Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterizing Network Motifs to Identify Spam Comments

Personal blogs are one of the most interconnected and socially networked type of social media. The capability of placing "comments'' on blog posts makes the blogosphere rather a complex environment.In this paper, we study the behavior of bloggers who place comments on others' posts and examine if it is possible to detect spam comments.We look at the functionality of different network motif profiles in the comment network, and identify certain subgraphs that associate with spam comments. We illustrate that some of these patterns and their statistical features could be exploited to classify comments and bloggers to spammers and non-spammers. Our preliminary results are encouraging and show reasonable results on rich and dense blog networks.
Designing Fully Distributed Consensus Protocols for Linear Multi-Agent Systems With Directed Graphs

This technical note addresses the distributed consensus protocol design problem for multi-agent systems with general linear dynamics and directed communication graphs. Existing works usually design consensus protocols using the smallest real part of the nonzero eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix associated with the communication graph, which however is global information. In this technical note, based on only the agent dynamics and the relative states of neighboring agents, a distributed adaptive consensus protocol is designed to achieve leader-follower consensus in the presence of a leader with a zero input for any communication graph containing a directed spanning tree with the leader as the root node. The proposed adaptive protocol is independent of any global information of the communication graph and thereby is fully distributed. Extensions to the case with multiple leaders are further studied.
SEED FUNDING FOR HIGH TECHNOLOGY VENTURES : THE ROLE OF THE BRIDGE BUSINESS

High technology new ventures often start when engineers and scientists transfer technology via their own intellectual property from parent employer organizations to a new independent startup. These entrepreneurs, like most, are often constrained by insufficient funding. A startup pattern noted among some high tech entrepreneurs is herein designated the bridge business strategy. The bridge business is a temporary venture used to generate seed capital for the technology development stage of a new, high-potential technology business. This paper defines and discusses the bridge business.
Online Knowledge-Based Model for Big Data Topic Extraction

Lifelong machine learning (LML) models learn with experience maintaining a knowledge-base, without user intervention. Unlike traditional single-domain models they can easily scale up to explore big data. The existing LML models have high data dependency, consume more resources, and do not support streaming data. This paper proposes online LML model (OAMC) to support streaming data with reduced data dependency. With engineering the knowledge-base and introducing new knowledge features the learning pattern of the model is improved for data arriving in pieces. OAMC improves accuracy as topic coherence by 7% for streaming data while reducing the processing cost to half.
Sensor Gain Fault Diagnosis for a Class of Nonlinear Systems

Identifiability of sensor gain faults is studied and a novel approach to fault detection and diagnosis of a class of nonlinear systems is presented. Sensor gain faults are divided into two classes: the conditionally identifiable faults and the conditionally detectable faults. An algorithm is proposed to obtain the number and location of the conditionally identifiable faults. Asymptotic estimation of the conditionally identifiable faults is achieved via the use of an unknown-input observer and an adaptive rule when there are no conditionally detectable faults in the system and a linear matrix inequality is satisfied, and a detection observer is presented to monitor the conditionally detectable faults. The emphasis of this paper is put on unstable systems. Finally, simulation results on a single-link flexible joint robot are presented for illustration.
A formulation of convective entrainment in terms of mixing efficiency

The entrainment across a stably stratified interface forced by convective motions is discussed in the light of the mixing efficiency of the entrainment process. The context is the convectively driven atmospheric boundary layer and we focus on the regime of equilibrium entrainment, i.e. when the boundary-layer evolution is in a quasi-steady state. The entrainment law is classically based on the ratio R of the negative of the heat flux at the interface to the heat flux at the ground surface. We propose a parameterization for R that involves the mixing efficiency and the thickness of the interface, which matches well the direct computation of R from a high-resolution large-eddy simulation. This result enables us to derive modified expressions for the classical entrainment laws (the so-called zero- and first-order models) as a function of the mixing efficiency. We show that, when the thickness of the interface is ignored (zero-order model), the scaling factor A in the entrainment law is the flux Richardson number. This parameterization of A is further improved when the thickness of the interface is considered (first-order model), as shown by the direct computation of A from the large-eddy simulation.
Designing an application of 3D character modelling in trialling size of clothes on online clothing shopping

