Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
FE-MAC: a forwarding election-based MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks

Influenced by the design principles of the layered network protocol stack, current MAC protocols in wireless sensor network usually resort to improving energy efficiency as a major energy saving means, with little considerations of load balance, which limits the network lifetime. In this paper, a forwarding election-based MAC protocol, FE-MAC, is proposed. By means of load balance improvement, energy is evenly consumed among nodes, and network lifetime is further extended. FE-MAC protocol adopts the forwarding election mechanism, in which nodes are organized to contend for the right of packet forwarding according to their residual energy, the more energy a node has, the more forwarding tasks it will take, and load balance and routing capability are realized. The experiments show that: compared with S-MAC and T-MAC, in wireless sensor networks of different scale, FE-MAC can prominently extend network lifetime, and the larger the number of nodes is, the better FE-MAC protocol performs. FE-MAC is more suitable to configuring large scale wireless sensor networks.
ASIREM Participation at the Discriminating Similar Languages Shared Task 2016

This paper presents the system built by ASIREM team for the Discriminating between Similar Languages (DSL) Shared task 2016. It describes the system which uses character-based and word-based n-grams separately. ASIREM participated in both sub-tasks (sub-task 1 and sub-task 2) and in both open and closed tracks. For the sub-task 1 which deals with Discriminating between similar languages and national language varieties, the system achieved an accuracy of 87.79% on the closed track, ending up ninth (the best results being 89.38%). In sub-task 2, which deals with Arabic dialect identification, the system achieved its best performance using character-based n-grams (49.67% accuracy), ranking fourth in the closed track (the best result being 51.16%), and an accuracy of 53.18%, ranking first in the open track.
Low-cost smart antennas for advanced wireless systems

Smart antenna is a key technology for mobile communications, satellite communications, radar and sensors as it can enable the wireless systems to achieve the optimum performance by electronically steering its maximum radiation towards the desired directions while forming nulls against interfering sources. Traditional smart antennas are, however, complicated in structure, bulky, power hungry and costly. For commercial applications, it is important to reduce the size, mass, power consumption and cost of smart antennas. Firstly, this paper presents an introduction to smart antennas, followed by a brief review of various types of low-cost smart antennas. Then, several recent examples of low-cost smart antennas reported by the author's group are presented and discussed. These antennas are capable of achieving electronic beam steering within a wide angular range, while having compact sizes, low power consumption and low cost. A detailed list of references is given in the end of this paper.
Research on intrusiveness model of online advertising based on neural network

Online advertising has emerged as one of the major business models on the Internet. Publishers rely on the online revenue generated from online advertising to offer their free services. At the same time, intrusive ads such as pop-ups and animated layer ads are being perceived as annoying thing by an increasing number of web users, because they distract the web users from reading or navigating through the main content of web pages. It is definitely not a problem to place ads within web pages as long as they do not become annoying. Thinking from the perspective of most users, online advertising should have a limit. It is necessary to model the intrusiveness of online advertising in order to ensure that a proper balance is achieved between user experiences and branding effectiveness. In this paper, an approach based on neural network is proposed to model the intrusiveness of online advertising. Comprehensive features of ads and hosting web pages are exploited and effectively combined. Promising experimental results are obtained on web pages collected from 500 web sites.
Diagnosis of Gate Delay Faults in the Presence of Clock Delay Faults

This paper presents a diagnosis method for gate delay faults in the presence of clock delay faults. The method deduces candidate faults using a single gate delay fault dictionary and a single clock delay fault dictionary, which contain the information of latest transition time of signals as well as output logic values. To reduce the diagnostic ambiguity we remove those faults from the candidate fault list which provide a contradiction between the circuit responses and responses stored in the dictionary. Since the dictionary is not generated by considering the simultaneous existence of a gate delay fault and a clock delay fault, some heuristic parameters are introduced in order to compensate the difference between the dictionaries and the responses in a circuit under diagnosis.
Reduced-routing complexity decoder for high-rate QC-LDPC codes

