Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two Similarity Measure Methods Based on Human Vision Properties for Image Segmentation Based on Affinity Propagation Clustering

We firstly present an image segmentation method based on affinity propagation clustering which needs not to initialize cluster centers and is more reliable than traditional clustering methods such as K-Means clustering and so on. However, it is very difficult to get good image segmentation results through adjusting the only parameter “preference” of affinity propagation clustering, and sometimes the segmentation results don’t accord with human vision properties. To tackle the two problems, we propose two similarity measure methods based on human vision properties for measuring the similarities between pairs of data points of an image. The experiment results show that compared with the traditional Euclidean distance, the two similarities proposed can lower the level of difficulty of selecting parameters and make the segmentation results more according with human vision properties.
Syntax Accommodation in Social Media Conversations

The psycholinguistic theory of Communication Accommodation proposes that people modify communication dynamics (e.g. vocal patterns, gesture, word choice, syntax, etc.) to minimize (or maximize) their social differences. Research on communication accommodation has shown that people who want social approval will modify their linguistic style to match that of their interactant; however, most studies have been conducted on small-scale datasets and in laboratory situations. In this work, we investigate the relationship between linguistic syntactic usage and conversation participation in a more naturalistic conversational setting: social media conversations on Reddit.com. We introduce a novel approach for calculating document-level syntactic similarity by relying on natural language processing methods (parse tree generators) and graph theory techniques (minimum weight perfect matching on complete bipartite graphs). Using the proposed method, we present the results of two experiments which demonstrate that users who comment on a post tend to use syntax similar to that of the original post. Specifically, we provide evidence that comments on a post are more likely to follow the syntactic structure of the original post, compared to both random comments and also posts by the author of the comment.
An Adaptive Dynamic Programming Algorithm for Dynamic Fleet Management, I: Single Period Travel Times

In a companion paper (Godfrey and Powell 2002) we introduced an adaptive dynamic programming algorithm for stochastic dynamic resource allocation problems, which arise in the context of logistics and distribution, fleet management, and other allocation problems. The method depends on estimating separable nonlinear approximations of value functions, using a dynamic programming framework. That paper considered only the case in which the time to complete an action was always a single time period. Experiments with this technique quickly showed that when the basic algorithm was applied to problems with multiperiod travel times, the results were very poor. In this paper, we illustrate why this behavior arose, and propose a modified algorithm that addresses the issue. Experimental work demonstrates that the modified algorithm works on problems with multiperiod travel times, with results that are almost as good as the original algorithm applied to single period travel times.
Daily typical load clustering of residential customers

This paper presents the daily load pattern created by Fuzzy-Possibilistic C-Means (FPCM) clustering method and Fuzzy C-Mean (FCM) clustering method. Load data is used to study of customer's demand characteristic. Daily load profile is monitored from digital meters, which were installed randomly in limited locations due to budget constraint. The FCM technique assigns a degree of membership for each data set belonging to each center of all clusters. Euclidean distance is utilized to calculate the distance between data set and each cluster center. The FPCM technique is better than the FCM technique for reducing outliers data's error. Therefore, fuzzy clustering technique was employed to determine daily load pattern of residential customer for customer's behavior analysis and customer load demand estimation. Understanding consumers' behavior is crucial for decision in power system operation and planning.
Application-specific language-oriented modularity: a case study of the ovirt project

Despite the availability of general purpose aspect languages (GPALs) and the availability of frameworks for creating domain specific aspect languages (DSALs), tangled and scattered code still prevails in modern software projects. Through the prism of a case study of the oVirt open source project we examine the conjecture that it may simply be too costly to implement crosscutting concerns in today's GPALs and DSALs. We introduce a subcategory of DSALs, called application specific aspect languages (ASALs), that along with a programming methodology, called language oriented modularity (LOM), allows such concerns to be modularized in a cost-effective, practical way. We illustrate this process concretely for the oVirt project.
Evaluation of pediatric patients with hepatitis A.

