Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Augmenting human memory using personal lifelogs

Memory is a key human facility to support life activities, including social interactions, life management and problem solving. Unfortunately, our memory is not perfect. Normal individuals will have occasional memory problems which can be frustrating, while those with memory impairments can often experience a greatly reduced quality of life. Augmenting memory has the potential to make normal individuals more effective, and those with significant memory problems to have a higher general quality of life. Current technologies are now making it possible to automatically capture and store daily life experiences over an extended period, potentially even over a lifetime. This type of data collection, often referred to as a personal life log (PLL), can include data such as continuously captured pictures or videos from a first person perspective, scanned copies of archival material such as books, electronic documents read or created, and emails and SMS messages sent and received, along with context data of time of capture and access and location via GPS sensors. PLLs offer the potential for memory augmentation. Existing work on PLLs has focused on the technologies of data capture and retrieval, but little work has been done to explore how these captured data and retrieval techniques can be applied to actual use by normal people in supporting their memory. In this paper, we explore the needs for augmenting human memory from normal people based on the psychology literature on mechanisms about memory problems, and discuss the possible functions that PLLs can provide to support these memory augmentation needs. Based on this, we also suggest guidelines for data for capture, retrieval needs and computer-based interface design. Finally we introduce our work-in-process prototype PLL search system in the iCLIPS project to give an example of augmenting human memory with PLLs and computer based interfaces.
From ‘Great’ Leaders to Building Networks: The Emergence of a New Urban Leadership in Southern Europe?

This article reviews the changes that have taken place in local government leadership in France and Spain. It has been argued that political leadership in local government in Southern Europe is characterized by major political leaders who are able to obtain resources from central government through their political connections. However, both French and Spanish local governments have evolved while developing new forms of leadership that are more connected to territory, its people and local issues than to the respective administrative capitals. The article argues that the development of new policies at the local level, the opening of new avenues of citizen participation and the introduction of new methods of public management have changed the relationship between elected representatives and the people. Institutional innovations at the supra-municipal level have also created a space between regions and municipalities for local leaders to develop their capacity as project leaders and network creators. Cet article examine les changements survenus au niveau de l'autorite gouvernementale locale en France et en Espagne. L'autorite politique dans un gouvernement local du sud de l'Europe se caracterise, assure-t-on, par de grands leaders politiques capables d'obtenir des ressources du gouvernement central grâce a leurs relations. Pourtant, les gouvernements locaux francais et espagnols ont evolue tout en elaborant des formes originales de leadership, plus proches du territoire, de sa population et des affaires locales que les capitales administratives concernees. La conception de politiques publiques novatrices au plan local, l'ouverture d'autres acces a la participation des citadins et l'introduction de nouvelles methodes de gestion publique ont modifie le rapport entre representants elus et population. De plus, des innovations institutionnelles au niveau supra-municipal ont genere un espace entre regions et municipalites permettant aux leaders locaux de developper leurs aptitudes en tant que chefs de projet et createurs de reseaux.
Magnetization-tagged MRI is a simple method for predicting liver fibrosis

Background/Aims: To assess the usefulness of magnetization-tagged magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in quantifying cardiac-induced liver motion and deformation in order to predict liver fibrosis. Methods: This retrospective study included 85 patients who underwent liver MRI including magnetization-tagged sequences from April 2010 to August 2010. Tagged images were acquired in three coronal and three sagittal planes encompassing both the liver and heart. A Gabor filter bank was used to measure the maximum value of displacement (MaxDisp) and the maximum and minimum values of principal strains (MaxP1 and MinP2, respectively). Patients were divided into three groups (no fibrosis, mild-to-moderate fibrosis, and significant fibrosis) based on their aspartate-aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index (APRI) score. Group comparisons were made using ANOVA tests. Results: The patients were divided into three groups according to APRI scores: no fibrosis (≤0.5; n=41), moderate fibrosis (0.5–1.5; n=23), and significant fibrosis (>1.5; n=21). The values of MaxDisp were 2.9±0.9 (mean±SD), 2.3±0.7, and 2.1±0.6 in the no fibrosis, moderate fibrosis, and significant fibrosis groups, respectively (P<0.001); the corresponding values of MaxP1 were 0.05±0.2, 0.04±0.02, and 0.03±0.01, respectively (P=0.002), while those of MinP2 were –0.07±0.02, –0.05±0.02, and –0.04±0.01, respectively (P<0.001). Conclusions: Tagged MRI to quantify cardiac-induced liver motion can be easily incorporated in routine liver MRI and may represent a helpful complementary tool in the diagnosis of early liver fibrosis.
Carbapenem Inactivation Method: Accurate Detection and Easy Interpretation of Carbapenemase Production in Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas spp.

