M-Learning: A New Paradigm of Learning Mathematics in Malaysia

M-Learning is a new learning paradigm of the new social structure with mobile and wireless technologies. Smart school is one of the four flagship applications for Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) under Malaysian government initiative to improve education standard in the country. With the advances of mobile devices technologies, mobile learning could help the government in realizing the initiative. This paper discusses the prospect of implementing mobile learning for primary school students. It indicates significant and challenges and analysis of user perceptions on potential mobile applications through a survey done in primary school context. The authors propose the m-Learning for mathematics by allowing the extension of technology in the traditional classroom in term of learning and teaching.


Brand Name Logo Recognition of Fast Food and Healthy Food among Children

The fast food industry has been increasingly criticized for creating brand loyalty in young consumers. Food marketers are well versed in reaching children and youth given the importance of brand loyalty on future food purchasing behavior. In addition, food marketers are increasingly targeting the Hispanic population given their growing spending power. The fast food industry is among the leaders in reaching youth and ethnic minorities through their marketing efforts. The primary objective of this study was to determine if young children recognized fast food restaurant logos at a higher rate than other food brands. Methods Children (n = 155; 53% male; 87% Hispanic) ages 4–8 years were recruited from elementary schools and asked to match 10 logo cards to products depicted on a game board. Parents completed a survey assessing demographic and psychosocial characteristics associated with a healthy lifestyle in the home. Results Older children and children who were overweight were significantly more likely to recognize fast food restaurant logos than other food logos. Moreover, parents’ psychosocial and socio-demographic characteristics were associated with the type of food logo recognized by the children. Conclusions Children’s high recognition of fast food restaurant logos may reflect greater exposure to fast food advertisements. Families’ socio-demographic characteristics play a role in children’s recognition of food logos.


LSTM Model to Forecast Time Series for EC2 Cloud Price

With the widespread use of spot instances in Amazon EC2, which utilize unused capacity with unfixed price, predicting price is important for users. In this paper, we try to forecast spot instance price by using long short-term memory (LSTM) algorithm to predict time series of the prices. We apply cross validation technique to our data set, and extract some features; this help our model to learn deeply. We make the prediction for 10 regions, and measure the performance using root-mean-square error (RMSE). We apply our data to other statistical models to compare their performance; we found that our model works more efficiently, also the error is decreasing more with cross validation and the result is much faster. Based on our result we try to find the availability zone that less become over on-demand price and less changing price over time, which help users to choose the most stable availability zone.


Automatic scraper of celebrity images from heterogeneous websites based on face recognition and sorting for profiling

Now days it has become trend to follow all the celebrities as we consider them as our role models. So instead of searching the images of various celebrities in different websites we can find them in a single website by sorting all the images. Reliable database of images is essential for any image recognition system. Through Internet we find all the required images. These images will serve as samples for automatic recognition system. With these images we do face detection, face recognition, face sorting using various techniques like local binary patterns, haar cascades. We make an overall analysis of the detector. Using opencv we detect and recognize images. Similarity matching is done to check how the images are related to each other. Collection of images is based on user defined templates, which are in web browser environment. With the help of this system one can give their requirement and the image of celebrity is displayed based on that.


Convolution Kernels on Discrete Structures

We introduce a new method of constructing kernels on sets whose elements are discrete structures like strings, trees and graphs. The method can be applied iteratively to build a kernel on a innnite set from kernels involving generators of the set. The family of kernels generated generalizes the family of radial basis kernels. It can also be used to deene kernels in the form of joint Gibbs probability distributions. Kernels can be built from hidden Markov random elds, generalized regular expressions, pair-HMMs, or ANOVA de-compositions. Uses of the method lead to open problems involving the theory of innnitely divisible positive deenite functions. Fundamentals of this theory and the theory of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces are reviewed and applied in establishing the validity of the method.


What Does This Imply? Examining the Impact of Implicitness on the Perception of Hate Speech


An autonomous polymerization motor powered by DNA hybridization.

