Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Potencial evocado visual multifocal em olhos com hemianopsia temporal por compressão quiasmática. Correlação com a perimetria computadorizada e a tomografia de coerência óptica

Sousa RM. Multifocal visual evoked potential in eyes with temporal hemianopia from chiasmal compression. Correlation with standard automated perimetry and OCT findings [thesis]. São Paulo: “Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo”; 2017. 75p. PURPOSE: To evaluate the ability of multifocal visual evoked potential (mfVEP) to differentiate patients with temporal hemianopia due to chiasmal compression from normal controls. To assess the relationship between mfVEP, standard automated perimetry (SAP) and fourier domain-optical coherence tomography (fd-OCT). METHODS: Twenty-seven eyes of 21 patients with permanent temporal visual field (VF) defects from chiasmal compression and 43 eyes of 23 healthy controls underwent mfVEP, SAP and fd-OCT (3D OCT-1000®, Topcon) macular and peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) measurements. It was averaged the responses for global mfVEP, central mfVEP and fd-OCT macular measurements were averaged in quadrants and halves, while peripapillary RNFL thickness was averaged in 12 sectors around the disc. VF loss was estimated in four quadrants and each half of 24-2 and 10-2 strategy test points. The two groups were compared using generalized estimated equations (GEE). Correlations between mfVEP, VF and fd-OCT findings were verified. RESULTS: Global and central mfVEP P1 and N2 amplitude parameters of temporal measurements were significantly smaller in patients than controls (p<0.004). No significant differences were observed between the groups with respect to mfVEP amplitude parameters from the nasal measurements. No significant differences were observed in global and central mfVEP latency parameters for all averaged measurements between patients and healthy controls. A significant moderate correlation was found between global and central mfVEP amplitude parameters of temporal measurements and temporal VF 24-2 and 10-2 loss as well as with corresponding fd-OCT macular and RNFL thickness measurements. CONCLUSIONS: mfVEP amplitude parameters were able to differentiate eyes with temporal hemianopia from controls and were significant correlated with VF and fd-OCT findings. These data suggest that it is a useful technology for detecting visual abnormalities in patients with chiasmal compression. Descriptors: Optic atrophy/diagnosis; Optic chiasm/pathology; Nerve fibers/pathology; Visual field tests/methods; Tomography, Optical coherence/methods; Evoked potentials, Visual
Performance monitoring in advanced computer architecture

Imagine that you could directly monitor the performance of a processor while it is running. How would that affect a computer architecture course? The current generation of microprocessors has performance monitoring registers on chip which can be read by users. The result is real-time monitoring of processor performance, and a new opportunity for computer architecture education. In particular, it allows experimentation which addresses the question "Should Computer Scientists Experiment More? " from the cover of the May 1998 IEEE Computer magazine. This paper describes the incorporation of performance monitoring into a graduate-level, advanced computer architecture course based on Hennessy & Patterson's Computer Architecture A Quantitative Approach.
DATING YOUR SUPERVISOR: A GAMIFIED APPLICATION FOR ALLOCATING STUDENT DISSERTATION SUPERVISORS

Being an academic comes with many challenges, one such challenge is ensuring student satisfaction, and one of the large contributors to student satisfaction is the allocation of final year dissertation project supervisors. The paper outlines a novel way to allocate third year project students and their respective dissertation supervisors. The aim of this project is to evaluate what contributes to student satisfaction, and if we can influence the perceived satisfaction of a student through an online ‘dating’ style gamerfied application. We present the rationale for development of such a system, other mechanisms by which we have attempted to carry out project allocations and the resulting development of this application. Due to the nature of the 3 rd year project taking 1 year and the module feedback for this taking place after the delivery of the module, the final results of this project will not be known for 12 months.
Achieving Data-Aware Load Balancing through Distributed Queues and Key / Value Stores

Load balancing techniques (e.g. work stealing) are important to obtain the best performance for distributed task scheduling system. In work stealing, tasks are randomly migrated from heavy-loaded schedulers to idle ones. However, for data-intensive applications where tasks are dependent and task execution involves processing large amount of data, migrating tasks blindly would compromise the data-locality incurring significant data-transferring overhead. In this work, we propose a data-aware work stealing technique that combines key-value stores and distributed queues enabling it to achieve good load balancing, all while maximizing data-locality. We leverage a distributed key-value store, ZHT, as a meta-data service that stores task dependency and data-locality information. We implement the proposed technique in MATRIX, a distributed task execution fabric. We evaluate the work with all-pairs application structured as direct acyclic graph from biometrics, and compare with Falkon data-diffusion technique.
The relationship between organizational culture and quality of working life of employees

