Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Opportunities for a cultural specific approach in the computational description of music

The current research in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is showing the potential that the Information Technologies can have in music related applications. A major research challenge in that direction is how to automatically describe/annotate audio recordings and how to use the resulting descriptions to discover and appreciate music in new ways. But music is a complex phenomenon and the description of an audio recording has to deal with this complexity. For example, each music culture has specificities and emphasizes different musical and communication aspects, thus the musical recordings of each culture should be described differently. At the same time these cultural specificities give us the opportunity to pay attention to musical concepts and facets that, despite being present in most world musics, are not easily noticed by listeners. In this paper we present some of the work done in the CompMusic project, including ideas and specific examples on how to take advantage of the cultural specificities of different musical repertoires. We will use examples from the art music traditions of India, Turkey and China.
Pakistan: The Political Economy of Lawlessness

It is a unique multi-disciplinary work encompassing the disciplines of economics, criminology, sociology, public administration, and policing. It shows in concrete quantitative terms the connection between lawlessness and the economy of Pakistan. It presents a sound strategy for good governance and macro-economic stability and provides, a cost effective model for indigenous policing conducive to sustainable economic develpoment.
CULTURAL TENSIONS IN ELEARNING ENVIRONMENT DESIGN

L'article présente le modèle conceptuel IFeLTs (Informal and Formal eLearnig Transactions) et dresse un portrait des tensions émergentes entre l'environnement de changement des enseignants et les espaces et territoires d'apprentissage. L'analyse préliminaire des données de nos recherches permet d'exposer les principaux défis auxquels font face les programmes de la formation des maîtres. Summary: In this paper, we present the conceptual model for Informal and Formal eLearning Transactions (IFeLTs) and portray the emerging tensions between teaching change environment and
Atomic scale models of ion implantation and dopant diffusion in silicon

We review our recent work on an atomistic approach to the development of predictive process simulation tools. First principles methods, molecular dynamics simulations, and experimental results are used to construct a database of defect and dopant energetics in Si. This is used as input for kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. C and B trapping of the Si self- interstitial is shown to help explain the enormous disparity in its measured diffusivity. Excellent agreement is found between experiments and simulations of transient enhanced diffusion following 20-80 keV B implants into Si, and with those of 50 keV Si implants into complex B-doped structures. Our simulations predict novel behavior of the time evolution of the electrically active B fraction during annealing.
Penalized regression approaches to testing for quantitative trait-rare variant association

In statistical data analysis, penalized regression is considered an attractive approach for its ability of simultaneous variable selection and parameter estimation. Although penalized regression methods have shown many advantages in variable selection and outcome prediction over other approaches for high-dimensional data, there is a relative paucity of the literature on their applications to hypothesis testing, e.g., in genetic association analysis. In this study, we apply several new penalized regression methods with a novel penalty, called Truncated L1-penalty (TLP) (Shen et al., 2012), for either variable selection, or both variable selection and parameter grouping, in a data-adaptive way to test for association between a quantitative trait and a group of rare variants. The performance of the new methods are compared with some existing tests, including some recently proposed global tests and penalized regression-based methods, via simulations and an application to the real sequence data of the Genetic Analysis Workshop 17 (GAW17). Although our proposed penalized methods can improve over some existing penalized methods, often they do not outperform some existing global association tests. Some possible problems with utilizing penalized regression methods in genetic hypothesis testing are discussed. Given the capability of penalized regression in selecting causal variants and its sometimes promising performance, further studies are warranted.
Regulation of SOX10 stability via ubiquitination-mediated degradation by Fbxw7α modulates melanoma cell migration

Dysregulation of SOX10 was reported to be correlated with the progression of multiple cancer types, including melanocytic tumors and tumors of the nervous system. However, the mechanisms by which SOX10 is dysregulated in these tumors are poorly understood. In this study, we report that SOX10 is a direct substrate of Fbxw7α E3 ubiquitin ligase, a tumor suppressor in multiple cancers. Fbxw7α promotes SOX10 ubiquitination-mediated turnover through CPD domain of SOX10. Besides, GSK3β phosphorylates SOX10 at CPD domain and facilitates Fbxw7α-mediated SOX10 degradation. Moreover, SOX10 protein levels were inversely correlated with Fbxw7α in melanoma cells, and modulation of Fbxw7α levels regulated the expression of SOX10 and its downstream gene MIA. More importantly, SOX10 reversed Fbxw7α-mediated suppression of melanoma cell migration. This study provides evidence that the tumor suppressor Fbxw7α is the E3 ubiquitin ligase responsible for the degradation of SOX10, and suggests that reduced Fbxw7α might contribute to the upregulation of SOX10 in melanoma cells.
Corporate Parenting Style In The Global Economy

