Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Some aspects of the compression and collapse behaviour of an unsaturated natural loess

The compression and collapse behaviour of a natural unsaturated loess from northern France was investigated by running a series of constant rate of strain oedometric compression tests (together with some step loading tests) while monitoring suction by means of a high-capacity tensiometer. The reasonably constant suction measured during constant water compression tests was linked to the collapse of the largest dry pores. Time-dependent behaviour was also observed, with different responses obtained at different strain rates. In a standard fashion, collapse tests appeared to bring the representative point from the constant water content curve to the zero suction compression curve, indicating the existence of a maximum collapse stress. Data were qualitatively interpreted using the loading collapse (LC) yield curve of the Barcelona basic model. Changes in the LC yield curve inclinations could account for the existence of a maximum collapse value.
Fuzzy Model for Working Capital Speed Control as a Service of Big Data Analytics Systems

The article offers a fuzzy model designed for working capital speed control. The model is based on minimizing the function of working capital immobilization as well as its derivatives with the use of the interval numbers arithmetic. The module approach allows on-going monitoring of the stock, accounts, receivable and financial resources using terms and concepts customary for economists and financiers.
Quality Metrics for Internet Applications: Developing "New" from "Old"

This discussion concerns 'metrics'. More specifically, we discuss quantitative metrics for evaluating Internet applications: what should we quantify, monitor and analyse in order to characterise, evaluate and develop Internet applications based on reusing existing Internet applications,which is widely available in the Internet. Due to the distinctive evolution nature of Internet applications, assessing quality of software will provide ease and higher accuracy for Web developers. However, there is a great gap between the rapid development of Internet applications and the slow speed of developing corresponding metric measures. To tackle this issue, we look into measuring the quality of Internet applications and enable Web developers to enhance the quality of their programs and identify reusable components from Internet-based resources.
Evaluation on Performance of the Tertiary Industry of Lucheng District in Wenzhou: A DEA Application

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a non-parametric technique for measuring and evaluating the relative efficiencies of a set of decision-making units in terms of a set of common inputs and outputs, which is more popular in analyses of the emerging industry. With DEA, we handle multiple inputs and multiple outputs in Lucheng District of Wenzhou city, assess potential technical efficiency and scale efficient of its tertiary industry, find out some existent problems, and illuminate the route of development for Lucheng District in the future.
Performance measurement of a fully pipelined JPEG codec on emulation platform

This paper presents the design and performance measurement of the hardware JPEG codec on an ARM926EJS emulation base board. JPEG is one of the best compression algorithms for still images. It preserves the quality with high compression ratio. JPEG codec encodes and decodes coloured as well grey image formats. The design exploits the pipeline architecture for high throughput. Overall size of the codec is controlled by sharing the common resources between JPEG encoder and decoder. Hardware JPEG codec was synthesized for Xilinx™ Virtex II FPGA device on ARM926EJS emulation base board. The paper covers all the RTL modifications done for performance measurement. FPGA resource utilization is tabulated at post-synthesis and post-mapping stage. Real time performance measurement is done for encoder and decoder for colored and grey images.
Ambiguity Aversion is the Exception

An extensive literature has studied ambiguity aversion in economic decision making, and how ambiguity aversion can account for empirically observed violations of expected utility-based theories. Almost all relevant applied models presume a general dislike of ambiguity. In this paper, we provide a systematic experimental assessment of ambiguity attitudes in different likelihood ranges and in the gain domain, the loss domain and with mixed outcomes. We draw on a unified framework with more than 500 participants and find that ambiguity aversion is the exception, not the rule. We replicate the usual finding of ambiguity aversion for moderate likelihood gains. However, when introducing losses or lower likelihoods, we observe either ambiguity neutrality or even ambiguity seeking behavior. Our results are robust to different elicitation procedures.
Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience Synaptic Neuroscience Background: the Optic Tectum and Its Activity- Dependent Development

