Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SocketWatch: An autonomous appliance monitoring system

A significant amount of energy is wasted by electrical appliances when they operate inefficiently either due to anomalies and/or incorrect usage. To address this problem, we present SocketWatch - an autonomous appliance monitoring system. SocketWatch is positioned between a wall socket and an appliance. SocketWatch learns the behavioral model of the appliance by analyzing its active and reactive power consumption patterns. It detects appliance malfunctions by observing any marked deviations from these patterns. SocketWatch is inexpensive and is easy to use: it neither requires any enhancement to the appliances nor to the power sockets nor any communication infrastructure. Moreover, the decentralized approach avoids communication latency and costs, and preserves data privacy. Real world experiments with multiple appliances indicate that SocketWatch can be an effective and inexpensive solution for reducing electricity wastage.
‘My life felt like a cage without an exit’ – narratives of childhood under the abuse of a narcissistic mother

ABSTRACT This research focused on narcissistic homes as described by adult daughters of narcissistic mothers. The definition of narcissism reveals the problematic behaviours of narcissists (e.g. blaming, manipulation, nullification, and self-sufficiency to hide one’s own low self-esteem). How do these affect upbringing? How do children of narcissistic mothers describe their childhood? The research participants consisted of 13 women who wrote widely about their childhood in the shadow of their narcissistic mothers. They all had taken therapy when adults. This was a narrative research. The data brought up three childhood narratives: incompetent childhood, isolated childhood, and denied childhood. The elements and contents of the narratives are partly overlapping but provide a multidimensional picture of upbringing by narcissistic mothers. Many children felt being without support by health care, education, or social service agents and had difficulties defining their selfhood and identity. This research provided new information and means to support the biased mother–child relationship.
The Rise of Mobile Social Video: An In-depth Analysis of Vine

Thanks to the increasing popularity of mobile devices and online social networks, mobile and social video is on the rise, calling for a better understanding of its usage and future impact. In this paper, we provide an in-depth measurement study of Vine, a mobile application that is used for creating and sharing short looping videos of up to six seconds in length. Based on a dataset of 851,039 tweets containing a Vine URL, we investigate different aspects of Vine, including hashtag usage, video popularity and user attention. For the dataset used, we find that 34% of the Vine videos contain at least one hashtag, a percentage that is four times higher than the percentage of tweets that is in general annotated with at least one hashtag. Copyright c © by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted only for private and academic purposes. In: S. Papadopoulos, P. Cesar, D. A. Shamma, A. Kelliher, R. Jain (eds.): Proceedings of the SoMuS ICMR 2014 Workshop, Glasgow, Scotland, 01-04-2014, published at http://ceur-ws.org In addition, we can observe that a Vine video that is shared frequently on Twitter within hours after its creation will have more likes on Vine after one week, compared to a Vine video that is not shared frequently on Twitter during this same period of time. However, we cannot establish a clear link between the number of tweets sharing a Vine video and its resulting popularity. Finally, by analyzing the evolution of the number of likes and the number of shares received by a Vine video on Vine and Twitter, respectively, we can conclude that a Vine video receives most user attention shortly after its creation, with the amount of user attention received not stopping completely but remaining stable for days to weeks after its creation.
Pax7-expressing satellite cells are indispensable for adult skeletal muscle regeneration

Distinct cell populations with regenerative capacity have been reported to contribute to myofibres after skeletal muscle injury, including non-satellite cells as well as myogenic satellite cells. However, the relative contribution of these distinct cell types to skeletal muscle repair and homeostasis and the identity of adult muscle stem cells remain unknown. We generated a model for the conditional depletion of satellite cells by expressing a human diphtheria toxin receptor under control of the murine Pax7 locus. Intramuscular injection of diphtheria toxin during muscle homeostasis, or combined with muscle injury caused by myotoxins or exercise, led to a marked loss of muscle tissue and failure to regenerate skeletal muscle. Moreover, the muscle tissue became infiltrated by inflammatory cells and adipocytes. This localised loss of satellite cells was not compensated for endogenously by other cell types, but muscle regeneration was rescued after transplantation of adult Pax7+ satellite cells alone. These findings indicate that other cell types with regenerative potential depend on the presence of the satellite cell population, and these observations have important implications for myopathic conditions and stem cell-based therapeutic approaches.
Nostalgia shapes and potentiates the future

