Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Kirchhoff's Rule for Quantum Wires. II: The Inverse Problem with Possible Applications to Quantum Computers

In this article we continue our investigations of one particle quantum scattering theory for Schroedinger operators on a set of connected (idealized one-dimensional) wires forming a graph with an arbitrary number of open ends. The Hamiltonian is given as minus the Laplace operator with suitable linear boundary conditions at the vertices (the local Kirchhoff law). In ``Kirchhoff's rule for quantum wires'' [J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 32, 595 - 630 (1999)] we provided an explicit algebraic expression for the resulting (on-shell) S-matrix in terms of the boundary conditions and the lengths of the internal lines and we also proved its unitarity. Here we address the inverse problem in the simplest context with one vertex only but with an arbitrary number of open ends. We provide an explicit formula for the boundary conditions in terms of the S-matrix at a fixed, prescribed energy. We show that any unitary $n\times n$ matrix may be realized as the S-matrix at a given energy by choosing appropriate (unique) boundary conditions. This might possibly be used for the design of elementary gates in quantum computing. As an illustration we calculate the boundary conditions associated to the unitary operators of some elementary gates for quantum computers and raise the issue whether in general the unitary operators associated to quantum gates should rather be viewed as scattering operators instead of time evolution operators for a given time associated to a quantum mechanical Hamiltonian.
Determining factors influencing information security culture among ICT librarians

The purpose of this study is to examine information security culture among and to investigate the factors that contribute to the information security culture among ICT librarians. The study uses the quantitative research method to analyze the responses to open-ended questions by 56 ICT librarians in private colleges. An empirical study is presented of an information security culture assessment instrument, which is a questionnaire, thereby providing a valid and reliable tool that can be used by organizations (libraries) to assess the in-house level of the information security culture. The evidence suggests that principles significantly influence the information security culture among ICT librarians. The developed statements in the information security culture assessment instrument are not categorized to be answered by different audiences in an organization. This could be useful as not all employees would, for instance, be in a position to answer management and strategic questions. Practitioners should understand the factors influencing the information security culture in order to develop a good culture and at the same time to protect their information assets in organization.
Tone recognition of Chinese continuous speech using tone critical segments

This paper presents our approach to automatically detect tone nuclei, and to use their features for recognizing lexical tones of Chinese continuous speech. We have suggested that Fundamental frequency (F0) contour of a syllable usually consists of three segments: onset course, tone nucleus and offset course. Among them, only tone nucleus contains key features for tone discrimination, hence the tone critical segment of a syllable. The other two segments result from physiological transition effect of human vocal cords, and are affected largely by adjacent tones in continuous speech. The tone nucleus can be detected out by a two-process scheme; the first process segments a syllable F0 contour by Segmental Clustering algorithm, and the second one finds tone nucleus according to knowledge rules on suprasegmental features. Tone recognition performance can be improved by using tone nucleus features and discarding others. Tone recognition experimental results proved the advantage of our method over the conventional ones.
Study on Determination of Core Enterprise Based on Set Pair Analysis

This the foundation of developing virtual enterprise is to determine the core enterprise. This paper established its evaluation index system on the basis of the Role and the ability that the core enterprise must have, and determine the weights of each evaluation index by Analytic Network Process(ANP); The appraiser judge the index and got the coefficient matrix of evaluation decision that based on the set pair analysis; And it can got the total evaluation decision after the weight of expert were obtained by group decision making.Then we can determine weather a enterprise can becoming the core enterprise through the principles of decision-making more than half. The results of the empirical Analysis showed that this method have a good practicality.
Enhanced Texture Editing using Self Similarity

Texture mapping is an indispensable tool for achieving realism in computer graphics. Significant progress has been made in recent years with regards to the synthesis and editing of 2D texture images. However, the exploration of user control for semi-automatic texture editing remains an open area of research. We present methods that partially address the semantic and technical limitations of Self-Similarity Based Editing. This is achieved by providing the user with more control over the similarity metric during editing and over spatial re-arrangement during cloning.
Collagen–based scaffolds for skin tissue engineering

The aim of this study was to obtain four collagen based porous scaffolds and to assess their in vitro biocompatibility and biodegradability in order to use them for skin tissue engineering. We have prepared four variants of collagen–based biodegradable sponges by liophilization of type I collagen solution and three variants of collagen–agarose mixture in different ratios 2:1 (A), 1:1 (B) and 1:2 (C). These scaffolds had microporous structure with a higher than 98% porosity and a reduced biodegradation after their exposure to UV radiation. The incorporation of agarose into the collagen scaffolds has improved their structural stability. In vitro biocompatibility testing for the four types of sponges was performed on a stabilized fibroblast cell line and showed that both cell viability and morphology were not altered by collagen and collagen–agarose variants A and B sponges. These three porous sponges demonstrated potential for future application as cell scaffolds in skin tissue engineering.
EOG based control of mobile assistive platforms for the severely disabled

