Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perceptually tuned subband coder with region of interest

At high compression, various artifacts such as blurring and blocking are common in JPEG images. In this paper, a perceptually tuned subband coder based on the subband discrete cosine transform (SBDCT) is discussed. At the same bit rate, the compressed images from our proposed coder are visually better than JPEG images. In [5], simple schemes of computation and distortion scalability are introduced in our coder. In this paper, an updated implementation of [5] which consists of lower memory requirement and ROI coding are discussed.
A Progressive Fault Tolerant Mechanism in Mobile Agent Systems

We present the approach of deploying cooperating agents to detect failures as well as recover services in a mobile agent system. In additional to server failure detection, we use cooperating agents to handle agent failure detection. Two types of agents are involved. One is the agent performing the computation delegated by the owner, which we call the actual agent. Another is the agent that monitors the actual agent, namely the witness agent. We introduce a protocol by using a message passing mechanism between these two kinds of agents to detect agent failures and recover agent services. This approach can handle server failures, agent failures, and failures in message passing. It is capable of detecting and recovering most failure scenarios in mobile agent systems. We describe the design of our witness agent approach to mobile agent systems, and conduct reliability evaluation for our approach. The evaluation results show our approach is a promising technique in achieving mobile agent system reliability.
How Reliable Are Recession Prediction Models

The U.S. economy continues to advance briskly, defying forecasts of more moderate growth. Beginning in March 1991, the current expansion has become the longest peacetime expansion on record and is less than a year away from becoming the longest in U.S. history. To the surprise of some observers, economic growth has been particularly robust late in the expansion. In fact, over the last three years growth has averaged 4 percent annually, and indicators of growth for the first half of 1999 show no signs of significant slowing. > Despite these positive signs, few analysts believe the expansion can go on forever. As the expansion continues to age, economists will increasingly be called on to predict the next recession. Recession prediction models may help them gauge the likelihood of imminent recession. > Filardo examines the reliability of five popular recession prediction models. He concludes that these models have demonstrated some ability in the past to predict recessions. When judiciously interpreted, the models can help resolve uncertainty about the possibility of future recession.
The SADC regional bloc: What challenges and prospects for regional integration?

Generally, regional integration is when a group of countries get together and develop a formal agreement (by way of treaties) regarding how they will conduct trade with each other. Ernst Haas, perhaps the most prominent integration scholar of the time, defined integration as follows: [T]he process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities toward a new centre, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over pre-existing national states. The end result of a process of political integration is a new political community, superimposed over the pre-existing ones.
The Posse Comitatus Act and Disaster Response

The federal government’s failure to quickly send active duty troops and other military assets to Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina primarily stems from its narrow interpretation of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA), which generally bars the use of federal troops for domestic law enforcement. As this chapter explains, the complete breakdown of law and order during a catastrophic emergency such as Hurricane Katrina allows the president to unilaterally deploy federal troops. This authority to deploy federal troops in response to certain natural disasters, in accordance with the PCA and the Constitution, is found in the Insurrection Act, Stafford Act, and Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), as well as the Insurrection, Guarantee, Commerce, and Necessary and Proper Clauses of the Constitution. While there are significant restrictions on the domestic use of federal troops, the restrictions do not prevent the federal government from swiftly and adequately responding to catastrophes.
"Fuzzy tap-testing" sensors for material health-state characterization

A smart sensor for structural health monitoring, based on piezoelectric tactile sensors and soft-computing signal-processing techniques, is presented in this paper. The proposed probe, made by tubular translating piezoceramic elements, stimulates the surface of the object under test and analyzes the local viscoelastic response produced at the moment of tapping. An automatic and "real-time" strategy, based on the processing of a class of features, extracted from the time-domain responses of the developed tactile probe, is proposed in order to classify the damages compromising the health status of a material. Suitable software procedures, based on fuzzy logic and implemented on a dedicated microcontroller, elaborate the input data in order to realize the desired classification task. A specific application is reported here in order to validate the proposed sensing device. It consists of the "detection of damages induced in composite structures"; in particular, a coupon of quasi-isotropic carbon epoxy material, subjected to various aggressions, has been considered. Different damages such as delaminations, induced by calibrated impacts, and burning, induced either by contact with a hot body or by simulated lightning impact produced by electric sparks, have been considered. The results obtained are quite interesting in view of the simple structure of the measurement system proposed here with respect to other classical approaches
Design centering scheme for robust SRAM cell design

