title: Smart home care network using sensor fusion and distributed vision-based reasoning

text: A wireless sensor network employing multiple sensing and event detection modalities and distributed processing is proposed for smart home monitoring applications. Image sensing and vision-based reasoning are employed to verify and further analyze events reported by other sensors. The system has been developed to address the growing application domain in caregiving to the elderly and persons in need of monitored living, who care to live independently while enjoying the assurance of timely access to caregivers when needed. An example of sensed events is the accidental fall of the person under care. A wireless badge node acts as a bridge between the user and the network. The badge node provides user-centric event sensing functions such as detecting falls, and also provides a voice communication channel between the user and the caregiving center when the system detects an alert and dials the center. The voice connection is carried over an IEEE 802.15.4 radio link between the user badge and another node in the network that acts as a modem. Using signal strength measurements, the network nodes keep track of the approximate location of the user in the monitoring environment.The network also includes wall-mounted image sensor nodes, which are triggered upon detection of a fall to analyze their field-of-view and provide the caregiving center with further information about the user 's status. A description of the developed network and several examples of the vision-based reasoning algorithm are presented in the paper.


title: A viability theory for digital businesses: Exploring the evolutionary changes of revenue mechanisms to support managerial decisions

text: The ongoing integration of Information Technology (IT) into various areas of our lives has led to a plethora of digital products and services. To survive competition in the long run, these offerings not only have to keep up with constant technological developments, but also have to adapt from a business point of view. Managers of these digital businesses have to especially focus on the design and evolution of their business’ revenue mechanisms to ensure the viability of their offerings. The related decisions are not trivial, as managers have to be aware of the relevant contextual factors and have to react quickly to changes in the environment. This paper proposes a viability theory for digital businesses described by 17 propositions that may guide managers in the design of revenue mechanisms and thereby support the evolution as well as the viability of a digital business.


title: Efficient Zero-Knowledge Contingent Payments in Cryptocurrencies Without Scripts

text: One of the most promising innovations offered by the cryptographic currencies (like Bitcoin) are the so-called smart contracts, which can be viewed as financial agreements between mutually distrusting participants. Their execution is enforced by the mechanics of the currency, and typically has monetary consequences for the parties. The rules of these contracts are written in the form of so-called “scripts”, which are pieces of code in some “scripting language”. Although smart contracts are believed to have a huge potential, for the moment they are not widely used in practice. In particular, most of Bitcoin miners allow only to post standard transactions (i.e.: those without the non-trivial scripts) on the blockchain. As a result, it is currently very hard to create non-trivial smart contracts in Bitcoin. Motivated by this, we address the following question: “is it possible to create non-trivial efficient smart contracts using the standard transactions only?” We answer this question affirmatively, by constructing efficient Zero-Knowledge Contingent Payment protocol for a large class of NP-relations. This includes the relations for which efficient sigma protocols exist. In particular, our protocol can be used to sell a factorization (p, q) of an RSA modulus n = pq, which is an example that we implemented and tested its efficiency in practice. As another example of the “smart contract without scripts” we show how our techniques can be used to implement the contract called “trading across chains”.


title: Survey of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Systems

text: As part of the information fusion task we wish to automatically fuse information derived from the text extraction process with data from a structured knowledge base. This process will involve resolving, aggregating, integrating and abstracting information via the methodologies of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning into a single comprehensive description of an individual or event. This report surveys the key principles underlying research in the field of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. It represents an initial step in deciding upon a Knowledge Representation and Reasoning system for our information fusion task. APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE


title: Proving the Incompatibility of Efficiency and Strategyproofness via SMT Solving

text: Two important requirements when aggregating the preferences of multiple agents are that the outcome should be economically efficient and the aggregation mechanism should not be manipulable. In this article, we provide a computer-aided proof of a sweeping impossibility using these two conditions for randomized aggregation mechanisms. More precisely, we show that every efficient aggregation mechanism can be manipulated for all expected utility representations of the agents’ preferences. This settles an open problem and strengthens several existing theorems, including statements that were shown within the special domain of assignment. Our proof is obtained by formulating the claim as a satisfiability problem over predicates from real-valued arithmetic, which is then checked using a satisfiability modulo theories (SMT) solver. To verify the correctness of the result, a minimal unsatisfiable set of constraints returned by the SMT solver was translated back into a proof in higher-order logic, which was automatically verified by an interactive theorem prover. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first application of SMT solvers in computational social choice.


title: Measurement of return on marketing investment : A conceptual framework and the future of marketing metrics

text: There is growing recognition that firms in the contemporary business environment derive substantial and sustained competitive advantage from a bundle of intangible assets such as knowledge, networks and innovative capability. Measuring the return on such intangible assets has now become imperative for managers. The present manuscript focuses on the measurement of the return on marketing. We first discuss the conditions that make this task a high managerial priority. We then discuss measurement efforts to date, both in general management and marketing. We then offer a conceptual framework that places measurement efforts in a historical perspective. We conclude with a discussion on where the future of marketing metrics lies. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


title: Proactive avoidance of moving obstacles for a service robot utilizing a behavior-based control

text: A main challenge in the application of service robotics is safe and reliable navigation of robots in human everyday environments. Supermarkets, which are chosen here as an example, pose a challenging scenario because they usually have a cluttered and nested character. The robot has to avoid collisions with static and even with moving obstacles while interacting with nearby humans or a dedicated user respectively. This paper presents a hierarchical approach for the proactive avoidance of moving objects as it is used on the robot shopping trolley InBOT. The behavior-based control (bbc) of InBOT is extended by a reflex and a reactive behavior to ensure adequate reaction times when confronted with a possible collision. On top of the bbc a spatio-temporal planner is situated which is able to predict environmental changes and therefore can generate a safe movement sequence accordingly.


title: Mobile app conceptual browser: Online marketplaces information extraction

text: Online marketplaces are e-commerce websites where thousands of products are provided by multiple third parties. There are dozens of these differently structured marketplaces that need to be visited by the end users to reach their targets. This searching process consumes a lot of time and effort; moreover it negatively affects the user experience. In this paper, extensive analysis and evaluation of the existing e-marketplaces are performed to improve the end-users experience through a Mobile App. The main goal of this study is to find a solution that is capable of integrating multiple heterogeneous hidden data sources and unify the received responses into one single, structured and homogeneous source. Furthermore, the user can easily choose the desired product or reformulate the query through the interface. The proposed Android Mobile App is based on the multi-level conceptual analysis and modeling discipline, in which, data are analyzed in a way that helps in discovering the main concepts of any unknown domain captured from the hidden web. These concepts discovered through information extraction are then structured into a tree-based interface for easy navigation and query reformulation. The application has been evaluated through substantial experiments and compared to other existing mobile applications. The results showed that analyzing the query results and re-structuring the output before displaying to the end-user in a conceptual multilevel mechanism are reasonably effective in terms of number of clicks, time taken and number of navigation screens. Based on the proposed intelligent application, the interface is minimized to only two navigation screens, and the time needed to browse products from multiple marketplaces is kept reasonable in order to reach the target product.


title: CRISPR/Cas9 for genome editing: progress, implications and challenges.

text: Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated (Cas) protein 9 system provides a robust and multiplexable genome editing tool, enabling researchers to precisely manipulate specific genomic elements, and facilitating the elucidation of target gene function in biology and diseases. CRISPR/Cas9 comprises of a nonspecific Cas9 nuclease and a set of programmable sequence-specific CRISPR RNA (crRNA), which can guide Cas9 to cleave DNA and generate double-strand breaks at target sites. Subsequent cellular DNA repair process leads to desired insertions, deletions or substitutions at target sites. The specificity of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated DNA cleavage requires target sequences matching crRNA and a protospacer adjacent motif locating at downstream of target sequences. Here, we review the molecular mechanism, applications and challenges of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing and clinical therapeutic potential of CRISPR/Cas9 in future.


title: Cross Domain Regularization for Neural Ranking Models using Adversarial Learning

text: Unlike traditional learning to rank models that depend on hand-crafted features, neural representation learning models learn higher level features for the ranking task by training on large datasets. Their ability to learn new features directly from the data, however, may come at a price. Without any special supervision, these models learn relationships that may hold only in the domain from which the training data is sampled, and generalize poorly to domains not observed during training. We study the effectiveness of adversarial learning as a cross domain regularizer in the context of the ranking task. We use an adversarial discriminator and train our neural ranking model on a small set of domains. The discriminator provides a negative feedback signal to discourage the model from learning domain specific representations. Our experiments show consistently better performance on held out domains in the presence of the adversarial discriminator---sometimes up to 30% on precision$@1$.