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between organizational culture and quality of work life of employees in Islamic Azad University of Tabriz (IAUT). Statistical population of survey is all employees who work in different organizational posts of IAUT (N=796). The Sample has been selected based on a stratified random sampling method using Cochran formula (n=260). We have used Hofstede Organizational questionnaire for collecting information based on Queen and Gareth model and Walton work life quality questionnaire. Both of them were standard questionnaires and have good stability and validity. Findings of the research show that: - There is direct and significant relation between organizational culture and quality of employees work life. - There is direct and significant relation between every components of work life quality. - Governed culture of the university is kind of Idiologic.
Constraint Answer Set Programming Based on HEX-Programs ?

Constraint Answer Set Programming (CASP) is a convenient integration of the Answer Set Programming (ASP) paradigm with constraint programming (CP), which was exploited for a range of applications. HEX-programs are another extension of ASP towards integration of arbitrary external sources through socalled external atoms. In this work, we integrate HEX-programs with CP, which results in a strict generalization of CASP, called constraint HEX-programs. We then present a translation of constraint HEX-programs to (standard) HEX-programs using special external sources for constraint solving. In contrast to native CASP solvers, this not only allows for reusing existing algorithms, but also for combining constraints with other external sources. We further show how to integrate advanced techniques used in CASP solving algorithms; while dedicated solvers are currently faster as not all such techniques have been integrated yet, our experiments show that this significantly improves efficiency and promises that further optimization integrated in future work will yield an efficient yet more general system.
Liquid- and Gas-Phase Diffusion of Ferrocene in Thin Films of Metal-Organic Frameworks

The mass transfer of the guest molecules in nanoporous host materials, in particular in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), is among the crucial features of their applications. By using thin surface-mounted MOF films in combination with a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), the diffusion of ferrocene vapor and of ethanolic and hexanic ferrocene solution in HKUST-1 was investigated. For the first time, liquid- and gas-phase diffusion in MOFs was compared directly in the identical sample. The diffusion coefficients are in the same order of magnitude (~10−16 m2·s−1), whereas the diffusion coefficient of ferrocene in the empty framework is roughly 3-times smaller than in the MOF which is filled with ethanol or n-hexane.
Do Security Patterns Really Help Designers?

Security patterns are well-known solutions to security-specific problems. They are often claimed to benefit designers without much security expertise. We have performed an empirical study to investigate whether the usage of security patterns by such an audience leads to a more secure design, or to an increased productivity of the designers. Our study involved 32 teams of master students enrolled in a course on software architecture, working on the design of a realistically-sized banking system. Irrespective of whether the teams were using security patterns, we have not been able to detect a difference between the two treatment groups. However, the teams prefer to work with the support of security patterns.
The changing role of information systems in Chinese state-owned organizations

This study is a theoretical replication of a 1991 study that examines how information systems (IS) are used in Chinese state-owned organizations to support functional business requirements. Although the new companies studied are larger and from a different city, the observations are generally the same: the Chinese use of IS continues to be quite different from US implementations even after four or more years into economic reform. Yet there are signs of change faintly beginning to emerge in the first three of the four areas evaluated in this study: IS planning support, data resource management, IS manager's role, and IS planning methodology.
The defect

We give an introduction to the valuation theoretical phenomenon of "defect", also known as "ramification deficiency". We describe the role it plays in deep open problems in positive characteristic: local uniformization (the local form of resolution of singularities), the model theory of valued fields, the structure theory of valued function fields. We give several examples of algebraic extensions with non-trivial defect. We indicate why Artin-Schreier defect extensions play a central role and describe a way to classify them. Further, we give an overview of various results about the defect that help to tame or avoid it, in particular "stability" theorems and theorems on "henselian rationality", and show how they are applied. Finally, we include a list of open problems.
A Survey on Domain-specific Modeling and Languages in Robotics

