Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Image Storage Service based on Distributed File System

This paper analyzes in detail the three basic characteristics of distributed file system,including the classification of multi-node servers,the data distribution,and the communication between the multi-node servers.Based on this,a method for realizing the service of image storage is proposed,which is based on distributed file system realized in Java.This method,with Hadoop as the foundation and by the features of HDFS(Hadoop Distributed File System),provides a convenient and flexible framework for distributed storage system on a cluster of commodity machines.The method could simplify the design of distributed image storage service system and improve the performance and reliability of the system.
John Von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrance, and Much More

The cheapest way to make the world richer A silver spoon in Budapest, 1903-14 At the Lutheran Gymnasium, 1914-21 An undergraduate with lion's claws, 1921-26 Rigor becomes more relaxed, 500 B. C. -A. D. 1931 The quantum leap, 1926-32 Sturm und Drang, marriage, emigration, 1927-31 Depression at Princeton, 1931-37 The calculating exploder, 1937-43 Los Alamos to Trinity, 1943-45 In the domain of economics The computers at Philadelphia, 1944-46 The computers from Princeton, 1946-52 And then the H-bomb With astonishing influence, 1950-56 Acknowledgments Permissions acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index Macrae on Macrae.
Effect of overlapping between successive carriers of multicarrier-CDMA on the performance in a multipath fading channel

In this paper, the effect of overlapping between successive carriers of a multicarrier (MC) code division multiple access (CDMA) system on the performance in a multipath fading channel is investigated. Transmitted data bits are serial to parallel converted to a number of parallel branches. On each branch, each bit is direct-sequence spread-spectrum modulated and transmitted with certain number of carriers. The separation between successive carriers is allowed to vary to achieve various overlapping-percentages. The system is analyzed with a conventional matched filter (MF) receiver. It is shown that for each number of carriers there exists an optimum overlapping-percentage at which the performance of the system is optimized.
Procedures, methods and/or good practices to design private clouds

The Cloud Computing Paradigm’s Private Cloud deployment model for the majority of Small and Medium Enterprises is a cost, effective and secure solution for achieving nimbly the computation infrastructure demand. Nowadays it’s adoption has been hindered due to the lack of methods that allow facing the design of Private Clouds from a business perspective; and because of the high compute requirements that impose the commercial solutions with greater presence in the market in relation to the low requirements of compute resources that these enterprises demand for supporting their Information and Communication Services. The present work exposes a study of the state of the art that shows the problematic situation afore mentioned, and proposes a general framework that lays the foundations for developing a Private Cloud method design with the necessary procedures, instruments and design principles for designing from the perspective of the business and with a top-down philosophy.
Processing astro-photographs using Retinex based methods

Stars, galaxies and some nebulae emit light, differently from solar system planets and satellites that mainly reflect Sun’s light or nebulae that also partly reflect nearby stars light. Light emission is concentrated on specific wavelengths corresponding to transition states of atoms that compose the object. Professional photographers and astronomers use special narrow band filters to detect spectral light emission. Using monochromatic CCD cameras a multi filter photograph can be taken, producing at least long, middle and short wavelength snapshots that can be processed to give full color pictures. Amateurs can use wide-band filters or even color cameras. Colors in astrophotography do not correspond to perceivable colors by human vision system (HVS) and our visual system did not evolve to perceive these kinds of images. Any way we still have to consider our perception when creating pictures to observe cosmic objects photos, that have been rendered using the so called representative colors, selected to show the captured wavelength bands with the purpose to make visible what is scientifically relevant. The typical application field of the Retinex based algorithms is that of natural images, since their purpose is to simulate some behaviors of the human visual system. However we can use HVS properties to enhance astro-photographs and increase local contrast, thus allowing researchers to detect non-visible structures and lay people to be fascinated by richness of cosmic objects. We will present the results of applications of some Retinex based algorithms to astro-photographs. We will discuss their efficacy, compared to traditional methods and discuss possible developments.
Gait Phase Parameter Estimation and Model Predictive Control of Active Transfemoral Prosthesis.