title: Occlusion-Free Visual Servoing for the Shared Autonomy Teleoperation of Dual-Arm Robots

text: Visual servoing in telerobotics provides information to the operator about the remote location and assists in the task execution to reduce stress on the user. Occlusions in this scenario can, on the one hand, lead to the visual servoing failure, and, on the other hand, degrade the user experience and navigation performance due to the obstructed vision of elements of interest. In this letter, we consider a teleoperation system composed of two robot arms where one is remotely operated, while the other is autonomous and equipped with an eye-in-hand camera sensor. We propose a reactive unified convex optimization based controller that allows the execution of occlusion-free tasks by autonomously adjusting the camera robot, so as to keep the teleoperated one in the field of view. The occlusion avoidance is formulated inside the optimization as a constraint in the image space, it is formally derived from a collision avoidance analogy and made robust against noisy measurements and dynamic environment. A state machine is used to switch the control policy whenever an occlusion might occur. We validate our approach with experiments on a 14 d.o.f. dual-arm ABB YuMi robot equipped with an red, green, blue (RGB) camera and teleoperated by a 3 d.o.f. Novint Falcon device.


title: Large-scale brain networks in cognition: emerging methods and principles

text: An understanding of how the human brain produces cognition ultimately depends on knowledge of large-scale brain organization. Although it has long been assumed that cognitive functions are attributable to the isolated operations of single brain areas, we demonstrate that the weight of evidence has now shifted in support of the view that cognition results from the dynamic interactions of distributed brain areas operating in large-scale networks. We review current research on structural and functional brain organization, and argue that the emerging science of large-scale brain networks provides a coherent framework for understanding of cognition. Critically, this framework allows a principled exploration of how cognitive functions emerge from, and are constrained by, core structural and functional networks of the brain.


title: The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale: translation and validation in university students.

text: The aim of this study was to translate into Spanish and to validate the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), completed by 420 university students. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the model that best fit the data, both in the total sample and in the male and female subsamples, was the one-factor structure with method effects associated with positively worded items. The results indicated high, positive correlations between self-esteem and the five dimensions of self-concept. The scale showed satisfactory levels of internal consistency and temporal stability over a four-week period. Lastly, gender differences were obtained. These findings support the use of the RSES for the assessment of self-esteem in higher education.


title: Teaching Computational Thinking Using Agile Software Engineering Methods: A Framework for Middle Schools

text: Computational Thinking (CT) has been recognized as one of the fundamental skills that all graduates should acquire. For this reason, motivational concerns need to be addressed at an early age of a child, and reaching students who do not consider themselves candidates for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines is important as well if the broadest audience possible is to be engaged. This article describes a framework for teaching and assessing CT in the context of K-12 education. The framework is based on Agile software engineering methods, which rely on a set of principles and practices that can be mapped to the activities of CT. The article presents as well the results of an experiment applying this framework in two sixth-grade classes, with 42 participants in total. The results show that Agile software engineering methods are effective at teaching CT in middle schools, after the addition of some tasks to allow students to explore, project, and experience the potential product before using the software tools at hand. Moreover, according to the teachers’ feedback, the students reached all the educational objectives of the topics involved in the multidisciplinary activities. This result can be taken as an indicator that it is possible to use computing as a medium for teaching other subjects, besides computer science.


title: 1 Pavement distress detection methods : a review 2

text: The road pavement condition affects safety and comfort, traffic and travel times, vehicles 8 operating cost and emission levels. In order to optimize the road pavement management and 9 guarantee satisfactory mobility conditions for all the road users, the Pavement Management 10 System (PMS) is an effective tool for the road manager. An effective PMS requires the availability of 11 pavement distress data, the possibility of data maintenance and updating, in order to evaluate the 12 best maintenance program. In the last decade, many researches have been focused on pavement 13 distress detection, using a huge variety of technological solutions for both data collection and 14 information extraction and qualification. This paper presents a literature review of data collection 15 systems and processing approach aimed at the pavement condition evaluation. Both commercial 16 solutions and research approaches have been included. The main goal is to draw a framework of 17 the actual existing solutions, considering them from a different point of view in order to identify 18 the most suitable for further research and technical improvement, also considering the automated 19 and semi-automated emerging technologies. An important attempt is to evaluate the aptness of the 20 data collection and extraction to the type of distress, considering the distress detection, 21 classification and quantification phases of the procedure. 22


title: A Unified Local and Global Model for Discourse Coherence

text: We present a model for discourse coherence which combines the local entitybased approach of (Barzilay and Lapata, 2005) and the HMM-based content model of (Barzilay and Lee, 2004). Unlike the mixture model of (Soricut and Marcu, 2006), we learn local and global features jointly, providing a better theoretical explanation of how they are useful. As the local component of our model we adapt (Barzilay and Lapata, 2005) by relaxing independence assumptions so that it is effective when estimated generatively. Our model performs the ordering task competitively with (Soricut and Marcu, 2006), and significantly better than either of the models it is based on.


title: A knowledge-based table recognition method for Chinese bank statement images

text: Automatic processing of large volume scanned Chinese bank statements is a urgent demand recently. Conventional methods can not well handle the following challenges of this problem: various layout styles, noises, and especially requirement of fast speed for large Chinese character set. This paper proposes a knowledge based table recognition method to meet fast speed requirement with good accuracy. Two kinds of knowledge are utilized to accelerate the identification of digit columns and the cell recognition: i) geometric knowledge about column alignment and quasi equal digit width, and ii) semantic knowledge about prior format based on the results from an optical character recognition (OCR) engine of digits. Experimental results on a real dataset show the effectiveness of our method.


title: Artificial Neural Network Method for Solution of Boundary Value Problems With Exact Satisfaction of Arbitrary Boundary Conditions

text: A method for solving boundary value problems (BVPs) is introduced using artificial neural networks (ANNs) for irregular domain boundaries with mixed Dirichlet/Neumann boundary conditions (BCs). The approximate ANN solution automatically satisfies BCs at all stages of training, including before training commences. This method is simpler than other ANN methods for solving BVPs due to its unconstrained nature and because automatic satisfaction of Dirichlet BCs provides a good starting approximate solution for significant portions of the domain. Automatic satisfaction of BCs is accomplished by the introduction of an innovative length factor. Several examples of BVP solution are presented for both linear and nonlinear differential equations in two and three dimensions. Error norms in the approximate solution on the order of 10-4 to 10-5 are reported for all example problems.


title: Promoting tourism destinations : A strategic marketing approach

text: Introduction This paper outlines the main topics of a report prepared for the Tourism Promotion Committee (TPC) in Heraklion District, Crete. This body is responsible for coordinating marketing activities and promoting its area. Its membership is composed of the main public and private sector organizations involved in providing tourism services in Crete. The report was compiled for TPC by the first author, who has been closely involved in the development of tourism marketing and planning on Crete for over ten years. It was commissioned with the aim of improving the destination’s marketing effectiveness and efficiency. The task assigned was to provide a report (i) reviewing the marketing activities undertaken by the TPC; (ii) providing the appropriate approach to be adopted and implemented in promoting Heraklion as tourism destination; and (iii) giving a set of recommendations for key areas requiring improvement. Marios D. Soteriades and Vasiliki A. Avgeli


title: Zoomorphic design

text: Zoomorphic shapes are man-made shapes that possess the form or appearance of an animal. They have desirable aesthetic properties, but are difficult to create using conventional modeling tools. We present a method for creating zoomorphic shapes by merging a man-made shape and an animal shape. To identify a pair of shapes that are suitable for merging, we use an efficient graph kernel based technique. We formulate the merging process as a continuous optimization problem where the two shapes are deformed jointly to minimize an energy function combining several design factors. The modeler can adjust the weighting between these factors to attain high-level control over the final shape produced. A novel technique ensures that the zoomorphic shape does not violate the design restrictions of the man-made shape. We demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of our approach by generating a wide variety of zoomorphic shapes.


Differential Cryptanalysis of the Data Encryption Standard


This paper discusses some aspects of testing random and pseudorandom number generators. A Statistical Test Suite for Random and Pseudorandom Number Generators for Cryptographic Applications (NIST Special Publication) is presented. This paper also demonstrates the software implementation of the test suite with output protocols and presents experiences from testing some random and pseudorandom generators.


title: A New Iterative Secret Key Cryptosystem Based on Reversible and Irreversible Cellular Automata

text: Many cryptosystems have been released to secure electronic data on internet. Some data are very critical to be transmitted as plaintext. Thus, to ensure the data confidentiality and integrity, a list of cryptosystems have been elaborated. The most important ones are divided into two categories: symmetric algorithms encrypting and decrypting data in blocks using a single secret key; and asymmetric algorithms using public keys to cipher texts and secret keys to reconstruct plaintexts. The of the present work is the design and implement a new secret key cryptosystem encrypting and decrypting data in blocks according to a number of iterations. Each plaintext block is encrypted using cellular automata and a list of sub keys deduced from a secret key through cellular automata. To demonstrate the feasibility, the proposed scheme is compared with AES algorithm, the well-known symmetric block cipher. We prove that our algorithm resists against statistical attacks and it is faster than AES-256 achieving good confusion and diffusion tests.


title: Differential Cryptanalysis of Feal and N-Hash

text: In 1,2] we introduced the notion of diierential cryptanalysis and described its application to DESS11] and several of its variants. In this paper we show the applicability of diierential cryptanalysis to the Feal family of encryption algorithms and to the N-Hash hash function. In addition, we show how to transform diierential cryptanalytic chosen plaintext attacks into known plaintext attacks.


