Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Location and extraction of broadcast in news video based on QGMM and BIC

An algorithm on location and extraction of broadcast in news video is proposed in this paper. Firstly, input audio stream is divided into speech and non-speech segments by VQ (vector quantification) after a set of new features representing audio segments' time-variant characteristics are extracted, including HZCRR (high zero-crossing rate ratio), LSTER (low short-time energy ratio) and HBFERR (high basic-frequency-energy rate ratio), etc. Then a QGMM (quasi Gaussian mixture model) is presented to describe the speaker's identity and BIC (Bayesian information criterion) is used to detect speaker change. Finally speaker clustering is carried out with BIC, and location and extraction of broadcast is realized based on rules. Satisfactory results from experiments prove the effectiveness of this algorithm.
A perturbation theory for large deviation functionals in fluctuating hydrodynamics

We study a large deviation functional of density fluctuation by analyzing stochastic nonlinear diffusion equations driven by the difference between the densities fixed at the boundaries. By using a fundamental equality that yields the fluctuation theorem, we first relate the large deviation functional with a minimization problem. We then develop a perturbation method for solving the problem. In particular, by performing an expansion with respect to the average current, we derive the lowest order expression for the deviation from the local equilibrium part. This expression implies that the deviation is written as the spacetime integration of the excess entropy production rate during the most probable process of generating the fluctuation that corresponds to the argument of the large deviation functional.
Molecular Traffic Control in a 3D network of single file channels and fast reactivity

We study the conditions for reactivity enhancement of catalytic processes in porous solids by use of molecular traffic control (MTC) as a function of grain size. We extend a recently introduced two dimensional model system to three dimensions. With dynamic Monte-Carlo simulations and analytical solution of the associated Master equation we obtain a quantitative description of the MTC effect in the limit of fast reactivity. The efficiency ratio (compared with a topologically and structurally similar reference system without MTC) is inversely proportional to the grain diameter.
A general method of the hybrid controller construction for temporal planning with preferences

This paper is aimed at presenting some general construction method of the hybrid plan controller for some task of temporal planning with preferences. This construction is multi-stage and it begins with a description of a chosen robot environment and its plan in some extended version of Linear Temporal Logic. This description is later transformed to the appropriate preferential Büchi automaton. In the same way, the real plan performing by the robot is encoded by the similar automaton. Finally, both automata are exploited to construct its product automaton, which is later described in PROLOG.
Application-specific modelling of assisted telemanipulation systems in the early design phase using the i* framework

In assisted telemanipulation systems, operators are supported by an automated virtual actor. Because the integration of a virtual actor changes the concept of operations of a system, selection of the appropriate automation concept is application-specific and part of the early design phase. Although various methods exist to support this selection, they provide limited means to assess the viability of the resulting system concept. Therefore, this paper introduces the i* modelling framework as an additional tool to support this selection. Using the example of a Haptic Shared Control telemanipulation system, this paper shows how i* models can be used for the goal-based implementation of an automated virtual actor, and to assess its impact on the system. i* models also help to identify unintended side effects of such implementation and provide a first indication of the impact on system complexity.
Hexazinone Dissipation in Forest Ecosystems and Impacts on Aquatic Communities

