Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The standard parts problem and the complexity of control communication

The objective of the standard parts optimal control problem is to find a number, m, of control inputs to a given input-output system that can be used in different combinations to achieve a certain number, n, of output objectives and to do this in such a way that a specified figure-of-merit measuring the average cost of control is minimized. The problem is especially interesting when m is significantly less than n. Distributed optimization problems of this type arise naturally in connection with recent work on control communication complexity. In what follows a general formulation of the standard parts optimization problem is given along with some simple illustrative examples. Control communication complexity is defined, and it is shown how one measure of this complexity naturally leads to a standard parts optimization problem. The entire circle of ideas is explored in the context of quadratic optimal control of the Heisenberg system, and recent results on computability using simple closed curve inputs are presented.
Estimation of Potential GDP and output Gap. Comparative Perspective

The purpose of the analysis is to assess the impact of the crisis on the potential output and output gaps, to study their evolution by using a comparative approach for a sample of EU countries that were in majority included recently in financial assistance and macroeconomic adjustment programmes. The potential GDP growth rates calculated using the Cobb Douglas production function and Hodrick-Prescott methodology, decelerated substantially across the board in the countries studied once the international economic and financial crisis hit, recording even negative rates of growth in Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain. In addition to the specific factors that characterise each country, there is a series of common features that will affect the developments of the potential GDP on a long-term basis, such as the increase of global risk aversion correlated with the reduction of the banking exposures, the slow economic recovery in the EU, and last but not least the incoming ageing process, which will exert an additional negative impact on the growth potential of the EU member states. The article makes a series of economic policy recommendations to promote key measures aiming to increase the flexibility of the goods, services, and labour markets, to improve the prioritisation of public expenditures especially capital spending, and to improve the management of the public assets including real estate and public buildings by promoting a mix of measures including privatisation, monetisation and a wider involvement of the private sector in their management.
An FPGA-based High-Speed, Low-Latency Processing System for High-Energy Physics

The Global Tracking Unit of the ALICE Transition Radiation Detector is a high-speed, low-latency trigger processor installed at the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Based on the analysis of up to 20,000 parametrized particle track segments per event, a trigger decision is formed within approx. 2 μs. Furthermore, the system is designed to significantly improve the overall detector performance by providing a complex and robust multi-event buffering scheme. Data from the detector arrives at an aggregate net bandwidth of 2.16Tbit/s via 1080 optical links and is processed massively in parallel by 109 FPGA-based units organized in a 3-stage hierarchical structure. The embedded PowerPC cores are employed not only to build a monitoring and control system that can be interfaced by the experiment control. They are also used to realize a real-time hardware/software co-design, able to characterize the trigger performance, supervise the operation and intervene in cases of system errors.
Feature extraction using Gabor feature-based IFDA

In this paper, we propose a new method of Gabor feature-based inverse Fisher discriminant analysis for face recognition. In the proposed method, the intrinsic feature is first characterized using Gabor wavelet transform with different scales and directions. Then, image discriminant features are extracted by selecting principal components and inverse Fisher disciminant vectors. Experimental results on ORL and FERET face database demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Alternating direction method for a class of bilinear programming problem with its applications ∗

In this paper, we design a novel alternating update method for solving a class of generalized bilinear programming problem, where each subproblem is regularized by a positive-definite proximal term to guarantee the convergence of the method. By using the tool of the variational inequality and the property of a monotonicity operator, its global convergence is analyzed and a worst-case O(1/t) convergence rate in an ergodic sense is established. In order to accelerate the convergence of the proposed method, we also introduce a linearized strategy to approximately deal with the involved subproblems. Several numerical examples are tested to verify the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method.
Conceptualizing the Limiting Issues Inhibiting Sustainability Embeddedness

There can be little doubt that sustainability has become one of the most important issues in business in recent years. In spite of sustainability’s importance, there is agreement amongst leaders and practitioners that sustainability is not as embedded as desired. This study reports a framework on inhibitors that limit sustainability embeddedness in organizations. The framework can assist management to address the non-achievement antecedents of embeddedness specifically and holistically. This study obtained empirical data from employees on all management levels in a stock exchange-listed company. Through in-depth analysis in a case organization, valuable insights about embeddedness were inductively identified, interpreted and presented using descriptive labels, namely: “Professing What Is Right”; “Green Distraction”; the belief of “Not My Job”; “Firefighter”; the “Past Performance Anchor”; “Strategy Discourse” and “Harmony”—a mediator to sustainability embeddedness. All these were also found to be altered by the transformation of culture and the communication of the strategy message by sustainable leadership—the moderator. The findings were also corroborated by related and supporting literature as part of our contribution and pursuit for better understanding of this phenomenon.
Change Detection Without Awareness: Do Explicit Reports Underestimate the Representation of Change in the Visual System?