title: A new kind of science

text: The distinctive idea is easy to state, though it needs some examples to appreciate. It is that simple rules can generate complex very complex outcomes when they are repeatedly applied. Isolated examples of this phenomenon have been known for centuries. For example, the number p has a simple definition the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and there is a quite simple formula to calculate its digits. The result begins: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640 6286208998628034825342117068...


title: Fixed-point algorithms for learning determinantal point processes

text: Determinantal point processes (DPPs) offer an elegant tool for encoding probabilities over subsets of a ground set. Discrete DPPs are parametrized by a positive semidefinite matrix (called the DPP kernel), and estimating this kernel is key to learning DPPs from observed data. We consider the task of learning the DPP kernel, and develop for it a surprisingly simple yet effective new algorithm. Our algorithm offers the following benefits over previous approaches: (a) it is much simpler; (b) it yields equally good and sometimes even better local maxima; and (c) it runs an order of magnitude faster on large problems. We present experimental results on both real and simulated data to illustrate the numerical performance of our technique.


title: Stock Market Prediction based on Time Series Data and Market Sentiment

text: In this project, we would like to create a system that predicts stock market movements on a given day, based on time series data and market sentiment analysis. We will use Twitter data on that day to predict the market sentiment and S&P 500 values to perform analysis on historical data.


title: An Automated Approach for Digital Forensic Analysis of Heterogeneous Big Data

text: The major challenges with big data examination and analysis are volume, complex interdependence across content, and heterogeneity. The examination and analysis phases are considered essential to a digital forensics process. However, traditional techniques for the forensic investigation use one or more forensic tools to examine and analyse each resource. In addition, when multiple resources are included in one case, there is an inability to cross-correlate findings which often leads to inefficiencies in processing and identifying evidence. Furthermore, most current forensics tools cannot cope with large volumes of data. This paper develops a novel framework for digital forensic analysis of heterogeneous big data. The framework mainly focuses upon the investigations of three core issues: data volume, heterogeneous data and the investigators cognitive load in understanding the relationships between artefacts. The proposed approach focuses upon the use of metadata to solve the data volume problem, semantic web ontologies to solve the heterogeneous data sources and artificial intelligence models to support the automated identification and correlation of artefacts to reduce the burden placed upon the investigator to understand the nature and relationship of the artefacts.


title: Application of Katharine Kolkaba Comfort theory to nursing care of patient

text: aring is in practice since existence but caring as profession named Nursing was scientifically Coined by the founder of modern nursing who in her writings “what it is and what it is not”declared the boundaries along with its Constitutional elements. Those elements with appropriate association not only revealed the nature of caring dogma it also shows that it is doing something base on thinking something or in simple words this is practice rely on theory. According to McCrae, (2011) For the sake of assuming valuable status ofprofession in society nursing struggle to legitimate its position by generation and application of theory. Nursing literature is rich regarding theory practice association. although constant body of argument, counter argument and lack of agreed conclusion regarding nursing theory creates a bit confusion among nurses but ideally nursing theory should set the code of every day practice of nurses(Giltinane, 2013) as lack of a valued unique contribution nurses make to health care based on a specialized body of knowledge will portrayed nursing role as subordinate to doctor (Mccrae, 2011) Eminent nurses’ theorist, scientist, Researchers, Clinicians, Educators and intellectual intelligentsia aid evidence to different perspectives of theory practice link. Some unanimous convincing narratives argue that the relationship is reciprocal and according to (Mckenna, 2005) Nursing theory takes its origin from practice, than reverse to practice for testing and at the end become set to guide the practice.


title: The impact of social and conventional media on firm equity value: A sentiment analysis approach

text: Available online 30 December 2012


title: Applying autonomous sensor systems in logistics — Combining sensor networks , RFIDs and software agents

text: New sensor, communication and software technologies are used to broaden the facilities of tracing and tracing systems for food transports. n embedded assessing unit detects from sensor data collected by a wireless network potential risks for the freight quality. The estimation of he current maturing state of agricultural products will be supported by measurements of the gaseous hormone ethylene as an indicator for the ipening processes. A miniaturized high-resolution gas chromatography is under construction. The system autonomously configures itself to a roduct specific supervision task based on data scanned by an RFID reader during freight loading. Mobile software agents accompany the freight long the supply chain. They pre-process the vast sensor data and submit only substantial changes to the freight owner. 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


title: Data Collection and Wireless Communication in Internet of Things (IoT) Using Economic Analysis and Pricing Models: A Survey

text: This paper provides a state-of-the-art literature review on economic analysis and pricing models for data collection and wireless communication in Internet of Things (IoT). Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are the main components of IoT which collect data from the environment and transmit the data to the sink nodes. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust designs to address many issues, e.g., data collection, topology formation, packet forwarding, resource and power optimization, coverage optimization, efficient task allocation, and security. For these issues, sensors have to make optimal decisions from current capabilities and available strategies to achieve desirable goals. This paper reviews numerous applications of the economic and pricing models, known as intelligent rational decision-making methods, to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Besides, we survey a variety of pricing strategies in providing incentives for phone users in crowdsensing applications to contribute their sensing data. Furthermore, we consider the use of some pricing models in machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. Finally, we highlight some important open research issues as well as future research directions of applying economic and pricing models to IoT.


title: Near-Duplicates Detection and Elimination Based on Web Provenance for Effective Web Search

text: Users of World Wide Web utilize search engines for information retrieval in web as search engines play a vital role in finding information on the web. However, the performance of a web search is greatly affected by flooding of search results with information that is redundant in nature i.e., existence of nearduplicates. Such near-duplicates holdup the other promising results to the users. Many of these near-duplicates are from distrusted websites and/or authors who host information on web. Such nearduplicates may be eliminated by means of Provenance. Thus, this paper proposes a novel approach to identify such near-duplicates based on provenance. In this approach a provenance model has been built using web pages which are the search results returned by existing search engine. The proposed model combines both content based and trust based factors for classifying the results as original or near-duplicates. Keywords— Web search, Near-duplicates, Provenance, Semantics,


title: Schemaless NoSQL Data Stores - Object-NoSQL Mappers to the Rescue?

text: NoSQL data stores are becoming increasingly popular in application development. These systems are attractive for developers due to their ability to handle large volumes of data, as well as data with a high degree of structural variety. Typically, NoSQL data stores are accessed programmatically. Due to the imminent lack of standardized query languages, building applications against the native interfaces of NoSQL data stores creates an unfortunate technical lock-in. To re-gain platform independence, developers turn to object mapper libraries as an additional level of abstraction when accessing NoSQL data stores. The current market for Java object mappers that support NoSQL data stores is still volatile, with commercial and open source products competing for adoption. In this paper, we give an overview on the state-of-the-art in Object-Relational Mappers that can handle also NoSQL data stores, as well as dedicated Object-NoSQL Mappers. We are able to show that choosing the right object mapper library is a strategic decision with far reaching consequences: Current mappers diverge in the NoSQL data stores that they support, in their features, their robustness, their truthfulness to the documentation and query standards, and ultimately, in the runtime overhead that they introduce. Especially in web development, runtime overhead is a crucial aspect contributing to the application latency, and ultimately, the user experience. By shedding light on the current market, we intend to provide software architects with the necessary information to make informed decisions.


title: Efficient Image Dehazing with Boundary Constraint and Contextual Regularization

text: Images captured in foggy weather conditions often suffer from bad visibility. In this paper, we propose an efficient regularization method to remove hazes from a single input image. Our method benefits much from an exploration on the inherent boundary constraint on the transmission function. This constraint, combined with a weighted L1-norm based contextual regularization, is modeled into an optimization problem to estimate the unknown scene transmission. A quite efficient algorithm based on variable splitting is also presented to solve the problem. The proposed method requires only a few general assumptions and can restore a high-quality haze-free image with faithful colors and fine image details. Experimental results on a variety of haze images demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.


title: Trust in Online Shopping: The Korean Student Experience

text: E-commerce has become an important part of business. In South Korea, the market size of online shopping malls was 13,460 billion Korean Won in 2006, and this figure keeps growing. Thus, gaining loyal customers has become a rising concern. In this study, we adopted Lewicki and Bunker's three different types of trust, namely, calculus-based trust, knowledge-based trust, and identification-based trust, in order to investigate their hierarchical relationships in e-commerce and their impacts on customer satisfaction and loyalty. A total of 104 responses from university students were analyzed to test the proposed model and its hypotheses using PLS. The results showed that hierarchical relationships between different types of trust exist in the online environment, and among them, knowledge-based trust has the strongest impact on customer satisfaction. This finding implied that practitioners should focus on developing an appropriate online strategy in terms of how to build up trust-based relationships with online customers.


title: Music-based respiratory biofeedback in visually-demanding tasks

text: Biofeedback tools generally use visualizations to display physiological information to the user. As such, these tools are incompatible with visually demanding tasks such as driving. While auditory or haptic biofeedback may be used in these cases, the additional sensory channels can increase workload or act as a nuisance to the user. A number of studies, however, have shown that music can improve mood and concentration, while also reduce aggression and boredom. Here, we propose an intervention that combines the benefits of biofeedback and music to help users regulate their stress response while performing a visual task (driving a car simulator). Our approach encourages slow breathing by adjusting the quality of the music in response to the user’s breathing rate. We evaluate the intervention on a design with music and auditory biofeedback as independent variables. Our results indicate that our music-biofeedback intervention leads to lower arousal (reduced electrodermal activity and increased heart rate variability) than music alone, auditory biofeedback alone and a control condition.


