Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonsmooth ICA Contrast Minimization Using a Riemannian Nelder–Mead Method

This brief concerns the design and application of a Riemannian Nelder-Mead algorithm to minimize a Hartley-entropy-based contrast function to reliably estimate the sources from their mixtures. Despite its nondifferentiability, the contrast function is endowed with attractive properties such as discriminacy, and hence warrants an effort to be effectively handled by a derivative-free optimizer. Aside from tailoring the Nelder-Mead technique to the constraint set, namely, oblique manifold, the source separation results attained in an empirical study with quasi-correlated synthetic signals and digital images are presented, which favor the proposed method on a comparative basis.
Mining sequences with temporal annotations

In this paper we propose an extension of the sequence mining paradigm to (temporally-)annotated sequential patterns, where each transition in a sequential pattern is annotated with a typical transition time derived from the source data. Then, we present a basic solution for the novel mining problem based on the combination of sequential pattern mining and clustering, and assess this solution on two realistic datasets, illustrating how potentially useful patterns of the new form are extracted.
2 . Petri net model of SACK TCP

Qiang Ye, Mike H. MacGregor Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Email: {qye,macg} @cs.ualberta. ca Abstract The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) was designed to provide a reliable end-to-end network connection. The most up-to-date TCP version, SACK TCP, was designed to be capable of surviving multiple segment loss. However, it has been found that if too many segments in one transmission window are lost, even if SACK TCP transitions into Fast Recovery, it is still possible that timeout will finally occur and performance will be degraded significantly. In this paper we propose two changes in TCP that decrease the impact of lost segments by at least 50%. We developed a Petri net model of our new high-resilience SACK TCP and verified formally that our changes leave TCP “correct” in the sense that all states are bounded and the desired final state is always reachable from the initial state.
Constructivism in the third space: challenging pedagogical perceptions of science outreach and science education

ABSTRACT Informal opportunities for young people to engage with science have increased in response to declining uptake in science and a shortage of science graduates. This paper is set in the context of the recent introduction of science at primary level in Ireland and the existence of a great number of science outreach programmes, in particular from universities to support this sector. The recent movement to change science pedagogy in schools towards a focus on inquiry and constructivist methods commands discussion around pedagogical practice in both spaces (education and outreach). Building on the authors’ research which embraced a qualitative approach to ascertain participant perception of constructivism and understanding of conceptual and pedagogical dilemmas within science education, this paper reports a singularly quantitative insight, carried out in parallel, to facilitate a more formal and standardised comparison within and between populations and to allow generalisation to the larger population. A Constructivist Learning Environment (CLES) survey of both primary teachers (N = 148) and science outreach practitioners (N = 81) in Ireland was conducted, eliciting multiple dimension perceptions, in terms of pedagogical choice and comparative differentiators regarding sex, school size, outreach frequency in the classroom, role of outreach practitioner within their institution, outreach experience of the outreach practitioner. Results challenge beliefs presented in the literature about a deficit of science pedagogy amongst primary level teachers and therefore questions the role of science outreach in this relationship. This study provokes the necessity for a discussion of the third space, arising from the juxtaposition between science outreach and education.
Low power baseband processor for IoT terminals with long range wireless communications

In this paper, we propose a new baseband architecture for Internet of Things (IoT) terminals that support long range communications such as those based on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and spread spectrum technologies. We analyze the workload profiles of both systems and find that the frame detection unit has by far the highest computational load. Based on this analysis, we propose a simple architecture that uses only a scalar datapath. To optimize for low power consumption, we introduce application specific instructions that minimize register accesses and include address generation units for streamlined memory access. Preliminary synthesis results in 65nm node show that this architecture has an area of 0.204 μm2 and average energy consumption of 2.41 nJ/cycle when operated at 3MHz with supply voltage of 1.08 V.
OAI-PMH Repository Enhancement for the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Sciences Data Center

The NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) has almost 2 petabytes of canonical earth science data. Despite this volume of data, the ASDC does not maintain the information resources derived from this data: publications, web pages, visualizations, etc. We present the preliminary results of a project that augments the holdings of the ASDC by using search engine APIs to find relevant resources on the web, determine their importance by computing their weighted position in various search engines, download the resources and package them in an XML format (MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration) suitable for dissemination via an Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) repository. We present the current status of this project and our plans for future work.
Microtubule plus-end tracking by CLIP-170 requires EB1

