Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Artist Ranking Through Analysis of On-line Community Comments

We describe an approach to measure the popularity of music tracks, albums and artists by analyzing the comments of music listeners in social networking online communities such as MySpace. This measure of popularity appears to be more accurate than the traditional measure based on album sales figures, as demonstrated by our focus group study. We faced many challenges in our attempt to generate a popularity ranking from the user comments on social networking sites, e.g., broken English sentences, comment spam, etc. We discuss the steps we took to overcome these challenges and describe an end to end system for generating a new popularity measure based on online comments, and the experiments performed to evaluate its success.
A conceptual model of intention to use health information associated with online social network

Online social networking can influence and support holistic health, by supporting social communication. People have different health conditions at different ages of life. To maintain healthy living, it is necessary to increase health services for people. Hence, this research tries to find out user adoption of online social networking, regarding health information. We apply the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) to test user adoption of social networking related to healthy living. We propose that Perceived Value should be included in the UTAUT model for testing user adoption of health related social networking. Besides traditional moderators (i.e. gender, age, experience, and voluntariness of use), we propose that Personality traits should be considered as additional moderator in this context. With the proposed model, designer of health related social networking can gain better understanding of determinates and moderators with significant effect on user adoption of health related social networking. From 30 random subjects, it is found that perceive value is significant determinants. Users will adopt social networking fast or slow, depending on Personality traits.
Automatic parametrization of differentiated glottal flow: Comparing methods by means of synthetic flow pulses

The automatic parametrization of the first derivative of glottal flow is studied. Representatives of the two types of methods used most often for parametrization were tested and compared. The chosen representatives are all based on the Liljencrants–Fant model. As numerous tests were needed for a detailed comparison of the methods, a novel evaluation procedure is used which consists of the following stages: (1) use the Liljencrants–Fant model to generate synthetic flow pulses; (2) estimate voice source parameters for these synthetic flow pulses; and (3) calculate the errors by comparing the estimated values with the input values of the parameters. This evaluation procedure revealed that in order to reduce the average error in the estimated voice source parameters, the estimation methods should be able to estimate noninteger values of these parameters. The proposed evaluation method was also used to study the influence of low-pass filtering on the estimated voice source parameters. It turned out that low-pass filtering causes an error in all estimated voice source parameters. On average, the smallest errors were found for a parametrization method in which a voice source model is fitted to the flow derivative, and in which the voice source model is low-pass filtered with the same filter as the flow derivative.
Unobservable intrusion detection based on call traces in paravirtualized systems

We present a non-invasive system for intrusion and anomaly detection, based on system call tracing in paravirtualized machines over Xen. System calls from guest user programs and operating systems are intercepted stealthy within Xen hypervisor, and passed to a detection system running in Dom0 via a suitable communication channel. Guest applications and machines are left unchanged, and an intruder on the virtual machine cannot tell whether the system is under inspection or not. As for the detection algorithm, we present and study a variant of Stide, which we verify experimentally to have a good performance on intrusion detection with an acceptable overhead—in fact, online real-time intrusion detection feasible. However, since the interception mechanism is kept separated from the detection system, the latter can be replaced according to further needs.
Current status of New Zealand indigenous aphids

This report summarises our current knowledge of the New Zealand indigenous aphid fauna. Size of fauna. Based on present knowledge, estimates of the size of the New Zealand indigenous aphid fauna range from 12 to 16 species. Six indigenous species have been fully described and named. A further six species are almost certainly indigenous to New Zealand but have not been fully described. There is good evidence for the existence of another two species and some evidence for another two species. More species are likely to be discovered. Taxonomic distinctiveness. The New Zealand indigenous aphids constitute a distinctive taxonomic component of the New Zealand fauna and the world aphid fauna. They have Gondwanan affinities and other unique features. At least two genera are endemic. They also support what appears to be a unique i ndigenous parasitoid (parasites that kill their hosts) fauna of unknown size. Biology and ecology. Very little is known about the biology and ecology of any species of indigenous aphid. One characteristic feature of the Aphis/ Paradoxaphis group is their patchy but very aggregated distribution. Population status. Only three species, Neophyllaphis totarae, Sensoriaphis nothofagus and the undescribed aphid on Dracophyllum, can be considered to be relatively common. The remaining species are now known from either one or two populations or have not been seen recently. Survey and collection. Extensive surveys have been completed of some species with little attention given to others. Recent surveys reinforce previous perceptions that, apart from three species, most indigenous species are difficult to find. Threats to survival. New Zealand indigenous aphids face a number of threats to their continued survival: from habitat destruction, displacement by introduced aphids, and attack from introduced parasitoids and predators. The relative importance of these threats has yet to be determined.
Heterogeneity, Bounded Rationality and Market Dysfunctionality

