Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A middleware for location-based mobile applications with privacy protection

Network operators gradually open their interfaces to formerly hidden services. This fosters the development of a new class of mobile applications that take into account context information such as the location of users. However, the development of location-based services also raises the issue of users location-privacy. In this paper we introduce a service architecture that aims to overcome some of the shortages of currently existing context-aware applications by applying a novel pseudonym based privacy enhancing mechanism that is based on the notion of pseudonyms. This mechanism can even be applied on legacy mobile devices with restricted memory or processing power. Due to its flexibility many different kinds of applications are conceivable. One of the most important aspects in this respect is the highly postulated pay-as-you-go model. To illustrate our approach we demonstrate a transport ticket application that is extended by location-tracking functionality.
Abstract #2491: Repo-Man controls a protein phosphatase 1-dependent threshold for DNA damage checkpoint activation

AACR Annual Meeting-- Apr 18-22, 2009; Denver, CO The DNA damage checkpoint is a critical surveillance mechanism employed by the cell to defend its genomic integrity. The cell activates checkpoints through kinase cascades and signal amplification loops, which are kept silent in unperturbed cells and respond to DNA damage in a dose-dependent manner. The DNA damage response is often deregulated in human cancer cells. Here we show that inhibition of PP1 and PP2A phosphatases synergistically turns on DNA damage signaling in the absence of actual DNA damage; moreover, inhibition of PP1 alone allows checkpoint activation with a subthreshold level of DNA damage. This aspect of PP1 function is mediated by a targeting subunit, Repo-Man (Recruits PP1 onto mitotic chromatin at anaphase). Repo-Man recruits PP1\#947; to chromatin to regulate ATM activation, and thereby sets the threshold for DNA damage checkpoint activation in both Xenopus egg extracts and human cells. Importantly, we show that expression of Repo-Man is upregulated in various human cancer tissues. Using the well-established MCF10A cell line model of breast cancer progression, we find that overexpression of Repo-Man during cancer progression is corelated with a blunted DNA damage response, and ectopic expression of Repo-Man renders early stage, precancerous cells less responsive to DNA damage. In summary, our results suggest upregulation of Repo-Man during cancer progression provides a means for the tumor cell to override cell cycle suppression mediated by the DNA damage response and accumulate genomic damage that contributes to cancer progression. Citation Information: In: Proc Am Assoc Cancer Res; 2009 Apr 18-22; Denver, CO. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; 2009. Abstract nr 2491.
Fault detection in mobile robots using sensor fusion

Fault detection and isolation in mobile robots has become a challenging task primarily due to uncertain and dynamic operating environments. The design of model-based fault detection methods would not be a practical real-time solution in view of the dynamic and uncertain nature of the problem. Also, conventional single-sensor approaches have limitations in practical applications. In this paper, a method of fault detection and isolation (FDI) based on a multi-level data fusion and response (behavioral) analysis technique is presented. The proposed FDI scheme mainly consists of pre-processing, sensor-fusion, a conflict monitoring unit, a confidence level computation unit, a high-level information fusion unit and a fault isolation unit. The developed FDI method is implemented in a simulated robot environment employing IR/camera fusion for navigation and obstacle avoidance. The fusion-based FDI method is tested under faults in camera and IR sensor. With the developed approach, faults are detected in a timely manner and isolated accurately. Also, with the incorporation of sensor fusion, reliable and accurate sensor information is adaptively fused and fault tolerance is achieved under camera/IR sensor faults.
ISSUES IN PARALLEL DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION FOR AN INTERNET TELEPHONY CALL SIGNALING PROTOCOL

In the world of Internet telephony, features are implemented somewhat differently than they are in the existing circuit-switched world. In Internet telephony, features can be implemented as Java applets that are controlled by an Internet call controller. As call signaling and feature deployment move towards the Internet as the network of choice, there is an increasing need to understand and predict the behavior of such systems in the Internet environment. One way to provide such insight is to develop discrete event simulation models of the entities involved in signaling and feature deployment. Given the size and complexity of such models, it is necessary to distribute the simulation across multiple computers to achieve reasonable performance. In this paper, we discuss the issues involved in designing and implementing a parallel discrete event simulator for Internet telephony. In particular, we look at the issue of how to model network traffic contention within the Internet, how to best model the Java applets implementing the user features, how to synchronize the simulation, and how to maximize the performance of the simulation. While we discuss these issues within the context of Internet teleph-ony, the solutions will be applicable to a wide range of simulation problems.
Promoting women's heart health by screening for vascular risk factors among middle-aged women: methods and baseline results from a preventive trial

