Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perceived Ease of Use, Trust, and Satisfaction as Determinants of Loyalty in e-Auction Marketplace

Abstract—Commercial online services have increased dramatically over the last decade, especially in the field of electronic commerce (EC). The rapid development of electronic commerce has allowed people to access information and interact with global businesses. This, in combination with the advent of economical and efficient electronic capabilities, has led to the rising popularity of online auctioning. The purpose of this study is to explore from customers’ perspectives what attracts them to online auction sites, and keeps them coming back. Through the use of structural equation modeling (SEM), this article provides insight into online auction customer loyalty and online customer behavior. The ways in which consumer satisfaction interacts with auction website loyalty (the essence of the business-consumer relationship) are discussed. Furthermore, suggestions are made as to how online auction website managers can use these findings to implement and improve upon marketing strategies.
Extraction Systems and Downstream Applications

Open Information Extraction (Open IE) extracts textual tuples comprising relation phrases and argument phrases from within a sentence, without requiring a pre-specified relation vocabulary. In this paper we first describe a decade of our progress on building Open IE extractors, which results in our latest extractor, OPENIE4, which is computationally efficient, outputs n-ary and nested relations, and also outputs relations mediated by nouns in addition to verbs. We also identify several strengths of the Open IE paradigm, which enable it to be a useful intermediate structure for end tasks. We survey its use in both human-facing applications and downstream NLP tasks, including event schema induction, sentence similarity, text comprehension, learning word vector embeddings, and more.
Non-orthogonal access with SIC in cellular downlink for user fairness enhancement

This paper investigates the enhancement of cell-edge user throughput by using non-orthogonal access with a successive interference canceller (SIC) in the cellular downlink compared to orthogonal access, which is widely used in 3.9 and 4G mobile communication systems. Since both the total user throughput and cell-edge user throughput are important in a real system, we compare the cell-edge user throughput while subject to the same total user throughput. The optimum resource allocation in terms of bandwidth and transmission power for each user is assumed for the respective access schemes based on the instantaneous channel conditions. The evaluation results show that non-orthogonal access with a SIC significantly enhances the cell-edge user throughput (thus user fairness) compared to orthogonal access while achieving the same total user throughput in the context of the cellular downlink, which can yield some insights regarding the direction of the wireless access scheme for the systems beyond IMT-Advanced.
Determination of profile parameters of a Fano resonance without an ultrahigh-energy resolution

A deconvolution procedure is proposed to determine the resonant width G , the asymmetry parameter q , and the background cross section sb of a Fano-type resonance in the absence of an ultrahigh-energy resolution. This procedure enables a direct extrapolation to infinite energy resolution using a set of explicit analytical relations in terms of the ratio between the width G and the experimental energy resolution V in the limit of G/V! 1. @S1050-2947~98! 04906-3#
Data Shapes and Data Transformations

Nowadays, information management systems deal with data originating from different sources including relational databases, NoSQL data stores, and Web data formats, varying not only in terms of data formats, but also in the underlying data model. Integrating data from heterogeneous data sources is a time-consuming and error-prone engineering task; part of this process requires that the data has to be transformed from its original form to other forms, repeating all along the life cycle. With this report we provide a principled overview on the fundamental data shapes tabular, tree, and graph as well as transformations between them, in order to gain a better understanding for performing said transformations more efficiently and effectively.
An Online RBF Network Approach for Adaptive Message Scheduling on Controller Area Networks

The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a communication bus for message transaction in real-time environments. A real-time system typically consists of several classes of messages and a scheduler is responsible to allocate network resources to fulfill timing constraints. Given sufficient bandwidth, the static scheduling algorithms can meet the bounded time delay. However, due to the availability of network bandwidth, not all messages can gain enough bandwidth to achieve the best control performance. Therefore, adaptive message scheduling policies that optimize the bandwidth utilization while supporting timeliness guarantees are of special interest. In this paper, we devise an online adaptive Message Scheduling Controller (MSC), which is designed to dynamically respond to the network dynamics. The MSC is realized by the Radial Basis Function (RBF) network with supervised parameter tuning. Two novel learning algorithms provide complementary effects (1) to prevent possible causes of non-uniform bandwidth allocation and (2) to reduce possibilities of transmission failures. Simulation results show that the proposed MSC in conjunction with parameter adaptation outperforms the existing Fixed-Priority scheduling and Earliest-Deadline First method, in terms of convergence speed, schedulability, and transmission failure rates.
Membership, metallicity and lithium abundances for solar-type stars in NGC 6633