We present a synthetic molecular motor capable of autonomous nanoscale transport in solution. Inspired by bacterial pathogens such as Rickettsia rickettsii, which locomote by inducing the polymerization of the protein actin at their surfaces to form 'comet tails', the motor operates by polymerizing a double-helical DNA tail2. DNA strands are propelled processively at the living end of the growing polymers, demonstrating autonomous locomotion powered by the free energy of DNA hybridization.


0.18-V input charge pump with forward body biasing in startup circuit using 65nm CMOS

In this paper, a 0.18-V input three-stage charge pump circuit applying forward body bias is proposed. In the developed charge pump, all the MOSFETs are forward body biased by using the inter-stage/output voltages. By applying the proposed charge pump as the startup in the boost converter, the lower kick-up input voltage of the boost converter can be achieved. To verify the circuit characteristics, four test circuits have been implemented by using 65nm CMOS process. The measured available output current of the proposed charge pump under 0.18-V input voltage can be improved more than 150%. In addition, the boost converter can successfully been boosted from 0.18-V input to the 0.74-V output under 6mA output current. The proposed circuit is suitable for extremely low voltage applications such as harvesting energy sources.


A Blockchain-Based Micro Economy Platform for Distributed Infrastructure Initiatives

Distributed Infrastructure Initiatives (DIIs) are communities that collaboratively produce and consume infrastructure. To develop a healthy ecosystem, DIIs require an economic model that balances supply and demand, but there is currently a lack of tooling to support implementing these. In this research, we propose an architecture for a platform that enables DIIs to implement such models, focused around a digital currency based on blockchain technology. The currency is issued according to the amount participants contribute to the initiative, which is quantified based on operational metrics gathered from the infrastructure. Furthermore, the platform enables participants to deploy smart contracts which encode self-enforcing agreements about the infrastructure services they exchange. The architecture has been evaluated through a case study at The Things Network (TTN) a global distributed crowdsourced Internet of Things initiative. The case study revealed that the architecture is effective for the selected case at TTN. In addition, the results motivate future research lines to support scalability (i.e., to deploy the architecture on a larger scale) and security.


Safe robotic grasping: Minimum impact-force grasp selection

This paper addresses the problem of selecting from a choice of possible grasps, so that impact forces will be minimised if a collision occurs while the robot is moving the grasped object along a post-grasp trajectory. Such considerations are important for safety in human-robot interaction, where even a certified “human-safe” (e.g. compliant) arm may become hazardous once it grasps and begins moving an object, which may have significant mass, sharp edges or other dangers. Additionally, minimising collision forces is critical to preserving longevity of robots which operate in uncertain and hazardous environments, e.g. robots deployed for nuclear decommissioning, where removing a damaged robot from a contaminated zone for repairs may be extremely difficult and costly. Also, unwanted collisions between a robot and critical infrastructure (e.g. pipework) in such high-consequence environments can be disastrous. In this paper we investigate how the safety of the post-grasp motion can be considered during the pre-grasp approach phase, so that the selected grasp is optimal in terms of applying minimum impact forces if a collision occurs during the desired post-grasp manipulation. We build on the methods of augmented robot-object dynamic model and “effective mass” and propose a method for combining these concepts with modern grasp and trajectory planners, to enable the robot to achieve a grasp which maximises the safety of the post-grasp trajectory, by minimising potential collision forces. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through several experiments with both simulated and real robots.