Nostalgia is “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past” (Pearsall, 1998, p. 1266). This dictionary definition aligns well with lay conceptions (i.e., prototype analysis; cf. Rosch, 1978). Laypeople (Hepper, Ritchie, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2012) across 18 cultures (Hepper et al., 2014) think of the construct “nostalgia” as encompassing fond, rose-colored, and personally important (i.e., self-defining) memories of one’s childhood or relationships, but also as encompassing pining and wishing for momentary returns to the past. They think of it, then, as a bittersweet (albeit more positive than negative) emotion that is relevant to the self and close others. Both content analyses of nostalgic narratives (Abeyta, Routledge, Roylance, Wildschut, & Sedikides, 2015; Holak & Havlena, 1998; Wildschut, Sedikides, Arndt, & Routledge, 2006, Studies 1-2) and in vivo manipulations of nostalgia (Baldwin, Biernat, & Landau, 2015; Wildschut et al., 2006, Studies 5-7; Stephan, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2012) have corroborated these properties of the emotion.
Mobile Web Usability Evaluation - Combining the Modified Think Aloud Method with the Testing of Emotional, Cognitive and Conative Aspects of the Usage of a Web Application

This paper proposes a usability testing method that alters a given usability testing method to make it less costly and time consuming for the investigator. The usage of user-centred methods is motivated and a combination of two user-centred methods suggested. Furthermore this method is combined with other techniques to additionally detect the state of satisfaction within the user. User based factors like emotions, opinions, cognitive and conative aspects are therefore considered. A method for the joint evaluation of all data gathered is proposed.
Understanding repair as a creative process of everyday design

This paper presents the findings from an exploratory study that looks at how creativity plays a role in the repair and reuse of objects in the home. We are interested in a particular form of creativity that manifests in the everyday -- what John Dewey [8] describes as a constant doing and undergoing, as we actively adjust to everyday situations. The goal of this study is to show evidence of repair as not only an act of restoration, but also as an act of creativity that entails the repurposing and resourcing of objects. This study is part of a larger research initiative known as the Everyday Design, where it is believed that everyone is a designer and that design is an ongoing activity that includes the repair, modification, and appropriation of design objects and systems. Furthermore, this study serves as baseline research for future investigations in how to inform the design of technologies whose lifecycle can be extended for various contexts of use through repair.
Pericytes Promote Malignant Ovarian Cancer Progression in Mice and Predict Poor Prognosis in Serous Ovarian Cancer Patients

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the role of pericytes in regulating malignant ovarian cancer progression. Experimental Design: The pericyte mRNA signature was used to interrogate ovarian cancer patient datasets to determine its prognostic value for recurrence and mortality. Xenograft models of ovarian cancer were used to determine if co-injection with pericytes affected tumor growth rate and metastasis, whereas co-culture models were utilized to investigate the direct effect of pericytes on ovarian cancer cells. Pericyte markers were used to stain patient tissue samples to ascertain their use in prognosis. Results: Interrogation of two serous ovarian cancer patient datasets [the Australian Ovarian Cancer Study, n = 215; and the NCI TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas), n = 408] showed that a high pericyte score is highly predictive for poor patient prognosis. Co-injection of ovarian cancer (OVCAR-5 & -8) cells with pericytes in a xenograft model resulted in accelerated ovarian tumor growth, and aggressive metastases, without altering tumor vasculature. Pericyte co-culture in vitro promoted ovarian cancer cell proliferation and invasion. High αSMA protein levels in patient tissue microarrays were correlated with more aggressive disease and earlier recurrence. Conclusions: High pericyte score provides the best means to date of identifying patients with ovarian cancer at high risk of rapid relapse and mortality (mean progression-free survival time < 9 months). The stroma contains rare yet extremely potent locally resident mesenchymal stem cells—a subset of “cancer-associated fibroblasts” that promote aggressive tumor growth and metastatic dissemination, underlying the prognostic capacity of a high pericyte score to strongly predict earlier relapse and mortality. Clin Cancer Res; 22(7); 1813–24. ©2015 AACR.
Effective Removal of Artifacts from Views Synthesized using Depth Image Based Rendering

Depth Image Based Rendering (DIBR), as a free- viewpoint synthesis technique, enables interactive selection of the view for watching. However, many rendering methods based on DIBR usually bring contour, crack and disocclusion artifacts. To address these problems, we propose effective methods to remove these artifacts. Firstly, before warping, the reference depth maps and color images are analyzed to find the regions causing contour artifacts. A combination of depth map edge detection and color consistency correction is applied to the analysis. By omitting warping the found regions, the synthesized views contain no contour artifacts and edges of foreground objects are well preserved. Secondly, cracks are filled using surrounding non- crack pixels rather than filtering for local consistency and smoothness. Thirdly, we apply a method based on texture extrapolation with depth information to inpaint the disocclusions. For two well-known sequences, 'Ballet' and Breakdancers', we obtain large Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) gains in comparison to state-of-the-art techniques. In addition, the proposed method also obtains good results in Structural Similarity Index Measurement (SSIM) and visual quality.
Software Support for aVirtual Planning

