Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Let's Stop Pushing the Envelope and Start Addressing It: A Reference Task Agenda for HCI

We identify a problem with the process of research in the human-computer interaction (HCI) community-an overemphasis on "radical invention" at the price of achieving a common research focus. Without such a focus, it is difficult to build on previous work, to compare different interaction techniques objectively, and to make progress in developing theory. These problems at the research level have implications for practice, too; as researchers we often are unable to give principled design advice to builders of new systems. We propose that the HCI community try to achieve a common focus around the notion of reference tasks. We offer arguments for the advantages of this approach as well as consider potential difficulties. We explain how reference tasks have been highly effective in focusing research into information retrieval and speech recognition. We discuss what factors have to be considered in selecting HCI reference tasks and present an example reference task (for searching speech archives). This example illustrates the nature of reference tasks and points to the issues and problems involved in constructing and using them. We conclude with recommendations about what steps need to be taken to execute the reference task research agenda. This involves recommendations about both the technical research that needs to be done and changes in the way that the HCI research community operates. The technical research involves identification of important user tasks by systematic requirements gathering, definition and operationalization of reference tasks and evaluation metrics, and execution of task-based evaluation, along with judicious use of field trials. Perhaps more important, we have also suggested changes in community practice that HCI must adopt to make the reference tasks idea work. We must create forums for discussion of common tasks and methods by which people can compare systems and techniques. Only by doing this can the notion of reference tasks be integrated into the process of research and development, enabling the field to achieve the focus it desperately needs.
A Hardware Trojan Architecture for Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Elliptic curve cryptography has been attracting attention as a public key encryption of the next generation. Elliptic curve cryptography is able to realize a high-strength cipher with a small key length. On the other hand, the threat of hardware Trojans has been pointed out recently. A hardware Trojan is a malicious circuit that is incorporated into large scale integration (LSI) during its manufacturing process. When predetermined conditions specified by an attacker are satisfied, the hardware Trojan is triggered and performs subversive activities without the LSI users even being aware of these activities. Hardware Trojans, which have been reported, attack cryptographic circuits in many cases. Since cryptographic circuits are designed to protect confidential data, attacking cryptographic circuits can cause serious damage.To prevent damage caused by hardware Trojans, it is important to investigate architecture of hardware Trojans. This study proposes a hardware Trojan architecture for elliptic curve cryptography.
On Solving Mirror Reflection in LIDAR Sensing

This paper presents a characterization of sensing failures of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) given the presence of a mirror, which are quite common in our daily lives. Although LIDARs play an important role in the field of robotics, previous research has addressed little regarding the challenges in optical sensing such as mirror reflections. As light can be reflected off a mirror and penetrate a window, mobile robots equipped with LIDARs only may not be capable of dealing with real environments. It is straightforward to deal with mirrors and windows by fusing sensors of heterogeneous characteristics. However, indistinguishability between mirror images and true objects makes the map inconsistent with the true environment, even for a robot with heterogeneous sensors. We propose a Bayesian framework to detect and track mirrors using only LIDAR information. Mirrors are detected by utilizing the property of mirror symmetry. Spatiotemporal information is integrated using a Bayesian filter. The proposed approach can be seamlessly integrated into the occupancy grid map representation and the mobile robot localization framework, and has been demonstrated using real data from a LIDAR. Mirrors, as potential obstacles, are successfully detected and tracked.
Cognitive and behavioural characteristics are associated with personality dimensions in patients with eating disorders

DSM-IV categorizes eating disorders according to behavioural and cognitive characteristics. Based on personality-related and biological research, hypotheses have been formulated to explain differences in the symptomatology between the various types of eating disorders. Therefore, the study of the association between personality-related characteristics and behavioural and cognitive characteristics may contribute to our understanding of the causes and course of eating disorders. This study aimed, first, at describing personality characteristics (using Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory) in a group of eating disordered patients (n = 272) according to the type of eating disorder. Three groups were compared: restricting anorexics (n = 71), purging anorexics (n = 84) and bulimics (n = 118). Secondly, the association between personality characteristics and cognitive and behavioural aspects, using the Eating Disorders Inventory and the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire, was measured. In bulimics, positive correlations were found between novelty seeking on the one hand and external and emotional eating and bulimia on the other. Contrary to expectation, there was no significant correlation between novelty seeking and body dissatisfaction in bulimics. The significant difference between the restricting and purging type of anorexics regarding self-directedness, and restrained and emotional eating and drive for thinness corresponded with the significant negative correlation between these characteristics. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.
A General Parallel Structure Repetitive Control Scheme for Multiphase DC–AC PWM Converters