Quantifying Political Polarity Based on Bipartite Opinion Networks

Political inclinations of individuals (liberal vs. conservative) largely shape their opinions on several issues such as abortion, gun control, nuclear power, etc. These opinions are openly exerted in online forums, news sites, the parliament, and so on. In this paper, we address the problem of quantifying political polarity of individuals and of political issues for classification and ranking. We use signed bipartite networks to represent the opinions of individuals on issues, and formulate the problem as a node classification task. We propose a linear algorithm that exploits network effects to learn both the polarity labels as well as the rankings of people and issues in a completely unsupervised manner. Through extensive experiments we demonstrate that our proposed method provides an effective, fast, and easy-to-implement solution, while outperforming three existing baseline algorithms adapted to signed networks, on real political forum and US Congress datasets. Experiments on a wide variety of synthetic graphs with varying polarity and degree distributions of the nodes further demonstrate the robustness of our approach. Introduction Many individuals use online media to exert their opinions on a variety of topics. Hotly debated topics include liberal vs. conservative policies such as tax cuts and gun control, social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, environmental issues such as climate change and nuclear power plants, etc. These openly debated issues in blogs, forums, and news websites shape the nature of public opinion and affect the direction of politics, media, and public policy. In this paper, we address the problem of quantifying political polarity in opinion datasets. Given a set of individuals from two opposing camps (liberal vs. conservative) debating a set of issues or exerting opinions on a set of subjects (e.g. human subjects, political issues, congressional bills), we aim to address two problems: (1) classify which person lies in which camp, and which subjects are favored by each camp; and (2) rank the people and the subjects by the magnitude or extent of their polarity. Here while the classification enables us to determine the two camps, ranking helps us understand the extremity to which a person/subject is polarized; e.g. same-sex marriage may be highly polarized among the Copyright c © 2014, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. two camps (liberals being strictly in favor, and conservatives strictly being against), while gun control may not belong to a camp fully favoring or opposing it (i.e., is less polarized). Ranking also helps differentiate moderate vs. extreme individuals, as well as unifying vs. polarizing subjects; such as (unifying) bills voted in the same way, e.g. all ‘yea’ by the majority of congressmen vs. (polarizing) bills that are voted quite oppositely by the two camps. A large body of prior research focuses on sentiment analysis on politically oriented text (Cohen and Ruths 2013; Conover et al. 2011b; 2011a; Pak and Paroubek 2010; Tumasjan et al. 2010). The main goal of these works is to classify political text. In this work, on the other hand, we deal with network data to classify its nodes. Moreover, these methods mostly rely on supervised techniques whereas we focus on un/semi-supervised classification. Other prior research on polarization have exploited link mining and graph clustering to study the social structure on social media networks (Adamic and Glance 2005; Livne et al. 2011; Conover et al. 2011b; Guerra et al. 2013) where the edges depict the ‘mention’ or ‘hyperlink’ relations and not opinions. Moreover, these works do not perform ranking. Different from previous works, our key approach is to exploit network effects to both classify and rank individuals and political subjects by their polarity. The opinion datasets can be effectively represented as signed bipartite networks, where one set of nodes represent individuals, the other set represent subjects, and signed edges between the individuals and subjects depict the +/− opinions. As such, we cast the problem as a node classification task on such networks. Our main contributions can be summarized as follows: • We cast the political polarity classification and ranking problem as a node classification task on edge-signed bipartite opinion networks. • We propose an algorithm, called signed polarity propagation (SPP), that computes probabilities (i.e., polarity scores) of nodes of belonging to one of two classes (e.g., liberal vs. conservative), and use these scores for classification and ranking. Our method is easy-to-implement and fast—running time grows linearly with network size. • We show the effectiveness of our algorithm, in terms of both prediction and ranking, on synthetic and real datasets with ground truth from the US Congress and Political Forum. Further, we modify three existing algorithms to handle signed networks, and