We present spectroscopic observations of candidate F, G and K type stars in NGC 6633, an open cluster with a similar age to the Hyades. From the radial velocities and metal-line equivalent widths we identify 10 new cluster members including one short period binary system. Combining this survey with that of Jeffries (1997), we identify a total of 30 solar-type members. We have used the F and early G stars to spectroscopically estimate [Fe/H]= 0.096 ± 0.081 for NGC 6633. When compared with iron abundances in other clusters, determined in a strictly comparable way, we can say with more precision that NGC 6633 has (0.074±0.041)dex less iron than the Pleiades and (0.206±0.040)dex less iron than the Hyades. A photometric estimate of the overall metallicity from the locus of cluster members in the B-V, V-Ic plane, yields [M/H]= 0.04 ± 0.10. A new estimate, based upon isochrones that are empirically tuned to fit the Pleiades, gives a distance modulus to NGC 6633 that is 2.41 ± 0.09 larger than the Pleiades. Lithium abundances have been estimated for the NGC 6633 members and compared with consistently determined Li abundances in other clusters. Several mid F stars in NGC 6633 show strong Li depletion at approximately the same effective temperature that this phenomenon is seen in the Hyades. At cooler temperatures the Li abundance patterns in several open clusters with similar ages (NGC 6633, Hyades, Praesepe and Coma Berenices) are remarkably similar, despite their differing [Fe/H]. There is however evidence that the late G and K stars of NGC 6633 have depleted less Li than their Hyades counterparts. This qualitatively agrees with models for pre-main sequence Li depletion that feature only convective mixing, but these models cannot simultaneously explain why these stars have in turn depleted Li by more than 1 dex compared with their ZAMS counterparts in the Pleiades. Two explanations are put forward. The first is that elemental abundance ratios, particularly [O/Fe], may have non-solar values in NGC 6633 and would have to be higher than in either the Hyades or Pleiades. The second is that additional non-convective mixing, driven by angular momentum loss, causes additional photospheric Li depletion during the first few hundred Myr of main sequence evolution.
A Cluster-Based Protocol to Enforce Integrity and Preserve Privacy in Data Aggregation

Data fusion or information collection is one of the fundamental functions in the future cyber-physical systems. But, privacy concerns must be addressed and security must be assured in such systems. It is very challenging to achieve the synergy of privacy and integrity, because privacy preserving schemes try to hide or interfere with data, while integrity protection usually needs to enable peer monitoring or public access of the data. Therefore, privacy and integrity can be the conflicting requirements, one may barricade the implementation of the other.In this paper, we address both privacy of individual sensory data and integrity of aggregation result simultaneously by proposing a protocol called iCPDA, which piggybacks on a cluster-based privacy-preserving data aggregation protocol(CPDA). We implement the add-on feature to protect integrity of aggregation result. To show the efficacy and efficiency of the proposed scheme, we present simulation results. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is among the first protocols to preserve privacy and integrity in data aggregation.
Optimal Execution under Time-Inhomogeneous Price Impact and Volatility

We consider the problem of optimally liquidating a large position in a security within a specified period of time, to maximize a weighted sum of the expected value and variance of the profit from liquidating the position. To exploit predictable seasonal components in liquidity and volatility, we incorporate time-inhomogeneous linear price impact slopes and volatility into the formulation. We show that the optimal liquidation trajectory can be found by solving a Fredholm integral equation of the second type, or a related two-point boundary value problem (TPBVP) for a linear homogeneous secondorder ordinary differential equation (when the price impact slopes vary smoothly). We also show how the liquidation trajectory design method can be extended to liquidation under drifts and basket trading that accounts for cross-price impacts in liquidating a basket of assets. As in the driftless single security case, the optimal liquidation strategies can be found via solving associated linear integral equations. We illustrate the optimal liquidation trajectory design method with an example.
Scaling Law for the Heating of Solar Coronal Loops

We report preliminary results from a series of numerical simulations of the reduced magnetohydrodynamic equations used to describe the dynamics of magnetic loops in active regions of the solar corona. A stationary velocity field is applied at the photospheric boundaries to imitate the driving action of granule motions. A turbulent stationary regime is reached, characterized by a broadband power spectrum Ek ≃ k-3/2 and heating rate levels compatible with the energy requirements of active region loops. A dimensional analysis of the equations indicates that their solutions are determined by two dimensionless parameters: the Reynolds number and the ratio between the Alfvén time and the photospheric turnover time. From a series of simulations for different values of this ratio, we determine how the heating rate scales with the physical parameters of the problem, which might be useful for an observational test of this model.
Spectral-spatial based super pixel remote sensing image classification

