Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Statistical Analysis of Symmetric Positive-definite Matrices

YING YUAN: Statistical Analysis of Symmetric Positive-definite Matrices. (Under the direction of Hongtu Zhu and J. S. Marron.) This dissertation is motivated by addressing the statistical analysis of symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrix valued data, which arise in many applications. Due to the nonlinear structure of such data, it is challenging to apply well-established statistical methods to them. Our goal is to develop statistical models and perform statistical inferences on the Riemannian manifold of the space of SPD matrices. This dissertation has three major parts. In the first part, we develop a local polynomial regression model for the analysis of data with SPD matrix responses on the Riemannian manifold. The independent variable of this model is from Euclidean space. We examine two commonly used metrics including the affine invariant metric and the Log-Euclidean metric on the space of SPD matrices. Under each metric, we develop an associated cross-validation bandwidth selection method, and derive the asymptotic bias, variance, and normality of the intrinsic local constant and local linear estimators and compare their asymptotic mean square errors. Simulation studies are further used to compare the estimators under the two metrics and examine their finite sample performance. In the second part, we develop a functional data analysis framework to model diffusion tensors along fiber bundles as functional responses with a set of covariates of interest, such as age, diagnostic status and gender, in real applications. We propose a statistical model with varying coefficient functions to characterize the dynamic association between functional SPD matrix-valued responses and covariates. We calculate a weighted least squares estimation of the varying coefficient functions under the Log-Euclidean metric in the space of SPD matrices. We also develop a global test statistic to test specific hypotheses about these coefficient functions and construct their simultaneous confidence bands. Simulated data are further used to examine the finite sample performance of the estimated varying coefficient functions.
Caractérisation et modélisation des propriétés mécaniques des couches minces pour l'intégration 3D - Application aux matériaux plastiques et aux grandes déformations

La fabrication des dispositifs en microelectronique implique aujourd’hui une architecture tridimensionnelle : « l’integration 3D ». La mise en œuvre de cette technologie peut etre limitee par des questions d’integrite mecanique des dispositifs durant les processus de fabrication. En effet, deposer plusieurs couches aux proprietes thermomecaniques distinctes et a differentes temperatures ou amincir le substrat de silicium pour realiser des interconnexions sont autant d’etapes a controler pour prevenir des decohesions le long d’interfaces, des distorsions des wafers ou encore des contraintes induites trop grandes et garantir la fiabilite des composants.Dans ce travail nous avons aborde ces questions en considerant des depots de nature diverse (metallique, oxyde ou polymere) pour lesquels une reponse thermoelastique est consideree, dependant de la temperature le cas echeant. Un modele semi-analytique « Sigmapps », exploitable en salle blanche, a ete developpe pour predire la deformee induite au cours des procedes de depot et predire les contraintes induites dans chaque couche, permettant egalement d’identifier les proprietes thermoelastique d’une couche dans le cadre d’une « approche inverse ». Dans ce cas, des mesures experimentales sont necessaires et ont ete menees au LETI. Dans une deuxieme partie, nous avons etudie le phenomene d’instabilite d’une structure multicouche, comportant des contraintes internes. Ici, le chargement thermique d’un bicouche a ete considere comme « cas d’etude » et nous nous sommes attaches a predire la temperature pour laquelle une instabilite apparaissait jusqu’a la prediction de l’etat « post-critique ». La aussi, l’approche est semi-analytique pour garantir son utilisation, simple, en environnement de salle blanche. Le probleme de la criticite d’un depot sur la stabilite d’un wafer peut egalement etre aborde. Il est ainsi possible d’orienter le choix des materiaux a integrer et leurs epaisseurs pour garantir l’integrite des dispositifs et optimiser les sequences de fabrication.
Bayesian Analysis of a Shape Parameter of the Weibull-Frechet Distribution

In this paper, we estimate a shape parameter of the Weibull-Frechet distribution by considering the Bayesian approach under two non-informative priors using three different loss functions. We derive the corresponding posterior distributions for the shape parameter of the Weibull-Frechet distribution assuming that the other three parameters are known. The Bayes estimators and associated posterior risks have also been derived using the three different loss functions. The performance of the Bayes estimators are evaluated and compared using a comprehensive simulation study and a real life application to find out the combination of a loss function and a prior having the minimum Bayes risk and hence producing the best results. In conclusion, this study reveals that in order to estimate the parameter in question, we should use quadratic loss function under either of the two non-informative priors used in this study.
Newton method with feasible inexact projections for constrained equations and nonsmooth Newton method in Riemannian manifolds

