Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trophic interactions under climate fluctuations: the Atlantic puffin as an example

Co–occurrence in food requirements of offspring and food availability is a key factor determining breeding success. Prey availability is typically dependent on environmental conditions that are different from those influencing the predator's decision regarding whether or not to initiate breeding, and is not always optimal at the peak of reproduction requirements. We investigated this relationship to understand better what determines the fledging success of the Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica). Colony data from Røst (northern Norway) covering a period of 27 years were analysed with parallel data on sea temperature and the size and abundance of the puffins' main prey (the Norwegian spring–spawning herring, Clupea harengus). By fitting statistical models to the fledging success, we found that one effect of climate on this population of Atlantic puffins is indirect and mediated by sea temperature affecting the availability of first–year herring. The best model also demonstrates that the breeding success of the Røst puffins may be quantitatively predicted from the size of first–year herring and sea temperature.
Use of predictive text in text messaging over the course of a year and its relationship with spelling, orthographic processing and grammar

An investigation into the impact of predictive text use upon the literacy skills of primary school, secondary school and university cohorts was conducted over the course of a year. No differences in use of text abbreviations (‘textisms’) were found between predictive text users and nonusers. However, secondary school children who used predictive text made more genuine spelling errors than nonusers. Predictive text was related to use of some specific grammatical violations in school-age children’s text messages but was not related overall to the tendency to make grammatical errors when texting. University students, however, made significantly fewer grammatical errors in their text messages when they used predictive text. Over the course of a year, predictive text use was variable for all age groups. Consistency of predictive text use was unrelated to grammatical understanding, spelling or orthographic processing for primary and secondary school cohorts. Predictive text use was negatively related to morphological awareness for adult participants.
An assessment of the construct validity of the SF-12 summary scores across ethnic groups.

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to determine the construct validity of the 12-item Short Form health survey questionnaire (SF-12) across ethnic groups in a large community sample of the United Kingdom. METHODS A postal survey was carried out in English using a questionnaire booklet, containing the SF-12 and a number of other items relating to experiences of chronic illness and utilization of health care services. The dataset was the National Survey of NHS Patients. The sample consisted of 1000 residents within each Health Authority in England who were randomly selected from the electoral registers, giving an initial sample of 100000. RESULTS A total of 61 426 (61.4 per cent) questionnaires were returned; 94.3 per cent of respondents classified themselves as white and 5.7 per cent classified themselves as members of other ethnic groups. Construct validity of the SF-12 was assessed by comparing results from the two summary scores (the Mental Health Component Summary (MCS) score and the Physical Health Component Summary (PCS) score) with overall self-assessed health and limiting longstanding illness. Although there were generally consistent patterns of association between overall self-assessed health or limiting longstanding illness and the MCS and PCS scores in all the ethnic groups, there were significant differences between the MCS and PCS scores of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who understood English fluently and those who did not. Furthermore, there were differences in the completion rates of the SF-12 between ethnic groups and a reversal of the general pattern of increasing MCS scores with increasing age in Bangladeshis. CONCLUSION The results indicate that the use of the SF-12 to measure the health of ethnic minorities seems acceptable in most instances, but may prove problematic in those instances where respondents complete the questionnaire via an untrained translator, such as a friend or family member. The systematic differences in MCS and PCS scores between ethnic minorities who understood English fluently and those who did not suggest that the meaning of specific SF-12 items may change when informally translated. Future research using the SF-12 to measure the health status of ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom via postal surveys must include questions on whether respondents completed the questionnaires via informal translations. In general, those wishing to measure the health of members of ethnic groups who are unable to read English might consider using different techniques to gain the information from these groups.
Reliable topological place detection in bubble space

This paper introduces a novel approach to topo-logical place detection. The approach is based on previously proposed bubble space representation - where all sensory features and their relative S2- geometry are encoded in a manner that is implicitly dependent on robot pose. Its novelty is that ensuring sensory data reliability is integrated with place detection. This is achieved via checking for informativeness, coherence and plenitude using only the bubble space representation of the incoming sensory data. The stringency of these checks is controllable via a set of associated parameters. Experimental results with benchmark datasets indicate correct detection rates comparable to state-of-the-art approaches in place detection. Furthermore, the detected places can then be immediately used to generate the nodes in topological maps.
A new fusion image quality assessment based on edge and structure similarity