De l'hexazinone (ingredient actif) a ete applique par voie aerienne sous formes granulaire (Velpar ULW) et liquide (Velpar L) dans des bassins versants du piemont de l'Alabama, aux Etats-Unis, au taux de 6,72 kg.ha -1 , c'est-a-dire trois fois le taux recommande pour ce site. Un bassin versant non traite a servi de temoin. Nous avons determine la demi-vie en jours de l'hexazinone pour le Velpar ULW (plantes, 26-59; litiere, 55; sol nu, 68; sol recouvert de litiere, 74) et le Velpar L (plantes, 19-36; litiere, 56; sol nu, 77; sol recouvert de litiere, 275). Les concentrations maximales d'hezazinone dans les ruisseaux (422 μg.L -1 pour le Velpar ULW; 473 μg.L -1 pour le Velpar L) ont ete observees lors de l'application et resultaient directement de l'application aerienne. Les concentrations d'hezazinone dans les ruisseaux ont connu des pointes a plusieurs reprises lors des orages pendant les premiers 30 jours (56-70 μg.L -1 pour le Velpar ULW; 145-230 μg.L -1 pour le Velpar L) et etaient diluees de trois a cinq fois a 1,6 km en aval. Les metabolites de l'hezazinone ont aussi ete suivis. L'exposition des macro-invertebres a l'hexazinone n'a pas altere la structure de la communaute benthique. La richesse en taxons, incluant les insectes sensibles a la pollution, n'etait pas significativement differente avec ou sans traitement a l'hexazinone. Les macro-invertebres benthiques dans les ruisseaux du piemont du sud-est des Etats-Unis ne semblent pas affectes par l'hexazinone au niveau d'exposition observe dans cette etude.
Money Talks

@fmct:Contents @toc4:Acknowledgments iii @toc2:1. The Puzzle of International Monetary Fund Conditionality 000 2. The Theory of Supplementary Financier Influence 000 3. A History of International Monetary Fund Conditionality 000 4. Observable Implications and Explanations of Longitudinal Change 000 5. Creditor States as Supplementary Financiers 000 6. Private Financial Institutions as Supplementary Financiers 000 7. Multilateral Organizations as Supplementary Financiers 000 8. Conclusion 000 @toc4:Appendix 1 000 Appendix 2 000 Appendix 3 000 Appendix 4 000 Notes 000 Bibliography 000 Index 000
Optimal signal design and detection for fast fading channels

In this paper, we characterize optimal detection and signaling (in terms of signal-to-noise ratio) for a fast fading channel when the autocorrelation function of the channel variation is known. We find that the well known matched filter and RAKE receiver are limiting cases of our result. Also, we provide a procedure that finds a pair of signals for digital communication. With land mobile fading channels, the signals obtained with our procedure have a performance significantly better than traditional flat-top pulse in terms of probability of error rate.
Memo # 152 Characterizing the Sensitivity of the EVLA at L-band

We present sensitivity measurements of the EVLA at L-band between 0.95 and 2 GHz. These are obtained using three EVLA antennas that are equipped with the final, EVLA-compliant L-band receivers. The reported SEFD values meet and/or exceed the EVLA sensitivity requirements over about 70% of the band, but are too high by 12–38% over the frequency range 1425–1750 MHz.
Livestock farming: eating up the environment?

REVOLUTIONS can bring both benefits and risks to the people they touch. The livestock revolution , arising from an increasing worldwide demand for animal products (specifically meat, poultry, and milk), is no different. This growing demand is especially prevalent in developing countries, which historically have consumed far less of animal products on a per capita basis than have developed countries.sumption rates of meat and milk in developing countries increased by 70 million and 105 million metric tons, respectively. Rates in developed countries during the same time period increased by 26 million metric tons for meat and 50 million metric tons for milk. Increased demand requires increased production. However, the environmental
The evolution of recombination in changing environments

145 The main difficulty with the evolution of recombination is that parents who survive to reproduce have a genotype that works under local environmental conditions; tinkering with their offsprings’ genotypes by recombination risks making the situation worse, with little hope of making it better. This idea underlies the Reduction Principle: in a constant environment without mutation, only modifier alleles that reduce recombination can invade a randomly mating population at equilibrium1–4. Lower recombination rates evolve whenever there are genetic associations among loci (linkage disequilibria), whether these are positive or negative1–4. Recent models of the evolution of recombination have greatly clarified the conditions under which increased recombination can evolve, especially when the population is changing over time3,5–10. It has long been thought that recombination might help a population keep up with environmental changes by producing novel allelic combinations11–13. It is not true, however, that changing environments always favor increased recombination and the new analyses specify the conditions that must hold for higher rates of recombination to evolve. Here, we highlight some of the important recent results on the evolution of recombination (the interested reader is referred to Refs 4,14–16 for further review).
A Logical Study of Distributed Transition Systems

