Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing tools for use with webcasts

This research assessed the effectiveness of selected interface tools in helping people respond to classic information tasks with Webcasts. Rather than focus on a classic search/browse task to locate an appropriate Webcast to view, our work takes place at the level of an individual Webcast to assess interactivity within the contents of a single Webcast. The questions guiding our work are: (1) Which tool(s) are the most effective in achieving the best response? (2) How do users use those tools for task completion? In this study, 16 participants responded to a standard set of information tasks using ePresence, a Webcasting system that handles both live and stored video, and provides multiple techniques for accessing content. Using questionnaires, screen capture and interviews, we evaluated the interaction, assessed the tools, and based on our results, make suggestions for improving access to the content of stored Webcasts
Segmented Images Colorization Using Harmony

In the colorization process, artists fill image's regions with colors following harmony rules. Some region colorizations are more significant than others. In this paper we introduce a model for computer assisted colorization of segmented images using Itten's proportion contrast. Our model is able to process images composed of totally blank or partially filled regions. Though, each region must be filled with only one color. The user defines sectors representing colors on the chromatic hue wheel and may redefine each color's proportion. Then a set of colors is selected to compute the desired harmony. To proportionally colorize an image, already existing colors can be taken into account or the harmony can be applied only to blank regions. Due to the fact that regions cannot be divided, exact proportion contrast colorization of segmented images is a difficult algorithmic problem. In order to solve this problem we use different strategies and propose different methods to fill the regions. If they exist, exact solutions are proposed, otherwise different approximation methods are used to determinate combinations of colors-regions close to the defined proportions. Once the image is processed, the user can adapt hue (in the chosen sector), saturation and value of each region to enhance the result. Our model is flexible and specifically designed to help artists, illustrators, comics creators or any other user to automatically colorize (partially or totally) their images.
Subjective mental workload measurement using video fragments

Mental workload has been a relevant topic in traffic safety research for decades. In general workload measurements are expensive and time consuming. This paper presents the first steps in the development of a cheaper and quicker mental workload measurement method. It uses short video fragments of driving situations that are shown to the subject, after watching the video fragment the subject is asked to indicate their perceived mental effort if they would be driving in those situations themselves. The experiment revealed significant effects on mental workload for traffic density, age, weather, presence of Heavy Goods Vehicles and presence of Vulnerable Road Users. These results are in line with previous workload studies. The first results of the Video based Workload Measurement method (VWM) presented in this paper are promising as a sensitive and valid method for determining workload. However, in order to adequately attain its effectiveness, more research is needed.
Brain structure abnormalities in early-onset and adolescent-onset conduct disorder.

OBJECTIVE The developmental taxonomic theory proposes that neurodevelopmental factors play a critical role in the etiology of early-onset conduct disorder, whereas adolescent-onset conduct disorder arises as a result of social mimicry of deviant peers. Recent studies have challenged this theory by demonstrating that adolescents with both early- and adolescent-onset forms of conduct disorder show impaired emotional learning and abnormal neural activation during facial expression processing. The present study extends this work by investigating brain structure in both subtypes of conduct disorder. METHOD Voxel-based morphometry was used to compare gray matter volumes in four regions of interest (amygdala, insula, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal cortex) in male adolescents with early-onset (N=36) or adolescent-onset (N=27) conduct disorder and in healthy comparison subjects (N=27). Whole-brain structural analyses were also performed. RESULTS The combined conduct disorder group displayed gray matter volume reductions in the bilateral amygdala, extending into the insula, relative to healthy comparison subjects. Separate comparisons between healthy subjects and each conduct disorder subgroup revealed lower amygdala volume in both subgroups and reduced right insula volume in the adolescent-onset subgroup. Regression analyses within the conduct disorder subjects alone demonstrated a negative correlation between conduct disorder symptoms and right insula volume. CONCLUSIONS The results demonstrate that gray matter volume reductions in brain regions involved in processing socioemotional stimuli are associated with conduct disorder, regardless of age of onset. Brain structural abnormalities may contribute to the emergence of adolescent-onset as well as early-onset conduct disorder.
Stronger user authentication for web browser

Passwords are the most popular authentication mechanism on the Internet. People have to remember many passwords for their many online accounts. However, selecting and keeping track of all the passwords that are required to maintain a person's online identity becomes a cumbersome task. In this paper, we propose a password protocol that allows a user to securely login multiple web accounts using the same password. Our aim is to make web authentication more secure and more convenient. Each online account of a user is protected by a unique password generated from the user's single password using a combination of the password entered by the user, data associated with the web site, and a random string generated by the extension itself from a passphrase entered by the user. Compromising a user's password at one site does not allow the attacker to login at another site. Our method is secure against dictionary attacks, password phishing, and many other exploits. Working transparently, our method minimizes changes to user experience. It is easy to deploy as it can be implemented as a browser extension and requires no change on web servers.
Robust precoding for orthogonal space-time block coded MIMO cognitive radio networks

