Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Change-point detection via switching Kalman filters

Modelling non-stationary time-series is a challenging but important task. One of the key issues we face is explaining such data with stationary parametric models without creating overly complex models. Identifying trends in time-varying data is a key step in simplifying such models and deconstructing signals into realizations of local models separated by change-points. We study the problem of simultaneous change-point detection and inference under a piece-wise linear model using switching Kalman filters. Under the piece-wise linear dynamics assumption we look at the problem of inference as a model selection task and try to find the most likely regime sequence in polynomial time. To motivate the utility of our model we illustrate our approach in a financial time-series analysis setting where we propose a method where exogenous data can be used in conjunction with time series data to identify change-points and test various hypotheses regarding the relation of exogenous data such as news articles mentioning a financial instrument to price fluctuations.
A large, fast instruction window for tolerating cache misses

Instruction window size is an important design parameter for many modern processors. This paper presents a new instruction window design targeted at achieving the latency tolerance of large windows with the clock cycle time of small windows. The key observation is that instructions dependent on a long latency operation (e.g., cache miss) cannot execute until that source operation completes. These instructions are moved out of the conventional, small, issue queue to a much larger waiting instruction buffer (WIB). When the long latency operation completes, the instructions are reinserted into the issue queue. In this paper, we focus specifically on load cache misses and their dependent instructions. Simulations reveal that, for an 8-way processor, a 2K-entry WIB with a 32-entry issue queue can achieve speedups of 20%, 84%, and 50% over a conventional 32-entry issue queue for a subset of the SPEC CINT2000, SPEC CFP2000, and Olden benchmarks, respectively.
Anticancer Drugs from Traditional Toxic Chinese Medicines

Many anticancer drugs are obtained from natural sources. Nature produces a variety of toxic compounds, which are often used as anticancer drugs. Up to now, there are at least 120 species of poisonous botanicals, animals and minerals, of which more than half have been found to possess significant anticancer properties. In spite of their clinical toxicity, they exhibit pharmacological effects and have been used as important traditional Chinese medicines for the different stages of cancer. The article reviews many structures such as alkaloids of Camptotheca acuminata, Catharanthus roseus and Cephalotaxus fortunei, lignans of Dysosma versipellis and Podophyllum emodi, ketones of Garcinia hanburyi, terpenoids of Mylabris and Ginkgo biloba, diterpenoids of Tripterygium wilfordii, Euphorbia fischeriana, Euphorbia lathyris, Euphorbia kansui, Daphne genkwa, Pseudolarix kaempferi and Brucea javanica, triterpenoids of Melia toosendan, steroids of Periploca sepium, Paris polyphylla and Venenum Bufonis, and arsenic compounds including Arsenicum and Realgar. By comparing their related phytochemistry, toxic effects and the recent advances in understanding the mechanisms of action, this review puts forward some ideals and examples about how to increase antitumour activity and/or reduce the side effects experienced with Chinese medicine. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
RSA private key reconstruction from random bits using SAT solvers

SAT solvers are being used more and more in Cryptanalysis. Their e ciency varies depending on the structure of the algorithm they are applied to. However, when it comes to integer factorization, or more specially the RSA problem, SAT solvers prove to be at least ine cient. The running times are too long to be compared with any well known integer factorization algorithm, even when it comes to small RSA moduli numbers. The recent work on cold boot attacks has sparkled again the interest on partial key exposure attacks and RSA key reconstruction. In this work, contrary to the search tree or lattice-based approaches that most of these works use, SAT solvers are used. The focus is on the study of two scenarios, one where there is disclosure of random bits of p and q and one for the case where the public exponent e is equal to three. In both cases, we provide a more e cient modeling of RSA as an instance of a satis ability problem, and manage to reconstruct the private key, given a part of the key, even for public keys of 1024 bits in few seconds.
Bleeding region detection in WCE images based on color features and neural network

Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) is the first-line procedure in Obscure Gastrointestinal Bleeding (OGIB). However, a major problem associated with this new technology is that too many images need to be manually examined by clinicians and the integrated software SBI has insufficient sensitivity and specificity. In this paper a method aimed for rapid detecting bleeding regions in the WCE video is proposed. As color features are most important clues for the clinician to judge the status of the gastrointestinal tract, the proposed technique mainly focuses on color features in RGB color spaces. The results obtained from comparative experiments on our image data sets show that this new technique is superior in detecting bleeding frames in the WCE video.
How to Design a Mobile Learning Environment - Recommendations Based on Student Perceptions

