Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A-coord input: coordinating auxiliary input streams for augmenting contextual pen-based interactions

The human hand can naturally coordinate multiple finger joints, and simultaneously tilt, press and roll a pen to write or draw. For this reason, digital pens are now embedded with auxiliary input sensors to capture these actions. Prior research on auxiliary input channels has mainly investigated them in isolation of one another. In this work, we explore the coordinated use of two auxiliary channels, a class of interaction techniques we refer to as a-coord input. Through two separate experiments, we explore the design space of a-coord input. In the first study we identify if users can successfully coordinate two auxiliary channels. We found a strong degree of coordination between channels. In a second experiment, we evaluate the effectiveness of a-coord input in a task with multiple steps, such as multi-parameter selection and manipulation. We find that a-coord input facilitates coordination even with a complex, aforethought sequential task. Overall our results indicate that users can control at least two auxiliary input channels in conjunction which can facilitate a number of common tasks can on the pen.
GeoSTAR - A New Approach for a Geostationary Microwave Sounder

The Geostationary Synthetic Thinned Aperture Radiometer (GeoSTAR) is a microwave atmospheric sounder, with capabilities similar to those of the AMSU-A/B system, and is intended for deployment in geostationary orbit ‐ where it will complement future infrared sounders to enable all-weather temperature and humidity soundings. It also has the capability of mapping rain rates, and it can be deployed in medium earth orbits as well. GeoSTAR is based on spatialinterferometric principles and uses a stationary array of a large number of individual receivers to synthesize a large aperture and achieve the required spatial resolution, an approach that has significant advantages over conventional real-aperture systems ‐ such as full-disk scanning with no moving parts. GeoSTAR will implement the same tropospheric sounding channels as AMSU-A (temperature) and AMSU-B (humidity) and will achieve an initial spatial resolution of 25-50 km. Future versions will have significantly higher spatial resolution. The required technology is currently being developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other collaborating organizations, under NASA’s Instrument Incubator Program, and a ground based demo system will be ready in 2005.
LTE-A Mobile Relay Handling: Architecture Aspects

Relaying is one of the new key features that has been defined for LTE-Advanced (3GPP Rel' 10) in order to improve to and extend the coverage area among other advantages. In the 3GPP Technical Report [1] some architecture alternatives were considered for a case when relay becomes a part of the fixed access network. It is concluded in the report that the architecture based on proxy S1/X2 has more benefits in compare with other alternatives and has to be selected as the baseline architecture to support a fixed relay node. This paper reviews, outlines and sums up the main network architecture aspects for mobile relay handling. Taking into account that mobile relay support has additional requirements such as the group mobility, persistent IP connectivity during handover, etc. the other alternatives considered in [1] could bring more advantages. For this reason, we re-analyze relay architectures presented in [1] aiming to clarify the basic differences and distinguish between the architecture alternatives in the context of relay mobility support. Further to this comparative analysis we review latency budget of handover procedures for different architectures. As a result of the study we conclude that the architecture with a full L3 relay (transparent for Donor eNB) is more appropriate than other architecture alternatives for enabling mobile relay.
For the Many or the Few

Direct democracy is alive and well in the United States. Citizens are increasingly using initiatives and referendums to take the law into their own hands, overriding their elected officials to set tax, expenditure, and social policies. John G. Matsusaka's For the Many or the Few provides the first even-handed and historically based treatment of the subject. Drawing upon a century of evidence, Matsusaka argues against the popular belief that initiative measures are influenced by wealthy special interest groups that neglect the majority view. Examining demographic, political, and opinion data, he demonstrates how the initiative process brings about systematic changes in tax and expenditure policies of state and local governments that are generally supported by the citizens. He concludes that, by and large, direct democracy in the form of the initiative process works for the benefit of the many rather than the few. An unprecedented, comprehensive look at the historical, empirical, and theoretical components of how initiatives function within our representative democracy to increase political competition while avoiding the tyranny of the majority, For the Many or the Few is a most timely and definitive work.
Measuring Social Status with Occupational Information: Some Useful Procedures.