We consider a spectrum sharing based cognitive radio wireless communications system which consists of a secondary transmitter (ST) and a secondary receiver (SR), both equipped with multiple antennas, and a single-antenna primary user (PU). ST is composed of an orthogonal space-time block code (OSTBC) followed by a linear precoder which acts as a multimode beamformer. Given a fixed OSTBC, our goal is to design a robust linear precoder, where the robustness assumes addressing the problem of imperfect channel state information (CSI) of ST to SR (ST-SR) MIMO link at ST. Channel correlation information of ST to PU (ST-PU) link is also available at ST. The imperfect channel knowledge of the ST-SR link is described by a specified uncertainty region, known to ST. The robust precoding design criterion is the maximization of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the worst-case Frobeneus norm-bounded CSI mismatch subject to the transmit-power constraint of ST and interference-power constraint of PU. The original robust precoder design problem is non-convex and does not have any close-form solution. Using a semidefinite relaxation (SDR) approach, we transform it to a convex form and find the approximate solution using standard numerical methods. Simulation results are presented to show the performance of the robust precoding scheme.
An Intelligent Assistant for Obtaining the Optimal Policy during Operation Transients in a HRSG

This paper shows how to use Markov Decision Processes to guide the actions of the operation personnel during a transient in a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). The critical events shown correspond to situations where a strong participation of human operators is required. The aim is to help the steam generation control system to set the plant on a safe operation state. The proposed system also takes into account that either the actuators or control valves in the loop can fail. The possible recommended actions are of parallel nature so that different people can command different control devices to control the situation. A reward function specify the desired and non-desired operation states.
Code Red in the Boardroom: Crisis Management as Organizational DNA

Preface Introduction: Crises Happen, So be Prepared Types of Crises Attacks on Organizations When things go Bad When the Organization Misbehaves Managing Crises Crisis Sensing Network Crisis Management Plan as Living Document Crisis Management as DNA: Overcoming Resistance to the Crisis Management Process Appendix A: Sample Crisis Management Plans Elements Appendix B: Department of Homeland Security Fact Sheet for NIMS Index
Image Based Visual Servoing with Linear-Quadratic Regulator Control for Mobile Robots

The paper presents the design of controller for wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) which continuously follows humans indoors while maintaining a minimum distance of separation between the robot and a person. This task uses computer vision in the controller feedback loop and is referred to as vision-based control or visual servo control. Typically, visual servo techniques can be categorised into image based visual servoing (IBVS) and position-based visual servoing (PBVS). The paper discusses Image based visual servoing approaches for following human in an indoor environment. The Robotics system used here consists of camera for extracting the image features. A suitable motion control law is developed which can learn the robot behaviour policy and autonomously improve its performance to achieve the smooth and efficient travel path towards the object of interest.
SAVE: Sensor anomaly visualization engine

Diagnosing a large-scale sensor network is a crucial but challenging task. Particular challenges include the resource and bandwidth constraints on sensor nodes, the spatiotemporally dynamic network behaviors, and the lack of accurate models to understand such behaviors in a hostile environment. In this paper, we present the Sensor Anomaly Visualization Engine (SAVE), a system that fully leverages the power of both visualization and anomaly detection analytics to guide the user to quickly and accurately diagnose sensor network failures and faults. SAVE combines customized visualizations over separate sensor data facets as multiple coordinated views. Temporal expansion model, correlation graph and dynamic projection views are proposed to effectively interpret the topological, correlational and dimensional sensor data dynamics and their anomalies. Through a case study with real-world sensor network system and administrators, we demonstrate that SAVE is able to help better locate the system problem and further identify the root cause of major sensor network failure scenarios.
The Labour Party: A Centenary History

The Labour Party presents the latest thinking on the evolution of the Party during its first century. Trade unions, the parliamentary party and Labour's electoral strategy are considered alongside broader policy areas such as international relations and welfare. The process of modernization and change in the Labour Party under Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair is discussed in many of the chapters, which combine work from contemporary historians, political scientists and sociologists. This book is a unique opportunity both to celebrate and to assess critically the Labour Party's role in shaping the events of the twentieth century. It brings together academics from a variety of disciplines to examine the history of the Party's development and its impact on Britain in the 1900s. Contributions include commentaries and analyses from former Labour leaders, cabinet ministers and backbench MPs.
Monotone and Nonmonotone Dataaow Networks