Assistive robots are increasingly being used to improve the quality of the life of disabled or handicapped people. In this paper a complete system is presented that can be used by people with extremely limited peripheral mobility but having the ability for eye motor coordination. The electrooculogram signals (EOG) that results from the eye displacement in the orbit of the subject are processed in real time to interpret intent and hence generate appropriate control signals to the assistive device. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology and the algorithms are demonstrated using a mobile robot for a limited vocabulary
The Impact of a Naturalistic Stressor on Spontaneous Alternation Behavior: A New Animal Model of OCD

Over the past few decades, various animal models of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) have been developed. Similarly, various stressors have been used throughout animal research. The Spontaneous Alternation Behavioral (SAB) model is a well-established model of OCD while 2,5-dihydro-2,4,5-trimethylthiazoline (TMT) has recently become a popular naturalistic stressor. This study linked the two together, thus modeling the effect of stress on OCD behaviors. After living in an enriched or standard environment for 3 weeks, male Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to either TMT or no odor, and then were examined in the SAB task. Unlike what was hypothesized, the enriched environment proved not to be obviously protective towards future stress in terms of SAB behavior. However, rats housed in enriched environments proved to be more decisive, which could be reflective of the protective nature of their enriched housing. Additionally, an interaction effect of housing and odor in terms of distance traveled during odor exposure, paired with the rats’ location in regard to the odor source, lead the researchers to believe that the enriched housing was protective for rats faced with stress. TMT proved to be effectively aversive to the rats yet, unlike what was hypothesized, TMT was not shown to be stress-inducing, at least not in a way that increased OCD-like behavior as modeled by the SAB model. The effects of stress on OCD is challenging to model and further research in this field, using a variety of models, will need to be explored.
The zone of proximal development in Vygotsky's analysis of learning and instruction.

What kind of instruction is optimal for a particular child? Without doubt, this question is immediately comprehensible to any committed teacher in virtually any country in the world, and most teachers are likely to want concrete answers to the question, not only as a theoretical puzzle, but in relation to their immediate practices. If one were to look to scientific psychology and educational research for advice in relation to this practical problem, what would the answer(s) look like? This simple question raises several profound problems. Normative and political issues about the goals of instruction and the resources available for realizing these goals must be resolved. A theory of learning that can explain how intellectual capabilities are developed is needed. If instruction is not viewed as an end in itself, then a theory about the relationship between specific subject matter instruction and its consequences for psychological development is also needed. This last problem was the main tension against which Vygotsky developed his well-known concept of zone of proximal development , so that the zone focused on the relation between instruction and development, while being relevant to many of these other problems. Vygotsky's concept of zone of proximal development is more precise and elaborated than its common reception or interpretation. The main purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive introduction to and interpretation of this concept, along with comments about predominant contemporary interpretations. The chapter concludes with some perspectives and implications derived from the interpretation presented here.
Evolving Cooperative Groups : Preliminary

Multi-agent systems require coordination of sources with distinct expertise to perform complex tasks eeectively. In this paper, we use co-evolutionary approach using genetic algorithms to evolve multiple individuals who can eeectively cooperate to solve a common problem. We concurrently run a GA for each individual in the group. In this paper, we experiment with a room painting domain which requires cooperation of two agents. We have used two mechanisms for evaluating an individual in one population: (a) pair it randomly with members from the other population, (b) pair it with members of the other population in a shared memory containing the best pairs found so far. Both the approaches are successful in generating optimal behavior patterns. However, our preliminary results exhibit a slight edge for the shared memory approach.
Predicting In Vivo Anti-Hepatofibrotic Drug Efficacy Based on In Vitro High-Content Analysis