In this paper, a statistical approach for the optimal design of 6-T FinFET based SRAM cells considering the statistical distributions of gate length and silicon thickness of its transistors is presented. The corresponding statistical correlations of these two parameters are also considered. In this method, proper back-gate voltages for the SRAM transistors which maximize the yield against read, write, access and hold errors are determined. To assess the efficiency of the approach, the approach is applied to a 45 nm FINFET technology. The use of Monte-Carlo simulations shows the effectiveness of the method for increasing the yield of the FinFET SRAM cells. The proposed scheme is general and may be applied to other circuits.
Fault characteristics extraction of motor's vibratory signal based on wavelet transform

The fault in motor arises with the change in vibration, which shows on the vibration form, amplitude size and frequency composition. So if a different frequency composition and the corresponding time of vibration signal are detected, we can efficiently diagnosis the fault's type, extent and time. Fault characteristics extraction of motor's vibratory signal based on wavelet transform makes good use of the advantage of wavelet transform singularity detection and multi-resolution analysis remove the noise from the signal, and extract the fault characteristics. The computer emulation verifies the method is practical.
L2-Projected Least-Squares Finite Element Methods for the Stokes Equations

Two new L2 least-squares (LS) finite element methods are developed for the velocity-pressure-vorticity first-order system of the Stokes problem with Dirichlet velocity boundary condition. A key feature of these new methods is that a local or almost local L2 projector is applied to the residual of the momentum equation. Such L2 projection is always defined onto the linear finite element space, no matter which finite element spaces are used for velocity-pressure-vorticity variables. Consequently, the implementation of this L2-projected LS method is almost as easy as that of the standard L2 LS method. More importantly, the former has optimal error estimates in L2-norm, with respect to both the order of approximation and the required regularity of the exact solution for velocity using equal-order interpolations and for all three variables (velocity, pressure, and vorticity) using unequal-order interpolations. Numerical experiments are given to demonstrate the theoretical results.
Detection and Correction the Decayed Bits of Scope Decay Bloom Filters In Wireless Sensor Networks ( Wsns )

In WSNs the existing query flooding based and event flooding based routing protocol, Query flooding can find desired events quickly but is also costly because many query messages are generated and employs precise routing hints to route queries that can reduce query messages at the expense of heavy routing overhead (specifically, keeping precise routing hints for many events is expensive) respectively. Bloom filters have been used in database applications, web caching, and searching in peer-to-peer networks. In this paper, we propose a routing protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) by Scope Decay Bloom Filter (SDBF), that detecting and correcting the decaying bits of SDBF using Hamming Code. In SDBF, each node maintains some probabilistic hints about events and utilizes these hints to route queries intelligently. SDBF greatly reduces the amortized network traffic without compromising the query success rate and achieves a higher energy efficiency.
Fingerprint Sample Quality Metric NFIQ 2.0

At the NIST March 2010 workshop on “The Future of NFIQ”, the development of a new (open source) version of NFIQ in consultation and collaboration with users and industry was recommended. Following this recommendation, NIST and BSI set up a joint project for the development of a successor version of NFIQ. This paper explains the reasons and needs for the development and details the planned approach and development process.
Minimum Wage: Does it Improve Welfare in Thailand?

We study the causal impact of the minimum wage on employment and welfare in Thailand using a difference-in-difference approach that relies on exogenous policy variation in minimum wages across provinces. We find that minimum-wage increases have small disemployment effects on female, elderly, and less-educated workers and large positive effects on the wages of prime-age male workers. As such, increases in the minimum wage are associated with increases in household consumption per capita in general, but the consumption increase is greatest among those households around the median of the distribution. In fact, rises in the minimum wage increased inequality in consumption per capita within the bottom half of the distribution.
Inhibitory Effect of Ginsenoside Rg1 on Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell Proliferation Induced by PDGF-BB Is Involved in Nitric Oxide Formation