The quality assessment of fusion images is of fundamental importance for most image fusion applications. Piella proposes a quality metric for image fusion based on structural similarity but it has been proved not so good in some cases. In this paper we present a novel objective fusion image quality index which is also very easy to calculate and applicable to various image fusion processing applications. Statistics by many experiments, we find that in most cases when the edge image of fused results are closer to the addition result of the two original edge images, it can express better visual effects. So, we introduce the edge information and the corresponding addition result into the assessment and calculate the whole index based on the ideal edge structure both in part and unity. Experiments demonstrate that the new assessment maintains better consistency with human subjective perception.
Generic Regularization of Boosting-Based Algorithms for the Discovery of Regime-Independent Portfolio Strategies from High-Noise Time Series

Recently proposed boosting-based optimization offers a generic framework for the discovery of portfolios of complementary base trading strategies with stable combined performance over wide range of market regimes and robust generalization abilities. However, wide variety of market regimes and existence of hard-to-model periods reduces universe of financial instruments and achievable performance ranges for which such portfolio strategies can be found. Recently introduced generic regularization approach based on confusing (noisy) sample removal was shown to be effective for diversification of portfolio strategies discovered by boosting-based optimization. Here we argue and demonstrate that this regularization technique could be also effective in dealing with large periods of excessive volatility and significantly reduced determinism in training data. In the most recent history such situation occurred during current financial crisis. The algorithm for confusing sample removal is outlined and applied to the recent market data in the context of mid-frequency intraday trading.
Interaction Techniques for Object Selection/Manipulation inNon-Immersive Virtual Environments with Force Feedback

The interaction techniques (ITs) that are used for object selection/manipulation are very important for easier and faster user interaction with objects in virtual environment (VE). Although research in this area is very intensive, few works are interested in possibility to combine these techniques with force feedback. In this paper we present short review of ITs for immersive VE. We discuss the possibilities to apply these ITs in non-immersive virtual environment with force feedback. We also show advantages and disadvantages of force feedback in VE and we try to adapt the methods to provide with better interaction.
Is mispricing in asset prices due to the inflation illusion?

We examine whether the observed negative relations between stock returns and inflation and between housing returns and inflation can be explained by the inflation illusion hypothesis. We identify the mispricing component in asset prices (i.e., stock prices and housing prices) based on present value models, linear and loglinear models, and we then investigate whether inflation can explain the mispricing component using the data from three countries (the U.S., the U.K., and Korea). When we take into account the potential asymmetric effect of positive and negative inflation on the mispricing components in asset prices, which is an important implication of the inflation illusion hypothesis, none of the asset returns is compatible with the inflation illusion hypothesis in that both positive and negative inflation rates do not have a negative effect on the housing mispricing components. Instead, we find that behavioral factors such as consumer sentiments contribute to the mispricing of asset prices.
Self-validated numerical methods and applications

Preface This monograph is a set of course notes written for the 21 st Brazilian Mathematics Colloquium held at IMPA in July 1997. It gives an overview of the eld of self-validated numerics|computation models in which approximate results are automatically provided with guaranteed error bounds. We focus, in particular, on two such models: interval arithmetic and aane arithmetic. Interval arithmetic (IA) was developed in the 1960's by Ramon E. Moore 42]. IA is the simplest and most eecient of all validated nu-merics models, and, not surprisingly, the most widely known and used. After two decades of relative neglect, IA has been enjoying a strong and steady resurgence, driven largely by its successful use in all kinds of practical applications. We are conndent that many readers of this monograph will nd IA to be a useful tool in their own work as well. AAne arithmetic (AA) is a more complex and expensive computation model, designed to give tighter and more informative bounds than IA in certain situations where the latter is known to perform poorly. The AA model was proposed and developed recently by the authors 10{12], although a similar model had been developed in 1975 by E. R. Hansen 20]. Apart from its usefulness for certain special applications, AA is being presented here as an example of the many topics for research that are still unexplored in the eld of self-validated numerical methods. We apologize to the reader for the length and verbosity of these notes but, like Pascal, 1 we didn't have the time to make them shorter. 1 \Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. " |Blaise Pascal, Lettres Provinciales, XVI (1657). i ii Acknowledgements We thank the Organizing Committee of the 21 st Brazilian Mathematics Colloquium for the opportunity to present this course. We wish to thank Jo~ ao Comba, who helped implement a prototype aane arithmetic package in Modula-3, and Marcus Vinicius Andrade, who helped debug the C version and wrote an implicit surface ray-tracer based on it. Ronald van Iwaarden contributed an independent implementation of AA, and investigated its performance on branch-and-bound global optimization algorithms. Douglas Priest and Helmut Jarausch provided code and advice for rounding mode control. We wish to thank also Sergey P. Shary and Lyle Ramshaw for valuable comments and references, and Paulo Correa de Mello for the use of …
Bayesian Network Inference on Risks of Construction Schedule-Cost