This paper presents a high-throughput and routing complexity reduced decoder for Quasi-Cyclic Low-Density Parity-Check (QC-LDPC) codes in the high rate wireless personal area network applications (WPAN). Our selected code is the rate-1/2 QC-LDPC code in IEEE P802.11ad/D1.0. A new decoder architecture is proposed. The message paths between variable nodes and check nodes are constructed by a fixed wire network. Compared to the fully parallel architecture, routing complexity of the new architecture is reduced greatly. The decoder is implemented using FPGA, and a data rate of 1.21Gbps can be achieved in the air.
A Symmetric Motion Estimation Method for Motion-Compensated Frame Interpolation

This paper proposes a new motion-compensated frame interpolation (MCFI) method. The proposed method utilizes a symmetric motion estimation (SME) method, which is a new pixel-wise motion estimation method for intermediate frame interpolation. By using an adaptive search range for the motion estimation, the proposed method can obtain a more reliable motion vector for each pixel than previous MCFI methods that use a conventional block matching algorithm (BMA). In addition, we propose a combined method of the SME and BMA to reduce the computation time of the pixel-wise motion estimation method. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms other MCFI methods in terms of generating objectively and subjectively better interpolated frames.
Handbook of Neural Networks for Speech Processing (first Edition) Pp. 000{000 Networks for Speech Enhancement

This chapter presents an overview of several approaches to neural speech enhancement. Speech enhancement is concerned with the processing of noisy and corrupted speech to improve the quality or intelligibility of the signal. While the general eld is well established, in recent years, several distinct neural network based frameworks have emerged in the literature. These include time-domain ltering, transform-domain mapping , state-dependent model switching, and on-line iterative approaches. The goal of this chapter is to explore the diierences in the capabilities and assumptions of the various methods. Where appropriate, a review of traditional (non-neural) techniques is provided for context. Rather than giving a detailed description of each algorithm with explicit experimental comparisons, the chapter highlights qualitatively those features which distinguish each approach. Potential areas of future research are also suggested, along with more general recommendations for the eld.
Business Process Reengineering (BPR): A Strategic Choice

This article reviews the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) vision of radical business process change, focusing upon the use of information technology, to facilitate a shift away from linear work organization towards parallel processing and multidisciplinary team working. To approach such a change, by focusing on the technologies aspect to the detriment of a regard on managerial, technological and human resources management, might however handicap a lot the chances of succeeding of such a project. Organizational structures and human resources management politics indeed shape the positioning of actors facing the change project, and constitute the appropriation context of those technologies. This article aims to show the significance to articulate those three poles of reengineering.
Motor system hyperconnectivity in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy: a cognitive functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy is the most frequent idiopathic generalized epilepsy syndrome. It is characterized by predominant myoclonic jerks of upper limbs, often provoked by cognitive activities, and typically responsive to treatment with sodium valproate. Neurophysiological, neuropsychological and imaging studies in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy have consistently pointed towards subtle abnormalities in the medial frontal lobes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging with an executive frontal lobe paradigm, we investigated cortical activation patterns and interaction between cortical regions in 30 patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy and 26 healthy controls. With increasing cognitive demand, patients showed increasing coactivation of the primary motor cortex and supplementary motor area. This effect was stronger in patients still suffering from seizures, and was not seen in healthy controls. Patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy showed increased functional connectivity between the motor system and frontoparietal cognitive networks. Furthermore, we found impaired deactivation of the default mode network during cognitive tasks with persistent activation in medial frontal and central regions in patients. Coactivation in the motor cortex and supplementary motor area with increasing cognitive load and increased functional coupling between the motor system and cognitive networks provide an explanation how cognitive effort can cause myoclonic jerks in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. The supplementary motor area represents the anatomical link between these two functional systems, and our findings may be the functional correlate of previously described structural abnormalities in the medial frontal lobe in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy.
Exploring the use of best-worst scaling to elicit course experience questionnaire responses

Abstract Students are an important stakeholder group in the context of quality assurance in higher education. From their perspective as learners, students’ views on educational experiences are increasingly used as an indicator of educational quality. The Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) is a widely used quantitative tool to gauge students’ perceptions of degree programmes. With a view to enhancing the scope for differentiation between individual questionnaire items, this paper explores the use of best–worst scaling to elicit CEQ responses as an alternative to a ratings instrument. The data for this study were generated from a representative sample (n = 263) of graduates from a Dutch university. The survey focused on two core CEQ scales: Good Teaching and Generic Skills. The results show that the Generic Skills items were deemed more pertinent to the degree programme than were the ones related to Good Teaching, with problem-solving skills perceived as the most relevant aspect. Using latent class analysis, six groups of graduates were identified that differed mainly in terms of the relative importance of the skills attributes. Overall, this study shows how the features of best–worst scaling can be used to enhance the scope for discrimination between items in a degree programme evaluation.
Novel cooperative policy for cognitive radio networks: Stability region and delay analysis

