Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Price elasticities of surface travel demand: a meta-analysis of UK evidence

This paper reports the largest meta-analysis yet of price elasticities of travel demand, covering 167 UK studies and 1,633 elasticities for the surface modes of car, rail, bus, and underground. A large number of influences on price elasticities have been examined and methodological issues addressed. Generally plausible relationships with journey purpose, mode, ticket type, area, and distance have been recovered, while important insights are provided into how price elasticities vary between the short and long run, according to data type and model formulation, and over time. The elasticities implied generally support official recommendations and conventional wisdom, but provide some challenges. © 2013 LSE and the University of Bath
An Efficient Approach for Fast and Accurate Voltage Stability Margin Computation in Large Power Grids

This paper proposes an efficient approach for the computation of voltage stability margin (VSM) in a large-scale power grid. The objective is to accurately and rapidly determine the load power margin which corresponds to voltage collapse phenomena. The proposed approach is based on the impedance match-based technique and the model-based technique. It combines the Thevenin equivalent (TE) network method with cubic spline extrapolation technique and the continuation technique to achieve fast and accurate VSM computation for a bulk power grid. Moreover, the generator Q limits are taken into account for practical applications. Extensive case studies carried out on Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) benchmark systems and the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower, Taipei, Taiwan) system are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Interacting with Inspectable Bayesian Student Models

Inspectable student models focus on the idea of letting students and teachers interact with the representation of the student that the system maintains. Both humans and the system can benefit from this interaction. By externalizing the student model and making it an object for inspection, several representational and interaction issues arise. This paper presents ViSMod (Visualization of Bayesian Student Models) an integrated tool to visualize and inspect distributed Bayesian student models. Using ViSMod, students and teachers can understand, explore, inspect, and modify Bayesian student models. ViSMod offers a practical tool that helps students and teachers to engage in negotiated assessment processes. Student models in ViSMod follow the Bayesian belief net backbone structure proposed by Reye (1996), which describes both cognitive and social aspects of the student. In addition, we report on a usability study of the ViSMod tool and an exploratory study focused on the effects of employing various levels of guidance and support in the way students interact with inspectable Bayesian student models.
A Novel Chinese Mandarin Speech Indexing Method Based on Confusion Network Using Tone Information

We proposed a novel method for Chinese Mandarin speech indexing on the basis of confusion network in this paper. Chinese Mandarin is a tonal language which has 5 basic tones including neutral tone. The method utilized this characteristic of Chinese to model tone. Firstly, we obtained a tonal syllable confusion network (CN) through a conversion after an introduction of traditional lattice. Subsequently, we used MSD-HMM model to get a tone model, with the use of which we merge the CN into an acoustic model. Finally we got our best speech indexing system with a precision of 84.6%. The experiment results showed that the merged confusion network system had a better performance comparing with the former system with an improvement of 4.2%. And the run speed of CN can be nearly 5 times faster than the traditional lattice.
Estimated HIV Incidence, Prevalence, and Mortality Rates Among Racial/Ethnic Populations of Men Who Have Sex with Men, Florida

Background:Population-based HIV incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates among men who have sex with men (MSM) have been unavailable, limiting assessment of racial/ethnic disparities and epidemic dynamics. Methods:Using estimated numbers of MSM aged ≥18 years by race/ethnicity as denominators, from models in our prior work, we estimated MSM HIV prevalence and mortality rates for 2006-2007 and HIV incidence rates for 2006 in Florida. Results:Overall, the estimated MSM HIV prevalence rates per 100,000 MSM were 7354.8 (2006), and 7758.3 (2007). With white MSM as the referent, MSM HIV prevalence rate ratios (RRs) equaled 3.7 for blacks in 2006 and 3.6 in 2007 and 1.7 for Hispanics in both years (all P < 0.001). Among all MSM with HIV, the mortality rates were 199.8 (2006) and 188.4 (2007), with RRs of 5.4 for blacks in 2006 and 4.9 in 2007, and 1.6 for Hispanics in 2006 and 1.4 in 2007 (all P < 0.001). In 2006, the estimated HIV incidence rate among all MSM was 656.1 per 100,000 MSM, with RRs of 5.5 (blacks) and 2.0 (Hispanics) (both P < 0.001). A sensitivity analysis indicated that error due to misclassification of minority MSM as males who are not MSM lowered rates and RRs for all the 3 indicators but racial/ethnic disparities persisted (all P < 0.001). Conclusions:The impact of HIV by each measure was greater on black and Hispanic MSM than on white MSM. Quantifying estimates of HIV incidence, HIV prevalence, and mortality rates among MSM with HIV informs HIV surveillance, prevention, treatment, resource allocation, and community mobilization.
The Influence of Cardiac Risk Factor Burden on Cardiac Stress Test Outcomes