KHADE, AJINKYA SANJAY. Gait Phase Parameter Estimation and Model Predictive Control of Active Transfemoral Prosthesis. (Under the direction of Dr. Fen Wu.) Limb loss disrupts the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals every year. And the disruption it causes is even more severe if a lower limb is lost. Loss of mobility drastically reduces the quality of life of any individual. Lot of prosthetic devices are available these days that restore basic locomotion capability. But most of these devices either require a large amount of effort from the user or are severely restricted in terms of the capabilities they restore. This thesis seeks to remedy some of these issues by examining the viability of Model Predictive Control for controlling Active Transfemoral Prosthesis. The experimental setup used for collecting the data used in this research will be introduced, followed by a description of the nonlinear gait model of the prosthesis. The thesis will develop an optimization framework for estimating the parameters of the system, which are essential for designing a controller. This optimization framework is composed of several smaller optimization sub-problems that are solved using a combination of global optimization algorithms like Genetic Algorithm and local algorithms. This yields a reasonable set of estimates for the system parameters which are used for designing a Model Predictive Controller with the goal of tracking the reference gait trajectory. The process gives a controller which is capable of tracking reference trajectories for both hip and knee angles during the gait cycle with high accuracy for the base scenario of level-ground walking and while reducing the effort required from the user as well as prosthesis. However it leaves some room for improvement in terms of its robustness. The thesis will close with a discussion of the possible future work that could help to improve upon the results obtained. © Copyright 2016 by Ajinkya Sanjay Khade All Rights Reserved Gait Phase Parameter Estimation and Model Predictive Control of Active Transfemoral Prosthesis by Ajinkya Sanjay Khade A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Mechanical Engineering Raleigh, North Carolina 2016
Assessments of Reading Comprehension with Hypertexts: A Research Synthesis (Article submitted for presentation only)

The issue of hypertext comprehension meets a genuine research interest of educational scientists as the students’ learning, and reading, environments grow with the use of the internet and increasingly include not only printed texts but hypertexts also. Therefore, students need to learn how to make efficient and competent use of this new text format [1]. From the viewpoint of educational reading research it needs to be determined whether reading hypertexts involves the same comprehension processes as reading traditional print texts, or whether the hypertext format involves a different set of comprehension processes which need to be taken into account when teaching students to read this sort of material.
Runtime verification on data-carrying traces

Malfunctioning software systems can cause severe loss of money, sensitive data, or even human life. The ambition is therefore to verify these systems not only statically, but also monitor their behaviour at runtime. For the latter case, the temporal logic LTL—a de facto standard specification formalism in runtime verification—is widely used and well-understood. However, propositional variables are usually not a natural nor sufficient model to represent the behaviour of complex, interactive systems that can process arbitrary input values. Consequently, there is a demand for more expressive formalisms that are defined wrt. what we call traces with data, i.e., traces that contain propositions enriched with values from a (possibly) infinite domain. This thesis studies the runtime monitoring with data for a natural extension of LTL that includes first-order quantification, called LTL. The logic’s quantifiers range over values that appear in a trace. Under assumptions laid out of what should arguably be considered a “proper” runtime monitor, this thesis first identifies and analyses the underlying decision problems of monitoring properties in LTL and LTL. Moreover, it proposes a monitoring procedure for the latter. A result is that LTL is undecidable, and the prefix problem too, which an online monitor has to preferably solve to coincide with monotonicity. Hence, the obtained monitor cannot be complete for LTL; however, this thesis proves the soundness of its construction and gives experimental results from an implementation, in order to justify its usefulness and efficiency in practice. The monitor is based on a new type of automaton, called spawning automaton; it helps to efficiently decide what parts of a possibly infinite state space need to be memorised at runtime. Furthermore, the problem occurs that not every property can be monitored trace-length independently, which is possible in LTL. For that reason, a hierarchy of effectively monitorable properties is proposed. It distinguishes properties for which a monitor requires only constant memory from ones for which a monitor inevitably has to grow ad infinitum, independently of how the future of a trace evolves. Last but not least, a proof of concept validates the monitoring means developed in this thesis on a widely established system with intensive data use: Malicious behaviour is checked on Android devices based on the most comprehensive malware set presently available. The overall detection and false positive rates are 93.9% and 28%, respectively. As a means of conducting the experiments and as a contribution in itself, an application-agnostic logging-layer for the Android system has been developed and its technical insights are explained. It aims at leveraging runtime verification techniques on Android, like other domain-specific instrumentation approaches did, such as AspectJ for Java.
Insights from Behavioral Economics to Decrease Pollution and Reduce Energy Consumption