We consider a cognitive radio system that consists of primary user, secondary user, and their destinations. The secondary user has a relaying capability, i.e., it transmits the relayed packets from the primary user. Unlike most of the previous works that restrict the secondary user to transmit only in the idle time slots, we assume that the secondary user interferes on the primary user with certain probability that is optimized to maximize the stable throughput of the secondary network under certain level of quality of service constraints for the primary one. We show how significantly our proposed scheme improves the performance of the secondary user and increases the maximum stable throughput of the primary user over the traditional cooperative policies that restrict the secondary user to exploit only the periods of silence of the primary user.
High reuse efficiency of radio resources in urban microcellular systems

A new microcell configuration scheme in urban areas is proposed in order to increase the reuse efficiency of radio resources. Multiple directional-beam antennas lined up along a street form a cigar-shaped cell. Antennas are located at intersection and are directed along the intersecting streets. Two antennas facing each other form a microzone and, therefore, a cigar-shaped cell consists of multiple microzones in a line. Each microzone is protected against cochannel interference from neighboring microzones by confinement of transmitted signals to a microzone using down-tilting of antenna beams. Therefore, a radio channel which is occupied in one microzone can be used in adjacent microzones. An increase in system capacity is achieved by the high reuse efficiency of radio resources. The proposed system increases system capacity up to 560% with a call blocking probability of 1% when compared with a conventional system. In addition, a macrodiversity scheme using two antennas in a microzone improves the call quality on the reverse link.
Runtime Verification of Concurrent Haskell (work in progress)

In this article we use model checking techniques to debug Concurrent Haskell programs. LTL formulas specifying assertions or other properties are verified at runtime. If a formula cannot be satisfied, the debugger emits a warning and prints the path leading to the violation. It is possible to dynamically add formulas at runtime, giving a degree of flexibility which is not available in static verification of source code. We give a comprehensive example of using the new techniques to detect lock-reversal in Concurrent Haskell programs.
Molecular and Biological Characterization of Deformed Wing Virus of Honeybees (Apis mellifera L.)

ABSTRACT Deformed wing virus (DWV) of honeybees (Apis mellifera) is closely associated with characteristic wing deformities, abdominal bloating, paralysis, and rapid mortality of emerging adult bees. The virus was purified from diseased insects, and its genome was cloned and sequenced. The genomic RNA of DWV is 10,140 nucleotides in length and contains a single large open reading frame encoding a 328-kDa polyprotein. The coding sequence is flanked by a 1,144-nucleotide 5′ nontranslated leader sequence and a 317-nucleotide 3′ nontranslated region, followed by a poly(A) tail. The three major structural proteins, VP1 (44 kDa), VP2 (32 kDa), and VP3 (28 kDa), were identified, and their genes were mapped to the N-terminal section of the polyprotein. The C-terminal part of the polyprotein contains sequence motifs typical of well-characterized picornavirus nonstructural proteins: an RNA helicase, a chymotrypsin-like 3C protease, and an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. The genome organization, capsid morphology, and sequence comparison data indicate that DWV is a member of the recently established genus Iflavirus.
Examining the Early Impacts of the Leading Educators Fellowship on Student Achievement and Teacher Retention. Research Report.

This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. R® is a registered trademark. iii Preface Leading Educators is dedicated to training promising mid-career teachers to retain effective educators and raise student achievement. RAND is conducting an independent multiyear evaluation of the Leading Educators Fellowship program. This report presents findings from the preliminary analyses of the program's effects. This report includes an analysis of program impacts on student achievement and teacher retention in both Louisiana and Missouri in the 2011–2012 through 2013–2014 school years for teachers who are program fellows and for the teachers mentored by fellows. The findings from this study will be of interest to those concerned with programs and policies that provide support to teachers and teacher leaders and, more generally, programs that improve student achievement and teacher retention.
Decentralized Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks with Channel Fading Statistics