The rise in sales of smartphones, the importance of anywhere connectivity, the general adoption of mobile apps, and the opportunities brought by mobile devices in educational settings underline the delay with which universities have moved to adapt their virtual learning environments for mobile devices. Providing students with a means to access the learning environment from a mobile device is therefore a pressing need. In this paper we present a series of recommendations designed to guide universities in the development of mobile learning environments, based on a case study of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC), an online university. A focus group was organized to gather studentsâ views on the three mobile developments for the UOCâs Virtual Campus: a native app, an adapted version for mobile browsers, and an e-mail client app.
Perceptions and performances of experienced incident commanders

Rescue operations have been organized in accordance with strict hierarchical management structures for decades. There seem to be minor differences between emergency response units within and between countries with respect to formalized routines and command structure. This presupposes that the incident commander is important for the emergency response performance and the actual outcome of the crisis. This paper presents findings from a study carried out in Norway, Sweden and Bosnia‐Herzegovina, designed to reveal the assessments carried out by incident commanders and other professional leaders of emergency response units, the police, paramedics and fire brigade. The study encompasses aspects of naturalistic decision making in the different accident response phases. On call‐out, the leaders constructed their mental maps of the situations from a combination of information from the call center, knowledge of standard procedures, their expectation of available resources and personal knowledge of the site. Typical management strategies involved incremental problem solving within narrow time horizons. The incident commanders were more concerned with details than with evaluating the overall situation. In general, the commanders expected normal situations, i.e. typical accidents they were trained to cope with and in response to which their preparations and strategies were standard. Our study shows that these incident command strategies are more reactive than proactive, and that the commanders rarely command. Risk management is limited to evaluations of the response units' safety.
The Experience the Gift in a Model of Co-Therapy

Abstract The significant social and cultural transformations which took place in recent decades brought about significant changes in the way couples interact and deal with “the risk of bonding”. The vulnerability that characterizes the couple in post-modernity is the consequence of these changes. The application of a co-therapy model with couples in crisis is based on the premise of mutual gift, which has to be understood as both an exchange of expertise and professionalism to the benefit of the couple, and as a bond of unity between co-therapists. The work that follows suggests some reflections which originate from the co-therapy model. The novelty of this model originates from the fact that the clinical work is based on two connected and complementary aspects: a deep attention towards the patient and a deep attention towards the relationship between the co-therapists. Both of these aspects are characterized by the dimension of gift. In this clinical model therapists transform any specific suffering lived by the couple in a positive relational experience between themselves which then becomes an example for the couple. Thus, for example, the inability to understand each other that the couple lives is contrasted by the capacity to listen to each other in a deep and authentic way by the therapists; the attitude of prevailing over each other in the couple, is counterbalanced by the therapists’ attention towards each other. And so on. This act of “overturning the limit” seems to reveal the therapeutic potential that a model of co-therapy, based on a new humanism, can offer to the clinical work with couples in crisis.
Implementation of alternative test strategies for the safety assessment of engineered nanomaterials

Nanotechnology introduces a new field that requires novel approaches and methods for hazard and risk assessment. For an appropriate scientific platform for safety assessment, nanoscale properties and functions of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs), including how the physicochemical properties of the materials relate to mechanisms of injury at the nano–bio interface, must be considered. Moreover, this rapidly advancing new field requires novel test strategies that allow multiple toxicants to be screened in robust, mechanism‐based assays in which the bulk of the investigation can be carried out at the cellular and biomolecular level whilst maintaining limited animal use and is based on the contribution of toxicological pathways to the pathophysiology of disease. First, a predictive toxicological approach for the safety assessment of ENMs will be discussed against the background of a ‘21st‐century vision’ for using alternative test strategies (ATSs) to perform toxicological assessment of large numbers of untested chemicals, thereby reducing a backlog that could otherwise become a problem for nanotechnology. An ATS is defined here as an alternative to animal experiments or refinement/reduction alternative to traditional animal testing. Secondly, the approach of selecting pathways of toxicity to screen for the pulmonary hazard potential of carbon nanotubes and metal oxides will be discussed, as well as how to use these pathways to perform high‐content or high‐throughput testing and how the data can be used for hazard ranking, risk assessment, regulatory decision‐making and ‘safer‐by‐design’ strategies. Finally, the utility and disadvantages of this predictive toxicological approach to ENM safety assessment, and how it can assist the 21st‐century vision, will be addressed.
Known Unknowns in Large-Scale System Monitoring