There remain many questions regarding STDP, for which the optic tectum remains an ideal experimental system for investigation. These include how the STDP rule changes during the development of distinct cellular morphologies and layers, the role of different neurotransmitters in shaping the effects of STDP, and how STDP operates on a population level. Understanding STDP's place in this circuit is likely to continue to provide important clues regarding the developmental role of this form of plasticity across neural systems. Despite its importance in our current understanding of syn-aptic plasticity, some researchers may be less familiar with the optic tectum than with other model systems. Long before the identification of STDP, the optic tectum was one of the systems of choice for studying the role of activity in neural development. For many decades researchers have used its unique properties to investigate how activity shapes properties such as topographic maps and binocular circuits. Therefore, before focusing upon more recent research on STDP, this review will begin with a brief overview of the optic tectum, its development and key contributions this system has made to our understanding of activity-dependent mechanisms in development. A full discussion of the extensive research in these areas is obviously not possible here and we refer interested readers to the thorough reviews provided With this background in place, we will then review in vivo studies on STDP in the optic tectum, with the ultimate goal of linking this to the earlier work, thereby identifying future directions for STDP research that will be particularly tractable in this system. IntroductIon How do animals survive in ever-changing, complex environments? A critical feature is the brain's ability to exhibit lasting changes in neural circuits that enable flexible development, adaptation to changes in the environment, and storage of new information. The widespread consensus today is that these capabilities are mediated in part by long-term potentiation and depression (LTP/LTD) of synaptic efficacy (Martin et al., 2000), which are in turn driven by correlations in spiking activity (Bi and Poo, 2001). Uncovering the rules that determine how synapses change based on spiking activity was significantly advanced by the discovery that the temporal order of inputs to the hippocampus determines whether potentiation or depression is induced (Levy and Steward, 1983). A series of studies more than a decade later showed that synaptic plasticity in several systems depends on the specific timing of action potentials in presynaptic and …
Temporally Static Region Detection in Multi-Camera Systems

Traditional approaches consider left behind object detection as a tracking application and heavily depend on accurate initialization of objects, which is a performance bottleneck. Here, we present a pixel-based solution that employs dual foregrounds of different scene modalities. We construct separate longand short-term backgrounds modeled as multilayer, multivariate Gaussian distributions. These backgrounds are adapted online using a Bayesian update mechanism at different learning rates that can be imposed as different frame processing frequencies. In addition, the formulation for color background can be easily extended for the gradient and feature point representations. By comparing the current frame with the background modes, we construct dual foregrounds. We aggregate evidence scores at each camera to provide temporal consistency on the hypotheses inferred from the foregrounds. We fuse the evidence from multiple cameras on a ground plane with the associated confidence scores to eliminate the individual camera failures due to the lighting artifacts. Our method does not require object initialization, tracking, or offline training. It accurately segments objects even if they are fully occluded. Its computational load is low and it readily lends itself to parallelization if further speed improvements are necessary.
Movement and Empowerment : Explaining the Political Consequences of Activism

In follow-up studies of activists, activism has been observed to have long-term positive effect on political participation. However, little attention has been paid to the conditions under which the theory applies. I examine how the personal consequences of participation in three different protest movements in Sweden depended upon movement success and procedural justice. The results support previous findings suggesting that activism has positive long-term effects on individual political participation. However, several of the activists interviewed did not follow this general pattern, especially those who suffered unfair and discriminatory treatment from the authorities. The results imply that the effect of activism on political participation is determined by the perceived procedural justice, whereas reaching the preferred policy outcome is of less importance. External political efficacy is indicated to be a potential mechanism explaining the relation between activism and long-term political participation.
Comparison of adaptive pacing therapy , cognitive behaviour therapy , graded exercise therapy , and specialist medical care for chronic fatigue syndrome ( PACE ) : a randomised trial

Citation for published version: White, PD, Goldsmith, KA, Johnson, AL, Potts, L, Walwyn, R, DeCesare, JC, Baber, HL, Burgess, M, Clark, LV, Cox, DL, Bavinton, J, Angus, BJ, Murphy, G, Murphy, M, O'Dowd, H, Wilks, D, McCrone, P, Chalder, T, Sharpe, M & PACE Trial Management Grp 2011, 'Comparison of adaptive pacing therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, graded exercise therapy, and specialist medical care for chronic fatigue syndrome (PACE): a randomised trial' The Lancet, vol. 377, no. 9768, pp. 823-836. DOI: 10.1016/S01406736(11)60096-2
Impact of Limited Feedback on the Performance of MIMO Macrodiversity Transmission

In this paper, we study the performance of the multiple-input multiple-output macrodiversity transmission with limited feedback. The downlink scenario, where multiple transmitters serve the user simultaneously, is considered. We find it necessary to modify the model of the quantized channel by Jinal (2006) such that the phase ambiguity in the vector quantization procedure can be characterized. Using the modified model, we show that the conventional limited feedback methods cannot obtain the macrodiversity gain even when the size of the codebook is asymptotically large, and that the macrodiversity gain can be attained by adding only one bit of phase feedback. Our analysis can apply to both random vector quantization and any fixed codebook setup, and is verified by the simulation results.
IEEE 802.11b SDMA Performance in Realistic Environments

