Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Semantic Feature Type Constrains the Organization and Computation of Concrete Conceptual Knowledge

This thesis addresses the computation and organization of conceptual knowledge. Specifically, it focuses on the recruitment of concrete knowledge during single word reading using behavioural and electrophysiological methodologies. Chapters 1 and 2 assess how number of visual semantic features listed by participants as being part of a given concept influence the speed of word meaning computation, and its neural underpinnings, providing evidence for modality-specific neural organization. Chapter 3 assesses the flexibility of knowledge activation as a function of specific task constraints, suggesting a multi-faceted approach to semantic richness is needed. Chapter 4 describes a novel application of recent statistical advances to the analysis of real-time electrophysiological data, and highlights some limitations of standard analytical approaches. Chapter 5 assesses the real-time influence of several types of knowledge on the neuroelectric activity underlying concrete word meaning computation. A timecourse of sensory-based knowledge type activation is outlined. Finally, Chapter 6 describes a novel approach whereby real-time electrophysiological brain activity is used to predict the speed of semantic decision making, providing further evidence of a highly flexible, but finely structured, human semantic memory system.
Understanding the user : Why, what and how ?

Explains the need, importance, purposes and scope of user studies, discusses procedure for conducting sound user studies together with associated problems of research like selection of problem, formulation of hypothesis, design of study, sampling strategy, data collection methods, scaling techniques, pilot study, processing and analysis of data, testing of hypothesis, interpretation, drawing inferences, communication and dissemination of results and finally concludes by highlighting methodological flaws and gaps in user studies.
Rhetorical Schemes for Audio Communication

The application of rhetorical techniques to the use of non-verbal sound in the interaction between humans and technologies is the core idea of this paper. We present our ideas at a general level and illustrate an exploratory case based on the application of rhetorical schemes to the sonification of computer operating system events. Both cases of musical sounds and everyday sounds are investigated. This work is intended as a preliminary study aiming at motivating a larger scale and more rigorous research about the potentiality of the use of rhetoric in the domain of Auditory Display (AD) and Sonic Interaction Design (SID).
A second-generation modem analog front-end

The echo-cancelling voice-grade modems used on PSTN are projected to increase in bit rate from the present 14.4 kb/s (V.32bis) to 19.2 kb/s and even 24 kb/s in the near future. This will be facilitated by increasing the symbol rate from 2400 baud to maximum of 3200 baud, but will cost a 3-dB increase in dynamic range for every 2.4 kb/s increment. Improvement of 12 to 18 dB in dynamic range and linearity is required for the modem analog front-end (MAFE) described. The modem block diagram presented gives the worst-case magnitudes of the signals in the duplexer performing two-wire/four-wire conversion. The demodulator receives a signal between -3 dBm and -43/-48 dBm corrupted by a -9 dBm local echo. After echo removal, the signal-to-noise ratio must reach 25 dB to 35 dB for good performance at 19.2 kb/s, 30 dB to 40 dB at 24 kb/s, depending on the line quality. It is demonstrated that the second-order sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter used in the MAFE is consistent with this goal, taking into account the 12-dB peak factor of the quadrature amplitude modulation used in high-speed single-carrier modems. <<ETX>>
A Classification Scheme for Self-adaptation Research

The research on self-adaptation is distributed across many sub-disciplines of computer science. This leads to the reinvention of concepts and impairs the ability to establish a structured research program on self-adaptation. This paper contributes a classification scheme that allows to structure selfadaptation research and to compare approaches from different domains. The classification scheme is based on basic concepts that are shared across the research disciplines presented in this paper.
Self-organizing ontogenetic development for autonomous adaptive systems - a dynamic perspective

The capacities of animals for pattern classification using biological neural mechanisms far surpass any existing artificial devices - advanced devices for pattern recognition using neural networks and statistical algorithms implemented with digital computers make use of certain biologically motivated principles of information processing. A major impediment to further development of biologically inspired computing tools is the lack of theory on how large masses of neurons interact to produce an emergent collective behavior. We are interested in developing models of ontogenetic development that capture some of the flexibility and power of biological development. In this paper we present a testbed for the creation and testing of models of development that we have created. We present some results on standard neural networks in learning to perform this task and discuss future plans for developmental models in this environment.
Conversational Narrative: Storytelling in everyday talk

1. Preface 2. Transciption Conventions 3. Chapter 1. Approaching Storytelling in Conversation 4. Chapter 2. Internal Narrative Structure 5. Chapter 3. Formulaicity and Repetition in Storytelling 6. Chapter 4. Retelling and Retold Stories 7. Chapter 5. Narrative Contexts 8. Chapter 6. Varieties of Conversational Narrative 9. Chapter 7. Extensions of the Approach 10. Chapter 8. Conclusions and Perspectives 11. Appendixes 12. Notes 13. References 14. Name Index 15. Subject Index
Quantitative analysis of large amounts of journalistic texts using topic modelling

