Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
WORST-CASE SCENARIOS FOR AMERICAN OPTIONS

One approach to cope with uncertain diffusion parameters when pricing options portfolios is to identify the parameters in a subset of the parameter space which form the worst-case for a particular portfolio. For the sell-side, this leads to a nonlinear algorithm that maximizes the expected liability under the risk-neutral measure. depends on the portfolio under consideration. Moreover, the algorithm must take into account that the exposure to -risk changes when non-vanilla components such as barrier or American options knock out or are exercised early. In this paper, we describe techniques to price portfolios with American options under worst-case scenarios based on uncertain volatility models. We also present heuristics which reduce the computational complexity that arises from the necessity to consider many early exercise combinations at a time. These heuristics reduce the compute time by almost one half.
Gratitude as an Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Strategy

Reviews the book, The Spectrum of Gratitude Experience by John Elfers and Patty Hlava (see record 2017-01801-000). Elfers and Hlava articulate the gratitude experience from a scientific perspective. They present key features of the lived gratitude experience in separate chapters but nicely scaffold their argument. These authors effectively unravel the complexity of this affective experience and explain its utility. The authors weave the role of gratitude in interpersonal relationships throughout the book. Principally, they define gratitude as a positive emotional experience derived from being given a benefit, typically (although not exclusively) in caring relationships. The authors present the evolutionary origin of gratitude, define types of gratitude, and discuss its development in one’s identity. Perhaps the most compelling information is on the effects of experiencing gratitude. This book is most relevant for affective scientists. The authors delicately bridge various theories of emotion (e.g., basic, cognitive, action tendencies) to provide a framework for the multifaceted nature of gratitude. You do not need to have a background in psychology to appreciate this book. It would interest anyone who is curious about the human condition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
A low-cost neurostimulator with accurate pulsed-current control

A constant-current stimulator for high-impedance loads using only low-cost standard high-voltage components is presented. A voltage-regulator powers an oscillator built across the primary of a step-up transformer whose secondary supplies, after rectification, the high voltage to a switched current-mirror in the driving stage. Adjusting the regulated voltage controls the pulsed-current intensity. A prototype produces stimulus of amplitude and pulsewidth within 0 /spl les/ I/sub skin/ /spl les/ 20 mA and 50 /spl mu/s /spl les/ T/sub pulse/ /spl les/ 1 ms, respectively. Pulse-repetition spans from 1 Hz to 10 Hz. Worst case ripple is 3.7% at I/sub skin/ = 1 mA. Overall consumption is 5.6 W at I/sub skin/ = 20 mA.
Analysing gait sequences using Latent Dirichlet Allocation for certain human actions

Conventional human action recognition algorithm and method generate coarse clusters of input videos approximately 2-4 clusters with less information regarding the cluster generation. This problem is solved by proposing Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm that transforms the extracted gait sequences in gait domain into documents-words in text domain. These words are then used to group the input documents into finer clusters approximately 8-9 clusters. In this approach, we have made an attempt to use gait analysis in recognizing human actions, where the gait analysis requires to have some motion in lower parts of the human body like leg. As the videos of Weizmann dataset have some actions that exhibits these movements, we are able use these motion parameters to recognize certain human actions. Experiments on Weizmann dataset suggest that the proposed Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm is an efficient method for recognizing human actions from the video streams.
Subspace-based direction finding in partly calibrated arrays of arbitrary geometry

The problem of direction finding in partly calibrated arrays of an arbitrary geometry is addressed. We assume that an array is composed of multiple calibrated subarrays and consider the cases of unknown (or known with some error) inter-subarray displacements, imperfect synchronization of subarrays in time, as well as unknown channel mismatches between subarrays. Recently, the so-called RAnk Reduction Estimator (RARE) has been proposed as a particular solution to the problem of direction finding in partly calibrated arrays with unknown inter-subarray displacements. However, the application of RARE is restricted by the special case of arrays composed of identically oriented linear subarrays with interelement spacings which are integer multiples of a certain shortest baseline. In this paper, we propose a more general subspacebased approach which further develops the ideas of RARE and is applicable to partly calibrated arrays composed of subarrays of arbitrary geometry. The algorithms proposed enable simple extensions to the two-dimensional (2D) Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) estimation case.
Chapter 1 Emerging Vehicular Applications