We extend labelled transition systems to distributed transition systems by labelling the transition relation with a finite set of actions, representing the fact that the actions occur as a concurrent step. We design an addition-based temporal logic in which one can explicity talk about steps. The logic is studied to establish a variety of positive and negative results in terms of axiomatizability and decidability. Our positive results show that the step notion is amenable to logical treatment via standard techniques. They also help us to obtain a logical characterization of two well known models for distributed systems: labelled elementary net systems and labelled prime event structures. Our negative results show that demanding deterministic structures when dealing with a "non-interleaved" notion of transitions is, from a logical standpoint, very expressive. They also show that another well known model of distributed systems called asynchronous transition systems exhibits a surprising amount of expressive power in a natural logical setting.
Polarimetric analysis of iceberg and sea ice radar backscattering mechanisms for iceberg detection

Multi-polarization synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems are in particular useful for identification and separation of different scattering mechanisms and their sources in a medium (Oliver & Quegan, 1998, p. 319). The Canadian RADARSAT-2 (RS-2) carries a fullypolarimetric SAR system which measures intensities at VV, HH, HV and VH-polarizations as well as phase differences between the differently polarized channels (http://www.asccsa.gc.ca/eng/satellites/radarsat2/). With the aid of different polarimetric parameters such as coand cross-polarization ratio or entropy, the dominant backscattering processes for icebergs and sea ice and their potential for iceberg detection are investigated. We used three RS-2 Fine Quad Pol SAR images in the southern Weddell Sea region north of Berkner Island, one recorded on 11 September 2011 and two on 18 September 2011 (Figure 1).
A Survey of Web Architectures for Wireless Communication Environments

The WWW is currently considered as the most promising and rapidly evolving soft- ware platform for the deployment of applications in wide area networks (telematics) as well as enterprise intranets. Another technology that proliferates rapidly in such environments is wire- less communication networks (e.g., GSM, wireless LANs). The combination - merging of the two technologies (i.e., mobile computing based on the WWW) is considered of major impor- tance to the computing industry for the forthcoming years. A survey of the research activities undertaken in this area over the previous years is reported. The different approaches that have been proposed to overcome the associated technical difficulties at different layers of the OSI reference model (e.g., the application layer, the transport/network layer) are described and compared. The presented architectures incorporate mechanisms and ideas extensively used in the area of mobile computing (e.g., caching, pre-fetching).
An adaptive isotropic search window based NLM algorithm for image denoising

The non-local means (NLM) algorithm uses the self-similarity or repeated patterns present in images for denoising. NLM algorithm has been extensively researched due to its effectiveness and simplicity. In conventional NLM algorithm, the size of the search window is kept fixed for each pixel. Ideally, the search window size must optimally vary from region to region based on the characteristics of the search region. In this paper, we propose an adaptive NLM algorithm based on classification of homogeneous and heterogeneous regions using local entropy. The proposed algorithm selects an optimal search window size for each pixel based on region characteristics. The experimental results have shown that the proposed algorithm performs consistently better than the conventional NLM in terms of PSNR and visual quality for denoising the images at various noise levels.
Spritely NFS: experiments with cache-consistency protocols

File caching is essential to good performance in a distributed system, especially as processor speeds and memory sizes continue to improve rapidly while disk latencies do not. Stateless-server systems, such as NFS, cannot properly manage client file caches. Stateful systems, such as Sprite, can use explicit cache consistency protocols to improve both cache consistency and overall performance. By modifying NFS to use the Sprite cache consistency protocols, we isolate the effects of the consistency mechanism from the other features of Sprite. We find dramatic improvements on some, although not all, benchmarks, suggesting that an explicit cache consistency protocol is necessary for both correctness and good performance.
The secondary engagement evaluation project in low SES schools