There is an important relationship between construction costs and schedule, a more appropriate schedule causes less cost risks. In such cases, a more acceptable construction cost-risk analysis model that takes into account of schedule risks should be applied. In this paper, the construction schedule-cost risk is defined and based on Bayesian network a schedule-cost risk analysis model is established which can process qualitative information and quantitative information, especially can reveal the relationship between schedule-cost risk factors easier. And Bayesian network inference is utilized to analyze and forecast the risks of construction schedule-cost, which helps decision-makers to control the schedule risks and cost risks.
Mega-KV: A Case for GPUs to Maximize the Throughput of In-Memory Key-Value Stores

In-memory key-value stores play a critical role in data processing to provide high throughput and low latency data accesses. In-memory key-value stores have several unique properties that include (1) data intensive operations demanding high memory bandwidth for fast data accesses, (2) high data parallelism and simple computing operations demanding many slim parallel computing units, and (3) a large working set. As data volume continues to increase, our experiments show that conventional and general-purpose multicore systems are increasingly mismatched to the special properties of key-value stores because they do not provide massive data parallelism and high memory bandwidth; the powerful but the limited number of computing cores do not satisfy the demand of the unique data processing task; and the cache hierarchy may not well benefit to the large working set. In this paper, we make a strong case for GPUs to serve as special-purpose devices to greatly accelerate the operations of in-memory key-value stores. Specifically, we present the design and implementation of Mega-KV, a GPU-based in-memory key-value store system that achieves high performance and high throughput. Effectively utilizing the high memory bandwidth and latency hiding capability of GPUs, Mega-KV provides fast data accesses and significantly boosts overall performance. Running on a commodity PC installed with two CPUs and two GPUs, Mega-KV can process up to 160+ million key-value operations per second, which is 1.4-2.8 times as fast as the state-of-the-art key-value store system on a conventional CPU-based platform.
Impact of Work Family Conflict on Psychological Distress Among the Employees Working in Banking Sector

In this paper it is an attempt made to understand the two aspects of work family conflict: work conflicting with family and Family conflicts with work among the employees working in the public and private sectors banks in Gujarat. Conflict is the inevitable fact which is faced by every individual. The sample for this study was 400 employees, i.e. 200 each from public and private sector banks in Gujarat. In this study we tried to highlights the significance of the impact of work-life conflict on psychological distress of the bank employees. This paper examines the effects of some of the essential personal background variables like number of children, size of family, gender, and family type, type of bank and marital status on Work life conflict and psychological distress.
Finite-time Consensus for Nonlinear Multi-agent Systems with Fixed Topologies

In this paper, we study finite-time state consensus problems for continuous nonlinear multi-agent systems. Building on the theory of finite-time Lyapunov stability, we propose sufficient criteria which guarantee the system to reach a consensus in finite time, provided that the underlying directed network contains a spanning tree. Novel finite-time consensus protocols are introduced as examples for applying the criteria. Simulations are also presented to illustrate our theoretical results.
Corpus-Based Concatenative Synthesis

Corpus-based concatenative methods for musical sound synthesis have attracted much attention recently. They make use of a variety of sound snippets in a database to assemble a desired sound or phrase according to a target specification given in sound descriptors or by an example sound. With ever-larger sound databases easily available, together with a pertinent description of their contents, they are increasingly used for composition, high-level instrument synthesis, and interactive exploration of a sound corpus. This article gives an overview of the components needed for corpus-based concatenative synthesis and details of some realizations. Signal processing methods are crucial for all parts of analysis, (segmentation; and descriptor analysis), for synthesis, and can intervene in the selection part, e.g., for spectral matching
Towards a Formal Framework for Developing Secure Web Services

