bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
CAPITAL STRUCTURE AND TAX CONVEXITY WHEN THE MATURITY OF DEBT IS FINITE
Authors: ATTAOUI SAMI
Published: February 2016

We examine the impact of tax convexity on the optimal leverage, the optimal default barrier, and the credit spread. Contrary to previous papers, debt maturity in our setting is finite. We find that maturity plays a crucial role to fully capture the effect of tax convexity. Our results show that tax convexity has a substantial impact on the optimal default boundary when the maturity is intermediate. We argue that, in the presence of tax convexity, equityholders inject cash into the firm because they weigh the value surplus they achieve from delaying default against the loss they incur, given the absolute priority rule, when the firm fails to fully redeem the debt’s principal at maturity. We also find that the longer is the maturity, the stronger is the negative impact of tax convexity on the optimal leverage.
Actional Intelligence, a Key Element for Actioning Knowledge. A Field Study Analysis
Authors: Albors-Garrigos Jose , Ramos-Carrasco Jose Carlos , Peiro-Signes Angel
Published: February 2016

This paper develops a framework based on a new construct, actional intelligence, and highlights the key elements involved: individual and organisational value alignment and open learning attitudes. It analyses the relationships between them and the individual performance in the organisation. The model is tested using Smart partial least squares (PLS) with a sample of 175 employees in a large organisation belonging to the cosmetics sector. This research also analyses whether these constructs contribute to the organisational performance of individuals. This paper contributes to developing the seminal ideas of actionable knowledge proposed by Argyris and other academics. It concludes with practical implications that justify the use of knowledge management (KM) by managers in organisations. On the other hand, it provides a better understanding of the KM process and its systematisation. It covers the research gap related to actioning of knowledge of previous methods and signifies a more practical and understandable approach to KM and a closer perspective to business.
Parametric Reliability Sensitivity Analysis Using Failure Probability Ratio Function
Authors: Wei Pengfei , Lu Zhenzhoug
Published: February 2016

Reducing the failure probability is an important task in the design of engineering structures. In this paper, a reliability sensitivity analysis technique, called failure probability ratio function, is firstly developed for providing the analysts quantitative information on failure probability reduction while one or a set of distribution parameters of model inputs are changed. Then, based on the failure probability ratio function, a global sensitivity analysis technique, called R-index, is proposed for measuring the average contribution of the distribution parameters to the failure probability while they vary in intervals. The proposed failure probability ratio function and R-index can be especially useful for failure probability reduction, reliability-based optimization and reduction of the epistemic uncertainty of parameters. The Monte Carlo simulation (MCS), Importance Sampling (IS) and Truncated Importance Sampling (TIS) procedures, which need only a set of samples for implementing them, are introduced for efficiently computing the proposed sensitivity indices. A numerical example is introduced for illustrating the engineering significance of the proposed sensitivity indices and verifying the efficiency and accuracy of the MCS, IS and TIS procedures. At last, the proposed sensitivity techniques are applied to a planar 10-bar structure for achieving a targeted 80% reduction of the failure probability.
Mathematical Basis of G Spaces
Authors: Chen Meng , Li Ming , Liu G. R.
Published: February 2016

This paper represents some basic mathematic theories for G[Formula: see text] spaces of functions that can be used for weakened weak (W2) formulations, upon which the smoothed finite element methods (S-FEMs) and the smoothed point interpolation methods (S-PIMs) are based for solving mechanics problems. We first introduce and prove properties of G[Formula: see text] spaces, such as the lower boundedness and convergence of the norms, which are in contrast with H1spaces. We then prove the equivalence of the Gsnorms and its corresponding semi-norms. These mathematic theories are important and essential for the establishment of theoretical frame and the development of relevant numerical approaches. Finally, numerical examples are presented by using typical S-FEM models known as the NS-FEM and [Formula: see text]S-FEM to examine the properties of a smoothed method based on Gsspaces, in comparison with the standard FEM with weak formulation.
The Role of Unabsorbed Slack in Internal and Collaborative Innovation Processes — A Resource-Based Framework
Authors: Lichtenthaler Ulrich
Published: February 2016

Extant research has highlighted the critical role of unabsorbed slack resources in internal innovation processes. In recent years, many firms have continued to open up their innovation processes to actively collaborate with external partners. In light of a limited understanding of the determinants of collaborative innovation, we provide new theoretical arguments about the relationship of unabsorbed slack resources with internal and collaborative innovation processes. Specifically, we draw on resource-based and competence-based logic and develop a conceptual framework for intraorganizational and interorganizational innovation with propositions for the impact of unabsorbed slack resources on internal and external knowledge acquisition and commercialization processes. The arguments underscore the critical role of excess resources in collaborative innovation, and they highlight the need for a fine-grained examination of the impact of unabsorbed slack resources in innovation processes. The arguments are particularly important in light of a renewed interest in essential enablers and barriers to collaborative innovation processes.
β-Substituted ferrocenyl porphyrins: The role of the spacer and of the number of substituents on their structural and spectroscopic characteristics
Authors: Mazzuca Claudia , Di Napoli Benedetta , Lentini Sara , Cicero Daniel O. , Gatto Emanuela , Tagliatesta Pietro , Palleschi Antonio
Published: February 2016