title: Graph databases: A survey

text: In the era of big data, data analytics, business intelligence database management plays a vital role from technical business management and research point of view. Over many decades, database management has been a topic of active research. There are different type of database management system have been proposed over a period of time but Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is the one which has been most popularly used in academic research as well as industrial setup[1]. In recent years, graph databases regained interest among the researchers for certain obvious reasons. One of the most important reasons for such an interest in a graph database is because of the inherent property of graphs as a graph structure. Graphs are present everywhere in the data structure, which represents the strong connectivity within the data. Most of the graph database models are defined in which data-structure for schema and instances are modeled as graph or generalization of a graph. In such graph database models, data manipulations are expressed by graph-oriented operations and type constructors [9]. Now days, most of the real world applications can be modeled as a graph and one of the best real world examples is social or biological network. This paper gives an overview of the different type of graph databases, applications, and comparison between their models based on some properties.


title: Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality, Second Edition

text: The best ebooks about Fundamentals Of Wearable Computers And Augmented Reality Second Edition that you can get for free here by download this Fundamentals Of Wearable Computers And Augmented Reality Second Edition and save to your desktop. This ebooks is under topic such as fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality 11 location-based mixed and augmented reality storytelling fundamentals of wearable computers and augmented reality forum book review mit press journals the vietnam war revised 2nd edition ebook | slangsurfing dicom to 3d holograms: use case for augmented reality in pensees de j j rousseau citoyen de geneve v1 2 1785 ebook click here to access this book : free download amendment xivequal protection constitutional amendments solutions manual to fundamentals of engineering document about distant mirrors america as a foreign regeneration of peasants slangsurfing the cell ebook | esmajorelojes il buddhismo contemporaneo italian edition ebook | slanggeek proceedings of a court of inquiryconvened at the navy answer coming soonmore blog postings on arts letters the travel and tropical medicine manual 4e ebook fundamentals of sql server 2012 replication


title: The State of Public Infrastructure-as-a-Service Cloud Security

text: The public Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud industry has reached a critical mass in the past few years, with many cloud service providers fielding competing services. Despite the competition, we find some of the security mechanisms offered by the services to be similar, indicating that the cloud industry has established a number of “best-practices,” while other security mechanisms vary widely, indicating that there is also still room for innovation and experimentation. We investigate these differences and possible underlying reasons for it. We also contrast the security mechanisms offered by public IaaS cloud offerings and with security mechanisms proposed by academia over the same period. Finally, we speculate on how industry and academia might work together to solve the pressing security problems in public IaaS clouds going forward.


title: Researching Mental Health Disorders in the Era of Social Media: Systematic Review

text:
BACKGROUND
Mental illness is quickly becoming one of the most prevalent public health problems worldwide. Social network platforms, where users can express their emotions, feelings, and thoughts, are a valuable source of data for researching mental health, and techniques based on machine learning are increasingly used for this purpose.

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this review was to explore the scope and limits of cutting-edge techniques that researchers are using for predictive analytics in mental health and to review associated issues, such as ethical concerns, in this area of research.

METHODS
We performed a systematic literature review in March 2017, using keywords to search articles on data mining of social network data in the context of common mental health disorders, published between 2010 and March 8, 2017 in medical and computer science journals.

RESULTS
The initial search returned a total of 5386 articles. Following a careful analysis of the titles, abstracts, and main texts, we selected 48 articles for review. We coded the articles according to key characteristics, techniques used for data collection, data preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection, model construction, and model verification. The most common analytical method was text analysis, with several studies using different flavors of image analysis and social interaction graph analysis.

CONCLUSIONS
Despite an increasing number of studies investigating mental health issues using social network data, some common problems persist. Assembling large, high-quality datasets of social media users with mental disorder is problematic, not only due to biases associated with the collection methods, but also with regard to managing consent and selecting appropriate analytics techniques.


title: Advances in geometric modeling and feature extraction on pots

text: This paper outlines progress on the 3DK Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence project undertaken by the Partnership for Research In Stereo Modeling (PRISM) at Arizona State University. Three of the six 3DK pilot projects of this National Science Foundation funded project involve archaeological and biological material, namely ceramic vessels, lithic artifacts, and bones. These projects are: (1) “3D Morphology of Ceramic Vessels” which aims to learn about vessel uniformity and proportionality as indicators of developing craft specialization and complex social organization among prehistoric cultures; (2) “Lithic Refitting” which intends to develop the algorithms required to (partially) automate the refitting process through 3D scanning and surface modeling; and finally (3) “3D Topography of Joint Surfaces” which investigates the ability of human ancestors to make tools and walk upright by developing software that will automate segmentation of osteological features and quantify the surface area and curvature of joint surfaces and the congruency between reciprocal joint surfaces, allowing for the development of biomechanical models. This paper discusses the links between these three unique projects and explores the underlying research aspects common to all: geometric modeling, feature recognition, and the development of a database structure aimed at making 3D models of these artifacts available online for query.


title: A Comparison of Knives for Bread Slicing

text: Vertical partitioning is a crucial step in physical database design in row-oriented databases. A number of vertical partitioning algorithms have been proposed over the last three decades for a variety of niche scenarios. In principle, the underlying problem remains the same: decompose a table into one or more vertical partitions. However, it is not clear how good different vertical partitioning algorithms are in comparison to each other. In fact, it is not even clear how to experimentally compare different vertical partitioning algorithms. In this paper, we present an exhaustive experimental study of several vertical partitioning algorithms. We categorize vertical partitioning algorithms along three dimensions. We survey six vertical partitioning algorithms and discuss their pros and cons. We identify the major differences in the use-case settings for different algorithms and describe how to make an apples-to-apples comparison of different vertical partitioning algorithms under the same setting. We propose four metrics to compare vertical partitioning algorithms. We show experimental results from the TPC-H and SSB benchmark and present four key lessons learned: (1) we can do four orders of magnitude less computation and still find the optimal layouts, (2) the benefits of vertical partitioning depend strongly on the database buffer size, (3) HillClimb is the best vertical partitioning algorithm, and (4) vertical partitioning for TPC-H-like benchmarks can improve over column layout by only up to 5%.


title: Large-scale PV system based on the multiphase isolated DC/DC converter

text: The large-scale photovoltaic (PV) systems have already been reached 200 MW power level and they will continue to grow in size in the upcoming years. This trend will challenge the existing PV system architectures by requiring power converters with a higher power rating and a higher voltage level at the point of common coupling (PCC). The cascaded H-bridge (CHB) multilevel converter is one of the solutions which could deal with the aforementioned challenges. However, the topology based on the CHB converter faces the issue of leakage current that flows through the solar panel parasitic capacitance to ground which could damage the PV panels and pose safety problems. This paper proposes a multiphase isolated DC/DC converter for the CHB topology for a large-scale PV system which eliminates the leakage current issue. At the same time, the multiphase structure of the DC/DC converter helps to increase the power rating of the converter and to reduce the PV voltage and current ripples. A 0.54 MW rated seven-level CHB converter using multiphase isolated DC/DC converters has been modeled and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink and PLECS Blockset. Simulation results of different case studies are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed PV system configuration.


title: Word Sense Induction for Novel Sense Detection

text: We apply topic modelling to automatically induce word senses of a target word, and demonstrate that our word sense induction method can be used to automatically detect words with emergent novel senses, as well as token occurrences of those senses. We start by exploring the utility of standard topic models for word sense induction (WSI), with a pre-determined number of topics (=senses). We next demonstrate that a non-parametric formulation that learns an appropriate number of senses per word actually performs better at the WSI task. We go on to establish state-of-the-art results over two WSI datasets, and apply the proposed model to a novel sense detection task.


title: A theory of visual attention.

text: A unified theory of visual recognition and attentional selection is developed by integrating the biased-choice model for single-stimulus recognition (Luce, 1963; Shepard, 1957) with a choice model for selection from multielement displays (Bundesen, Pedersen, & Larsen, 1984) in a race model framework. Mathematically, the theory is tractable, and it specifies the computations necessary for selection. The theory is applied to extant findings from a broad range of experimental paradigms. The findings include effects of object integrality in selective report, number and spatial position of targets in divided-attention paradigms, selection criterion and number of distracters in focused-attention paradigms, delay of selection cue in partial report, and consistent practice in search. On the whole, the quantitative fits are encouraging.


title: Exercise prescription for overhead athletes with shoulder pathology: a systematic review with best evidence synthesis.

text:
OBJECTIVE
To produce a best evidence synthesis of exercise prescription used when treating shoulder pathology in the overhead athlete.

DESIGN
A systematic review of exercises used in overhead athletes including case studies and clinical commentaries.

DATA SOURCES
MEDLINE, PubMed, SPORTDiscus and CINAHL from database inception through July 8, 2016.