Microtubules are polarized polymers that exhibit dynamic instability, with alternating phases of elongation and shortening, particularly at the more dynamic plus-end. Microtubule plus-end tracking proteins (+TIPs) localize to and track with growing microtubule plus-ends in the cell. +TIPs regulate microtubule dynamics and mediate interactions with other cellular components. The molecular mechanisms responsible for the +TIP tracking activity are not well understood, however. We reconstituted the +TIP tracking of mammalian proteins EB1 and CLIP-170 in vitro at single-molecule resolution using time-lapse total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy. We found that EB1 is capable of dynamically tracking growing microtubule plus-ends. Our single-molecule studies demonstrate that EB1 exchanges rapidly at microtubule plus-ends with a dwell time of <1 s, indicating that single EB1 molecules go through multiple rounds of binding and dissociation during microtubule polymerization. CLIP-170 exhibits lattice diffusion and fails to selectively track microtubule ends in the absence of EB1; the addition of EB1 is both necessary and sufficient to mediate plus-end tracking by CLIP-170. Single-molecule analysis of the CLIP-170–EB1 complex also indicates a short dwell time at growing plus-ends, an observation inconsistent with the copolymerization of this complex with tubulin for plus-end-specific localization. GTP hydrolysis is required for +TIP tracking, because end-specificity is lost when tubulin is polymerized in the presence of guanosine 5′-[α,β-methylene]triphosphate (GMPCPP). Together, our data provide insight into the mechanisms driving plus-end tracking by mammalian +TIPs and suggest that EB1 specifically recognizes the distinct lattice structure at the growing microtubule end.
Dual-channel optimally modified log-spectral amplitude estimator using spatial information

In this paper, we present a dual channel speech enhancement algorithm using optimally modified log-spectral amplitude estimator based on spatial information, which minimizes the mean-square error of the log-spectral for speech signals under target presence uncertainty. A target presence probability estimator based on the phase difference and magnitude squared coherence information to distinguish signals coming from the desired and undesired directions in each frequency bin is proposed. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves significantly reduced level of nonstationary noise without further distorting the desired signal components over the comparative algorithms.
Making the invisible visible: a grounded theory study of female adult trauma survivors reconstructing reality with supportive others

| xv Abstract Violence against women and children is a pervasive challenge across the globe. Research has shown that survivors of interpersonal violence, such as child maltreatment and intimate partner violence, may develop a complex form of posttraumatic stress disorder accompanied by, for example, difficulties in regulating emotions and relating to others. Additional mental health and social problems contribute to survivors’ long-term impairment. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand the key elements and processes that facilitate trauma recovery. The majority of research places survivors as individuals at the core of understanding trauma and recovery, which makes it an intrapsychic problem focused on, for example, the individual’s cognitive bias, maladaptive interpersonal behaviour, or emotion dysregulation which need repairing, rather than considering appropriately the role of context, external factors and social processes. Thus, trauma recovery may be more complicated. The current study explored key elements and processes of trauma recovery in female adult survivors with a focus on emotional and interpersonal skills, within the narratives of individuals constructing their own recovery within an interpersonal context. Fifteen female adult survivors were recruited from a statutory clinical service and a third-sector community project. Participants were interviewed individually, and data were analysed qualitatively using grounded theory. The study constructed a framework of four key components. Women survivors initially disengaged from feelings, other people and themselves (1), gradually made hidden experiences visible (2) and examined these (3), and eventually reconstructed their reality (4). Although not always a linear process, this framework revealed a
Tampering Detection Based On Blur Inconsistencies

— Image tampering is a digital art which needs understanding of image properties and good visual creativity. The tampering of image is done for many reasons either to enjoy fun of digital works creating pleasant photos or to produce false evidences. In this paper, we propose a method for image tampering detection based on blur inconsistency detection and classification. The image is partitioned into blocks, after the block based partitioning, for local blur kernels estimation a space variant prior for local blur kernel is proposed. To cluster the image blocks which have similar blur kernels into different regions k-means clustering is used and the clusters are classified as the different blur types. The experimental result shows there is an inconsistency in the blur types of an images by considering the difference value between the motion blur ,out of focus blur and the original image which is the proof for the image tampering.
Community, Aesthetics, and Authenticity: The Retail Curatorship of a Rapidly Gentrifying Australian Streetscape

While change to the retail landscape is a vital component of the gentrification narrative, most literature engages with the gentrification of retail from an objective position. In this article, we explore the process of rapid gentrification of Boundary Street, West End in Brisbane, Australia through the eyes of retailers themselves using photo elicitation. Retailers to varying degrees see themselves as custodians of the street and a disappearing public realm. We explore their narratives of change and authenticity in a rapidly changing spatial environment, driven by top-down capital-led gentrification. We use the perspective of retailers as newcomers, “voyeurs”; or more longstanding players, “curators,” to argue that the transformation of retail in a gentrifying neighborhood can be used to signify moments in the shift of the “authentic” from community to aestheticization and then to outright commodification.
An investigation of the presence of low-dimensional chaotic behaviour in the sediment transport phenomenon

