Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Robust Control of Dynamic Systems with Unknown Input Hysteresis

This paper deals with adaptive control of dynamic systems preceded by unknown hysteresis nonlinearities, where the hysteresis is modelled by a differential equation. By exploiting solution properties of the differential equation and combining those properties with adaptive control techniques, a robust adaptive control algorithm is developed without constructing a hysteresis inverse.
Detecting Visual Function Abnormality with a Contrast-Dependent Visual Test in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

In addition to diabetic retinopathy, diabetes also causes early retinal neurodegeneration and other eye problems, which cause various types of visual deficits. This study used a computer-based visual test (Macular Multi-Function Assessment (MMFA)) to assess contrast-dependent macular visual function in patients with type 2 diabetes to collect more visual information than possible with only the visual acuity test. Because the MMFA is a newly developed test, this study first compared the agreement and discriminative ability of the MMFA and the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) contrast acuity charts. Then symbol discrimination performances of diabetic patients and controls were evaluated at 4 contrast levels using the MMFA. Seventy-seven patients and 45 controls participated. The agreement between MMFA and ETDRS scores was examined by fitting three-level linear mixed-effect models to estimate the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). The estimated areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were used to compare the discriminative ability of diseased versus non-diseased participants between the two tests. The MMFA scores of patients and controls were compared with multiple linear regression analysis after adjusting the effects of age, sex, hypertension and cataract. Results showed that the scores of the MMFA and ETDRS tests displayed high levels of agreement and acceptable and similar discriminative ability. The MMFA performance was correlated with the severity of diabetic retinopathy. Most of the MMFA scores differed significantly between the diabetic patients and controls. In the low contrast condition, the MMFA scores were significantly lower for 006Eon-DR patients than for controls. The potential utility of the MMFA as an easy screening tool for contrast-dependent visual function and for detecting early functional visual change in patients with type 2 diabetes is discussed.
Emergence of Regularities in the Stochastic Behavior of Human

This paper aims to show that regularities emerge from the strongly stochastic properties of human behavior. To this aim, the paper presents the application of a new Knowledge Discovery in Database (KDD) process, called Timed Observations Mining for Learning (TOM4L), on the timed data provided by a smart building of offices of the southeast of France during 12 months from April 2011 to March 2012. The TOM4L process produces then 12 behavioral models of the white-collar workers of the office, one for each month of the studied period. This sequence of models put on the light the strongly stochastic properties of human behavior since they differ significantly from one month to another. This illustrates the intrinsic difficulty of discovering behavior rules from the timed data provided by a smart environment. Nevertheless, regularities clearly emerges from this sequence of behavioral models that are closely linked with seasons. Two seasons, a cold season of five month and a warm seasons of seven months, are clearly identified with this sequence but to this aim, more abstract models are required. Finally, this paper shows that the TOM4L approach is clearly operational and powerful for human behavior modeling in smart environments but higher abstraction levels of representation must be defined to discover more general behavior rules.
COMPUTATION OF LYAPUNOV FUNCTIONS FOR SYSTEMS WITH MULTIPLE LOCAL ATTRACTORS

We present a novel method to compute Lyapunov functions for continuous-time systems with multiple local attractors. In the proposed method one first computes an outer approximation of the local attractors using a graph-theoretic approach. Then a candidate Lyapunov function is computed using a Massera-like construction adapted to multiple local attractors. In the final step this candidate Lyapunov function is interpolated over the simplices of a simplicial complex and, by checking certain inequalities at the vertices of the complex, we can identify the region in which the Lyapunov function is decreasing along system trajectories. The resulting Lyapunov function gives information on the qualitative behavior of the dynamics, including lower bounds on the basins of attraction of the individual local attractors. We develop the theory in detail and present numerical examples demonstrating the applicability of our method.
Genetic changes in paired atypical and usual ductal hyperplasia of the breast by comparative genomic hybridization.