METHODS
We examined data from randomised controlled trials and prospective cohort (level I-IV evidence) studies that addressed exercise intervention in the rehabilitation of the overhead athlete with shoulder pathology. Case studies and clinical commentaries (level V evidence) were examined to account for expert opinion-based research. Data were combined using best evidence synthesis and graded (A-F) recommendations (Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine).

RESULTS
There were 33 unique exercises in six level I-IV studies that met our inclusion criteria. Most exercises were single-plane, upper extremity exercises performed below 90o of elevation. There were 102 unique exercises in 33 level V studies that met our inclusion criteria. These exercises emphasised plyometrics, kinetic chain and sport-specific training.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Overall, evidence for exercise interventions in overhead athletes with shoulder pathology is dominated by expert opinion (grade D). There is great variability between exercise approaches suggested by experts and those investigated in research studies and the overall level of evidence is low. The strongest available evidence (level B) supports the use of single-plane, open chain upper extremity exercises performed below 90° of elevation and closed chain upper extremity exercises. Clinical expert pieces support a more advanced, global treatment approach consistent with the complex, multidimensional nature of sport.


title: No Free Lunch Theorems: Limitations and Perspectives of Metaheuristics

text: The No Free Lunch (NFL) theorems for search and optimization are reviewed and their implications for the design of metaheurist ics are discussed. The theorems state that any two search or optimization algorith ms are equivalent when their performance is averaged across all possible problems and even over subsets of problems fulfilling certain constraints. The NFL results show that if there is no assumption regarding the relation between visited and unse en arch points, efficient search and optimization is impossible. There is no wel l performing universal metaheuristic, but the heuristics must be tailored to the pr oblem class at hand using prior knowledge. In practice, it is not likely that the pr econditions of the NFL theorems are fulfilled for a problem class and thus differenc es between algorithms exist. Therefore, tailored algorithms can exploit structu re nderlying the optimization problem. Given full knowledge about the problem class, it i in theory possible to construct an optimal algorithm.


title: Comparing support vector machines with Gaussian kernels to radial basis function classifiers

text: The support vector (SV) machine is a novel type of learning machine, based on statistical learning theory, which contains polynomial classifiers, neural networks, and radial basis function (RBF) networks as special cases. In the RBF case, the SV algorithm automatically determines centers, weights, and threshold that minimize an upper bound on the expected test error. The present study is devoted to an experimental comparison of these machines with a classical approach, where the centers are determined byk-means clustering, and the weights are computed using error backpropagation. We consider three machines, namely, a classical RBF machine, an SV machine with Gaussian kernel, and a hybrid system with the centers determined by the SV method and the weights trained by error backpropagation. Our results show that on the United States postal service database of handwritten digits, the SV machine achieves the highest recognition accuracy, followed by the hybrid system. The SV approach is thus not only theoretically wellfounded but also superior in a practical application.


title: Fundamental Limitations on Search Algorithms: Evolutionary Computing in Perspective

text: The past twenty years has seen a rapid growth of interest in stochastic search algorithms, particularly those inspired by natural processes in physics and biology. Impressive results have been demonstrated on complex practical optimisation problems and related search applications taken from a variety of fields, but the theoretical understanding of these algorithms remains weak. This results partly from the insufficient attention that has been paid to results showing certain fundamental limitations on universal search algorithms, including the so-called “No Free Lunch” Theorem. This paper extends these results and draws out some of their implications for the design of search algorithms, and for the construction of useful representations. The resulting insights focus attention on tailoring algorithms and representations to particular problem classes by exploiting domain knowledge. This highlights the fundamental importance of gaining a better theoretical grasp of the ways in which such knowledge may be systematically exploited as a major research agenda for the future.


title: Design and Implementation of an FPGA-Based Real-Time Face Recognition System

text: Face recognition systems play a vital role in many applications including surveillance, biometrics and security. In this work, we present a {\textit complete} real-time face recognition system consisting of a face detection, a recognition and a down sampling module using an FPGA. Our system provides an end-to-end solution for face recognition, it receives video input from a camera, detects the locations of the face(s) using the Viola-Jones algorithm, subsequently recognizes each face using the Eigenface algorithm, and outputs the results to a display. Experimental results show that our complete face recognition system operates at 45 frames per second on a Virtex-5 FPGA.


title: The origins and the future of microfluidics

text: The manipulation of fluids in channels with dimensions of tens of micrometres — microfluidics — has emerged as a distinct new field. Microfluidics has the potential to influence subject areas from chemical synthesis and biological analysis to optics and information technology. But the field is still at an early stage of development. Even as the basic science and technological demonstrations develop, other problems must be addressed: choosing and focusing on initial applications, and developing strategies to complete the cycle of development, including commercialization. The solutions to these problems will require imagination and ingenuity.


title: Novel Low-Density Signature for Synchronous CDMA Systems Over AWGN Channel

text: Novel low-density signature (LDS) structure is proposed for transmission and detection of symbol-synchronous communication over memoryless Gaussian channel. Given N as the processing gain, under this new arrangement, users' symbols are spread over N chips but virtually only dv < N chips that contain nonzero-values. The spread symbol is then so uniquely interleaved as the sampled, at chip rate, received signal contains the contribution from only dc < K number of users, where K denotes the total number of users in the system. Furthermore, a near-optimum chip-level iterative soft-in-soft-out (SISO) multiuser decoding (MUD), which is based on message passing algorithm (MPA) technique, is proposed to approximate optimum detection by efficiently exploiting the LDS structure. Given beta = K/N as the system loading, our simulation suggested that the proposed system alongside the proposed detection technique, in AWGN channel, can achieve an overall performance that is close to single-user performance, even when the system has 200% loading, i.e., when beta = 2. Its robustness against near-far effect and its performance behavior that is very similar to optimum detection are demonstrated in this paper. In addition, the complexity required for detection is now exponential to dc instead of K as in conventional code division multiple access (CDMA) structure employing optimum multiuser detector.


title: Automatic feature extraction for multiview 3D face recognition

text: Current 2D face recognition systems encounter difficulties in recognizing faces with large pose variations. Utilizing the pose-invariant features of 3D face data has the potential to handle multiview face matching. A feature extractor based on the directional maximum is proposed to estimate the nose tip location and the pose angle simultaneously. A nose profile model represented by subspaces is used to select the best candidates for the nose tip. Assisted by a statistical feature location model, a multimodal scheme is presented to extract eye and mouth corners. Using the automatic feature extractor, a fully automatic 3D face recognition system is developed. The system is evaluated on two databases, the MSU database (300 multiview test scans from 100 subjects) and the UND database (953 near frontal scans from 277 subjects). The automatic system provides recognition accuracy that is comparable to the accuracy of a system with manually labeled feature points


title: A Survey of Location Prediction on Twitter

text: Locations, e.g., countries, states, cities, and point-of-interests, are central to news, emergency events, and people's daily lives. Automatic identification of locations associated with or mentioned in documents has been explored for decades. As one of the most popular online social network platforms, Twitter has attracted a large number of users who send millions of tweets on daily basis. Due to the world-wide coverage of its users and real-time freshness of tweets, location prediction on Twitter has gained significant attention in recent years. Research efforts are spent on dealing with new challenges and opportunities brought by the noisy, short, and context-rich nature of tweets. In this survey, we aim at offering an overall picture of location prediction on Twitter. Specifically, we concentrate on the prediction of user home locations, tweet locations, and mentioned locations. We first define the three tasks and review the evaluation metrics. By summarizing Twitter network, tweet content, and tweet context as potential inputs, we then structurally highlight how the problems depend on these inputs. Each dependency is illustrated by a comprehensive review of the corresponding strategies adopted in state-of-the-art approaches. In addition, we also briefly review two related problems, i.e., semantic location prediction and point-of-interest recommendation. Finally, we make a conclusion of the survey and list future research directions.


title: Sense-Aaware Semantic Analysis: A Multi-Prototype Word Representation Model Using Wikipedia

text: Human languages are naturally ambiguous, which makes it difficult to automatically understand the semantics of text. Most vector space models (VSM) treat all occurrences of a word as the same and build a single vector to represent the meaning of a word, which fails to capture any ambiguity. We present sense-aware semantic analysis (SaSA), a multi-prototype VSM for word representation based on Wikipedia, which could account for homonymy and polysemy. The “sense-specific” prototypes of a word are produced by clustering Wikipedia pages based on both local and global contexts of the word in Wikipedia. Experimental evaluation on semantic relatedness for both isolated words and words in sentential contexts and word sense induction demonstrate its effectiveness.


title: Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry: New estimates of R&D costs.

text: The research and development costs of 106 randomly selected new drugs were obtained from a survey of 10 pharmaceutical firms. These data were used to estimate the average pre-tax cost of new drug and biologics development. The costs of compounds abandoned during testing were linked to the costs of compounds that obtained marketing approval. The estimated average out-of-pocket cost per approved new compound is $1395 million (2013 dollars). Capitalizing out-of-pocket costs to the point of marketing approval at a real discount rate of 10.5% yields a total pre-approval cost estimate of $2558 million (2013 dollars). When compared to the results of the previous study in this series, total capitalized costs were shown to have increased at an annual rate of 8.5% above general price inflation. Adding an estimate of post-approval R&D costs increases the cost estimate to $2870 million (2013 dollars).