Abstract Understanding the dynamics of the various components (and the mechanisms involved) in a river system and establishing precise relationships between them are important for an accurate description of the sediment transport phenomenon. Despite the significant progress achieved in the last century with the development of a variety of approaches, there is no generally accepted simple relationship between the components. A preliminary attempt is made herein to address the sediment transport problem from a low-dimensional chaotic dynamical perspective. Such an approach assumes that the seemingly complex behaviour of the sediment transport phenomenon can be the outcome of a simple deterministic system influenced by a few dominant nonlinear interdependent variables sensitive to initial conditions. As a first step towards assessing the validity of such a hypothesis, the dynamical behaviours of three important (and related) components of the sediment transport phenomenon, i.e. water discharge, suspended sediment concentration and bed load, in the Mississippi River basin (at St Louis, Missouri), USA are studied. The correlation dimension method is employed to identify the dynamical behaviour (chaotic or stochastic). The results indicate that the three components exhibit low-dimensional chaotic behaviour. A possible implication of such results could be that the complete sediment transport phenomenon might also exhibit low-dimensional chaotic behaviour. Efforts towards analysing the other components of the sediment transport system and establishing relationships between them are underway.
Reconsidering Cointegration in International Finance: Three Case Studies of Size Distortion in Finite Samples

This paper reconsiders several recently published but controversial results about the behaviour of exchange rates. In particular, it explores finite-sample problems in the application of cointegration tests and shows how these may have affected the conclusions of recent research. It also demonstrates how simple simulation methods may be used to check the robustness of cointegration tests in particular applied settings, and provides information on the potential sources of size distortion in these tests. Three case studies are presented. The first is the literature on cointegration and prediction of nominal spot exchange rates spawned by Baillie and Bollerslev (1989). The second is work on the long-run validity of the monetary model of exchange rate determination, particularly the contributions of MacDonald and Taylor (1993; 1994a). The final case study looks at the evidence presented by Kasa (1992) on common stochastic trends in the international stock market. Our results suggest that Baillie and Bollerslev's results are unaffected by finite-sample problems, but that the opposite is true for the other two case studies.
Incorporating SHA-2 256 with OFB to realize a novel encryption method

The SHA-2 hash function is used in many fields of security system such as digital signature, tamper detection, password protection and so on. SHA-2 is very important algorithm for integrity and authentication realization, SHA-2 is a one way algorithm to produce hash code of any message with 256 random hash bits (that's according to the version of SHA-2), which cannot be reversible, this property makes the hash function in general susceptible to breaking, and also the limitation of number of bits makes a probability of collision incidence. So, the hash code's merged with a kind of cryptography which is the stream cipher. The stream cipher mode of operation named Output Feedback (OFB) method combined with SHA-2 256 algorithm to produce encrypted hash code that can be reversible to achieve confidentiality. Implementation and simulation results of OFB based on SHA-2 256 algorithm obtained in LabVIEW project shows simplicity in modelling hash function algorithm generating hash codes encrypted by OFB method.
COVASIAM: an Image Analysis Method That Allows Detection of Confluent Microbial Colonies and Colonies of Various Sizes for Automated Counting

ABSTRACT In this work we introduce the confluent and various sizes image analysis method (COVASIAM), an automated colony count technique that uses digital imaging technology for detection and separation of confluent microbial colonies and colonies of various sizes growing on petri dishes. The proposed method takes advantage of the optical properties of the surfaces of most microbial colonies. Colonies in the petri dish are epi-illuminated in order to direct the reflection of concentrated light coming from a halogen lamp towards an image-sensing device. In conjunction, a multilevel threshold algorithm is proposed for colony separation and counting. These procedures improved the quantification of colonies showing confluence or differences in size. We tested COVASIAM with a sample set of microorganisms that form colonies with contrasting physical properties:Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Aspergillus nidulans,Escherichia coli, Azotobacter vinelandii,Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Rhizobium etli. These physical properties range from smooth to hairy, from bright to opaque, and from high to low convexities. COVASIAM estimated an average of 95.47% (ς = 8.55%) of the manually counted colonies, while an automated method based on a single-threshold segmentation procedure estimated an average of 76% (ς = 16.27) of the manually counted colonies. This method can be easily transposed to almost every image-processing analyzer since the procedures to compile it are generically standard.
Formal Analysis of Branch Prediction Algorithms

