Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Gestalt morphology of prosody directed by functions: the example of a step by step model developed at ICP

This paper proposes a point of view consisting in showing prosody as an emergent form perceived via Gestalt processing. Contours carry some function values at different levels through the superposition of independent contours. In this view, tonal phonology can be interpreted as a bottom-up sub-processing approach, and global form modelling as supported by a top-down approach. The model can integrate a large scale of functions from the linguistic domain to the expression of emotion. The founding principles of the model are explained and the most significant steps developed at ICP are recalled to illustrate this theoretical background.
Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials: Understanding the "New Students.".

STUDENTS n essential component of facilitating learning is understanding learners. The learning styles, attitudes, and approaches of high school students differ from those of eighteento twenty-twoyear-old college students. The styles, attitudes, and approaches of adult learners differ yet again. How well do college and university faculty, administrators, and staff understand these differences? How often do they take the differences into account when designing programs or courses? Boomers Gen-Xers Millennials
Using a circular grid for offline handwritten character recognition

Offline handwritten recognition is more challenging as indicated by the recognition technologies. This study demonstrates significantly higher rates recognition when compared with other comparable studies. In this paper, we present a circular grid zoning method applied on Polar transformation recognition system. It compares the circular grid zoning (CGZ) and standard zoning (SZ) feature extraction method on Polar and Cartesian coordinate system. We report recognition rates of 92.3%, which are considerably higher than previous studies of zoning based Polar transformation system (86.6%) and zoning based Cartesian recognition system (80.6%). Based on the finding, we propose that our circular grid zoning based Polar transformation system may provide improved classification rates for complex offline handwritten recognition.
Tracking Visual Differences for Generation and Playback of User-Customized Notifications

Notification systems alert individuals or groups of changing information that is of interest to them. The problem is that it is difficult for people to gather notifications of personal interest; they must either rely on the generic offerings of the information provider, or construct their own services through coding. In this paper, we contribute a simple yet effective method that lets people create custom notification elements by image assembly, where notifications are triggered through visual differencing. First, after finding information of interest on a web page, the person constructs a visual collage selected from regions on the page. These are regions of the fully rendered bitmap view of the page i.e., they are not coupled to the page’s underlying HTML markup. The composite image created from this collage will be used to assemble a notification of relevant changes to that web page. Second, the person specifies one or more regions on the page that will be compared for visual differences over time, and how often the page should be revisited to check for these differences. The system will automatically generate a notification (the composite image plus a title and timestamp) when differences go beyond a userprovided threshold. Finally, the person can view the notifications in several ways: as only the most recently changed version (to illustrate current state), or as an image history that can be either browsed individually or played back as a continuous video stream (to see changes over time).
Restricting Excessive Cardiac Action Potential and QT Prolongation: A Vital Role for IKs in Human Ventricular Muscle

Background—Although pharmacological block of the slow, delayed rectifier potassium current (IKs) by chromanol 293B, L-735,821, or HMR-1556 produces little effect on action potential duration (APD) in isolated rabbit and dog ventricular myocytes, the effect of IKs block on normal human ventricular muscle APD is not known. Therefore, studies were conducted to elucidate the role of IKs in normal human ventricular muscle and in preparations in which both repolarization reserve was attenuated and sympathetic activation was increased by exogenous dofetilide and adrenaline. Methods and Results—Preparations were obtained from undiseased organ donors. Action potentials were measured in ventricular trabeculae and papillary muscles using conventional microelectrode techniques; membrane currents were measured in ventricular myocytes using voltage-clamp techniques. Chromanol 293B (10 &mgr;mol/L), L-735,821 (100 nmol/L), and HMR-1556 (100 nmol/L and 1 &mgr;mol/L) produced a <12-ms change in APD while pacing at cycle lengths ranging from 300 to 5000 ms, whereas the IKr blockers sotalol and E-4031 markedly lengthened APD. In voltage-clamp experiments, L-735,821 and chromanol 293B each blocked IKs in the presence of E-4031 to block IKr. The E-4031–sensitive current (IKr) at the end of a 150-ms-long test pulse to 30 mV was 32.9±6.7 pA (n=8); the L-735,821–sensitive current (IKs) magnitude was 17.8±2.94 pA (n=10). During a longer 500-ms test pulse, IKr was not substantially changed (33.6±6.1 pA; n=8), and IKs was significantly increased (49.6±7.24 pA; n=10). On application of an “action potential–like” test pulse, IKr increased as voltage became more negative, whereas IKs remained small throughout all phases of the action potential–like test pulse. In experiments in which APD was first lengthened by 50 nmol/L dofetilide and sympathetic activation was increased by 1 &mgr;mol/L adrenaline, 1 &mgr;mol/L HMR-1556 significantly increased APD by 14.7±3.2% (P<0.05; n=3). Conclusions—Pharmacological IKs block in the absence of sympathetic stimulation plays little role in increasing normal human ventricular muscle APD. However, when human ventricular muscle repolarization reserve is attenuated, IKs plays an increasingly important role in limiting action potential prolongation.
NUMA-aware scheduling for both memory- and compute-bound tasks

