Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantifying and setting off network performance

While many aspects of the network and the collaboration process have been discussed in management literature, quantifying and setting off the network performance have remained largely unconsidered. Network performance management is an important arena for inter-organisational interaction. Therefore, a newly developed Shareholder Value-Added (SVA) transfer model will make a contribution to ease and support improvements in network management as well as to give specific guidelines and examples for its implementation. This paper also explains the inter-relationship between network decisions and the bottom line of the firm.
Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy

When the University of Michigan Press approached me to bring out a book of collected papers on increasing returns in economics I was surprised. I had thought that only older researchers, venerable and near retirement, issued collected works. But Timur Kuran, my editor, and Colin Day, the Press's director, argued that although the papers collected here have been receiving much attention lately, several of them have appeared in obscure places and are not easy to track down. In book form they would be accessible. Moreover, if they were brought together, a wider picture might emerge from the mosaic they create than from the individual pieces. This sounded like sufficient rationalization to me, and I accepted their invitation with gusto.
An Experiment with Conceptual Clustering for the Analysis of Security Alerts

In response to attack against corporative and enterprise networks, administrators deploy intrusion detection systems, monitors, vulnerability scans and log systems. These systems monitor and record host and network device activities searching for signs of anomalies and security incidents. Doing that, these systems generally produce a huge number of alerts that overwhelms security analysts. This paper proposes the application of a conceptual clustering technique for filtering alerts and shows the results obtained for seven months of security alerts generated in a real large scale SaaS Cloud system. The technique has been useful to support manual analysis activities conducted by the operations team of the reference Cloud system.
Associations between Religious Attendance, Social Support, and Depression in Psychiatric Patients

Religious attendance and social support have been found to be positively associated with mental well-being, although this may be threatened by depression. Here we studied whether religious attendance was associated with mildness of depression and whether social support explained this association among 1,179 patients in community mental health services in Kuopio province, Finland. More women (20%) than men (11%) attended religious events regularly. In logistic regression, mildness of depression (Beck Depression Inventory score ≤ 10) was associated with regular religious attendance in females but not in males. No higher-degree associations between religious attendance, social support, and mild depression were found in log-linear models. Religious attendance may be important in protecting mental well-being, but social support is not the explanation.
The Embouchure

Brass and woodwind specialists are known to differ considerably in their approach to problem embouchures, in their correcting of poor embouchure habits, and even in their ideas about the normal use of the embouchure in performance. Maurice M. Porter has used considerable restraint and foresight in handling this subject, for he attacks false impressions, inaccurate deductions, and a general lack of information at the very heart of the matter-the anatomy and physiology of the embouchure. As Mr. Porter puts it in in his Introduction, "The purpose of this book is to convey to wind musicians and to all others concerned the conclusions of a long research into the make-up of the embouchure. In addition to describing its musculature and the architecture of the important structures involved, the book is intended to provide examples of the subtle influences that could disturb the musician's embouchure and to suggest how these influences can be eliminated or avoided. I have also tried to relate the embouchure to certain phenomena during playing, such as resonance and fatigue, and to suggest ways of maintaining the developed embouchure for as long as possible. " The Embouchure, then, is written from an anatomically and physiologically analytical viewpoint rather than from the strictly performance practiceproblem approach. Mr. Porter sets the stage for clarity and understanding by stating at the outset his definitions of mouth structures, wind instrument classifications, and musculature, as well as the basic functions of organs involved in performance. From this vantage point, Mr. Porter considers the various degrees of embouchure discomfort and its causes and effects, ranging from projecting or separated teeth to excessive brass cup mouthpiece pressure. When the author writes about embouchure potential, he deals with factors affecting development of the embouchure as well as the relationships and movements of mouth structure. The normal occlusion (bite) and the receding and protruding lower jaw are examined. The matching of the differing types of occlusion to each of the wind instrument types is well done. Particularly good is the discussion of the interaction of "baby" teeth and Robert Rollins
Parallel Simulation of Inextensible Cloth

This paper presents an efficient simulation method for parallel cloth simulation. The presented method uses an impulse-based approach for the simulation. Cloth simulation has many application areas like computer animation, computer games or virtual reality. Simulation methods often make the assumption that cloth is an elastic material. In this way the simulation can be performed very efficiently by using spring forces. These methods disregard the fact that many textiles cannot be stretched significantly. The simulation of inextensible textiles with methods based on spring forces leads to stiff differential equations which cause a loss of performance. In contrast to that, in this paper a method is presented that simulates cloth by using impulses. The mesh of a cloth model is subdivided into strips of constraints. The impulses for each strip can be computed in linear time. The strips that have no common particle are independent from each other and can be solved in parallel. The impulse-based method allows the realistic simulation of inextensible textiles in real-time.
A two-stage approach to WLAN planning: Detailed performance evaluation along the Pareto frontier