This paper presents a general parallel structure repetitive control (PSRC) scheme for multiphase dc-ac pulse-width modulation (PWM) converters to cancel output total harmonic distortion more efficiently. With parallel structure, categorized harmonic frequency internal models are connected in parallel. Each categorized internal model has its own independent control gain and PSRC can optimize the total convergence rate by tuning the control gains independently according to the harmonic distribution. Compared with a multiresonant controller, PSRC has more compact structure and yields much less computation burden. Compared with conventional repetitive control (CRC), PSRC can achieve a much faster dynamic response without any loss of tracking accuracy or any added data memory. Moreover, PSRC is a general parallel structure RC for housing various existing RC, such as CRC, odd-harmonic RC, and dual-mode-structure RC. Experimental results of the PSRC-controlled three-phase dc-ac PWM converters show the validity and advantages of the proposed PSRC scheme.
Neonatal hypothalamic androgenization in the female rat induces changes in peripheral insulin sensitivity and adiposity function at adulthood.

UNLABELLED It is recognized that there exists a link between hyperandrogenicity and insulin resistance. OBJECTIVE By using the neonatally androgenized female rat we explored whether this treatment modifies peripheral insulin sensitivity and visceral fat function at adulthood. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS On day 5 of age, female Sprague-Dawley pups were injected, sub cutaneous, with either 50 ml of sterile corn oil alone (CT) or containing 1.25 mg of testosterone propionate (TP) and further used for experimentation on day 100 of age. CT and TP rats were killed by decapitation in non-fasting condition and blood samples were kept frozen for measurement of different metabolites. Immediately after sacrifice, freshly dissected visceral fat pads were used for isolation of adipocytes, these cells were then incubated with medium alone or containing different concentrations of insulin in order to determine leptin secreted into the medium. Additionally, in vivo metabolic responses to intravenous high glucose load were performed in, 24 hour-fasting, CT and TP rats. RESULTS We found that neonatal androgenization induced adult animals displaying higher visceral adiposity mass, body weight and leptinemia than CT rats. No group differences were found in basal circulating levels of several hormones and metabolic parameters. The results of the high glucose load 90-min test indicated that TP and CT rats developed similar glycemia but this accounted because of an early significantly higher peak values of circulating insulin in TP than in CT rats, regardless of similar enhancement in circulating glucocorticoid concentrations in both groups. While high glucose load significantly increased, over the baseline, circulating leptin concentrations as early as 30 min post-glucose in CT rats, in TP animals, it significantly enhanced leptinemia only by the end of the test. Finally, results of in vitro incubations of isolated visceral adipocytes indicated that cells from androgenized rats spontaneously released more leptin than control cells, although they were less responsive than CT cells to insulin-induced leptin output. CONCLUSION Our study strongly supports the hypothesis that development of insulin resistance seems to be dependent on early hyperandrogenicity.
Theoretical and Methodological Problems of a 10-Year Follow-Up Program Evaluation Study

Summary In this paper, conceptual and methodological problems of school program evaluation are discussed. The data were collected in conjunction with a 10 year cross-sectional/longitudinal investigation with partial inclusion of control groups. The experiences and conclusions resulting from this long-term study are revealing not only from the vantage point of the scientific evaluation of new scholastic models, but are also valuable for program evaluation studies in general, particularly in the field of gifted education.
Energy efficient offloading for competing users on a shared communication channel

In this paper we consider mobile users that employ computation offloading. In computational offloading, users can reduce energy consumption by executing jobs on a remote cloud server, rather than locally. In order to execute a job in the cloud, a mobile user must upload the job over a base station channel which is shared by all of the uploading users. The jobs are subject to hard deadline constraints, and since the channel quality may be different for each user, this may restrict the users ability to reduce energy usage. The system is modelled as a competitive game where each user is interested in minimizing its own energy use. The game is subject to the real-time constraints imposed by job execution deadlines, user specific channel bit rates, and the competition over the shared communication channel. The paper shows that for known classes of parameters, a game where each user independently adjusts its offload decisions always has a pure Nash equilibrium, and a Gauss-Seidel-like method for determining this equilibrium is presented. Results are then presented which illustrate that the system always converges to a Nash equilibrium using Gauss-Seidel. Data is presented which show the number of Nash equilibria that are found, the number of iterations required, and the quality of the solutions obtained. In particular, we find that the solutions perform well compared to a lower bound on total energy performance.
An Efficient Knowledge Transfer Solution to a Novel SMDP Formalization of a Broker's Decision Problem

Retail and wholesale broker's decision problems have been optimized separately, ignoring the probable existence of a globally optimal trading strategy. To address this, we propose a novel formalization, based on a semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) and solved using hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) in multi-agent environments. Furthermore, to mitigate the curse of dimensionality, which arises when applying SMDP and HRL to complex decision problems, we propose an efficient knowledge transfer approach. An analysis of our controlled experiments in two well-established multi-agent simulation environments within the Trading Agent Competition (TAC) community shows that this broker can outperform the top TAC-brokers and is able to reuse the trading knowledge acquired in previously experienced settings.
Reemergence and decline of dengue virus serotype 3 in Puerto Rico.

