Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RA-MAC: An energy efficient and low latency MAC protocol using RTS aggregation for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks have been studied with two typical applications called event-driven and periodic monitoring applications. Although these applications have different core requirements, they have the same low latency requirement for real-world operation. However, the main issue of the protocol in wireless sensor networks has focused on energy efficiency, so there has been a lack of consideration of the latency problem. In this paper, we propose RA-MAC, an energy efficient and low latency MAC protocol using a new channel access mechanism, and the RTS aggregation scheme for wireless sensor networks. RA-MAC can also provide appropriate characteristics required for both event-driven and periodic monitoring applications through the transmission scheduling scheme. Our experimental results show that RA-MAC not only provides similar energy efficiency but also achieves throughput improvement and latency reduction compared with other MAC protocols.
Driving Forces of Conformational Changes in Single-Layer Graphene Oxide

The extensive oxygen-group functionality of single-layer graphene oxide proffers useful anchor sites for chemical functionalization in the controlled formation of graphene architecture and composites. However, the physicochemical environment of graphene oxide and its single-atom thickness facilitate its ability to undergo conformational changes due to responses to its environment, whether pH, salinity, or temperature. Here, we report experimental and molecular simulations confirming the conformational changes of single-layer graphene oxide sheets from the wet or dry state. MD, PM6, and ab initio simulations of dry SLG and dry and wetted SLGO and electron microscopy imaging show marked differences in the properties of the materials that can explain variations in previously observed results for the pH dependent behavior of SLGO and electrical conductivity of chemically modified graphene-polymer composites. Understanding the physicochemical responses of graphene and graphene oxide architecture and performing selected chemistry will ultimately facilitate greater tunability of their performance.
Semantic Interpretation of Events in Live Soccer Commentaries

English. In the context of semantic interpretation of live soccer commentaries in Italian, we propose an annotation schema for relevant events and their argument structure, on whose basis we annotated a reference evaluation corpus. We investigated automatic event classification and used Active Learning to reduce the cost of acquiring domain-specific training data. Italiano. Nel contesto dell’interpretazione di commenti calcistici in diretta, proponiamo uno schema per l’annotazione di eventi (e relativa struttura argomentativa), sulla base del quale abbiamo creato un corpus di valutazione di riferimento. Ci siamo occupati della classificazione automatica di eventi utilizzando Active Learning per ridurre lo sforzo per l’acquisizione di dati annotati specifici del dominio.
Participatory research and extension in agriculture : Organisation of learning in participatory research and extension approaches

Different organisations have developed approaches to include the farmers? knowledge in the research and extension process and to increase the knowledge and skills of the farmer. The increase in knowledge and skills of the farmers is the result of a learning process. The aim of this research is to determine the factors that influence the effects for farmers and scientist of the different participatory research and approaches. First a theoretical framework is developed. This framework consists of characteristics of the organisation, characteristics of the participatory research and extension methods and the effects for farmers and scientists. Based on this framework a survey among managers and field staff of research and extension organisation was conducted. The results of this survey show that most of the organisations use a participatory approach. To get a better understanding of the research and extension processes a case study was made from the research and extension system in Uganda. The case study showed a more differentiated picture of participation. From the results of the survey and the case study it appears that the factors that have a positive effect on the participation of farmers are an organisation that is development-oriented and promoting an input-based technology. The factors that enhance the learning of farmers are a high level of farmers? participation and sufficient resources of the organisation to support the learning. The learning of farmers is leading to application of the new technology and to results for farmers and scientists in the end.
Investigating a new formal model for a library system using B method

The use of formal methods for development of safety-critical sys-tems has motivated researchers to serve them in distributed appli-cations. B method has the precision to support animation and rigorous verification, but requires significant effort in training to overcome the mathematical barrier that many practitioners perce-ive. In this paper, an overview of B method is described including definition, properties, and tools. Then, a new formal model for a library system using B is presented. This formal model can be ex-tended in distributed environments and be integrated with UML as further work.
Selection and Peer-review under Responsibility of the Program Chairs. Codebook Selection Strategies in Long-range Sub-1 Ghz Wlans