compare them to SPP. Our experiments reveal the advantages and robustness of our method on diverse settings with various polarity and degree distributions. Related Work Scoring and ranking the nodes of a graph based on the network structure has been studied extensively, with wellknown algorithms like PageRank (Brin and Page 1998), and HITS (Kleinberg 1998). These, however, are applied on graphs where the edges are unsigned and therefore cannot be directly used to compute polarity scores. Computing polarity scores can be cast as a network classification problem, where the task is to assign probabilities (i.e., scores) to nodes of belonging to one of two classes, which is the main approach we take in our work. There exist a large body of work on network-based classification (Getoor et al. 2007; Neville and Jensen 2003; Macskassy and Provost 2003). Semi-supervised algorithms based on network propagation have also been used in classifying political orientation (Lin and Cohen 2008; Zhou, Resnick, and Mei 2011). However, all the existing methods work with unsigned graphs in which the edges do not represent opinions but simply relational connections such as HTML hyperlinks between blog articles or ‘mention’ relations in Twitter. Signed networks have only recently attracted attention (Leskovec, Huttenlocher, and Kleinberg 2010b). Most existing studies focused on tackling the edge sign prediction problem (Yang et al. 2012; Chiang et al. 2011; Leskovec, Huttenlocher, and Kleinberg 2010a; Symeonidis, Tiakas, and Manolopoulos 2010). Other works include the study of trust/distrust propagation (Guha et al. 2004; DuBois, Golbeck, and Srinivasan 2011; Huang et al. 2012), and product/merchant quality estimation from reviews (McGlohon, Glance, and Reiter 2010). These works do not address the problem of classifying and ranking nodes in signed graphs. With respect to studies on political orientation through social media, (Adamic and Glance 2005; Adar et al. 2004) use link mining and graph clustering to analyze political communities in the blogosphere. While these and most clustering algorithms are designed to work with unsigned graphs, there also exist approaches for clustering signed graphs (Traag and Bruggeman 2009; Lo et al. 2013; Zhang et al. 2013). Clustering, however, falls short in scoring the nodes and hence quantifying polarity for ranking. Related, (Livne et al. 2011) utilize graph and text mining techniques to analyze differences between political parties and their online media usage in conveying a cohesive message. Most recently, (Cohen and Ruths 2013) use supervised classification techniques to classify three groups of Twitter users with varying political activity (figures, active, and modest) by their political orientation. Other works that exploit supervised classification using text features include (Conover et al. 2011a; Golbeck and Hansen 2011; Pennacchiotti and Popescu 2011). Similar to (Adamic and Glance 2005), there exist related works that study the social structure for measuring polarity. These works rely on the existence of (unsigned) social links between the users of social media and study the communities induced by polarized debate; an immediate consequence of the homophily principle, which states that people with similar beliefs and opinions tend to establish social ties. (Livne et al. 2011) and (Conover et al. 2011b) both use modularity (Newman 2006) as a measure of segregation between political groups in Twitter. (Guerra et al. 2013) compare modularity of polarized and non-polarized networks and propose two new measures of polarity based on community boundaries. Again, these works do not study the opinion networks with signed edges. As our main task is quantifying polarity, work on sentiment analysis is also related. There exist a long list of works on sentiment and polarity prediction in political text (Tumasjan et al. 2010; Awadallah, Ramanath, and Weikum 2010; Conover et al. 2011b; He et al. 2012), as well as in tweets, blogs, and news articles (Pak and Paroubek 2010; Godbole, Srinivasaiah, and Skiena 2007; Thomas, Pang, and Lee 2006; Balasubramanyan et al. 2012). These differ from our work as they use text-based sentiment analysis, while we focus on the network effects in signed graphs. Proposed Method Problem Overview We consider the problem of polarity prediction and ranking in opinion datasets (e.g. forums, blogs, the congress). Opinion datasets mainly consist of a set of people (e.g. users in a forum, representatives in The House) and a set of subjects (e.g. political issues, political people, congressional bills). Each person often maintains a positive or negative opinion toward a particular subject (e.g. a representative votes ‘yes’ for a bill, a person ‘likes’ a political individual). This opinion is often an exposition of the person’s latent political leaning—liberal or conservative. For example, we could think of a person with strong negative opinion toward gay&lesbian rights to be more conservati