INTRODUCTION Hepatitis A is the most common form of acute viral hepatitis worldwide, especially in children. The clinical severity of the hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection varies from an asymptomatic infection to a fulminant disease. In this study, we aimed to evaluate characteristics of pediatric patients diagnosed with HAV infection. METHODOLOGY Patients younger than 18 years of age admitted between January 1, 2006 and January 1, 2011 to our hospital, an important reference center located in the middle part of Turkey, diagnosed as having hepatitis A were evaluated. RESULTS Of 427 patients, 49.4% were female and 50.6% were male. Hospitalization rate of the patients was 28.3%. The reason for hospitalization was vomitting in 58.7% of the patients and abdominal pain in 28%. The mean time of hospitalization was 5.2 ± 4.5 (1-40) days. There was no significant difference in hospitalization time by age. Vomiting and abdominal pain were significantly more common, and PT and aPTT levels were significantly elevated in patients with elevated AST and ALT levels over 1000 IU/L (p < 0.001). PT elevation was present in 15.2% of the patients, aPTT elevation in 11.9%, leukopenia in 16.6%, and thrombocytopenia in 2.6%. In terms of atypical course, four patients (0.9%) had cholestatic hepatitis, one had recurrent hepatitis, and one had fulminant hepatitis, yet no mortality was observed. CONCLUSIONS Atypical courses of hepatitis A were more scarce in pediatric patients, but careful follow-up of patients with AST and ALT levels > 1000 IU/L is necessary.
Exchange Rate Pass-Through in an Emerging Market: The Case of the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT We examine exchange rate pass-through, or how domestic prices respond to exchange rate shocks, in the Czech Republic from 1998 to 2013 by employing vector autoregression models. Using the aggregate consumer price index and its subcomponents, we find that the peak response occurs between nine and thirteen months after the exchange rate shock. The average pass-through at the monetary policy horizon is approximately 20 percent at the aggregate level. Regarding the subcomponents, the degree of pass-through is greatest for food prices.
Sperm aneuploidies and low progressive motility.

BACKGROUND Patients with poor semen quality show increased sperm disomy and diploidy rates. Oligozoospermia and teratozoospermia are known to influence sperm aneuploidy, but there is still a debate about whether aneuploidies are associated with reduced motility. METHODS Ejaculates from a large group of patients were examined by light microscopy to evaluate sperm concentration, motility and morphology, and by fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) to analyse the presence of aneuploidies. Statistical analysis was performed to compare differences and to evaluate the relationship between sperm aneuploidy rate and semen quality. RESULTS Five groups were established following the motility parameter, and total aneuploidy rates were statistically significantly higher in the groups where motility was <30% compared to the controls. A homogeneous group of men with asthenozoospermia showed higher FISH values compared to control data, although the difference was not statistically significant. Motility and sperm morphology were each found to be statistically related to aneuploidy using a multiple linear regression analysis, whereas sperm concentration was only related to aneuploidy by the equation of a hyperbolic curve. CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, biological and statistical data from the present research support the idea that the presence of aneuploidies could also be associated with reduced sperm motility.
ACOUSTIC NOISE CANCELL ATION USING BLOCK LMS FILTER IN MATLAB SIMULINK

In this paper, we use LMS filter and design a model with the help of Simulink using MATLAB 11a software. The effect of interference of acoustic noise in speech signals is the most common problem in speech processing. Acoustic noise reduces the intelligibility of speech signals by masking them. We need to suppress this acoustic noise for better communication. By using this technique, the acoustic noise is suppressed to a much larger extent from the original speech signal and helps in better communication. The experimental results show that it provides a greater SNR value.
Constrained model predictive control of an incremental sheet forming process

Model Predictive Control (MPC) has been applied in a range of industrial applications, and part of its popularity is that it can cope with a constrained system, providing an optimal control for a certain performance index. Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF) is an emerging progressive sheet metal forming technology where the deformation occurs locally. It is best suited to customised and one-off or short-run production, because ISF does not require costly individual tools, dies or punches to be manufactured. The geometrical accuracy of the shape made by ISF, is however, lower than the conventional processes, such as stamping. We address this issue by using a constrained model predictive control scheme to optimise the tool trajectory of this process. A simplified linear forming process model is first derived, which is modified then to handle the “tool contact” issue and after that a full MPC formulation is established. Two types of shapes are produced on an experimental rig, and the experimental results show that the final geometrical errors can be reduced compared to a standard contour following approach.
Structure Mining for Intellectual Networks

The research community is very important for researchers in order to undertake new research topics. In the present paper, we propose a community mining system that helps to find communities of researchers using bibliography data. The basic concept of the present study is to provide interactive visualization of communities both local and global. We implemented this concept using actual bibliography data and present a case study using the proposed system.
Software practitioners dropping-out: a research proposal