PURPOSE Breast cancer is thought to develop from noninvasive precursor lesions, although the earliest steps of neoplastic transformation are still undefined. Usual ductal hyperplasia (UDH) is considered to represent a benign proliferation of ductal epithelial cells, whereas atypical ductal hyperplasia (ADH) may represent the first clonal neoplastic expansion of these cells. The aim of this study was to examine genetic alterations in UDH and ADH and to determine the relationship between these lesions in the same breast biopsy. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Comparative genomic hybridization analysis was used to define copy number alterations in DNA extracted from archival sections of 18 patients. Nine patients showed ADH with adjacent UDH, and nine showed pure UDH. None showed evidence of invasive cancer or ductal carcinoma in situ. RESULTS Five of the nine ADH lesions showed chromosome copy number alterations. 16q loss (five cases) and 17p loss (two cases) were the most frequent changes. The associated UDH lesions in these five patients also showed copy number alterations, always a subset of the changes present in the paired ADH. In one other patient, the UDH showed eight chromosomal alterations, whereas the paired ADH showed no changes. Only one of nine cases with pure UDH showed comparative genomic hybridization abnormalities. CONCLUSIONS These data support the likelihood that UDH is a precursor of ADH, at least in some cases representing neoplastic growth. The frequencies of 16q and 17p losses suggest that alterations of candidate genes located in these chromosomal regions may play a role early in breast carcinogenesis.
On covering numbers

A positive integer n is called a covering number if there are some distinct divisors n1,. ,nk of n greater than one and some integers a1,. ,ak such that Z is the union of the residue classes a1(mod n1),. ,ak(mod nk). A covering number is said to be primitive if none of its proper divisors is a covering number. In this paper we give some su! cient conditions for n to be a (primitive) covering number; in particular, we show that for any r = 2,3,. there are infinitely many primitive covering numbers having exactly r distinct prime divisors. In 1980 P. Erd˝s asked whether there are infinitely many positive integers n such that among the subsets of Dn = {d ! 2 : d | n} only Dn can be the set of all the moduli in a cover of Z with distinct moduli; we answer this question a! rmatively. We also conjecture that any primitive covering
Automatic blur detection in mobile captured document images: Towards quality check in mobile based document imaging applications

Optical Character Recognition is widely used for automated processing of document images. While character recognition technology is mature, its application to mobile captured document image is still at its nascent stage. Capturing images from a mobile camera poses several challenges like motion blur, defocus and geometrical distortions which are usually not encountered in scanned or calibrated camera captured images. Therefore determining the quality of images automatically prior to recognition is an important problem. Quality check is especially useful in financial transaction instruments like bill payment where accuracy of text recognition for sensitive fields such as “amount due” should be high. Poor quality images can be rejected prior to OCR to avoid incorrect text recognition and save processing time. This paper discusses some techniques in literature for blur detection in mobile camera captured document images. We propose a simple yet elegant method that addresses some challenges faced in these document images. Extensive testing is performed on large dataset containing more than 4000 mobile captured images and optimum parameter values for performing quality check against motion blur and defocus are identified. Our experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. In addition we realized a smart mobile application for blur detection and report its performance on several mobile devices.
A LABEL-CORRECTING TRACING ALGORITHM FOR THE APPROXIMATION OF THE PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION OF THE PROJECT COMPLETION TIME

ABSTRACT When facing projects with uncertain factors, most of the project managers are interested to secure the pdf of the completion time of the project so as to have full insights into its randomness. For large-size SAN with general types of pdf for the duration of activities, the project managers must turn to the techniques of discretization since the other approaches in the literature become too demanding in computational loading. In this study, we find that there are two problems when applying the techniques of discretization to obtain an approximated probability density function (pdf) of the project completion time in stochastic activity networks. Namely, first, there exists neither exact data structure nor systematic scheme for the computer programming when applying the techniques of discretization; and second, error may arise from assuming independency between sub-paths in the activity network. Therefore, we are motivated to propose a Label-Correcting Tracing Algorithm (LCTA) to improve the techniques of discretization. To evaluate the performance of the proposed LCTA, we randomly generate 20 sets of 100-node instances in our numerical experiments. Using the pdf's resultant from Monte Carlo simulation using 20,000 samples as the benchmark, we compared the pdf's obtained from the PERT model, Dodin's [10] algorithm and the proposed LCTA. Based on our experimental results, we conclude that the proposed LCTA significantly outperforms the others in both the run time and the precision aspects.
An efficient dynamic thresholds energy detection technique for Cognitive Radio spectrum sensing

Cognitive Radio (CR) is an intelligent technique for opportunistic access of idle resources. In CR, Spectrum sensing is one of its important key functionalities. It is used to sense the unused spectrum in an opportunistic manner. Energy detection constitutes a preferred approach for spectrum sensing in cognitive radio due to its simplicity and applicability. The conventional energy detection technique, which is based upon fixed threshold, is sensitive to noise uncertainty which is unavoidable in practical cases. This noise uncertainty gets the fixed threshold energy detector un-optimized in its performance. In this paper, an efficient energy detector is proposed for optimal CR performance. The proposed scheme is based upon a dynamic threshold energy detection algorithm, in which, the decision threshold is toggled between two levels based upon the average energy received from the primary user (PU) during a specified period of observation. Thresholds evaluations are based upon estimating the noise uncertainty factor. These thresholds are used to maximize the probability of detection (Pd) and minimize the probability of false alarm (Pfa). Theoretical analysis and simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in comparison to the conventional energy detection method with less increase in complexity.
Performance Evaluation of Intel EPT Hardware Assist