Two existing measures of occupation that seem to be useful for investigating social status are described and compared. Modifications are suggested on the basis of extensive investigation of the dimensions of social stratification. Hollingshead scale classifies occupations into seven categories. Because the coder must classify unlisted occupations on the basis of general resemblance to available examples, the scale requires judgment. Using it, however, does not require much training. Duncan's Socioeconomic Index, which provides scores for occupations used in the 1950 census, can be used to code occupations directly. Coding is complex and requires much training. Modifications of the Hollingshead scale rearranged the format, reversed the direction of the scores, altered values of businesses and farms to reflect 1971 dollars, and added categories for "No Occupation," "Don't Know," "Not Ascertained," and "Inapplicab le. " The modification of the Duncan SEI entailed a number of changes in the SED scores, census occupation and industry codes, and coding procedures. (DJ) RESEARCH. eL3J MEMORANDUM RM -72 -9 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. EDUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO. DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIM, INATING IT. POINTS OF 4IEW OR OPIN. ' IONS STATED DO NOT IIECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY. MEASURING SOCIAL STATUS WITH OCCUPATIONAL INFORMATION: SOME USEFUL PROCEDURES Lawrence J. Stricker This Memorandum is for interoffice use. It is not to be cited as a published report without the specific permission of the author. Educational Testing Service Princeton, New Jersey August 1972 Measuring Social Status with Occupational Information: Some Useful Procedures 1 The use of socioeconomic variables in psychological research had increased markedly in the last few years. Recent studies have relied: on a wide range of ad hoc and standardized measures, some based on single variables, such as occupation, education, or income, and others, such as Warner's (Warner, Meeker, & Eells, 190) Index of Status Characteristics, based on a combination of variables. Many of these devices, which vary greatly in merit, are described in detail elsewhere (e.g., Gordon, 1958). Almost without exception, such indexes are concerned with only one dimension in the socioeconomic domain: status or prestige in the community; other potentially important dimensions, such as wealth and power (Weber, 1946), have received little attention. Measures based on occupation are the most popular as well as the best indexes of status (e.g., Kahl & Davis, 1955). Although these devices are substantially related (Kahl & Davis, 1955), they clearly differ in extent of standardization (e.g., Duncan, 1961a) and ease of use (Ellis, Lane, & Olesen, 1963), and probably vary appreciably in validity and reliability, too--systematic research on the latter issues
Acoustic beamforming in reverberant environment

by Joyce Lee Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF. TECHNOLOGY May 21, 1999 @ 1999 Joyce Lee. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to M.I. T. permission to reproduce and distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis and to grant others the right to do so.
Microlensing of a Ring Model for Quasar Structure

Microlensing observations of QSO 0957+561A and QSO 0957+561B have consistently shown evidence for structure in the quasar that has not been evident in available microlensing models, where the luminous source has been consistently modeled as a single large, round structure. We show that the microlensing features can easily be reproduced by a luminous quasar model motivated by observations: a luminous inner accretion disk edge and outer ring-shaped structures where the emission lines form. Such a model can explain all of the features known from 24 years of QSO 0957+561 microlensing observations.
Efficiently Reasoning about Qualitative Constraints through Variable Elimination

We introduce, study, and evaluate a novel algorithm in the context of qualitative constraint-based spatial and temporal reasoning, that is based on the idea of variable elimination, a simple and general exact inference approach in probabilistic graphical models. Given a qualitative constraint network N, our algorithm enforces a particular directional local consistency on N, which we denote by ←-consistency. Our discussion is restricted to distributive subclasses of relations, i.e., sets of relations closed under converse, intersection, and weak composition and for which weak composition distributes over non-empty intersections for all of their relations. We demonstrate that enforcing ←-consistency on a given qualitative constraint network defined over a distributive subclass of relations allows us to decide its satisfiability. The experimentation that we have conducted with random and real-world qualitative constraint networks defined over a distributive subclass of relations of the Region Connection Calculus, shows that our approach exhibits unparalleled performance against competing state-of-the-art approaches for checking the satisfiability of such constraint networks.
Performance bounds for hybrid flow lines: Fundamental behavior, practical features and application to linear cluster tools

For deterministic hybrid flow lines with multiple classes of customer and no overtaking, we develop upper bounds on the customer departure times. For this general class of systems, the bounds are the most that one can deduce; examples can be constructed where equality is achieved and where it is not. We incorporate a very general class of setups and similarly obtain upper bounds. Such hybrid flow lines are natural candidates to serve as models of cluster tools in semiconductor wafer manufacturing. We use the flow lines as a starting point for the development of approximation models for a relatively new class of cluster tools with linear flow, called linear cluster tools. The approximations include issues caused by wafer transport robots and rolling setups. The resulting approximations are of good quality; they predict the just-in-time (maximum) throughput to within about 5%. Computation requires two orders of magnitude less effort than detailed simulation. They may thus be useful for fabricator simulations.
Thermal-Aware Compilation for Register Window-Based Embedded Processors