The expressiveness of concurrent data ow primitives have been studied from the point of view of automata theory [19] as well as in terms of abstractly given processes de ned in terms of traces [20]. The expressiveness of the merge primitives, fair merge, angelic merge and in nity-fair merge were shown to hinge on monotonicity properties of their trace languages. From the point of view of concurrent automata an important class of automata called monotone automata were de ned and it was shown that fair merge could not be implemented by such an automaton. In this paper we study the relationship between monotonicity properties of automata and of trace languages. We characterize the trace languages computed by monotone automata and we show that the characterization does not correspond to the existing monotonicity properties of trace languages. These, relatively easy, results led us to discover a new indeterminate primitive, the fair stack, that turns out to be nonmonotone and to have interesting expressiveness properties. We show that a fair stack is strictly weaker than fair merge but provably incomparable with angelic merge. These results suggest that it is time to study seriously the class of nonmonotone automata.
Hunting malicious attacks in social networks

The Rapid growth of internet resulted in feature rich and dynamic web applications. This increase in features also introduced completely under estimated attack vectors. Cross site scripting attacks, SQL Injection and malicious file execution are the most dominant classes of web vulnerabilities reported by OWASP 2011. These attacks make use of vulnerabilities in the code of web applications, resulting in serious consequences, such as theft of cookies, passwords and other personal credentials. It is caused by scripts, which do not sanitize user input. Several server-side counter measures for XSS attacks do exist, but such techniques have not been universally applied, because of their deployment overhead. The existing client-side solutions degrade the performance of client's system resulting in a poor web surfing experience. We present automata-based symbolic string analyses (XHunter)for automatic verification of string manipulating programs we compute the pre and post conditions of common string functions using deterministic finite automata (DFAs). Experiment result shows that our approach finds large number of malicious attacks in web application.
Multicultural Education in Contexts: Lessons from Korean multicultural education for their immigrants to American educators

This piece takes a close look at Korean multicultural education as a way to engage in a conversation regarding multicultural education in the U.S. Specifically, Korean multicultural education falls short in addressing the fundamental problem that constructing and maintaining real Koreans to only mean ethnic South Koreans leads to academic and social marginalization of cultural others. A similar process takes place here in the U.S., and we argue that American multicultural educators must problematize the meaning of real Americans as a way to promote social justice and equity.
Centrins, Potential Regulators of Transducin Translocation in Photoreceptor Cells

Changes in the intracellular Ca2+-concentration regulate the visual signal transduction cascade directly or more often indirectly through Ca2+-binding proteins. In this review, we discuss our recent findings on centrins in photoreceptor cells of the mammalian retina. Centrins are members of a highly conserved subgroup of the EF-hand superfamily of Ca2+-binding proteins commonly associated with centrosome-related structures. In photoreceptor cells, centrins are additionally prominent components in the connecting cilium linking the light sensitive outer segment compartment with the biosynthetically active inner segment. Our recent data indicate that Ca2+-activated centrin isoforms generate complexes with the visual heterotrimeric G-protein transducin by binding to its β-subunit. These Ca2+-dependent assemblies of centrin/G-protein complexes are novel aspects of translocation regulations of signaling proteins in sensory cells, and a potential link between molecular trafficking and signal transduction in general.
The Board of WIDER

(WIDER) was established in 1984 and started work in Helsinki in the spring of 1985. The principal purpose of the Institute is to help identify and meet the need for policy-oriented socioeconomic research on pressing global and development problems and their interrelationships. The establishment and location of WIDER in Helsinki have been made possible by a generous financial contribution from the Government of Finland. The work of WIDER is carried out by staff researchers and visiting scholars and through networks of collaborating institutions and scholars in various parts of the world. WIDER's research projects are grouped into three main themes: I. Hunger and poverty-the poorest billion II. Money, finance and trade-reform for world development III. Development and technological transformation-the management of change WIDER seeks to involve policy makers from developing countries in its research efforts and to draw specific policy lessons from the research results. The Institute continues to build up its research capacity in Helsinki and to develop closer contacts with other research institutions around the world. In addition to its scholarly publications, WIDER issues short, non-technical reports aimed at policy makers and their advisers in both developed and developing countries. WIDER will also publish a series of study group reports on the basic problems of the global economy.
Kernel learning as minimization of the single validation estimate