Young people of school age are switching off and disengaging from schooling at unprecedented rates; especially in low SES school communities. Between 30-40% of young people are not completing 12 years of secondary education. If you happen to be Indigenous, poor or live in rural and remote communities, the figures are progressively worse. This failure to achieve high levels of school retention and student engagement represents a significant and intractable problem for individuals, families, communities and governments. We are all worse off when young people fail to realise their potential and do not make a meaningful transition to a rewarding adult life. The implications for the individual and society are long lasting and costly in both human and financial terms.
An Altered Peptide Ligand Antagonizes Antigen-Specific T Cells of Patients with Human T Lymphotropic Virus Type I-Associated Neurological Disease

Human T lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I)-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) is an inflammatory neurologic disease associated with HTLV-I infection, in which chronically activated, HTLV-I-specific CD8+ CTL have been suggested to be immunopathogenic. In HLA-A2 HAM/TSP patients, CD8+ HTLV-I-specific CTLs recognize an immunodominant peptide of the HTLV-I Tax protein, Tax11–19. We examined the functional outcome on activation of both cloned peripheral blood and cerebrospinal spinal fluid-derived CTL and bulk PBMC from HAM/TSP patients by altered peptide ligands (APL) derived from HTLV-I Tax11–19. In CTL clones generated from PBMC and CSF of HLA-A2 HAM/TSP patients, an APL substituted at position 5 significantly decreased CTL responses when compared with the native peptide. Moreover, these ligands were also shown to inhibit CTL responses to the native peptide in bulk PBMC of HLA-A2 HAM/TSP patients. These data suggest that a modification of an antigenic peptide at the central position can manipulate the T cell responses in bulk PBMC from different individuals with an inflammatory disease. Additionally, these results have implications for the potential use of APL-based immunotherapy in this T cell-mediated CNS disease.
Identification of honeycomb sandwich properties by high-resolution modal analysis

A method is proposed to identify the mechanical properties of the skin and core materials of honeycomb sandwich. All the elastic coefficients and loss-factors that matter in the dynamics of a panel in the thick-plate approximation are identified. To this end, experimental natural modes (i.e. eigenmodes of the damped system) are compared to the numerical modes of a large sandwich panel (lx,y/h ≃ 80). The chosen generic model for the visco-elastic behaviour of the materials is E(1 + jd). The numerical modes are computed by means of a Rayleigh-Ritz procedure and their dampings are predicted according to the visco-elastic model. The frequencies and dampings of the natural modes of the panel are estimated experimentally by means of a high-resolution modal analysis technique. An optimisation procedure yields the desired coefficients. A sensitivity analysis assess the reliability of the method.
Anti-Oxidative and Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Ginger in Health and Physical Activity: Review of Current Evidence

Background: Ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) belongs to the family Zingiberaceae. The health-promoting perspective of ginger is attributed to its rich phytochemistry. This study aimed to review the current evidence on ginger effects as an anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative. Methods: We searched MEDLINE for related publications using “ginger” and “anti-oxidative” and “ginger” and “anti-inflammatory” as keywords. This search had considered Papers that had been published between 2000 and 2010 without any filter. Conclusions: The anticancer potential of ginger is well documented and its functional ingredients like gingerols, shogaol, and paradols are the valuable ingredients which can prevent various cancers. This review concludes to favor ginger but some ambiguities necessitate further research before claiming its efficacy.
Adaptive Explanation Architecture for Maintaining Human-Computer Trust

One of the most important challenges in the field of human-computer interaction is maintaining and enhancing the willingness of a user to interact with a technical system. This cooperativeness provides a solid basis for a real dialogue between user and technical system. The goals and tasks of an intelligent technical system seem unrealistic without it. In particular intelligent technical systems, which are continually assisting the user in his everyday life, degenerate without this willingness for dialogue to helpers for quite simple tasks and cannot fulfil their original purpose as intelligent assistants for complex tasks. Trust has shown to be an important factor influencing the frequency and kind of usage. If the user does not understand system actions or instructions, the trust of the user in the system will decrease and this can lead to a reduced frequency or in the worst case to a total cease of usage. Therefore, the intelligibility of a technical system should be upheld. This paper is concerned with how the intelligibility of an intelligent technical system can be upheld by providing explanations to the user. Providing explanations may prevent or at least decrease the loss of trust. However, trust is a complex construct consisting of different bases. We show why and how these bases of trust should be treated by giving individual kinds of explanations.
Algebra in Two-Dimensional Black Hole