Ginsenoside Rg1 (Rg1) has been reported to suppress the proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). This study aimed to observe the role of nitric oxide (NO) in Rg1-antiproliferative effect. VSMCs from the thoracic aorta of SD rats were cultured by tissue explant method, and the effect of Rg1 (20 mg·L−1, 60 mg·L−1, and 180 mg·L−1) on platelet-derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB)-induced proliferation was evaluated by MTT assay. The cell cycle was analyzed by flow cytometry. For probing the mechanisms, the content of NO in supernatant and cGMP level in VSMCs was measured by nitric oxide kit and cGMP radio-immunity kit, respectively; the expressions of protooncogene c-fos and endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) mRNA in the VSMCs were detected by real-time RT-PCR; the intracellular free calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i) was detected with Fura-2/AM-loaded VSMCs. Comparing with that in normal group, Rg1 180 mg·L−1 did not change the absorbance of MTT and cell percent of G0/G1, G2/M, and S phase in normal cells (P > 0.05). Contrarily, PDGF-BB could increase the absorbance of MTT (P < 0.01) and the percent of the S phase cells but decrease the G0/G1 phase cell percent in the cell cycle, accompanied with an upregulating c-fos mRNA expression (P < 0.01), which was reversed by additions of Rg1(20 mg·L−1, 60 mg·L−1, and 180 mg·L−1). Rg1 administration could also significantly increase the NO content in supernatant and the cGMP level in VSMCs, as well as the eNOS mRNA expression in the cells, in comparison of that in the group treated with PDGF-BB alone (P < 0.01). Furthermore, Rg1 caused a further increase in the elevated [Ca2+]i induced by PDGF-BB. It was concluded that Rg1 could inhibit the VSMC proliferation induced by PDGF-BB through restricting the G0/G1 phase to S-phase progression in cell cycle. The mechanisms may be related to the upregulation of eNOS mRNA and the increase of the formation of NO and cGMP.
Feature selection and re-weighting in content-based SAR image retrieval

With the development of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in recent years, the explosion of SAR images has urged people to find efficient means for searching and organizing mass amounts of images. In this paper, we propose an approach to content-based retrieval of SAR images, which contains feature selection and relevance feedback. In the process of retrieval, a low-dimensional feature subset is selected from original feature set by feature selection technique based on linear support vector machines (SVM). And the relevance feedback technique employs feature re-weighting method to set appropriate weights for each component of the selected feature subset. Lastly, this feature subset with different weights is used to retrieve relevant images in database which are similar to sample images submitted by users. The experiment results prove that the proposed method is efficient for querying pure terrain in SAR image.
Optimality of Debt under Flexible Information Acquisition

This article studies a security design problem featuring flexible information acquisition. To raise liquidity, a seller issues a security backed by her asset in place at the price she proposes to a buyer. Before deciding whether to accept the offer, the buyer can acquire costly information about the underlying asset. This case differs from the existing literature on security design, in that the buyer has the full flexibility of choosing not only the amount of resources to spend in information acquisition, but also how to allocate them, depending on the shape of the security. Debt is shown to be the unique optimal security for the seller, as its payoff is the least sensitive to the value of its underlying asset. This minimizes the buyer’s incentive to acquire information and mitigates the resulting adverse selection. I do not assume monotonicity of the feasible securities nor impose various distributional assumptions on information structures. Instead, I identify conditions for general information costs that support the results.
SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES USING MOP / GP TECHNIQUES

Abstract. Although there have been several approaches to machine learning, we focus on the mathematical programming (in particular, multi-objective and goal programming; MOP/GP) approaches in this paper. Among them, Support Vector Machine (SVM) is gaining much popularity recently. In pattern classification problems with two class sets, it generalizes linear classifiers into high dimensional feature spaces through nonlinear mappings defined implicitly by kernels in the Hilbert space so that it produces nonlinear classifiers in the original data space. Linear classifiers then are optimized to give the maximal margin separation between the classes. The idea of maximal margin separation was employed in the multi-surface method (MSM) suggested by Mangasarian in 1960’s. Also, linear classifiers using goal programming were developed extensively in 1980’s. This paper proposes a new family of SVM using MOP/GP techniques, and discusses its effectiveness throughout several numerical experiments.
Syndromic Surveillance for Influenza in the Emergency Department–A Systematic Review

The science of surveillance is rapidly evolving due to changes in public health information and preparedness as national security issues, new information technologies and health reform. As the Emergency Department has become a much more utilized venue for acute care, it has also become a more attractive data source for disease surveillance. In recent years, influenza surveillance from the Emergency Department has increased in scope and breadth and has resulted in innovative and increasingly accepted methods of surveillance for influenza and influenza-like-illness (ILI). We undertook a systematic review of published Emergency Department-based influenza and ILI syndromic surveillance systems. A PubMed search using the keywords “syndromic”, “surveillance”, “influenza” and “emergency” was performed. Manuscripts were included in the analysis if they described (1) data from an Emergency Department (2) surveillance of influenza or ILI and (3) syndromic or clinical data. Meeting abstracts were excluded. The references of included manuscripts were examined for additional studies. A total of 38 manuscripts met the inclusion criteria, describing 24 discrete syndromic surveillance systems. Emergency Department-based influenza syndromic surveillance has been described worldwide. A wide variety of clinical data was used for surveillance, including chief complaint/presentation, preliminary or discharge diagnosis, free text analysis of the entire medical record, Google flu trends, calls to teletriage and help lines, ambulance dispatch calls, case reports of H1N1 in the media, markers of ED crowding, admission and Left Without Being Seen rates. Syndromes used to capture influenza rates were nearly always related to ILI (i.e. fever +/− a respiratory or constitutional complaint), however, other syndromes used for surveillance included fever alone, “respiratory complaint” and seizure. Two very large surveillance networks, the North American DiSTRIBuTE network and the European Triple S system have collected large-scale Emergency Department-based influenza and ILI syndromic surveillance data. Syndromic surveillance for influenza and ILI from the Emergency Department is becoming more prevalent as a measure of yearly influenza outbreaks.
Dynamic identification of a 6 dof industrial robot with a closed-loop output error method