Nesta tese, estudaremos tres versoes do metodo de Newton para resolver problemas em dois contextos, a saber, Euclidiano e Riemanniano. No contexto Euclidiano, apresentaremos o metodo de Newton com projecoes inexatas viaveis para resolver equacoes generalizadas sujeitas a um conjunto de restricoes. Sob hipoteses locais, a convergencia linear ou superlinear de uma sequencia gerada pelo metodo proposto e estabelecida. Em seguida, uma versao do metodo de Newton inexato com projecoes inexatas viaveis para resolver equacoes restritas diferenciaveis e nao-diferenciaveis e apresentada. Usando hipoteses adequadas, a convergencia linear ou superlinear de uma sequencia gerada pelo metodo e provada. Alem disso, para ilustrar o comportamento pratico do metodo, alguns experimentos numericos sao reportados. Sob uma outra perspectiva, a ultima versao do metodo de Newton a ser investigada e uma extensao do proprio metodo de Newton nao-diferenciavel do contexto Euclidiano para o Riemanniano, objetivando encontrar uma singularidade de uma classe especial de campos de vetores localmente Lipschitz continuos. Em particular, este metodo recupera o classico metodo de Newton nao-diferenciavel para resolver um sistema de equacoes nao-diferenciaveis. A boa definicao da sequencia gerada pelo metodo e garantida e a analise de convergencia do metodo e feita sob hipoteses locais e semi-locais.
Evidence Revelations at Memory Forensics in Conversations of Instant Messages

Instant messaging software is typically installed in a Microsoft Windows-based computer. Forensic procedures provide evidence for legal purposes after such software is used. Web-based instant messaging leaves no chat messages on the hard disk but some may be dumped into memory, the paging file and unallocated hard disk space. The targets in this paper are the software ＂Skype＂ and the web version of ＂Facebook Messenger＂ in Windows operating system. Proposed memory forensic technology is used to collect key evidence of communication records and the stepwise process demonstrated. The user’s login username, password, contact list, and conversation records are obtained for the purposes of reconstructing a crime.
Community Detection and Profiling in Location-Based Social Networks

Due to the proliferation of GPS-enabled smartphones, Location-Based Social Networking (LBSNs) services have been experiencing a remarkable growth over the last few years. Compared with traditional online social networks, a significant feature of LBSNs is the coexistence of both online and offline social interactions, providing a large-scale heterogeneous social network that is able to facilitate lots of academic studies. One possible study is to leverage both online and offline social ties for the recognition and profiling of community structures. In this chapter, the authors attempt to summarize some recent progress in the community detection problem based on LBSNs. In particular, starting with an empirical analysis on the characters of the LBSN data set, the authors present three different community detection approaches, namely, link-based community detection, content-based community detection, and hybrid community detection based on both links and contents. Meanwhile, they also address the community profiling problem, which is very useful in real-world applications.
Low-Interference Multicast in Wireless Mesh Networks

Compared with wireless sensor networks and mobile ad hoc networks, wireless mesh networks mainly focus on improving the throughput of multicast, while interference severely limits the network throughput. When building a multicast topology, the minimum cost or shortest path is generally taken into account in the traditional methods, and only a few works have tried to improve the performance by reducing interference. However, they calculate the interference by the method for unicast topology, which is not suitable for multicast. For example if n nodes will receive simultaneously packets from one node, among these n nodes there is interference in unicast, but not in multicast. Therefore this tudy proposes the multicast conflict graph to calculate interference of the multicast topology, and then the concise definition of interference of multicast trees is provided. The study shows that building minimum interference multicast trees (MITs) is a NP-complete problem and proposes a gravitation-based heuristics to approximate such optimal trees. To apply to the environment of multi-channel, the study also proposes the multi-hop channel algorithm (MH) for multicast, which can meet different interference ranges. Simulation results reveal that the algorithms can reduce interference and increase throughput in both single-interface single-channel and multi-interface multi-channel wireless mesh networks.
Information technology for Ukrainian Sign Language translation based on ontologies

The article discusses an information technology for Ukrainian Sign Language translation based on ontologies. The components of the technology that are based on grammatically augmented ontology are described. New methods and tools for Ukrainian Sign Language translation were developed. These tools can be used for the development of a machine translation system from spoken to sign language and vice versa to facilitate communication between deaf people and those who do not speak sign language. The experiments for Ukrainian Sign Language translation were conducted. The increase of the percentage of correctly parsed sentences shows the feasibility of using the information technology for Ukrainian Sign Language translation.
Graphical Display of the Effect of Three Cash Flow Elements for Sensitivity Analysis