Mono and bis ethynyl and ethynylphenyl [Formula: see text]-substituted porphyrins have been synthesized and characterized. Their conformational properties have been analyzed through a combination of NMR experiments and molecular mechanic calculations, while UV-Vis absorption and fluorescence measurements together with electrochemical studies allows us to probe the existence of intramolecular electronic processes. The role of the beta-substituents and of the spacer is underlined.
The Potential to Machine Superconductors with Electrochemical Machining
Authors: Leese Rebecca J. , Ivanov Atanas , Babu-Nadendla Hari
Published: February 2016

Superconductors (SCs), such as gadolinium barium copper oxide, are brittle ceramics which are very difficult to machine conventionally due to the easy propagation of cracks. The cracks formed during conventional machining destroy the superconductive properties of the material. As a result a new method to machine ceramic SCs is needed. In this paper, polarization experiments were conducted in various nonaqueous salt electrolytes to determine whether electrochemical machining (ECM) is a suitable method for machining gadolinium barium copper oxide with silver inclusions (GdBCO-Ag) for the first time. Sodium chloride in formic acid proved to be the best electrolyte for this application with higher dissolution rates and achieving a better surface finish. It was noted that GdBCO-Ag dissolved at higher rates in NaCl in formic acid than in other salt-solvent systems.
Links and submersions to the plane on an open 3-manifold
Authors: Miyoshi Shigeaki
Published: February 2016

We study the realization problem which asks if a given oriented link in an open 3-manifold can be realized as a fiber of a submersion to the Euclidean plane. We correct the results obtained before by the author which contains an error and certain imperfection, and investigate a necessary and sufficient condition for the realization in the words of well-known invariants. We obtain the condition expressed by the first homology group with mod 2 coefficient.
A dynamic optimal execution strategy under stochastic price recovery
Authors: Ieda Masashi
Published: February 2016

In the present paper, we study the optimal execution problem under stochastic price recovery based on limit order book dynamics. We model price recovery after execution of a large order by accelerating the arrival of the refilling order, which is defined as a Cox process whose intensity increases by the degree of the market impact. We include not only the market order, but also the limit order in our strategy in a restricted fashion. We formulate the problem as a combined stochastic control problem over a finite time horizon. The corresponding Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman quasi-variational inequality is solved numerically. The optimal strategy obtained consists of three components: (i) the initial large trade; (ii) the unscheduled small trades during the period; (iii) the terminal large trade. The size and timing of the trade is governed by the tolerance for market impact depending on the state at each time step, and hence the strategy behaves dynamically. We also provide competitive results due to inclusion of the limit order, even though a limit order is allowed under conservative evaluation of the execution price.
Dynamic risk model for CMO with credit tranching
Authors: Parnes Dror
Published: February 2016

In this paper, we present a dynamic risk model that can assess the stochastic credit quality of senior tranches of collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO) while supported by any number of junior bond classes. We design the model to be universal and to embed common hazards and retreats within the U.S. housing market. This deployment assists us in resolving real problems when gauging the dynamic creditworthiness of CMOs’ senior bond tranches. Resulting from our subsequent theoretical simulations, we discover the boundaries of these structured financial instruments when exposed to relatively modest probabilities of a broad economic crisis. We demonstrate that despite their diverse supportive structures, CMOs are not as protective as originally thought by many investors when a widespread housing calamity progresses.
NANDFlashSim
Authors: Jung Myoungsoo , Choi Wonil , Gao Shuwen , Wilson III Ellis Herbert , Donofrio David , Shalf John , Kandemir Mahmut Taylan
Published: February 2016