Apart from the rich spectral information provided by multispectral or hypersepctral sensors, the spatial information has been paid more and more attention in remote sensing classification, especially for high spatial resolution images. Pixel-wise spatial features can be generated by applying Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM) locally to describe an image's texture properties. Morphological filtering provides spatial structure enhancement and watershed processing aims at contextual boundary identification. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of these spatial treatments are investigated. A combined procedure is developed to maximize spatial information extraction. Texture feature selection is emphasized for class separability enhancement. Morphological filtering is introduced as a preprocessing for watershed segmentation in order to reduce false alarm on contextual boundaries. Super pixels are formed for the objects defined from the watershed segmentation. The experimental results show that the combined spatial treatment is effective and, by integrating it with spectral information, an object oriented classification map can be obtained with significantly reduced ‘salt and pepper’ noise.
A novel ranking algorithm based on Reinforcement Learning

People are very interested in finding most related web pages when they are looking for some information about a topic in the web. This is the responsibility of the search engine to use effective ranking methods to find the most related web pages for a given query. In this paper, we propose a novel ranking method which is based on connectivity and also benefits from the Reinforcement Learning (RL) concepts. RL problems are structured around estimating value functions. In our algorithm, each web page is considered as a state and its score is as value function of the state. So, the key elements in our method are agent, value function and considered interstate transition rewards. Also we inspected a hybrid ranking algorithm which combined results of several basic ranking algorithms. The proposed algorithms are evaluated by using well known benchmark data sets and they are analyzed according to concerning criteria. Experimental results show that applying reinforcement learning method leads to considerable improvements and the hybrid algorithm can outperform all other basic ranking algorithms.
Snake Implementation in the UK IUE Project

This report describes design issues, specification and implementation details of the concept of active contour models (snakes) in medical image processing as part of the UK IUE Project sponsored by EPSRC. For the DARPA funded Image Understanding Environment (IUE), general package information is provided by Amerinex Applied Imaging at URL http://www.aai. com/AAI/IUE/IUE.html, URL http://s10d.smb. man.ac. uk/IUE/IUE gate.html gives further general project information at the hub site at Manchester, and URL http//www.cs. ucl.ac. uk/research/mip/mipue/ provides local spoke project information, reference guides, and programs. The other two stages of this project are described in [8] and [9].
Stress-Induced Sodium Excretion: A New Intermediate Phenotype to Study the Early Genetic Etiology of Hypertension?

Impaired stress-induced pressure natriuresis, ie, an inadequate compensatory increase in urinary sodium excretion (UNaV) in response to a stress-induced blood pressure increase, may lead to the premature development of essential hypertension. To assess the heritability of baseline UNaV, stress UNaV, and the UNaV response to stress (&Dgr;UNaV=stress UNaV− baseline UNaV), we studied 396 black and 494 white twins, including monozygotic and dizygotic twins of the same as well as the opposite sex (mean age: 17.6±3.3 years; range: 11.9 to 30.0 years). Bivariate genetic model fitting was performed to examine the extent to which genetic and environmental factors are common or specific to baseline and stress UNaV. Heritability estimates for &Dgr;UNaV can be derived from these bivariate models. All of the bivariate analyses were performed separately in whites and blacks, because univariate models for baseline UNaV showed significant ethnic differences in heritability estimates. Best-fitting models showed that the heritability of stress UNaV was 0.42 in whites and 0.58 in blacks. Only 15% and 11% of the total variance could be attributed to genetic factors common to baseline and stress UNaV in whites and blacks, respectively. After removal of all of the shared influences with baseline UNaV, heritabilities for stress UNaV were 0.32 in whites and 0.57 in blacks. Heritability estimates for &Dgr;UNaV were 0.36 in whites and 0.39 in blacks. In summary, this study establishes &Dgr;UNaV and stress UNaV as heritable phenotypes that may be used to study the genetic etiology of early hypertension development.
A comparison of longitudinal controllers for autonomous UAV

This paper describes the design of an altitude control system for a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using classical control methods, optimal control methods and fuzzy logic. A survey on recent research is made to develop a better UAV control system. A small radio control (RC) plane that is converted to a small UAV for testing purposes is used. The equations of motion of the UAV and state-space realisation of the system are included in the study. The longitudinal stability characteristic of the small UAV is analysed and classical control method using proportional-derivative (PD) controller, linear quadratic regulator (LQR) type optimal controller using different weight matrices and fuzzy logic controller are designed. The effectiveness of different control methods in this case is investigated and the results of the altitude control systems are compared.
Glutamate plasticity woven through the progression to alcohol use disorder: a multi-circuit perspective