The aim of this trial was to test the feasibility of a screening method based on the well-known risk factors of cardiovascular disease (CVD), and to evaluate the efficacy of 2 preventive strategies to lower the level of risk factors. Par- ticipants (n = 755) were female employees contacted during their health check visit at the age of 40, 45, 50, or 55 years. The risk-index consisted of body mass index, total serum cholesterol level, blood pressure, smoking and exercise activity. Psychosocial factors (e.g. vital exhaustion, optimism-hopelessness) were assessed with self-report questionnaires. High- risk women were invited to participate in a preventive intervention. Simple crossover design was used to evaluate the effi- cacy of personal feedback and health education as compared with feedback and group-based intervention programme. Fol- low-ups were completed at 6 and 12 months. Nearly one third (29.0 %) of the participants scored over the previously es- tablished risk-limit. Indicators of negative affectivity, i.e. vital exhaustion and hopelessness, associated significantly with the risk index after controlling for age and education. The feasibility of the screening method in an occupational health care setting proved to be good. The proportion of high-risk women was higher than expected but remained clearly lower than the 41 % prevalence in corresponding male cohorts. Results suggest that the screening method offers a good starting point for prevention.
The Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties in America

The U.S. health care system faces well-known problems: 47 million people without health insurance, rapidly rising costs that consume 16 percent of the country's economic output, and widely uneven quality of care. Even many people with coverage are experiencing serious problems paying for the rapidly rising costs of health care and insurance. This book - a joint product of the National Academy of Public Administration and the National Academy of Social Insurance - undertakes a sweeping analysis of the management and administrative issues that arise in expanding health care coverage. The book identifies the core administrative functions that need to be performed in assuring access to health coverage, describes how these functions are performed at present and under proposed alternatives, draws lessons from experience in the U.S. and abroad, and assesses suggested administrative approaches designed to facilitate the improvement and expansion of health care coverage. Adequate health care is one of today's most crucial domestic policy concerns. Expanding Access to Health Care is designed to bring together in one place some of the best thinking on the subject, not as an exercise in advocacy, but rather to lay out the issues in a balanced way so that policymakers, researchers, and citizens can better understand the complex details of health care reform.
A Structural Model of the Cytochrome c Reductase/Oxidase Supercomplex from Yeast Mitochondria*

Mitochondrial respiratory chain complexes are arranged in supercomplexes within the inner membrane. Interaction of cytochrome c reductase (complex III) and cytochrome c oxidase (complex IV) was investigated in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Projection maps at 15Å resolution of supercomplexes III2 + IV1 and III2 + IV2 were obtained by electron microscopy. Based on a comparison of our maps with atomic x-ray structures for complexes III and IV we present a pseudo-atomic model of their precise interaction. Two complex IV monomers are specifically attached to dimeric complex III with their convex sides. The opposite sides, which represent the complex IV dimer interface in the x-ray structure, are open for complex IV-complex IV interactions. This could lead to oligomerization of III2 + IV2 supercomplexes, but this was not detected. Instead, binding of cytochrome c to the supercomplexes was revealed. It was calculated that cytochrome c has to move less than 40Å at the surface of the supercomplex for electron transport between complex III2 and complex IV. Hence, the prime function of the supercomplex III2 + IV2 is proposed to be a scaffold for effective electron transport between complexes III and IV.
A controllable flying vehicle with a single moving part

This paper presents the “monospinner”: a mechanically simple flying vehicle with only one moving part. The vehicle is shown to be controllable in three translational degrees of freedom and two rotational degrees of freedom. The vehicle has a single scalar control input, the thrust magnitude, and is controlled by a cascaded control strategy with an inner attitude controller and an outer position controller. The vehicle design is chosen based on two robustness metrics: the ability to maintain hover under perturbations and the probability of input saturation based on a stochastic model. The resulting mechanical and control designs are experimentally demonstrated, where it is also shown that the vehicle is sufficiently robust to achieve hover after being thrown into the air.
Preliminary Exploration of the Use of Geographical Information for Content-based Geo-tagging of Social Video

Estimating the geo-location of an image or video is an interesting and challenging task in information retrieval and computer vision. In this paper, a pure image content based approach for this task is described. We partition the world map into regions based on external data sources (climate and biomes data). We hypothesize that such a partition yields regions of high visual stability, which in turn is hypothesized to improve geolocation estimation. The exploratory experiments that we designed and carried out on the MediaEval Placing Task 2012 test data were not able to confirm these hypotheses.
An optical joint position sensor for anthropomorphic robot hands