As the popularity of NAND flash expands in arenas from embedded systems to high-performance computing, a high-fidelity understanding of its specific properties becomes increasingly important. Further, with the increasing trend toward multiple-die, multiple-plane architectures and high-speed interfaces, flash memory systems are expected to continue to scale and cheapen, resulting in their broader proliferation. However, when designing NAND-based devices, making decisions about the optimal system configuration is nontrivial, because flash is sensitive to a number of parameters and suffers from inherent latency variations, and no available tools suffice for studying these nuances. The parameters include the architectures, such as multidie and multiplane, diverse node technologies, bit densities, and cell reliabilities. Therefore, we introduce NANDFlashSim, a high-fidelity, latency-variation-aware, and highly configurable NAND-flash simulator, which implements a detailed timing model for 16 state-of-the-art NAND operations. Using NANDFlashSim, we notably discover the following. First, regardless of the operation, reads fail to leverage internal parallelism. Second, MLC provides lower I/O bus contention than SLC, but contention becomes a serious problem as the number of dies increases. Third, many-die architectures outperform many-plane architectures for disk-friendly workloads. Finally, employing a high-performance I/O bus or an increased page size does not enhance energy savings. Our simulator is available at http://nfs.camelab.org.
Put Three and Three Together
Authors: Prat-Pérez Arnau , Dominguez-Sal David , Brunat Josep-M. , Larriba-Pey Josep-Lluis
Published: February 2016

Community detection has arisen as one of the most relevant topics in the field of graph data mining due to its applications in many fields such as biology, social networks, or network traffic analysis. Although the existing metrics used to quantify the quality of a community work well in general, under some circumstances, they fail at correctly capturing such notion. The main reason is that these metrics consider the internal community edges as a set, but ignore how these actually connect the vertices of the community. We propose the Weighted Community Clustering (
WCC
), which is a new community metric that takes the triangle instead of the edge as the minimal structural motif indicating the presence of a strong relation in a graph. We theoretically analyse
WCC
in depth and formally prove, by means of a set of properties, that the maximization of
WCC
guarantees communities with cohesion and structure. In addition, we propose
Scalable Community Detection (SCD)
, a community detection algorithm based on
WCC
, which is designed to be fast and scalable on SMP machines, showing experimentally that
WCC
correctly captures the concept of community in social networks using real datasets. Finally, using ground-truth data, we show that
SCD
provides better quality than the best disjoint community detection algorithms of the state of the art while performing faster.
Mining Influencers Using Information Flows in Social Streams
Authors: Subbian Karthik , Aggarwal Charu , Srivastava Jaideep
Published: February 2016

The problem of discovering information flow trends in social networks has become increasingly relevant due to the increasing amount of content in online social networks, and its relevance as a tool for research into the content trends analysis in the network. An important part of this analysis is to determine the key patterns of flow in the underlying network. Almost all the work in this area has focused on fixed models of the network structure, and edge-based transmission between nodes. In this article, we propose a fully content-centered model of flow analysis in networks, in which the analysis is based on actual content transmissions in the underlying social stream, rather than a static model of transmission on the edges. First, we introduce the problem of influence analysis in the context of information flow in networks. We then propose a novel algorithm
InFlowMine
to discover the information flow patterns in the network and demonstrate the effectiveness of the discovered information flows using an influence mining application. This application illustrates the flexibility and effectiveness of our information flow model to find topic- or network-specific influencers, or their combinations. We empirically show that our information flow mining approach is effective and efficient than the existing methods on a number of different measures.
User-Centric Scheduling and Governing on Mobile Devices with big.LITTLE Processors
Authors: Hsiu Pi-Cheng , Tseng Po-Hsien , Chen Wei-Ming , Pan Chin-Chiang , Kuo Tei-Wei
Published: February 2016

Mobile applications will become progressively more complicated and diverse. Heterogeneous computing architectures like big.LITTLE are a hardware solution that allows mobile devices to combine computing performance and energy efficiency. However, software solutions that conform to the paradigm of conventional fair scheduling and governing are not applicable to mobile systems, thereby degrading user experience or reducing energy efficiency. In this article, we exploit the concept of application sensitivity, which reflects the user’s attention on each application, and devise a user-centric scheduler and governor that allocate computing resources to applications according to their sensitivity. Furthermore, we integrate our design into the Android operating system. The results of experiments conducted on a commercial big.LITTLE smartphone with real-world mobile apps demonstrate that the proposed design can achieve significant gains in energy efficiency while improving the quality of user experience.
Rule-Based Generation of Ancient Chinese Architecture from the Song Dynasty
Authors: Liu Jin , Wu Zhong-Ke
Published: February 2016

Ancient Chinese architecture from the Song dynasty is a prominent example of the ancient oriental architectures. The
cai-fen
system was a module system used for the carpentry of Song architectures, which was specified by the governmental manual, the
Yingzao Fashi
(State Building Standards) compiled by Li Jie [1103]. We present a rule-based approach for generation of ancient Chinese architectures from the Song dynasty. Based on the special module system and the hierarchical topology of structural patterns in traditional Chinese architectures, the approach parameterizes the wooden elements of buildings and formalizes the construction rules for different architecture styles. In the approach, XML-based description files are generated for displaying the construction process. What the approach generates are standard architectures that strictly follow the ancient Chinese governmental manual. To demonstrate the efficiency of our approach, architectures in different styles have been generated based on their corresponding rules. The fundamental difference between our approach and previous works is that we apply and implement the module system in digitalization of ancient Chinese architecture.
Measurements and Analysis of a Major Adult Video Portal
Authors: Tyson Gareth , Elkhatib Yehia , Sastry Nishanth , Uhlig Steve
Published: February 2016

