Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Routing Policy for the X Call-Center Model Designed to Respond to Unexpected Overloads

We consider a large-scale X call-center model ‐ a stochastic model with two customer classes and two associated service pools containing large numbers of agents, with each pool primarily dedicated to the designated customer class, but with all agents cross-trained and allowed to serve the other class, even though they may do so inefficiently or ineffectively. Under normal loads, we want class-i customers to be served by type-i agents, but we activate sharing (serving the other class) when there is an unexpected overload, allowing sharing in only one way at any time. We propose a fixed-queue-ratio assignment rule with thresholds (FQR+T) for available agents. Assignments depend on a weighted-difference stochastic process: D(t) · Q1(t) i rQ2(t), where Qi(t) is the queue length of class-i customers and r is a weighting factor, which management can set. Provided that there is no current sharing in the other direction, an available agent in service pool 2 (1) serves the first class-1 (2) waiting customer when D(t) ‚ •1;2 (• i•2;1), where •1;2 and •2;1 are threshold parameters that management can set. We develop approximations to describe system performance when overloads occur, and perform simulations to verify that the approximations are effective.
Milk production and grazing behaviour during early lactation of three strains of Holstein-Friesian dairy cows managed in different feeding systems

The objective of this work was to compare individual intake and grazing behaviour of different strains of HolsteinFriesian dairy cows. Strains tested were high breeding worth 1990s Holstein-Friesian of overseas (OS90) or NZ origin (NZ90), and a 1970 NZ strain of Friesian (NZ70), farmed under different feeding systems defined by feed allowance per cow per year. Feed allowance ranged from 4.5 to 7.0 t DM cow year, based on different stocking rates and supplement inputs. Each system (one strain at one total annual allowance) was managed using a common set of decision rules and all the strains were in similar body condition score (BCS) at calving. Milksolids production, liveweight and BCS were measured routinely, and during September 2002 (55-75 days in milk) daily DMI and digestibility (DMD) were estimated for each cow by the n-alkane method. Grazing behaviour was observed visually. Daily milksolids yield (per cow and per 100 kg LW) were similar for NZ90 and OS90, which were higher than NZ70 (p<0.01). At the start of the season OS90 cows were heavier (p<0.05) than cows of the other two strains and NZ90 cows heavier (p<0.05) than NZ70 cows, however they were similar in BCS. During September OS90 cows were just slightly heavier than the other two strains (p=0.16), but with lower BCS (p<0.01). Between the start of the season and September, LW and BCS decreases for OS90 cows were significantly higher (p<0.05) than for cows in the other two strains. Slightly higher DMI (per cow and per 100 kg LW) were recorded for the NZ90s than for NZ70 and OS90. Grazing time, ruminating time or biting rate was similar across strains. These results suggest that the OS90 was not able to eat sufficient pasture and used more body energy reserves to produce similar MS yield as NZ90.
Construction and sharp consistency estimates for atomistic/continuum coupling methods with general interfaces: a 2D model problem

We present a new variant of the geometry reconstruction approach for the formulation of atomistic/continuum coupling methods (a/c methods). For multi-body nearest-neighbour interactions on the 2D triangular lattice, we show that patch test consistent a/c methods can be constructed for arbitrary interface geometries. Moreover, we prove that all methods within this class are first-order consistent at the atomistic/continuum interface and second-order consistent in the interior of the continuum region.
Optimizing vertical sectorization for high-rises

Vertical sectorization is a recent development of active antenna technologies, whereas cellular providers make use of sectors in the vertical domain in addition to the standard horizontal sectorization currently in place. In this paper, we develop a framework to analyze and optimize vertical sectorization for high-rise buildings in urban environments. We start with a generic urban network topology with high-rise buildings and use it to derive the distribution of the elevation angles of the user equipments (UEs) in a cell. Using this distribution, we derive the values of tilts that maximize the coverage of all the UEs for the cases of one and two vertical sectors. This work provides answers to how a cellular service provider should perform vertical sectorization for different base station heights, cell sizes and various urban environments.
Architectures for FPGA-Based Implementation of Motion Estimation of Dynamic Obstacles for Autonomous Robot Navigation

Real time implementation is the key challenge in vision-based detection of dynamic obstacles in autonomous robot navigation systems. The Discrete Cosine Transform-Based Motion Estimation (DXT-ME) Algorithm, proposed for video coding has inherently parallel, low complexity computations and therefore, can be implemented in real time. It provides the exact displacement of the object of interest, making it suitable for fine-grained tracking. As two dimensional cosine/sine transforms are the main computations involved, this paper presents a comparison of three architectures for the FPGA implementation of the same. An architecture for DXT-ME is proposed.
The study of emotion recognition from physiological signals