We study the SL(2;R)/U(1) coset model of two-dimensional black hole and its relation to the Liouville theory coupled to the c = 1 matter. We uncover a basic isomorphism in the algebraic structures of these theories and show that the black hole model has the same physical spectrum as the c = 1 model, i.e. tachyons, W∞ currents and the ground ring elements. We also identify the operator responsible for the creation of the mass of the black hole. In this article we discuss the SL(2;R)/U(1) coset model of two-dimensional black hole [1] and its relation to the Liouville theory coupled to c = 1 matter. Making use of free field realization of SL(2;R) current algebra we first show that the stress tensor of the coset theory is identical to that of the c = 1 Liouville theory up to BRST exact terms and thus there exists a basic isomorphism in the algebraic structure between these two theories. We next determine the physical spectrum (BRST invariants) of the black hole theory which turns out to be identical to that of the c = 1 two-dimensional gravity. Besides the standard tachyon states, there also exist discrete states in two-dimensional black hole which possess the same algebraic structure, the W∞-algebra and ground ring, as in the c = 1 theory. Thus the black hole and c = 1 theory in fact seem to originate from the identical conformal field theory. We then try to identify the operator which is responsible for the creation of the mass of the black hole. We shall show that the mass perturbation operator is given by β exp(−2 √ 2φ) (β, γ, φ are the free fields used to realize SL(2;R) current algebra), the screening operator of SL(2;R) algebra. In the Liouville theory the perturbing operator is given by the cosmological constant exp(− √ 2φ) and thus the black hole and c = 1 gravity theories are the same conformal thoeries but perturbed by different marginal operators. Let us start from the free field realization of SL(2;R) current algebra [2] given by J+ = β , (1) J− = βγ 2 + √ 2kγ∂φ+ k∂γ , k = k − 2 , (2) J3 = − βγ − √ k 2 ∂φ . (3) Here β, γ are the commuting ghost fields with the dimensions h = 1, 0 and we have the operator product expansions (OPE’s) β(z)γ(w) ∼ 1/(z−w), φ(z)φ(w) ∼ −log(z − w). k is the level of the SL(2;R) current algebra, J+(z)J−(w) ∼ k (z − k)2 − 2J3(w) z − w + · · · , (4)
Modified Apriori Algorithm to find out Association Rules using Tree based Approach

In the modern world, where data is in abundant, the problem of segregating data that leads to a specific purpose is the order of the hour. Traditionally we use data mining to achieve the purpose. A good example of the above mentioned problem can be found in a store. Generally, we use market basket analysis to find out which groups of products have a high chance of selling together. In this paper we present a new approach of segregating data by modifying the traditional Apriori algorithm. Since it is based on the traditional Apriori algorithm, the presented algorithm can be used for any number of data.
THE EFFECT OF BUSINESS STRATEGY AND EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ON MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEMS: A STUDY OF MALAYSIAN HOTELS

This study was undertaken to investigate the use of Management Control Systems (MCS) in Malaysian hotels. MCS was conceptualized as Action/Results controls, Formal/Informal, Tight/Loose controls, Restricted/Flexible, Impersonal/Interpersonal controls and Financial/Non Financial information to represent management control bureaucracy. The framework also recognizes business strategy and external environment (perceived environmental uncertainty - PEU) as factors associated with organizations choice of MCS. A survey methodology was employed. Questionnaires were administered to the top management of the hotels in Malaysia. The findings indicate that hotels pursuing cost leadership strategy was positively associated with a more bureaucratic MCS while hotels pursuing differentiation strategy was associated with less bureaucratic MCS. PEU is negatively associated with less bureaucratic MCS which indicates tighter control when environment is perceived as unpredictable. Overall, the data demonstrates that type of MCS utilized by hotels is associated with the business strategy pursuit and the PEU.