Abstract Off-line robot dynamic identification methods are mostly based on the use of the inverse dynamic model, which is linear with respect to the dynamic parameters. This model is sampled while the robot is tracking reference trajectories that excite the system dynamics. This allows using linear least-squares techniques to estimate the parameters. This method requires the joint force/torque and position measurements and the estimate of the joint velocity and acceleration, through the bandpass filtering of the joint position at high sampling rates. Recently, the DIDIM method has been proposed and validated on a 2 degree-of-freedom robot. DIDIM method requires only the joint force/torque measurement. It is a closed-loop output error (CLOE) method based on a closed-loop simulation of the robot using the direct dynamic model, the same structure of the control law, and the same reference trajectory for both the actual and the simulated robot. The optimal parameters minimize the 2-norm of the error between the actual force/torque and the simulated force/torque. A validation experiment on a 6 dof Staubli TX40 robot shows that DIDIM method is very efficient on industrial robots.
Community retrieval and visualization in large graphs

This paper deals with the analysis and the visualization of large graphs. Our interest in such a subject-matter is related to the fact that graphs are convenient widespread data structures. Indeed, this type of data can be encountered in a growing number of concrete problems: Web, information retrieval, social networks, biological interaction networks. Furthermore, the size of these graphs becomes increasingly large as the progression of the means for data gathering and storage steadily strengthens. This calls for new methods in graph analysis and visualization which are now important and dynamic research fields at the interface of many disciplines such as mathematics, statistics, computer science and sociology. In this paper, we propose a method for graphs representation and visualization based on a prior clustering of the vertices. Newman and Girvan (2004) points out that “reducing [the] level of complexity [of a network] to one that can be interpreted readily by the human eye, will be invaluable in helping us to understand the large-scale structure of these new network data”: we rely on this assumption to use a priori a clustering of the vertices as a preliminary step for simplifying the representation of the graphs – as a whole. The clustering phase consists in optimizing a quality measure specifically suitable for the research of dense groups in graphs. This quality measure is the modularity and expresses the “distance” to a null model in which the graph edges do not depend on the clustering. The modularity has shown its relevance in solving the problem of uncovering dense groups in a graph. Optimization of the modularity is done through a stochastic simulated annealing algorithm. The visualization/representation phase, as such, is based on a force-directed algorithm described in Truong et al. (2007). After giving a short introduction to the problem and detailing the vertices clustering and representation algorithms, the paper will introduce and discuss two applications from the social network field. Villa, N. ; Dkaki, T. ; Gadat, S. ; Inglebert, J.M. ; Truong, Q.D. / QUIC&VECT
Using the mobile phone as a security token for unified authentication

The number of different identities and credentials used for authentication towards services on the Internet has increased beyond the manageable. Still, the most common authentication scheme is based on usernames and passwords. This is a weak authentication mechanism, which can be broken by eavesdropping on the network connection or by sloppy handling by the users (e.g. re-use of the same password for different services, writing down the passwords on paper etc.). Also, management of user credentials is a costly task for most companies, estimated by IDC to around 200-300 USD pr. user/year. Hence, better solutions for simplified, yet secure authentication, is required in the future. This paper proposes and describes an authentication scheme based on a One-Time Password (OTP) MIDlet running on a mobile phone for unified authentication towards any type of service on the Internet.
Weighting Public Mood via Microblogging Analysis

The analysis of social networks is a very challenging research area while a fundamental aspect concerns the alternations of users opinions. Accordingly, some specific users can affect their followers as they tend to be more "influential" than others. In this paper, we present a study on identifying such phenomena on Twitter and in following on determining whether specific users' posts can affect them. Furthermore, emotionally changed posts are analyzed so as to predict if they can alter public opinion towards certain events, persons and so on, when used by certain influential users. Finally, we aim in proposing a method for creating a group of selected users by combining their posts on a subject; this group will have the ability to drastically change the opinions of the rest of the users towards a specific emotional subject.