The development of advanced robotic systems is challenging as expertise from multiple domains needs to be integrated conceptually and technically. Model-driven engineering promises an efficient and flexible approach for developing robotics applications that copes with this challenge. Domain-specific modeling allows to describe robotics concerns with concepts and notations closer to the respective problem domain. This raises the level of abstraction and results in models that are easier to understand and validate. Furthermore, model-driven engineering allows to increase the level of automation, e.g. through code generation, and to bridge the gap between modeling and implementation. The anticipated results are improved efficiency and quality of the robotics systems engineering process. Within this contribution, we survey the available literature on domain-specific modeling and languages that target core robotics concerns. In total 137 publications were identified that comply with a set of defined criteria, which we consider essential for contributions in this field. With the presented survey, we provide an overview on the state-of-the-art of domain-specific modeling approaches in robotics. The surveyed publications are investigated from the perspective of users and developers of model-based approaches in robotics along a set of quantitative and qualitative research questions. The presented quantitative analysis clearly indicates the rising popularity of applying domain-specific modeling approaches to robotics in the academic community. Beyond this statistical analysis, we map the selected publications to a defined set of robotics subdomains and typical development phases in robotic systems engineering as reference for potential users. Furthermore, we analyze these contributions from a language engineering viewpoint and discuss aspects such as the methods and tools used for their implementation as well as their documentation status, platform integration, typical use cases and the evaluation strategies used for validation of the proposed approaches. Finally, we conclude with recommendations for discussion in the model-driven engineering and robotics community based on the insights gained in this survey.
An efficient similar image search framework for large-scale data on cloud

In this paper, we aim to build a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) based on Map Reduce distributed processing framework, which is an image analysis platform with the capacities of operating stably and achieving the high performance in a large-scale dataset. It provides a fast and robust technique SURF to build feature descriptors for representing an image. As well, a building index scheme based on unsupervised learning method VP-Tree is also applied to construct a binary search tree for improving the efficiently while searching. Moreover, a locality distance cache is implemented on each processing machine, which maintains distance computations of previous query sessions for approximating the tightness distances between the current query object and objects stored in the database, thus decreasing needed time to process a single query. Especially, a Redis Master/Slave replication model is configured as a collaborative caching service for increasing data availability in the distributed environment. Finally, an MapReduce framework is exploited to retrieve the top-relevant images in searching phase. Regarding to experiments, it showed that our proposed framework achieves both accuracy and low responding time when working on a large dataset.
Bayesian methods for change‐point detection in long‐range dependent processes

Abstract. We describe a Bayesian method for detecting structural changes in a long‐range dependent process. In particular, we focus on changes in the long‐range dependence parameter, d, and changes in the process level, μ. Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are used to estimate the posterior probability and size of a change at time t, along with other model parameters. A time‐dependent Kalman filter approach is used to evaluate the likelihood of the fractionally integrated ARMA model characterizing the long‐range dependence. The method allows for multiple change points and can be extended to the long‐memory stochastic volatility case. We apply the method to three examples, to investigate a change in persistence of the yearly Nile River minima, to investigate structural changes in the series of durations between intraday trades of IBM stock on the New York Stock Exchange, and to detect structural breaks in daily stock returns for the Coca Cola Company during the 1990s.
Software architecture modelling for Information Retrieval Systems

Abstract: This paper considers an iterative user centered design of Information Retrieval Systems (IRS). An iterative design based on experimental evaluations with the end-users implies a high modifiability of the software. To achieve this software quality criterion, we apply the PAC-Amodeus model. PAC-Amodeus is a conceptual model useful for devising architectures driven by quality criteria including modifiability and portability. We illustrate the applicability of the model with the implementation of an IRS that we have developed: TIAPRI.
Player Modelling for Cursor-Driven Games

Cursor-driven games compose the vast majority of digital games on the market. For humans and for agents that control a virtual cursor, precise cursor control is frequently the primary determining factor of skill. Past efforts to control computer difficulty by adding rule-based distortions to the virtual cursor are inflexible and often based on coarse difficulty settings. We propose a framework for modelling player-controlled cursor accuracy by abstracting the twodimensional cursor plane into a one-dimensional distance measure from a target’s center. We then infer a probability distribution from player data using a novel online learning technique. The proposed learner is shown to be more computationally efficient and robust to a range of player types than comparable methods. The player modelling techniques we describe can potentially be applied to developing interesting cursor-driven opponents, or providing players with feedback as to when and where their cursor control is weak.
Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science or Volunteered Geographic Information? The Current State of Crowdsourced Geographic Information