The development of compiler-based mechanisms to optimize the thermal profile of large register files to improve the processor reliability has become an important issue. Thermal hotspots have been known to cause severe reliability issues, while the thermal profile of the devices is also related to the leakage power consumption and the cooling cost. Register window-based architectures provide a relatively large register files. However, such large register files are not designed or utilized for thermal balancing or reliability enhancement. In this letter, we propose a compilation flow that utilizes the register windows to optimize the thermal profile and to reduce the hotspots. As a result, the thermal profile and reliability of the device is clearly improved. Simulation results show that the proposed flow achieves up to 91% reduction of hotspots and 11% reduction of the peak temperature in embedded processors.
CAMF: Context-Aware Message Forwarding in Mobile Social Networks

In mobile social networks (MSN), with the aim of conserving limited resources, egotistic nodes might refuse to forward messages for other nodes. Different from previous work which mainly focuses on promoting cooperation between selfish nodes, we consider it from a more pragmatic perspective in this paper. Be specific, we regard selfishness as a native attribute of a system and allow nodes to exhibit selfish behavior in the process of message forwarding. Apparently, selfishness has a profound influence on routing efficiency, and thus novel mechanisms are necessary to improve routing performance when self-centered nodes are considered. We first put forward a stateless approach to measure encounter opportunities between nodes, and represent forwarding capabilities of nodes by combining the acquired encounter opportunities with node selfishness. We then quantify receiving capabilities of nodes based on their available buffer size and energy. Taking both forwarding and receiving capabilities into account, we finally present a forwarding set mechanism, which could be deduced to a multiple knapsack problem to maximize the forwarding profit. Consequently, we take all the above studies into the design of a context-aware message forwarding algorithm (CAMF). Extensive trace-driven simulations show that CAMF outperforms other existing algorithms greatly. In fact, it achieves a surprisingly high routing performance while consumes low transmission cost and resource in MSN.
Clinical pharmacology and toxicology of dichloroacetate.

Dichloroacetate (DCA) is a xenobiotic of interest to both environmental toxicologists and clinicians. The chemical is a product of water chlorination and of the metabolism of various drugs and industrial chemicals. Its accumulation in groundwater and at certain Superfund sites is considered a potential health hazard. However, concern about DCA toxicity is predicated mainly on data obtained in inbred rodent strains administered DCA at doses thousands of times higher than those to which humans are usually exposed. In these animals, chronic administration of DCA induces hepatotoxicity and neoplasia. Ironically, the DCA doses used in animal toxicology experiments are very similar to those used clinically for the chronic or acute treatment of several acquired or hereditary metabolic or cardiovascular diseases. As a medicinal, DCA is generally well tolerated and stimulates the activity of the mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme complex, resulting in increased oxidation of glucose and lactate and an amelioration of lactic acidosis. By this mechanism, the drug may also enhance cellular energy metabolism. DCA is dehalogenated in vivo to monochloroacetate and glyoxylate, from which it can be further catabolized to glycolate, glycine, oxalate, and carbon dioxide. It remains to be determined whether important differences in its metabolism and toxicology exist in humans between environmentally and clinically relevant doses. ImagesFigure 1Figure 2
PORT PRIVATIZATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: THE CASE OF CONTAINER TERMINALS

This paper analyzes the characteristics of general cargo port operations in developing countries, and the process of privatization. A general analysis of the production characteristics of container terminals is made, giving special attention to market structure. It is posited that, given the magnitude of freight flows in developing countries, dispersion of operations in a number of terminals (to establish competitive conditions) is socially inefficient. Next, a cost model is developed considering private production costs, congestion externalities, and ship operating costs. A system of charges that internalizes external costs and makes the operator feel the social cost structure is proposed. In such situations, short and long run average production costs for the concessionaire are defined. The advantages of concentrating resources and increases in throughput capacity are shown, and main variables and bidding conditions, necessary to obtain an efficient assignment and operation of concessions, are analyzed.
Stability Aanalysis Results Concerning the Fuzzy Control of a Class of Nonlinear Time-Varying Systems

The paper offers new stability results concerning the Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy control systems dedicated to a class of Single Input-Single Output (SISO) nonlinear time-varying systems. Lyapunov’s approach based on quadratic positive definite Lyapunov function candidates is emplyed to derive a sufficient uniform asymptotic stability condition. An illustrative example validates the stability analysis results by the design of a T-S fuzzy control system for a SISO nonlinear process.
Incorporation of various methods for obtaining notch characteristics