BACKGROUND The dengue virus serotype 3 (DENV-3) Indian subcontinent strain emerged in Puerto Rico in 1998 after a 21-year absence. The rapid expansion of DENV-3 on the island correlated with the withdrawal of the other serotypes for 7 years. The DENV-3 prevalence declined in 2008 and remains undetected. METHODS We sequenced complete genomes of 92 DENV-3 clinical isolates to characterize the molecular evolution and phylogeography throughout 10 years of continued sampling (1998–2007). RESULTS We documented 8 distinct lineages that emerged simultaneously and evolved independently. Two of the 8 lineages were highly associated with transient introductions of foreign viruses, and 2 of the 3 endemic lineages covered the entire study period. We found evidence of temporal-geographical clustering only within the 3 endemic lineages. The phylogeography analysis combined with serotype-specific incidence data showed that transmission of a DENV serotype in a given location and time is usually correlated with the absence of the other serotype. CONCLUSIONS Our study shows the cotransmission of DENV-3 lineages through a complex dissemination pattern dissimilar to the evolutionary dynamics of the other serotypes in the island. High virus genetic diversity and a large naive population were underlying factors in the expansion and collapse of DENV-3 in Puerto Rico.
Usefulness of NTproBNP in the emergency management of patients with severe dyspnea and an uncertain heart failure diagnosis

Introduction and objectives. Measurement of N-termi-nal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NTproBNP) helps in diagnosing heart failure (HF). The test’s usefulness may be greatest in patients with severe dyspnea of uncertain origin. However, NTproBNP has not been evaluated in this setting. Diagnosis. Prognosis.
Text mining based approach for intrusion detection

Intrusion detection is classified as NP-Hard in the literature even today. Also supervised learning also termed classification, when performed on high dimensional documents has problem from the noise or outliers, which make the text classification inaccurate and leads to reduced accuracy by classifiers. We discuss the feature reduction methods which we adopted to achieve dimensionality reduction. In the Feature Extraction process, the high dimensional text documents are projected onto their corresponding low dimensional representation in feature space through using algebraic rules and transformations. The objective is to find optimal transformation matrix corresponding the input high dimensional document feature matrix. This objective is achieved in this thesis by using the concept of feature clustering and through clustering the features into a optimal set of clusters by designing a novel fuzzy membership function. The membership function designed retains the original distribution of words in the documents which is the importance of this approach.
Neuronal basis of dreaming and mentation during slow-wave (non-REM) sleep

Although the cerebral cortex is deprived of messages from the external world in REM sleep and because these messages are inhibited in the thalamus, cortical neurons display high rates of spontaneous firing and preserve their synaptic excitability to internally generated signals during this sleep stage. The rich activity of neocortical neurons during NREM sleep consists of prolonged spike-trains that impose rhythmic excitation onto connected cells in the network, eventually leading to a progressive increase in their synaptic responsiveness, as in plasticity processes. Thus, NREM sleep may be implicated in the consolidation of memory traces acquired during wakefulness. [Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Vertes & Eastman]
Effective interferon therapy for chronic hepatitis C patients with low viral loads.

BACKGROUND/AIMS Possible short-term interferon therapy was investigated in chronic hepatitis C patients with genotype 2a or 2b and low viral-loads. Furthermore, initial changes of hepatic C virus RNA levels in early phase interferon therapy, and the number of pretreatment mutated clones at hypervariable region-1 were determined in order to upgrade interferon therapy efficacy prediction rates. METHODOLOGY Study subjects were 31 patients with histologically proven chronic hepatitis C, having less than 1 Meq/mL of hepatic C virus RNA levels. Daily dose was defined as 9 MU of interferon; patients with genotype lb were treated for 26 weeks, while those with genotype 2a or 2b were treated for 16 weeks. RESULTS Sustained response rates showed no difference in efficacy between the 2 groups (66.7% vs. 62.5%). Response rates based on the number of hypervariable region-1 clones indicated that the fewer the number of mutated clones, more significant was the increase in efficacy. Efficacy as hepatic C virus RNA in early phase treatment showed no difference in response rates between negative and positive groups at any time point from day 1. CONCLUSIONS In a low viral-load group, the number of hypervariable region-1 clones was a critical factor influencing interferon therapy efficacy. Thus, 16-week interferon therapy was effective and economical.
A wearable EEG-based drowsiness detection system with blink duration and alpha waves analysis