There has been much work in NUMA-aware (Non-Uniform Memory Access) scheduling the past decade, all authors presenting different schedulers and considers the major problems with today schedulers, which are mostly aimed at UMA (Unified Memory Access) machines or not optimized for NUMA machines.This paper is aimed at summarizing the available literature about NUMA-aware scheduling and extract guidelines for how to schedule compute- and memory-bound tasks in a NUMA-aware fashion. This can be done by using different techniques to distribute the data among the available nodes and by fully utilizing all of the memory controllers sockets.From the discussion and theory, it is possible to form eight guidelines that can be used to write a NUMA-aware scheduler, formed from the main ideas of the available literature.
Automatic Sentiment Analysis in On-line Text

The growing stream of content placed on the Web provides a huge collection of textual resources. People share their experiences on-line, ventilate their opinions (and frustrations), or simply talk just about anything. The large amount of available data creates opportunities for automatic mining and analysis. The information we are interested in this paper, is how people feel about certain topics. We consider it as a classification task: their feelings can be positive, negative or neutral. A sentiment isn’t always stated in a clear way in the text; it is often represented in subtle, complex ways. Besides direct expression of the user's feelings towards a certain topic, he or she can use a diverse range of other techniques to express his or her emotions. On top of that, authors may mix objective and subjective information about a topic, or write down thoughts about other topics than the one we are investigating. Lastly, the data gathered from the World Wide Web often contains a lot of noise. All of this makes the task of automatic recognition of the sentiment in on-line text more difficult. We will give an overview of various techniques used to tackle the problems in the domain of sentiment analysis, and add some of our own results.
La régulation interprofessionnelle dans le secteur vitivinicole est-elle fondée économiquement ?

La regulation dans le secteur des vins d'Appellation d'Origine souleve des debats recurrents, tant au sein des filieres vitivinicoles qu'au sein des instances nationales et internationales chargees de la reglementation des formes d'organisation du secteur agricole. Cependant, ces debats ne sont pas l'objet d'affrontements de doctrines economiques clairement etablies, les arguments etant principalement de nature politique ou juridique. L'objectif de cet article est de contribuer a l'elaboration de cette doctrine dans le cadre des resultats recents de la theorie micro-economique.
Spielen in virtuellen Welten: Übertragung von Inhalten und Handlungsmustern aus Bildschirmspielen

Bildschirmspiele wurden seit jeher als problematischer Aspekt des jugendlichen Umgangs mit dem Computer angesehen. Durch die fortschreitende Entwicklung werden sie auch spielerisch umfangreicher, komplexer und kommen der Realitat immer naher. Der Artikel entwirft ein Schema zur Kategorisierung von Bildschirmspielen aus dem sich erschliessen lasst, wo die Schwerpunkte der Ubertragung von Inhalten aus der virtuellen Welt der Bildschirmspiele in die Alltagswelt liegen. Dabei werden nicht nur die kritischen Seiten dieser Thematik besprochen, wie die Ubernahme aggressiver Verhaltensweisen und emotionale Abstumpfung. Es werden auch die padagogischen Moglichkeiten von Bildschirmspielen als Lernmedium aufgezeigt, durch den Aufbau einer Erlebniswelt am Bildschirm.
Learning Semi-Markovian Causal Models using Experiments

Semi-Markovian causal models (SMCMs) are an extension of causal Bayesian networks for modeling problems with latent variables. However, there is a big gap between the SMCMs used in theoretical studies and the models that can be learned from observational data alone. The result of standard algorithms for learning from observations, is a complete partially ancestral graph (CPAG), representing the Markov equivalence class of maximal ancestral graphs (MAGs). In MAGs not all edges can be interpreted as immediate causal relationships. In order to apply state-of-the-art causal inference techniques we need to completely orient the learned CPAG and to transform the result into a SMCM by removing non-causal edges. In this paper we combine recent work on MAG structure learning from observational data with causal learning from experiments in order to achieve that goal. More specifically, we provide a set of rules that indicate which experiments are needed in order to transform a CPAG to a completely oriented SMCM and how the results of these experiments have to be processed. We will propose an alternative representation for SMCMs that can easily be parametrised and where the parameters can be learned with classical methods. Finally, we show how this parametrisation can be used to develop methods to efficiently perform both probabilistic and causal inference.
Topological Map Building and Path Estimation Using Global-appearance Image Descriptors

