Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Introduction: dementia care and quality of life in assisted living and nursing homes.

It is well recognized that the number of older adults who suffer from dementia has been increasing and will continue to do so over the coming years. In fact, nothing short of a three-fold rise in the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to occur between 2000 and 2050, and those with moderate or severe disease may number as many as 6.5 million midway through the century (Sloane et al., 2002). As the severity of dementia increases, families face challenging caregiving demands, and many find residential long-term care to be the best option for ongoing oversight. Historically, nursing homes have been the primary setting for the institutional care of older adults. During the last decade, however, their prominence in providing care for individuals who do not need medical services has been challenged by the growth of residential care/ assisted living (RC/AL)—facilities or discrete portions of facilities that are licensed by the states at a nonnursing home level of care, and provide room, board, 24-hour oversight, and assistance with activities of daily living. Recent estimates indicate that 23% to 42% of RC/AL residents have moderate or severe dementia, as do more than 50% of nursing home residents (Zimmerman et al., 2003). The number of RC/AL and nursing home beds exceeds 800,000 and 1.8 million, respectively (Institute on Medicine, 2001), suggesting that well more than 1 million individuals with dementia already reside in these settings. The matter of ‘‘quality’’ of life for individuals with dementia has been increasingly recognized during the last decade, and countless textbooks and manuals have been written to provide guidance on enhancing quality of life (see, for example, Fazio, Seman, & Stansell, 1999; Kovach, 1996; Volicer & Bloom-Charette, 1999). Efforts to define and measure this multidimensional component have progressed as well, and there now exist numerous valid and reliable instruments to do so (see, for example, Albert & Logsdon, 2000). What has been absent from the field is the study of quality of life for individuals with dementia in long-term care settings—both nursing homes and RC/AL facilities. Without this information, it has not been possible to evaluate components of care that relate to better quality of life. In this context, the work conducted by the Collaborative Studies of Long-Term Care (CSLTC) constitutes a significant contribution to what is known about quality of life and its correlates in long-term care. Another contribution of the work conducted by the CS-LTC is its basis in communitybased participatory research, which maximizes its utility for practice and policy. As detailed in the following ‘‘Perspectives of the Alzheimer’s Association,’’ the Association is using this information as the basis for its evidence-based consumer education, advocacy, and staff training efforts. Thus, the work presented in this issue is a necessary step toward the improvement of care and the quality of life for persons with dementia.
Study on configuration design of interconnection in high power module

In a high power module, a high electrical load may cause electromigration and induce the joule heating, subsequently raising the chip temperature. Temperature excursion in the IGBT chip may produce thermal stress, inducing failure in the metal wire and chip. Those failure modes degrade the reliability of a power module. This study elucidates the coupling behavior of a high power module through electro-thermal coupling analysis and thermo-mechanical analysis. Additionally, the configuration design of an aluminum wire is simulated and implemented. Related design parameters, e.g., wire arrangement position, wire number, wire bonding perimeter and wire height, are studied and the design trend of a metal wire is analysed and suggested as well.
Towards a Protocol-Independent Internet Transport API

The conjoint API of TCP, UDP, UDP-Lite, SCTP and DCCP has a large number of choices and is quite complex. By requiring an application to specify the name of the protocol to use, it also constrains the implementation of the Internet's transport layer. We propose to provide a common API that only offers the services that application programmers need to see, and we show how its design could be undertaken, ending up with an API that we believe is much simpler than the alternatives in use today. We also argue that this would be a very good way to get new transport protocols widely deployed.
Topological Properties of Manifolds

In this chapter we investigate the consequences for a manifold, when certain topological properties are assumed. In particular, we develop an important analytical tool, called partition of unity. 5.1 Compactness Recall that in a metric space X, a subset K is said to be compact, if every sequence from K has a subsequence which converges to a point in K. Recall also that every compact set is closed and bounded, and that the converse statement is valid for X = R n with the standard metric, that is, the compact subsets of R n are precisely the closed and bounded subsets. The generalization of compactness to an arbitrary topological space X does not invoke sequences. It originates from another important property of compact sets in a metric space, called the Heine-Borel property, which concerns coverings of K. Let X be a Hausdorff topological space, and let K ⊂ X.
The dynamic model of electrostatic torsion mirror with pull-in consideration for multiphysics behavior anticipation

This study presents a newly developed dynamic model established by MATLAB Simulink that can handle post pull-in behavior of MEMS electrostatic torsional mirror. In addition to the conventional MATLAB Simulink model of the quadratic oscillation system, a mathematical model of displacement limiter has been inserted to represent the pull-in effect in dynamic analysis. Due to the modification, the model has become applicable to both pre- and post pull-in region of electrostatic actuators. Electrical circuits from the MATLAB Simulink libarary can be combined with the mechanical model and simulated to see multiphysics behavior. The new model has been integrated in the simulation model of self-oscillating MEMS system which has CMOS logics, and the versatility in the behavior-level simulation has been verified.
Multiplayer role games applied to problem based learning