Emotion recognition from physiological signals has aroused great concern recently as its objective. In this paper, the recognition system from physiological signals is introduced, and important topics on emotion models, databases for analysis, feature extraction and selection methods, different classification techniques and performance issues are studied. Finally, the research challenges and trend of emotion recognition from physiological signals are discussed for future research.
Quality improvement and optimization of test cases: a hybrid genetic algorithm based approach

Software development organizations spend considerable portion of their budget and time in testing related activities. The effectiveness of the verification and validation process depends upon the number of errors found and rectified before releasing the software to the customer side. This in turn depends upon the quality of test cases generated. The solution is to choose the most important and effective test cases and removing the redundant and unnecessary ones; which in turn leads to test case optimization. To achieve test case optimization, this paper proposed a heuristics guided population based search approach namely Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA) which combines the features of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Local Search (LS) techniques to reduce the number of test cases by improving the quality of test cases during the solution generation process. Also, to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, a comparative study is conducted with Genetic Algorithm and Bacteriologic Algorithm (BA) and concluded that, the proposed HGA based approach produces better results.
Implementation of partitional clustering on ILPD dataset to predict liver disorders

Cluster Analysis methods are very important, popular data summarization techniques applied in diverse environments. These techniques retrieve the hidden patterns in large datasets in the form of characterized patterns which can be interpreted further in different contexts. Widespread use of medical information systems and explosive growth of medical databases require traditional manual data analysis coupled with efficient computer assisted analysis. Medical Diagnosis is a difficult process which needs proficiency as well as experience to cope with a disease. Data segmentation is an application in medical domain used to analyze patient records, disease trends and health care resource utilization, which in turn assist a physician in Medical Diagnosis. In the present paper a technique based on classification techniques is proposed to predict liver disorders accurately. The main objective is to examine whether the proposed method can obtain better prediction accuracy to traditional classification algorithms. The classification results using the proposed method are found to be very promising and accurate.
Activity of lipases and esterases towards tertiary alcohols: insights into structure-function relationships.

Hydrolytic enzymes are versatile biocatalysts and find increasing applications in organic synthesis and a considerable number of industrial processes using these enzymes have been commercialized. Within this class, lipases (E.C. 3.1.1.3) and carboxyl esterases (E.C. 3.1.1.1) are frequently used as they accept a broad range of non-natural substrates, are usually very stable in organic solvents and exhibit good to excellent stereoselectivity.
Brief Report: Food Insufficiency Is Associated With Lack of Sustained Viral Suppression Among HIV-Infected Pregnant and Breastfeeding Ugandan Women

Abstract:Food insecurity is associated with poor virologic outcomes, but this has not been studied during pregnancy and breastfeeding. We assessed sustained viral suppression from 8 weeks on antiretroviral therapy to 48 weeks postpartum among 171 pregnant and breastfeeding Ugandan women; 74.9% experienced food insufficiency. In multivariable analysis, food insufficiency [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 0.38, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.16 to 0.91], higher pretreatment HIV-1 RNA (aOR 0.55 per 10-fold increase, 95% CI: 0.37 to 0.82), and lopinavir/ritonavir versus efavirenz (aOR 0.49, 95% CI: 0.24 to 0.96) were associated with lower odds of sustained viral suppression. Interventions to address food security may improve virologic outcomes among HIV-infected women.
On the Outside Looking In: An African American Family's Experience in an Individualized Education Plan Meeting

The current laws that mandate special education originated through the advocacy of families (Turnbull & Turnbull, 1990). Over the years, families have challenged the system to provide free and appropriate public educations for their children. We share, through qualitative measures, the experiences of one African American family and the educators who serve them trying to navigate the system as well as the obstacles they faced. Recommendations for P-12 practice, teacher education, and advocacy efforts are discussed.
Inflation from tachyon condensation, large N effects

Using only general properties of the tachyon potential we show that inflation may be generic when many branes and anti-branes become coincident. Inflation may occur because of: (1) the assistance of the many diagonal tachyon fields: (2) when the tachyons condense in a staggered fashion: or (3) when some of them condense very late. We point out that such inflation is in some sense a stringy implementation of chaotic inflation and may have important applications for ``regularizing'' a lopsided or singular cosmological compact surface.
Base-T / IEEE 802 . 12 / Packet Switching