The paper provides a summary of the existing typologies of corporate parenting styles and discovers the missing elements in the theoretical constructs. New theoretical constructs fill the gaps. The paper presents a new typology of corporate parenting style by combining “adding value to subsidiaries by their corporate parent(s)” and “extracting value from subsidiaries by their corporate parent(s). ” The four-type typology of corporate styles outlines the different levels of value addition and value extraction and various degree of reciprocity of both processes. This paper determines the most important factors that affect the selection of corporate parenting styles. It postulates that the multinational corporation should simultaneously exhibit different parenting styles towards their subsidiaries and should be ready to swiftly amend their parenting styles to reflect the changes in a subsidiary’s strategy and its motives for corporate ownership.
The Limited Reliability of Board-Level SAC SolderJoints under both Mechanical and Thermo-mechanicalLoads

The trend of miniaturization, light weight, high speed and multifunction are common in electronic assemblies, especially, for portable electronic products. In particular, board-level solder joint reliability, in term of both mechanical (e.g., drop impact) and thermo-mechanical (e.g., thermal cycling) loads is of great concern for portable electronic products. The transition to lead-free solder happened to coincide with a dramatic increase in portable electronic products. Sn–Ag–Cu (SAC) is now recognized as the standard lead-free solder alloy for packaging interconnects in the electronics industry. Hence, this study review the reliability of board-level SAC solders joints when subjected to drop impact and thermal cycling loading conditions from the viewpoints of mechanical and micro-structural properties of the bulk solder. The finding presented in this study indicates that the best SAC composition for drop performance is not necessarily the best composition for optimum thermal cycling reliability, thus the SAC solder alloys are limited in their potential applications in the electronic industries. This contribution has its value in giving information on possible developments and the suitability for the usage of SAC solder in portable electronic devices.
Effect of TRPV2 cation channels on the proliferation, migration and invasion of 5637 bladder cancer cells

Transient receptor potential vanilloid 2 (TRPV2), a nonselective cation channel, has become an attractive target gene for tumor studies due to its wide range of physiological and pathological functions. However, its specific role in bladder cancer development and progression remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of TRPV2 on the proliferation, migration and invasion of 5637 bladder cancer cells in vitro. Rat TRPV2 cDNA was transfected into 5637 bladder cancer cells and changes in the behavior of the cells were detected. It was observed that TRPV2 enhanced bladder cancer cell migration and invasion; however, it did not affect cell proliferation in vitro. TRPV2 activity, which may be mediated by direct matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP2) regulation, is important in bladder tumor development and progression. The results of this study suggest that TRPV2 channels are a potential therapeutic target for bladder carcinoma.
Bold Hearts 2003: Skill Learning Via Information-Theoretical Decomposition of Behaviour Features

The ideas underlying the soccer simulation team Bold Hearts are described. At the heart of the team concept, we describe SIVE, a method for Selective Information Variant Extraction. It is used to learn behaviours in a “holistic” fashion. SIVE concentrates on behaviours at the boundary between different possible outcomes. This boundary is analyzed in an information-theoretic fashion and decomposed into such parameters which are maximally predictive with respect to the behaviour outcome (the variants) and such parameters which are maximally insensitive (invariants) with respect to the behaviour outcomes. SIVE is used to train the passing and goal-shot skill, showing that it provides an effective framework to train skills.
Using Real-Time Freeform Annotations as Qualitative e-Research Metadata

Qualitative analyses may emerge over long periods of time, sometimes through reinspection of old data in a new light, and sometimes over the course of changing research groups and projects. However, predicting which materials and markings might be useful to retain for future use is often a difficult and time-consuming job which typically in e-Science has led to constraints on metadata categories through ontologies, or the use of automated tools for simple event logging. As a result, analysts may have to rely on memory to find and restudy data together, and may lose some potentially useful threads of analysis altogether. Within the MiMeG e-Social Science node, we have been working on ways of recording and storing a variety of annotations as metadata related to distributed analysis, such that they can be retrieved in later situations and repurposed to feed new ideas. Keeping track of research activities in this way requires i) that we maintain the use of freeform annotations and provide methods of retrieval partly based on skill and memory rather than automation ii) that the system should take into account ownership and authorship of annotation data and iii) that we understand what forms of freeform annotation, such as transcripts, scribbles, audio and even off-screen movements, may be used to support qualitative e-research.
Strichartz Estimates for Some 2D Water Wave Models