As the main building blocks of the modern finance theory, homogeneity and rational expectation have faced difficulty in explaining many market anomalies, stylized factors, and market inefficiency in empirical studies. As a result, heterogeneity and bounded rationality have been used as an alterative paradigm of asset price dynamics and this paradigm has been widely recognized recently in both academic and financial market practitioners. Within the framework of Chiarella, Dieci and He (2006a, 2006b) on mean-variance analysis under heterogeneous beliefs in terms of either the payoffs or returns of the risky assets, this paper examines the effect of the heterogeneity. We first demonstrate that, in market equilibrium, the standard one fund theorem under homogeneous belief does not held under heterogeneous belief in general, however, the optimal portfolios of investors are very close to the market efficient frontier. By imposing certain distribution assumption on the heterogeneous beliefs, we then use Monte Carlo simulations to show that certain heterogeneity among investors can improve the Sharpe and Treynor ratios of the portfolios and investors can benefit from the diversity in investors’ beliefs. We also show that non-normality of market equilibrium return distributions is an outcome of the market aggregation of individual investors who make rational decisions based on their beliefs. Our results explain the empirical funding that that managed funds under-perform the market index on average and show that heterogeneity can improve the market efficiency.
The SPCH1 region on human 7q31: genomic characterization of the critical interval and localization of translocations associated with speech and language disorder.

The KE family is a large three-generation pedigree in which half the members are affected with a severe speech and language disorder that is transmitted as an autosomal dominant monogenic trait. In previously published work, we localized the gene responsible (SPCH1) to a 5.6-cM region of 7q31 between D7S2459 and D7S643. In the present study, we have employed bioinformatic analyses to assemble a detailed BAC-/PAC-based sequence map of this interval, containing 152 sequence tagged sites (STSs), 20 known genes, and >7.75 Mb of completed genomic sequence. We screened the affected chromosome 7 from the KE family with 120 of these STSs (average spacing <100 kb), but we did not detect any evidence of a microdeletion. Novel polymorphic markers were generated from the sequence and were used to further localize critical recombination breakpoints in the KE family. This allowed refinement of the SPCH1 interval to a region between new markers 013A and 330B, containing approximately 6.1 Mb of completed sequence. In addition, we have studied two unrelated patients with a similar speech and language disorder, who have de novo translocations involving 7q31. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analyses with BACs/PACs from the sequence map localized the t(5;7)(q22;q31.2) breakpoint in the first patient (CS) to a single clone within the newly refined SPCH1 interval. This clone contains the CAGH44 gene, which encodes a brain-expressed protein containing a large polyglutamine stretch. However, we found that the t(2;7)(p23;q31.3) breakpoint in the second patient (BRD) resides within a BAC clone mapping >3.7 Mb distal to this, outside the current SPCH1 critical interval. Finally, we investigated the CAGH44 gene in affected individuals of the KE family, but we found no mutations in the currently known coding sequence. These studies represent further steps toward the isolation of the first gene to be implicated in the development of speech and language.
Do We Really Need Central Bank Independence? A Critical Re-Examination

In this survey, we critically review the argument for central bank independence (CBI). We argue CBI is neither necessary nor sufficient for reaching monetary stability. First, CBI is just one potentially useful monetary policy design instrument among several. Second, CBI should not be treated as an exogenous variable, but instead attention should be devoted to the question of why central banks are made independent. CBI is chosen by countries under specific circumstances, which are related to their legal, political, and economic systems. Third, in a number of empirical studies, researchers found CBI is correlated with low inflation rates. By taking the endogeneity of CBI into account, however, there is no reason to believe the correlation between CBI and low inflation tells us anything about causality.
Multi-Agent System for Decision Support in Enterprises