Safe navigation support through wireless car-to-car and car-to-curb communications has become an important priority for car manufacturers as well as transportation authorities and communications standards organizations. New standards are emerging for car-to-car communications (DSRC and more recently IEEE 802.11p) [8]. There have been several well publicized testbeds aimed at demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of car-to-car communication safety; for instance, the ability to rapidly propagate accident reports to oncoming cars, the awareness of unsafe drivers in the proximity and the prevention of intersection crashes. While safe navigation has always been the prime motivation behind vehicle-tovehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, vehicular networks provide a promising platform for a much broader range of large scale, highly mobile applications. Given the automobile’s role as a critical component in peoples’ lives, embedding software-based intelligence into cars has the potential to drastically improve the user’s quality of life. This, along with significant market demand for more reliability, safety and entertainment value in automobiles, has resulted in significant commercial development and support of vehicular networks and applications. These emerging applications span many fields, from office-on-wheels to entertainment, mobile Internet games, mobile shopping, crime investigation, civic defense, etc. Some of these applications are conventional “mobile internet access” applications, say, downloading files, reading e-mail while on the move, etc. Others involve the discovery
À l’intersection du genre et de l’origine nationale : quels sont les parcours professionnels des immigrants sélectionnés au Québec ?

Les differences d’insertion dans l’emploi entre immigres et natifs sont etroitement liees a l’origine nationale et au genre. Alors que le desavantage des hommes immigres non occidentaux est souvent explique en termes de discrimination et de transferabilite du capital humain, celui des femmes immigrees repose plutot sur un argumentaire culturel, selon lequel la participation des femmes au marche du travail serait le reflet des roles de genre dans la region d’origine. En utilisant les donnees d’enquete sur les travailleurs selectionnes au Quebec, nous examinons la rapidite avec laquelle les immigres accedent a l’emploi selon la nationalite et le genre. Ces derniers sont tous des requerants principaux de la categorie des travailleurs qualifies au Quebec. Les facteurs lies aux « barrieres culturelles », censes freiner l’acces des femmes a l’emploi, sont ainsi neutralises dans l’analyse des differents groupes se destinant au marche du travail. Des modeles de Cox avec interactions montrent que l’effet de genre se juxtapose a celui de l’origine nationale des immigres et revelent des differences de genre pour l’acces au premier emploi, qui sont principalement modulees par les connaissances linguistiques. Au contraire, l’acces a un emploi conforme au niveau d’education differe selon l’origine nationale, independamment du genre.
Voice transformation and speech synthesis for video games

Voice and expressivity transformation as well as text-to-speech synthesis with high degree of naturalness are now available. A set of tools permitting a large range of voices to be made from a single voice, whose speech may be produced from text and given a certain expressivity, is proposed. In the context of multiplayer video games, for instance, this technology allows for creation of the speech of non-player characters as well as for transforming the player’s voice into the voice of her character. The technology behind these tools will be presented. A demonstration using cartoon characters will also be provided.
Dynamics of DNA Methylation in Recent Human and Great Ape Evolution

DNA methylation is an epigenetic modification involved in regulatory processes such as cell differentiation during development, X-chromosome inactivation, genomic imprinting and susceptibility to complex disease. However, the dynamics of DNA methylation changes between humans and their closest relatives are still poorly understood. We performed a comparative analysis of CpG methylation patterns between 9 humans and 23 primate samples including all species of great apes (chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla and orangutan) using Illumina Methylation450 bead arrays. Our analysis identified ∼800 genes with significantly altered methylation patterns among the great apes, including ∼170 genes with a methylation pattern unique to human. Some of these are known to be involved in developmental and neurological features, suggesting that epigenetic changes have been frequent during recent human and primate evolution. We identified a significant positive relationship between the rate of coding variation and alterations of methylation at the promoter level, indicative of co-occurrence between evolution of protein sequence and gene regulation. In contrast, and supporting the idea that many phenotypic differences between humans and great apes are not due to amino acid differences, our analysis also identified 184 genes that are perfectly conserved at protein level between human and chimpanzee, yet show significant epigenetic differences between these two species. We conclude that epigenetic alterations are an important force during primate evolution and have been under-explored in evolutionary comparative genomics.
Emergence of Circadian and Photoperiodic System Level Properties from Interactions among Pacemaker Cells

Daily patterns of behavior and physiology in animals in temperate zones often differ substantially between summer and winter. In mammals, this may be a direct consequence of seasonal changes of activity of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). The purpose of this study was to understand such variation on the basis of the interaction between pacemaker neurons. Computer simulation demonstrates that mutual electrical activation between pacemaker cells in the SCN, in combination with cellular electrical activation by light, is sufficient to explain a variety of circadian phenomena including seasonal changes. These phenomena are: self-excitation, that is, spontaneous development of circadian rhythmicity in the absence of a light-dark cycle; persistent rhythmicity in constant darkness, and loss of circadian rhythmicity in pacemaker output in constant light; entrainment to light-dark cycles; aftereffects of zeitgeber cycles with different periods; adjustment of the circadian patterns to day length; generation of realistic phase response curves to light pulses; and relative independence from day-to-day variation in light intensity. In the model, subsets of cells turn out to be active at specific times of day. This is of functional importance for the exploitation of the SCN to tune specific behavior to specific times of day. Thus, a network of on-off oscillators provides a simple and plausible construct that behaves as a clock with readout for time of day and simultaneously as a clock for all seasons.
On the Dangers of Cross-Validation. An Experimental Evaluation