This paper proposes an exploratory study to determine why some computer science or software engineering graduates abandon their careers in software to pursue radically different paths. While these people may be experiencing a generic mid-life crisis, is it possible that the tremendous technical focus of their work means they are ill-prepared for the senior roles on offer, roles that involve inter-personal as opposed to technical skills?
Environmental Stresses Disrupt Telomere Length Homeostasis

Telomeres protect the chromosome ends from degradation and play crucial roles in cellular aging and disease. Recent studies have additionally found a correlation between psychological stress, telomere length, and health outcome in humans. However, studies have not yet explored the causal relationship between stress and telomere length, or the molecular mechanisms underlying that relationship. Using yeast as a model organism, we show that stresses may have very different outcomes: alcohol and acetic acid elongate telomeres, whereas caffeine and high temperatures shorten telomeres. Additional treatments, such as oxidative stress, show no effect. By combining genome-wide expression measurements with a systematic genetic screen, we identify the Rap1/Rif1 pathway as the central mediator of the telomeric response to environmental signals. These results demonstrate that telomere length can be manipulated, and that a carefully regulated homeostasis may become markedly deregulated in opposing directions in response to different environmental cues.
Performance Evaluation of Security Services: An Experimental Approach

Recent advances in wireless technologies have enabled pervasive connectivity to Internet scale systems which include heterogeneous mobile devices, such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants, a trend which is generally referred to as ubiquitous computing. This leads to the need for providing security functions to applications which are partially deployed over wireless devices. Delivering security services to mobile devices raises a number of challenging issues, mostly related to the limited amount of computing power which is typically available on the target plat-forms. Some promising solutions rely on multi-tier architectures, which are based on the emerging Web services technology. In this scenario, understanding the impact of architectural characteristics of specific platforms is a key issue for practitioners who have to develop and deploy efficient security-enabled applications on mobile devices. This paper provides an experimental study of the impact that specific characteristics of individual mobile device platforms have on the final performance of security applications. Focus is on performance and resource utilization, which are key aspects when one develops applications on mobile devices. The case study is a Web services based solution for delivering public key infrastructure (PKI) services to mobile devices. Experiments have been conducted on three different mobile terminals, which span a large range of characteristics in the class of resource-constrained devices. Results show that: i) performance figures are not uniform in spite of similar underlying hardware characteristics, and ii) security and performance are often conflicting requirements
Intelligent Diagnosis and Prognosis of Tool Wear Using Dominant Feature Identification

Identification and prediction of a lifetime of industrial cutting tools using minimal sensors is crucial to reduce production costs and downtime in engineering systems. In this paper, we provide a formal decision software tool to extract the dominant features enabling tool wear prediction. This decision tool is based on a formal mathematical approach that selects dominant features using the singular value decomposition of real-time measurements from the sensors of an industrial cutting tool. Selection of dominant features is important, as retaining only essential features allows reduced signal processing or even reduction in the number of required sensors, which cuts costs. It is shown that the proposed method of dominant feature selection is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the least-squares estimation error. The identified dominant features are used with the recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm to identify parameters in forecasting the time series of cutting tool wear. Experimental results on an industrial high-speed milling machine show the effectiveness in predicting the tool wear using only the dominant features.
Trends in land relations -a note.

Atny paper on the Indian agrarian structure must start with a disclaimer. In a cou? ntry with such diverse social and economic institution.s and widely divergent patternts of change in different areas it is nearly impossible to generalise. In fact for a student of land institutions in India it is too easy to be lost in a bewvildering nass of diversities. Yet it might be important, from time to time, to raise one's head abo-ve the swarming details atnd indulge in a few generalities about the situation as a whole. At the same time one should be careful to avoid the easy way out with sweepinig assertions that may fit one's a priori concepts (often borrowed from the past history of Western Europe) but are unsupported by observed data. The limited purpose of the present paper is ontly to bring together some of the relevant evidenlce now available and see if it is possible to derive some rough generalisations on the basis of it and find a coherent pattern. [The author is grateful to Kalpana Bardhan for help rentdered and to Amartya Sen and T N Srinivasan for comments. All errors and opinions are his. ]
BCN: Expansible network structures for data centers using hierarchical compound graphs