Evidence from many different paradigms (e.g. change blindness, inattentional blindness, transsaccadic integration) indicate that observers are often very poor at reporting changes to their visual environment. Such evidence has been used to suggest that the spatio-temporal coherence needed to represent change can only occur in the presence of focused attention. In four experiments we use modified change blindness tasks to demonstrate (a) that sensitivity to change does occur in the absence of awareness, and (b) this sensitivity does not rely on the redeployment of attention. We discuss these results in relation to theories of scene perception, and propose a reinterpretation of the role of attention in representing change.
Detector Randomization and Stochastic Signaling for Minimum Probability of Error Receivers

Optimal receiver design is studied for a communications system in which both detector randomization and stochastic signaling can be performed. First, it is proven that stochastic signaling without detector randomization cannot achieve a smaller average probability of error than detector randomization with deterministic signaling for the same average power constraint and noise statistics. Then, it is shown that the optimal receiver design results in a randomization between at most two maximum a-posteriori probability (MAP) detectors corresponding to two deterministic signal vectors. Numerical examples are provided to explain the results.
Energy Efficiency of SR and IPM Generators for Hybrid Electric Vehicle

A new switched reluctance (SR) generator was designed for possible application in hybrid electric vehicles. The proposed generator was designed to be mostly competitive with the target interior permanent-magnet (IPM) generator currently used in mass-produced hybrid vehicles. The energy efficiencies of the SR and IPM generators were compared in typical driving cycles, such as US06, HWFET, and UDDS modes. We found that the energy efficiency of the SR generator was close to the IPM generator in high-speed driving cycles because the SR generator has no iron loss during the generator idling period due to the fact that it has no PM.
WHAT IS THE PRICE OF CRIME? NEW ESTIMATES OF THE COST OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION

Title of Document: WHAT IS THE PRICE OF CRIME? NEW ESTIMATES OF THE COST OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION Jonathan Kilbourn Roman, M.P.P., 1997 Directed By: Professor Peter Reuter, School of Public Policy Robust estimates of the price of crime, measured as the costs of crime to victims, inform a wide range of policy analysis. The most commonly cited studies are constrained by limited data and rely on indirect methods to estimate prices. In these studies, health statistics are used to estimate direct losses from crime, jury award data are used to estimate indirect damages from crime, and self-reported crime data are used to weight injury prevalence within broad crime categories. While the relationship between injury and damages can be observed at the individual level in civil court records, individual level data have not previously been available that link crimes and injury. Since both individual and aggregate data are combined in these studies, prior research has not corrected sampling bias, and the estimates of victimization costs have been reported only as point estimates without confidence intervals. Estimates have been developed for only a few broad categories of crime and these estimates have not been robust to study design. This study analyzes individual-level data from two sources: jury award and injury data from the RAND Institute of Civil Justice and crime and injury data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System. Propensity score weights are developed to account for heterogeneity in jury awards. Data from the jury awards are interpolated onto the NIBRS data based on the combination of all attributes observable in both data sets. From the combined data, estimates are developed of the price of crime to victims for thirty-one crime categories. Until data become available linking information about criminal incidents to jury award data, the strategy used here is likely to yield the most robust estimates of the costs to crime victims that can be generated from the jury compensation method. WHAT IS THE PRICE OF CRIME? NEW ESTIMATES OF THE COST OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION
Improving empirical antibiotic treatment using TREAT, a computerized decision support system: cluster randomized trial.

BACKGROUND Appropriate antibiotic treatment decreases mortality, while superfluous treatment is associated with antibiotic resistance. We built a computerized decision support system for antibiotic treatment (TREAT) targeting these outcomes. METHODS Prospective cohort study comparing TREAT's advice to physician's treatment followed by a cluster randomized trial comparing wards using TREAT (intervention) versus antibiotic monitoring without TREAT (control). We included patients suspected of harbouring bacterial infections in three hospitals (Israel, Germany and Italy). The primary outcome, appropriate antibiotic treatment, was assessed among patients with microbiologically documented infections (MDI). Length of hospital stay, adverse events, mortality (interventional trial) and antibiotic costs (both studies), including costs related to future antibiotic resistance, were compared among all included patients. RESULTS Among 1203 patients included in the cohort study (350 with MDI), TREAT prescribed appropriate empirical antibiotic treatment significantly more frequently than physicians (70% versus 57%, P < 0.001) using less broad-spectrum antibiotics at half physicians' antibiotic costs. The randomized trial included 2326 patients, 570 with MDI. The rate of appropriate empirical antibiotic treatment was higher in intervention versus control wards [73% versus 64%, odds ratio (OR): 1.48, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.95-2.29, intention to treat, adjusted for location and clustering]. For patients treated according to TREAT's advice in intervention wards, the difference with controls was highly significant (OR: 3.40, 95% CI: 2.25-5.14). Length of hospital stay, costs related to future resistance and total antibiotic costs were lower in intervention versus control wards. CONCLUSIONS TREAT improved the rate of appropriate empirical antibiotic treatment while reducing antibiotic costs and the use of broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment.
Peer-Led Diabetes Education Programs in High-Risk Mexican Americans Improve Glycemic Control Compared With Standard Approaches