Cross validation allows models to be tested using the full training set by means of repeated resampling; thus, maximizing the total number of points used for testing and potentially, helping to protect against overfitting. Improvements in computational power, recent reductions in the (computational) cost of classification algorithms, and the development of closed-form solutions (for performing cross validation in certain classes of learning algorithms) makes it possible to test thousand or millions of variants of learning models on the data. Thus, it is now possible to calculate cross validation performance on a much larger number of tuned models than would have been possible otherwise. However, we empirically show how under such large number of models the risk for overfitting increases and the performance estimated by cross validation is no longer an effective estimate of generalization; hence, this paper provides an empirical reminder of the dangers of cross validation. We use a closed-form solution that makes this evaluation possible for the cross validation problem of interest. In addition, through extensive experiments we expose and discuss the effects of the overuse/misuse of cross validation in various aspects, including model selection, feature selection, and data dimensionality. This is illustrated on synthetic, benchmark, and real-world data sets.
Gait recognition of different people groups based on Fourier descriptor and support vector machine

In this paper, we present a novel method for gait recognition of different people groups based on Fourier descriptors (FDs) and support vector machine (SVM). The proposed method involves the procedures of background modeling, extraction of gait silhouettes by background subtraction, shadow removal, representation of gait silhouettes using the FDs, and recognition of human gaits by an SVM Classifier. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, 5 different people groups with 15 video sequences, including the pregnant, the children, the adult, the people with a walking stick, and the aged, are utilized. Experimental results show that the correct recognition rate (CRR) of 81% is obtained using only the first 20 coefficients of FDs, indicating the feasibility of the proposed method.
Falls incidence underestimates the risk of fall-related injuries in older age groups: a comparison with the FARE (Falls risk by Exposure).

BACKGROUND up till now, the risk of falls has been expressed as falls incidence (i.e. the number of falls or fallers per 100 person-years). However, the risk of an accident or injury is the probability of having an accident or injury per unit of exposure. The FARE (Falls risk by Exposure) is a measure for falls risk which incorporates physical activity as a measure of exposure. The objective of this study was to compare falls incidence and the FARE when expressing the age-related risk of fall-related injuries. METHODS data of 21,020 community-dwelling elderly aged ≥55 years (60.3% women) obtained from a national survey (2000-05) were used to compare incidence of fall-related injuries and the FARE. In order to compare both measures, risk ratios (of both outcome measures) were calculated for each age group. Hierarchical regression analyses (linear versus exponential model) were conducted to check the best model fit when expressing falls risk by age for the total study population and for men and women separately. RESULTS the risk of fall-related injuries, calculated on the basis of the incidence of fall-related injuries, showed a linear relationship with age, whereas the risk calculated on the basis of fall-related injuries corrected for exposure (falls risk by exposure, FARE) showed an exponential relationship. Calculations on the basis of the incidence of fall-related injuries underestimated the risk of fall-related injuries in people aged 70 years and older, and especially in women. CONCLUSION calculation of the risk of fall-related injuries based on the incidence of these injuries underestimates the risk of such injuries relative to that calculated on the basis of the FARE. FARE-based calculations enable the early identification of people at high risk of falls and provide a more sensitive outcome measure for studies evaluating falls prevention interventions.
Internalization of lectins in neuronal GERL

Conjugates of ricin agglutinin and phytohemagglutinin with horseradish peroxidase (HRP) were used for a cytochemical study of internalization of their plasma membrane "receptors" in cultured isolated mouse dorsal root ganglion neurons. Labeling of cells with lectin-HRP was done at 4 degrees C, and internalization was performed at 37 degrees C in a culture medium free of lectin-HRP. 15-20 min after incubation at 37 degrees C, lectin-HRP receptor complexes were seen in vesicles or tubules located near the plasma membrane. After 1-3 h at 37 degrees C, lectin-HRP-receptor complexes accumulated in vesicles and tubules corresponding to acid phosphatase-rich vesicles and tubules (GERL) at the trans aspect of the Golgi apparatus. A few coated vesicles and probably some dense bodies contained HRP after 3-6 h of incubation at 37 degrees C. Soluble HRP was not endocytosed under the conditions of this experiment or when it was present in the incubation medium at 37 degrees C. Internalization of lectin-HRP-receptor conjugates was decreased or inhibited by mitochondrial respiration inhibitors but not by cytochalasin B or colchicine. These studies indicate that lectin- labeled plasma membrane moieties of neurons are endocytosed primarily in elements of GERL.
Developing learnability — The case for reduced dimensionality