In this paper, we experiment with use of a formal framework for developing secure Web services (WSs) from components. The framework focuses on separating security requirements from the functional ones. For each component, the approach makes use of two complementary models: one is state-based, described in Z, and the other is event-based, expressed in Hoare's communicating sequential processes (CSP) process algebra. The former is particularly useful to capture persistent data and model "back-end" operations whereas the latter is particularly useful to model behaviour, and in particular, "front-end" interactions and communications. The whole system can then be seen in Z as a combination of the constituent components. In CSP the software architecture of the whole system could be viewed as a parallel composition of appropriate customization of the behaviour of relevant components. The CSP descriptions can be implemented as Web services using current technologies such as Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and Microsoft's . NET framework. We illustrate this approach with a case study for a conference management system. With this approach, it is possible to specify the core functionalities of a system independently from the security mechanisms. Authentication and authorization are viewed as components which are carefully integrated with the global system
Performance of iterative data detection and channel estimation for single-antenna and multiple-antennas wireless communications

In iterative data-detection and channel-estimation algorithms, the channel estimator and the data detector recursively exchange information in order to improve the system performance. While a vast bulk of the available literature demonstrates the merits of iterative schemes through computer simulations, in this paper analytical results on the performance of an iterative detection/estimation scheme are presented. In particular, this paper focus is on uncoded systems and both the situations that the receiver and the transmitter are equipped with either a single antenna or multiple antennas are considered. With regard to the channel estimator, the analysis considers both the minimum mean square error and the maximum likelihood channel estimate, while, with regard to the data detector, linear receiver interfaces are considered. Closed-form formulas are given for the channel-estimation mean-square error and for its Crame/spl acute/r-Rao bound, as well as for the error probability of the data detector. Moreover, the problem of the optimal choice of the length of the training sequence is also addressed. Overall, results show that the considered iterative strategy achieves excellent performance and permits, at the price of some complexity increase, the use of very short training sequences without incurring any performance loss. Finally, computer simulations reveal that the experimental results are in perfect agreement with those predicted by the theoretical analysis.
The Baxter Q-operator for the graded SL(2|1) spin chain

We study an integrable non-compact superspin chain model that emerged in recent studies of the dilatation operator in the super-Yang–Mills theory. It was found that the latter can be mapped into a homogeneous Heisenberg magnet with the quantum space in all sites corresponding to infinite dimensional representations of the SL(2|1) group. We extend the method of the Baxter Q-operator to spin chains with supergroup symmetry and apply it to determine the eigenspectrum of the model. Our analysis relies on a factorization property of the -operators acting on the tensor product of two generic infinite dimensional SL(2|1) representations. It allows us to factorize an arbitrary transfer matrix into a product of three ‘elementary’ transfer matrices which we identify as Baxter Q-operators. We establish functional relations between transfer matrices and use them to derive the T–Q relations for the Q-operators. The proposed construction can be generalized to integrable models based on supergroups of higher rank and, as distinct from the Bethe ansatz, it is not sensitive to the existence of the pseudovacuum state in the quantum space of the model.
Hybrid (Numerical-Physical) Circulatory Models: Description and Possible Applications

Circulatory models are used for several applications ranging from research, to education and training. They are based on different structures that are essentially numerical or hydraulic. Both structures present advantages and disadvantages which suggested developing a new class of circulatory models, defined as hybrid: hybrid circulatory models permit to merge numerical and physical models. This solution reduces the costs, enhances the flexibility and opens the way to many applications. This paper presents a prototype consisting of a hydraulic model of systemic arterial tree connected to a lumped parameters numerical model of the circulation developed in Lab VIEWtrade. The behavior of the model was verified reproducing two circulatory conditions, physiological and pathological. The latter was assisted by means of an intra-aortic balloon pump. The results show that hybrid modeling permits to build complex networks merging models based on different structures. The hybrid system is able to react to events occurring indifferently in any of the structures forming it
ATTITUDE TOWARD MATHEMATICS: OVERCOMING THE POSITIVE/NEGATIVE DICHOTOMY

This contribution deals with ‘attitude toward mathematics’, a construct which plays an important role in mathematics education. Our interest in research on attitude dates back to several years ago. In previous work (Di Martino & Zan, 2001, 2002, 2003; Zan & Di Martino, 2003) we underlined the lack of theoretical clarity that characterizes research on attitude and the inadequacy of most measurement instruments; we analyzed the definitions of attitude that either explicitly or implicitly researchers most frequently refer to; we discussed the ‘negative’ / ‘positive’ dichotomy; we found a relationship between the risk of circularity in research on attitude and the researcher’s implicit beliefs. In the following we will briefly summarize some results of these studies, in order to introduce recent findings from an Italian Project about attitude, aimed at investigating the phenomenon of ‘negative attitude towards mathematics’.