In this paper we establish Strichartz type estimates associated with a class of semigroup operators in Rn, which for n = 2 correspond to some 2D water wave models. We also establish a nonlinear scattering result for solutions of the generalized Benney-Luke equation for higher order nonlinearity and small data initial in the energy space.
Visualizing document similarity using n-grams and latent semantic analysis

As the number of information resources and document quantity explodes, efficient tools with intuitive visualization capabilities desperately needed to assist users in conducting document similarity analysis and/or plagiarism detection tasks by discovering hidden relations among documents. This paper proposes a content-based method for document similarity analysis and visualization. The proposed method is based on modeling the relationship between documents and their n-gram phrases, which are generated from the normalized text, exploiting morphology analysis and lexical lookup. Resolving possible morphological ambiguities is carried out by tagging the words within the examined documents. Text indexing and stop-words removal are performed, employing a new technique that is efficient in dealing with multiple long documents. The examined documents' TF-IDF model is constructed using heuristic based pair-wise matching algorithm, considering lexical and syntactic changes. Then, the hidden associations between the documents and their unique n-gram phrases are investigated using Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). Next, the pairwise document subset and similarity measures are derived from the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) computations. Different visualization techniques are then applied on the SVD results to expose the hidden relations among the documents under consideration. As Arabic is one of the most morphological and complicated languages, this paper emphasizes Arabic documents similarity analysis and visualization. Various experiments were carried out revealing the strong capabilities of the proposed method in analyzing and visualizing literal and some types of intelligent similarities.
A Survey on Local Invariant Features

A rotating sewing machine hook (1) with a horizontal shaft in which the axis of the under thread bobbin (15) forms an angle (a>0) to the hook shaft in a horizontal plan, whereby the width of the bobbin can be increased without the use of thread guide plates, because the inclination of the bobbin in the bobbin holder (6) facilitate the passage of the upper thread around the bobbin holder.
Randomised controlled trial of efficacy of teaching patients with bipolar disorder to identify early symptoms of relapse and obtain treatment

Abstract Objective: To determine the efficacy of teaching patients with bipolar disorder (manic-depressive psychosis) to identify early symptoms of relapse and seek prompt treatment from health services. Design: Single blind randomised controlled trial with matching on four baseline variables using a minimisation algorithm. Setting: Mental health services in four NHS trusts (one teaching, three non-teaching). Subjects: 69 patients with bipolar disorder who had had a relapse in the previous 12 months. Interventions: Seven to 12individual treatment sessions from a research psychologist plus routine care or routine care alone. Main outcome measures: Time to first manic or depressive relapse, number of manic or depressive relapses, and social functioning examined by standardised interviews every six months for 18 months. Results: 25th centile time to first manic relapse in experimental group was 65weeks compared with 17weeks in the control group. Event curves of time to first manic relapse significantly differed between experimental and control groups (log rank 7.04, df=1, P=0.008), with significant reductions in the number of manic relapses over 18months (median difference 30% (95% confidence interval 8% to 52%), P=0.013). The experimental treatment had no effect on time to first relapse or number of relapses with depression, but it significantly improved overall social functioning (mean difference 2.0(0.7to 3.2), P=0.003) and employment (mean difference 0.7(0.1to 1.3), P=0.030) by 18months. Conclusion: Teaching patients to recognise early symptoms of manic relapse and seek early treatment is associated with important clinical improvements in time to first manic relapse, social functioning, and employment.
Emerging inhaled bronchodilators: an update

Bronchodilators remain central to the symptomatic management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, and, for this reason and also because the patent protection of many bronchodilators has expired, several companies have reinitiated research into the field. The only limits set for the development of a long-lasting bronchodilator with a new product profile are medical needs and marketing opportunities. The incorporation of once-daily dose administration is an important strategy for improving adherence and is a regimen preferred by most patients. A variety of β2-agonists and antimuscarinic agents with longer half-lives and inhalers containing a combination of several classes of long-acting bronchodilator are currently under development. The present article reviews all of the most important compounds under development, describing what has been done and discussing their genuine advantage.
Solving the face recognition problem using QR factorization

Inspired and motivated by the idea of LDA/QR presented by Ye and Li, in addition, by the idea of WK- DA/QR and WKDA/SVD presented by Gao and Fan. In this paper, we first consider computational complexity and efficacious of algorithm present a PCA/range(Sb) algorithm for dimensionality reduction of data, which transforms firstly the original space by using a basis of range(Sb) and then in the transformed space applies PCA. Considering computationally expensive and time complexity, we further present an improved version of PCA/range(Sb), denot- ed by PCA/range(Sb)-QR, in which QR decomposition is used at the last step of PCA/range(Sb). In addition, we also improve LDA/GSVD, LDA/range(Sb) and PCA by means of QR decomposition. Extensive experiments on face images from UCI data sets show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.
TACTIC: An API for Touch and Tangible Interaction