For the majority of common workloads, performance in a virtualized environment is close to that in a native environment. Virtualization does create some overheads, however. These come from the virtualization of the CPU, the MMU (Memory Management Unit), and the I/O devices. In some of their recent x86 processors AMD and Intel have begun to provide hardware extensions to help bridge this performance gap. In 2006, both vendors introduced their first-generation hardware support for x86 virtualization with AMD-VirtualizationTM (AMD-VTM) and Intel® VT-x technologies. Recently Intel introduced its second generation of hardware support that incorporates MMU virtualization, called Extended Page Tables (EPT).
SQL/AA: Executing SQL on an Asymmetric Architecture

Current applications, from complex sensor systems (e.g. quantified self) to online e-markets acquire vast quantities of personal information which usually end-up on central servers. This information represents an unprecedented potential for user customized applications and business (e.g., car insurance billing, carbon tax, traffic decongestion, resource optimization in smart grids, healthcare surveillance, participatory sensing). However, the PRISM affair has shown that public opinion is starting to wonder whether these new services are not bringing us closer to science fiction dystopias. It has become clear that centralizing and processing all one's data on a single server is a major problem with regards to privacy concerns. Conversely, decentralized architectures, devised to help individuals keep full control of their data, complexify global treatments and queries, often impeding the development of innovative services and applications.
Effects of e-CRM on Customer–Bank Relationship Quality and Results

This research examines the results of electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) system carrying out in the Iran banking industry from customer outlooks. Because most e-CRM carrying outs cannot be directly seen or identified by customers, report survey and interviews with experts in the Iran banking industry were used to develop a new construct called ‘customer-based service ascribe’ to quantify e-CRM results from customers' outlooks. A full-scale field survey of 684 customers of Iran commercial banks was then directed. A service ascribes model and a model that integrated relationship quality and result were constructed, and their validity and reliability was verified. Analysis of the results by using structural equation modeling demonstrated that e-CRM carrying out has a statistically significant positive relationship with customer- based service ascribe and with the quality and result of customer–bank relationships as well as an indirect effect on relationship quality and result through customer-based service ascribe.
Dynamic adjustment packet control for video communications over ad-hoc networks

This paper is concerned with transporting video information via multihop mobile ad-hoc channels. The major problem with transmitting real-time video information over these channels is the issue of link reliability. To improve the quality of the video reception we propose a cross layer feedback control mechanism that can allow the application layer to adapt itself to a dynamically changing network topology. We also present packet transmission strategies capable of recovering video signals under long bursts of packet drops, typical of a route change condition. This feedback control scheme has been developed for transmission of RTP/UDP/IP packets using the emerging H.264/AVC video-coding standard.
ApoE polymorphism and predisposition to coronary heart disease in youths of different European populations. The EARS Study. European Atherosclerosis Research Study.

The European Atherosclerosis Research Study was based on the comparison of offspring having a paternal history of premature myocardial infarction with age- and sex-matched control subjects. Case (n = 635) and control (n = 1259) subjects aged 18 through 26 years were recruited from 14 universities of 11 European countries. The allele distributions of apolipoprotein (apo) E polymorphism differed between populations, with a clear-cut gradient for allele epsilon 4 frequency decreasing from 0.18 in Finland to 0.11 in the south of Europe, following the gradient of coronary heart disease mortality rates. The association of apoE polymorphism with plasma total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, apoB, and apoE levels was consistent with the now well-identified effects of epsilon 2 and epsilon 4 alleles on these traits. Both epsilon 2 and epsilon 4 alleles equally increased the level of triglycerides, and epsilon 2 had a lowering effect on lipoprotein(a) concentration. There were also weak effects of epsilon 2 and epsilon 4 on high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, apoA-I, and apoA-I-containing lipoprotein levels that paralleled those on apoE levels. The main finding of this study was the significant association of the apoE polymorphism with a paternal history of myocardial infarction. The association was consistent across regions, except in the south. When excluding this region, the population-adjusted odds ratios by reference to phenotype E3/3 were estimated as 0.23, 0.61, 0.78, 1.16, and 1.33 for E2/2, E3/2, E4/2, E4/3, and E4/4, respectively. The apoE locus largely explained the case/control difference of apoB level. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Combined Total Genome Loss of Heterozygosity Scan of Breast Cancer Stroma and Epithelium Reveals Multiplicity of Stromal Targets