In modern microprocessors deep pipelines are widely used to speed up execution. The importance of a good branch predictor to the eeectiveness of a deep pipeline in the presence of conditional branches is well-known. There are several branch prediction schemes described in literature. The common way to evaluate the performance of branch prediction algorithms is simulation. In this paper we present a formal methodology for evaluating branch prediction algorithms. Our goal is to provide a technique for analyzing branch prediction which is based on rigorous mathematical foundations and thus provide a deeper insight into the analysis and design of branch prediction algorithms. Our technique hinges on constructing a Markov model or a probabilis-tic automaton corresponding to the test suite. We also show the eeectiveness of our method by experimental results.
CLUSTERED SIMULATION EXPERIMENTER : A tool for concurrent simulation execution on loosely coupled workstations

The "Clustered Simulation Experimenter" (CSX) project intends to make massive concurrent experiments without having to be concerned in locating computational resources to carry it out. This paper presents a tool whose principal purpose is to use a lot of idle and heterogeneous workstations at university laboratories and research centers to run concurrent simulations. The approach consists of adding and eliminating machines, with different architectures and operating systems, to a heterogeneous and dynamic cluster that permits to execute a distributed application. The communication among the machines and the co-ordination of the distributed application processes uses a typical network infrastructure using PVM v3.4. (Parallel Virtual Machine). An asynchronous design of the communications lets to execute sequential simulation models as fast as running it as normal simulation programs. Simulations executed using CSX are classic discrete-event oriented models that, basically, will be run using replication techniques, and monitored for extracting statistic information of the output variables of the model, letting CSX to improve response times through possibilities of an improved statistic output analysis. The first effort has been to be able to monitor the output variables of the models without causing an excessive "overhead". We present here how has been applied to SMPL, but the purpose is to use it in simulators such as CSIM, SIM++, QNAP and DEVS*. Due to the fact that the distributed execution environment is highly variable and is shared with other users, it is necessary to apply dynamic load balancing techniques.
The aged brain: genesis and fate of residual progenitor cells in the subventricular zone

Neural stem cells (NSCs) persist in the adult mammalian brain through life. The subventricular zone (SVZ) is the largest source of stem cells in the nervous system, and continuously generates new neuronal and glial cells involved in brain regeneration. During aging, the germinal potential of the SVZ suffers a widespread decline, but the causes of this turn down are not fully understood. This review provides a compilation of the current knowledge about the age-related changes in the NSC population, as well as the fate of the newly generated cells in the aged brain. It is known that the neurogenic capacity is clearly disrupted during aging, while the production of oligodendroglial cells is not compromised. Interestingly, the human brain seems to primarily preserve the ability to produce new oligodendrocytes instead of neurons, which could be related to the development of neurological disorders. Further studies in this matter are required to improve our understanding and the current strategies for fighting neurological diseases associated with senescence.
Antenna array configurations for massive MIMO outdoor base stations

Massive MIMO predicts unprecedented capacity and energy efficiency improvements in future networks, by the use of base stations with hundreds of antennas. However the crucial question of determining suitable, or even optimal, antenna hardware solutions for deploying such a large number of antennas in constrained physical spaces is still open. Here we analyse the potential benefits of using compact arrays, dual-polarized arrays, and 2D arrays in outdoor scenarios using a realistic 3D spatial channel model and accurate antenna electromagnetic simulations. In particular we show that it is detrimental to reduce the distance between elements below λ/3. Actually, better performances can be achieved by increasing the number of antennas using dual polarization instead (if random polarization of user antennas is assumed). We also show that good performance can be achieved by using 2D arrays, but at the expense of an increased number of total elements when compared to horizontal linear arrays.
Heart Disease, Clinical Proteomics and Mass Spectrometry

Heart disease is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the world. As such, biomarkers are needed for the diagnosis, prognosis, therapeutic monitoring and risk stratification of acute injury (acute myocardial infarction (AMI)) and chronic disease (heart failure). The procedure for biomarker development involves the discovery, validation, and translation into clinical practice of a panel of candidate proteins to monitor risk of heart disease. Two types of biomarkers are possible; heart-specific and cardiovascular pulmonary system monitoring markers. Here we review the use of MS in the process of cardiac biomarker discovery and validation by proteomic analysis of cardiac myocytes/tissue or serum/plasma. An example of the use of MS in biomarker discovery is given in which the albumin binding protein sub-proteome was examined using MALDI-TOF MS/MS. Additionally, an example of MS in protein validation is given using affinity surface enhanced laser desorption ionization (SELDI) to monitor the disease-induced post-translational modification and the ternary status of myoctye-originating protein, cardiac troponin I in serum.