This paper proposes an efficient solution to the open problem of network planning for large-scale WLAN deployments. WLAN performance is governed by the Csma-Ca protocol, whose dynamic effects are difficult to capture. Accurate performance evaluation depends on simulations and takes time. A detailed analysis of dozens candidate designs with varying Ap positions and channel assignments during network planning is therefore infeasible. In our solution, we first identify few good candidate designs using a multi-criteria optimization model, which features notions of cell overlap and station throughput. These candidate designs are taken from the corresponding Pareto frontier. In the second step, we evaluate the performance of the candidate designs by means of simulations. We apply our method to a realistic, large-scale planning scenario for an indoor office environment. The detailed simulations reveal important characteristics of the candidate designs that are not captured by the optimization model. The resulting performance differs significantly across the candidate designs. Hence, this approach successfully combines the benefits of mathematical optimization and simulations, yet avoiding their individual drawbacks.
Desig of Optimal Fuzzy Classifier Usig Ehaced Geetic Algorithm

One of the important issues in the design of fuzzy classifier is the formation of fuzzy if-then rules and the membership functions. This paper presents a Genetic Algorithm (GA) approach to obtain the optimal rule set and the membership function. To develop the fuzzy system the membership functions and rule set are encoded into the chromosome and evolved simultaneously using Genetic Algorithm. Advanced genetic operators are applied to improve the performance of the GA in designing the fuzzy classifier. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated through development of fuzzy classifier for Iris, Wine and Tcpdump data. From the simulation study it is found that the Enhanced Genetic Algorithm produces a fuzzy classifier which has minimum number of rules and whose classification accuracy is better than the results reported in the literature.
Effect of flexure hinge type on a 3D printed fully compliant prosthetic finger

Soft robotics, as a new dimension in robotics, is an rapidly growing research area. Fully compliant mechanisms and structures can be built using soft materials. Having a fully compliant system -a monolithic body- will reduce the manufacturing and assembly costs and show a whole-body bending performance similar to its natural counter-parts. Current prosthetics, particularly fingers and hands, require significant manufacturing and assembly operations. Using additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing), low cost and high performance prosthetic devices can be established. In this study, we report on a fully compliant finger which is 3D printed with a modified low-cost 3D printer based on the Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) technique. Prior to the finger fabrication, the bending behavior of some well-known flexure hinges were modelled and experimentally evaluated to find the most suitable design for a fully compliant prosthetic finger. Experimental and numerical results from the finite element analysis for the hinges and the complaint finger are in good correlation, encouraging us to establish a single piece prosthetic hand in the near future.
A Formalisation of Encapsulated Modification of Objects

Currently existing formalisations of object orientation are unsatisfactory w.r. t. inheritance. This is due to an inherent conflict between inheritance and encapsulation. To solve this conflict, we present a formal model with a clear syntactic distinction between “inheritable entities” and objects. This model naturally gives rise to two types of incremental modification of objects without compromising encapsulation. Both types of modification are complementary from a software engineering point of view.
Optimal scheduling for UET-UCT grids into fixed number of processors

The n-dimensional grid is one of the most representative patterns of data flow in parallel computation. Many scientific algorithms, which require nearest neighbor communication in a lattice space, are modeled by a task graph with the properties of a simple or enhanced grid. In this paper we consider an enhanced model of the n-dimensional grid by adding extra diagonal edges and allowing unequal boundaries for each dimension. First, we calculate the optimal makespan for the generalized UET-UCT (Unit Execution Time-Unit Communication Time) grid topology and then, we establish the minimum number of processors required, to achieve the optimal makespan. We present the optimal time schedule, using unbounded and bounded number of processors, without allowing task duplication. This paper proves that UET-UCT scheduling of generalized n-dimensional grids into fixed number of processors is low complexity tractable.
The importance of biotic interactions and local adaptation for plant response to environmental changes: field evidence along an elevational gradient