The new long-range WLANs will enable a simple and cost-efficient setup of wireless ambient systems, including smart city and smart grid communication networks. The emerging IEEE 802.11ah WLAN standard utilizes carrier frequencies at 900 MHz in the ISM-band and facilitates multi-antenna MIMO-OFDM. In order to further increase the wireless coverage, precoding selection strategies are proposed and analyzed. The Grassmannian and the Kerdock manifold are in the focus of this study due to their simplicity and effectiveness. Whereas the Grassmannian manifold may provide an optimal codeword distance, the Kerdock man-ifold has been found to be more effective due to its reduced quantized codewords combined with an increased SNR. Simulation studies as well as real-world evaluation results indicate a 2-3 dB increase of precoding gains when the proposed Kerdock manifold is applied, thus increasing the coverage. The codebooks have been evaluated in a SDR-based IEEE 802.11ah WLAN prototype.
How policy travels : tcourse and effects of school funding policy on equity at different levels of the education system

Successful implementation of equity driven policies has proven to be a difficult and vexing issue especially in developing countries. As a result, many educational reforms were found in practice to be at variance with their founding objectives. The purpose of this exploratory and descriptive study therefore was to trace the implementation pathway traveled by the National Norms and Standards for School Funding (NNSSF) Policy from the center (National Department of Education) to the periphery (school level). This was informed by the necessity to explain where, how and why the discrepancy developed between the policy intentions and educational outcomes (i.e. effects). The NNSSF policy aimed at the fundamental transformation of the schools since it requires the following things to happen : the delegation of financial management and authority to the School Governing Body (SGB), the day-to-day management of curriculum delivery, the generation of additional funds, and the improvement and maintenance of school infrastructure. The allocation and management of these functions constitute in what is called “self-managing schools”, thus freeing such schools from the bureaucratic processes associated with centralization. This (research) investigation is guided by two research questions: 1. How was the new School Funding Policy (SFP) implemented within and through the different levels of the education system? 2. What were the effects of the National Norms and Standards For School Funding (NNSSF) policy on equity at school level? In essence, this research explains how different education stakeholders understand the new funding policy, and with what effects. In tracing the course of the NNSSF policy, I paid special attention to policy breakdown by comparing and contrasting the views and estimations of various implementers across the four levels of the education system namely: national, provincial, regional and school levels. This research on the understandings of policy was not restricted to formal definitions of policy, but went further to seek University of Pretoria etd – Molale, I S (2004)
Static Hand Gesture Recognition Method Based on Depth Images with Shape Context Feature

Static hand gesture recognition is very important for human-computer interaction systems, which is widely used in human-computer interaction systems. Using visible RGB images as the input method would be more stable, but the illumination and skin color are big problems; by contrast the depth images is a better choice. A novel algorithm which recognizes static hand gesture based on depth images using 3d shape context feature and improves the performance by arm major axis correction and contour-center sampling is proposed. Arm major axis correction can solve the rotation problem and the sampling, which increases the recognition rate. Besides, using 3d space information makes the algorithm more stable. Experimental results show that the average recognition rate gets to 95.8%, and the performance and speed are superior to existing algorithms. Recognition results can be widely used in the follow-on real scene human-computer interaction (HCI) operations.
Image processing and classification in diabetic retinopathy: A review

Diabetic retinopathy is one of the disabling microvascular complications of diabetes mellitus that causes the loss of central vision or in cases complete vision loss if not recognized and cured at the earlier stage. This work reviews the latest techniques in digital image processing and pattern classification employed for the detection of diabetic retinopathy and compares them on the basis of different performance measures like sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and area under the curve in receiver operating characteristic. The classification of diabetic retinopathy follows various steps like pre-processing, feature extraction and classification of microaneurysm, hemorrhages, exudates and cotton woolen spot. In this paper, the reported literature in each domain is analyzed.
Control and navigation of formations of car-like robots on a receding horizon

The formulation and solution of a minimum time optimal control problem for a formation conformed by nonholonomic car-like mobile robots and a virtual leader reaching a target zone in an environment that includes dynamic and static obstacles with arbitrary shapes, is provided in this paper. The proposed approach for solving the formation to target zone minimum time problem, is formulated using receding horizon control methodologies. Simulation results using the proposed methodology are also reported.
Top-down analysis of low-level object relatedness leading to semantic understanding of medieval image collections

The aim of image understanding, which is a long standing goal of computer vision, is to develop algorithms with which computers can advance to the semantic content of images. One ability of such algorithms would be the automatic discovery of relations between different objects in large collections of images. To analyze this relatedness we present an unsupervised and a semi-supervised approach for decomposing the large intra-class variability of object categories. The relations between objects is discovered by mapping all exemplars into a single low-dimensional projection that preserves the structure that is inherent to the category. The analysis reveals subtypes and an automatic classification algorithm is presented that predicts the artistic workshop that has drawn the objects. Finally, an approach for ordering the instances of an object category is proposed that also shows transitions between object instances. Our work is based on late medieval manuscripts from the Codices Palatini germanici.
Why Do Parents Bring Their Children to the Emergency Department? A Systematic Inventory of Motives