Today, the Internet is a large multimedia delivery infrastructure, with websites such as YouTube appearing at the top of most measurement studies. However, most traffic studies have ignored an important domain: adult multimedia distribution. Whereas, traditionally, such services were provided primarily via bespoke websites, recently these have converged towards what is known as “Porn 2.0”. These services allow users to upload, view, rate, and comment on videos for free (much like YouTube). Despite their scale, we still lack even a basic understanding of their operation. This article addresses this gap by performing a large-scale study of one of the most popular Porn 2.0 websites: YouPorn. Our measurements reveal a global delivery infrastructure that we have repeatedly crawled to collect statistics (on 183k videos). We use this data to characterise the corpus, as well as to inspect popularity trends and how they relate to other features, for example, categories and ratings. To explore our discoveries further, we use a small-scale user study, highlighting key system implications.
Data structure aware garbage collector
Authors: Cohen Nachshon , Petrank Erez
Published: February 2016

Garbage collection may benefit greatly from knowledge about program behavior, but most managed languages do not provide means for the programmer to deliver such knowledge. In this work we propose a very simple interface that requires minor programmer effort and achieves substantial performance and scalability improvements. In particular, we focus on the common use of data structures or collections for organizing data on the heap. We let the program notify the collector which classes represent nodes of data structures and also when such nodes are being removed from their data structures. The data-structure aware (DSA) garbage collector uses this information to improve performance, locality, and load balancing. Experience shows that this interface requires a minor modification of the application. Measurements show that for some significant benchmarks this interface can dramatically reduce the time spent on garbage collection and also improve the overall program performance.
Concurrent compaction using a field pinning protocol
Authors: Österlund Erik , Löwe Welf
Published: February 2016

Compaction of memory in long running systems has always been important. The latency of compaction increases in today’s systems with high memory demands and large heaps. To deal with this problem, we present a lock-free protocol allowing for copying concurrent with the application running, which reduces the latencies of compaction radically. It provides theoretical progress guarantees for copying and application threads without making it practically infeasible, with performance overheads of 15% on average. The algorithm paves the way for a future lock-free Garbage Collector.
The judgment of forseti: economic utility for dynamic heap sizing of multiple runtimes
Authors: Cameron Callum , Singer Jeremy , Vengerov David
Published: February 2016

We introduce the FORSETI system, which is a principled approach for holistic memory management. It permits a sysadmin to specify the total physical memory resource that may be shared between all concurrent virtual machines on a physical node. FORSETI models the heap size versus application throughput for each virtual machine, and seeks to maximize the combined throughput of the set of VMs based on concepts from economic utility theory. We evaluate the FORSETI system using a standard Java managed runtime, i.e. OpenJDK. Our results demonstrate that FORSETI enables dramatic reductions (up to 5x) in heap footprint without compromising application execution times.
Recycling trash in cache
Authors: Shidal Jonathan , Spilo Ari J. , Scheid Paul T. , Cytron Ron K. , Kavi Krishna M.
Published: February 2016

The disparity between processing and storage speeds can be bridged in part by reducing the traffic into and out of the slower memory components. Some recent studies reduce such traffic by determining dead data in cache, showing that a significant fraction of writes can be squashed before they make the trip toward slower memory. In this paper, we examine a technique for eliminating traffic in the other direction, specifically the traffic induced by dynamic storage allocation. We consider recycling dead storage in cache to satisfy a program's storage-allocation requests. We first evaluate the potential for recycling under favorable circumstances, where the associated logic can run at full speed with no impact on the cache's normal behavior. We then consider a more practical implementation, in which the associated logic executes independently from the cache's critical path. Here, the cache's performance is unfettered by recycling, but the operations necessary to determine dead storage and recycle such storage execute as time is available. Finally, we present the design and analysis of a hardware implementation that scales well with cache size without sacrificing too much performance.
Reasoning with the HERMIT: tool support for equational reasoning on GHC core programs
Authors: Farmer Andrew , Sculthorpe Neil , Gill Andy
Published: February 2016

A benefit of pure functional programming is that it encourages equational reasoning. However, the Haskell language has lacked direct tool support for such reasoning. Consequently, reasoning about Haskell programs is either performed manually, or in another language that does provide tool support (e.g. Agda or Coq). HERMIT is a Haskell-specific toolkit designed to support equational reasoning and user-guided program transformation, and to do so as part of the GHC compilation pipeline. This paper describes HERMIT's recently developed support for equational reasoning, and presents two case studies of HERMIT usage: checking that type-class laws hold for specific instance declarations, and mechanising textbook equational reasoning.
A typechecker plugin for units of measure: domain-specific constraint solving in GHC Haskell
Authors: Gundry Adam
Published: February 2016