Online shopping is increasingly popular and there is a trend that many businesses will adopt the technology to increase their product sales volumes because the online shopping can penetrate to target consumer at the large extent and it is convenient to those who cannot afford time to purchase directly from a store. In addition, the internet network interconnected to all trading networks can expand sales volume both at the regional and world levels without limits. No matter how, the online shopping is still facing challenging problems such as consumers themselves cannot trial or touch the physical products, resulted in lacking of confidence in both product quality and product performances. There are some kinds of product that the difference of physical body of consumer has direct effect to the product purchasing such as clothing because from the sight of on-line clothing, the consumer cannot inspect which size and proportion of clothes are suitable for them and what the quality of clothing materials used are. These are constraints for consumer to make decisions. The most frequent problem of online clothing shopping is that the clothing size does not fit with the buyer and the seller normally solves this problem by allowing the return of products and replacing the new ones until the buyer gets the satisfactory size within the given period. All in all, it causes the cost of assets and time which both parties, buyer and seller must be mutually responsible. This research aims at designing the application of Three-Dimension-Modelling Technology for solving the problem, and select the online clothing shopping as the case study. The researcher conducted the experiment for designing the Three-Dimension-Modelling Technology beneficial to potential consumers for specifying their own preferences in on line shopping for trial variety of clothes in terms of size, dimension and quality of clothing materials for matching their needs.
Rivastigmine as a Symptomatic Treatment for Apathy in Parkinson's Dementia Complex: New Aspects for This Riddle

Over 90% of PDD patients show at least one neuropsychiatric symptom (NPS); in the 60–70% two or more NPS are present. Their incidence is important in terms of prognosis and severity of pathology. However, among all NPS, apathy is often the most disturbing, associated with greater caregiver's burden. Similar to other NPS, apathy may be due to a dysfunction of the nigrostriatal pathway, even though, not all the PD patients become apathetic, indicating that apathy should not entirely be considered a dopamine-dependent syndrome, and in fact it might also be related to acetylcholine defects. Apathy has been treated in many ways, without sure benefits; among these, Rivastigmine may present benefic properties. We present a series of 48 patients, suffering from PDD, treated with Rivastigmine, and followed-up for one year; they have been devotedly studied for apathy, even though all the other NPS disorders have been registered. Rivastigmine did not have a prolonged benefic effect on apathy, in our work, on the contrary of what had been observed in the literature, probably due to the longer follow-up of our patients.
Frequency estimation without missing measurements under impulsive noise

The frequency recovery problem from impulse noise corrupted signal is considered by exploring the signal sparse property. Through creating a DFT-like matrix, the frequency sparsity is revealed in the frequency domain, and then utilized to formulate a sparsity-inspired frequency estimation approach. Special treatment is required when it comes to impulsive noise corrupted signal. Thanks to the exciting finding of the nearly-sparse property of the impulsive noise in the time domain, the noise reduction approach is designed to explore its sparsity to cancel the noise. By utilizing the sparsity of both frequency and noise, a joint frequency estimation and impulsive noise reduction approach is achieved. Numerical studies demonstrate that joint estimate offers robust and consistent results compared to the non-joint estimate (without noise reduction).
Online Retweet Recommendation with Item Count Limits

Some Twitter accounts provide information to the followers not by publishing their own tweets but by retweeting (i.e., Forwarding) useful information from their friends. These accounts need to select an appropriate number of tweets that match the followers' interests. If they retweet too many or too few tweets, it annoys the followers or degrade the value of the accounts. They also need to retweet them in a timely manner. If they retweet a tweet long after they receive it, the informational value of the tweet may diminish before the followers read it. There is, however, a trade-off between these two requirements. If they select tweets after seeing all the candidates, they can select the best given number of tweets, but in order to provide timely information, they have to decide to (or not to) retweet each tweet before seeing all the following candidates. In order to help the management of such Twitter accounts, we developed a system that reads a sequence of tweets from the friends one by one, and select a given number of (or less) tweets in an online (or near-online) fashion. In this paper, we propose four algorithms for it. Two of them give priority to the timeliness, and make a decision immediately after reading a new tweet by comparing its score with a threshold. The other two give priority to the selection quality, and make a decision after seeing some following tweets: after seeing incoming tweets for a fixed length of time or after seeing a fixed number of tweets. The former two are truly online algorithms and the latter two are near-online algorithms. Our experiment shows that the near-online algorithms achieve high selection quality only with acceptable time delays.
Multi-Scale Modelling of a Solar Reactor for the High-Temperature Step of a Sulphur-Iodine-Based Water Splitting Cycle