A fundamental challenge in data centers is how to design networking structures for efficiently interconnecting a large number of servers. Several server-centric structures have been proposed, but are not truly expansible and suffer low degree of regularity and symmetry. To address this issue, we propose two novel structures called HCN and BCN, which utilize hierarchical compound graphs to interconnect large population of servers each with two ports only. They own two topological advantages, i.e., the expansibility and equal degree. In addition, HCN offers high degree of regularity, scalability and symmetry, which well conform to the modular design of data centers. Moreover, a BCN of level one in each dimension involves more servers than FiConn with server degree 2 and diameter 7, and is large enough for a single data center. Mathematical analysis and comprehensive simulations show that BCN possesses excellent topology properties and is a viable network structure for data centers.
La evolución histórica e importancia económica del sector textil y del vestido en México

El objetivo de este articulo es analizar la importancia economica y social que ha tenido el sector textil en el impulso de la economia capitalista en Mexico, a traves del analisis de su evolucion historica en cuanto a su aportacion a la inversion fisica, la generacion de empleo, el volumen de exportaciones y la industrializacion en Mexico. El analisis muestra que el avance del sector ha estado asociado a las politicas gubernamentales de apoyo a la inversion extranjera, los esfuerzos para promover la industrializacion del pais, los acuerdos de libre comercio y la situacion economica del pais. Se concluye que si bien estos factores favorecieron en ciertos periodos el desarrollo del sector no ha habido esfuerzos concretos para mejorar las capacidades productivas de las empresas ni para la integracion de la cadena textil-vestido. La revitalizacion del sector depende de la posibilidad de moverse hacia una produccion flexible de paquete completo, aumentar la seguridad y a decrecer el comercio ilegal de prendas de vestir.
Pin assignment with global routing for VLSI building block layout

In this paper, we will consider global routing and pin assignment in VLSI building block layout, and present an efficient algorithm which integrates global routing, pin assignment, block reshaping and positioning. The general flow of the proposed algorithm is the same as the one proposed in by Cong in 1991 [1] and consists of two main phases. The first phase is to determine not only global routes and coarse pin assignment in the same way as [1], but also shapes and positions of blocks. The second phase is to compute the final pin assignment for channels. We generalize the channel pin assignment (CPA) problem in [1], in which the CPA problem is formulated for only channels formed by two blocks, to the CPA problem for channels formed by multiple blocks. We will propose a linear time optimal channel pin assignment algorithm, which is an extension of the algorithm in [1]. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Consensus Software : Robustness and Social Good via Widespread Multiagent Development

This paper describes two complementary research thrusts: (1) it investigates how software robustness can be achieved pragmatically through the use of large-scale multiagent systems, and (2) it investigates how a broader spectrum of people can contribute to the production and customization of software, also through the use of multiagent systems. The paper first hypothesizes that robust software can be achieved through redundancy, where the redundancy is achieved by agents that have different algorithms but similar responsibilities. The agents are produced by wrapping conventional algorithms with a minimal set of agent capabilities, which we specify. We describe our initial experiments in verifying our hypothesis and present results that show an improvement in robustness due to redundancy. We then advance the hypothesis that the redundant algorithms can be obtained through the efforts of many people outside of the traditional software development community. To be successful, such widespread development will require tools, an infrastructure, and a means for semantic reconciliation, and we investigate the characteristics and requirements for these. The paper analyzes the relationship between the software systems that manage and control societal institutions and the members of the society. The result enables individuals to participate more directly in the behavior of their governing institutions.
Applications of an adaptive hierarchical mobile robot navigation system

A hierarchical robot navigation system has been developed and implemented on a range of real and simulated mobile robots for two independent research applications. One application is a study on emotion-modulated navigation. The other is an investigation of heterogeneous multi-robot navigation. The navigation framework shared by the various implementations is described. A multi-layered architecture is employed that incorporates reactive control, deliberative path planning and exploration capabilities. The reactive controller utilises a two-stage optimisation in directional and velocity space. Path planning employs a probabilistic A* algorithm applied to a dynamically-updated occupancy grid. Implementation differences between applications include the path planning cost function, and certain aspects of the reactive control system that are affected by different robot shapes and drive systems. Some key results from both applications are presented, including experiments performed in simulation and in the real world.