This work uses spatial radio channel measurements to evaluate how much IEEE 802.11b wireless local area network (WLAN) capacity could be improved by using spatial division multiple access (SDMA). The radio channel measurements are collected for three different indoor network configurations using a sectorized antenna suitable for use in an actual 802.11b access point. The measurements are then used directly in 802.11b physical layer simulations in order to evaluate SDMA performance.
Analysis of an Experimental Cortical Network: ii) Connections of Visual Areas 17 and 18 After Neonatal Injections of Ibotenic Acid

Lesions of cortical areas 17 and 18 were produced in newborn kittens by local injections of the excitotoxin ibotenic acid. In the adult this results in a microcortex which consists of superficial layers I, II and III, in the absence of granular and infragranular layers. Horseradish peroxidase, alone or wheat germ agglutinin conjugated, was injected in the microcortex or in the contralateral, intact areas 17 and 18. The microcortex maintains several connections characteristic of normal areas 17 and 18 of the cat. It receives afferents from the dLGN, and several visual areas of the ipsilateral and contralateral hemisphere. However, it has lost its projections to dLGN, superior colliculus, and, at least in part, those to contralateral visual areas. Thus some parts of the microcortex receive from, but do not project into, the corpus callosum. In addition, the microcortex maintains afferents from ipsilateral and contralateral auditory areas AI and AII which are normally eliminated in development.
Law Firms’ Organizational Impression Management Strategies on Twitter

This study examined the organizational impression management (OIM) strategies adopted by the US law firms on Twitter. The Diction software package for textual analysis of nearly 10,000 tweets, coupled with statistical analysis, was used to assess the significant differences among law firms over 5 years. Although higher revenue law firms were found to exhibit higher certainty and optimism than lower revenue firms, analysis via repeated measures analysis of variance did not show significant differences. When companies’ OIM strategies were observed over a period of 5 years, there was a statistically significant difference in activity between 2011 and 2014. The findings add to the body of corporate communications research through examination of social media OIM strategies used by financially successful US law firms.
Classification of Scattered Code in Object-Oriented Applications

Aspect-oriented programming strives to encapsulate crosscutting concerns into modular units called aspects. Aspect Mining techniques aim to search for aspect candidates in existing software systems. These techniques associate all occurrences of scattered code in existing applications with the absence of aspects. In this paper, we demonstrate that in a poorly designed object-oriented system, scattered code can also originate from the absence of objects. On the one hand it will be erroneous to associate the occurrences of scattered code originating from the absence of objects with the absence of aspects. On the other hand such scattered code should be separately classified as it identifies refactoring opportunities. In this paper, we first present patterns that are similar to the patterns searched by aspect mining techniques but these patterns originate from the absence of proper object-oriented design. Based on these patterns, we construct a tool that distinguishes between scattered codes arising due to the absence of different encapsulating units: objects and aspects. Hence, the tool differentiates between aspect-oriented and object-oriented refactoring opportunities. We validate our findings on different software systems. Keywords-component; Aspect-oriented Programming; Aspect Mining; Software Design Defects; Code Smells; Refactoring
Diseño y análisis del cuestionario de valoración de servicios deportivos (EPOD2) / Design and analysis of the valuation questionnaire of sports services (EPOD 2)

La valoracion de los servicios deportivos es uno de los hechos mas estudiados en la actualidad debido a la necesidad de comprender el comportamiento de los usuarios y por el aprovechamiento de la informacion que las organizaciones obtienen gracias a este tipo de investigaciones. Existen distintos instrumentos de medida pero presentan diversas limitaciones. El objetivo de este trabajo es validar un instrumento y constatar la fiabilidad del mismo como medio de evaluacion de los servicios que prestan las diferentes organizaciones deportivas. Para ello se construyo un cuestionario conformado por tres areas: calidad percibida, satisfaccion y valor percibido. Se realizo un analisis estadistico de los items, un analisis factorial exploratorio, un analisis factorial confirmatorio y se determino la validez. Los resultados se materializaron en un cuestionario final compuesto por ocho dimensiones y 25 items, capaz de evaluar la calidad percibida, satisfaccion y valor percibido del servicio que prestan las organizaciones deportivas. PALABRAS CLAVE: Validacion, fiabilidad, calidad percibida, satisfaccion, valor percibidlo ABSTRACT Nowadays the assessment of Sport Services is one of the most studied facts due to the need to understand the users’ behaviour and for the use of the information that the organizations obtain through this type of research. There are different measuring instruments but they have several limitations. The aim of this study is to validate an instrument and verify its reliability as a means of assessment of the services provided by the different sport organizations. To do this a questionnaire was made, composed of three areas: perceived quality, satisfaction, and perceived value. A statistical analysis, an exploratory factor analysis, and a confirmatory factor analysis were performed on the items and the validity was determined. The results were embodied in a final questionnaire consisting of eight dimensions and 25 items, able to assess the perceived quality, satisfaction and perceived value of the service provided by the sport organizations. KEY WORDS: Validation, reliability, perceived quality, satisfaction, perceived value
Granulosa Cell – Stromal Tumors: An Immunohistochemical Study Including Comparison of Calretinin and Inhibin