Business decisions must rely not only on organisation’s internal data but also on external data from competitors or relevant events. This information can be obtained from the Web but must be integrated with the data in an organisation’s Data Warehouse (DW). In this paper we discuss the agent-based integration approach using ontologies. To enable common understanding of a domain between people and application systems we introduce business rules approach towards ontology management. Because knowledge in organisation’s ontologies is acquired from business users without technical knowledge simple user interface based on ontology restrictions and predefined templates are used. After data from internal DW, Web and business rules are acquired; agent can deduce new knowledge and therefore facilitate decision making process. Tasks like information retrieval from competitors, creating and reviewing OLAP reports are autonomously performed by agents, while business users have control over their execution through knowledge base in ontology. The approach presented in the paper was verified on the case study from the domain of mobile communications with the emphasis on supply and demand of mobile phones and its accessories.
Minimal Cubature Formulae for Spherically Symmetric Integrals and Tight Euclidean Designs

Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest appreciation to my adviser Professor Hiroyuki Mat-sumoto. He has supervised my study for six and a half years and his continuous encouragement , patience, and excellent guidance had led me to successfully complete this thesis. I am especially indebted to Professor Eiichi Bannai, Professor Etsuko Bannai for fruitful discussion and support of my understanding of the theories on Euclidean designs in algebraic combinatorics. Without their kind support, I could not have completed this thesis. I owe a very important debt to Professor Masanori Sawa. I am grateful for his advices not only on our study but also on my private life. I have learned a lot through joint works with him. I would like to thank Professor Masakazu Jimbo and Professor Hidehiro Kaise for their knowledge and valuable advice. I am very thankful for everything to Dr. Koji Momihara, Ms. Yuanyuan Zhou and all our laboratory members. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to my parents for their warm supports. I could not have completed this work without their hearty encouragement.
Information processing, rational beliefs and social interaction (10w2133)

The study of the mathematical aspects of belief formation, information processing and rational belief change is of central importance in a number of different fields, namely artificial intelligence, computer science, game theory, logic, philosophy and psychology. The area of belief change studies how a rational agent may maintain its beliefs about a possibly changing environment after obtaining or perceiving new information about the environment. This new information could include properties of the actual world, occurrences of events, and, in the case of multiple agents, actions performed by other agents, as well as the beliefs, preferences or actions (including communication acts) of other agents. Such agents could be acting and sensing in a dynamic world, coalescing information obtained from various sources, negotiating with other agents, or otherwise augmenting and revising their knowledge. The most important question in Game Theory is how to rationally form a belief about other players’ behavior and how to rationally revise those beliefs in light of observed actions. Traditionally Game Theory has relied mostly on probabilistic models of beliefs, although recent research has focused on qualitative aspects of belief change. A new branch of modal logic, called Dynamic Epistemic Logic, has emerged that investigates the effects of events that involve information being revealed to a group of agents in a variety of ways, such as through a public announcement or a private announcement. In artificial intelligence, the relatively recent emergence of the field of cognitive robotics, which is concerned with endowing artificial agents with cognitive functions that involve reasoning about goals, actions, the states of other agents, collaboration and negotiation, etc., has given impetus to the development of computational operators for belief change and the identification of issues arising from concrete, evolving sets of knowledge. Another, related, new field of research, called Social Software, maintains that mathematical models developed to reason about the knowledge and beliefs of a group of agents can be used to deepen our understanding of social interaction and aid in the design of successful social institutions. Social Software is the formal study of social procedures focusing on three aspects: (1) the logical and algorithmic structure of social procedures (the main contributors to this area are computer scientists), (2) knowledge and information (the main contributors to this area are logicians and philosophers) , and (3) incentives (the main contributors are game theorists and economists). The area of belief change is thus of interest to many research communities. To date, there has been limited interaction among these communities. The purpose of this 2-day workshop was to bring together researchers from these
A Distributed Multimedia CDN Model with P2P Architecture

Use for reference of the great success of P2P in distributed file sharing and locating, by abolishing CDN central node and making all POP nodes, which adopt the cluster technique, being peers to each other, a distributed multimedia CDN model with P2P architecture is put forward. In order to implement the global load optimization, the two-level load balance algorithm based on network measurement is proposed. Files are sliced up and transmitted through P2P mechanism to satisfy the requirement on real time multi-media application and high quality of service. Results of analysis show us that this multimedia CDN model has better expansibility, robustness, and quality of service
It's My Turn... Please, After You: An Experimental Study of Cooperation and Social Conventions