Glutamate signaling in the brain is one of the most studied targets in the alcohol research field. Here, we report the current understanding of how the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, its receptors, and its transporters are involved in low, episodic, and heavy alcohol use. Specific animal behavior protocols can be used to assess these different drinking levels, including two-bottle choice, operant self-administration, drinking in the dark, the alcohol deprivation effect, intermittent access to alcohol, and chronic intermittent ethanol vapor inhalation. Importantly, these methods are not limited to a specific category, since they can be interchanged to assess different states in the development from low to heavy drinking. We encourage a circuit-based perspective beyond the classic mesolimbic-centric view, as multiple structures are dynamically engaged during the transition from positive- to negative-related reinforcement to drive alcohol drinking. During this shift from lower-level alcohol drinking to heavy alcohol use, there appears to be a shift from metabotropic glutamate receptor-dependent behaviors to N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor-related processes. Despite high efficacy of the glutamate-related pharmaceutical acamprosate in animal models of drinking, it is ineffective as treatment in the clinic. Therefore, research needs to focus on other promising glutamatergic compounds to reduce heavy drinking or mediate withdrawal symptoms or both.
An optical velocity for the Phoenix dwarf galaxy

We present the results of a Very Large Telescope observing programme carried out in service mode using FORS1 on ANTU in long-slit mode to determine the optical velocities of nearby low surface brightness galaxies. As part of our programme of service observations we obtained long-slit spectra of several members of the Phoenix dwarf galaxy from which we derive an optical heliocentric radial velocity of-13 +/- 9 km s(-1) . This agrees very well with the velocity of the most promising of the H i clouds seen around Phoenix, which has a heliocentric velocity of -23 km s(-1) , but is significantly different from the recently published optical heliocentric velocity of Phoenix of -52 +/- 6km s(-1) by Gallart et al.
Unusual Repertoire of Vocalizations in the BTBR T+tf/J Mouse Model of Autism

BTBR T+ tf/J (BTBR) is an inbred mouse strain that displays social abnormalities and repetitive behaviors analogous to the first and third diagnostic symptoms of autism. Here we investigate ultrasonic vocalizations in BTBR, to address the second diagnostic symptom of autism, communication deficits. As compared to the commonly used C57BL/6J (B6) strain, BTBR pups called more loudly and more frequently when separated from their mothers and siblings. Detailed analysis of ten categories of calls revealed an unusual pattern in BTBR as compared to B6. BTBR emitted high levels of harmonics, two-syllable, and composite calls, but minimal numbers of chevron-shaped syllables, upward, downward, and short calls. Because body weights were higher in BTBR than B6 pups, one possible explanation was that larger thoracic size was responsible for the louder calls and different distribution of syllable categories. To test this possibility, we recorded separation calls from FVB/NJ, a strain with body weights similar to BTBR, and 129X1/SvJ, a strain with body weights similar to B6. BTBR remained the outlier on number of calls, displaying low numbers of complex, upward, chevron, short, and frequency steps calls, along with high harmonics and composites. Further, developmental milestones and growth rates were accelerated in BTBR, indicating an unusual neurodevelopmental trajectory. Overall, our findings demonstrate strain-specific patterns of ultrasonic calls that may represent different lexicons, or innate variations in complex vocal repertoires, in genetically distinct strains of mice. Particularly intriguing is the unusual pattern of vocalizations and the more frequent, loud harmonics evident in the BTBR mouse model of autism that may resemble the atypical vocalizations seen in some autistic infants.
Implementation of a quantum phase gate by the optical Kerr effect

We show that the optical Kerr effect can be used to construct a quantum phase gate. It is well known from quantum nondemolition techniques that, as two photon field modes pass through a Kerr medium, the phase of each mode will be shifted, and the size of the phase shift will depend on the number of photons in both modes. We discuss the Hamiltonian responsible for this effect and show how this can produce an effective photon-photon interaction which corresponds to the quantum phase gate operating on two qubits each of which is represented by the elliptical polarization of one photon field. We discuss decoherence and losses and suggest some methods for dealing with them.
Diversity of capitalism and Central and Eastern European Countries. A statistical analysis. (In French)

Realised within the framework of the ESEMK project supported by the EU (FP6, Priority 7, Contract CIT-CT-2004-506077), the present study proposes a statistical analysis of the variety of the European socio-economic models integrating Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) using Bruno Amable’s approach of the diversity of capitalism. The analysis relies on the theoretical design of institutional complementarities whose coherence defines the character of model of capitalism. The aim of this methodological study is to test the stability of Amable’s results when new countries are introduced (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey and one emerging country, Mexico, in order to diversify our sample), and to position the CEEC with respect to the European models already identified. Although the typology of the five capitalisms seems finally well resist to the introduction of new countries, it is however necessary to note some more dubious configurations on the side of European continental and Mediterranean models. Concerning the new introduced countries, the three Central European countries differs from the whole of the other models whereas Turkey is close to the Mediterranean model.
A Comprehensive Security Model for Networking Applications

The Internet is currently being used by millions of users for web browsing, data storage, social networks, communications, VOIP, e-commerce, and other applications that are enabled by wireless networks, cloud computing, distributed systems, and cellphone networks. The architecture for these applications is not secure as shown by all the recent widely-publicized attacks. We propose a comprehensive security model for networking applications that includes new key distribution and management techniques and a realistic trust model.