Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimenting Systems Analysis Teaching Using a Comparative Approach | a Position Paper

There are many methods for modeling information systems, none of which has a deenite advantage over the others. Thus, it is necessary to develop a decision process for existing modeling methods to determine the most appropriate set of modeling tools for a speciic application. This position paper outlines such a decision process, based on the experience accumulated over the years of teaching courses in analysis and design of information systems in the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. The decision procedure is carried out by using a set of evaluation criteria, that are applied to a speciic application.
Defining the accuracy of real-world range estimations of an electric vehicle

Range anxiety is a major barrier for the mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), a contributing factor to this is the variability of the predicted range remaining presented to the driver in the vehicle. This study aims to better understand the causes of potential inaccuracies and how ITS can help resolve these issues. Eleven participants completed 141 logged journeys, with results showing that range (as predicted by the EV and presented to the driver) was overestimated by approximately 50% in comparison to journey distance. Driving style had the most significant impact on range prediction accuracy, where a more aggressive driving style led to greater inaccuracies. However, journey distance and type of road driven, which can be calculated from Satnav systems, were factors which were correlated with having a significant effect on range accuracy. Therefore incorporating these into future range prediction algorithms has the potential to increase the accuracy of information and subsequently increase driver trust.
U can touch this: touchifying an IDE

Touch gestures are not only often very intuitive, but their direct manipulation characteristics also help to reduce the cognitive load. Since software development poses complex cognitive demands, our goal is to exploit the advantages of direct manipulation to support professional software engineering processes. In this paper, we demonstrate how touch gestures can be used within a professional integrated development environment. As for that, we have enriched the Eclipse IDE with common and invertible multi-touch gestures which can be used for both controlling the graphical user interface and triggering built-in refactoring tools. The design of our extensions was informed by an early user study revealing problems of using the Eclipse IDE with the default touch support provided by the operating system. By using the emerging prototype during its implementation, we were able to iteratively improve the prototype based on our own experience and gain first insights into the potential of using direct manipulation methods within the IDE. First results suggest that using an additional touch device within the classical desktop setup enables a precise and fast work flow.
Guidelines for the design of flexibility in queueing systems : model, measures, and analysis

An analytical and computational framework is presented that has been developed for the performance analysis of arbitrary queueing networks with multiple heterogeneous servers and multiple customer classes, where customers have the flexibility of being processed by more than one server and servers possess the capability of processing more than one customer class. Jobs of a given class may arrive according to an independent Poisson process to a facility consisting of multiple heterogeneous servers. The service time for the processing of any given job class at any given server is assumed to be exponentially distributed with a mean that could vary by job class as well by server. Significantly, we do not impose any restriction on the set of job classes that can be processed by any given server. Assuming finite work-in-process capacity in terms of the number of jobs already in the system, we allow for multiple stages of processing in the queueing system. In order to motivate the research, we first identify the different forms of flexibility in such queueing systems that are relevant to managers given their importance as design factors and control policies for higher performance. Next, we present an analytical framework whose goal is to capture for performance analysis, the relative impact of the different forms of flexibility so identified. Third, we demonstrate the usefulness of the modeling framework through a simple but illuminative numerical analysis of single-stage queuing systems that in turn shows the significance of these flexibility mechanisms to the performance measures of interest to system managers. In terms of insights from the modeling efforts, we first show that when evaluated within this framework, control policies such as job-routing and job-selection rules have a relatively limited impact on throughput and overall utilization measures when compared to strategic flexibility design parameters such as the assignment of long-term job responsibilities to servers. However, we show that this influence on performance is significant enough that various flexibility design alternatives are better compared after taking into account the control policy that will be used to operate the system. Furthermore, and motivated by the recent interest in revenue management techniques for operational systems, we show that such operational control policies can have disproportionate influence on revenue and cost measures of performance; this fact further underscores the importance of having such models, measures, and analytical tools to examine various system design alternatives for improving performance.
D2P: Distance-Based Differential Privacy in Recommenders