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of a culturally sensitive diabetes self-management education program that uses a low-cost, peer-educator format (Project Dulce) on glucose control and metabolic parameters in low-income Mexican Americans with type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 207 Mexican-American patients recruited from federally funded community health centers in San Diego County with HbA1c >8% were randomly assigned to the Project Dulce peer intervention or continuation of standard diabetes care. The primary outcome of interest was HbA1c. RESULTS The majority of subjects were born in Mexico, were female, were middle-aged, had less than an eighth-grade education, and had high baseline HbA1c levels. Significant time-by-group interaction effects for HbA1c (P = 0.02) and diastolic blood pressure (P = 0.04) indicated that the Project Dulce group exhibited greater improvement (i.e., decreases) across time. Within-group analyses showed that the intervention group exhibited significant improvements from baseline to month 4 in absolute levels of HbA1c (−1.7%, P = 0.001) and HDL cholesterol (+1.4 mg/dL, P = 0.01) and from baseline to month 10 in absolute levels of HbA1c (−1.5%, P = 0.01), total cholesterol (−7.2 mg/dL, P = 0.04), HDL cholesterol (+1.6 mg/dL, P = 0.01), and LDL cholesterol (−8.1 mg/dL, P = 0.02). No significant changes were noted in the control group. CONCLUSIONS This randomized trial, using the Project Dulce model of culturally sensitive, peer-led education, demonstrates improvement in glucose and metabolic control and suggests that this low-cost approach to self-management education for high-risk diabetic populations is effective.
Time-invariant spatially coupled low-density parity-check codes with small constraint length

We consider a special family of spatially coupled low-density parity-check (SC-LDPC) codes, that is, time-invariant low-density parity-check convolutional (LDPCC) codes, which are known in the literature for a long time. Codes of this kind are usually designed by starting from quasi-cyclic (QC) block codes, and applying suitable unwrapping procedures. We show that, by directly designing the LDPCC code syndrome former matrix without the constraints of the underlying QC block code, it is possible to achieve smaller constraint lengths with respect to the best solutions available in the literature. We also find theoretical lower bounds on the syndrome former constraint length for codes with a specified minimum length of the local cycles in their Tanner graphs. For this purpose, we exploit a new approach based on a numerical representation of the syndrome former matrix, which generalizes over a technique we already used to study a special subclass of the codes here considered.
Modeling embedded systems using SystemC extensions

SystemC AMS extensions introduce new language constructs for the design of embedded analog/mixed-signal systems. This paper presents the novel modeling language for analog and mixed-signal functions that supports design and modeling of telecommunications, automotive and imaging sensor applications at various levels of abstraction. A simple example illustrates how these new features facilitate a design refinement methodology for functional modeling, architecture exploration and virtual prototyping of embedded analog and mixed-signal systems.
Integrated Laboratory Experiences in Power Engineering Courses

The Power Engineering Group at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez (UPRM) has assumed a leadership role in education at the ECE Department through the integration of laboratory practices to courses. This effo rt has been supported by an NSF Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) grant. Laboratory practices were created for two introductory courses and two Senior design courses in power engineering. A description of the experiments as well as a discussion of a new cooperative learning structure for teamwork is included. Areas included are: introduction to electric energy systems, power electronics, motor control, and power systems protection. Assessment tools were developed with the collaboration of an expert from the Social Sciences Department. The paper presents a discussion of assessment results on student learning and students' perceptions of their learning. Integrating laboratory practices to courses has become a key strategy in curriculum renovation at the ECE Department. Besides strengthening the power engineering position within the Department, this effort has motivated students with the subject matter by the linking theory to practice, providing a closer interaction with Faculty members and making them active participants in the learning process. Index Terms – Integrated laboratories, power engineering, assessment.
The use of animation to explain genetic algorithms

Algorithm animation has been applied to a huge variety of algorithms, and has been found to be of enormous benefit in assisting with their comprehension. However, the radical nature of several classes of algorithm has caused them to be largely overlooked in this regard; noticeable among these are genetic algorithms. In addressing this, we have used the XTANGO software system to develop a set of animation sequences designed to illustrate the behaviour of a genetic algorithm applied to a real-world problem. The resulting package is general enough to be adapted easily to a range of problems.
Left Ventricle: Fully Automated Segmentation Based on Spatiotemporal Continuity and Myocardium Information in Cine Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (LV-FAST)