We introduce a class of two-player cooperation games where each player faces a binary decision, enter or exit. These games have a unique Nash equilibrium of entry. However, entry imposes a large enough negative externality on the other player such that the unique social optimum involves the player with the higher value to entry entering and the other player exiting. When the game is repeated and players' values to entry are private, cooperation admits the form of either taking turns entering or using a cuto? strategy and entering only for high private values of entry. Even with conditions that provide opportunities for unnoticed or non-punishable “cheating”, our empirical analysis including a simple strategy inference technique reveals that the Nash-equilibrium strategy is never the modal choice. In fact, most subjects employ the socially optimal symmetric cuto? strategy. These games capture the nature of cooperation in many economic and social situations such as bidding rings in auctions, competition for market share, labor supply decisions in the face of excess supply, queuing in line and courtship.
An Exploratory Study of Pauses in Computer-Assisted EFL Writing.

Cuiqin Xu, Nanjing University Yanren Ding, Nanjing University The advance of computer input log and screen-recording programs over the last two decades has greatly facilitated research into the writing process in real time. Using Inputlog 4.0 and Camtasia 6.0 to record the writing process of 24 Chinese EFL writers in an argumentative task, this study explored L2 writers’ pausing patterns in computerassisted writing settings and how their pausing patterns related to writing time allocation, writing fluency, and text quality. Results suggest that while the skilled writers allocated significantly less time to the prewriting stage, they paused significantly longer yet less frequently than the less-skilled group in this stage; however, the two groups displayed no significant difference in pause frequency or duration in the composing stage. Text quality was found to correlate positively with prewriting pause duration and writing fluency but negatively with the prewriting time. Web search and dictionary use were identified as important extra writing activities that gave rise to the observed time allocation and pausing patterns. These findings suggest that computer-assisted L2 writing has features distinct from pen-and-paper writing and that L2 writers need to be informed of how to coordinate and regulate writing resources in an electronic environment.
Robust position control of a novel series elastic actuator via disturbance observer

This paper proposes a new robust position control method for a novel series elastic actuator (SEA). It is a wellknown fact that SEAs provide many benefits in force control, e.g., lower reflected inertia and impedance, greater shock tolerance, safety, and so on. However, current SEA designs have a common performance limitation due to the compromise on the selection of spring stiffness. The performance of an SEA can be significantly improved by changing the stiffness of the spring; however, designing a variable-stiffness SEA is a quite challenging task. In this paper, a novel variable-stiffness SEA, which can relax the fundamental performance limitation of conventional SEAs, is proposed. It consists of torsional and linear springs, which have different compliances, in series. The soft and hard springs improve the performance when low and high force control applications are performed, respectively. Although SEAs have several advantages in force control, their position control problem is more complicated than the force control one. Moreover, using extra springs increases the number of vibration mode, which may significantly deteriorate the performance, in the position control problem of the SEA. In this paper, a new position control system, which improves the performance by increasing the robustness and suppressing the vibration, is proposed for a novel SEA. Experimental results are given to validate the proposal.
A new low-power, low-area, parallel prefix Sklansky adder with reduced inter-stage connections complexity

In this paper a relation between graph energy and electrical energy or power consumption with graph nodes and edges for PPA structures is introduced. The Sklansky PPA is selected as the target PPA and its recursion steps limited. This reduced the internal nodes of the PPA. The reduction of nodes and edges and limiting the recursive stages to maximum 8 steps, resulted in proposed adder I and using special dot and semi-dot operators for graph nodes in proposed adder I led to proposed adder II. The number of transistors, total power and critical delay path of our proposed adder II are reduced about 31%, 29% and 7% versus Sklansky adder respectively. Finally the power-delay-product (PDP) of proposed PPA II comes with about 35% improvement compared with Sklansky adder.
Service-based collaborative workflow for DAME

The paper reports on research to design and implement a service-based, secure collaborative workflow system for distributed aircraft maintenance environment (DAME). This has been developed by the Universities of York, Sheffield, Oxford and Leeds, and industrial partners, Rolls-Royce and Data Systems and Solutions (DS&S). DAME is a prototype system to support aircraft engine maintenance and predictive services. It is an example of a virtual organisation with grid-based services running at the four universities sites. To meet the industrial requirements strong security is implemented to protect commercially sensitive services and data. Application services have been coordinated using the DAME workflow management system to automate business processes and control collaborative access. A dynamic workflow-team policy is used to authorise user access to workflow instances and corresponding service instances. The paper includes aspects of an initial evaluation with the industrial participants and illustrates the feasibility of using DAME in an industrial environment.