The educational community is willing to approach the learning applications to the engaging and immersive formats of multimedia and video games as a way of increasing the motivation of the so called "digital natives" [19]. During this decade the interest for videogames as a way of combining learning with fun has grown exponentially. But despite the best intentions of teachers and technologists, the efforts to integrate games into the curriculum have often fallen flat. Most students see learning through videogames as "chocolate covered broccoli" [1] while many teachers consider games as a waste of time. In this paper we propose an approach, the NUCLEO framework, that is getting good results in several testing implementations for the Spanish higher education context, turning a whole problem based learning scenario into a role game. The conceptual framework and the system presented here are aimed at getting effective learning in a motivating environment that seeks a student's change of attitude towards learning. It is intended to be used within the context of a LMS (Learning Management System), complementing its features with new interfaces and modes of content interaction.
Evaluation of the Unified Model of the Sphere for Fisheye Cameras in Robotic Applications

Abstract A wide field of view is required for many robotic vision tasks. Such an aperture may be acquired by a fisheye camera, which provides a full image compared to catadioptric visual sensors, and does not increase the size and the weakness of the imaging system with respect to perspective cameras. While a unified model exists for all central catadioptric systems, many different models, approximating the radial distortions, exist for fisheye cameras. It is shown in this paper that the unified projection model proposed for central catadioptric cameras is also valid for fisheye cameras in the context of robotic applications. This model consists of a projection onto a virtual unitary sphere followed by a perspective projection onto an image plane. This model is shown equivalent to almost all the fisheye models. Calibration with four cameras and partial Euclidean reconstruction are done using this model, and lead to persuasive results. Finally, an application to a mobile robot navigation task is proposed and correctly executed along a 200-m trajectory.
Photometric calibration for quantitative spectral microscopy under transmitted illumination

Over the past decade, there have been significant developments in the mechanisms for examination of biological and material samples. These developments exploit techniques in light microscopy to elucidate specific parts of cells and tissues, as well as inorganic particles. In recent years, spectral microscopy has become more prevalent for characterization of samples. Simultaneously, sensor technology has progressed as well and modern charge‐coupled devices (CCD) cameras are now capable of achieving high spatial resolution and high sensitivity measurements of signals in the optical microscope. One major impediment in obtaining absolute quantitative information of imaged samples is the lack of automated photometric calibration mechanisms for spectral microscopes. In this paper, we present a methodology for achieving photometric calibration of an automated spectral imaging system targeted towards examination of biological samples. By acquiring spatial and spectral data simultaneously, spectral imaging allows one to exploit physical connections between a particle's morphology and its characteristic response to the optical spectrum. In composite biological material, the interpretation of the spectra is a complicated problem. This is because any light source and charge‐coupled device camera used for data acquisition does not have a uniform illumination spectra and quantum efficiency, respectively, across the emitted light spectra. To balance the spectral response across individual wavelengths, our method modulates the exposure duration for the charge‐coupled device camera during image acquisition. We present an image similarity based method to calibrate the system. Experiments to test the effectiveness of the calibration method under the various image similarity metrics are presented along with results to show the calibrated system's ability to accurately measure spectra based on the measured transmission profiles of optical filters.
On Integrating Conversations into Web Services Composition

Zakaria MaamarZayed University, Dubai, U.A. Ezakaria.maamar@zu.ac. aeSoraya Kouadri MostefaouiOxford Brookes University, Oxford, UKE-mail: kouadris@acm.orgKeywords: Web service, conversation, composition, context.Received: November 28, 2004We present an approach for integrating conversations into the process of composing Web services. A Webservice is an accessible application that other applications and humans can discover and trigger to satisfyvarious needs such as weather forecasts. While much of the work on Web services to date has focussed onlow-level standards, it is becoming urgent to allow Web services engage in conversations, make decisions,and adjust their behavior according to the context of the situations in which they participate.Povzetek: Predstavljena je integracija koverzacije v spletne storitve.
Burstiness-aware I/O scheduler for MapReduce framework on virtualized environments