Background Chest pain is the most common admission diagnosis for observation unit patients. These patients often undergo cardiac stress testing to further risk stratify for coronary artery disease (CAD). The decision of whom to stress is currently based on clinical judgment. We sought to determine the influence of cardiac risk factor burden on cardiac stress test outcome for patients tested from an observation unit, inpatient or outpatient setting. Methods We performed a retrospective observational cohort study for all patients undergoing stress testing in our institution from June 2006 through July 2007. Cardiac risk factors were collected at the time of stress testing. Risk factors were evaluated in a summative fashion using multivariate regression adjusting for age and known coronary artery disease. The model was tested for goodness of fit and collinearity and the c statistic was calculated using the receiver operating curve. Results A total of 4026 subjects were included for analysis of which 22% had known CAD. The rates of positive outcome were 89 (12.0%), 95 (12.6%), and 343 (16.9%) for the OU, outpatients, and hospitalized patients respectively. While the odds of a positive test outcome increased for additional cardiac risk factors, ROC curve analysis indicates that simply adding the number of risk factors does not add significant diagnostic value. Hospitalized patients were more likely to have a positive stress test, OR 1.41 (1.10 - 1.81). Conclusions Our study does not support basing the decision to perform a stress test on the number of cardiac risk factors.
Intestinal metabolite compound K of panaxoside inhibits the growth of gastric carcinoma by augmenting apoptosis via Bid-mediated mitochondrial pathway

Compound K (20‐O‐β‐D‐glucopyranosyl‐20(S)‐protopanaxadiol, CK), an intestinal bacterial metabolite of panaxoside, has been shown to inhibit tumour growth in a variety of tumours. However, the mechanisms involved are largely unknown. We use human gastric carcinoma cell lines BGC823, SGC7901 and human gastric carcinoma xenograft in nude mice as models to study the mechanisms of CK in gastric cancers. We found that CK significantly inhibits the viabilities of BGC823 and SGC7901 cells in dose‐ and time‐dependent manners. CK‐induced BGC823 and SGC7901 cells apoptosis and cell cycle arrest in G2 phase by up‐regulation of p21 and down‐regulation of cdc2 and cyclin B1. Further studies show that CK induces apoptosis in BGC823 and SGC7901 cells mainly through mitochondria‐mediated internal pathway, and that CK induces the translocation of nuclear Bid to mitochondria. Finally, we found that CK effectively inhibited the tumour formation of SGC7901 cells in nude mice. Our studies show that CK can inhibit the viabilities and induce apoptosis of human gastric carcinoma cells via Bid‐mediated mitochondrial pathway.
Elementary Excitations in Trapped BEC and Zero Mode Problem

We propose a natural expansion of the atomic field operator in studying elementary excitations in trapped Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) system near T=0K. Based on this expansion, a system of coupled equations for elementary excitations, which is equivalent to the standard linearized GP equation, is given to describe the collective excitation of BEC in a natual way. Applications of the new formalism to the homogeneous case emphasize on the zero mode and its relevant ground state of BEC.
Digital Heritage Interpretation: Learning from the Realm of Real-World