In order to prevent overfitting in traditional support vector kernel learning, we propose to learn a kernel (jointly with the cost parameter C) by minimizing the single validation estimate with a sequential linear filter algorithm. Additionally, we introduce a simple heuristic in order to improve risk estimation, which randomly swaps several points between the validation and the training sets. Contrarily to previous works, which use several validation sets to improve risk estimation, our strategy does not increase the number of optimization variables. This is easily done thanks to Karasuyama and Takeuchi's multiple incremental decremental support vector learning algorithm. A synthetic signal classification problem underlines the effectiveness of our method. The main parameters of the learned kernel are the finite impulse responses of a filter bank.
Inhibition of Breast Cancer Cell Growth In vitro and In vivo: Effect of Restoration of Wwox Expression

Purpose: The WWOX gene is down-regulated in breast cancer and loss of Wwox expression correlates with important clinical features of breast cancer. Thus, we have examined the effect of restoration of Wwox expression in breast cancer-derived cells. Experimental Design: Wwox protein expression was restored by the following: (a) infection with a recombinant adenovirus carrying WWOX cDNA (Ad-WWOX) or (b) treatment with the DNA methyltransferase inhibitor, 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine, to activate the endogenous WWOX gene, in breast cancer-derived cells in vitro and in vivo. Results: Restoration of Wwox expression led to suppression of growth of Wwox-deficient breast cancer-derived cells, through activation of the intrinsic caspase pathway, but did not affect growth of Wwox-sufficient MCF7 cells. Intratumoral Wwox restoration, through Ad-WWOX infection or endogenous Wwox reactivation by 5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine injection, suppressed tumor growth in nude mice by inducing apoptosis. Alteration of global methylation levels was not observed. Conclusions: The results confirm that overexpression of exogenous Wwox inhibits breast cancer cell growth in vitro and in vivo and, perhaps more importantly, shows that restoration of endogenous Wwox expression, and likely other proteins, by treatment with a de novo methyltransferase inhibitor, also inhibits breast cancer cell growth and reverses breast cancer xenograft growth.
Extreme Adverse Selection, Competitive Pricing, and Market Breakdown

Extreme adverse selection arises when private information has unbounded support, and market breakdown occurs when no trade is the only equilibrium outcome. We study extreme adverse selection via the limit behavior of a financial market as the support of private information converges to an unbounded support. A necessary and sufficient condition for market breakdown is obtained. If the condition fails, then there exists competitive market behavior that converges to positive levels of trade whenever it is first best to have trade. When the condition fails, no feasible (competitive or not) market behavior converges to positive levels of trade.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Real Time Chemical Characterization of Local and Regional Nitrate Aerosols

Nitrate aerosols make a very major contribution to PM 2.5 and PM 10 in western Europe, but their sources and pathways have not been fully elucidated. An Aerosol Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (ATOFMS) and a Compact Time of Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (C-ToF-AMS) were deployed in an urban background location in London, UK, collecting data as part of the REPARTEE-I experiment. During REPARTEE-I, daily PM 10 concentrations ranged up to 43.6 µg m −3 , with hourly nitrate concentrations (measured by AMS) of up to 5.3 µg m −3. The application of the ART-2a neural network algorithm to the ATOFMS data characterised the nitrate particles as occurring in two distinct clusters (i.e. particle types). The first (33.6% of particles by number) appeared to be locally produced in urban locations during nighttime, whilst the second (22.8% of particles by number) was regionally transported from continental Europe. Nitrate in locally produced aerosol was present mainly in particles smaller than 300 nm, whilst the regional nitrate presented a coarser mode, peaking at 600 nm. In both aerosol types, nitrate was found to be internally mixed with sulphate, ammonium, elemental and organic carbon. Nitrate in regional aerosol appeared to be more volatile than that locally formed. During daytime, a core of the regionally transported nitrate aerosol particle type composed of organic carbon and sulphate was detected.
Non-BPS D-brane near NS5-branes

We use tachyon field theory effective action to study the dynamics of a non-BPS Dp-brane propagating in the vicinity of k NS5-branes. For the time dependent tachyon condensation we will concentrate on the case of the large tachyon and the case when a non-BPS D-brane is close to NS5-branes. For spatial dependent tachyon condensation we will argue that the problem reduces to the study of the motion of an array of D(p? 1)-branes and D(p? 1)-antibranes in the vicinity of k NS5-branes.
Chinese Web page classification using noise-tolerant support vector machines

Real-world applications often require the classification of Web documents under the situation of noisy data. Support vector machines (SVM) work well for classification applications because of their high generalization ability. But they are very sensitive to noisy training data, which can degrade their classification accuracy. This paper presents a new algorithm to deal with noisy training data, which combines support vector machines and K-nearest neighbor (KNN) method. Given a training set, it employs K-nearest neighbor method to remove noisy training examples. Then the remained examples are selected to train SVM classifiers for Web categorization. Empirical results show that this new algorithm has strong tolerance of noise, and it can greatly reduce the influence of noisy data on the SVM classifier.