Drowsiness is one of the most prevalent causes of accidents in mining, driving and industrial activities carrying high personal risks and economic costs. For this reason, automatic detection of drowsiness is becoming an important application, and it is being integrated in a large variety of wearable and deeply embedded systems. Relevant effort has been spent in the past to quantify the drowsiness level from behavioral features exploiting eye tracking systems, dermal sensors or steering wheel movements. On the other hand, all these approaches lack of generality, they are highly intrusive and can only be applied in specific circumstances. A promising alternative approach is based on the extraction and processing of physiological features from the EEG using Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI). This work describes a wearable system capable of detecting drowsiness conditions and emitting alarms using only EEG signals, with three levels of alarm based on the blink duration and on the spectral power of alpha waves. This implementation aims to replace or complement the use of cameras and other sensors, extracting drowsiness information exploiting both behavioral and physiological features from EEG sensors only. The system was validated with 7 test subjects achieving detection accuracy of 85%, while being much more lightweight and compact than other state of the art methods.
Leukemia inhibitory factor blocks expression of Crx and Nrl transcription factors to inhibit photoreceptor differentiation.

PURPOSE Activating ligands of gp130, including leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), can block differentiation and function of retinal neurons. This study focused on determining whether LIF inhibits differentiation of photoreceptors by altering cell fate or by blocking the expression of essential transcription factors in vivo. METHODS Transgenic mice were generated that had lens-specific expression of the secreted human LIF protein. Retinal differentiation was assessed by histology and by gene expression analysis, with in situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry, and real-time qRT-PCR. Electroretinograms were used to assess retinal function. RESULTS LIF did not prevent or alter the timing of outer and inner nuclear layer separation, but it inhibited phototransduction gene expression in both rods and cones, thereby blocking functional maturation of photoreceptors. LIF also reduced the expression of Crx, Nrl, and Nr2e3, and upregulated the expression of transcription inhibitors Baf and Fiz1. CONCLUSIONS LIF expression did not appear to alter photoreceptor cell fate specification, but it inhibited subsequent differentiation. These results suggest that gp130 ligands can inhibit photoreceptor functional differentiation by reducing Crx- and Nrl-dependent transcription.
Affirmative Action in Theory and Practice: issues of Power, Ambiguity, and Gender Versus Race

Reactions to affirmative action are, in part, a function of how recipients are perceived in American society as well as how recipients perceive themselves. Affirmative action for relatively powerless groups may be viewed negatively because their group membership is more salient than that of the powerful and because the stereotypes about them serve to perpetuate power asymmetries. Moreover, affirmative action for Blacks may be viewed even more negatively than affirmative action for women because race stereotypes tend to be more simplistic and less prescriptive than gender stereotypes. Black affirmative-action recipients also may understand affirmative-action policies differently than women recipients. Blacks may be more likely than women to feel entitled rather than unfairly helped. As a result, Blacks may be less likely to develop negative self-evaluations due to affirmative action. Regardless of self-perceptions, affirmative-action policies are held suspect. Suspicious surrounding recipients' ability to .
Hierarchical Virtual Machine Placement in Modular Data Centers

This work studies how to minimize communication cost for placing Virtual Machines (VMs) in a modular data center. We consider a number of cooperative VMs implementing the same job, with known inter-VM communication patterns. The modular data center has a two-layer network structure, where computing pods constitute basic building blocks and are connected by a core network. At the core network layer, we design spectral clustering algorithms to partition VMs into computing pods, minimizing inter-pod communication cost. We then further apply an SDP relaxation approach to decide the VM placement within each computing pod, targeting both load balancing among physical servers and inter-server communication cost minimization. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate the efficacy of the proposed hierarchical VM placement scheme.
Emotional Communication on Romantic Relationships: Design and Validation of a Measure in Mexico

Relational communications is a basic tool to allow individuals express and interpret the messages in their close relationships, including information about the daily interaction and some vital issues about the relationship (Guerrero, Andersen, &Afifi, 2007), which will contribute to their general subjective well being. Thus, communication plays an important role on couple interaction, satisfaction and the fulfillment of their personal and interpersonal goals. Base on this, a pictographic emotional communication self-report for romantic relationships, was designed and validated. To do this, we studied a sample integrated for 384 individuals (50% males and 50% females) in an actual couple relationship. Participant’s age was from 18 to 69 years old with at least bachelor’s degree and Mexico City´s residents. Findings show a scale with proper psychometric characteristics. Some interesting factors were obtained and reflect the relationship among emotions and interpersonal behaviors.Language: Spanish