Interactive surfaces, gesture recognition, object tracking, tangible interaction are increasingly moving from the research arena to the domain of commercial applications. However, the effort required to combine all these technologies is still a barrier preventing a wider adoption. In this paper, we present TACTIC, an API combining touch surfaces, tangibles, and the interaction space above the surface, in a way that allows developers to easily combine all these features, and distribute interfaces across multiple devices if required. Additionally, we present the results of a developer study showing how TACTIC is easy to learn and use.
Non-Welfarist Optimal Taxation and Behavioural Public Economics

Research in behavioural economics has uncovered the widespread phenomenon of people making decisions against their own good intentions. In these situations, the government might want to intervene, indeed individuals might want the government to intervene, to induce behaviour that is closer to what individuals wish they were doing. The analysis of such corrective interventions, through taxes and subsidies, might be called 'behavioural public economics'. However, such analysis, where the government has an objective function that is different from that of individuals, is not new in public economics. In these cases the government is said to be 'non-welfarist' in its objectives, and there is a long tradition of non-welfarist welfare economics, especially the analysis of optimal taxation and subsidy policy where the outcomes of individual behaviour are evaluated using a preference function different from the one that generated the outcomes. First of all the object of this paper is to present a unified view of the non-welfarist optimal taxation literature and, second, to present behavioural public economics as a natural special case of this general framework. Copyright 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Rare Detection of Occult Hepatitis B Virus Infection in Children of Mothers with Positive Hepatitis B Surface Antigen

The prevalence of occult Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in children was considerably varied from 0.1–64% in different reports. In this study we aimed to investigate the prevalence of occult HBV infection among the children born to mothers with positive hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) in Jiangsu, China. Serum samples were collected from 210 children of 207 mothers with positive HBsAg. HBV serological markers were detected by ELISA and HBV DNA was detected by nested PCR. Homology comparison of HBV sequences recovered from the child and mother was used to define the infection. Three children (1.43%) were positive for HBsAg, in whom the HBV pre S and S gene sequence in each child was identical to that in her mother. Of the 207 HBsAg-negative children, nine displayed HBV DNA positive by two nested PCR assays using primers derived from S and C genes. However, the sequence alignment showed that the sequences in each child were considerably different from those in his/her mother. Therefore, the sequences amplified from the children were very likely resultant from the cross-contaminations. Furthermore, the nine children with ‘positive HBV DNA’ were all negative for anti-HBc, and one had anti-HBs 3.42 mIU/ml and eight others had anti-HBs from 72 to >1000 mIU/ml, indicating that the nine children were less likely infected with HBV. Therefore, none of the 207 HBsAg-negative children of HBV-infected mothers was found to have occult HBV infection. We conclude that the prevalence of occult HBV infection in vaccinated children born to HBsAg positive mothers should be extremely low. We recommend that homology comparison of sequences recovered from the child and mother be used to define the occult HBV infection in children born to HBV infected mothers.
Pick me!: Getting Noticed on Google Play

Almost any search on Google Play returns numerous app suggestions. The user quickly skims through the list and picks a few apps for a closer look. The vast majority of the apps regardless of how well-made they are go unnoticed. App icons uniquely represent each app in Google Play and help apps to get noticed, as we demonstrate in the paper. We reviewed the visual qualities of icons that could make them noticeable and likable. We then computationally measured two of the qualities visual saliency and complexity for 930 icons and linked the computed scores to app popularity (the number of app ratings and installs). The measures explained 38% of variance in the number of ratings, if app genre was accounted for. Not only does such result assert the link between icon properties and app popularity, it also highlights the automatic prediction of app popularity as a promising research direction. HCI researchers, app creators and Google Play (or another mobile marketplace) will benefit from the paper insights on what antecedes app success and how to measure the antecedents.
Reactive avoidance of dynamic obstacles through optimization of their epipoles

This paper proposes a new reactive method of avoiding dynamic obstacles by real-time optimization. A mobile robot is equipped with a monocular camera and dynamic obstacles are identified in the image sequence by clustering the optical flow. The respective epipoles of the clusters are determined and afterwards the relative epipole positions are evaluated to identify colliding and dangerous objects. In this work the correlation between the vehicle's velocities and the cluster epipoles is derived and utilized in the proposed cost function for shifting the epipoles. By optimizing this cost function the vehicle is able to avoid collisions, which means that the 3D motion is deduced from purely 2D image data. Finally, the validity of the concept is confirmed by hardware-in-the-loop simulations.