pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Education and Long-Term Unemployment

This paper investigates the relationship between education and long-term unemployment when considering regional economic differences and other relevant variables at the individual and at the local level, using data from the 2004-2006 EU-SILC (11 countries). The analysis has been run using both a binary logit model and a binary scobit model. Our results suggest that the probability of an individual to be in long-term unemployment decreases with her educational level. There is a decrease in returns to education after the age of 40, which confirms the assumption of an obsolescence of skills defended in the human capital literature. With regard to the regional settings, younger workers (20-30) and older workers (50-65) tend to benefit more from the dynamics offered by highly competitive regions.
Course Evaluation Study in Europe: The Current Picture

Proceedings of: First International Conference on Reforming Education, Quality of Teaching and Technology-Enhanced Learning: Learning Technologies, Quality of Education, Educational Systems, Evaluation, Pedagogies (TECH-EDUCATION 2010). Athens, Greece, May 19-21, 2010.Course evaluation is one of the key processes in the educational context that is in charge of the assurance of quality of courses taught in an institution. Although it is an essential process realized in every institution, the procedure followed for course evaluation does not comply with any evaluation standard. The objectives of this document are: to define a course evaluation concept map to understand better the needs of this field; to analyze the course evaluation standard ISO/IEC 19796, the only standard for course evaluation; and finally, to carry out a study of European institutions evaluation processes to determine why anyone is using standards in this learning process.This work was partially funded by Learn3 project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I” TIN2008-05163/TSI and the Best Practice Network ICOPER (Grant No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007).Publicad
A Process for Improving Course Quality based on Mid-Semester Feedback

Proceedings of: First International Conference on Reforming Education, Quality of Teaching and Technology-Enhanced Learning: Learning Technologies, Quality of Education, Educational Systems, Evaluation, Pedagogies (TECH-EDUCATION 2010). Athens, Greece, May 19-21, 2010.Quality control mechanisms are becoming more important in higher educational institutions. Student evaluation of teaching is typically used to obtain feedback from students about a learning experience but its effect in the course may take too long. Fast feedback mechanisms, in exchange, look at obtaining feedback in order to apply corrective measures quickly. In this paper a process is described to obtain feedback from the students about a course, analyze the received results, and identify the most significant aspects. The process has been applied to a course and led to some adjustments that had immediate impact on the course.The authors are truly indebted to Miguel Valero for his guidance during the design of this process. Work partially funded by the Learn3 project, “Plan Nacional de I+D+I TIN2008-05163/TSI”, the Best Practice Network ICOPER (Grant No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007), the Flexo Project “Plan Nacional de Investigación Científica, Desarrollo e Innovación Tecnológica” (Ref. TSI-020301-2008-19), and the “Emadrid: Investigación y desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” project (S2009/TIC-1650).Publicad
Supporting Teachers to Automatically Build Accessible Pedagogical Resources: The APEINTA Project

Proceedings of: First International Conference, TECH-EDUCATION 2010, Athens, Greece, May 19-21, 2010Most of the universities in Europe have started their process of adaptation towards a common educational space according to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The social dimension of the Bologna Process is a constituent part of the EHEA and it is a necessary condition for the attractiveness and competitiveness of the EHEA. Two of the main features of the social dimension are the equal access for all the students and the lifelong learning. One of the main problems of the adaptation process to the EHEA is that the teachers have no previous references and models to develop new pedagogical experiences accessible to all the students, nevertheless of their abilities, capabilities or accessibility characteristics. The APEINTA project presented in this paper can be used as a helpful tool for teachers in order to cope with the teaching demands of EHEA, helping the teachers to automatically build accessible pedagogical resources even when the teachers are not accessibility experts. This educational project has been successfully used in 2009 in two different degrees at the Carlos III University of Madrid: Computer Science and Library and Information Science
Frameworks for logically classifying polynomial-time optimisation problems.\ud

We show that a logical framework, based around a fragment of existential second-order logic formerly proposed by others so as to capture the class of polynomially-bounded P-optimisation problems, cannot hope to do so, under the assumption that P ≠ NP. We do this by exhibiting polynomially-bounded maximisation and minimisation problems that can be expressed in the framework but whose decision versions are NP-complete. We propose an alternative logical framework, based around inflationary fixed-point logic, and show that we can capture the above classes of optimisation problems. We use the inductive depth of an inflationary fixed-point as a means to describe the objective functions of the instances of our optimisation problems
Balancing Bounded Treewidth Circuits