The huge collections of news content which have become available through digital technologies both enable and warrant scientific inquiry, challenging journalism scholars to analyse unprecedented amounts of texts. We propose Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling as a tool to face this challenge. LDA is a cutting edge technique for content analysis, designed to automatically organize large archives of documents based on latent topics, measured as patterns of word (co-)occurrence. We explain how this technique works, how different choices by the researcher affect the results and how the results can be meaningfully interpreted. To demonstrate its usefulness for journalism research, we conducted a case study of the New York Times coverage of nuclear technology from 1945 to the present, partially replicating a study by Gamson and Modigliani. This shows that LDA is a useful tool for analysing trends and patterns in news content in large digital news archives relatively quickly.
Image processing techniques to detect and filter objectionable images based on skin tone and shape recognition

In this paper we describe image-processing techniques to detect and categorize potentially objectionable images based solely on the image content. The techniques include a novel method of matching skin tones based on a fuzzy classification scheme and shape recognition techniques to match faces and other elements of the human anatomy. In particular the color matching technique is significantly more accurate than existing methods documented in literature. These techniques offer a means of filtering images, based solely on graphical content, for a new generation of home Internet appliances.
Active by Accident: Relevance Feedback in Information Retrieval

Relevance feedback is a supervised learning method used to improve the eeectiveness of information retrieval systems. It is an active learning technique, and may be the most widespread application of active learning to date. We brieey discuss information retrieval and the role of relevance feedback in it, and point out some areas where active learning could make further contributions. The goal of information retrieval (IR) techniques is to provide content-based manipulation (retrieval, catego-rization, visualization, etc.) of large collections of objects. Often the objects are composed of natural language text, but IR approaches have also been applied to databases of stored speech, images, video, computer source code, and other forms of information. Conventional approaches to databases (e.g. rela-tional databases) work well when the semantic of objects are well-understood and data processing can be reduced to working out the logical consequences of speciied restrictions on small numbers of attributes. IR, on the other hand, works with objects with much murkier semantics. Formal inference is less applicable , and processing is based on classiication or similarity measurement using large numbers of attributes and with some degree of uncertainty. Not surprisingly, machine learning and statistical techniques play a large role (Lewis 1991). Relevance feedback is an application of machine learning to ranked retrieval sytems, an increasingly common type of IR system. (For example, many Internet tools, including WAIS, Lycos, and Infoseek provide ranked retrieval.) A session with a ranked retrieval system starts with the user entering an initial textual request describing their information need. The textual request is converted into a classiier which attempts to distinguish relevant from nonrelevant documents (Croft Harman 1992a). (How a statistical classiier with tens of thousands of attributes is produced using essentially no training data is an interesting story itself, but will not be discussed here.) The classiier is used to rank documents by how likely they are to be class members (that is, relevant to the user) and display the top ranked documents to the user. In relevance feedback, the user has the option of labeling a few of the top documents in this ranking (perhaps 10 or so) according to whether they are relevant or not. The labeled documents are then given to a supervised learning procedure, which uses them, along with the original request, to produce a new classiier. The new classiier is used to produce a new ranking, which typically puts more relevant documents at …
Investigating the Enabling Role of Web 2.0 Technology for Interactive E-learning in Australia

Web 2.0 technology has caught much attention in e-learning due to its interactive nature, ease of use and readily availability. The extent to which web 2.0 technology supports interactive e-learning is however unclear. To adequately address this issue, this paper investigates the extent to which web 2.0 technology supports interactive e-learning and how web 2.0 technology influences the effectiveness of e-learning. Structural equation modelling is used for validating a proposed conceptual model using the survey data collected from Australia. The results reveal that web 2.0 technology supports personal knowledge management, collaboration, instructional support and management of learning resources. Furthermore the results also show that the use of web 2.0 technology for collaboration and management of learning resources positively influences the effectiveness of e-learning.
Practical security for multi-user web application databases