Existing channel aware signal processing design for decentralized detection in wireless sensor networks typically assumes the clairvoyant case, that is, global channel state information (CSI) is known at the design stage. In this paper, we consider the distributed detection problem where only the channel fading statistics, instead of the instantaneous CSI, are available to the designer. We investigate the design of local decision rules for the following two cases: (1) fusion center has access to the instantaneous CSI; (2) fusion center does not have access to the instantaneous CSI. As expected, in both cases, the optimal local decision rules that minimize the error probability at the fusion center amount to a likelihood ratio test (LRT). Numerical analysis reveals that the detection performance appears to be more sensitive to the knowledge of CSI at the fusion center. The proposed design framework that utilizes only partial channel knowledge will enable distributed design of a decentralized detection wireless sensor system.
Comparing Galaxy Morphology at Ultraviolet and Optical Wavelengths

We have undertaken an imaging survey of 34 nearby galaxies in far-ultraviolet (FUV, ∼1500 Å) and optical (UBVRI) passbands to characterize galaxy morphology as a function of wavelength. This sample, which includes a range of classical Hubble types from elliptical to irregular, with emphasis on spirals at low inclination angle, provides a valuable database for comparison with images of high-z galaxies whose FUV light is redshifted into the optical and near-infrared bands. Ultraviolet data are from the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) Astro-2 mission. We present images and surface brightness profiles for each galaxy, and we discuss the wavelength dependence of morphology for different Hubble types in the context of understanding high-z objects. In general, the dominance of young stars in the FUV produces the patchy appearance of a morphological type later than that inferred from optical images. Prominent rings and circumnuclear star formation regions are clearly evident in FUV images of spirals, while bulges, bars, and old, red stellar disks are faint to invisible at these short wavelengths. However, the magnitude of the change in apparent morphology ranges from dramatic in early-type spirals with prominent optical bulges to slight in late-type spirals and irregulars, in which young stars dominate both the UV and optical emission. Starburst galaxies with centrally concentrated, symmetric bursts display an apparent "E/S0" structure in the FUV, while starbursts associated with rings or mergers produce a peculiar morphology. We briefly discuss the inadequacy of the optically defined Hubble sequence in describing FUV galaxy images and estimating morphological k-corrections, and we suggest some directions for future research with this data set.
Feedback Effects on Learning a Novel Bimanual Coordination Pattern: Support for the Guidance Hypothesis

The authors tested specificity and the guidance hypothesis by examining the effects of continuous or discrete concurrent feedback during acquisition, retention, and transfer of a 90° phase offset bimanual coordination pattern. The authors tested both groups immediately following acquisition, 1 week later under retention conditions (i.e., identical feedback as acquisition) and under transfer conditions with a change in feedback (i.e., discrete to continuous or vice versa) and with no feedback. Acquisition results revealed superior performance by the continuous feedback group. However, during immediate transfer conditions, the continuous group showed decreased pattern accuracy and stability, whereas the discrete group improved its performance. These results support the guidance hypothesis, as the participants with a high amount of feedback in acquisition became reliant on the feedback and could not adapt their learning to a new situation. These results also show partial support for the specificity of practice hypothesis as the continuous group was only able to mimic their acquisition performance under identical conditions as practice. Practice specificity effects were not found for the discrete group, as performance was not negatively affected with a change or removal of afferent information.
Analyzing interaction between network protocols, topology and traffic in wireless radio networks

We study the interaction between communication protocols, network topology and packet traffic in wireless static radio networks. A particular interest is to empirically characterize the effect of interaction between the routing layer and the MAC layer on overall system performance. Three well-known MAC protocols: 802.11, CSMA and MACA are considered. Similarly three recently proposed routing protocols: AODV, DSR and LAR scheme 1 are considered. The performance of the protocols is measured with regard to three important parameters: (i) number of packets received, (ii) average latency of each packet and (iii) long term fairness. We use a simple statistical technique based on ANOVA (analysis of variance), to characterize the effect of interaction between protocols and various input parameters on network performance. This technique is of independent interest and can be utilized in other simulation studies. Using our methodology, we conclude that different combinations of routing and MAC protocols yield varying performance under varying network topology and traffic situations. Our results show that no combination of routing protocol and MAC protocol is the best over all situations. An important implication of the study is that the performance analysis of protocols at a given level in the protocol stack needs to be studied not locally in isolation but as a part of the complete protocol stack.