Algorithmic tools for graphs of small treewidth are used to address questions
in complexity theory. For both arithmetic and Boolean circuits, it is shown
that any circuit of size $n^{O(1)}$ and treewidth $O(\log^i n)$ can be
simulated by a circuit of width $O(\log^{i+1} n)$ and size $n^c$, where $c =
O(1)$, if $i=0$, and $c=O(\log \log n)$ otherwise. For our main construction,
we prove that multiplicatively disjoint arithmetic circuits of size $n^{O(1)}$
and treewidth $k$ can be simulated by bounded fan-in arithmetic formulas of
depth $O(k^2\log n)$. From this we derive the analogous statement for
syntactically multilinear arithmetic circuits, which strengthens a theorem of
Mahajan and Rao. As another application, we derive that constant width
arithmetic circuits of size $n^{O(1)}$ can be balanced to depth $O(\log n)$,
provided certain restrictions are made on the use of iterated multiplication.
Also from our main construction, we derive that Boolean bounded fan-in circuits
of size $n^{O(1)}$ and treewidth $k$ can be simulated by bounded fan-in
formulas of depth $O(k^2\log n)$. This strengthens in the non-uniform setting
the known inclusion that $SC^0 \subseteq NC^1$. Finally, we apply our
construction to show that {\sc reachability} for directed graphs of bounded
treewidth is in $LogDCFL$
Obtaining online ecological colourings by generalizing first-fit.

A colouring of a graph is ecological if every pair of vertices that have the same set of colours in their neighbourhood are coloured alike. We consider the following problem: if a graph G and an ecological colouring c of G are given, can further vertices added to G, one at a time, be coloured using colours from some finite set C so that at each stage the current graph is ecologically coloured? If the answer is yes, then we say that the pair (G,c) is ecologically online extendible. By generalizing the well-known First-Fit algorithm, we are able to characterize when (G,c) is ecologically online extendible. For the case where c is a colouring of G in which each vertex is coloured distinctly, we give a simple characterization of when (G,c) is ecologically online extendible using only the colours of c, and we also show that (G,c) is always online extendible if we permit ourselves to use one extra colour. We also study (off-line) ecological H-colourings where the colouring must satisfy further restrictions imposed by some fixed pattern graph H. We characterize the computational complexity of this problem. This solves an open question posed by Crescenzi et al
Quotient Complexity of Closed Languages

A language L is prefix-closed if, whenever a word w is in L, then every
prefix of w is also in L. We define suffix-, factor-, and subword-closed
languages in the same way, where by subword we mean subsequence. We study the
quotient complexity (usually called state complexity) of operations on prefix-,
suffix-, factor-, and subword-closed languages. We find tight upper bounds on
the complexity of the prefix-, suffix-, factor-, and subword-closure of
arbitrary languages, and on the complexity of boolean operations,
concatenation, star and reversal in each of the four classes of closed
languages. We show that repeated application of positive closure and complement
to a closed language results in at most four distinct languages, while Kleene
closure and complement gives at most eight languages.Comment: 12 pages, 5 eps figures, uses llnc
Universally Composable Quantum Multi-Party Computation

The Universal Composability model (UC) by Canetti (FOCS 2001) allows for
secure composition of arbitrary protocols. We present a quantum version of the
UC model which enjoys the same compositionality guarantees. We prove that in
this model statistically secure oblivious transfer protocols can be constructed
from commitments. Furthermore, we show that every statistically classically UC
secure protocol is also statistically quantum UC secure. Such implications are
not known for other quantum security definitions. As a corollary, we get that
quantum UC secure protocols for general multi-party computation can be
constructed from commitments
Efficient lattice (H)IBE in the standard model

We construct an efficient identity based encryption system based on the standard learning with errors (LWE) problem. Our security proof holds in the standard model. The key step in the construction is a family of lattices for which there are two distinct trapdoors for finding short vectors. One trapdoor enables the real system to generate short vectors in all lattices in the family. The other trapdoor enables the simulator to generate short vectors for all lattices in the family except for one. We extend this basic technique to an adaptively-secure IBE and a Hierarchical IBE
Maximum Cliques in Protein Structure Comparison

International audienceComputing the similarity between two protein structures is a crucial task in molecular biology, and has been extensively investigated. Many protein structure comparison methods can be modeled as maximum clique problems in specific k-partite graphs, referred here as alignment graphs. In this paper, we propose a new protein structure comparison method based on internal distances (DAST), which main characteristic is that it generates alignments having RMSD smaller than any previously given threshold. DAST is posed as a maximum clique problem in an alignment graph, and in order to compute DAST's alignments, we also design an algorithm (ACF) for solving such maximum clique problems. We compare ACF with one of the fastest clique finder, recently conceived by Österg˙ard. On a popular benchmark (the Skolnick set) we observe that ACF is about 20 times faster in average than the Österg˙ard's algorithm. We then successfully use DAST's alignments to obtain automatic classification in very good agreement with SCOP
Exact Bipartite Crossing Minimization under Tree Constraints