Typed functional programming and units of measure are a natural combination, as F# ably demonstrates. However, encoding statically-checked units in Haskell’s type system leads to inevitable disappointment with the usability of the resulting system. Extending the language itself would produce a much better result, but it would be a lot of work! In this paper, I demonstrate how typechecker plugins in the Glasgow Haskell Compiler allow users to define domain-specific constraint solving behaviour, making it possible to implement units of measure as a type system extension without rebuilding the compiler. This paves the way for a more modular treatment of constraint solving in GHC.
Improving Haskell types with SMT
Authors: Diatchki Iavor S.
Published: February 2016

We present a technique for integrating GHC's type-checker with an SMT solver. The technique was developed to add support for reasoning about type-level functions on natural numbers, and so our implementation uses the theory of linear arithmetic. However, the approach is not limited to this theory, and makes it possible to experiment with other external decision procedures, such as reasoning about type-level booleans, bit-vectors, or any other theory supported by SMT solvers.
Formally proving a compiler transformation safe
Authors: Breitner Joachim
Published: February 2016

We prove that the Call Arity analysis and transformation, as implemented in the Haskell compiler GHC, is safe, i.e. does not impede the performance of the program. We formalized syntax, semantics, the analysis and the transformation in the interactive theorem prover Isabelle to obtain a machine-checked proof and hence a level of rigor rarely obtained for compiler optimization safety theorems. The proof is modular and introduces trace trees as a suitable abstraction in abstract cardinality analyses. We discuss the breadth of the formalization gap.
Injective type families for Haskell
Authors: Stolarek Jan , Peyton Jones Simon , Eisenberg Richard A.
Published: February 2016

Haskell, as implemented by the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC), allows expressive type-level programming. The most popular type-level programming extension is TypeFamilies, which allows users to write functions on types. Yet, using type functions can cripple type inference in certain situations. In particular, lack of injectivity in type functions means that GHC can never infer an instantiation of a type variable appearing only under type functions. In this paper, we describe a small modification to GHC that allows type functions to be annotated as injective. GHC naturally must check validity of the injectivity annotations. The algorithm to do so is surprisingly subtle. We prove soundness for a simplification of our algorithm, and state and prove a completeness property, though the algorithm is not fully complete. As much of our reasoning surrounds functions defined by a simple pattern-matching structure, we believe our results extend beyond just Haskell. We have implemented our solution on a branch of GHC and plan to make it available to regular users with the next stable release of the compiler.
Practical probabilistic programming with monads
Authors: Ścibior Adam , Ghahramani Zoubin , Gordon Andrew D.
Published: February 2016

The machine learning community has recently shown a lot of interest in practical probabilistic programming systems that target the problem of Bayesian inference. Such systems come in different forms, but they all express probabilistic models as computational processes using syntax resembling programming languages. In the functional programming community monads are known to offer a convenient and elegant abstraction for programming with probability distributions, but their use is often limited to very simple inference problems. We show that it is possible to use the monad abstraction to construct probabilistic models for machine learning, while still offering good performance of inference in challenging models. We use a GADT as an underlying representation of a probability distribution and apply Sequential Monte Carlo-based methods to achieve efficient inference. We define a formal semantics via measure theory. We demonstrate a clean and elegant implementation that achieves performance comparable with Anglican, a state-of-the-art probabilistic programming system.
Guilt free ivory
Authors: Elliott Trevor , Pike Lee , Winwood Simon , Hickey Pat , Bielman James , Sharp Jamey , Seidel Eric , Launchbury John
Published: February 2016

Ivory is a language that enforces memory safety and avoids most undefined behaviors while providing low-level control of memory- manipulation. Ivory is embedded in a modern variant of Haskell, as implemented by the GHC compiler. The main contributions of the paper are two-fold. First, we demonstrate how to embed the type-system of a safe-C language into the type extensions of GHC. Second, Ivory is of interest in its own right, as a powerful language for writing high-assurance embedded programs. Beyond invariants enforced by its type-system, Ivory has direct support for model-checking, theorem-proving, and property-based testing. Ivory’s semantics have been formalized and proved to guarantee memory safety.
Variations on variants
Authors: Morris J. Garrett
Published: February 2016