The upsurge in the number of web users over the last two decades has resulted in a significant growth of online information. This information growth calls for recommenders that personalize the information proposed to each individual user. Nevertheless, personalization also opens major privacy concerns. This paper presents D2P, a novel protocol that ensures a strong form of differential privacy, which we call distance-based differential privacy, and which is particularly well suited to recommenders. D2P avoids revealing exact user profiles by creating altered profiles where each item is replaced with another one at some distance. We evaluate D2P analytically and experimentally on MovieLens and Jester datasets and compare it with other private and non-private recommenders.
Towards a Low-Cost Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Display with Real-Time Eye Center Location Capability

The real-time detection of eye center location provides valuable information to be used in a wide range of applications such as face alignment, face recognition, human-computer interaction, device control for people with disabilities and user's attention detection. Gaze tracking systems is another type of application that uses the eye center location to infer the direction of the user's gaze. These systems can be applied to Augmented Reality (AR) Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) in order to improve the User Experience. This work presents a low-cost AR HMD prototype with real-time eye center location capability. This work also presents an overview of Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Displays and methods for eye center location found in the literature. To assess our AR HMD prototype, we choose a state-of-the-art method for eye center location found in the literature and evaluate its real-time performance in different development boards.
Fast Detector/First Responder: Interactions between the Superior Colliculus-Pulvinar Pathway and Stimuli Relevant to Primates

Primates are distinguished from other mammals by their heavy reliance on the visual sense, which occurred as a result of natural selection continually favoring those individuals whose visual systems were more responsive to challenges in the natural world. Here we describe two independent but also interrelated visual systems, one cortical and the other subcortical, both of which have been modified and expanded in primates for different functions. Available evidence suggests that while the cortical visual system mainly functions to give primates the ability to assess and adjust to fluid social and ecological environments, the subcortical visual system appears to function as a rapid detector and first responder when time is of the essence, i.e., when survival requires very quick action. We focus here on the subcortical visual system with a review of behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that demonstrates its sensitivity to particular, often emotionally charged, ecological and social stimuli, i.e., snakes and fearful and aggressive facial expressions in conspecifics. We also review the literature on subcortical involvement during another, less emotional, situation that requires rapid detection and response—visually guided reaching and grasping during locomotion—to further emphasize our argument that the subcortical visual system evolved as a rapid detector/first responder, a function that remains in place today. Finally, we argue that investigating deficits in this subcortical system may provide greater understanding of Parkinson's disease and Autism Spectrum disorders (ASD).
The convergence rate of the MDM algorithm

In this paper we will describe a simple proof of a linear convergence rate for the MDM algorithm that solves the Minimum Norm Problem (MNP). Linear convergence rates have been shown for the SMO algorithm, but the proofs require specific assumptions and are rather involved. We will follow a different approach, with a more geometric flavor. While as of now our proof also requires some of the just mentioned assumptions, we shall discuss some examples where linear convergence holds without them, suggesting that a linear convergence rate may be achieved under conditions more general than those currently known.
Cognitive Issues in GUI design

This paper examines site maps (graphical representations of web sites, as employed by e.g. Visual Interdev and WebSphere Studio1), assessing their value in gaining an understanding of web sites. We consider the site mapping problem with reference to standard claims about benefits of graphical representations, but also argue that their use might be detrimental. We suggest that while some users find site maps useful, the cognitive support they provide is due to properties not normally thought to be among the main advantages of graphical representations.
The Language Question and the Diaspora

The issue of language has a privileged place in Greek intellectual discourse. In America the race question has been at the forefront of political discussions over the past century and a half; Italy has its Southern Question; in Greece it is the Language Question (to glossiko zitima), that has generated an analogous amount of pages and debate. Since the eighteenth century, well before independence, Greek intellectuals, school teachers, and priests have fought over which variety of the Greek language should be the official one: demotic, the language ‘of the people’, or katharevousa, a purist language that reintroduced elements of ancient Greek in order to ‘clean up’, or ‘purify’, spoken Greek, a language supposedly contaminated by centuries of Roman, Frankish, and Turkish rule. Which register of Greek a Greek spoke – and, even more importantly, wrote – was central to what it meant to be Greek. As scholars have amply shown, the language question and the particular problem of diglossia – in the Greek case the existence of two competing varieties of the language – have been enmeshed with the major developments and cultural struggles in modern Greek history from the nation’s inception to the present, as has been discussed by Peter Mackridge in chapter 13.1 Here I propose to shift the focus from the national to a diasporic perspective on the Language Question. I begin by rehearsing the familiar story of language reform
Delay distribution for a new version of a simple mac protocol for cognitive wireless networks