Computer supported cooperative work depends on conventional personal productivity tools and on the ability of the system to provide eeective means for various members involved in the work to interact with one another. The interaction mechanism may be formalized through operations on shared information, through strict message-passing protocols, or by providing a means by which the human users can interact with one another through conventional conversation. Desktop virtual environment technology can be used to create group human-computer interface in which diierent users on diierent computers interact with common virtual artifacts, and with representations of one another using pointing devices, keyboards, and bitmapped screens. Virtual environments place tremendous demands on bandwidth for data movement, extensive graphics, data stream synchronization, and frequent interactions among object representations of the artifacts and virtual users. This paper describes our organization of an experimental virtual environment, called the Virtual Planning Room.
A Robust Visual Tracking Algorithm with Low-Rank Region Covariance

Region covariance (RC) descriptor is an effective and efficient feature for visual tracking. Current RC-based tracking algorithms use the whole RC matrix to track the target in video directly. However, there exist some issues for these whole RCbased algorithms. If some features are contaminated, the whole RC will become unreliable, which results in lost object-tracking. In addition, if some features are very discriminative to the background, other features are still processed and thus reduce the efficiency. In this paper a new robust tracking method is proposed, in which the whole RC matrix is decomposed into several low rank matrices. Those matrices are dynamically chosen and processed so as to achieve a good tradeoff between discriminability and complexity. Experimental results have shown that our method is more robust to complex environment changes, especially either when occlusion happens or when the background is similar to the target compared to other RC-based methods. Keywords—Visual tracking, region covariance descriptor, lowrank region covariance
Generation of High-Resolution Mosaic for Photo-Realistic Texture-Mapping of Cultural Heritage 3D Models

The work investigates the problem of how information contained in different overlapping images of a scene can be combined to produce larger images of higher quality. The resulted images can be used for different applications like forensic image analysis, computer animation, special effects, 3D model texture mapping or panorama mosaic. In our case, high-resolution image mosaics of mural frescos are required for the texturing of a 3D model that will be used in a movie production. We developed a novel method for the derivation of a high quality mosaic using multi-resolution and multi-temporal images acquired from arbitrary positions and cameras. This method named 'constrained mesh-wise affine transformation' allows for seamless enhancement of the scene in the areas where higher resolution images are available. In this paper, we also discuss alternative procedures for the texture mapping of a 3D model using existing multi-resolution and multi-temporal imagery. The work has been done within a project aimed at a virtual and physical reconstruction of the destroyed Buddha statues of Bamiyan, Afghanistan.
Suzaku Observations of HESS J1616-508: Evidence for a Dark Particle Accelerator

We observed the bright unidentified TeV γ-ray source HESS J1616−508 with the X-ray Imaging Spectrometers onboard the Suzaku satellite. No X-ray counterpart was found to a limiting flux of 3.1 × 10 −13 ergs −1 cm −2 in the 2–10keV band, which is some 60-times below the γ-ray flux in the 1–10TeV band. This object is bright in TeV γ-rays, but very dim in the X-ray band, and thus is one of the best examples in the Galaxy of a “dark particle accelerator. ” We also detected soft thermal emission with kT ∼ 0.3–0.6keV near the location of HESS J1616−508. This may be due to a dust-grain scattering halo from the nearby bright supernova remnant RCW 103.
Sleep promotes lasting changes in selective memory for emotional scenes

Although we know that emotional events enjoy a privileged status in our memories, we still have much to learn about how emotional memories are processed, stored, and how they change over time. Here we show a positive association between REM sleep and the selective consolidation of central, negative aspects of complex scenes. Moreover, we show that the placement of sleep is critical for this selective emotional memory benefit. When testing occurred 24 h post-encoding, subjects who slept soon after learning (24 h Sleep First group) had superior memory for emotional objects compared to subjects whose sleep was delayed for 16 h post-encoding following a full day of wakefulness (24 h Wake First group). However, this increase in memory for emotional objects corresponded with a decrease in memory for the neutral backgrounds on which these objects were placed. Furthermore, memory for emotional objects in the 24 h Sleep First group was comparable to performance after just a 12 h delay containing a night of sleep, suggesting that sleep soon after learning selectively stabilizes emotional memory. These results suggest that the sleeping brain preserves in long-term memory only what is emotionally salient and perhaps most adaptive to remember.
ANTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONAL COMPETENCES FOR DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE DISCLOSING OF IGNORANCE