Background: We evaluated the carbapenem inactivation method (CIM) compared with the modified Hodge test (MHT) for the detection of carbapenemase-producing Gram-negative bacilli. Methods: A total of 61 isolates of carbapenemaseproducing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE: 14 KPC, 7 GES5, 8 NDM-1, 9 VIM-2, 9 IMP-1, and 14 OXA-48-like), 34 isolates of metallo-β-lactamase (MBL)-producing Pseudomonas spp. (14 VIM-2 and 20 IMP-6), and 70 carbapenem-nonsusceptible carbapenemase-negative isolates were included. The CIM and MHT were performed for all of the isolates. To perform the CIM, a meropenem disk was incubated with a suspension of the isolate to be tested and then on Mueller-Hinton agar with the Escherichia coli ATCC 29522 strains. The absence of an inhibition zone indicates presence of a carbapenemase. The presence of a clearing zone indicates lack of a carbapenemase. Results: The total sensitivity and specificity of CIM (96% sensitivity and 100% specificity) in carbapenemnonsusceptible Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas spp. were better than those of the MHT (77% sensitivity and 94% specificity). The interpretation of CIM results was easy, with no or <20 mm inhibition zones indicating positivity and >20 mm inhibition zones indicating negative carbapenemase activity. Conclusion: The CIM had excellent sensitivity and specificity for detection of CPE and MBL-producing Pseudomonas spp. , and a positive result was easily determined, unlike the MHT. (Ann Clin Microbiol 2016;19:83-87)
Antimicrobial Activity of Chitosan-Carbon Nanotube Hydrogels

In the present study, we have prepared chitosan-carbon nanotube (Chitosan-CNT) hydrogels by the freeze-lyophilization method and examined their antimicrobial activity. Different concentrations of CNT were used in the preparation of Chitosan-CNT hydrogels. These differently concentrated CNT hydrogels were chemically characterized using Fourier Transform-Infrared Spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy and Optical microscopy. The porosity of the hydrogels were found to be >94%. Dispersion of chitosan was observed in the CNT matrix by normal photography and optical microscopy. The addition of CNT in the composite scaffold significantly reduced the water uptake ability. In order to evaluate antimicrobial activity, the serial dilution method was used towards Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Candida tropicalis. The composite Chitosan-CNT hydrogel showed greater antimicrobial activity with increasing CNT concentration, suggesting that Chitosan-CNT hydrogel scaffold will be a promising biomaterial in biomedical applications.
Leveraging Learning To Rank in an Optimization Framework for Timeline Summarization

With the tremendous amount of news published on the Web every day, helping users explore news events on a given topic of interest is an acute problem. Timeline summaries have recently emerge as a simple and effective solution for users to navigate through temporally related news events. In this paper, we propose an optimization framework and demonstrate the use of Learning To Rank (LTR) to automatically construct timeline summaries from Web news articles. Experimental evaluations show that our approach outperforms existing solutions in producing high quality timeline summaries. We make our dataset publicly available for future research in the same area at http://www.l3s. de/~gtran/timeline/
Capture expression-dependent AU relations for expression recognition

To date, there is only limited research that explicitly exploits the relationships among Action Units and expressions for facial expression recognition. In this paper, we propose an facial expression recognition method through modeling the expression-dependent AU relations. First, the incremental association Markov blanket algorithm is adopted to select crucial action units for a certain expression. Second, a Bayesian Network (BN) is constructed to capture the relationships between a certain expression and its crucial action units. Given the learned BNs and measurements of AUs and expression, we can then perform expression recognition within the BN through a probabilistic inference. Experimental results on the CK+ and MMI databases demonstrate the effectiveness and generalization ability of our method.
Smooth Reconstruction and Compact Representation of Reflectance Functions for Image-based Relighting