Visual-based navigation has been a source of numerous researches in the field of mobile robotics. In this paper we present a topological map building and localization algorithm using wide-angle scenes. Global-appearance descriptors are used in order to optimally represent the visual information. First, we build a topological graph that represents the navigation environment. Each node of the graph is a different position within the area, and it is composed of a collection of images that covers the complete field of view. We use the information provided by a camera that is mounted on the mobile robot when it travels along some routes between the nodes in the graph. With this aim, we estimate the relative position of each node using the visual information stored. Once the map is built, we propose a localization system that is able to estimate the location of the mobile not only in the nodes but also on intermediate positions using the visual information. The approach has been evaluated and shows good performance in real indoor scenarios under realistic illumination conditions.
Micro-mechanical bending (M2B) method for carbon nanotube (CNT) based sensor fabrication

Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs forest) array is known to be the darkest material on earth. However, post processing of VACNTs array by micro mechanical bending (M2B) causes the individual CNT to be bent, flattened and reflective. This interesting change in the optical property of CNT forest opens the gateway, to use it as displacement sensor both for linear and angular motion. This paper investigates experimentally how different parameters of M2B process affect the morphology of the patterned zone which is very important in fabricating this type of sensor. Micro-mechanical bending is locally applied to the targeted area in order to change the physical property of carbon nanotube. The factors that govern the resultant have been first identified; rotation spindle rate, bending speed rate, step size and total depth of bend. The resultant has been analyzed using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) technique to observe the differences in surface roughness and structural integrity, revealing their dependence on the machining parameters.
Abstract—in the Knowledge Based Economy Knowledge-based

businesses are the main drivers of economic growth. In the new economy universities are encountering radical changes. Their roles are changed because of emerging new community needs. To cope with new missions universities made dramatic changes in their educational and research procedures. Entrepreneurial university is a good concept to introduce the transformed universities. In this university research commercialization and technology transfer are the core activities of an entrepreneurial university. To be effective in these processes universities needs an appropriate knowledge management. Knowledge management can be defined as the task of developing, shearing, and exploiting a university's tangible and intangible knowledge assets. Tangible assets include knowledge systems and the outputs of academic researches such as technologies, patents and market information. Intangible assets include the competencies and knowledge resources of human capital within the university. Knowledge management refers to the activities of university aimed at creating an intelligent enterprise, which is able to leverage upon its tangible and intangible assets, to learn from past experiences, act as a knowledge-based business. At the people level, KM centers on the competencies and learning abilities of faculty members and students. At the university level, KM puts emphasis on the creation, utilization and development of a university's business intelligence. In this paper our objective is to discuss commercialization issues in universities and propose an appropriate model of knowledge management which enables the university to be effective in exploitation commercialization opportunities. Based on the proposed model universities should develop their entrepreneurial capabilities.
Dead-Time Compensated Pulsewidth Modulator for a 3-Phase VSI Implemented with an AT89C52 Microcontroller

Modern microcontrollers are equipped with enhanced resources with built in huge flash program memory, increased RAM and EEPROM for data memory, timers, multi-channel ADCs and network controls. The enhanced on-chip resources make the microcontrollers a promising candidate for complex PWM implementations in embedded applications. In this paper a microcontroller based PWM implementation scheme is proposed that can produce high resolution PWM patterns for three phase inverters with dead-time compensation. An AT89C52 microcontroller computes the PWM pulse widths on carrier cycle basis based on the input frequency. The microcontroller send the pulse width information for the three phases to a memory minimized ROM lookup table, which is scanned by a binary counter to generate the real time PWM patterns. The on board timer of AT89C52 is utilized to generate programmed clock for the scanning binary counter. The ROM lookup table stores two types of PWM pattern for the same PWM duty in consecutive even and odd address locations. The even location stores the dead-time compensated PWM pattern for a leg for load current greater than zero. The immediate odd location contains the dead-time compensated pattern for current less than zero. A current feedback signal selects the appropriate PWM pattern for any duty and hence the resultant real time PWM pattern completely eliminates the dead-time effects resulting highly efficient PWM output.
Integration of local pattern elements into a global shape in human vision.