Organizations pursuing development of their competences must balance the pursuit of mastery in the present against the potential of innovations that may enable success in the future. In the present, key competences can be identified as work practices essential to the satisfaction of customers and other stakeholders. These competences may be improved incrementally, and/or more widely disseminated across the enterprise. In the future, however, the “right” competences to be developed are less clear. The potential customers, emerging technologies and/or key factors of competitiveness in the future are uncertain. The competences that are distinctive in the present may not be the competences that provide distinction in the future. An approach that is currently popular is to view organizational activities from a perspective of knowledge. Inquiring systems provide a compatible foundation for this view. A related, but different view is based in social practices. Defining organizational competences in terms of social practices provides a more grounded understanding of action, but requires additional study on how change can be influenced and enabled. An approach based on disclosing new worlds can extend the social practices framework to be applied prescriptively. The disclosing of ignorance is proposed to uncover competences that should be developed in anticipation of an uncertain future. A framework created in the Curriculum on Medical Ignorance at the University of Arizona College of Medicine is extended for application into the domain of business. In this domain, forms of ignorance are grouped into four categories, as: (a) known unknowns; (b) passive ignorances, as “ignoring” – including errors and unknown knowns; (c) unknown unknowns; and (d) active ignorances, as “the ignored” – including taboos and denials. The first two categories are normally handled through focused research, and intercommunication programs where expertise and practices are shared. The latter two categories, however, are rarely addressed explicitly. They require more provocative forms of disclosing, so that “new worlds” can be presented as viable and desirable ways forward. The subject of ignorance may itself be a taboo in an organization. Issues with the dissemination of disclosing are discussed.
Training needs and online learning preferences of early childhood professionals

ABSTRACT Providing early childhood professionals with professional development opportunities to enhance their skills and knowledge can improve quality of care. For professional development to be valued by the early childhood workforce, it is essential to offer meaningful content that accommodates the needs of the learner. With an increasing demand for quality professional development, as well as the expansion of online learning opportunities, this qualitative study explores the opinions of 14 North Carolina early childhood professionals regarding their professional development training needs and online learning preferences. Training content needs, experiences with online learning, and recommendations for training development are discussed. This study has implications for professional development creators and trainers for advancing the education and growth of the early childhood workforce.
A Discourse Analysis of Diversity and Inclusion Terminology in the High-Tech Industry

The field of Diversity and Inclusion is a growing interest within the High-Tech industry, particularly within the San Francisco Bay Area of California. To combat misconceptions of Diversity and Inclusion, this thesis aims to define and analyze the language used at 20 companies in the High-Tech sector. The trends, nuances, and practices of how companies use language in their programming and data dictates the direction of the company. This thesis investigates the underlying complexities of where Diversity and Inclusion is within the industry today and goals for the future. Findings from this research suggest that companies can strengthen their Diversity and Inclusion commitments by focusing more on transparency of data and providing further insight into how they prioritize their initiatives.
On the use of model checking techniques for dependability evaluation

Over the last two decades, many techniques have been developed to specify and evaluate Markovian dependability models. Most often, these Markovian models are automatically derived from stochastic Petri nets, stochastic process algebras or stochastic activity networks. However, whereas the model specification has become very comfortable, the specification of the dependability measures of interest most often has remained fairly cumbersome. In this paper, we show that our recently introduced logic CSL (continuous stochastic logic) provides ample means to specify state- as well as path-based dependability measures in a compact and flexible way. Moreover, due to the formal syntax and semantics of CSL, we can exploit the structure of CSL-specified dependability measures in the dependability evaluation process. Typically, the underlying Markov chains that need to be evaluated can be reduced considerably in size by this structure exploitation.
Silicon as a mechanical material

Single-crystal silicon is being increasingly employed in a variety of new commercial products not because of its well-established electronic properties, but rather because of its excellent mechanical properties. In addition, recent trends in the engineering literature indicate a growing interest in the use of silicon as a mechanical material with the ultimate goal of developing a broad range of inexpensive, batch-fabricated, high-performance sensors and transducers which are easily interfaced with the rapidly proliferating microprocessor. This review describes the advantages of employing silicon as a mechanical material, the relevant mechanical characteristics of silicon, and the processing techniques which are specific to micromechanical structures. Finally, the potentials of this new technology are illustrated by numerous detailed examples from the literature. It is clear that silicon will continue to be aggressively exploited in a wide variety of mechanical applications complementary to its traditional role as an electronic material. Furthermore, these multidisciplinary uses of silicon will significantly alter the way we think about all types of miniature mechanical devices and components.