Cognitive radio is a promising technology for the next generation of wireless networks. Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is an important issue to define the performance of cognitive radio network. In this paper we investigate the delay distribution of a simple and efficient MAC protocol previously proposed in the literature. This analysis is important to calculate a very important quality of service parameter: the probability of delay exceeding a given threshold. We verify the good behavior of the proposed protocol in terms of delay distribution and we validate the methodology used to estimate the delay distribution.
Knowledge Based Approaches to Nepali Word Sense Disambiguation

A word may have multiple senses and the challenge is to find out which particular sense is appropriate in a given context. Word sense disambiguation(WSD) resolves this ambiguity by finding out which particular sense of a word is appropriate in a given context. WSD is of critical importance in the areas of machine translation, information retrieval, speech processing etc. In this paper we present some approaches to Word sense disambiguation in Nepali using Nepali WordNet. These approaches are overlap based approach and conceptual distance and semantic graph based approach which falls under Knowledge based approach. Conceptual distance and semantic graph distance are used as a measures to score our WSD algorithm.
Service provider‐customer similarities and disparities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent of congruence between service providers’ perceptions of customer satisfaction and customer‐reported satisfaction in the context of optometric services.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected via mail surveys from a sample of German optometrists and their customers. Usable responses were obtained from 388 optometrists and 2,237 customers.Findings – Results show that the underlying configurations of satisfaction attributes decompose into eight factors in the case of optometrists and five factors in the case of customers. The extent of congruence between the two groups is weak.Research limitations/implications – Replications among other optometrist and customer samples are needed to validate the current findings. Also to gain more pointed insights into the similarities and disparities between service providers’ perceptions of their customers’ satisfaction and customer‐reported satisfaction, extension of research to other service sectors.
The "Creative Destruction" in Economic and Political Institutions

One of the analytical advantages brought by transaction costs economics has been to provide a general framework within one can consider all economic organizations as displayed in a “space” of different contractual forms between the two extreme situations of pure markets and pure hierarchies. Even though this approach is still incomplete and characterized by unresolved problems 1, it has consolidated the idea of considering market and hierarchical organizations to be alternative devices with which to coordinate economic activities. This idea originates from the debate on socialist planning to which during the 1930s Lange (among socialists) and Hayek (among Austrians) made the major contributions. The Austrian claims concerning the inefficiency of planning created a dilemma in the neo-classical camp because capitalistic business firm are basically planned organizations, and therefore large and giant firms should be expected to be poorly efficient. Coase’s notion of transaction costs can be considered a reply to the dilemma opened by the Austrian: in fact in his view planned organizations exist because the costs to coordinate the economic activities via markets are positive and can be higher than the costs to coordinate them via plans and orders. Transaction costs are therefore introduced as the costs of “running the market”, and is suggested that the limit on the expansion of planned organizations is reached when the costs of organizing economic activity by orders within a plan become superior to the costs of organizing the same activity via transactions on the market. (the so-called of make-or-buy decision). In its earlier versions, by consequence, transaction costs economics focused on vertical integration as the basic mechanism with which to explain the shift among different organizational forms. In current debate the perspective has widened: markets, firms and hybrid forms which characterize economic activity, are considered to be different “governance structures of transactions” (Williamson, 1981) and the differences among different forms are analysed by comparing the attributes of transactions with the features of the governance structures, and also the costs involved. Yet, even in this more sophisticated version, this
Capital público, actividad económica privada y efectos desbordamiento: un análisis por Comunidades Autónomas de los sectores Industria y Construcción en España

En este trabajo se presenta una valoracion del impacto de la infraestructura publica sobre la actividad privada espanola en los sectores de Industria y Construccion por CC.AA. para el periodo 1980-1993. El enfoque utilizado consiste en la estimacion de una funcion de costes transcendental logaritmica, obteniendo resultados, entre otros, de la productividad del capital publico y privado a corto y a largo plazo. Ademas, a diferencia de otros estudios, se considera la posible existencia de efectos desbordamiento del capital publico entre regiones. Classification-JEL : D21, H54, O47
Tumor necrosis factor α is a risk factor for infection in peritoneal dialysis patients