This paper addresses a central challenge in PRISM, a large-scale distributed monitoring system: coping with the uncertainties and ambiguities introduced by network and node failures. In particular, in a large scale monitoring system, such failures interact badly with techniques needed for scalability like hierarchy, arithmetic filterin g, and temporal batching. For example, if a monitoring subtree is silent over an interval, it is difficult to distinguis h between two cases: (a) the subtree has sent no updates because the inputs have not significantly changed or (b) the inputs have significantly changed but the subtree is unable to transmit its report. As a result, reported results can be arbitrarily far from their true values. To address this challenge PRISM introduces Network Imprecision(NI), a new metric to characterize accuracy despite node failures, network disruptions, and system reconfigurations. PRISM leverages NI to flag potentially inaccurate results, allowing applications to differentia te between known-correct and likely-erroneous results as well as to correct distorted results by applying several redundancy techniques. Evaluation of our PRISM prototype shows that NI effectively flags inaccurate query results while incurring low overheads, and we find that using NI to automatically select the best results can reduce the inaccuracy in a PRISM-based monitoring service by nearly a factor of five.
Simulation Studies for Stabilization Control of Furuta Pendulum System Using Cascade Fuzzy PD Controller

A fuzzy PD controller in cascade form is proposed in the present study to deal with stability issue of Furuta pendulum. The Furuta pendulum which is widely known as Rotary inverted pendulum (RIP) is under-actuated mechanical system. This paper, described a development of nonlinear dynamical equations of the RIP system using Kane's method. The Simulink model of RIP is developed based on the derived equations. The open loop simulation studies are carried out and the results indicated that, the RIP system is inherently nonlinear and unstable. The fuzzy PD controller is designed for stability control of RIP. The simulation result found show that the proposed controller is effective based on the four performance indexes (i.e. settling time, overshoot, undershoot and steady state error). The proposed fuzzy PD controller can be used to solve the stabilization control for other systems with unstable and nonlinear behavior.
Les facteurs stratégiques influençant l'évaluation des start-ups par les capitaux-risqueurs

A new venture valuation by venture capitalists is a particular delicate task, since they don't historical data to make a forecast. Guided by established theories in strategic management, the article proposes a theoretical rationale and develops an integrated theoretical framework to investigate new valuation. Statistical analyses are conducted on 184 rounds of venture capital financing accounting for 102 new ventures. The empirical results help to establish an initial linkage between the well-developed theories in strategic management and under-researched venture capital valuation practice.
The Regular C*-algebra of an Integral Domain

To each integral domain R with finite quotients we associate a purely infinite simple C*-algebra in a very natural way. Its stabilization can be identified with the crossed product of the algebra of continuous functions on the "finite adele space" corresponding to R by the action of the ax+b-group over the quotient field Q(R). We study the relationship to generalized Bost-Connes systems and deduce for them a description as universal C*-algebras with the help of our construction.
Using systematic review methods within a Ph.D. dissertation in political science: challenges and lessons learned from practice*

Systematic review and synthesis methods have gained wide acceptance within the social sciences and, as a result, many postgraduate students now consider using them for their thesis or dissertation research. However, students are rarely aware of all the concrete implications that their decision entails. This reflective narrative reports the experience of a political science student who began to conduct a systematic review as part of his Ph.D. dissertation but who did not complete it. The aim of this article is to identify challenges and lessons learned from this experience and to formulate recommendations for postgraduate students who wish to make an informed choice with respect to the use of these methods.
Factor Xa Inhibitor Suppresses the Release of Phosphorylated HSP27 from Collagen-Stimulated Human Platelets: Inhibition of HSP27 Phosphorylation via p44/p42 MAP Kinase

