Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Packet loss effects on MPEG video sent over the public Internet

1. BSTWCT This paper presents results from a study of stieaming h~EG compressed video over the pubHc Inteme& using the RTP and UDP tianspoti protocok. TmTofie minute video etips were h~EG coded at rates of 384 Kbps and 1 l~ps. The resultant coded streams were transmitted at their respective data ra$esbe~een four sites in the United States and Europa hIeasurements w’ere taken be~een sites during aHhours of the day for seveml weeks at a time to generate a clear pictire of the time varying nature of Internet errors. The paper concentrates on ne~ork loss/error characteristics that specifica~y affect the quali~ of the received ~~EG compressed stieams. Due to the nature of h~EG data streams, losses in certain pati of the data stieam are more disturbing when viewed than losses in other parts of the data stieam. For instance, since N~EG video is inter-fmme coded, artifacts due to netiork loss/emors, can persist for many frames. Thus, a meaningful measure of received video qua~ty requires a more thorough analysis of netiork errors than average error rates. Our results include patterns of packet lossover tim~ conditional packet 10SS
Performance of a Novel Relay-STBC-HARQ for Cooperative MIMO System

For a two hop cooperative relay communication system, the first hop mainly gets the diversity gain, and the second hop gets the cooperative gain. While HARQ gets the time diversity gain, space-time or the others coding has the chance to get a tradeoff between diversity gain and multiplex gain. It is significant to combine the HARQ and STBC in a cooperative MIMO system that formed by a set of cooperative relay nodes that should be silent usually. According to analysis the relationship between the VBLAST, HARQ and STBC, this paper proposed a novel Relay-STBC-HARQ strategy. Theoretical and simulation analysis show that the strategy could improve the system capacity by spatial multiplex gain and cooperative gain. This means the strategy could get a tradeoff among credible coverage, flexible BER rate, code rate and delay.
Project manager's influence tactics and authority: a comparison across project structures

Ever since firms started using computers for processing their business data, researchers and practitioners have been preoccupied by the successful implementation of information systems (IS). Over the years, researchers have studied several aspects of IS implementation, be it measuring success or developing and testing models that explain IS project success or failure. However, up to now, few IS implementation studies have focused on the role played by the project leader. This paper presents the results of a study of 139 IS project managers. The study examined both the tactics adopted by these project managers to influence people, and their level of decision authority. It then attempted to determine if these two characteristics varied along with the project's organizational structure. The findings of the study point to the mediating role played by project managers' level of decision authority in linking organization structures to influence tactics. While influence tactics used do not vary across project structures, they do so across various levels of decision authority. In turn, the level of authority of project leaders varies across structures and steadily increases on the functional-project continuum. Three influence profiles emerged from the study, namely, the humanist, the political and the authoritarian project manager, providing further interpretation to influence tactics and behavior in an IS development context.
Age at first sex in rural South Africa

Objectives: To identify factors associated with sexual debut and early age at first sex (AFS) among young men and women (12–25 years) in a population with a high prevalence and incidence of HIV in rural South Africa. Methods: Longitudinal data from four rounds (2003–7) of a prospective population-based HIV and sexual behaviour survey in rural KwaZulu-Natal were used to investigate the distribution and predictors of earlier first sex. Survival analyses were used, and each analysis considered men and women separately. Results: Among the 4724 women and 4029 men who were virgins at the beginning of the period, the median AFS was 18.5 and 19.2 years, respectively. In multivariable models, factors associated with earlier AFS across gender were periurban residence (vs rural), ever use of alcohol and knowing at least one person who had HIV, while school attendance had a significant protective effect. Other factors were important for one gender only. Maternal death was significantly associated with earlier AFS for women, in the same way that paternal death was for young men, while mother’s membership of the same household significantly delayed AFS of young men. The analysis of early first sex confirmed the same factors to be important as in the overall analyses for men and women. Conclusion: Given the association of individual, household and community level factors with sexual debut, a multisectorial approach to prevention and targeting in youth programmes is recommended.
CUDA-Accelerated Rendering of Fireworks in Nearly Ultra High Definition Videos