Background and Objective: Histopathological evaluation of granulosa cell tumors (GCT) of the ovary may be confused morphologically with a wide variety of the tumors. Immunohistochemical staining for inhibin and calretinin can be used for better diagnosis. Although it has been suggested that inhibin can be a sensitive marker for GCT, it maybe had negative results in some cases. In addition, caltrinin has been proposed as a marker for GCT. The aim of this study was to investigate the immunohistochemical methods (IHC) including a comparison of calretinin and inhibin markers in the diagnosis of these tumors. Patients and Methods: This prospective study carried out from 2000 to 2009 at Ghaem and Omid hospitals, Mashad University of Medical Sciences, Iran. A total of 23 ovarian GCT specimens were immunostained with commercially available antibodies to find out calretinin and inhibin immunoreactivity. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistical method. A P value of =<0.05 was considered significant. Results: For diagnosing GCT, the sensitivity of calretinin was 100% and that of the inhibin was almost 73.9%. The extent and severity of staining was more extensive for calretinin compared to inhibin P<0.001. Conclusion: Calretinin is a more sensitive biomarker for GCT than inhibin.
CS 224 n Final Project Abstract The Interleaving Translation Group

We propose to use inversion transduction grammars (ITGs) for automatic constituency bracketing and identification of phrasal equivalents in bilingual, sententiallyaligned Japanese-English corpus and German-English corpora. ITGs were originally developed by Wu (1995b,d,a,c), who tested them on an English-Chinese aligned corpus. An ITG consists of a binary context-free grammar generating output on two streams, but which allows concatenation order (left-right or right-left) for each phrase structure production rule to be specified independently for each stream. This facilitates the matching of corresponding phrasal constituents within sentencealigned corpora. Wu (1995b,a) developed a “grammarless” ITG for phrasal bracketing of parallel aligned sentences, which made use of the simplifying assumption of only one nonterminal category and equal probability for all non-terminal rewrite rules. We implement such an ITG for Japanese/English and German/English corpora, and evaluate the quality of bracketing outputs. Wu used an translation lexicon automatically learned from collocations, but noted that adapting a translation lexicon pre-built for other purposes might yield better results. For German/English, we generated a translation lexicon using methods similar to Wu’s, and for Japanese/English, we used a commercially-used translation lexicon. Wu tested the performance of his model by taking a random sample of phrasal translation pairs and evaluating them for their accuracy. We plan to use a similar procedure for evaluation, and we also hope to devise other means of testing ITG performance.
Multifocus Image Fusion Based on Variational Decomposition in Combination with Reconstruction of Vector Fields

An image fusion scheme based on variational decomposition in combination with structure tensor analysis is presented in this paper. In the scheme, each source image is decomposed into a geometrical component and a textured component by applying Rudin-Osher-Fatemi (ROF) model in combination with Chambolle’s projection algorithm. Hereafter, the different components are fused separately. For fusing the geometrical components, a weighted average method is adopted. In order to effectively reconstruct the textured composite which corresponds to the divergence field of a vector field, a smoothing algorithm based on vector field denoise is developed to smooth the composite, then the structure tensor analysis method is adopted to compute the reconstruction result. Finally, the sum of the fused composites is calculated to obtain the fusion result. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm works well in multi focus image fusion.
Physiotherapy assessment based on Kinect and mobile APPs

The paper describes a set of frameworks developed to materialize physiotherapy assessment. Using data provided by the Microsoft Kinect sensor associated with upper limb joint position and Artificial Neural Network classification algorithms an evaluation and correction of the patients' exercises can be done, helping therapists to improve the effectiveness of training sessions. To improve the patient motivation a set of Kinect serious games for upper limbs training assures 3D data capture of the patients' joints and data storage in a remote database. Through a web based information system or mobile APPs the data associated with upper limb motion can be further visualized by the physiotherapists on their assessments but also to perform the serious game setting according to the patient specific needs. The developed frameworks intend to be a starting point for the remote physiotherapy in the smart health context, allowing high quality of service and cost reduction.