Background/Aims Many anti-fibrotic drugs with high in vitro efficacies fail to produce significant effects in vivo. The aim of this work is to use a statistical approach to design a numerical predictor that correlates better with in vivo outcomes. Methods High-content analysis (HCA) was performed with 49 drugs on hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) LX-2 stained with 10 fibrotic markers. ∼0.3 billion feature values from all cells in >150,000 images were quantified to reflect the drug effects. A systematic literature search on the in vivo effects of all 49 drugs on hepatofibrotic rats yields 28 papers with histological scores. The in vivo and in vitro datasets were used to compute a single efficacy predictor (Epredict). Results We used in vivo data from one context (CCl4 rats with drug treatments) to optimize the computation of Epredict. This optimized relationship was independently validated using in vivo data from two different contexts (treatment of DMN rats and prevention of CCl4 induction). A linear in vitro-in vivo correlation was consistently observed in all the three contexts. We used Epredict values to cluster drugs according to efficacy; and found that high-efficacy drugs tended to target proliferation, apoptosis and contractility of HSCs. Conclusions The Epredict statistic, based on a prioritized combination of in vitro features, provides a better correlation between in vitro and in vivo drug response than any of the traditional in vitro markers considered.
T-SLAM: Registering topological and geometric maps for robot localization in large environments

This article reports on a map building method that integrates topological and geometric maps created independently using multiple sensors. The procedure is termed T-SLAM to emphasize the integration of Topological and local Geometric maps that are created using a SLAM algorithm. The topological and metric representations are created independently, being local metric maps associated with topological places and registered at the topological level. The T-SLAM approach is mathematically formulated and applied to the localization problem within the Intelligent Robotic Porter System (IRPS) project, which is aimed at deploying mobile robots in large environments (e.g. airports). Some preliminary experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method.
Large-Scale Online Multitask Learning and Decision Making for Flexible Manufacturing

Large-scale machine coordination is a primary approach for flexible manufacturing, enabling large-scale autonomous machines to dynamically coordinate their actions in pursuit of a custom task. One of the key challenges for such large-scale systems is finding high-dimensional coordination decision-making policies. Multitask policy gradient algorithms can be used in search of high-dimensional policies, particularly in collaborative decision support systems and distributed control systems. However, it is difficult for these algorithms to learn online high-dimensional coordination control policies (CCP) from large-scale custom manufacturing tasks. This paper proposes a large-scale online multitask learning and decision-making approach, which can consecutively learn high-dimensional CCP in order to quickly coordinate machine actions online for large-scale custom manufacturing task. A large-scale online multitask leaning algorithm is developed, which is able to learn large-scale high-dimensional CCP in a flexible manufacturing scenario. An online stochastic planning algorithm is proposed, which online optimizes the Markov network structure in order to avoid expensive global search for the optimal policy. Experiments have been undertaken using a professional flexible manufacturing testbed deployed within a smart factory of Weichai Power in China. Results show the proposed approach to be more efficient when compared with previous works.
An Architecture for Context-Aware Semantic Web Services

Context awareness in Web services is gaining momentum. Since it is not a trivial task, it suffers from lack of a general solution. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for context-aware semantic Web services which is applicable for any environment. It is established based on composition of context provider Web services and other context-aware semantic Web services. In addition, an extended version of the semantic Web service ontology language for semantic Web services is introduced, in order to make it possible to find appropriate context-aware semantic Web services based on available context information. So as to make it applicable for any environment, the solution does not hold any assumption about the user's context source. Rather, the property of context level is defined.
An Efficient Stream-based Join to Process End User Transactions in Real-Time Data Warehousing

In the field of real-time data warehousing semistream processing has become a potential area of research since last one decade. One important operation in semi-stream processing is to join stream data with a slowly changing diskbased master data. A join operator is usually required to implement this operation. This join operator typically works under limited main memory and this memory is generally not large enough to hold the whole disk-based master data. Recently, a seminal join algorithm called MESHJOIN (Mesh Join) has been proposed in the literature to process semistream data. MESHJOIN is a candidate for a resource-aware system setup. However, MESHJOIN is not very selective. In particular, MESHJOIN does not consider the characteristics of stream data and its performance is suboptimal for skewed stream data. In this paper we propose a novel Semi-Stream Join (SSJ) using a new cache module. The algorithm is more appropriate for skewed distributions, and we present results for Zipfian distributions of the type that appears in many applications. We present the cost model for our SSJ and validate it with experiments. Based on the cost model we also tune the algorithm up to a maximum performance. We conduct a rigorous experimental study to test our algorithm. Our experiments show that SSJ outperforms MESHJOIN significantly.
Reducing DRAM Cache Access in cache miss via an effective predictor

As more and more cores are integrated on a single chip, memory speed has become a major performance bottleneck. The widening latency gap between high speed cores and main memory has led to the evolution of multi-level caches and using DRAM as the Last-Level-Cache (LLC). The main problem of employing DRAM cache is their high tag lookup latency. If DRAM cache misses, the latency of memory access will be increased comparing with the system without DRAM cache. To solve this problem, we propose an effective predictor to Reduce DRAM Cache Access (RCA) in cache miss. The predictor composes of a saturating counter and a Partial MissMap (P_Map). If the saturating counter indicates a hit, then the request will be send to the P_Map to further lookup whether it is a hit or not. The evaluation results show that RCA can improve system performance by 8.2% and 3.4% on average, compared to MissMap and MAP_G, respectively.
GeoJSON Web Service based road assets management system for Surabaya city using mobile GPS