Recently, virtualized environments such as cloud computing and a virtual cluster are used popularly by lots of MapReduce applications to reap the benefits of low cost and flexibility. However, the I/O bottleneck of the virtualization software gives a burden especially for processing big data. To relieve the burden, we propose a novel burstiness-aware I/O scheduler. Our analysis has revealed that the I/O bottleneck is caused by I/O interferences among the bursty I/Os triggered by different virtual machines, especially when they execute the map and/or reduce tasks. The I/O interferences result in frequent context switches in the virtualization software and long seek distances in a disk. Our proposed I/O scheduler first detects I/O burstiness of a virtual machine on-line. Then, it schedules bursty virtual machines in a round-robin fashion so that a scheduled virtual machine utilizes most of I/O bandwidth without interferences. Real implementation based experiments have shown that our scheduler can enhance the I/O performance up to 23% with an average of 20%.
Web 2.0 for sustainability reporting: Approach to refining communication on sustainability

Making use of web 2.0 principles for sustainability reporting provides a promising digital approach of sustainability online communication using the principles of current web 2.0 applications. Web 2.0 inspired sustainability reporting may overcome the limitations of orthodox reporting methods as it provides an array of specific capabilities to improve the way of communicating sustainability issues both, for companies (reporters), and their various stakeholders (report readers), e.g. along interactivity, customisation, reporting à la carte, stakeholder dialogue, and participation. This paper gives an outline on this up-and-coming sustainability reporting approach along two perspectives: (i) Me-dia-specific trends in sustainability reporting are observed. (ii) New opportunities web 2.0 applications are offering for sustainability reporting are identified. Finally, web 2.0 inspired sustainability reporting represents a promising approach as is has the potential to elevate sustainability reporting from a rather managerial closed-shop and one-way company controlled exercise to a more stakeholder-driven process providing a variety of mechanism for dialogue, feedback, interactivity, and customization.
Millisecond dip events in the 2007 RXTE/PCA data of Sco X—1 and the trans-Neptunian object size distribution

Millisecond dips in the RXTE/PCA archival data of Sco X−1 taken from 1996 to 2002 were reported recently. Those dips were found to be most likely caused by instrumental dead time but may also contain some true astronomical events, which were interpreted as the occultation of X-rays from Sco X−1 by trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) of 100 m size. Here, we report the results of search for millisecond dip events with the new RXTE/PCA data of Sco X−1 taken in the year 2007. Adopting the same selection criteria as that in the previous study, we found only three dip events in 72-ks data, much fewer than the 107 events found in the 560-ks data taken from 1996 to 2002 reported earlier. The new data provide more detailed information of individual ‘very large events’ (VLEs), which is not available in the old archival data. Although the number of VLEs does not obviously increase during the occurrence of dip events, all the three dip events are coincident in time with VLEs that have no flags set for any of the propane or the six main xenon anodes. It is a strong indication of instrumental effects. No significant dips which might be real occultation by 60‐100 m TNOs were observed. With only 72-ks data, however, the previously proposed possibility that about 10 percent of the dip events might not be instrumental still cannot be strictly excluded. Using the absence of those anomalous VLEs as the criterion for identifying non-instrumental dip events, we found, at a lower confidence level, four dip events of duration 8‐10 ms in the 72-ks data. Upper limits to the size distribution of TNOs at the small size end are suggested.
Cellular Automata: A Discrete View of the World (Wiley Series in Discrete Mathematics & Optimization)

As the applicability of cellular automata broadens and technology advances, there is a need for a concise but thorough resource that lays the foundation of key cellular automata rules and applications. In recent years, Stephen Wolfram's, A New Kind of Science, has brought to the attention of the scientific world the modeling power inherent in the medium of cellular automata. Now, Cellular Automata: A Discrete View of the World presents the thrust of the classic Wolfram text in a straightforward, introductory manner. Utilizing at times, novel material, this book provides an introduction to cellular automata as a constructive method for modeling the behavior of a wide range of complex systems (from bacteria to perhaps the universe itself), where patterns of self-organization arising from simple rules are revealed. Some of the material is presented for the first time in book form. The highly visual nature of the subject is accented with over 200 illustrations (8 pages of which are in color), that provide vivid representations of the cellular automata under discussion. Readers can create their own cellular automata using Java(tm) applets and simple computer code, which are available via the book's FTP site. This book serves as a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students and would be of interest to any reader with a scientific background.
Design and implementation of a single radio multi-channel MAC protocol on IEEE 802.15.4 for WBAN