In this paper we present a new method to reconstruct reflectance functions for image-based relighting. A reflectance function describes how a pixel in a photograph is observed depending on the incident illumination on the depicted object. Additionally we present a compact representation of the reconstructed reflectance functions. The reflectance functions are sampled from real objects by illuminating the object from a set of directions while recording photographs. Each pixel in a photograph is a sample of the reflectance function. Next, a smooth continuous function is reconstructed, using different reconstruction techniques, from the sampled reflectance function. The presented method maintains important high frequency features such as highlights and self-shadowing and ensures visually pleasing relit images, computed with incident illumination containing high and low frequency features. The reconstructed reflectance functions and incident illumination can be expressed by a common set of basis functions, enabling a significant speed-up of the relighting process. We use a non-linear approximation of higher order wavelets to preserve the smoothness of the reconstructed signal while maintaining good relit image quality. Our method improves on visual quality in comparison with previous image-based relighting methods, especially when animated incident illumination is used.
A Retinotopic Attentional Trace after Saccadic Eye Movements: Evidence from Event-related Potentials

Saccadic eye movements are a major source of disruption to visual stability, yet we experience little of this disruption. We can keep track of the same object across multiple saccades. It is generally assumed that visual stability is due to the process of remapping, in which retinotopically organized maps are updated to compensate for the retinal shifts caused by eye movements. Recent behavioral and ERP evidence suggests that visual attention is also remapped, but that it may still leave a residual retinotopic trace immediately after a saccade. The current study was designed to further examine electrophysiological evidence for such a retinotopic trace by recording ERPs elicited by stimuli that were presented immediately after a saccade (80 msec SOA). Participants were required to maintain attention at a specific location (and to memorize this location) while making a saccadic eye movement. Immediately after the saccade, a visual stimulus was briefly presented at either the attended location (the same spatiotopic location), a location that matched the attended location retinotopically (the same retinotopic location), or one of two control locations. ERP data revealed an enhanced P1 amplitude for the stimulus presented at the retinotopically matched location, but a significant attenuation for probes presented at the original attended location. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that visuospatial attention lingers in retinotopic coordinates immediately following gaze shifts.
Déjà vu — Predicting the number of players in online games through normalization of historical data

A key factor to delivering a good online gaming experience is to have sufficient server resources relative to the number of players online. In this work, we present a simple profiling technique which allows effective prediction of the number of players in the next 24 hour cycle based on both weekend and workday data. The methodology enables planning ahead so that resources can be scaled to the sufficient amount, thereby reducing cost and power consumption.
DNS of Laminar-Turbulent Transition in Swept-Wing Boundary Layers

Direct numerical simulation (DNS) is performed to examine laminar to turbulent transition due to high-frequency secondary instability of stationary crossflow vortices in a subsonic swept-wing boundary layer for a realistic natural-laminar-flow airfoil configuration. The secondary instability is introduced via inflow forcing and the mode selected for forcing corresponds to the most amplified secondary instability mode that, in this case, derives a majority of its growth from energy production mechanisms associated with the wall-normal shear of the stationary basic state. An inlet boundary condition is carefully designed to allow for accurate injection of instability wave modes and minimize acoustic reflections at numerical boundaries. Nonlinear parabolized stability equation (PSE) predictions compare well with the DNS in terms of modal amplitudes and modal shape during the strongly nonlinear phase of the secondary instability mode. During the transition process, the skin friction coefficient rises rather rapidly and the wall-shear distribution shows a sawtooth pattern that is analogous to the previously documented surface flow visualizations of transition due to stationary crossflow instability. Fully turbulent features are observed in the downstream region of the flow.
Project management in the Wikipedia community

A feature of online communities and notably Wikipedia is the increasing use of managerial techniques to coordinate the efforts of volunteers. In this short paper, we explore the influence of the organization of Wikipedia in so-called projects. We examine the project-based coordination activity and find bursts of activity, which appear to be related to individual leadership. Using time series, we show that coordination activity is positively correlated with contributions on articles. Finally, we bring evidence that this positive correlation is relying on two types of coordination: group coordination, with project leadership and articles editors strongly coinciding, and directed coordination, with differentiated online roles.
Show Me the Features: Regular Viewing Patterns During Encoding and Recognition of Faces, Objects, and Places.

Understanding viewing patterns of images is important for inferring how bottom-up and top-down information drive vision. However, it is unknown to what extent viewing patterns depend on specific features. Here, we examined subjects’ eye movements during encoding and recognition and asked whether they are feature, view or task specific. During encoding, subjects viewed faces, cars and corridors in random order. Half of the stimuli were shown in the front view while the other half in the side view. After a distracter task, subjects performed a recognition memory task and reported if images show an exemplar they had seen before or not, regardless of its view. Half of the images contained exemplars presented during encoding, and half were novel. Stimuli view was counterbalanced. In experiment 1 (19 subjects), stimuli view during encoding and recognition were identical. In experiment 2 (21 subjects), stimuli view during recognition and encoding were different. In both experiments, we found that subjects fixated on category-specific features: subjects looked significantly more at the eyes and nose of faces, the front hood of cars, and the end of corridors and walls. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between the features and view: for faces, subjects fixated less at the nose for the side view; for cars, subjects fixated more on the center of the hood for the front view, while at the sides of the front hood for the side view; for corridors, subjects fixated more on the end of the corridor for the front view, while at the walls for the side view. These data demonstrate a regular viewing pattern driven by category-specific features that is modulated by the view of the stimulus.
Decision-Theoretic Views on Simultaneous Testing of Superiority and Noninferiority