In this research, we have constructed road assets management system for Surabaya, the second biggest city in Indonesia. As reported in this paper, we have managed 607 assets -comprising traffic signs, traffic lights, and road marking- which are spread out at 365 different locations. The availability of mobile apps, which are equipped with camera and Global Positioning System (GPS), allows our proposed system to be implemented for road assets management system in other cities in Indonesia.
Analysis and Code Model Extraction for C/C++ Source Code

In the area of re-engineering or re-purposing ofexisting software, model driven methodologies are hard to adoptbecause of lack of the central asset: models for the existing sourcecode. Large companies and organizations that maintain a largecode basis over long periods of time have recognized this issue,and are looking for ways to turn that code basis into modelsunderstandable under a business purposes point of view.In this paper, we introduce a technique that address thisissue for C/C++ code. It delivers code-models, a representationof source code close to control flow graphs, by means oftool-supported analysis and transformations from legacy sourcecode. Code models extend usual control flow graphs with richinformation on both nodes and edges. They are immediatelyanalyzable and verifiable in the jABC MDD framework, thusadequate for a model driven design, development, and evolutionprocess.
A Low Complexity Video Watermarking in H.264 Compressed Domain

In this paper, a new blind and readable H.264 compressed domain watermarking scheme is proposed in which the embedding/extracting is performed using the syntactic elements of the compressed bit stream. As a result, it is not necessary to fully decode a compressed video stream both in the embedding and extracting processes. The method also presents an inexpensive spatiotemporal analysis that selects the appropriate submacroblocks for embedding, increasing watermark robustness while reducing its impact on visual quality. Meanwhile, the proposed method prevents bit-rate increase and restricts it within an acceptable limit by selecting appropriate quantized residuals for watermark insertion. Regarding watermarking demands such as imperceptibility, bit-rate control, and appropriate level of security, a priority matrix is defined which can be adjusted based on the application requirements. The resulted flexibility expands the usability of the proposed method.
Object oriented architecture for affective multimodal e-learning interfaces

This paper focuses on the architecture of affective multimodal user interfaces that exist in e-learning applications. The OO (Object Oriented) approach has been adopted in order to combine evidence from multiple modalities of interaction and data from emotion stereotypes and classify them into well structured objects with their own properties and methods. The proposed architecture can be adopted in future multi-purpose emotion recognition systems with multiple modalities and improved emotion detection algorithms. Furthermore, the resulting emotion detection server is capable of using and handling transmitted information from different sources of data during human-computer interaction. The evaluation of the OO architecture for affective interaction by programmers and teachers revealed that there are considerable improvements in the resulting e-learning system, including easiness in adding a modality of interaction, better structure for the available multi-modal information and user friendlier environment for the human-computer interaction. The evaluation of the resulting system provided quite satisfactory results considering the proposed affective multimodal architecture.
After Effects of Ontology Evolution

Use of ontology in Information Systems and Knowledge Sharing Systems are increasing that gives more importance to proper maintenance of these ontologies in use. Ontology change management is a collaborative process that incorporate areas like; ontology engineering, evolution versioning, merging, integration, and maintenance. As experts develop better understanding of the domain, incorporate changes accordingly to the body of knowledge, as a result the body of knowledge evolves from one state to another. Preserving consistency while accommodating changes is a crucial task that needs special attention. In this paper we provide a brief review of state of the art in the field of ontology evolution that set the stage for the unfolded challenges in ontology evolution to complete the process automatically. Then we also discuss very important issues that need special attention to minimize the after effects of ontology evolution.
Power and Spectral Efficient Free Space Optical Link Based on MIMO System

In this paper, we describe a terrestrial, line-of-sight free space optical (FSO) communication link using non- repetitive MIMO scheme with power efficient pulse position modulated (PPM) signal over highly scattering propagation medium described by Gamma-Gamma PDF channel. Due to its underlying low complexity, VBLAST- ZF (Vertical Bell Labs Layered Space Time - Zero Forcing) detection mechanism is exploited at the receiver side to increase overall spectral efficiency and channel capacity. Burst mode communication is assumed as the channel variations are considered to be constant within a block period and vary from block to block. Overall performance comparison under different turbulence conditions is obtained in terms of symbol error in a simulated random gamma-gamma PDF propagation environment. No coding has been included in the present work.