WBAN(Wireless Body Area Network) which has received a lot of attention for developing medical and entertainment services is standardized by IEEE 802.15 Task Group 6(TG6). WBAN should be guaranteed low data latency because medical data must be timely and correctly transferred. Since the standard considers only a single-channel, it has problems such as intervention and large latency. To solve these problems, a lot of multi-channel TDMA MAC protocols have been proposed. However, multi-radio multichannel MAC protocols cannot be implemented on current off-the-shelf sensor modules because they have a single-radio transceiver. Furthermore, existing single-radio MAC protocols duplicate data, which may lead to energy inefficiency. In this paper, we propose a single-radio multi-channel TDMA MAC protocol which can support low data latency, high reliability, and energy efficiency. To achieve above goals, the proposed protocol employs an inventive topology, i.e., star plus mesh topology. In addition, we implement our protocol on real sensor modules, ZigbeX-I and ZigbeX-II based on IEEE 802.15. 4 packet frame and superframe so that we can verify the performance in real environment.
Tools for Earthquake Impact Estimations in Near Real Time

The paper addresses the methodological and practical issues of near real-time loss assessment following strong earthquakes at global scale. The reliability of loss estimations is analyzed for three global tools’ applications. The need for coordinated efforts and research at international level for compiling and maintaining of different data bases used in the tools, including impact data bases, is stressed if one wants to increase the reliability of loss estimation in
Iterative Refinement for Cooperative Localization with Maximum Likelihood Estimation

Iterative localization is designed to more free nodes when the number of anchor is few. When all localizable nodes are localized in the primitive iterative localization, the reciprocal renement localization is proposed to rene and improve the node positions. To improve the localization accuracy, the position error of pseudo anchor is transformed to the equivalent range error, the optimal weight strategies are employed to maximum likelihood estimation. The simulations show that proposed the rened positions can achieve the CRLBs of node positions and the performances of iterative renement are much better than the results without renement.
Towards a decentralized and adaptive software-defined networking architecture

Software-defined networking (SDN) is the rising technology in near future to build programmable networks as a way to simplify the evolution of networks. It is a new networking paradigm with the main aim is to decouple forwarding hardware from control decisions. However, existing SDN architectures are centralized and then cannot meet the requirements of both scalability and adaptability simultaneously. The way in which they have typically been constructed is often very inflexible due to the risk of bottlenecks. Issues are that SDN architectures must be able to scale to billions of nodes, able to adapt to dynamic conditions, must be highly available, secure and should require minimal human configuration and management. Therefore, new architectures are required and need to be highly flexible with self-organizing capabilities in order to cope with a dynamically changing environment. In this paper, a decentralized architecture is introduced. Design concepts are presented to highlight its operation modes.
Random forest and change point detection for root cause localization in large scale systems

Identification of root causes of a performance problem is very difficult in case of large scale IT environment. A model which is scalable and reasonably accurate is required for such complex scenarios. This paper proposes a hybrid model using random forest and statistical change point detection, for root cause localization. Based on impurity measure and change in error rates, random forest identifies the features which can be a potential cause for the problem. Since it is a tree based approach, it does not require any prior information about the measured features. To reduce the number of false classifications, a second level of selection using change point analysis is done. The ability of random forest to work well on very large dataset makes the solution scalable and accurate. Proposed model is applied and verified by identifying the root causes for Service Level Objective Violations in enterprise IT systems.
A Stronger Notion of Proofs of Knowledge

Proofs of knowledge are central to cryptographic protocols, and many definitions for such proofs have been proposed. In this work we put forward a new definition, strictly stronger than previous ones, and argue that it captures better the intuition of what proofs of knowledge should be. We show that our definition implies some new and desirable properties.
Evaluating the effects of maximum power point tracking techniques on the reliability of grid-connected photovoltaic systems

Despite all the advantages presented by the generation of energy through photovoltaic (PV) cells, the efficiency of energy conversion is currently low, and the initial cost for its implementation is still considered high; thus, it becomes necessary to use techniques to extract the maximum power from these panels, in order to achieve maximum efficiency in operation. In this paper, in order to evaluate the effects of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques on the reliability of grid-connected PV systems, different MPPT techniques employed in PV systems are discussed according to a classification scheme as offline methods, online methods, and hybrid methods. The recursive least squares (RLS) identification algorithm uses to identify local PV system model parameters under different MPPT method. For proper separation of each MPPT method, variation of irradiation is considered as variation of set point. The simulation result shows that, there is direct relations between MPPT methods and overall reliability of the PV system. For this purpose, simulations were made in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment.
A clustering protocol based on Virtual Area Partition Using Double Cluster Heads scheme for wireless sensor networks

A number of multifunction sensors deployed randomly with limited energy is one character of wireless sensor networks, so energy efficient is a critical factor in sensor network design. In this literature, we present a clustering protocol based on Virtual Area Partition using Double Cluster Heads scheme (VAP-DCH) for wireless sensor networks, which partitions the network and selects a Main Cluster Head (MCH) and a Vice Cluster Head (VCH) in each cluster adaptively. The simulation results show that the protocol we presented improves the system performance, prolongs the network lifetime and transfers more data to the base station.