100Base-T, IEEE 802.12, 100VGAnyLAN, packet switching, IEEE 802.3, CSMAlCD, demand priority Three recent LAN technologies look set to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for LAN bandwidth. Two of these technologies are 100Mb/s shared medium LANs: 100Base-T (aka IEEE 802.3 Fast Ethernet) and IEEE 802.12 (aka 100VG-AnyLAN or 100VG). The third technology is packet switching, which is really an extension of existing LAN bridge technology, but which offers excellent performance gains at very low cost. In this paper we describe the three technologies and provide a comparison between the two 100Mb/s LANs. We also present results that compare the measured performance of 100 Mb/s shared medium LANs with switched LANs. Given the ''holy wars" between 100Base-T and 100VG-AnyLAN we have worked hard to present the technologies on an equal footing. One of the authors is from HP, and served on the 802.12 committee. The second author is the chairperson of an IEEE 802.3 subcommittee. We hope we have achieved our goal of presenting a balanced view of these technologies.
A Data Security Protection Mechanism Based on Transparent Biometric Authentication for Mobile Intelligent Terminals

The proliferations of the mobile intelligent terminal have brought them to the spotlight of the attackers for the sensitive information they carried. However, the current security schemes on the mobile intelligent terminal are fragile. This paper proposed a new transparent authentication and encryption measure to protect the confidentiality and integrity of the data on the mobile intelligent terminal. Our method is user-friendly as no interaction is needed during the process. Also, the result can be applied as evidence to identify who have used the phone.
The Effects of Arrest on Intimate Partner Violence: New Evidence From the Spouse Assault Replication Program

Discussed in this Brief: An analysis of 4,032 incidents in which males assaulted their female intimate partners, comparing the number of repeat offenses when batterers are and are not arrested. The data in this study were obtained from five jurisdictions included in the National Institute of Justice–sponsored Spouse Assault Replication Program. This multisite analysis was cosponsored by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ADAPTIVE TRACKING CONTROL OF TRACKED MOBILE ROBOTS WITH UNKNOWN SLIP PARAMETER

This paper presents the design of an adaptive control law that guarantees stability for a tracked mobile robot under unknown longitudinal slip condition. The kinematic model of the mobile robot is derived considering the slip as an unknown parameter. A control law that actuates on the angular velocities of the robot wheels is designed such that the robot follows a given reference trajectory. An update rule is used to estimate in real time the unknown slip parameter. The asymptotic stability of the global closed-loop system is ensured using an appropriate Lyapunov function. Numerical results show the usefulness of the proposed control strategy. Keywords— Nonholonomic systems, mobile robot, kinematic model, adaptive control. Resumo— Este trabalho apresenta o projeto de uma lei de controle adaptativo que garante estabilidade para um robô móvel acionado por rodas do tipo esteira sujeito a um deslizamento longitudinal desconhecido. O modelo cinemático do robô móvel é derivado considerando o deslizamento como um parâmetro incerto. Uma lei de controle que fornece as velocidades angulares das rodas do robô é projetada para que o robô siga uma dada trajetória de referência. Uma lei de adaptação é usada para estimar o parâmetro de deslizamento. A estabilidade assintótica do sistema em malha-fechada é assegurada usando-se uma função de Lyapunov apropriada. Resultados numéricos mostram a eficácia do método de controle proposto. Palavras-chave— Sistemas não-holonômicos, robôs móveis, modelo cinemático, controle adaptativo.
An Adaptive Partition-based Level Decomposition for Solving Two-stage Stochastic Programs with Fixed Recourse

We present a computational study of several strategies to solve two-stage stochastic linear programs by integrating the adaptive partition-based approach with level decomposition. A partition-based formulation is a relaxation of the original stochastic program, obtained by aggregating variables and constraints according to a scenario partition. Partition refinements are guided by the optimal second-stage dual vectors computed at certain first-stage solutions. The proposed approaches rely on the level decomposition with on-demand accuracy to dynamically adjust partitions until an optimal solution is found. Numerical experiments on a large set of test problems including instances with up to one hundred thousand scenarios show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.
Design and performance evaluation of an hybrid reservation‐polling MAC protocol for power‐line communications

This paper presents an hybrid reservation‐polling MAC protocol able to effectively deal with the channel disturbances typical of Power‐line communication systems. Channel access is controlled by a scheduler running on a centralized station. Fast retransmission of corrupted packets is employed to achieve high performance on Power‐line channels characterized by frequent error bursts due to impulsive noise. The performance of our proposed mechanism are evaluated by means of simulation, for the more challenging case of time‐sensitive traffic sources (voice calls). Results show that the system efficiency is virtually not affected by lightly to moderately disturbed PLC channel. Moreover, by slightly reducing the system utilization, a target 1% packet loss ratio can be met even in the presence of severe channel disturbances. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An Efficient Resource Management Scheme with Guaranteed QoS of Heterogeneous Services in MIMO-OFDM System