A tanglegram consists of a pair of (not necessarily binary) trees T_1, T_2 with leaf sets L_1, L_2. Additional edges, called tangles, may connect nodes in L_1 with those in L_2. The task is to draw the tanglegram with a minimum number of tangle edge crossings while making sure that no crossing occurs between edges within each tree. This problem has relevant applications in computational biology, e.g., for the comparison of phylogenetic trees. In this work, we show that the problem can be formulated as a quadratic linear ordering problem (QLO) with additional side constraints. It was already shown that, appropriately reformulated, the QLO polytope is a face of some cut polytope. It turns out that the additional side constraints arising in our application do not destroy this property. Therefore, any polyhedral approach to max-cut can be used in our context. We present experimental results for drawing random and realistic tanglegrams using both linear and semidefinite programming techniques, showing that our approach is very efficient in practice
A Hybrid Approach for Fault Tree Analysis Combining Probabilistic Method with Fuzzy Numbers

Conventional fault tree analysis in safety analysis of complex engineering systems calculates the occurrence probability of the top undesired event using probabilistic failure rates. However, it is often very difficult to obtain those failure rates well in advance due to insufficient data, environment changing or new components. Fuzzy numbers can be applied to estimate failure rates by handling linguistic terms. This study proposes a hybrid approach of Fuzzy Numbers and Fault Tree Analysis to solve the conventional problem and describes its procedures using a case study of emergency core cooling system of a typical nuclear power plant
A quantitative approach to topology for fuzzy regions

There has been lots of research in the field of fuzzy spatial data and the topology of fuzzy spatial objects. In this contribution, an extension to the 9-intersection model is presented, to allow for the relative position of overlapping fuzzy regions to be determined. The topology will be determined by means of a. new intersection matrix, and a set of numbers, expressing the similarity between the topology of the given regions and a number of predefined cases. The approach is not merely a conceptual idea, but has been built on our representation model and can as such be immediately applied
Employing compact intra-genomic language models to predict genomic sequences and characterize their entropy

Probabilistic models of languages are fundamental to understand and learn the profile of the subjacent code in order to estimate its entropy, enabling the verification and prediction of “natural” emanations of the language. Language models are devoted to capture salient statistical characteristics of the distribution of sequences of words, which transposed to the genomic language, allow modeling a predictive system of the peculiarities and regularities of genomic code in different inter and intra-genomic conditions. In this paper, we propose the application of compact intra-genomic language models to predict the composition of genomic sequences, aiming to achieve valuable resources for data compression and to contribute to enlarge the similarity analysis perspectives in genomic sequences. The obtained results encourage further investigation and validate the use of language models in biological sequence analysis
Enhancing Elementary Flux Modes analysis using filtering techniques in an integrated environment

Publicado em "Advances in bioinformatics : 4th International Workshop on Practical Applications of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics 2010 (IWPACBB 2010)", ISBN 978-3-642-13213-1Elementary Flux Modes (EFMs) have been claimed as one of the most promising approaches for pathway analysis. These are a set of vectors that emerge from the stoichiometric matrix of a biochemical network through the use of convex analysis. The computation of all EFMs of a given network is an NP-hard problem and existing algorithms do not scale well. Moreover, the analysis of results is difficult given the thousands or millions of possible modes generated. In this work, we propose a new plugin, running on top of the OptFlux Metabolic Engineering workbench, whose aims are to ease the analysis of these results and explore synergies among EFM analysis, phenotype simulation and strain optimization.The authors wish to thank the financial support of the Portuguese FCT for the Ph.D grant SFRH/BD/61465/2009 and the company Dupont under the scope of the Dupont European University Support Program Award
Reliability Analysis of Component-Based Systems with Multiple Failure Modes

This paper presents a novel approach to the reliability modeling and analysis of a component-based system that allows dealing\ud
with multiple failure modes and studying the error propagation among components. The proposed model permits to specify the components attitude to produce, propagate, transform or mask different failure modes.\ud
These component-level reliability specifications together with information\ud
about systems global structure allow precise estimation of reliability properties by means of analytical closed formulas, probabilistic modelchecking or simulation methods. To support the rapid identification of components that could heavily affect systems reliability, we also show how our modeling approach easily support the automated estimation of the system sensitivity to variations in the reliability properties of its components.\ud
The results of this analysis allow system designers and developers to identify critical components where it is worth spending additional improvement efforts
Reliability analysis of component-based systems with multiple failure modes