Heritage interpretation is often used to indicate the storylines adapted to help visitors to engage with and understand historical sites or artefacts. However, until now we hardly find any noteworthy scholarly works, charter, and critical discourse on the theory and methodology of interpretation in the field of Digital Heritage. Praxis limited by such theoretical underpinning, and at the same time the unwitting obsession with technology as a way out for better interpretation is leading most of the digital heritage projects to become descriptive and ocular-centric. Although technologies and tools like game-engines, multi-player virtual environments, haptic devices, augmented visualizations and immersive displays are being used to accentuate experience and visual fidelity, nevertheless, many scholars argue that technology alone can only provide partial interpretation. This paper raises the demands for an interpretive method for digital heritage and proposes some guidelines based on interpretation theories and scholarly materials from the real-world heritage domain.
Dynamic Max Algorithms in Crowdsourcing Environments

Our work investigates the problem of retrieving the maximum item from a set in crowdsourcing environments. We focus on tournament algorithms that can for instance select the best Facebook profile that matches a given person or the best photo that describes a given restaurant. Tournament algorithms can be tuned with parameters such as the desired difference of votes between the top-2 voted outcomes, and the maximum number of humans asked to perform a particular task. We propose a strategy for selecting appropriate tournament parameters that attempts to keep monetary cost and latency at a minimum while having quality guarantees. For our experiments, using a human model derived from psychometrics (the Thurstonian model), we provide insights on the effectiveness of our strategy in selecting appropriate tournament parameters and compare our techniques with previous work on tournament tuning.
Analysis of an Experimental Cortical Network: i) Architectonics of Visual Areas 17 and 18 After Neonatal Injections of Ibotenic Acid; Similarities with Human Microgyria

Lesions of cortical areas 17 and 18 have been produced in newborn kittens by local injections of the excitotoxin ibotenic acid (ibo). Twenty-four hours after an injection on postnatal days 2 or 3, the gray matter of areas 17 and 18 near the center of the injection appears completely destroyed, with the exception of a one-to-two cell-thick layer at the bottom of layer I. Intact migrating neurons and radial glia can be found light- and electron-microscopically in the region affected. During the following weeks a several hundred micron thick cortex reforms. In the adult, this cortex consists of superficial layers I, II and III as proven by cytoarchitectonics, continuity with the corresponding layers of the normal cortex and cellular composition. We believe that the recovery is due to completion of migration by neurons spared by the ibo injection. More severe destruction of cerebral cortex, i.e. complete loss of the neuronal layers or their reduction to a few cell-thick mantles can be obtained with ibo injections at the end of the second or, respectively, first postnatal week. Severity of lesion also depends on the dose of ibo injected. There are interesting similarities between the ibo-injured cortex and two human neocortical displasias: microgyria and ulegyria.
DYNAMIC SCHEDULING AND RESCHEDULING WITH FAULT TOLERANCE STRATEGY IN GRID COMPUTING

Grid Computing is a form of distributed systems that enables the sharing of resources from various administrative domains to solve a particular problem. Grid resource management is defined as the process of identifying requirements, matching resources to applications, allocating those resources, and scheduling and monitoring grid resources over time in order to run the various grid applications. Job scheduling is used to schedule the applications requested by the user to allocate the jobs with minimum time. The process of monitoring refers to systematically gather information about the status of all resources. The data stored in the Distributed Hash Table replicates the request given by the user. The proposed system focused on Fault Identification and Dynamic Scheduling. Since there is a probability of resource overloading due to dynamic scheduling of multiple jobs, and there may be chances of fault in the resources. The monitoring component gives the information about the resource overloading. In this, a novel algorithm is proposed to address this issue through implementing a strategy for dynamic rescheduling of jobs in the grid environment.
Integrating and Benchmarking Security Gateway with Open Source Firewall , VPN , and IDS