Online web applications are continuously vulnerable to attacks on their users’ data. Outside adversaries can gain unauthorized access by exploiting unknown vulnerabilities; curious or malicious database administrators can examine or alter the data in situ. Multiple Principal CryptDB protects against attacks on web application servers. By chaining encryption keys to user passwords, an attacker gaining access to decrypted data through issuing arbitrary queries to the database through CryptDB cannot access data belonging to offline users. A logging system and distributed key storage for CryptDB constrain the pool of possibly compromised data after an attack. Multiple Principal CryptDB can be used to secure the data of six web applications examined, with 2-8 lines of altered source code and 15-111 annotations added to the schema. On the phpBB web forum application, Multiple Principal CryptDB reduces throughput by only 14.5%, with 24 sensitive fields encrypted, and adds less than 26ms of latency to each individual query. Thesis Supervisor: Nickolai Zeldovich Title: Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The linkage problem for group-labelled graphs

textabstractThis thesis aims to extend some of the results of the Graph Minors Project of Robertson and Seymour to "group-labelled graphs". Let $\Gamma$ be a group. A $\Gamma$-labelled graph is an oriented graph with its edges labelled from $\Gamma$, and is thus a generalization of a signed graph. Our primary result is a generalization of the main result from Graph Minors XIII. For any finite abelian group $\Gamma$, and any fixed $\Gamma$-labelled graph $H$, we present a polynomial-time algorithm that determines if an input $\Gamma$-labelled graph $G$ has an $H$-minor. The correctness of our algorithm relies on much of the machinery developed throughout the graph minors papers. We therefore hope it can serve as a reasonable introduction to the subject. Remarkably, Robertson and Seymour also prove that for any sequence $G_1, G_2, \ldots$ of graphs, there exist indices $i < j$ such that $G_i$ is isomorphic to a minor of $G_j$. Geelen, Gerards and Whittle recently announced a proof of the analogous result for $\Gamma$-labelled graphs, for $\Gamma$ finite abelian. Together with the main result of this thesis, this implies that membership in any minor closed class of $\Gamma$-labelled graphs can be decided in polynomial-time. This also has some implications for well-quasi-ordering certain classes of matroids, which we discuss.
Low temperature data remanence in static RAM

Security processors typically store secret key material in static RAM, from which power is removed if the device is tampered with. It is commonly believed that, at temperatures below −20°C, the contents of SRAM can be ‘frozen’; therefore, many devices treat temperatures below this threshold as tampering events. We have done some experiments to establish the temperature dependency of data retention time in modern SRAM devices. Our experiments show that the conventional wisdom no longer holds.
Identifying service superiority, zone of tolerance and underlying dimensions

Purpose – This paper seeks to investigate the overall service quality of the library system of Independent University, Bangladesh, a top‐ranked private university in Bangladesh. A survey is conducted among the library users specifically faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students.Design/methodology/approach – A modified version of the SERVQUAL questionnaire was used for data collection. The gap differences between perceived and desired services were calculated and ranked which could indicate what services meet, exceed or fall short of the users' expectations. The mean values of desired service levels were ranked and compared among three groups of users. A Kruskal‐Wallis test was done to examine the differences in desired level of service quality by different groups. The method zone of tolerance was applied to find out the range between perceived and minimum service levels. Finally, the underlying dimensions of service quality were identified through exploratory factor analysis of level of desired servic.
Hierarchical Architecture for Coordinating Ground Vehicles in Unstructured Environments

This article presents a hierarchy of planners that can be used to coordinate multiple autonomous vehicles for different applications. The particular architecture reduces complexity and creates a constrained representation that in turn generates a wide variety of complex behaviors. This article will concentrate on the upper levels of the hierarchy assuming that the autonomous mobility tasks can be executed by the lower levels of the hierarchy. A particular set of examples for the US Army's Demo III project will be presented.
Prediction of Protein–Protein Interactions

In this paper, four methods are proposed to predict whether two given proteins interact or not. The four methods applied for prediction of interaction status of proteins are Principle Component Analysis, Multidimensional Scaling, K-means Clustering, and Support Vector Machines. These methods are applied on phylogenetic profiles of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae (baker’s yeast) protein pairs. The phylogenetic profile dataset is constructed from protein sequence information alone by checking the existence of homologs of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae proteins in different species. Several results obtained by applying these methods show that it is possible to make accurate predictions about protein interactions using sequence information alone by the application of statistical data analysis methods. The best classification results are obtained by Support Vector Machines.
An accurate speech signal modeling for communication applications on IP networks

The article deals with speech coding, which is particularly crucial for modern telecommunication systems. Since the end of the 1930s, much work has been done in the speech coding domain. But in spite of the numerous norms and products that have been developed, challenges exist and are more than ever a topical question. We have focused on the modeling of the speech signal. Hence we have studied a spectral modeling based on the MBE (multiband excitation) model, as the INMARSAT coder normalization (INMARSAT-M voice codec specifications, 1991) demonstrates the maturity of this approach. This coder gives a good quality/bit rate compromise; however it presents some limitations in terms of performance. In a first step, our study has consisted in proposing some improvements. This has led us to develop a coder modeling partly based on an improved MBE modeling, and on new modeling technologies.
Implementation of genome-wide prediction methods in applied plant breeding programs