In this paper the authors has showcased out various methods for obtaining out notch characteristics in the case of Circular Ring Monopole Antenna covering the UWB providing an essence for Wireless Communication Domain. Then by the introduction of slits and additional unique structures one can ease in attaining the easy benefits remaining behind it. The Overall Antenna size is 30 × 36 mm2 where it is designed using FR-4 and is simulated by using the Full Wave Simulator known as ANSYS-HFSS. The final designed prototype offers out in better VSWR, Omni Directional Radiation Pattern, effluent and prolific Current Distribution Pattern along with the enhanced form of gain and efficiency resulting out in wide range of occupation of bandwidth. All of them are based on the simulation outcomes where they can be mathematically modeled out in supporting the advances or the features from the fabrication point of view which is the last & concluding aim of the authors.
Soft Real-Time OLAP: Exploiting Modern Hardware without Breaking the Bank

Contemporary Online Analytical Processing systems often make extensive use of view materialization in order to minimize the cost of run-time query processing on massive data sets. Due to the cost of generation and maintenance, however, such views have typically been updated only in periodic batches. That being said, users of Big Data analytics platforms are demanding an increasingly shorter update cycle. In this paper, we present a framework for what we call soft real-time OLAP. Specifically, we employ view partitioning and maintain an additional "hot" partition that absorbs incoming update streams. We then augment this strategy with multi-core processing so as to further accelerate view construction and query resolution. Initial experiments with input sets of up to 10 million tuples show that our framework improves update performance by almost two orders of magnitude, while significantly reducing view construction and query costs.
Why Users Choose Particular Web Sites Over Others: Introducing a "Means-End" Approach to Human-Computer Interaction

Gutman’s means-end theory, widely used in market research, identifies three levels of abstraction – attributes, consequences, and values – associated with the use of products, representing the process by which physical attributes of products gain personal meaning for users. The primary methodological manifestation of means-end theory is the laddering interview, which it has been claimed generates better insights than other qualitative or quantitative methods. This study asked: Can means-end theory, and its concomitant laddering methodology, be successfully applied in the context of human-computer interaction research, specifically to help understand the relationships between Web sites and their users? The study employed laddering interviews to elicit data concerning Web site attributes, their consequences, and user end-values. This data was duly processed and the results were subsequently appraised. Examination determined that means-end chains do indeed characterize the process by which the physical attributes of Web sites gain personal meaning for their users, thus proving the theory’s applicability.
2 Recursive Portrayal of Robust Control Problems

This paper discusses senses in which alternative representations of the preferences that underlie robust control theory are or are not time consistent. The multiplier preferences of Hansen, Sargent, Turmuhambetova, and Williams (2006) are time consistent by construction. So too are their constraint preference, provided that continuation entropy is carried along as an additional state variable. The min-max expected utility theory of Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989) depicts preferences using multiple prior distributions, a set of distributions that robust control theory specifies in a very parsimonious way.
A hybrid recommendation system for news in a mobile environment

Over the last few years consumption of news articles has shifted more and more from the written versions towards the web. Mobile devices, which became more powerful, with larger screens and connected to the Internet, have had a great influence on this paradigm change. A critical problem associated to online news is related to the fact that the large number of daily articles can be overwhelming to the users. Recommendation services can largely improve the efficiency and accuracy of acquired information. These systems are designed to filter critical news, key events and meaningful items that might be of interest to a reader. In this paper, a news recommendation system in a mobility scenario is presented. The implemented recommendation system combines content-based and georeferenced recommendation techniques. Recommendations are supported by short-term and long-term user profiles created implicitly and considering also the mobile device geolocation. The final recommendation list is obtained by combining recommendations provided by the different recommendation approaches. To evaluate the performance of the solution, a user study was conducted. Results indicate that the quality of the recommendations is acknowledged by the test users. The system was integrated in a mobile application of a Portuguese newspaper (Público) in the context of the project Pglobal.
Combination of colour and thermal sensors for enhanced object detection

In uncontrolled environments, with dynamic background and lighting changes, performing efficient and real-time foreground - background segmentation is very challenging. This work is based on the hypothesis that the combination of long wave infrared (LWIR) (8-12 mum) and colour cameras can significantly improve the robustness of moving objects extraction. Pros and cons of colour and thermal imagers in outdoor video monitoring applications are discussed. In order to fuse information from both sensors, we favoured an approach based on "analytical fusion" rather than "representative fusion". Starting from a state-of-the-art algorithm for moving objects extraction in colour video (non-parametric codebook model), we first adapted the method for processing of "red-green-blue-thermal" video format. A preliminary objective performance evaluation of detection accuracy is presented. Original image sequences grabbed with co-aligned thermal and visible fields of view was used. Finally, some improvements to the original codebook model are proposed.