This paper presents a novel approach to the reliability modeling and analysis of a component-based system that allows dealing with multiple failure modes and studying the error propagation among components. The proposed model permits to specify the components attitude to produce, propagate, transform or mask different failure modes. These component-level reliability specifications together with information about systems global structure allow precise estimation of reliability properties by means of analytical closed formulas, probabilistic model-checking or simulation methods. To support the rapid identification of components that could heavily affect systems reliability, we also show how our modeling approach easily support the automated estimation of the system sensitivity to variations in the reliability properties of its components. The results of this analysis allow system designers and developers to identify critical components where it is worth spending additional improvement efforts
Autonomous and context-aware scheduling for public displays using place-based tag clouds

Public displays are an increasingly ubiquitous element of our sociodigital
landscape with a strong potential to become key building blocks for AmI.
For that purpose, they should have the ability to dynamically and autonomously
select content from web sources according to the relevance of their content to the
continuous flow of social settings around the display. In this paper, we explore the
creation of a public display system that evaluates the relevance of content from
web sources and selects the most relevant content according to a dynamic tag
cloud that incorporates static place definitions, but is also sensitive to the people
around the display. We have developed and evaluate a dynamic content selection
system based on those principles. The results show that place visitors recognize
the sensitivity of the system to their demands and that a place tag cloud can provide
an important element for the interpretation of place and for the combination
of the interests expressed by the place owner and the multiple place visitors
User recognition in AAL environments

Springer - Series Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, vol. 72Healthcare projects that intend to decrease the economical and social costs
of the real ageing population phenomenon, through the de-localisation of healthcare
services delivery and management to the home, have been arising in the scientific
community. The VirtualECare project is one of those, so called, Ambient
Assisted Living environments, which we have taken a step forward with the introduction
of proactive techniques for better adapting to its users, namely elderly or
chronic patients, once it is able to learn with their interaction based in contexts.
This learning, however, causes the system need to know with whom it is interacting.
Basic detection techniques based in possible devices that users carries along
with them (e.g. RFID tags, mobile phones, ...) are not good enough, since they can
lose/forgot/switch them. To obtain the expected results the technology used has to
be more advanced and available in several platforms. One possible and already fairly
developed technique is Facial Recognition, and it appears to be the most appropriate
one to handle the problem.This document exposes the initial approach of the
VirtualECare project to the Facial Recognition area
Patient monitoring under an ambient intelligence setting

Springer - Series Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, vol. 72In recent years there has been a growing interest in developing Ambient
Intelligence based systems in order to create smart environments for user and environmental
monitoring. In fact, higher-level monitoring systems with vital information
about the user and the environment around him/her represents an improvement
of the quality of care provided. In this paper, we propose an architecture that implements
a multi-agent user-profile based system for patient monitoring aimed to
improve the assistance and health care provided. This system mixes logical based
reasoning mechanisms with context-aware technologies. It is also presented a case
based on a scenario developed at a major Portuguese healthcare institution
Algorithms For Extracting Timeliness Graphs

We consider asynchronous message-passing systems in which some links are
timely and processes may crash. Each run defines a timeliness graph among
correct processes: (p; q) is an edge of the timeliness graph if the link from p
to q is timely (that is, there is bound on communication delays from p to q).
The main goal of this paper is to approximate this timeliness graph by graphs
having some properties (such as being trees, rings, ...). Given a family S of
graphs, for runs such that the timeliness graph contains at least one graph in
S then using an extraction algorithm, each correct process has to converge to
the same graph in S that is, in a precise sense, an approximation of the
timeliness graph of the run. For example, if the timeliness graph contains a
ring, then using an extraction algorithm, all correct processes eventually
converge to the same ring and in this ring all nodes will be correct processes
and all links will be timely. We first present a general extraction algorithm
and then a more specific extraction algorithm that is communication efficient
(i.e., eventually all the messages of the extraction algorithm use only links
of the extracted graph)
Optimal deterministic ring exploration with oblivious asynchronous
  robots

We consider the problem of exploring an anonymous unoriented ring of size $n$
by $k$ identical, oblivious, asynchronous mobile robots, that are unable to
communicate, yet have the ability to sense their environment and take decisions
based on their local view. Previous works in this weak scenario prove that $k$
must not divide $n$ for a deterministic solution to exist. Also, it is known
that the minimum number of robots (either deterministic or probabilistic) to
explore a ring of size $n$ is 4. An upper bound of 17 robots holds in the
deterministic case while 4 probabilistic robots are sufficient. In this paper,
we close the complexity gap in the deterministic setting, by proving that no
deterministic exploration is feasible with less than five robots whenever the
size of the ring is even, and that five robots are sufficient for any $n$ that
is coprime with five. Our protocol completes exploration in O(n) robot moves,
which is also optimal