Citizens are increasingly becoming an important source of geographic information, sometimes entering domains that had until recently been the exclusive realm of authoritative agencies. This activity has a very diverse character as it can, amongst other things, be active or passive, involve spatial or aspatial data and the data provided can be variable in terms of key attributes such as format, description and quality. Unsurprisingly, therefore, there are a variety of terms used to describe data arising from citizens. In this article, the expressions used to describe citizen sensing of geographic information are reviewed and their use over time explored, prior to categorizing them and highlighting key issues in the current state of the subject. The latter involved a review of ~100 Internet sites with particular focus on their thematic topic, the nature of the data and issues such as incentives for contributors. This review suggests that most sites involve active rather than passive contribution, with citizens typically motivated by the desire to aid a worthy cause, often receiving little training. As such, this article provides a snapshot of the role of citizens in crowdsourcing geographic information and a guide to the current status of this rapidly emerging and evolving subject.
Classification of TOFD Signals by Artificial Neural Network

TOFD is one of the advanced ultrasonic NDE techniques widely used in weld inspection. Signal and image evaluation in TOFD requires adequate knowledge and experience. It is well known that artificial neural networks can be used for defect classification and sizing. However, review of literature indicates that very little work has been done in the area of application of ANN for TOFD signals and images. This work focuses on the application of multi layer feed forward network with Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm for the classification of TOFD signals from defect types such as Lack of Fusion and Lack of Penetration. TOFD signals from austenitic stainless steel weld pads with the above mentioned defects were acquired using an AEA micro plus TOFD equipment. Time scale features were extracted from the resultant TOFD A scans. Increasing the number of hidden layers in the network from 0 to 4 resulted in classification accuracy better than 95%. The results are a pointer to the promising application of this for automatic defect classification by TOFD technique. This paper provides the approach and analysis methodologies and the results obtained.
Discriminative Pronunciation Modeling Using the MPE Criterion

Introducing pronunciation models into decoding has been proven to be benefit to LVCSR. In this paper, a discriminative pronunciation modeling method is presented, within the framework of the Minimum Phone Error (MPE) training for HMM/GMM. In order to bring the pronunciation models into the MPE training, the auxiliary function is rewritten at word level and decomposes into two parts. One is for co-training the acoustic models, and the other is for discriminatively training the pronunciation models. On Mandarin conversational telephone speech recognition task, compared to the baseline using a canonical lexicon, the discriminative pronunciation models reduced the absolute Character Error Rate (CER) by 0.7% on LDC test set, and with the acoustic model co-training, 0.8% additional CER decrease had been achieved. key words: automatic speech recognition, pronunciation models, discriminative training, Mandarin conversational speech recognition
Predictors of lower extremity injuries in team sports (PROFITS-study): a study protocol

Introduction Several intrinsic risk factors for lower extremity injuries have been proposed, including lack of proper knee and body control during landings and cutting manoeuvres, low muscular strength, reduced balance and increased ligament laxity, but there are still many unanswered questions. The overall aim of this research project is to investigate anatomical, biomechanical, neuromuscular, genetic and demographic risk factors for traumatic non-contact lower extremity injuries in young team sport athletes. Furthermore, the research project aims to develop clinically oriented screening tools for predicting future injury risk. Methods Young female and male players (n=508) from nine basketball teams, nine floorball teams, three ice hockey teams, and one volleyball team accepted the invitation to participate in this four-and-half-year prospective follow-up study. The players entered the study either in 2011, 2012 or 2013, and gave blood samples, performed physical tests and completed the baseline questionnaires. Following the start of screening tests, the players will be followed for sports injuries through December 2015. The primary outcome is a traumatic non-contact lower extremity injury. The secondary outcomes are other sports-related injuries. Injury risk is examined on the basis of anatomical, biomechanical, neuromuscular, genetic and other baseline factors. Univariate and multivariate regression models will be used to investigate association between investigated parameters and injury risk.