Predicting the response of species to environmental changes is a great and on‐going challenge for ecologists, and this requires a more in‐depth understanding of the importance of biotic interactions and the population structuration in the landscape. Using a reciprocal transplantation experiment, we tested the response of five species to an elevational gradient. This was combined to a neighbour removal treatment to test the importance of local adaptation and biotic interactions. The trait studied was performance measured as survival and biomass. Species response varied along the elevational gradient, but with no consistent pattern. Performance of species was influenced by environmental conditions occurring locally at each site, as well as by positive or negative effects of the surrounding vegetation. Indeed, we observed a shift from competition for biomass to facilitation for survival as a response to the increase in environmental stress occurring in the different sites. Unlike previous studies pointing out an increase of stress along the elevation gradient, our results supported a stress gradient related to water availability, which was not strictly parallel to the elevational gradient. For three of our species, we observed a greater biomass production for the population coming from the site where the species was dominant (central population) compared to population sampled at the limit of the distribution (marginal population). Nevertheless, we did not observe any pattern of local adaptation that could indicate adaptation of populations to a particular habitat. Altogether, our results highlighted the great ability of plant species to cope with environmental changes, with no local adaptation and great variability in response to local conditions. Our study confirms the importance of taking into account biotic interactions and population structure occurring at local scale in the prediction of communities’ responses to global environmental changes.
Echocardiography in Chagas Heart Disease

Background— Chagas heart disease is a frequent cause of morbidity and mortality in Latin America. Echocardiography provides useful diagnostic and prognostic information and is an important tool in the management of patients with Chagas disease. Methods and Results— A search for relevant publications was obtained from MEDLINE, LILACS, and SCIELO sources. Acute Chagas myocarditis is a rare disorder in which pericardial effusion is frequent. Echocardiography may exclude pericardial tamponade in case of heart failure. Chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy evolves for several decades after the infection. Epidemiological history, positive serology, and suggestive clinical and ECG abnormalities establish the diagnosis. About three quarters of chronic Chagas cardiomyopathy subjects remain asymptomatic with normal (indeterminate form) or abnormal ECGs. Early Doppler abnormalities includes prolongation of isovolumic contraction and relaxation times. Systolic function frequently is normal, but dysfunction may be elicited by stress tests. Half or more of symptomatic patients have a left ventricular apical aneurysm and other segmental contractile abnormalities similar to those seen in coronary heart disease. The dilated nonsegmental form is indistinguishable from dilated cardiomyopathy. Results from univariate and multivariate Cox survival analyses indicate that impaired systolic function and increased ventricular dimensions have significant value in predicting cardiac morbidity and mortality. Cardiac ultrasound commonly is used in the follow-up of patients and in the assessment of various therapeutic modalities. Conclusions— Echocardiographic and Doppler techniques provide useful structural and functional information in the detection of early myocardial damage, risk assessment of prognosis, disease progression, and management of patients with Chagas disease.
The Effects of Interpersonal and Informational Justice on Perceptions of an Authority Figure

There are several traits and characteristics that people may use to judge an authority based on how that authority acts and treats those under him or her. However, are there times when an authority can influence his or her own reputation among subordinates simply by the type of task he or she provides, or the level of information he or she presents? Prior evidence (Bies & Moag, 1986) has suggested that perceptions of authorities are influenced by a number of qualities. The purpose of this experiment was to test how the nature of a task and whether a rationale is provided for the task will affect the perception of interpersonal and informational fairness in relation to an authority figure. The findings suggest that authorities are indeed judged by the tasks they present and whether a rationale is given to explain those tasks.
CLIPS at TREC 11: Experiments in Filtering

At the TREC9 conference, we presented a new adaptive filtering system called RELIEFS. This system which is based on the idea of resonance, combines for each term t, the relative frequency of relevance knowing t and the relative frequency of t kwowing relevance. On the basis of other experiments, several changes have been made. We improved our threshold adaption, we slightly changed our relevance evaluation function and we gave up the use of conjunctions and thesaurus. The system is now focusing more exclusively on the combination of both reverse frequencies that we believe to represent the fundamental aspects of relevance estimation. This year we used the system in its new version and we tested it on the Reuters corpus. Focusing on the combination of the two frequencies, we varied their relative importance. The results show globally a good effectiveness especially when both frequencies are balanced.
Extending rule developing experimentation to perception of food packages with eye tracking.