Extensible variants improve the modularity and expressiveness of programming languages: they allow program functionality to be decomposed into independent blocks, and allow seamless extension of existing code with both new cases of existing data types and new operations over those data types. This paper considers three approaches to providing extensible variants in Haskell. Row typing is a long understood mechanism for typing extensible records and variants, but its adoption would require extension of Haskell's core type system. Alternatively, we might hope to encode extensible variants in terms of existing mechanisms, such as type classes. We describe an encoding of extensible variants using instance chains, a proposed extension of the class system. Unlike many previous encodings of extensible variants, ours does not require the definition of a new type class for each function that consumes variants. Finally, we translate our encoding to use closed type families, an existing feature of GHC. Doing so demonstrates the interpretation of instances chains and functional dependencies in closed type families. One concern with encodings like ours is how completely they match the encoded system. We compare the expressiveness of our encodings with each other and with systems based on row types. We find that, while equivalent terms are typable in each system, both encodings require explicit type annotations to resolve ambiguities in typing not present in row type systems, and the type family implementation retains more constraints in principal types than does the instance chain implementation. We propose a general mechanism to guide the instantiation of ambiguous type variables, show that it eliminates the need for type annotations in our encodings, and discuss conditions under which it preserves coherence.
People, Interacting with Information1
Authors: Belkin Nicholas J.
Published: February 2016

Recent recognition in IR that people engage in information seeking
sessions
; attempts to formally model search sessions; and, the move toward evaluation of IR systems over entire search sessions, are evidence of a new, broader understanding of IR's goals. This move takes IR's goal beyond identification of relevant information objects, to supporting people in achievement of the goal or task which led them to engage in information seeking. The emergence of the term,
interactive information retrieval
, the amount of research conducted under that rubric, and the lack of agreement about how to conduct and evaluate such research, testify to both the significance and the difficulty of addressing this new goal. In this new context, IR faces daunting challenges, including: understanding why people engage in information seeking; identifying aspects of that condition that need to be considered in supporting them in achieving their goals; designing support for evolving user goals and knowledge; and, perhaps most daunting, how to evaluate, in ways as rigorous and successful as IR evaluation has been to date, IR systems which attempt to address this broader goal. I, and others, have proposed that moving from relevance to
usefulness
as the main criterion for evaluation of IR system performance, could provide a basis for addressing many of these challenges. In this paper, I discuss how such a move might be implemented, some possible alternative means for addressing this broader goal for IR, and what serious attention to users of IR systems, and their interactions with information objects and systems, could mean for research and practice of IR.
ECIR 2015
Authors: Hanbury Allan , Kazai Gabriella , Rauber Andreas , Fuhr Norbert
Published: February 2016

The 37th European Conference on Information Retrieval took place from the 29th of March to the 2nd of April 2015 in Vienna, Austria. This report summarises the conference in terms of the keynotes presented, programme, industry day, tutorials, workshops and student support.
Report on CLEF 2015
Authors: Cappellato Linda , Ferro Nicola , Jones Gareth J.F. , Kamps Jaap , Mothe Josiane , Pinel-Sauvagnat Karen , San Juan Eric , Savoy Jacques
Published: February 2016

This is a report on the sixth edition of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF 2015), held in early September 2015, in Toulouse, France. CLEF was a four day event combining a Conference and an Evaluation Forum. The focus of the Conference is "Experimental IR" as carried out in the CLEF Labs and other evaluation forums, it featured keynotes by Greg Greffenstette, Mounia Lalmas, and Doug Oard, and 43 papers have been presented, covering a wide range of topics. There were a total of eight Labs: eHealth, ImageCLEF, LifeCLEF, Living Labs for IR, NEWSREEL, PAN, QA, and Social Book Search, addressing a wide range of tasks, media, languages, and ways to go beyond standard test collections.
Constrained Semi-supervised Learning in the Presence of Unanticipated Classes
Authors: Dalvi Bhavana Bharat
Published: February 2016

Traditional semi-supervised learning (SSL) techniques consider the missing labels of unlabeled datapoints as latent/unobserved variables, and model these variables, and the parameters of the model, using techniques like Expectation Maximization (EM). Such semisupervised learning techniques are widely used for Automatic Knowledge Base Construction (AKBC) tasks.

We consider two extensions to traditional SSL methods which make it more suitable for a variety of AKBC tasks. First, we consider jointly assigning multiple labels to each instance, with a flexible scheme for encoding constraints between assigned labels: this makes it possible, for instance, to assign labels at multiple levels from a hierarchy. Second, we account for another type of latent variable, in the form of unobserved classes. In open-domain webscale information extraction problems, it is an unrealistic assumption that the class ontology or topic hierarchy we are using is complete. Our proposed framework combines structural search for the best class hierarchy with SSL, reducing the semantic drift associated with erroneously grouping unanticipated classes with expected classes. Together, these extensions allow a single framework to handle a large number of knowledge extraction tasks, including macro-reading, noun-phrase classification, word sense disambiguation, alignment of KBs to wikipedia or on-line glossaries, and ontology extension.