The 3-step sulphur-iodine-based thermochemical cycle for splitting water is considered. The high-temperature step consists of the evaporation, decomposition, and reduction of H2SO4 to SO2 using concentrated solar process heat. This step is followed by the Bunsen reaction and HI decomposition. The solar reactor concepts proposed are based on a shell-and-tube heat exchanger filled with catalytic packed beds and on a porous ceramic foam to directly absorb solar radiation and act as reaction site. The design, modeling, and optimization of the solar reactor using complex porous structures relies on the accurate determination of their effective heat and mass transport properties. Accordingly, a multi-scale approach is applied. Ceramic foam samples are scanned using highresolution X-ray tomography to obtain their exact 3D geometrical configuration, which in turn is used in direct porelevel simulations for the determination of the morphological and effective heat/mass transport properties. These are incorporated in a volume-averaged (continuum) model of the solar reactor. Model validation is accomplished by comparing numerically simulated and experimentally measured temperatures in a 1 kW reactor prototype tested in a solar furnace. The model is further applied to analyze the influence of foam properties, reactor geometry, and operational conditions on the reactor performance.
Efficient Calibration of Trinomial Trees for One-Factor Short Rate Models

Abstract In this paper we propose a computationally efficient implementation of general one factor short rate models with a trinomial tree. We improve the Hull–White’s procedure to calibrate the tree to bond prices by circumventing the forward rate induction and numerical root search algorithms. Our calibration procedure is based on forward measure changes and is as general as the Hull–White procedure, but it offers a more efficient and flexible method of constructing a trinomial term structure model. It can be easily implemented and calibrated to both prices and volatilities.
Coding enhanced joint detection for multiple access communications

A low complexity approach to coding-enhanced multi-user detection is developed to mitigate the problems associated with the near-far effect and to permit a more efficient assignment of channel resources relative to current multiple access (MA) communications systems. Through prudent integration of error correction decoding, multi-user and inter-symbol interference equalization and stripping, a low complexity near-far resistant multi-user joint detector/decoder has been developed which exhibits significant performance gains relative to the best known low complexity joint detection/decoding procedures reported in literature. Empirical analysis of the coding-enhanced multi-user detector (CMD) for a case of heavy intersymbol interference and multi-user interference shows a 3 dB improvement over these best known methods.
Alterações de fala em escolares: ocorrência, identificação e condutas adotadas

SILVA, M. R. Alteracoes de fala em escolares: ocorrencia, identificacao e condutas adotadas. 121fl. 2008. Dissertacao (Mestrado em Educacao) – Faculdade de Educacao, Universidade de Campinas, Campinas. 2008.
Architecture of asynchronous cellular processor array for image skeletonization

This paper presents a design and implementation of an application specific cellular processor array (CPA) that executes binary image skeletonization on a hexagonal lattice. The designed CPA operates in an asynchronous mode, employing 'pixel per processor' concept, which provides significant performance increase in image processing operations that exploit 'wave-propagation' or 'grassfire' transformation approach. A proof-of-concept design has been implemented and evaluated in FPGA and results are presented and discussed.
I did that! Measuring users' experience of agency in their own actions

Cognitive neuroscience defines the sense of agency as the experience of controlling one's own actions and, through this control, affecting the external world. We believe that the sense of personal agency is a key factor in how people experience interactions with technology. This paper draws on theoretical perspectives in cognitive neuroscience and describes two implicit methods through which personal agency can be empirically investigated. We report two experiments applying these methods to HCI problems. One shows that a new input modality - skin-based interaction - can substantially increase users' sense of agency. The second demonstrates that variations in the parameters of assistance techniques such as predictive mouse acceleration can have a significant impact on users' sense of agency. The methods presented provide designers with new ways of evaluating and refining empowering interaction techniques and interfaces, in which users experience an instinctive sense of control and ownership over their actions.
Discrete energy landscapes and replica symmetry breaking at zero temperature

The order parameter P(q) for disordered systems with degenerate ground states is reconsidered. We propose that entropy fluctuations lead to a trivial P(q) at zero temperature as in the non-degenerate case, even if there are zero-energy large-scale excitations (complex energy landscape). Such a situation should arise in the 3-dimensional ±J Ising spin glass and in MAX-SAT. Also, we argue that if the energy landscape is complex with a finite number of ground-state families, then replica symmetry breaking reappears at positive temperature.
Immigrant Integration and Youth Mental Health in Four European Countries

The mental health of children of immigrant background compared to their majority peers is an important indicator of integration. We analyse internalizing and externalizing problems in 14–15-year-olds from England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden (n = 18,716), using new comparative data (Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries). Studying more than 30 different origin countries, we find that despite potential problems with acculturation and social stress, children of immigrants—particularly from geographically and culturally distant countries—report systematically fewer internalizing and externalizing problems than the majority population, thus supporting the ‘immigrant health paradox’ found in some studies. However, surprisingly, we do not find that this minority advantage changes with time in the destination country. Externalizing problems are most prevalent in our English sample, and overall Swedish adolescents show the least mental health problems. A plausible account of our results is that there is a positive selection of immigrants on some persistent and intergenerationally transferable characteristic that invokes resilience in children.
Nice Labeling Problem for Event Structures: A Counterexample