The spatial extent of the cortical filters selective for different spatial frequencies and orientations is limited. We studied psychophysically how information from the local filters is integrated into global pattern shapes, i.e., whether performance in the identification of a global pattern consisting of small, locally oriented Gabor elements depends on the orientations of those elements. The observer was presented with an E-like stimulus pattern shape comprised of oriented Gabor patches on a blank background, and the performance measure was the threshold contrast for identifying the orientation of the E pattern (four possible rotated orientations). The results showed that contrast thresholds were significantly lower when the local elements all shared the same orientation (e.g., all horizontal) compared with the condition in which the elements had mixed orientations (both horizontal and vertical). The enhancement effect due to uniform local orientations can be explained by two factors: One is local facilitatory interactions between the orientation selective filters, and the other is second-order information integration across the filters.
On the Stability of Quasi-Equilibrium Self-gravitating Configurations in a Tidal Field

The possibility that quasi-equilibrium self-gravitating galaxy-like configurations exist in a tidal field is analyzed in this paper. More specifically, we address the question of how to predict initial configurations modeling galaxies that are able to survive environmental effects in a dense environment for roughly one Hubble time, provided that dynamical friction is neglected. For simplicity, the configurations in the tidal field have been taken initially to be spherically symmetric and to have an isotropic velocity dispersion tensor (t-limited King spheres); they orbit inside steady state, spherical halos, as those that presumably surround compact galaxy groups and galaxy clusters. Both circular and eccentric orbits have been considered. In both cases, the initial quasi-equilibrium configurations have been built up taking into account the external tidal field produced by the halo. It modifies the escape velocity field of the configuration, compared with isolated configurations. The survival of the configurations as they orbit inside the halos has been studied through N-body simulations. As a general result, it has been found that the bulk of the models are conserved along 12.5 Gyr of evolution and that the low rates of mass loss they experience are consistent with those expected when the adiabatic protection hypothesis is at work. So, solutions for galaxy configurations in tidal quasi-equilibrium have been found, showing that tidal stripping in quiescent phases does not seem to be very important, unless the density of the galaxy environment at its formation had been much lower than that of the galaxy environment at the point of its orbit where the tidal perturbation is maximum.
Including System Integration of Variable Renewable Energies in a Constant Elasticity of Substitution Framework: The Case of the WITCH Model

The penetration of Variable Renewable Energies (VREs) in the electricity mix poses serious challenges in terms of management of the electrical grids, as the associated variability and non-dispatchability are in contrast with the requirement that the load be instantaneously equalized by the generation. One of the goals of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) is to simulate the evolution of electricity demand and generation mix over time, therefore a proper modeling of VRE system integration is crucial. In this paper we discuss how different modeling mechanisms can profoundly impact the evolution of the electricity mix, and specifically renewable penetration. In particular, we focus on the effects of introducing a set of explicit system integration constraints in a model, WITCH, characterized by a Constant Elasticity of Substitution (CES) framework.
Ambiguity in the brain: what brain imaging reveals about the processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences.

Two fMRI studies investigated the time course and amplitude of brain activity in language-related areas during the processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences. In Experiment 1, higher levels of activation were found during the reading of unpreferred syntactic structures as well as more complex structures. In Experiments 2A and 2B higher levels of brain activation were found for ambiguous sentences compared with unambiguous sentences matched for syntactic complexity, even when the ambiguities were resolved in favor of the preferred syntactic construction (despite the absence of this difference in previous reading time results). Although results can be reconciled with either serial or parallel models of sentence parsing, they arguably fit better into the parallel framework. Serial models can admittedly be made consistent but only by including a parallel component. The fMRI data indicate the involvement of a parallel component in syntactic parsing that might be either a selection mechanism or a construction of multiple parses.
SMART-COP: a tool for predicting the need for intensive respiratory or vasopressor support in community-acquired pneumonia.

BACKGROUND Existing severity assessment tools, such as the pneumonia severity index (PSI) and CURB-65 (tool based on confusion, urea level, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and age >or=65 years), predict 30-day mortality in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and have limited ability to predict which patients will require intensive respiratory or vasopressor support (IRVS). METHODS The Australian CAP Study (ACAPS) was a prospective study of 882 episodes in which each patient had a detailed assessment of severity features, etiology, and treatment outcomes. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify features at initial assessment that were associated with receipt of IRVS. These results were converted into a simple points-based severity tool that was validated in 5 external databases, totaling 7464 patients. RESULTS In ACAPS, 10.3% of patients received IRVS, and the 30-day mortality rate was 5.7%. The features statistically significantly associated with receipt of IRVS were low systolic blood pressure (2 points), multilobar chest radiography involvement (1 point), low albumin level (1 point), high respiratory rate (1 point), tachycardia (1 point), confusion (1 point), poor oxygenation (2 points), and low arterial pH (2 points): SMART-COP. A SMART-COP score of >or=3 points identified 92% of patients who received IRVS, including 84% of patients who did not need immediate admission to the intensive care unit. Accuracy was also high in the 5 validation databases. Sensitivities of PSI and CURB-65 for identifying the need for IRVS were 74% and 39%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS SMART-COP is a simple, practical clinical tool for accurately predicting the need for IRVS that is likely to assist clinicians in determining CAP severity.