Parents frequently bring their children to general or pediatric emergency departments (EDs), even though many of these visits are judged by others to be “nonurgent” and inappropriate. This study examined the motives behind parents' decisions to take their children to a pediatric emergency department (PED). At a PED in Toulouse, France, 497 parents rated their level of agreement with each of 69 possible motives—representing all categories of human motivation—for coming to the PED that day. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses found evidence for six separable motives, called (in order of importance) (a) Seeking Quick Diagnosis, Treatment, and Reassurance; (b) PED as the Best Place to Go; (c) Empathic Concern for Child's Suffering; (d) Being Considered by Others as Responsible Parents; (e) External Factors; and (f) Dissatisfaction with Previous Consultation. Conclusions. Parents' motives in bringing their children to the PED are primarily serious and goal-oriented. They are also often emotion based, as would be expected in parents of ill children. The parents would be unlikely to agree that these visits were inappropriate.
Evaluating the Use of Semantics in Collaborative Recommender Systems: A User Study, Intelligent Techniques for Web Personalization and Recommender Systems in E-Commerce

In this paper we report on a pilot user study aimed at evaluating two aspects of recommender systems that have not been the aim of previous user studies in the field. Firstly, item semantics may be incorporated into a collaborative recommender system and we wish to measure the effect on user satisfaction. Secondly, we would like to evaluate different approaches to collecting ratings from users: the ratings that are used to seed their profile with a collaborative filtering system. Key indications from the study are: users do prefer recommendations generated by semantically enhanced recommender systems; the user’s satisfaction with a recommendation set is different from the sum of their satisfaction with the individual items with the set and the approach to collecting item ratings from the user should be tailored to the algorithm being used. Finally, recommender systems within the movie domain seem to be more useful for “movie buffs” rather than the “average movie watcher” for whom recommending simply the most popular movies seems to be most appropriate.
Effect of Health Information Technology Expenditure on Patient Level Cost

Objectives This study investigate the effect of health information technology (IT) expenditure on individual patient-level cost using California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) data obtained from 2000 to 2007. Methods We used a traditional cost function and applied hospital fixed effect and clustered error within hospitals. Results We found that a quadratic function of IT expenditure best fit the data. The quadratic function in IT expenditure predicts a decrease in cost of up to US$1,550 of IT labor per bed, US$27,909 of IT capital per bed, and US$28,695 of all IT expenditure per bed. Moreover, we found that IT expenditure reduced costs more quickly in medical conditions than surgical diseases. Conclusions Interest in health IT is increasing more than ever before. Many studies examined the effect of health IT on hospital level cost. However, there have been few studies to examine the relationship between health IT expenditure and individual patient-level cost. We found that IT expenditure was associated with patient cost. In particular, we found a quadratic relationship between IT expenditure and patient-level cost. In other word, patient-level cost is non-linearly (or a polynomial of second-order degree) related to IT expenditure.
EU Committee Governance and the Emerging Community Administration

[Introduction. ] This chapter argues that an important fabric of EU administrative governance is the emerging multilevel community administration. This community administration integrates essential parts of national government institutions and important segments of the EU institutions. The study demonstrates that the domestic components of the community administration include the lower middle levels of the member-states’ ministries and agencies/directorates. At the EU-level the community administration covers the lower echelons of the Commission services, the Commission agencies, the Commission expert committees, the Council working parties, the comitology committees, and finally the national civil servants seconded to the Commission for shorter periods of time (Trondal 2004). Together, this community administration meshes and integrates executive institutions at two levels of government charged with responsibilities for policy initiation, policy decisions and policy implementation (Heywood and Wright 1997). This study highlights the development of a community administration within the three classes of EU committees referred to above. These committees integrate national civil servants into EU decision-making processes. They pose, however, different challenges to the decision-making behaviour, roles and loyalties among the officials attending these committee meetings. The survey data presented reveals that the institutional autonomy of the community administration is stronger within the European Commission than within the Council and the comitology setting. Hence, the picture of one unified community administration has to be sacrificed for the model of a multifaceted community administration balancing intergovernmental, functional and supranational dynamics. The data thus seriously challenges sweeping generalisations of administrative fusion and bureaucratic engrenage (Wessels 1998). This chapter also demonstrates that deliberative dynamics are not omnipotent within the comitology committees as asserted by Joerges and Neyer (1997).
On the Dynamics of Standards