In this paper, we present a counterexample to a conjecture of Rozoy and Thiagarajan from 1991 (also called the nice labeling problem) asserting that any (coherent) event structure with finite degree admits a labeling with a finite number of labels or, equivalently, that there exists a function $f:\mathbb{N}\mapsto\mathbb{N}$ such that an event structure with degree $\leq n$ admits a labeling with at most $f(n)$ labels. Our counterexample is based on Burling's construction from 1965 of 3-dimensional box hypergraphs with clique number 2 and arbitrarily large chromatic numbers and the bijection between domains of event structures and median graphs established by Barthelemy and Constantin in 1993.
Efficient estimation of the prevalence of multiple rare traits

We consider a population with multiple traits of interest, where our goal is to estimate the proportions of individuals with the traits. When traits are rare, group testing can improve efficiency. Previous work of Hughes-Oliver & Swallow (1994) developed an adaptive two-stage design for group testing of only one trait. We extend this work to the multi-trait case. We derive the optimum group sizes using compound D-optimum design theory. Estimation is based on maximum likelihood estimators, which are shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal. We apply our design to a problem of estimating the prevalence of HIV, chlamydia and syphilis in Ethiopian women.
Unmet Supportive Care Needs among Breast Cancer Survivors of Community-Based Support Group in Kuching, Sarawak

Background. Recognizing the needs of cancer survivors is one of the important aspects in healthcare delivery. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of unmet supportive care needs and its associated factors among the breast cancer survivors of community-based support group in Kuching, Sarawak. Materials and Methods. This was a cross-sectional study using Supportive Care Needs Survey (SCNS-SF34). All the members of community-based breast cancer support groups in Kuching were invited. A total of 101 respondents were face-to-face interviewed after the consent was obtained. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 20. Results. The respondents endorsed health system and information domain with the highest mean score (2.48; 95% CI: 2.32–2.64). Top 10 items with “moderate to high” level unmet needs had a prevalence of 14.9% to 34.7% of respondents indicating need. Significantly higher level of unmet needs was associated with survivors who were younger (less than 60 years old), had higher education attainment, were unemployed, had survival duration of up to 5 years, and were undergoing active treatment. Conclusion. Systematic delivery of health information which is targeted, culturally sensitive, and linguistically appropriate for addressing younger age, education level, employment status, length of survivorship, and treatment stage should be considered not only at hospital-based setting but also at the community-based support groups.
Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials Detection of Hepatitis C Virus in the Nasal Secretions of an Intranasal Drug-user

Background: One controversial source of infection for hepatitis C virus (HCV) involves the sharing of contaminated implements, such as straws or spoons, used to nasally inhale cocaine and other powdered drugs. An essential precondition for this mode of transmission is the presence of HCV in the nasal secretions of intranasal drug users.
New tight frames of curvelets and optimal representations of objects with C² singularities

This paper introduces new tight frames of curvelets to address the problem of finding optimally sparse representations of objects with discontinuities along C edges. Conceptually, the curvelet transform is a multiscale pyramid with many directions and positions at each length scale, and needle-shaped elements at fine scales. These elements have many useful geometric multiscale features that set them apart from classical multiscale representations such as wavelets. For instance, curvelets obey a parabolic scaling relation which says that at scale 2−j , each element has an envelope which is aligned along a ‘ridge’ of length 2−j/2 and width 2−j . We prove that curvelets provide an essentially optimal representation of typical objects f which are C except for discontinuities along C curves. Such representations are nearly as sparse as if f were not singular and turn out to be far more sparse than the wavelet decomposition of the object. For instance, the n-term partial reconstruction f n obtained by selecting the n largest terms in the curvelet series obeys ‖f − f n ‖2L2 ≤ C · n −2 · (log n), n→∞. This rate of convergence holds uniformly over a class of functions which are C except for discontinuities along C curves and is essentially optimal. In comparison, the squared error of n-term wavelet approximations only converges as n−1 as n → ∞, which is considerably worst than the optimal behavior.
Two schemes to reduce latency in short lived TCP flows

Motivated by the amount of short-lived TCP traffic due to interactive applications like Web browsing, we propose two schemes to reduce the download time of TCP flows. Both schemes explicitly try to overcome the long delay suffered when TCP has to recover from the loss of the last data segment in a flow, loss for which fast retransmit cannot be triggered. The first scheme consists in transmitting twice the last segment, while the second one exploits the reception of the duplicate ACK caused by the delivery of the FIN segment. Both schemes allow the transmitter to recover the loss without waiting for a retransmission timeout expiration, thus providing quicker recovery with up to 50% gain.