In this work, the notion of reduced dimensionality and its relevance for systems undergoing development is examined. The various motor control theories of degree of freedom change, optimal control, and motor primitives are related using the framework of control dimensionality reduction. Based on their relationship, we propose a developmental approach based on progressively utilising increasingly higher dimension representations of the system. A simulated planar 2 link arm model is then used to demonstrate the effect of utilising reduced dimensional models for control; comparisons on step and sinusoidal tasks are presented showing a progressive decrease in error that is task dependent quantitatively. Arguments are presented for why such a strategy might be essential from an evolutionary perspective for the developmental acquisition motor control in a tractable manner.
Sparse representation of texture patches for low bit-rate image compression

This paper proposes a sparse representation based approach for low bit-rate image compression using the learnt over-complete dictionary of texture patches. We first propose to compress each patch of the image with sparse and compressible linear combinations (via nonzero coefficients) of texture patterns encoded in a dictionary for image patches. Then, we find out that the compressibility and sparsity of coefficients can be achieved by the proposed recursive procedure of solving ℓ1 optimization problem of sparse representation. Moreover, rather than transform-based patterns (e.g. DCT), we explore the basic texture patterns from other training images with a learning algorithm based on the gradient descent, to form the over-complete dictionary. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Optimization of a digital neuron design

Summary form only given, as follows. Artificial neural network models, composed of many nonlinear processing elements operating in parallel, have been extensively simulated in software. The real estate required for neurons and their interconnections has been the major hindrance for hardware implementation. Therefore, a reduction in neuron size is highly advantageous. A digital neuron design consisting of an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) has been implemented to conform to the hard-limiting threshold function. Studies on reducing the ALU size, utilizing Monte-Carlo simulations, indicate that the effect of such a reduction on network reliability and efficiency is not detrimental. Neurons with reduced ALU size operate with the same computational abilities as full-size neurons. <<ETX>>
Automatic acquisition of exemplar-based representations for recognition from image sequences

We present an exemplar-based object recognition system which is capable of on-line learning of representations of scenes and objects from image sequences. Local appearance features are used in a tracking framework to find ‘keyframes’ of the input sequence during learning. The representation of the stored sequences which are used for recognition of novel images consists only of the appearance features in these key-frames and contains no further a-priori assumptions about the underlying sequences. The system is able to create sparse and extendable representations and shows good recognition performance in a variety of viewing conditions for databases of natural and synthetic image
How Stakeholders' Commitment May Affect the Success of Requirements Elicitation

Requirements elicitation consists in collecting information about the requirements and the environment of a systemto-be. It usually involves business analysts who are eliciting information, and stakeholders who are providing information. This paper investigates how the commitment of stakeholders to a RE project influences the results of elicitation. We suggest a way to measure the commitment of stakeholders during RE, and propose the so-called “commitment matrix”, which shows what analysts can expect from stakeholders who are more, as opposed to those who are less committed. The matrix builds on a survey of 87 stakeholders. Our results suggest that commitment somehow affects the information provided by stakeholders, and that it is therefore a relevant criterion to account for when selecting stakeholders to be involved in elicitation. Keywords—Requirements Elicitation, Commitment, Involvement
Robust Circadian Rhythm and Parathyroid Hormone-Induced Resetting during Hypertrophic Differentiation in ATDC5 Chondroprogenitor Cells

Cartilage tissues possess intrinsic circadian oscillators, which influence chondrocyte function and chondrocyte specific gene expression. However, it is not fully understood how chondrogenesis influences the circadian clock, and vice versa. Thus, we established ATDC5 cells which were stably transfected with the Bmal1:luc reporter and revealed robust circadian rhythms in ATDC5 cells during differentiation. Moreover, the circadian clock in ATDC5 cells was strongly reset by PTH in a circadian time-dependent manner. This assay system is expected to be useful for investigating the role of the circadian clock in chondrogenic differentiation and the precise molecular mechanisms underlying PTH action on the chondrocyte circadian clock.
Implementation of a high-definition 3D audio-visual display based on higher-order ambisonics using a 157-loudspeaker array combined with a 3D projection display

We have implemented a high-definition 3D audiovisual reproduction system based on higher-order ambisonics (HOA) using a surrounding-157-loudspeaker array combined with a 3D projection display to reproduce information with high sense-of-presence. In this report, we introduce the system overview as well as an investigation to realize good system synchronization, which we are keenly devoted to. Results of the investigation show that all 157 channels of loudspeakers were completely synchronized within the one-sample level (48 kHz) controlled using a single PC with three Multichannel Audio Digital Interface (MADI) systems. Moreover, the latency among 157 audio signals and the video signal was only about 1.1 ms.