peak to its full width at half maximum). In order to minimise the effect of long-term frequency drifts, power spectra were computed over the shortest times permitted by the data statistics. We show that the high Q of ~200 reported by Berger et al. (1996) for the lower frequency kilo-Hz QPO in one of their observations is by no means exceptional, as we observe a mean Q value in excess of 150 in 14 out of the 21 observations analysed and Q can remain above 200 for thousands of seconds. The frequency of the QPO varies over the wide range 560--890 Hz and we find a systematic trend for the coherence time of the QPO, estimated as tau=Q /(pi nu), to increase with the frequency, up to a maximum level at ~ 800 Hz, beyond which it appears to decrease, at frequencies where the QPO weakens. There is a more complex relationship between tau and the QPO root mean squared amplitude (RMS), in which positive and negative correlations can be found. A higher-frequency QPO, revealed by correcting for the frequency drift of the 560-890 Hz one, has a much lower Q (~10) which does not follow the same pattern. We discuss these results in the framework of competing QPO models and show that those involving clumps orbiting within or above the accretion disk are ruled out.
Digital implementation of a line current shaping algorithm for three phase high power factor boost rectifier without input voltage sensing

In this paper the implementation of a simple yet high performance digital current mode controller that achieves high power factor operation for three phase boost rectifier is described. The indicated objective is achieved without input voltage sensing and without transformation of the control variables into rotating reference frame. The controller uses the concept of resistance emulation for shaping of input current like input voltage in digital implementation. Two decoupled fixed frequency current mode controllers calculate the switching instants for equivalent single phase boost rectifiers. A combined switching strategy is developed in the form of space vectors to simultaneously satisfy the timing requirements of both the current mode controllers in a switching period. Conventional phase locked loop (PLL) is not required as converter switching is self-synchronized with the input voltage. Analytical formula is derived to obtain the steady state stability condition of the converter. A linear, low frequency, small signal model of the three phase boost rectifier is developed and verified by measurement of the voltage control transfer function. In implementation Texas Instruments's DSP TMS320F240F is used as the digital controller. The algorithm is tested on a 10-kW, 700-V dc, three phase boost rectifier.
Galaxy-galaxy lensing : dissipationless simulations versus the halo model

Galaxy-galaxy (g-g) lensing is a powerful probe of the relation between galaxies and dark matter (DM) haloes, but its theoretical interpretation requires a careful modelling of various contributions, such as the contributions from central and satellite galaxies. For this purpose, a phenomenological approach based on the halo model has been developed, allowing for fast exploration of the parameter space of models. In this paper, we investigate the ability of the halo model to extract information from the g-g weak lensing signal by comparing it to high-resolution dissipationless simulations that resolve subhaloes. We find that the halo model reliably determines parameters such as the host halo mass of central galaxies, the fraction of galaxies that are satellites and their radial distribution inside larger haloes. If there is a significant scatter present in the central galaxy host halo mass distribution, then the mean and median mass of that distribution can differ significantly from one another, and the halo model mass determination lies between the two. This result suggests that when analysing the data, galaxy subsamples with a narrow central galaxy halo mass distribution, such as those selected based on stellar mass, should be chosen for a simpler interpretation of the results.