GRAPHICAL DISPLAY OF THE EFFECT OF THREE CASH FLOW ELEMENTS FOR SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS Kawintorn Pothanun Old Dominion University, 2004 Director: Dr. William R. Peterson Sensitivity analysis is one o f the most important analysis techniques in a decision making process. The analytic intent behind sensitivity analysis is the variation o f parameters in data models, and the examination o f the effect o f these variations on the outcome of the models. There are four primary benefits from conducting a sensitivity analysis: a) sensitivity analysis facilitates the decision makers’ development o f recommendations, b) sensitivity analysis serves as a tool for communication among stakeholders or decision makers in a project or an organization, c) sensitivity analysis increases overall understanding o f the decision models, and d) sensitivity analysis serves as a useful tool in decision model development. Sensitivity analysis in engineering economy can be divided into two main categories. The first one is called one-parameter-at-a-time analysis. This analysis assumes that all parameters or cash flow elements except one are held constant. The second category is the analysis o f more than one parameter at a time. This research explored graphical display o f three-at-a-time sensitivity analysis in engineering econom y. This analysis approach required extensive inform ation to be displayed and decisions to be made in an information-rich domain. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission. This increased information complexity is harder to represent in conventional two-dimensional displays creating the need for display innovations that support the sensitivity analysis tasks o f exploration, understanding, and decision making. Problems with current two-dimensional information representation techniques include limited dimensionality and limited amounts of information that can be portrayed in a display. While three-dimensional information displays offer promise in resolving those issues, there is a lack o f empirical evidence to support the appropriateness of using three-dimensional display for sensitivity analysis o f three cash flow elements in engineering economy. A three-dimensional information display was designed and an experiment was conducted which tested this three-dimensional integrated display against the traditional two-dimensional bar chart. Recommendations were made for the most immediate needs for future research based on existing gaps in the body of knowledge in engineering management, engineering economy and human computer interaction. R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
Egyptian and kuwaiti arabic in contact: the case of kuwaiti /k, tʃ / and /θ/

Studies of dialect have recently attracted the interest of sociolinguists who are trying to seek answers as to how and why mutually intelligible linguistic varieties may influence one another when they come into contact, and more importantly the linguistic outcomes of such c ontact. These studies show that it is very unlikely that adult immigrants can fully and accurately acquire a non - native variety. Chambers (1992) argues that the acquisition of a second dialect is governed by a number of linguistic rules. In a previous stu dy (Dashti 199 7 ), the author examined the acquisition of three phonological variables , namely, (q) ( ʤ ) and ( ð) of Kuwaiti Arabic together with their variants by Egyptian Arabs whose native Arabic variety is Egyptian Arabic. It was suggested then, that the acquisition of both the variable (k) and the variable (θ) in the speech of Egyptian Arabs are also worth investigating in future research. This study aimed at investigating the acquisition of the Kuwaiti variables (k) and (θ) and their variants by Egyptian acquirers in the light of Chambers ’ principles. 40 subjects were interviewed and 40 hours of tape - recorded conversation were collected, phonetically transcribed and then statistically analysed. Analysis showed that both variables were complex and difficul t to acquire by Egyptians. On the other hand, marriage, gender, and length of stay were insignificant .
Utility-Driven Bandwidth Allocation in Data Center Networks

It has been realized that network performance is one of the most important metrics for evaluating the performance of applications deployed in cloud data centers. Numerous bandwidth allocation schemes have been proposed to maximize the utilization of data center networks as well as to improve the performance of applications. However, those works only focus on allocating link bandwidth shared among elastic applications; the path delay experienced by inelastic traffic such as delay-sensitive traffic has been neglected. In this paper, we investigate the problem of maximizing application utility in data center networks considering both the throughput and the delay influence. The utility of an application is the benefit brought by bandwidth increases minus the expenditure charged by congestion delay growth. We then formulate the utility-driven bandwidth allocation problem as a convex optimization with the objective of maximizing overall utility across all applications. Standard interior point algorithm is applied to derive the optimal solution. We show the outstanding performance of our solution through extensive simulations with several realistic data center network (DCN) topologies.
Improvement of Web Search Results using Genetic Algorithm on Word Sense Disambiguation

Extraction, finding content on the Internet using web search engine outputs web pages in huge amounts. Retrieval of information is a tedious task for extracting some meaning information over the web where the web is in itself a network of networks. The information stored on the web is spread across various platforms. There is no centralization of information on the Internet. The results that are displayed to the user are based on the keywords or based on their synonyms. The web pages or documents displayed to the user are not the best or reaching up to the level of user’s expectations. Hence it becomes the user’s task to filter out relevant information out of the huge amount of pages. This is one of the major research issues in Information Retrieval. This problem can be sought out with the help of mining of data on the basis of intention of the user. Depending on the intention of the user while entering the query on the search engines, information should be displayed. Such kind of technique would help in user satisfaction at great level.
A Multi-objective Autotuning Framework For The Java Virtual Machine