In this paper, an efficient resource management scheme applied to heterogeneous services scenario in multiple- input and multiple-output/orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO/OFDM) system is proposed. The design of the scheme is to maximize the system throughput while guaranteeing QoS requirements for users. At medium access control (MAC) layer, an urgency-factor based scheduler is designed to utilize the properties of packet data system. An efficient resource allocation algorithm at physical (PHY) layer, which jointly adapt subcarrier allocation, power distribution and bit loading according to instantaneous channel conditions, is proposed. The scheduler and the resource allocator are tightly coupled together through the cross-layer approach. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves the system throughput and makes use of resource more efficiently, while guaranteeing QoS for heterogeneous services.
Vision-Based Approach Angle and Height Estimation for UAV Landing

In order to estimate the approach angle and relative height of Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle (UAV) which lands autonomously, a combinational approach of monocular vision and stereo vision is presented. From monocular sequences, vanishing line is extracted by Hough transform and RANSAC algorithm, and then approach angle of UAV is calculated through vanishing line geometry. From stereo sequences, feature-based matching is adopted to gain depth information by extracting Harris corner. With gained approach angle, height of UAV is obtained by 3-D reconstruction. Kalman filter model is built to obtain accurate height by analyzing motion characteristic of UAV. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively estimate the approach angle and height, and converge quickly.
Running coupling and screening in the (s)QGP

Emphasizing the importance of renormalization in the context of thermal field theory in general, it is pointed out that the Debye mass in the hot quark gluon plasma is determined by the coupling at the scale $m_D$, not $T$ as commonly presumed. The mended result agrees quantitatively with lattice QCD calculations in the strong coupling regime almost down to $T_c$.
Coupling-aware high-level interconnect synthesis [IC layout]

Ultra-deep submicron technology and system-on-chip have resulted in a considerable portion of power dissipated on buses, in which the major sources of the power dissipation are: 1) the self transition activities on the signal lines and 2) the coupled transition activities of the lines. However, there has been no easy way of optimizing 1 and 2 simultaneously at an early stage of the synthesis process. In this paper, we propose a new (on-chip) bus synthesis algorithm to minimize the total sum of 1 and 2 in the microarchitecture synthesis. Specifically, unlike the previous approaches in which 1 and 2 are minimized sequentially without any interaction between them, or only one of them is minimized, we, given a scheduled dataflow graph to be synthesized, minimize 1 and 2 simultaneously by formulating and solving the two important issues in an integrated fashion: binding data transfers to buses and determining a (physical) order of signal lines in each bus, both of which are the most critical factors that affect the results of 1 and 2. Experimental results on a number of benchmark problems show that the proposed integrated low-power bus synthesis algorithm reduces power consumption by 24.8%, 40.3%, and 18.1% on average over those in (Chang and Pedram 1995, for minimizing 1 only), (Shin and Sakurai 2001, for 2 only) and (Shin and Sakurai 2001 and Chang and Pegram 1995, for 1 and then 2), respectively.
An analysis of knowledge sharing behaviors in requirement engineering through social media

Requirement engineering activities are very important for software development. However, it is difficult to capture and analyze requirements correctly and completely, and also, how to develop a set of accurate requirements is becoming an important issue. Despite there are many methods developed in order to gain more accurate requirements, there is lacking research highlight capturing more comprehensive requirements through knowledge sharing by using social media. Knowledge sharing is an interactive process which involves exchanging relevant knowledge such as information, idea, experience, knowledge know-how, and procedures from broader scope of resources in requirements engineering. Through knowledge sharing, the quality of communications between analysts and users is improved to make a good understanding of the users requirements. So that, the software developers can produce higher qualitative product. This paper proposes a flow of knowledge sharing activities through social media, and analyzes the knowledge sharing behaviors in process of requirements engineering.
Agent-based Distributed Intrusion Detection Methodology for MANETs

Intrusion detection, as a complementary mechanism to intrusion prevention, is necessary to secure wireless Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). In this paper we propose a practical agent-based distributed intrusion detection methodology for MANETs. A two-step intrusion detection procedure has been developed to effectively detect anomalies and identify attack types using distributed intrusion detection agents. The approach is efficient in dealing with large amount of system audit information with the growing network size. In addition, the distributed agent based implementation provides inherent flexibility and scalability. The performance of the approach has been evaluated via extensive simulations.
Plans Toward Automated Chat Summarization

We describe the beginning stages of our work on summarizing chat, which is motivated by our observations concerning the information overload of US Navy watchstanders. We describe the challenges of summarizing chat and focus on two chat-specific types of summarizations we are interested in: thread summaries and temporal summaries. We then discuss our plans for addressing these challenges and evaluation issues.
Path Privacy in Location-aware Computing

Context-aware applications often require sharing private data with a service provider. Most contextual information, such as location, changes over time. Privacy mechanisms that can safeguard information when shared with less trusted organizations, however, remain more suitable for static or point-in-time information. We make the case for developing privacy mechanisms that adequately address time-series, such as locational path information, and discuss our work in-progress in path segmentation and minutiae suppression.