In this paper, a framework of generating dynamic fireworks with a steady scene as the background is proposed. We use the particle system for simulating the firework animation to obtain a video clip, which can then be modified based on physical dynamics and the dissemination of light source. To achieve this goal, the general-purpose computation on graphics processing unit (GPGPU) for rendering and the linked list approach in C/C++ Language are integrated in the proposed method to enhance the computation efficiency. The introduction of a new computing technology termed "compute unified device architecture" (CUDA) is used to achieve higher efficiency and frame rates due to its capability on the parallel computing and memory allocation for display. Finally, the experimental results show that the proposed method significantly enhances the system performance in both the rendering and program execution efficiency. The video frame rate can achieve as high as than in nearly ultra -- high definition videos.
Strategies and Tactics for External Corporate Venturing

OVERVIEW: By providing a window on emerging technologies, market opportunities, new business models, and distribution channels, corporate venturing can be an important source of technological innovation for corporations. However, effective implementation requires a clear view of the objectives, dedication to understanding the process, and discipline. There are two major tactics for external investing: invest in a venture capital fund, or invest directly in a start-up company, and the strategy a company chooses should be tied to its objectives. For example, best-of-class companies whose objective is to acquire a window on technology will invest in VC funds to gain access to their wider deal flow. One of the most challenging aspects of corporate venturing is finding the right people, and corporations must be willing to devote significant time and resources to working closely with their portfolio companies if they wish to gain satisfactory value from their external investments.
Development and External Validation of a Prognostic Nomogram for Metastatic Uveal Melanoma

Background Approximately 50% of patients with uveal melanoma (UM) will develop metastatic disease, usually involving the liver. The outcome of metastatic UM (mUM) is generally poor and no standard therapy has been established. Additionally, clinicians lack a validated prognostic tool to evaluate these patients. The aim of this work was to develop a reliable prognostic nomogram for clinicians. Patients and Methods Two cohorts of mUM patients, from Veneto Oncology Institute (IOV) (N=152) and Mayo Clinic (MC) (N=102), were analyzed to develop and externally validate, a prognostic nomogram. Results The median survival of mUM was 17.2 months in the IOV cohort and 19.7 in the MC cohort. Percentage of liver involvement (HR 1.6), elevated levels of serum LDH (HR 1.6), and a WHO performance status=1 (HR 1.5) or 2–3 (HR 4.6) were associated with worse prognosis. Longer disease-free interval from diagnosis of UM to that of mUM conferred a survival advantage (HR 0.9). The nomogram had a concordance probability of 0.75 (SE .006) in the development dataset (IOV), and 0.80 (SE .009) in the external validation (MC). Nomogram predictions were well calibrated. Conclusions The nomogram, which includes percentage of liver involvement, LDH levels, WHO performance status and disease free-interval accurately predicts the prognosis of mUM and could be useful for decision-making and risk stratification for clinical trials.
Semi-automatic bird song analysis by spatial-cue-based integration of sound source detection, localization, separation, and identification

This paper addresses bird song analysis based on semi-automatic annotation. Research in animal behavior, especially with birds, would be aided by automated (or semiautomated) systems that can localize sounds, measure their timing, and identify their source. This is difficult to achieve in real environments where several birds may be singing from different locations and at the same time. Analysis of recordings from the wild has in the past typically required manual annotation. Such annotation is not always accurate or even consistent, as it may vary both within or between observers. Here we propose a system that uses automated methods from robot audition, including sound source detection, localization, separation and identification. In robot audition these technologies have typically been studied separately; combining them often leads to poor performance in real-time application from the wild. We suggest that integration is aided by placing a primary focus on spatial cues, then combining other features within a Bayesian framework. A second problem has been that supervised machine learning methods typically requires a pre-trained model that may require a large training set of annotated labels. We have employed a semi-automatic annotation approach that requires much less pre-annotation. Preliminary experiments with recordings of bird songs from the wild revealed that for identification accuracy our system outperformed a method based on conventional robot audition.
The economics of contract choice : an agrarian perspective

Agrarian organizations and contracts the basic model optimum contract choice under alternative assumptions long-term contracts interlinked contracts global survey of empirical evidence contract choice and enforcement in an agrarian community - the case of upland farming in Indonesia community and market in contract choice - the case of the Jeepney in the Philippines land reform, new technology and agrarian contracts - the case of a Philippine rice bowl towards a general theory of agrarian contracts.
Speaker Recognition Based on Support Vector Machines and Multi-Scale Wavelet Analysis