title: An Approach for Selecting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Product

text: Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) helps organizations avoid capital expenditure and pay for the functionality as an operational expenditure. Though enterprises are unlikely to use SaaS model for all their information systems needs, certain business functionalities such as Sales Force Automation (SFA), are more seen to be implemented using SaaS model. Such demand has prompted quite a few vendors to offer SFA functionality as SaaS. Enterprises need to adopt an objective approach to ensure they select the most appropriate SaaS product for their needs. This paper presents an approach that makes use of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique for prioritizing the product features and also for expert-led scoring of the products.


title: A Hotel Recommendation System Based on Collaborative Filtering and Rankboost Algorithm

text: A hotel recommendation system based on collaborative filtering method of clustering and Rankboost algorithm proposed in this paper, which can avoid the cold-start and scalability problems existing in traditional collaborative filtering. One can find a hotel quickly and efficiently when he uses this hotel recommendation system.


title: Trust management of services in cloud environments: Obstacles and solutions

text: Trust management is one of the most challenging issues in the emerging cloud computing area. Over the past few years, many studies have proposed different techniques to address trust management issues. However, despite these past efforts, several trust management issues such as identification, privacy, personalization, integration, security, and scalability have been mostly neglected and need to be addressed before cloud computing can be fully embraced. In this article, we present an overview of the cloud service models and we survey the main techniques and research prototypes that efficiently support trust management of services in cloud environments. We present a generic analytical framework that assesses existing trust management research prototypes in cloud computing and relevant areas using a set of assessment criteria. Open research issues for trust management in cloud environments are also discussed.


title: Massively-Parallel Lossless Data Decompression

text: Today's exponentially increasing data volumes and the high cost of storage make compression essential for the Big Data industry. Although research has concentrated on efficient compression, fast decompression is critical for analytics queries that repeatedly read compressed data. While decompression can be parallelized somewhat by assigning each data block to a different process, break-through speed-ups require exploiting the massive parallelism of modern multi-core processors and GPUs for data decompression within a block. We propose two new techniques to increase the degree of parallelism during decompression. The first technique exploits the massive parallelism of GPU and SIMD architectures. The second sacrifices some compression efficiency to eliminate data dependencies that limit parallelism during decompression. We evaluate these techniques on the decompressor of the DEFLATE scheme, called Inflate, which is based on LZ77 compression and Huffman encoding. We achieve a 2× speed-up in a head-to-head comparison with several multi core CPU-based libraries, while achieving a 17% energy saving with comparable compression ratios.


title: A task description language for robot control

text: Robot systems must achieve high level goals while remaining reactive to contingencies and new opportunities. This typically requires robot systems to coordinate concurrent activities, monitor the environment, and deal with exceptions. We have developed a new language to support such task-level control. The language, TDL, is an extension of C++ that provides syntactic support for task decomposition, synchronization, execution monitoring, and exception handling. A compiler transforms TDL into pure C++ code that utilizes a platform-independent task management library. This paper introduces TDL, describes the task treerepresentation that underlies the language, and presents some aspects of its implementation and use in an autonomous mobile robot.


title: Contrast masking in human vision.

text: Contrast masking was studied psychophysically. A two-alternative forced-choice procedure was used to measure contrast thresholds for 2.0 cpd sine-wave gratings in the presence of masking sine-wave gratings. Thresholds were measured for 11 masker contrasts spanning three log units, and seven masker frequencies ranging +/- one octave from the signal frequency. Corresponding measurements were made for gratings with horizontal widths of 0.75 degrees (narrow fields) and 6.0 degrees (wide fields). For high contrast maskers at all frequencies, signal thresholds were related to masking contrast by power functions with exponents near 0.6. For a range of low masking contrasts, signal thresholds were reduced by the masker. For the wide fields, high contrast masking tuning functions peaked at the signal frequency, were slightly asymmetric, and had approximately invariant half-maximum frequencies that lie 3/4 octave below and 1 octave above the signal frequency. The corresponding low contrast tuning functions exhibited peak threshold reduction at the signal frequency, with half-minimum frequencies at roughly +/- 0.25 octaves. For the narrow fields, the masking tuning functions were much broader at both low and high masking contrasts. A masking model is presented that encompasses contrast detection, discrimination, and masking phenomena. Central constructs of the model include a linear spatial frequency filter, a nonlinear transducer, and a process of spatial pooling that acts at low contrasts only.


title: Stages of embryonic development of the zebrafish.

text: We describe a series of stages for development of the embryo of the zebrafish, Danio (Brachydanio) rerio. We define seven broad periods of embryogenesis--the zygote, cleavage, blastula, gastrula, segmentation, pharyngula, and hatching periods. These divisions highlight the changing spectrum of major developmental processes that occur during the first 3 days after fertilization, and we review some of what is known about morphogenesis and other significant events that occur during each of the periods. Stages subdivide the periods. Stages are named, not numbered as in most other series, providing for flexibility and continued evolution of the staging series as we learn more about development in this species. The stages, and their names, are based on morphological features, generally readily identified by examination of the live embryo with the dissecting stereomicroscope. The descriptions also fully utilize the optical transparancy of the live embryo, which provides for visibility of even very deep structures when the embryo is examined with the compound microscope and Nomarski interference contrast illumination. Photomicrographs and composite camera lucida line drawings characterize the stages pictorially. Other figures chart the development of distinctive characters used as staging aid signposts.


Large-scale cost function learning for path planning using deep inverse reinforcement learning


HIRL: Hierarchical Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Long-Horizon Tasks with Delayed Rewards


title: A^2-Nets: Double Attention Networks

text: Learning to capture long-range relations is fundamental to image/video recognition. Existing CNN models generally rely on increasing depth to model such relations which is highly inefficient. In this work, we propose the “double attention block”, a novel component that aggregates and propagates informative global features from the entire spatio-temporal space of input images/videos, enabling subsequent convolution layers to access features from the entire space efficiently. The component is designed with a double attention mechanism in two steps, where the first step gathers features from the entire space into a compact set through second-order attention pooling and the second step adaptively selects and distributes features to each location via another attention. The proposed double attention block is easy to adopt and can be plugged into existing deep neural networks conveniently. We conduct extensive ablation studies and experiments on both image and video recognition tasks for evaluating its performance. On the image recognition task, a ResNet-50 equipped with our double attention blocks outperforms a much larger ResNet-152 architecture on ImageNet-1k dataset with over 40% less the number of parameters and less FLOPs. On the action recognition task, our proposed model achieves the state-of-the-art results on the Kinetics and UCF-101 datasets with significantly higher efficiency than recent works.


title: Automating hierarchical document classification for construction management information systems

text: The widespread use of information technologies for construction is considerably increasing the number of electronic text documents stored in construction management information systems. Consequently, automated methods for organizing and improving the access to the information contained in these types of documents become essential to construction information management. This paper describes a methodology developed to improve information organization and access in construction management information systems based on automatic hierarchical classification of construction project documents according to project components. A prototype system for document classification is presented, as well as the experiments conducted to verify the feasibility of the proposed approach. D 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


title: A SeqGAN for Polyphonic Music Generation

text: We propose an application of SeqGAN, generative adversarial networks for discrete sequence generation, for creating polyphonic musical sequences. Instead of monophonic melody generation suggested in the original work, we present an efficient representation of polyphony MIDI file that captures chords and melodies with dynamic timings simultaneously. The network can create sequences that are musically coherent. We also report that careful tuning of reinforcement learning signals of the model are crucial for general application.


title: Multilinear Discriminant Analysis for Higher-Order Tensor Data Classification

text: In the past decade, great efforts have been made to extend linear discriminant analysis for higher-order data classification, generally referred to as multilinear discriminant analysis (MDA). Existing examples include general tensor discriminant analysis (GTDA) and discriminant analysis with tensor representation (DATER). Both the two methods attempt to resolve the problem of tensor mode dependency by iterative approximation. GTDA is known to be the first MDA method that converges over iterations. However, its performance relies highly on the tuning of the parameter in the scatter difference criterion. Although DATER usually results in better classification performance, it does not converge, yet the number of iterations executed has a direct impact on DATER's performance. In this paper, we propose a closed-form solution to the scatter difference objective in GTDA, namely, direct GTDA (DGTDA) which also gets rid of parameter tuning. We demonstrate that DGTDA outperforms GTDA in terms of both efficiency and accuracy. In addition, we propose constrained multilinear discriminant analysis (CMDA) that learns the optimal tensor subspace by iteratively maximizing the scatter ratio criterion. We prove both theoretically and experimentally that the value of the scatter ratio criterion in CMDA approaches its extreme value, if it exists, with bounded error, leading to superior and more stable performance in comparison to DATER.