Recent breast cancer studies have highlighted the importance of interactions between cancer epithelium and tumor stroma. Recently, the focus of solid tumor investigations has shifted from mutations in carcinomatous epithelium to disturbances of tissue organization in cancer. The genetic basis of this microenvironment, however, remains to be clarified. To begin to resolve this problem, a total genome loss of heterozygosity (LOH) scan was done on epithelial and stromal DNA from 134 sporadic invasive breast carcinomas. In addition to detecting more frequent LOH at three loci in stroma than in epithelium, we found strong evidence that LOH frequencies were significantly elevated in specific regions of each chromosome. We detected 57 markers, which were preferentially lost either in stroma (n = 38) or epithelium (n = 19), relative to the background LOH frequencies on their respective chromosomes. This multiplicity of stromal cell LOH, and hence loss of genetic material, provides a possible mechanism for interpatient variation in host-stromal response to invading adenocarcinoma cells. This is consistent with a model in which initial, random LOH occurs equally among epithelium and stroma, but subsequent clonal selection is driven by factors, which appear to be distinctly different between malignant epithelial and surrounding stromal cells. Genetic alterations in stroma did not mimic those in epithelium, but they could play a different and parallel role in carcinogenesis and tumor progression, probably by modifying some features specific to breast cancer.
Transcriptome Analysis Reveals the Genetic Basis of the Resveratrol Biosynthesis Pathway in an Endophytic Fungus (Alternaria sp. MG1) Isolated from Vitis vinifera

Alternaria sp. MG1, an endophytic fungus previously isolated from Merlot grape, produces resveratrol from glucose, showing similar metabolic flux to the phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway, currently found solely in plants. In order to identify the resveratrol biosynthesis pathway in this strain at the gene level, de novo transcriptome sequencing was conducted using Illumina paired-end sequencing. A total of 22,954,434 high-quality reads were assembled into contigs and 18,570 unigenes were identified. Among these unigenes, 14,153 were annotated in the NCBI non-redundant protein database and 5341 were annotated in the Swiss-Prot database. After KEGG mapping, 2701 unigenes were mapped onto 115 pathways. Eighty-four unigenes were annotated in major pathways from glucose to resveratrol, coding 20 enzymes for glycolysis, 10 for phenylalanine biosynthesis, 4 for phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and 4 for stilbenoid biosynthesis. Chalcone synthase was identified for resveratrol biosynthesis in this strain, due to the absence of stilbene synthase. All the identified enzymes indicated a reasonable biosynthesis pathway from glucose to resveratrol via glycolysis, phenylalanine biosynthesis, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and stilbenoid pathways. These results provide essential evidence for the occurrence of resveratrol biosynthesis in Alternaria sp. MG1 at the gene level, facilitating further elucidation of the molecular mechanisms involved in this strain's secondary metabolism.
An authorization model for entity search

Entity search has recently attracted the attention of many researchers from a classical IR perspective [1]. This extension follows the observation that for many user queries, entities are more suitable for query satisfaction than full documents such as web-pages or scientific papers. A typical entity search scenario starts with a user query that describes an entity of interest and possibly additional constraints on the entity’s relationships with other entities. The retrieval system task is then to retrieve all matching entities (or documents that mention them), ranked by their “relevance” to the user query [2]. As an example, in a medical domain, a query like “Warfarin AND patient” may require to discover medication entities that contain the term “Warfarin” and which have at least one relationship with some patient entity (e.g., medications that were consumed by patients). Many discovery systems in various domains, such as social, medical, enterprise, and CRM, may benefit from exposing entity search services. Yet, many such systems may need a control on the level of information sharing during retrieval time in order to answer queries of authorized users and protect privacy. For example, in a medical domain, patients may wish to control who can search their personal health records and which portions of their data may be searchable (e.g., physicians may fully search patient health records while others may search only medical data such as medical treatments for purposes of clinical trials). Such privacy policies should be translated into a set of access rules defined over indexed entities and their relationships, and efficiently be enforced during search. In this paper we present a novel authorization model for entity search, based on traditional IR concept of access control list (ACL) which can be efficiently implemented. In the rest of this paper we shortly discuss the details of this model.