This paper is written to help relieve existing environmental problems. This paper focuses on how insights from Behavioral Economics can be drawn and affect human behavior in order to reduce pollution and relieve environmental problems. This research involves several interviews with government officials involving the preservation of energy and water, managers of environment-related corporations, and leaders of non-government organizations that are trying to reduce pollution and save the environment. Reviewing the existing measures taken by governments, this paper analyzes different points of views and approaches and gives several practical suggestions on reducing pollution in the Behavioral Economics point of view, which can be referred to by legislations and other organizations and helps eco-friendly policies to be more efficient and accepted. This paper also evaluates different measures that could be taken and the costs and benefits of different alternatives, bringing a clearer understanding of the impacts of many possible actions that can be both vital and beneficial.
Génération automatique de tests unitaires avec Praspel, un langage de spécification pour PHP

Les travaux presentes dans ce memoire portent sur la validation de programmes PHP a travers un nouveau langage de specification, accompagne de ses outils. Ces travaux s’articulent selon trois axes : langage de specification, generation automatique de donnees de test et generation automatique de tests unitaires.La premiere contribution est Praspel, un nouveau langage de specification pour PHP, base sur la programmation par contrat. Praspel specifie les donnees avec des domaines realistes, qui sont des nouvelles structures permettant de valider etgenerer des donnees. A partir d’un contrat ecrit en Praspel, nous pouvons faire du Contract-based Testing, c’est a dire exploiter les contrats pour generer automatiquement des tests unitaires. La deuxieme contribution concerne la generation de donnees de test. Pour les booleens, les entiers et les reels, une generation aleatoire uniforme est employee. Pour les tableaux, un solveur de contraintes a ete implemente et utilise. Pour les chaines de caracteres, un langage de description de grammaires avec un compilateur de compilateurs LL(⋆) et plusieurs algorithmes de generation de donnees sont employes. Enfin, la generation d’objets est traitee.La troisieme contribution definit des criteres de couverture sur les contrats.Ces derniers fournissent des objectifs de test. Toutes ces contributions ont ete implementees et experimentees dans des outils distribues a la communaute PHP.
DESIGN OF MULTI BIT LFSR PNRG AND PERFORMANCE COMPARISON ON FPGA USING VHDL

The main purpose of this paper is to study the FPGA implementation and performance analysis of 8, 16, and32 bit LFSR pseudo random number generator system. We have used FPGA to explain how FPGA’s ease the hardware implementation part of communication systems. The analysis is conceded out to find number of gates, memory and speed requirement in FPGA as the number of bits is increased. The comparative study of 8, 16 and 32 bit LFSR on FPGA is shown here to understand the on chip verification. Recently the field programmable gate arrays have enjoyed wide spread use due to several advantages related to relatively high gate density, short design cycle and low cost. The greatest advantage of FPGA’s are flexibility that we reconfigured the design many times and check the results and verify it on-chip for comparing with others PN sequence generators. The logic of PN Sequence Generator presented here can be changed any time, if we want a PN generator of more length all we need to do is change the number of shift register and adjust the taps. In this paper we have used one XOR operation for taping. Also we can use XNOR operation for taping. By increasing the number of tapping we can generate more randomness in the sequence.
Future Service Technologies – Is Service Research on Track with Business Reality?

Purpose – Service technologies are transforming the business landscape rapidly and researchers need to pay attention to the changing needs of service research and business practice. The aim of this paper is to explore the current scope of research in regards to emerging service technologies by comparing the content of articles in academic journals with practitioner-oriented publication outlets. <br><br>Methodology – In an exploratory study a total of 5,118 technology-related articles in service journals, service conferences, business journals and business magazines over the last two years are quantitatively analyzed. Text mining on article abstracts is used for the conceptual (thematic) and relational (semantic) analysis of the data. Common research themes and their relations are depicted in a two-dimensional structured network. Furthermore, the sample is analyzed in more detail regarding various technologies mentioned in the Gartner Hype Cycle. <br><br>Findings –The findings indicate that scientific service research is more focused on customer related aspects of technology compared to business journals. Service research takes a less concrete focus on technology in comparison to business publications. Still, service conference articles show a wider scope of emerging service technologies than academic journal articles. <br><br>Research Implications – The paper shows with a data-based approach, that scientific research should focus on more concrete service technologies. Business magazines serve as a relevant source for more technology research avenues. The paper identifies several promising new technology fields that researchers could focus on. <br><br>Practical Implications – The paper reveals differences in academic and business perspectives in regards to service technologies. Although business magazines are covering significantly more concrete service technologies, they miss the integrated perspective that academic articles usually offer. Academia can help business to align better concrete technologies with different internal and external perspectives. <br><br>Originality/Value – This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue Future Service Technologies and presents nine articles and two commentaries included the special issue, each contribution illustrating a different approach to service technologies. The presented articles are focusing mainly on two categories of service technologies (i.e. IoT and service robots in different contexts.). Additionally, the quantitative study of recent service technology research serves as a reality-check for academic research in comparison to business reality and provides recommendations that encourage research in a broader spectrum of themes and issues in future service technologies.
Internationalization Strategies, Entry Modes and Cultural Dimensions of Chinese Way of Doing Business in Europe