Genome-based prediction of genetic values is expected to overcome shortcomings that limit the application of QTL mapping and marker-assisted selection in plant breeding. Our goal was to study the genome-based prediction of test cross performance with genetic effects that were estimated using genotypes from the preceding breeding cycle. In particular, our objectives were to employ a ridge regression approach that approximates best linear unbiased prediction of genetic effects, compare cross validation with validation using genetic material of the subsequent breeding cycle, and investigate the prospects of genome-based prediction in sugar beet breeding. We focused on the traits sugar content and standard molasses loss (ML) and used a set of 310 sugar beet lines to estimate genetic effects at 384 SNP markers. In cross validation, correlations [0.8 between observed and predicted test cross performance were observed for both traits. However, in validation with 56 lines from the next breeding cycle, a correlation of 0.8 could only be observed for sugar content, for standard ML the correlation reduced to 0.4. We found that ridge regression based on preliminary estimates of the heritability provided a very good approximation of best linear unbiased prediction and was not accompanied with a loss in prediction accuracy. We conclude that prediction accuracy assessed with cross validation within one cycle of a breeding program can not be used as an indicator for the accuracy of predicting lines of the next cycle. Prediction of lines of the next cycle seems promising for traits with high heritabilities.
EFFECTS OF VIBRATION EXERCISE ON LOWER LIMB STRENGTH AND FUNCTIONAL PERFORMANCE IN AN OLDER POPULATION

INTRODUCTION The ageing process is synonymous with a decline in muscle strength and power. This decline can affect many aspects of physical function such as walking and rising from a chair. To date, exercise appears to be the best intervention to minimise or counteract reduced muscle function. Recently, whole-body-vibration (WBV) training has emerged as an intervention which may also improve strength in an older population (Roelants et al. 2004). However, research examining the effect of WBV on strength and functional performance in such a population is sparse. Therefore, this randomised controlled study was designed to investigate the effects of WBV on lower limb strength and performance of functional activities in a healthy, untrained, older population. METHODS Forty-three participants (23 men, 20 women, age 73.5 ± 4.5 yr) were randomly assigned to either a WBV group (VIB), an exercise without-vibration group (EX) or control group (CON). The VIB and EX interventions consisted of three sessions per week for eight-weeks. Outcome measures included a 5m fast walk, a sit-to-stand test (STS), stair mobility and isokinetic flexion and extension strength of the hip, knee and ankle. Data was examined to compare effects between groups using a 3x2 (group x time) ANCOVA, with pre-test values used as covariates. Significance was accepted at p<0.05. RESULTS The VIB group significantly improved ankle plantar flexion strength compared to the EX and CON groups (18.2%, 5.0%, 0.9%, respectively) (p<0.05). Both the VIB and EX groups significantly improved knee extension strength compared to the CON (8.1%, 7.2%, -2.0%, respectively) (p<0.05). Similarly, both the VIB and EX groups improved STS (12.4%, 10.2%) and 5m fast walk time (3.0%, 3.7%) compared to the CON (p<0.05). No significant changes were evident in hip flexion and extension strength or stair mobility for any group. DISCUSSION WBV training improved plantar flexion strength in a healthy, older population. This increase in plantar flexion strength can be considered clinically significant, with values approaching that previously reported in a healthy, younger population (Thelen et al. 1996). However, WBV did not facilitate knee extension strength to a greater degree than the exercise without-vibration group. The comparable gains in knee extension strength can be largely attributed to the unloaded squats. As comparable changes in 5m fast walk and STS performance also appear to be linked with the change in knee extension strength, future WBV programs should explore protocols to target the proximal musculature of the leg. REFERENCES Roelants M, Delecluse C, and Verschueren SM (2004). Whole-body-vibration training increases knee-extension strength and speed of movement in older women. J Am Geriatr Soc. 52(6):901-8. Thelen DG, Schultz AB, Alexander NB and Ashton-Miller JA (1996). Effects of age on rapid ankle torque development. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. 51(5):M226-32.
ENERGETICS OF THE HIGH FREQUENCY DISTURBANCES OVER SOUTH AMERICA

The energetics of the high frequency disturbances over South America are studied using composite maps of cyclone systems. The composite maps are constructed with filtered geopotential height data at 1000 hPa for the days when negative anomalies at the base grid point 70 o W, 45 S exceeded two standard deviations below the mean. The cyclone system composite has 61 cases. The spatial distribution of the available potential energy of the high frequency disturbances is similar to what is seen for the Northern Hemisphere extratropical cyclones. The energy cycle of the high-pass filtered anomalies showed that these disturbances grow by baroclinic conversion. During the growing phase, energy fluxes coming into the region and nonconservative sources are also important, although barotropic instability seems to play some role over the Pacific Ocean. At the mature stage the disturbances showed barotropic decay and radiate energy out of the region.