To summarize, this thesis argues that many AKBC tasks which have previously been addressed separately can be viewed as instances of single abstract problem: multiview semisupervised learning with an incomplete class hierarchy. In this thesis we present a generic EM framework for solving this abstract task.
True Stability of Lubricants Determined Using the Ball-on-Disk Test
Authors: Tortora Angela Maria , Halenahally Veeregowda Deepak
Published: February 2016

True stability of lubricants can be determined when there is minimum change in the contact area and also the intervention of wear debris in the contact zone. Here, we have used the ball-on-disk instrument with the migrating point contact, that is, relative motion between the ball and disk condition to fix the contact area and minimize the wear debris at the contact zone. The jump in the friction coefficient indicates the film failure, which appeared earlier for the motor oil 5W30 compared to 5W40. Such profile was not recorded in absence of relative motion. Therefore, 5W40 was considered to have a better lubricant stability than 5W30. Applying the same test condition to the natural lubricants shows that glycerol has better lubricant stability than glycerol-water mixture. Superior true lubricant stability by glycerol and 5W40 can be related to its high viscosity. However, they were less wear resistant compared to low viscosity lubricants like 5W30 and glycerol-water. We suspect the role of microscopic wear debris at the contact zone for this behavior although it should have been avoided in the migrating point contact condition. Overall, ball-on-disk instrument with a migrating point contact condition is an effective technique to determine the stability of lubricants.
Stainless Steel Mesh Supported Carbon Nanofibers for Electrode in Bioelectrochemical System
Authors: Wang Jing , Li Ming , Liu Fangtai , Chen Shuiliang
Published: February 2016

We proposed a self-connected carbon nanofiber design for electrode in microbial bioelectrochemical system. This design was realized by direct growth of carbon nanofibers (CNFs) onto stainless steel (SSM) via a chemical vapor deposition process without addition of any external catalysts. In the CNFs-SSM composite electrode, the SSM acted as the conductive network and ensured efficient substrate and proton transfer, and the CNFs layer served as highly porous habitats for thick biofilm propagation. The current generated by the CNFs-SSM was 200 times higher than the bare SSM under the same experimental conditions. This provided a simple and promising method for preparation of electrode material with high performance and low-cost in bioelectrochemical system.
Socioeconomic Factors Associated with Knowledge on Tuberculosis among Adults in Ethiopia
Authors: Gelaw Sifrash Meseret
Published: February 2016

Background. Ethiopia is among highly tuberculosis affected countries. This might be related to low level of awareness on the disease in the population. The objective of the study was to determine the level of tuberculosis knowledge and socioeconomic factors associated with it.Methods. The 2011 Ethiopia health and demographic survey data were used. Overall tuberculosis knowledge score was computed to evaluate the outcome variable. Multivariable logistic regression was employed to identify independent socioeconomic factors associated with low tuberculosis knowledge.Results. The overall tuberculosis knowledge was low, 44.05% (95% CI: 42.05–46.24%) among women and 32.3% (95% CI: 30.34–34.32%) among men. Rural women (AOR = 1.22) and youth, no formal education (women: AOR = 3.28, men: AOR = 7.42), attending only primary education (women: AOR = 1.95, men: AOR = 3.49), lowest wealth quintiles (women: AOR = 1.4, Men: AOR = 1.28), unskilled female manual workers (AOR = 4.15), female agricultural employee (AOR = 2.28), and lack of access to media (women: AOR = 1.52, men: AOR = 1.71) are significantly associated with low tuberculosis knowledge.Conclusion. The level of tuberculosis knowledge among adults in Ethiopia is low and varied by socioeconomic groups. Tuberculosis control programs should consider appropriate strategies for tuberculosis education, promotion, communication, and social mobilization to address the rural women, youths, the poor, less educated people, and unskilled workers.
The Plastic Glial-Synaptic Dynamics within the Neuropil: A Self-Organizing System Composed of Polyelectrolytes in Phase Transition
Authors: Fernandes de Lima Vera Maura , Pereira Alfredo
Published: February 2016

Several explanations have been proposed to account for the mechanisms of neuroglial interactions involved in neural plasticity. We review experimental results addressing plastic nonlinear interactions between glial membranes and synaptic terminals. These results indicate the necessity of elaborating on a model based on the dynamics of hydroionic waves within the neuropil. These waves have been detected in a small scale experimental model of the central nervous system, thein vitroretina. We suggest that the brain, as the heart and kidney, is a system for which the state of water is functional. The use of nonlinear thermodynamics supports experiments at convenient biological spatiotemporal scales, while an understanding of the properties of ions and their interactions with water requires explanations based on quantum theories. In our approach, neural plasticity is seen as part of a larger process that encompasses higher brain functions; in this regard, hydroionic waves within the neuropil are considered to carry both physiological and cognitive functions.
Experimental Matching of Instances to Heuristics for Constraint Satisfaction Problems
Authors: Moreno-Scott Jorge Humberto , Ortiz-Bayliss José Carlos , Terashima-Marín Hugo , Conant-Pablos Santiago Enrique
Published: February 2016