enterprises. In this work, we first demonstrate how to build a security gateway capable of firewall, virtual private network (VPN), and intrusion detection system (IDS) functions by integrating open source packages: Linux kernel, ipchains(packet filter), Squid(URL filter), TIS(content filter), FreeS/WAN(VPN), and Snort(IDS). We patch the kernel to ensure interoperability of these packages. Next, we compare this open source integration with commercial products and observe that ipchains and FreeS/WAN are viable but TIS and Snort have performance problems. Our detailed internal benchmarking reveals that the 3DES encryption in FreeS/WAN tops the ranking of packet processing within kernel, 9 times of the MD5 authentication and 31 times of NAT for 1518-byte packets, and TIS tops the ranking of request/response processing at the daemon level, several orders of magnitude higher than Snort and Squid. Further code tracing identifies the improper implementation in TIS and the less scalable linear matching algorithms in ipchains and Snort. Finally, to scale up these packages, we suggest ways of improvement.
Design and Simulation of Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) Modem

In this paper, a design and simulation for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) modem is presented which can be applied to different telephone networks. The ADSL modem is modeled and simulated under the MATLAB version 7.0 environment by which the simulation is achieved for both the downstream and upstream directions of the modem. The ADSL modem is divided into the modulation system that uses a Multicarrier Modulation (MCM) technique called Discrete Multitone modulation (DMT) and an error control system that consists of error detection and correction codes to achieve a desirable low Bit Error Rate (BER). The designed system can be applied to a channel with a relatively low Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). As a result, asymmetric transmission rates were achieved, that is 6.16 Mbps is achieved with BER = 3.61x10-6 at SNR=33.5 dB in the downstream direction, and 687.5 kbps is achieved with BER= 7.673 x10-6 at SNR=23.5 dB in the upstream direction.
Accelerating computation of Euclidean distance map using the GPU with efficient memory access

Recent graphics processing units (GPUs), which have many processing units, can be used for general purpose parallel computation. To utilise the powerful computing ability, GPUs are widely used for general purpose processing. Since GPUs have very high memory bandwidth, the performance of GPUs greatly depends on memory access. The main contribution of this paper is to present a GPU implementation of computing Euclidean distance map (EDM) with efficient memory access. Given a two-dimensional (2D) binary image, EDM is a 2D array of the same size such that each element stores the Euclidean distance to the nearest black pixel. In the proposed GPU implementation, we have considered many programming issues of the GPU system such as coalesced access of global memory and shared memory bank conflicts, and so on. To be concrete, by transposing 2D arrays, which are temporal data stored in the global memory, with the shared memory, the main access from/to the global memory enables to be performed by coalesced access. In practice, we have implemented our parallel algorithm in the following three modern GPU systems: Tesla C1060, GTX 480 and GTX 580. The experimental results have shown that, for an input binary image with size of 9216 × 9216, our implementation can achieve a speedup factor of 54 over the sequential algorithm implementation.
Kv1.1 Potassium Channel Deficiency Reveals Brain-Driven Cardiac Dysfunction as a Candidate Mechanism for Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy

Mice lacking Kv1.1 Shaker-like potassium channels encoded by the Kcna1 gene exhibit severe seizures and die prematurely. The channel is widely expressed in brain but only minimally, if at all, in mouse myocardium. To test whether Kv1.1-potassium deficiency could underlie primary neurogenic cardiac dysfunction, we performed simultaneous video EEG–ECG recordings and found that Kcna1-null mice display potentially malignant interictal cardiac abnormalities, including a fivefold increase in atrioventricular (AV) conduction blocks, as well as bradycardia and premature ventricular contractions. During seizures the occurrence of AV conduction blocks increased, predisposing Kv1.1-deficient mice to sudden unexplained death in epilepsy (SUDEP), which we recorded fortuitously in one animal. To determine whether the interictal AV conduction blocks were of cardiac or neural origin, we examined their response to selective pharmacological blockade of the autonomic nervous system. Simultaneous administration of atropine and propranolol to block parasympathetic and sympathetic branches, respectively, eliminated conduction blocks. When administered separately, only atropine ameliorated AV conduction blocks, indicating that excessive parasympathetic tone contributes to the neurocardiac defect. We found no changes in Kv1.1-deficient cardiac structure, but extensive Kv1.1 expression in juxtaparanodes of the wild-type vagus nerve, the primary source of parasympathetic input to the heart, suggesting a novel site of action leading to Kv1.1-associated cardiac bradyarrhythmias. Together, our data suggest that Kv1.1 deficiency leads to impaired neural control of cardiac rhythmicity due in part to aberrant parasympathetic neurotransmission, making Kcna1 a strong candidate gene for human SUDEP.
A Case-Based Reasoning Framework for Developing Agents Using Learning by Observation