title: Blind grasping: Stable robotic grasping using tactile feedback and hand kinematics

text: We propose a machine learning approach to the perception of a stable robotic grasp based on tactile feedback and hand kinematic data, which we call blind grasping. We first discuss a method for simulating tactile feedback using a soft finger contact model in GraspIt!, which is a robotic grasping simulator [10]. Using this simulation technique, we compute tactile contacts of thousands of grasps with a robotic hand using the Columbia Grasp Database [6]. The tactile contacts along with the hand kinematic data are then input to a Support Vector Machine (SVM) which is trained to estimate the stability of a given grasp based on this tactile feedback and also the robotic hand kinematics. Experimental results indicate that the tactile feedback along with the hand kinematic data carry meaningful information for the prediction of the stability of a blind robotic grasp.


title: Cortical dynamics of contextually cued attentive visual learning and search: spatial and object evidence accumulation.

text: How do humans use target-predictive contextual information to facilitate visual search? How are consistently paired scenic objects and positions learned and used to more efficiently guide search in familiar scenes? For example, humans can learn that a certain combination of objects may define a context for a kitchen and trigger a more efficient search for a typical object, such as a sink, in that context. The ARTSCENE Search model is developed to illustrate the neural mechanisms of such memory-based context learning and guidance and to explain challenging behavioral data on positive-negative, spatial-object, and local-distant cueing effects during visual search, as well as related neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and neuroimaging data. The model proposes how global scene layout at a first glance rapidly forms a hypothesis about the target location. This hypothesis is then incrementally refined as a scene is scanned with saccadic eye movements. The model simulates the interactive dynamics of object and spatial contextual cueing and attention in the cortical What and Where streams starting from early visual areas through medial temporal lobe to prefrontal cortex. After learning, model dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (area 46) primes possible target locations in posterior parietal cortex based on goal-modulated percepts of spatial scene gist that are represented in parahippocampal cortex. Model ventral prefrontal cortex (area 47/12) primes possible target identities in inferior temporal cortex based on the history of viewed objects represented in perirhinal cortex.


title: Improving bug triage with bug tossing graphs

text:
bug report is typically assigned to a single developer who is then responsible for fixing the bug. In Mozilla and Eclipse, between 37%-44% of bug reports are "tossed" (reassigned) to other developers, for example because the bug has been assigned by accident or another developer with additional expertise is needed. In any case, tossing increases the time-to-correction for a bug.
 In this paper, we introduce a graph model based on Markov chains, which captures bug tossing history. This model has several desirable qualities. First, it reveals developer networks which can be used to discover team structures and to find suitable experts for a new task. Second, it helps to better assign developers to bug reports. In our experiments with 445,000 bug reports, our model reduced tossing events, by up to 72%. In addition, the model increased the prediction accuracy by up to 23 percentage points compared to traditional bug triaging approaches.


title: Where should the bugs be fixed? More accurate information retrieval-based bug localization based on bug reports

text: For a large and evolving software system, the project team could receive a large number of bug reports. Locating the source code files that need to be changed in order to fix the bugs is a challenging task. Once a bug report is received, it is desirable to automatically point out to the files that developers should change in order to fix the bug. In this paper, we propose BugLocator, an information retrieval based method for locating the relevant files for fixing a bug. BugLocator ranks all files based on the textual similarity between the initial bug report and the source code using a revised Vector Space Model (rVSM), taking into consideration information about similar bugs that have been fixed before. We perform large-scale experiments on four open source projects to localize more than 3,000 bugs. The results show that BugLocator can effectively locate the files where the bugs should be fixed. For example, relevant buggy files for 62.60% Eclipse 3.1 bugs are ranked in the top ten among 12,863 files. Our experiments also show that BugLocator outperforms existing state-of-the-art bug localization methods.


title: Automatic Bug Triage using Semi-Supervised Text Classification

text: In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised text classification approach for bug triage to avoid the deficiency of labeled bug reports in existing supervised approaches. This new approach combines naive Bayes classifier and expectationmaximization to take advantage of both labeled and unlabeled bug reports. This approach trains a classifier with a fraction of labeled bug reports. Then the approach iteratively labels numerous unlabeled bug reports and trains a new classifier with labels of all the bug reports. We also employ a weighted recommendation list to boost the performance by imposing the weights of multiple developers in training the classifier. Experimental results on bug reports of Eclipse show that our new approach outperforms existing supervised approaches in terms of classification accuracy. Keywordsautomatic bug triage; expectation-maximization; semi-supervised text classification; weighted recommendation list


title: DREX: Developer Recommendation with K-Nearest-Neighbor Search and Expertise Ranking

text: This paper proposes a new approach called DREX (Developer Recommendation with k-nearest-neighbor search and Expertise ranking) to developer recommendation for bug resolution based on K-Nearest-Neighbor search with bug similarity and expertise ranking with various metrics, including simple frequency and social network metrics. We collect Mozilla Fire fox open bug repository as the experimental data set and compare different ranking metrics on the performance of recommending capable developers for bugs. Our experimental results demonstrate that, when recommending 10 developers for each one of the 250 testing bugs, DREX has produced better performance than traditional methods with multi-labeled text categorization. The best performance obtained by two metrics as Out-Degree and Frequency, is with recall as 0.6 on average. Moreover, other social network metrics such as Degree and Page Rank have produced comparable performance on developer recommendation as Frequency when used for developer expertise ranking.


title: Assigning bug reports using a vocabulary-based expertise model of developers

text: For popular software systems, the number of daily submitted bug reports is high. Triaging these incoming reports is a time consuming task. Part of the bug triage is the assignment of a report to a developer with the appropriate expertise. In this paper, we present an approach to automatically suggest developers who have the appropriate expertise for handling a bug report. We model developer expertise using the vocabulary found in their source code contributions and compare this vocabulary to the vocabulary of bug reports. We evaluate our approach by comparing the suggested experts to the persons who eventually worked on the bug. Using eight years of Eclipse development as a case study, we achieve 33.6% top-1 precision and 71.0% top-10 recall.


title: Understanding the determinants of business intelligence system adoption stages: An empirical study of SMEs

text: Although business intelligence systems (BIS) adoption research has progressed considerably since its early inceptions, our understanding of the influence of BIS determinants across different adoption stages remains limited. In response, we develop and empirically test a conceptual model for assessing the determinants of BIS diffusion on the evaluation, adoption, and use stages. The model is based on two prominent, firm-level adoption concepts: the diffusion of innovation (DOI) and the technology, organization, environment (TOE) framework, extended with our previous research findings. Drawing on data from 181 small and medium enterprises (SMEs), we identify seven distinct determinants (i.e. cost, BIS is part of ERP, management support, rational decision-making culture, project champion, organizational data environment, organizational readiness) as statistically significant for different adoption stages.


title: The Stratosphere platform for big data analytics

text: We present Stratosphere, an open-source software stack for parallel data analysis. Stratosphere brings together a unique set of features that allow the expressive, easy, and efficient programming of analytical applications at very large scale. Stratosphere’s features include “in situ” data processing, a declarative query language, treatment of user-defined functions as first-class citizens, automatic program parallelization and optimization, support for iterative programs, and a scalable and efficient execution engine. Stratosphere covers a variety of “Big Data” use cases, such as data warehousing, information extraction and integration, data cleansing, graph analysis, and statistical analysis applications. In this paper, we present the overall system architecture design decisions, introduce Stratosphere through example queries, and then dive into the internal workings of the system’s components that relate to extensibility, programming model, optimization, and query execution. We experimentally compare Stratosphere against popular open-source alternatives, and we conclude with a research outlook for the next years.


title: Improving Duckworth lewis method by using machine learning

text: There has been lot of research has been done in the area of sports with prediction. Machine learning algorithm has been applied on most of the data to predict its outcome. In cricket also there are many research has been done to find out the outcome of the match. But there are a special case in the cricket where statistic plays an important role. When the cricket match is interrupted by the rain and then again it starts during the shortage of the time it is difficult to predict the run and overs remaining in the cricket match.To over come this issue Duck worth lewis method has been introduced. In this paper we are going to discuss the short come of the method of Duck worth lewis method. In this research We are going to improve the model of duck worth lewis method with machine learning models. At end we are going to compare the Duck worth lewis method, Duck worth lewis method with run rate as a variable and Improved version of duck worth lewis method.


title: Push-Net: Deep Planar Pushing for Objects with Unknown Physical Properties

text: This paper introduces Push-Net, a deep recurrent neural network model, which enables a robot to push objects of unknown physical properties for re-positioning and re-orientation, using only visual camera images as input. The unknown physical properties is a major challenge for pushing. Push-Net overcomes the challenge by tracking a history of push interactions with an LSTM module and training an auxiliary objective function that estimates an object’s center of mass. We trained Push-Net entirely in simulation and tested it extensively on many different objects in both simulation and on two real robots, a Fetch arm and a Kinova MICO arm. Experiments suggest that Push-Net is robust and efficient. It achieved over 97% success rate in simulation on average and succeeded in all real robot experiments with a small number of pushes.


title: Big Scholarly Data in CiteSeerX: Information Extraction from the Web

text: We examine CiteSeerX, an intelligent system designed with the goal of automatically acquiring and organizing large-scale collections of scholarly documents from the world wide web. From the perspective of automatic information extraction and modes of alternative search, we examine various functional aspects of this complex system with an eye towards ongoing and future research developments.