Constraint satisfaction problems are of special interest for the artificial intelligence and operations research community due to their many applications. Although heuristics involved in solving these problems have largely been studied in the past, little is known about the relation between instances and the respective performance of the heuristics used to solve them. This paper focuses on both the exploration of the instance space to identify relations between instances and good performing heuristics and how to use such relations to improve the search. Firstly, the document describes a methodology to explore the instance space of constraint satisfaction problems and evaluate the corresponding performance of six variable ordering heuristics for such instances in order to find regions on the instance space where some heuristics outperform the others. Analyzing such regions favors the understanding of how these heuristics work and contribute to their improvement. Secondly, we use the information gathered from the first stage to predict the most suitable heuristic to use according to the features of the instance currently being solved. This approach proved to be competitive when compared against the heuristics applied in isolation on both randomly generated and structured instances of constraint satisfaction problems.
Assessment of Health-Related Quality of Life after TBI: Comparison of a Disease-Specific (QOLIBRI) with a Generic (SF-36) Instrument
Authors: von Steinbuechel Nicole , Covic Amra , Polinder Suzanne , Kohlmann Thomas , Cepulyte Ugne , Poinstingl Herbert , Backhaus Joy , Bakx Wilbert , Bullinger Monika , Christensen Anne-Lise , Formisano Rita , Gibbons Henning , Höfer Stefan , Koskinen Sanna , Maas Andrew , Neugebauer Edmund , Powell Jane , Sarajuuri Jaana , Sasse Nadine , Schmidt Silke , Mühlan Holger , von Wild Klaus , Zitnay George , Truelle Jean-Luc
Published: February 2016

Psychosocial, emotional, and physical problems can emerge after traumatic brain injury (TBI), potentially impacting health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Until now, however, neither the discriminatory power of disease-specific (QOLIBRI) and generic (SF-36) HRQoL nor their correlates have been compared in detail. These aspects as well as some psychometric item characteristics were studied in a sample of 795 TBI survivors. The ShannonH'index absolute informativity, as an indicator of an instrument’s power to differentiate between individuals within a specific group or health state, was investigated. Psychometric performance of the two instruments was predominantly good, generally higher, and more homogenous for the QOLIBRI than for the SF-36 subscales. Notably, the SF-36 “Role Physical,” “Role Emotional,” and “Social Functioning” subscales showed less satisfactory discriminatory power than all other dimensions or the sum scores of both instruments. The absolute informativity of disease-specific as well as generic HRQoL instruments concerning the different groups defined by different correlates differed significantly. When the focus is on how a certain subscale or sum score differentiates between individuals in one specific dimension/health state, the QOLIBRI can be recommended as the preferable instrument.
Mode Evaluation and Structure Design of Connection between Pole and Base of Roadside Breakaway Sign in China
Authors: Xu Liang , Cheng Guozhu , Jiang Qiuyue , Guo Yufeng
Published: February 2016

In order to present reliable mode and structure of connection between pole and base for breakaway sign, mode evaluation and structure design were conducted in this paper. AHP was adopted to evaluate connection modes between sign pole and base. Analytic hierarchy with double criterion layer and corresponding judgment matrix were established. Through qualitative analysis, powers of indexes were given and evaluation results were presented based on standardization process of each evaluation index. It shows that brittle connection mode comes in the first place, the plastic connection mode comes second, and rigid connection mode comes last. Two brittle connection structures were designed through the finite element simulation analysis. By ANSYS software, stress data were given for recessed and hole-type connection design structure. It can be found that maximum tensile stress data of two connection structures are all more than ultimate tensile strength of steel. Thus it can be concluded that two connection structures designed in this paper can be breakaway in collision and protect the safety of vehicle occupants.
Equilibrium and Optimal Strategies in M/M/1 Queues with Working Vacations and Vacation Interruptions
Authors: Tian Ruiling , Hu Linmin , Wu Xijun
Published: February 2016

We consider the customers equilibrium and socially optimal joining-balking behavior in single-server Markovian queues with multiple working vacations and vacation interruptions. Arriving customers decide whether to join the system or balk, based on a linear reward-cost structure that incorporates their desire for service, as well as their unwillingness for waiting. We consider that the system states are observable, partially observable, and unobservable, respectively. For these cases, we first analyze the stationary behavior of the system and get the equilibrium strategies of the customers and compare them to socially optimal balking strategies numerically.