A speaker recognition method based on support vector and multi-scale wavelet analysis is proposed and a frame model of it is constructed in this paper. Firstly, Multi-scale wavelet analysis is applied to the process of signal preprocess, based on it, the theory of multi-scale analysis is applied to separate speech and noise, and enhance the speech consequently. Secondly, in the feature extracting phase, Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient and its difference are derived to be the characteristic parameters and then composed into feature vector sequences based on SVM. Finally, a multi-category SVM algorithm is applied to realize the speaker classification and recognition by making training and testing based on swatches.
A Music Retrieval Method Based on Distribution of Feature Segments

In this paper, we propose a music retrieval method based on the distributions of features in the music. In common music retrieval methods, if several features are similar between the query and the retrieval target, the retrieval systems return that the query is similar to the retrieval target. However, a problem is that several features in the music are ignored. If the other features in the query and the retrieval target are quite different, the query and the retrieval target should be treated as different types of music. Therefore, we calculate the importance of each feature in the music. Then, we compare the importance of features between the query and the retrieval target, and we can retrieve the music without ignoring the importance of several features. In our experimental evaluation, we can confirm that our proposed system has better accuracy than the baseline method.
Guidelines for people not for diseases: the challenges of applying UK clinical guidelines to people with multimorbidity.

BACKGROUND currently one of the major challenges facing clinical guidelines is multimorbidity. Current guidelines are not designed to consider the cumulative impact of treatment recommendations on people with several conditions, nor to allow comparison of relative benefits or risks. This is despite the fact that multimorbidity is a common phenomenon. OBJECTIVE to examine the extent to which National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines address patient comorbidity, patient centred care and patient compliance to treatment recommendations. METHODS five NICE clinical guidelines were selected for review (type-2 diabetes mellitus, secondary prevention for people with myocardial infarction, osteoarthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depression) as these conditions are common causes of comorbidity and the guidelines had all been produced since 2007. Two authors extracted information from each full guideline and noted the extent to which the guidelines accounted for patient comorbidity, patient centred care and patient compliance. The cumulative recommended treatment, follow-up and self-care regime for two hypothetical patients were then created to illustrate the potential cumulative impact of applying single disease recommendations to people with multimorbidity. RESULTS comorbidity and patient adherence were inconsistently accounted for in the guidelines, ranging from extensive discussion to none at all. Patient centred care was discussed in generic terms across the guidelines with limited disease-specific recommendations for clinicians. Explicitly following guideline recommendations for our two hypothetical patients would lead to a considerable treatment burden, even when recommendations were followed for mild to moderate conditions. In addition, the follow-up and self-care regime was complex potentially presenting problems for patient compliance. CONCLUSION clinical guidelines have played an important role in improving healthcare for people with long-term conditions. However, in people with multimorbidity current guideline recommendations rapidly cumulate to drive polypharmacy, without providing guidance on how best to prioritise recommendations for individuals in whom treatment burden will sometimes be overwhelming.
HIV-1 Superinfection in the Antiretroviral Therapy Era: Are Seroconcordant Sexual Partners at Risk?

Background Acquisition of more than one strain of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) has been reported to occur both during and after primary infection, but the risks and repercussions of dual and superinfection are incompletely understood. In this study, we evaluated a longitudinal cohort of chronically HIV-infected men who were sexual partners to determine if individuals acquired their partners' viral strains. Methodology Our cohort of HIV-positive men consisted of 8 couples that identified themselves as long-term sexual partners. Viral sequences were isolated from each subject and analyzed using phylogenetic methods. In addition, strain-specific PCR allowed us to search for partners' viruses present at low levels. Finally, we used computational algorithms to evaluate for recombination between partners' viral strains. Principal Findings/Conclusions All couples had at least one factor associated with increased risk for acquisition of new HIV strains during the study, including detectable plasma viral load, sexually transmitted infections, and unprotected sex. One subject was dually HIV-1 infected, but neither strain corresponded to that of his partner. Three couples' sequences formed monophyletic clusters at the entry visit, with phylogenetic analysis suggesting that one member of the couple had acquired an HIV strain from his identified partner or that both had acquired it from the same source outside their partnership. The 5 remaining couples initially displayed no evidence of dual infection, using phylogenetic analysis and strain-specific PCR. However, in 1 of these couples, further analysis revealed recombinant viral strains with segments of viral genomes in one subject that may have derived from the enrolled partner. Thus, chronically HIV-1 infected individuals may become superinfected with additional HIV strains from their seroconcordant sexual partners. In some cases, HIV-1 superinfection may become apparent when recombinant viral strains are detected.
Cosmic structures via Bose–Einstein condensation and its collapse