Background/Aims: It has been shown that circulating tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) is elevated in end stage renal disease patients; however, the relationship between TNF-α and the development of infection in these patients is unknown. In this study, we investigated the association of plasma TNF-α and interleukin 6 (IL-6) with infection in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. We also evaluated the association of their plasma levels with the production by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), and with various clinical parameters. Methods: We enrolled 32 patients on maintenance PD and 10 healthy controls. Plasma and PBMC were isolated from blood. PBMC were stimulated with lipopolysaccharide in vitro. Results: Mean follow-up duration was 775 days. Six patients developed organ infections (five pneumonia and one liver abscess), and six patients developed PD peritonitis and eight developed exit site infection. Plasma TNF-α and IL-6 levels were significantly elevated in organ infections but not in peritonitis or in exit site infection. Plasma TNF-α was the only significant risk factor for organ infections and pneumonia in multivariate regression analysis. Patients with high plasma TNF-α levels showed a significantly greater cumulative hazard rate for organ infections compared to those with low TNF-α levels. Plasma TNF-α levels correlated with TNF-α production by PBMC and showed an inverse association with Kt/V. Conclusions: This is the first study showing that plasma TNF-α is a significant risk factor for infection in PD patients.
Subband compression of seismic stack sectionsTage

A subband lter bank is applied to decompose seismic stack sections. The lter bank is designed to give almost perfect reconstruction and maximum coding gain. A variable bit rate coding scheme is used on the sub-band signals. Blocks of subband samples are dynamically classiied into diierent classes according to the blockwise root mean-square value. Each subband sample is then quantized in a uniform threshold quantizer, and the quantizer indices are coded classwise in an arithmetic coder matched to the statistics of the corresponding variance class. The proposed method is compared with a commercially available discrete wavelet based coder. It is concluded that the proposed subband coder outperforms the wavelet coder both objectively and subjectively. Furthermore, with the techniques presented in this paper , it is possible to compress seismic stack sections at least 100:1 without introducing a perceptual loss of information after decompression.
Critical Factor Analysis of Mobile Online Shopping Adoption: From Mobile Phone Users' Perspectives

With the development and popularization of Mobile Internet and smart phones, mobile online shopping as a typical application of mobile e-commerce began to rise. The evidence is from Chinese mobile phone users. The article tests the conceptual model with Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by Questionnaire and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with Partial Least Squares (PLS). The analytical results showed that satisfaction with information system, cost of service, individual innovation, perceived enjoyment, peer influence, self-efficacy, subjective norm and attitude are the critical factors influencing the adoption of mobile phone shopping. This study contributes to both research and practice by advancing our understanding of mobile online shopping adoption behavior.
Affective Social Ties without the Need to Belong

Frans van Winden presents a quick introduction to the dynamic ‘dual process’model of social ties, which was developed by van Winden and colleagues in vari-ous publications during the last 20 years. Drawing on evidence from economicsand psychology, van Winden argues that preferences are determined by differentmixtures of emotional/subcortical and cognitive/neocortical brain activity, withthe mixture depending on the social context. Thus, the main contribution of vanWinden’s approach concerns the role of preferences, which are not exogenouslygiven but endogenous. In particular, van Winden focuses on one speciﬁc aspectof the social context, namely affective social ties between individuals. He arguesthat close relationships are more affect-laden than exchange relationships, andthat by taking emotional and cognitive factors into account the ’dual process’model is able to explain voluntary contributions to public goods. The idea is thata player has social preferences and the weight given to another player’s payoffdepends on the strength of the social tie between both players, which changesover time due to automatic affective responses. Since the weights in a player’sutility function are endogenous, van Winden’s model encompasses other modelsin which the weights are ﬁxed (e.g., selﬁsh preferences, altruism, or inequalityaversion). In this comment, I want to discuss two aspects. The ﬁrst aspect is conceptualand concerns the nature of affect-laden, close relationships. The second aspectconcerns the experimental evidence from van Dijk et al. (2002), Sonnemans et