Most realistic environments are complex, partially observable and impose real-time constraints on agents operating within them. This paper describes a framework that allows agents to learn by observation in such environments. When learning by observation, agents observe an expert performing a task and learn to perform the same task based on those observations. Our framework aims to allow agents to learn in a variety of domains (physical or virtual) regardless of the behaviour or goals of the observed expert. To achieve this we ensure that there is a clear separation between the central reasoning system and any domain-specific information. We present case studies in the domains of obstacle avoidance, robotic arm control, simulated soccer and Tetris.
IE based SMS semantic orientation recognition

This paper is a grope research on applying the technology of information extraction (IE) in the field of information content security and the focus is semantic orientation recognition for short message service (SMS). An experimental SMS monitoring system will be introduced, in which rules based and hidden Markov model (HMM) based IE patterns are integrated to recognize the semantic orientation of Chinese SMS in two specific domains. Testing results have shown that the performance is good and the method is feasible and promising.
Power allocation in interference relay channels based on non-cooperative game theory

In the paper, we consider the interference as a detriment to the performance of the relay enhanced cellular system. Then we build up the interference channel model based on amplify-and-forward protocol and decode-and-forward protocol, respectively. The interference comes not only from the adjacent cells, but also from the inner of the same cell. Moreover, proper power allocation can obtain a good tradeoff between the performance and the interference. Power allocation in interference relay channels based on non-cooperative game theory is proposed. Concretely, two stages constitute the game model, namely power allocation among the source nodes and among the relay nodes. The two utility functions are different from the different stations of the source nodes and relay nodes. But the two utility functions are designed to guarantee the target SINR. For the two-stage game, we prove the existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibriums, and the proposed distributed algorithm always converges to the unique Nash equilibrium from an arbitrary starting point. Meanwhile, simulation results show our allocation scheme has good convergence.
Model-driven rule composition for event-based systems

This article presents a novel framework for creating sense-and-respond rules, which allow detecting noteworthy event situations from streams of business incidents and responding to them in near real-time. Focusing on expressiveness as well as manageability, the proposed framework uses a model-driven approach for the rule definition, where the different aspects of a rule are specified in clearly separated, comprehensible sub-models. This includes models for event-type and correlation information, virtual business-object representations, event patterns (‘sense’) and actions (‘respond’), as well as event processing networks. Event patterns are modelled in a visual decision graph from easy-to-understand pieces of pattern-detection logic, and/or from sub-level event patterns. The proposed system has been fully implemented with a service-oriented architecture. The rule model is illustrated with a business case from the workload-automation domain.
Distributed and localized maximum-lifetime data aggregation forest construction in wireless sensor networks

Recently, employing an in-network data aggregation forest has been proposed to achieve energy saving in wireless sensor networks with multiple sinks. The construction of an in-network maximum-lifetime data aggregation forest was shown NP-complete, and only one centralized algorithm in the literature was designed to solve it. The centralized algorithm suffers from significant control overhead especially when forest adjustment is required. In this paper, we propose a distributed and localized algorithm for maximum-lifetime data aggregation forest construction in wireless sensor networks. The sensor nodes are organized into a forest consisting of multiple data aggregation trees in a distributed manner. Besides, a localized forest refinement mechanism is presented to achieve better load balancing. Finally, to prolong the network lifetime, we introduce a forest adjustment mechanism for low-energy sensor nodes. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the prior centralized algorithm in terms of network lifetime and control overhead. Moreover, the experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm is more scalable than the prior centralized algorithm.