Due to inherent limitations in performance, Java was not considered a suitable platform for for scalable high-performance computing (HPC) for a long time. The scenario is changing because of the development of frameworks like Hadoop, Spark and Fast-MPJ. In spite of the increase in usage, achieving high performance with Java is not trivial. High performance in Java relies on libraries providing explicit threads or relying on runnable-like interfaces for distributed programming. In this thesis, we develop an autotuning framework for JVM that manages multiple objective functions including execution time, power consumption, energy and perfomance-per-watt. The framework searches the combined space of JIT optimization sequences and di erent classes of JVM runtime parameters. To discover good con gurations more quickly, the framework implements novel heuristic search algorithms. To reduce the size of the search space machine-learning based pruning techniques are used. Evaluation on recommender system workloads show that signi cant improvements in both performance and power can be gained by ne-tuning JVM runitme parameters.
The Use Code Switching Between Arabic And English Languages Among Bilingual Jordanian Speakers In Malaysia

Code switching phenomena was investigated in different contexts where English is spoken as a first language (i.e. inner circle), English is spoken as second language (i.e. outer circle), and where English is spoken as a foreign language (i.e. expanding circle). However, very few studies addressed the issue of code switching among Jordanian speakers in outer circle countries such as Malaysia. Therefore, this study was conducted to fill the gap in the literature. This research investigates the bilingual Jordanian speakers’ use of code switching in their daily oral interactions (i.e. formal and informal communicative events from a sociolinguistic perspective). This research identified the contexts in which Arabic-English code switching occurs, including the communicative events in which Arabic-English code switching occurs, described and investigated the functions of Arabic-English code switching among the bilingual Jordanian speakers in Selangor, Malaysia from a sociolinguistic perspective, investigated the code switching patterns and investigated whether the communicative events and the patterns of code switching influence each other. Following a qualitative research design, data were collected ethnographically from five Jordanian speakers by employing two tools of enquiry namely observation and semi-structured interview. Findings revealed that Jordanian speakers code switch in both formal and informal communicative events. Furthermore, Jordanian speakers code switch from English to Arabic and vice versa for several sociolinguistic functions i.e. to bridge the lexical gap, to quote someone's speech, to further explain a point, to exclude someone out of the conversation, and to demonstrate capability. In addition, findings revealed that there are two patterns of code switching that Jordanian speakers employed in their daily oral interactions namely intra-sentential and inter-sentential switching. However, intra-sentential code switching is used more frequently than inter-sentential code switching. Finally, the findings of this research revealed that the communicative events and the patterns of code switching do not influence each other.
Testing for unit roots in panels with structural changes, spatial and temporal dependence when the time dimension is finite

Finite T panel data unit root tests allowing for structural breaks, spatial cross section dependence, heteroscedasticity, serial correlation, heterogeneity and non-linear trends are proposed. The structural breaks can be at known or unknown dates. For the latter, analytic probability density functions of the asymptotic distributions of the tests are provided based on a minimum order statistic. The tests can accommodate general forms of spatial dependence for which the spatial weights matrix does not have to be defined due to the utilization of a non-parametric estimator. A set of sufficient conditions which determines admissible deterministic trend functions is also provided. Finally, extensive Monte Carlo experiments show the usefulness of the new tests.
Identification of QTL Underlying Seed Micronutrients Accumu - lation in 'MD 96-5722' by 'Spencer' Recombinant Inbred Lines of Soybean

Genetic mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with seed nutrition levels is almost non-existent. The objective of this study was to identify QTLs associated with seed micronutrients (iron, Fe; zinc, Zn; bororn, B; manganese, Mn; and copper, Cu) accumulation (concentration) in a population of 92 F 5:7 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) that derived from a cross between MD 96-5722 (MD) and ‘Spencer’. For this purpose, a genetic linkage map based on 5,376 Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers was constructed using the Illumina Infinium SoySNP6K BeadChip array. The RILs were genotyped using 537 polymorphic, reliably segregating SNP markers. A total of 23 QTLs for micronutrients Fe, Zn, B, Mn, and Cu have been identified and mapped on eight linkage groups (LGs) of the soybean genome. Five QTLs were detected for Fe (qIRO001- qIRO005) on LGs N, A1, K, J, and G. Seven QTLs for Zn (qZIN001-qZIN007) on LGs D1a (Chr 1), N (Chr 3), F (Chr 5), B2 (Chr 14), J (Chr 16), A1 (Chr 5), and K (Chr 9). Two QTLs for B (qBOR001 and qBOR002) were detected on LGs N and A1. Four QTLs were detected for Mn (qMAN001-qMAN004) on LGs N, A1, K, and J, and five QTLs were detected for Cu (qCOP001- qCOP005) on LGs N, A1, K, J, and G). It was observed that the four QTLs for