The paper presents an approach to analyzing food packages based on the eye-tracking analysis of consumers exposed to experimentally designed prototypes of packages based on Rule Developing Experimentation methodology. In addition, the paper analyses emotional reactions to conceptual packages (the respondent had a choice among seven alter- natives, including one 'non-emotion' response). The combined approach allows the researcher and the designer to control the stimuli, presenting known combinations to the respondent leading to the discovery of existing links between what the researcher can do to the stimulus by means of a systematic design, how the eye tracks these changes, and what type of re- sponse the participant in a study might make (e.g., interest, statement of emotion). The paper explores this new interlinked approach working with a popular product, wine in a box.
Research of Kungfu animation based on video capture

In this paper, we presented a new method to make Kungfu animation by combining emerging technologies — video-based capture technology — with the Kungfu animation. In this method, we extract the main outline of Kungfu role from the data captured on the video through the “Edge Detection Technique”, predict the following data by Kalman filter, and then obtained the motion data via comparison. Finally, by applying the motion data to the animated character to be expressed, we will get the new Kungfu animation which can be displayed with the same movement of the original one but in a different character.
Myth and Reality : Usage Behavior in a Large Data-Intensive Physics Project

1 Motivation Sustained effort is ongoing to support various scientific communiti es and their large-scale data-sharing and data-analysis needs through a distributed, transparent infrastr ucture (GriPhyN project [2], PPDG [13], EU DataGrid [5], etc). This infrastructure necessarily inc ludes components for file location and management as well as for computation and data transfer scheduling . However, there is little information available on the specific usage patterns that emerge in t hese data-intensive, scientific projects. As a consequence, current designs either employ a “cover-all” approac h (provisioning for all possible usage patterns and not optimizing for any), or start from unproved assumpti ons on user behavior by extrapolating results from other systems (such as file syst ems, the web, etc.). If inappropriate, these assumptions may lead to inadequate design decisions or to performa nce evaluations under unrealistic conditions.
Range resolution of ultrasonic distance measurement using single bit cross correlation for robots

Ultrasonic sensors are widely used in distance measurement for robots. In practice, there is an important problem about the measurement resolution which is the ability to distinguish different targets. This paper is concern about the range resolution of the ultrasonic distance measurement using cross correlation. The highlight model is introduced to describe the resolution playing an important role in measurement. Then the resolution of cross correlation relies on ambiguity function of the signal. At the same time, the phase mismatch effect can be improved by using complex operation. The single bit correlation method can improve measurement error and reduce the computational complexity. The simulation results show that this method is suitable for distance measurement.
Risperidone monotherapy in manic inpatients: An open label, multicentre trial

Objective: The efficacy of risperidone in acute mania has been established in several controlled clinical studies. However, this may not necessarily resemble the clinical effectiveness of this treatment, as patient populations in controlled studies are considered as being not representative. This study examined risperidone monotherapy in a sample of severe manic patients in admission ward settings. Methods: Open label monotherapy with risperidone was examined for 3 weeks in 30 inpatients. Subjects were evaluated with structured clinical rating scales: Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS), Clinical Global Impression, bipolar version (CGI-BP), and the Extrapyramidal Symptom Rating Scale (ESRS). In addition, the amount of concomitant use of benzodiazepines was documented. Data were analysed using a last observation carried forward method on all subjects given medication at baseline. Results: Significant improvement from baseline to exit was observed both for the YMRS and CGI-BP. Responder analysis revealed that two-thirds of the patients showed a reduction of ≥50% in the YMRS score, and 69% of the patients were rated as very much improved or much improved on the CGI-BP mania scale at study exit. Only three patients dropped out due to adverse events, in one case due to extrapyramidal symptoms. Conclusions: The efficacy of risperidone in the acute treatment of mania as observed in controlled studies could be replicated in this open monotherapy study in a severely manic inpatient population. Considering the mean maximal dosage of 5.5±0.9mg risperidone, the tolerability and safety profile appeared satisfactory.
Combine automatic and manual process on web service selection and composition to support QoS

An original GA (genetic algorithm) is usually used for QoS (quality of service)-based Web services selection, however, such algorithm has to do a large redundancy repeat to find a solution for the reason that it does not make use of adequate output information. Thus, the efficiency and precision of GA are reduced. Moreover, fixed fitness function can not change to fit for different composite situations and complete automatic process so GA sometimes would miss the most suitable solution. To remedy this situation, this paper proposes a novel algorithm GBAA (genetic based ant algorithm) which could put feedback information to original GA by using MMAS (max-min ant system) and it also overcome some drawbacks of MMAS such as long time need and slow convergence. The new approach could gain the benefits of both GA and MMAS. Besides GBAA DC (divide and composite) method and rank sort method are added. DC is adopted to analysis business requirement and to build process. After computing QoS attributes, a manual step is allowed to put into selection process and a rank sort method is used to distinguish profits of different solutions. The automatic process which is cooperated with manual process could help user to make more effective decisions on Web service selection.