This paper presents the design of an optical position sensor integrated into a miniaturized tendon-driven robotic joint. The sensor exploits the modulation of the light power flux that goes from an infrared Light Emitting Diode (LED) to a PhotoDiode (PD) by means of a variable-thickness canal integrated into the joint itself to detect the joint position. The LED and the PD are fixed on one of the two links that compose the robotic joint, while the canal is integrated into the other link. The paper reports the basic sensor working principle, the integrated design of the miniaturized robotic joint with embedded position sensor and the experimental evaluation of the proposed device on a force/position control loop. Finally, a preliminary prototype of the UBH-IV finger in which the proposed joint with embedded position sensor are used is presented.
Oporto: A Realistic Scenario Generator for Moving Objects

The spatio-temporal database research community has just started to investigate benchmarking issues. On one hand we would rather have a benchmark that is representative of real world applications, in order to verify the expressiveness of proposed models. On the other hand, we would like a benchmark that offers a sizeable workload of data and query sets, which could obviously stress the strengths and weaknesses of a broad range of data access methods. This paper offers a framework for a spatio-temporal data sets generator, a first step towards a full benchmark for the large real world application field of “smoothly” moving objects with few or no restrictions in motion. The driving application is the modeling of fishing ships where the ships go in the direction of the most attractive shoals of fish while trying to avoid storm areas. Shoals are themselves attracted by plankton areas. Ships are moving points; plankton or storm areas are regions with fixed center but moving shape; and shoals are moving regions. The specification is written in such a way that the users can easily adjust generation model parameters.
A Constructionist Cognitive Model of Presence

This paper proposes a cognitive model of presence which emphasizes the interaction of top-down and bottom-up processes, and the subsequent creation of temporary representations of an environment in working memory. These temporary representations (which are termed constructions) are formations of meaning about the environment, which allow a subject to make inferences and interact in that environment. This paper argues that this constructionist position follows from the existence of hypothesis selection models of presence such as proposed by Slater & Steed. Finally, the paper contrasts this model to that of Wirth et al and discusses some of the implications of this model for presence in unfamiliar or unrealistic environments. 1. Cognitive models of presence
Improved Generalization in Recurrent Neural Networks Using the Tangent Plane Algorithm

The tangent plane algorithm for real time recurrent learning (TPA-RTRL) is an effective online training method for fully recurrent neural networks. TPA-RTRL uses the method of approaching tangent planes to accelerate the learning processes. Compared to the original gradient descent real time recurrent learning algorithm (GD-RTRL) it is very fast and avoids problems like local minima of the search space. However, the TPA-RTRL algorithm actively encourages the formation of large weight values that can be harmful to generalization. This paper presents a new TPA-RTRL variant that encourages small weight values to decay to zero by using a weight elimination procedure built into the geometry of the algorithm. Experimental results show that the new algorithm gives good generalization over a range of network sizes whilst retaining the fast convergence speed of the TPA-RTRL algorithm.
How Schools Do Policy: Policy Enactments in Secondary Schools

Foreword or Introduction 1. Beyond implementation -Towards a Theory of Policy Enactment 2. Taking Context Seriously 3. Doing Enactment: People, Culture and Policy Work 4. Policy into Practice 5. Whatever happened to. 6. Policy Enactments - In Theory and Practice
Analysis and comparison of 3D-SVM schemes for flying-capacitor multi-level inverters

The paper presents a comparative study of three different 3D-SVM techniques for the control of flying-capacitor multi-level inverters under both balanced and unbalanced operating conditions. Simulation results show that Direct 3D-SVM is the most efficient in computational effort. Application of this scheme to a three-level FCMI is simulated using the Alternative Transients Program (ATP). Output performance and features are highlighted.
Importance of Housing Finance Companies in Development of Financial Markets of Bangladesh

1. Abstract Money market is the market for short-term loans and securities (i.e., for one year or less). The strong presence of money market can boost the economic development of a country. The main purpose of money market is to provide the liquidity need of financial institutions, non-bank financial institutions and other participants in the market. The average borrowing rate in the call money market in 2009 was at 1.7% compares to 9.7% in the year 2008. The main concern in this study is Housing Finance Companies (HFCs). At present, there are three Housing Finance Companies (HFCs) in Bangladesh, which are an integral part of Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs). The objective of this study is to highlights the present scenario of HFCs, and its role in the development of money market. The study shows that the HFCs are not active participants in the money market like other financial institutions (like banks). In spite of this, they can play a significant role in the development of money market through active participation directly; issuing different money market securities to collect short term fund for new loan sanction and innovate new short-term financial products like securitization of the mortgage loan.
Infectious diseases consultation: impact on outcomes for hospitalized patients and results of a preliminary study.