CMR quantification of LV chamber volumes typically and manually defines the basal-most LV, which adds processing time and user-dependence. This study developed an LV segmentation method that is fully automated based on the spatiotemporal continuity of the LV (LV-FAST). An iteratively decreasing threshold region growing approach was used first from the midventricle to the apex, until the LV area and shape discontinued, and then from midventricle to the base, until less than 50% of the myocardium circumference was observable. Region growth was constrained by LV spatiotemporal continuity to improve robustness of apical and basal segmentations. The LV-FAST method was compared with manual tracing on cardiac cine MRI data of 45 consecutive patients. Of the 45 patients, LV-FAST and manual selection identified the same apical slices at both ED and ES and the same basal slices at both ED and ES in 38, 38, 38, and 41 cases, respectively, and their measurements agreed within −1.6 ± 8.7 mL, −1.4 ± 7.8 mL, and 1.0 ± 5.8% for EDV, ESV, and EF, respectively. LV-FAST allowed LV volume-time course quantitatively measured within 3 seconds on a standard desktop computer, which is fast and accurate for processing the cine volumetric cardiac MRI data, and enables LV filling course quantification over the cardiac cycle.
Implicit Representations for Recovery and Reconstruction of Motion Layers

In this paper, we propose a level set approach to decompose the image plane into segments with consistent apparent motion and recover parametric models that best describe such a motion. The number of motion planes and initial motion parameters are obtained by robust block-wise optical flow estimation, followed by non-parametric clustering in the motion parameter space. Implicit representations are used to further improve the estimation and to segment the image plane according to consistent motion. Our approach integrates a smoothness constraint, a spatial-temporal motion constraint and a color-driven segmentation module within the multiphase level set framework. Therefore, our method is able to recover the different topology of the motion layers and provide smooth motion segmentation that is consistent with the geometry of the scene. Experimental results on both natural and synthetic image sequences demonstrate the potential of the proposed technique.
Privacy preserving stereoscopic vision with One-Bit transform

This paper proposes a stereoscopic vision algorithm to calculate the disparity map using One-Bit transform (1BT). There are two advantages of the proposed algorithm over the conventional stereoscopic vision algorithms. First, the use of the 1BT reduces the computational complexity of the disparity map calculation. Second, for implementation in private spaces such as homes and communities, the use of the 1BT preserves the privacy of the occupants. Simulations results are presented to show that the use of the 1BT does not significantly affect the performance of the stereo matching algorithm.
Mechanical thrombectomy in acute ischemic stroke: Consensus statement by ESO-Karolinska Stroke Update 2014/2015, supported by ESO, ESMINT, ESNR and EAN

The original version of this consensus statement on mechanical thrombectomy was approved at the European Stroke Organisation (ESO)-Karolinska Stroke Update conference in Stockholm, 16–18 November 2014. The statement has later, during 2015, been updated with new clinical trials data in accordance with a decision made at the conference. Revisions have been made at a face-to-face meeting during the ESO Winter School in Berne in February, through email exchanges and the final version has then been approved by each society. The recommendations are identical to the original version with evidence level upgraded by 20 February 2015 and confirmed by 15 May 2015. The purpose of the ESO-Karolinska Stroke Update meetings is to provide updates on recent stroke therapy research and to discuss how the results may be implemented into clinical routine. Selected topics are discussed at consensus sessions, for which a consensus statement is prepared and discussed by the participants at the meeting. The statements are advisory to the ESO guidelines committee. This consensus statement includes recommendations on mechanical thrombectomy after acute stroke. The statement is supported by ESO, European Society of Minimally Invasive Neurological Therapy (ESMINT), European Society of Neuroradiology (ESNR), and European Academy of Neurology (EAN).
La estrategia de internacionalización de la pequeña empresa familiar

Este trabajo estudia la internacionalizacion de las pequenas empresas familiares industriales en Espana. A partir del enfoque de la empresa basado en los recursos, se analiza que problemas plantea la propiedad familiar para obtener una cartera de recursos adecuada para sustentar la salida a los mercados internacionales. A partir de ahi, el contraste empirico confirma la existencia de una relacion negativa entre propiedad familiar e internacionalizacion, medida a traves de la actividad exportadora. Igualmente, se confirma que la incorporacion de nuevas generaciones a la direccion, al igual que la colaboracion con otras empresas (que participan en el capital o con las que se establecen alianzas) tienen efectos positivos en la internacionalizacion de la empresa familiar