Selective inhibitors of factor Xa (FXa) are widely recognized as useful therapeutic tools for stroke prevention in non-valvular atrial fibrillation or venous thrombosis. Thrombin, which is rapidly generated from pro-thrombin through the activation of factor X to FXa, acts as a potent activator of human platelets. Thus, the reduction of thrombin generation by FXa inhibitor eventually causes a suppressive effect on platelet aggregation. However, little is known whether FXa inhibitors directly affect the function of human platelets. We have previously reported that collagen induces the phosphorylation of heat shock protein 27 (HSP27), a low-molecular weight heat shock protein via Rac-dependent activation of p44/p42 mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase in human platelets, eventually resulting in the release of HSP27. In the present study, we investigated the direct effect of FXa inhibitor on the collagen-induced human platelet activation. Rivaroxaban as well as edoxaban significantly reduced the collagen-induced phosphorylation of both HSP27 and p44/p42 MAP kinase without affecting the platelet aggregation. Rivaroxaban significantly inhibited the release of phosphorylated HSP27 from collagen-stimulated platelets but not the secretion of platelet derived growth factor-AB. In patients administrated with rivaroxaban, the collagen-induced levels of phosphorylated HSP27 were markedly diminished after 2 days of administration, which failed to affect the platelet aggregation. These results strongly suggest that FXa inhibitor reduces the collagen-stimulated release of phosphorylated HSP27 from human platelets due to the inhibition of HSP27 phosphorylation via p44/p42 MAP kinase.
Inferring Cetacean Population Densities from the Absolute Dynamic Topography of the Ocean in a Hierarchical Bayesian Framework

We inferred the population densities of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) and short-beaked common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) in the Northeast Pacific Ocean as functions of the water-column’s physical structure by implementing hierarchical models in a Bayesian framework. This approach allowed us to propagate the uncertainty of the field observations into the inference of species-habitat relationships and to generate spatially explicit population density predictions with reduced effects of sampling heterogeneity. Our hypothesis was that the large-scale spatial distributions of these two cetacean species respond primarily to ecological processes resulting from shoaling and outcropping of the pycnocline in regions of wind-forced upwelling and eddy-like circulation. Physically, these processes affect the thermodynamic balance of the water column, decreasing its volume and thus the height of the absolute dynamic topography (ADT). Biologically, they lead to elevated primary productivity and persistent aggregation of low-trophic-level prey. Unlike other remotely sensed variables, ADT provides information about the structure of the entire water column and it is also routinely measured at high spatial-temporal resolution by satellite altimeters with uniform global coverage. Our models provide spatially explicit population density predictions for both species, even in areas where the pycnocline shoals but does not outcrop (e.g. the Costa Rica Dome and the North Equatorial Countercurrent thermocline ridge). Interannual variations in distribution during El Niño anomalies suggest that the population density of both species decreases dramatically in the Equatorial Cold Tongue and the Costa Rica Dome, and that their distributions retract to particular areas that remain productive, such as the more oceanic waters in the central California Current System, the northern Gulf of California, the North Equatorial Countercurrent thermocline ridge, and the more southern portion of the Humboldt Current System. We posit that such reductions in available foraging habitats during climatic disturbances could incur high energetic costs on these populations, ultimately affecting individual fitness and survival.
Editorial: personality and cognition

This special issue is devoted to a consideration of the topics of Personality and Cognition and their interrelationship. For someÐespecially at speci®c points in timeÐthe connection between personality and cognition might seem to be indeterminate and, perhaps, a perplexing juxtaposition of terms. For example, the traditional trait approach tended to focus on descriptive categorization rather than on a concern with process and mechanism, the subject matter of the study of cognition. What, for example, do schemas and construct accessibility have to do with a search for the nature and number of basic personality traits? More recently, however, most of the dominant approaches to personality have at least acknowledged the importance of the cognitive and mental life of the individual in understanding individual dierences in behaviour. Many more, of course, consider cognitive structures and processes to be at the very heart of any reasoned attempt to understand personality. The papers in this special issue of the European Journal of Personality fall primarily within the second group. Traditional personality theory has its roots in two intellectual traditions, personality trait theory, with its accompanying measurement orientation, and psychodynamic theory, with its focus on the unconscious and intrapsychic con ̄ict. Historically, temperament, character and personality have been used to refer to what we now mean by the term personality. Allport (1937), widely regarded as the founder of modern personality psychology, distinguished between personality as maskÐthe term personality derives from the Latin word ``persona'', a mask worn in the classical Roman theatreÐand personality as substance. The ®rst modern personality questionnaire was designed by Woodworth in 1917 (Woodworth, 1919). A more cognitive stream currently exists in personality and has its roots, curiously, enough in the S±R tradition of Skinner (1953). This is curious, of course, because radical behaviourism eschewed consideration of unobervables such as cognitive structure and process. Radical behaviourism gradually evolved into the more recent social learning theories of Bandura (1977, 1986) and Mischel (1968, 1973). Basic work on schemas, a foundational construct in many cognitive theories, has its modern roots in work by Hebb (1949) on cell assemblies and work by Bartlett (1932) on social schemata. That contemporary personality theory would seek to marry traditional concerns with cognition is remarkable given the historical antagonism between personality theory's