title: Neural Task Programming: Learning to Generalize Across Hierarchical Tasks

text: In this work, we propose a novel robot learning framework called Neural Task Programming (NTP), which bridges the idea of few-shot learning from demonstration and neural program induction. NTP takes as input a task specification (e.g., video demonstration of a task) and recursively decomposes it into finer sub-task specifications. These specifications are fed to a hierarchical neural program, where bottom-level programs are callable subroutines that interact with the environment. We validate our method in three robot manipulation tasks. NTP achieves strong generalization across sequential tasks that exhibit hierarchal and compositional structures. The experimental results show that NTP learns to generalize well towards unseen tasks with increasing lengths, variable topologies, and changing objectives.stanfordvl.github.io/ntp/.


title: Functional reactive programming from first principles

text:
Functional Reactive Programming, or FRP, is a general framework for programming hybrid systems in a high-level, declarative manner. The key ideas in FRP are its notions of behaviors and events. Behaviors are time-varying, reactive values, while events are time-ordered sequences of discrete-time event occurrences. FRP is the essence of Fran, a domain-specific language embedded in Haskell for programming reactive animations, but FRP is now also being used in vision, robotics and other control systems applications.
In this paper we explore the formal semantics of FRP and how itrelates to an implementation based on streams that represent (and therefore only approximate) continuous behaviors. We show that, in the limit as the sampling interval goes to zero, the implementation is faithful to the formal, continuous semantics, but only when certain constraints on behaviors are observed. We explore the nature of these constraints, which vary amongst the FRP primitives. Our results show both the power and limitations of this approach to language design and implementation. As an example of a limitation, we show that streams are incapable of representing instantaneous predicate events over behaviors.


title: A Wide-band Circular Polarization Stacked Patch Antenna for the Wireless Communication Applications

text: A wide-band ‘corners-truncated rectangular’ stacked patch antenna for use in the circular polarization applications was proposed. The antenna proposed in this paper an axial ratio of less than 3 dB and a VSWR of less than 2 : 1 were shown to be achievable over a 25% bandwidth for use in the wireless communication applications, and this antenna can achieves higher gain, lower side lobes and wider bandwidth compared to the traditional microstrip patch antenna.


title: An upper limb exoskeleton with an optimized 4R spherical wrist mechanism for the shoulder joint

text: This paper presents an upper limb rehabilitation exoskeleton with an optimized 4R spherical wrist mechanism for the shoulder joint. Traditional designs of shoulder exoskeletons use 3R mechanisms to replicate the spherical motion of the shoulder. However, due to the exceptionally large range of motion of the human shoulder, the 3R mechanism is required to operate at a singular configuration at some point in the shoulder workspace. In this configuration, the 3R mechanism loses the ability to rotate the shoulder about one DOF. To overcome this problem, the use of a kinematically redundant 4R mechanism is proposed. The 4R mechanism has been optimized in a previous work and is used in the design of the presented exoskeleton prototype. This new shoulder mechanism allows the exoskeleton to achieve the entire human shoulder workspace without mechanical interference and while operating well away from singular configurations. Numerous features have also been included in the exoskeleton design to ensure it is safe, comfortable and easy to use. The shoulder mechanism of the exoskeleton is analyzed to demonstrate the capabilities of the 4R mechanism.


title: Multi-modal human-machine communication for instructing robot grasping tasks

text: A major challenge for the realization of intelligent robots is to supply them with cognitive abilities in order to allow ordinary users to program them easily and intuitively. One way of such programming is teaching work tasks by interactive demonstration. To make this effective and convenient for the user, the machine must be capable to establish a common focus of attention and be able to use and integrate spoken instructions, visual perceptions, and non-verbal clues like gestural commands. We report progress in building a hybrid architecture that combines statistical methods, neural networks, and finite state machines into an integrated system for instructing grasping tasks by man-machine interaction. The system combines the GRAVIS-robot for visual attention and gestural instruction with an intelligent interface for speech recognition and linguistic interpretation, and an modality fusion module to allow multi-modal task-oriented man-machine communication with respect to dextrous robot manipulation of objects.


title: Analogy just looks like high level perception: why a domain-general approach to analogical mapping is right

text: Hofstadter and his colleagues have criticized current accounts of analogy, claiming that such accounts do not accurately capture interactions between processes of representation construction and processes of mapping. They suggest instead that analogy should be viewed as a form of high level perception that encompasses both representation building and mapping as indivisible operations within a single model. They argue speci® cally against SM E, our model of analogical matching, on the grounds that it is modular, and oŒer instead programs such as Mitchell and Hofstadter’ s Copycat as examples of the high level perception approach. In this paper we argue against this position on two grounds. First, we demonstrate that most of their speci® c arguments involving SM E and Copycat are incorrect. Second, we argue that the claim that analogy is high-level perception, while in some ways an attractive metaphor, is too vague to be useful as a technical proposal. We focus on ® ve issues : (1) how perception relates to analogy, (2) how  ̄ exibility arises in analogical processing, (3) whether analogy is a domain-general process, (4) how micro-worlds should be used in the study of analogy, and (5) how best to assess the psychological plausibility of a model of analogy. W e illustrate our discussion with examples taken from computer models embodying both views.


title: MICA - A new generation of versatile instruments in robotic surgery

text: Robotic surgery systems are highly complex and expensive pieces of equipment. Demands for lower cost of care can be met if these systems are employable in a flexible manner for a large variety of procedures. To protect the initial investment the capabilities of a robotic system need to be expandable as new tasks arise.


title: PEEK biomaterials in trauma, orthopedic, and spinal implants.

text: Since the 1980s, polyaryletherketones (PAEKs) have been increasingly employed as biomaterials for trauma, orthopedic, and spinal implants. We have synthesized the extensive polymer science literature as it relates to structure, mechanical properties, and chemical resistance of PAEK biomaterials. With this foundation, one can more readily appreciate why this family of polymers will be inherently strong, inert, and biocompatible. Due to its relative inertness, PEEK biomaterials are an attractive platform upon which to develop novel bioactive materials, and some steps have already been taken in that direction, with the blending of HA and TCP into sintered PEEK. However, to date, blended HA-PEEK composites have involved a trade-off in mechanical properties in exchange for their increased bioactivity. PEEK has had the greatest clinical impact in the field of spine implant design, and PEEK is now broadly accepted as a radiolucent alternative to metallic biomaterials in the spine community. For mature fields, such as total joint replacements and fracture fixation implants, radiolucency is an attractive but not necessarily critical material feature.


title: A new computing environment for collective privacy protection from constrained healthcare devices to IoT cloud services

text: The Internet of healthcare things is essentially a new model that changes the way of the delivery and management of healthcare services. It utilizes digital sensors and cloud computing to present a quality healthcare service outside of the classical hospital environment. This resulted in the emergence of a new class of online web 4.0 services, which are termed “cloud healthcare services”. Cloud healthcare services offer a straightforward opportunity for patients to communicate with healthcare professionals and utilize their personal IoHT devices to obtain timely and accurate medical guidance and decisions. The personal IoHT devices integrate sensed health data at a central cloud healthcare service to extract useful health insights for wellness and preventive care strategies. However, the present practices for cloud healthcare services rely on a centralized approach, where patients’ health data are collected and stored on servers, located at remote locations, which might be functioning under data privacy laws somewhat different from the ones applied where the service is running. Promoting a privacy respecting cloud services encourages patients to actively participate in these healthcare services and to routinely provide an accurate and precious health data about themselves. With the emergence of fog computing paradigm, privacy protection can now be enforced at the edge of the patient’s network regardless of the location of service providers. In this paper, a framework for cloud healthcare recommender service is presented. We depicted the personal gateways at the patients’ side act as intermediate nodes (called fog nodes) between IoHT devices and cloud healthcare services. A fog-based middleware will be hosted on these fog nodes for an efficient aggregation of patients generated health data while maintaining the privacy and the confidentiality of their health profiles. The proposed middleware executes a two-stage concealment process that utilizes the hierarchical nature of IoHT devices. This will unburden the constrained IoHT devices from performing intensive privacy preserving processes. At that, the patients will be empowered with a tool to control the privacy of their health data by enabling them to release their health data in a concealed form. The further processing at the cloud healthcare service continues over the concealed data by applying the proposed protocols. The proposed solution was integrated into a scenario related to preserving the privacy of the patients’ health data when utilized by a cloud healthcare recommender service to generate health insights. Our approach induces a straightforward solution with accurate results, which are beneficial to both patients and service providers.


title: Transfer Learning for Text Mining

text: Over the years, transfer learning has received much attention in machine learning research and practice. Researchers have found that a major bottleneck associated with machine learning and text mining is the lack of high-quality annotated examples to help train a model. In response, transfer learning offers an attractive solution for this problem. Various transfer learning methods are designed to extract the useful knowledge from different but related auxiliary domains. In its connection to text mining, transfer learning has found novel and useful applications. In this chapter, we will review some most recent developments in transfer learning for text mining, explain related algorithms in detail, and project future developments of this field. We focus on two important topics: cross-domain text document classification and heterogeneous transfer learning that uses labeled text documents to help classify images.