I study a two-parameter family of rules governing the process of entry into a club. There are three types of agent: candidates desire to enter the club; judges vote on who should enter; elite are already in the club. Promotion requires that at least n of N judges agree that a candidate is at least as good as r of the R members of the elite. Candidates minimize the cost of acquiring a D-dimensional characteristic subject to satisfying the promotion criteria. The article characterizes how minimum entry standards change over time under different assumptions. Copyright 2001 by the RAND Corporation.
Preface Research Proposal

This chapter explores the rationale for why this book was written with a focus on the main research aim of producing a better format for a strategic plan and why architecture should be considered to give structure to the presentation of the key information in a strategic plan. Because information is a central theme throughout the book, the importance of the topic is reviewed together with the relationship of information systems and the necessity of their alignment with business directions. Finally, in this preface there is a section on the organisation of the book containing a brief description of each chapter. This book presents a well structured and easily understood strategic planning process in conjunction with the development of a clear and useable planning document. The process and document together provide an effective solution to the strategic planning problem; where all necessary stakeholder representatives can be involved and the result provides essential transparency of the organisational intentions. Implementation of requirements is effective because all staff are able to simply locate and understand the planning information relevant to their contribution to the achievement of the organisational goals. Today's global economy means that problems have grown in diversity, size, and complexity to such an extent that there is a need for better tools to assist in developing solutions. In the building industry, high rise buildings today have greater flexibility of design shape, and depending on location, have to be built to withstand high winds, torrential rain, earthquakes, and other natural phenomena; luckily, the builders have a long history of an organizing process for the solution development which is of course the architectural discipline. The same is true of many organisations in the information technology industry that uses an architectural discipline for the large scale information systems projects, which is now being discussed to also include the main business development. Allied to the architectural structure of the solution development, is the structure of the planning document, this planning document has an added benefit of allowing all the specialized members of the project team to know where to find the information relevant to their needs and in a format that is readily recognizable by their discipline. However other problems areas often search for solutions in a less organised fashion, and this research in this book offers a way for other disciplines to make use of the structural advantages that can be derived from examination …
The Color-Magnitude Relation in CL 1358+62 at z = 0.33: Evidence for Significant Evolution in the S0 Population

We use a large, multicolor mosaic of HST WFPC2 images to measure the colors and morphologies of 194 spectroscopically confirmed members of the rich galaxy cluster CL 1358+62 at z = 0.33. We study the color-magnitude (CM) relation as a function of radius in the cluster to a limit of 4. ′6 from the center, equivalent to 1.6 h50−1 Mpc. The intrinsic scatter in the rest-frame B-V CM relation of the elliptical galaxies is very small, ~0.022 mag. The CM relation of the ellipticals does not depend significantly on the distance from the cluster center. In contrast, the CM relation for the S0 galaxies does depend on radius: the S0's in the core follow a CM relation similar to that of the ellipticals, but at large radii (R > 0.7 h50−1 Mpc) the S0's are systematically bluer and the scatter in the CM relation approximately doubles, to ~0.043 mag. The blueing of the S0's at large radii is significant at the 95% confidence level. These results imply that the S0 galaxies in the outer parts of the cluster have formed stars more recently than the S0's in the inner parts. A likely explanation is that clusters at z = 0.33 continue to accrete galaxies and groups from the field and that infall extinguishes star formation. The apparent homogeneity of the elliptical galaxy population implies that star formation in recently accreted ellipticals was terminated well before accretion occurred. We have constructed models to explore the constraints that these observations place on the star formation history of cluster galaxies. The best-constrained parameter is the scatter in the luminosity-weighted age ΔτL/⟨τL⟩, which is less than 18% for the ellipticals and the S0's in the cluster core, and less than 35% for the S0's in the outer parts of the cluster. The constraints on the most recent period of star formation are model dependent, but we show that star formation in ellipticals likely ceased at z = 0.6 or higher. If we assume that the galaxies have a constant star formation rate up to a randomly distributed truncation time, we find that the S0's in the outer parts of the cluster have experienced star formation until the epoch of observation at z = 0.33. We conclude that the population of S0's in clusters is likely to evolve as star-forming galaxies are converted into passively evolving galaxies. Assuming a constant accretion rate after z = 0.33, we estimate that ~15% of the present-day early-type galaxy population in rich clusters was accreted between z = 0.33 and z = 0. The ellipticals (and the brightest S0's) are probably a more stable population, at least since z = 0.6.