We develop our novel model of cosmology based on Bose–Einstein condensation. This model unifies the dark energy and the dark matter, and predicts the multiple collapse of condensation, followed by the final acceleration regime of cosmic expansion. We first explore the generality of this model, especially the constraints on the boson mass and condensation conditions. We further argue the robustness of this model over a wide range of parameters of mass, self-coupling constant and the condensation rate. Then the dynamics of BEC collapse and the preferred scale of the collapse are studied. Finally, we describe possible observational tests of our model, especially the periodicity of the collapses and the gravitational wave associated with them.
Does the impact of active labor market programs depend on the state of the labor market? The case of the UK new deal for young people

There is much debate, but surprisingly little evidence, concerning the impact of primarily supply side Welfare to Work programmes in labour markets characterised by weak labour demand. The usual argument is that we might expect Welfare to Work measures to have greater impacts in tight labour markets than in slack ones because more (and perhaps better) job vacancies exist. On the other hand, the added value of such programmes may be lower in tighter labour markets. There may also be heterogeneous programme impacts if the characteristics of the unemployed differ across labour markets. In this paper we explore whether a compulsory Welfare to Work programme for unemployed young people introduced in 1998 â€“ the UK New Deal for Young People â€“ has had differential impacts on the probability of unemployment exits in different local labour markets. Our results show this to be the case, with the programme impact on the hazard rate for exits from unemployment increasing with the local unemployment rate. Disaggregating exits by destinations, however, shows that there exists a negative (positive) relationship between local unemployment rates and the size of the programme impact on the probability of exit to employment (inactivity). Keywords; new deal for young people, mixed proportional hazard models, unemployment, labor demand, competing risks
Time series forecasting using Fuzzy Functional link neural network trained by improved second order Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm

Fuzzy neural networks are found to be universal approximators when all the parameters of the network are adjusted simultaneously. Therefore, they have been used extensively classification and regression problems. Normally FNN uses TSK-type fuzzy rules where the consequent part of the rule base comprises linear terms. Thus FNNS may not be able to effectively handle chaotic time series like stock or electricity price time series by providing an accurate mapping. In this paper, therefore, the consequent part of the time series comprises the output from a functional link network that provides an expanded input dimension to handle the uncertainties and chaotic fluctuation of the time series databases. Further to improve the training speed for the weights of the FNN a second order Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) algorithm is used. The performance of the Fuzzy Functional link hybrid (FLFNN) is evaluated for two financial time series data bases providing excellent prediction accuracy.
GPT2: a glucose 6-phosphate/phosphate translocator with a novel role in the regulation of sugar signalling during seedling development

Background and Aims GPT2, a glucose 6-phosphate/phosphate translocator, plays an important role in environmental sensing in mature leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana. Its expression has also been detected in arabidopsis seeds and seedlings. In order to examine the role of this protein early in development, germination and seedling growth were studied. Methods Germination, greening and establishment of seedlings were monitored in both wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana and in a gpt2 T-DNA insertion knockout line. Seeds were sown on agar plates in the presence or absence of glucose and abscisic acid. Relative expression of GPT2 in seedlings was measured using quantitative PCR. Key Results Plants lacking GPT2 expression were delayed (25–40 %) in seedling establishment, specifically in the process of cotyledon greening (rather than germination). This phenotype could not be rescued by glucose in the growth medium, with greening being hypersensitive to glucose. Germination itself was, however, hyposensitive to glucose in the gpt2 mutant. Conclusions The expression of GPT2 modulates seedling development and plays a crucial role in determining the response of seedlings to exogenous sugars during their establishment. This allows us to conclude that endogenous sugar signals function in controlling germination and the transition from heterotrophic to autotrophic growth, and that the partitioning of glucose 6-phosphate, or related metabolites, between the cytosol and the plastid modulates these developmental responses.