In the absence of detailed and specific data on outcomes, specialists are thought to contribute excessively to the cost of care. Infectious diseases physicians are at further risk of heavy utilization of medical resources because their patients often are those with serious complications or expensive underlying diseases (e.g., AIDS). By using readily available information in a sophisticated computer database, we examined the crude economic impact of an inpatient infectious diseases consultation and identified important matching variables for more refined analysis. The study was performed at LDS Hospital (Salt Lake City), a tertiary care facility with four full-time infectious diseases physicians. A total of 496 cases (patients who were seen by an infectious diseases consultant) were matched with 3,117 controls (patients who were not seen by an infectious diseases consultant). Matching was performed on the basis of age, sex, exact discharge diagnosis-related group, minimum length of hospital stay equal to the interval from admission to consultation for cases, and measures of the severity of illness (nursing acuity score and the number of secondary diagnoses). Cases had longer lengths of hospital stays, longer intensive care unit lengths of stays, and higher antibiotic costs than did matched controls, and if the consultation occurred in the last one-third of hospitalization, cases had shorter lengths of hospital stay and lower antibiotic costs than did controls.
Biomarkers in Exhaled Breath Condensate Are Not Predictive for Pulmonary Exacerbations in Children with Cystic Fibrosis: Results of a One-Year Observational Study

Background Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is characterized by chronically inflamed airways, and inflammation even increases during pulmonary exacerbations. These adverse events have an important influence on the well-being, quality of life, and lung function of patients with CF. Prediction of exacerbations by inflammatory markers in exhaled breath condensate (EBC) combined with early treatment may prevent these pulmonary exacerbations and may improve the prognosis. Aim To investigate the diagnostic accuracy of a set of inflammatory markers in EBC to predict pulmonary exacerbations in children with CF. Methods In this one-year prospective observational study, 49 children with CF were included. During study visits with an interval of 2 months, a symptom questionnaire was completed, EBC was collected, and lung function measurements were performed. The acidity of EBC was measured directly after collection. Inflammatory markers interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), and macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) were measured using high sensitivity bead based flow immunoassays. Pulmonary exacerbations were recorded during the study and were defined in two ways. The predictive power of inflammatory markers and the other covariates was assessed using conditionally specified models and a receiver operating characteristic curve (SAS version 9.2). In addition, k-nearest neighbors (KNN) algorithm was applied (SAS version 9.2). Results Sixty-five percent of the children had one or more exacerbations during the study. The conditionally specified models showed an overall correct prediction rate of 55%. The area under the curve (AUC) was equal to 0.62. The results obtained with the KNN algorithm were very similar. Conclusion Although there is some evidence indicating that the predictors outperform random guessing, the general diagnostic accuracy of EBC acidity and the EBC inflammatory markers IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α and MIF is low. At present it is not possible to predict pulmonary exacerbations in children with CF with the chosen biomarkers and the method of EBC analysis. The biochemical measurements of EBC markers should be improved and other techniques should be considered.
An Integrated Home Financial Investment Learning Environment Applying Cloud Computing in Social Network Analysis

This paper tried to apply cloud computing technology in social network analysis for a comprehensive home financial learning environment that individual investors may use as a reference in establishing web-based learning and investment platforms. The major contributions were described in three parts. First, this paper advanced the social network analysis technology to be able to handle millions of nodes and links. Second, we demonstrate how cloud computing can be applied to advanced computing in social network. Third, we performed several intelligent analyses on a very popular social network, IHFILE, to identify some interesting and important features of it. In addition to analyzing a homogeneous social network such as IHFILE, we also propose direction of how cloud computing can be performed on a social network analysis as our future work.
Pricing of Asian Options by Numerical Path Integration

The paper presents a novel approach to the use of path integration for calculating the price of options. In particular, the case of Asian options is considered. The first step is to write down an Itô stochastic differential equation for a 2D state space vector process describing the temporal development of the instantaneous value of the underlying asset and its time integral. This equation is solved numerically by applying a special backward-forward time stepping procedure combined with splines interpolation. This makes it possible to achieve a very high degree of accuracy in the calculations, which is illustrated by several example results.