Abstract This paper presents the process of Chinese outward direct investment in Europe. A remarkable feature of the Chinese cross-border business expansion is the essential role of government in the internationalization of Chinese MNCs which was supported by official policy instruments, including the famous “go global” strategy that encouraged thousands of Chinese firms to invest abroad. It argues that the driving motive of Chinese firms to go abroad aimed at acquiring new skills, advanced technology, brands and supply chains that would enhance their competitive advantage in international as well as domestic markets. To this end, the Chinese investment in Europe has generally targeted few but major economies, namely Germany, UK and France. Merger and acquisitions has been the leading market entry mode resulting in huge takeovers characterizing Chinese investment in Europe. It is also apparent that the internationalization process of Chinese business companies did not follow the traditional Uppsala model as psychic distance and experiential knowledge didn’t play a role. Nevertheless, it is evident that the path-dependency of Chinese expatriates in European countries has made it difficult to learn and adapt to the local work environment that exhibits diverging and contrasting cultural values. This huge cross-cultural gap, often portrayed in the literature as “culture conflict”, constitutes the biggest challenge that Chinese companies face, in their international operations in general, and could undermine their effectiveness in doing business in European countries in particular.
Chapter Eleven. Faith or morality? ‘Theological sediments’ depending on the centrality,content, and social context of personal religious construct systems

This chapter tries to analyse to what degree traditional denominational doctrines influence the personal beliefs of Christians today. The analysis was led by the assumption that personal beliefs are to some degree influenced by common traditional doctrines that are taught in preaching, lessons, and talks about religious issues, and can be understood as a kind of theological sediment in todays beliefs. The chapter describes the issue at stake was whether there exists a typical Catholic and a typical Lutheran belief in justification. Reflecting historical denominational doctrines and notions of justification several theoretical positions for Catholics and Lutherans were proposed, discussed and operationalised. The chapter is a post-hoc analysis using data from studies on German samples which were conducted to validate the Structure of- Religiosity-Test (S-R-T). Belief in the sinners justification was thought to be analysable using the given data.Keywords: Catholic; German samples; Lutherans; sinners justification; structure of- religiosity-test(S-R-T); theological sediment; traditional denominational doctrines
Research on Data Distribution Service for Ship Information System

Aiming at the problem of high real-time data demands for ship information systems,this paper applies Data Distribution Service(DDS) for ship information systems,combining with the characteristics of the ship information system,the paper proposes a communication mechanism based on interest filtering.The mechanism can express the interest of subscription more fine-grained to improve communication rate.Simulation experimental results show that the mechanism can meet loose coupling and high real-time demands,and improve the efficiency of communication.
Company’s Efficiency and Its Impact on Performance: A Study on State Owned Non-Financial Company Listed on Indonesian Stock Exchange

The Indonesian government encourages state-owned companies (BUMN) to be listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange and perform well. A Company's operating policy is expected to affect company performance. One approach to detect the company's operating policy is through the management of working capital. This study aims to examine the working capital management of non-financial BUMN companies and their impact on the efficiency of the company. In addition, we want to find empirical evidence that efficiency will affect company performance. The study used three independent variables which are days in inventory, days in receivables, and days in payables. The dependent variable is firm performance, as measured by its profitability. Company efficiency is an intervening variable. The results found that the profitability of non-financial BUMN is influenced by its profitability from the previous period . Similarly, the working capital efficiency measured by the cash conversion cycle is significantly influenced by the previous period's cash conversion cycle, and is not significantly affected by the working capital component. There is not enough evidence that working capital efficiency, as an intervening variable, has a significant effect on profitability.
Factor augmented VAR revisited - A sparse dynamic factor model approach

We combine the factor augmented VAR framework with recently developed estimation and identification procedures for sparse dynamic factor models. Working with a sparse hierarchical prior distribution allows us to discriminate between zero and non-zero factor loadings. The non-zero loadings identify the unobserved factors and provide a meaningful economic interpretation for them. Applying our methodology to US macroeconomic data reveals indeed a high degree of sparsity in the data. We use the estimated FAVAR to study the effect of a monetary policy shock and a shock to the term premium. Factors and specific variables show sensible responses to the identified shocks.