ABSTRACT In a simultaneous testing of noninferiority and superiority in clinical trials, there is no multiplicity penalty. Ng (2003), however, argues that even though there is no inflation of the Type I error rate, this type of simultaneous testing is problematic because it may lead to loss of power in the subsequent confirmatory trial. And he recommends to conduct only one test chosen on the basis of the sponsor's preliminary assessment. We view the question of whether one should simultaneously test for noninferiority and superiority from a decision-theoretic view point. We develop the loss function approach implicit in Ng's research and compare his recommendation to simultaneous testing procedures indexed by a variety of design parameters. We find that the simultaneous testing procedure generally provides smaller loss than Ng's method, except when the prior distribution allocates a large probability to equivalence of the two treatments.
Effec ts of Temporal Perceptions on Employees' Work-Life Conflic t

xi CHAPTER I: Introduction 1 Work-Life Conflict 2 Dimensions of work-life conflict. 5 Effects of work-life conflict. 6 Demand Control Theory 6 Temporal Perceptions 8 Enactments of time. 8 Construals of time. 10 Temporal perceptions of interest. 12 Leader-Member Exchange 15 Leader’s Temporal Perceptions and WLC 18 Temporal Diversity Between Employee and Leader and WLC 19 Workload 20 Communication 22 Job Performance 23
A Calculus of Consistent Component-based Software Updates

It is important to enable reasoning about the meaning and possible effects of updates to ensure that the updated system operates correctly. A formal, mathematical model of dynamic update should be developed, in order to understand by both users and implementors of update technology what design choices can be considered. In this paper, we define a formal calculus $update\pi$, a variant extension of higher-order $\pi$ calculus, to model dynamic updates of component-based software, which is language and technology independent. The calculus focuses on following main concepts: proper granularity of update, timing of dynamic update, state transformation between versions, update failure check and recovery. We describe a series of rule on safe component updates to model some general processes of dynamic update and discuss its reduction semantics coincides with a labelled transition system semantics that illustrate the expressive power of these calculi.
Getting savages to fight barbarians: counterinsurgency and the remaking of Afghanistan

This article focuses on the emergence and evolution of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), a pro-government militia supported by the US military in Wardak Province. The ALP and its previous incarnations have been justified, invoking notions of ‘local solutions’ and ‘cost-effectiveness’, as a politically convenient and culturally appropriate measure to supplement broader efforts to counter the insurgency and build up the regular forces. Inspired by the tribal policing concept of arbaki, ALP was envisaged as a short-term local defence force. But the programme has been controversial, and its impact in improving security questionable. In analysing the contestations between different actors involved in the programme, the article demonstrates that the US military's attempt to resuscitate ‘age-old traditions’ of self-protection proved difficult to realize and produced unforeseen and largely deleterious outcomes. It concludes that far from reflecting the needs of local villagers, ALP was a top-down imposition whose objectives were much narrower than the purported aim of protecting the local population in Wardak.
Pulling the plug

New media outlets have been deemed a vital instrument for protesters and opposition groups to coordinate activities in the recent civilian uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. But what happens when regimes respond by shutting down the internet? I argue that governments have a strategic incentive to implement internet blackouts in conjunction with larger repressive operations against violent opposition forces. Short-term intermissions in communication channels are expected to decrease opposition groups’ capabilities to successfully coordinate and implement attacks against the state, allowing regime forces to strengthen their position. Network blackouts should consequently be accompanied by significant increases in military activity. Analyzing daily documented killings by the government in the Syrian civil war, I find that blackouts occur in conjunction with significantly higher levels of state repression, most notably in areas where government forces are actively fighting violent opposition groups. In addition, I estimate the number of undocumented conflict fatalities prior to and during network blackouts to test whether they are implemented to hide atrocities from outside observers, and find no support for this hypothesis. The results indicate that such network blackouts constitute a part of the military’s strategy to target and weaken opposition groups, where the underreporting of violence is not systematically linked to outages.