miRDeep2 accurately identifies known and hundreds of novel microRNA genes in seven animal clades

microRNAs (miRNAs) are a large class of small non-coding RNAs which post-transcriptionally regulate the expression of a large fraction of all animal genes and are important in a wide range of biological processes. Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing allow miRNA detection at unprecedented sensitivity, but the computational task of accurately identifying the miRNAs in the background of sequenced RNAs remains challenging. For this purpose, we have designed miRDeep2, a substantially improved algorithm which identifies canonical and non-canonical miRNAs such as those derived from transposable elements and informs on high-confidence candidates that are detected in multiple independent samples. Analyzing data from seven animal species representing the major animal clades, miRDeep2 identified miRNAs with an accuracy of 98.6-99.9% and reported hundreds of novel miRNAs. To test the accuracy of miRDeep2, we knocked down the miRNA biogenesis pathway in a human cell line and sequenced small RNAs before and after. The vast majority of the >100 novel miRNAs expressed in this cell line were indeed specifically downregulated, validating most miRDeep2 predictions. Last, a new miRNA expression profiling routine, low time and memory usage and user-friendly interactive graphic output can make miRDeep2 useful to a wide range of researchers.


GA3C: GPU-based A3C for Deep Reinforcement Learning

We introduce and analyze the computational aspects of a hybrid CPU/GPU implementation of the Asynchronous Advantage Actor-Critic (A3C) algorithm, currently the state-of-the-art method in reinforcement learning for various gaming tasks. Our analysis concentrates on the critical aspects to leverage the GPU’s computational power, including the introduction of a system of queues and a dynamic scheduling strategy, potentially helpful for other asynchronous algorithms as well. We also show the potential for the use of larger DNN models on a GPU. Our TensorFlow implementation achieves a significant speed up compared to our CPU-only implementation, and it will be made publicly available to other researchers.


1 Augmented Reality

This paper is an overview of technologies that fall under the term augmented reality. Augmented reality refers to a system in which the physical surroundings of a person are mixed with real-time computer generated information creating an enhanced perception of surrounding environment. Being partly virtual and real, augmented reality applications have quite extreme requirements to be practical to use. It also has very much potential in numerous different application areas. These issues make augmented reality both an interesting and challenging subject from scientific and business perspectives.


Arrested development? Reconsidering dual-systems models of brain function in adolescence and disorders

The dual-systems model of a ventral affective system, whose reactivity confers risks and liabilities, and a prefrontal control system, whose regulatory capacities buffer against these vulnerabilities, is an intuitive account that pervades many fields in the cognitive neurosciences--especially in the study of populations that differ from neurotypical adults, such as adolescents or individuals with affective or impulse regulation disorders. However, recent evidence that is inconsistent with dual-systems models illustrates the complexity of developmental and clinical variations in brain function. Building new models to account for this complexity is critical to progress in these fields, and will be facilitated by research that emphasizes network-based approaches and maps relationships between structure and function, as well as brain and behavior, over time.


1/f noise of NMOS and PMOS transistors and their implications to design of voltage controlled oscillators

Low frequency noise of NMOS and PMOS transistors in a 0.25 /spl mu/m foundry CMOS process with a pure SiO/sub 2/ gate oxide layer is characterized for the entire range of MOSFET operation. Surprisingly, the measurement results showed that surface channel PMOS transistors have about an order of magnitude lower 1/f noise than NMOS transistors especially at V/sub GS/-V/sub TH/ less than /spl sim/0.4 V The data were used to show that a VCO using all surface channel PMOS transistors can have /spl sim/14 dB lower close-in phase noise compared to that for a VCO using all surface channel NMOS transistors.


Design issues in CMOS differential LC oscillators

An analysis of phase noise in differential crosscoupled inductance–capacitance(LC) oscillators is presented. The effect of tail current and tank power dissipation on the voltage amplitude is shown. Various noise sources in the complementary cross-coupled pair are identified, and their effect on phase noise is analyzed. The predictions are in good agreement with measurements over a large range of tail currents and supply voltages. A 1.8-GHz LC oscillator with a phase noise of 121 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz is demonstrated, dissipating 6 mW of power using on-chip spiral inductors.


Oscillator phase noise: a tutorial

Linear time-invariant (LTI) phase noise theories provide important qualitative design insights but are limited in their quantitative predictive power. Part of the difficulty is that device noise undergoes multiple frequency translations to become oscillator phase noise. A quantitative understanding of this process requires abandoning the principle of time invariance assumed in most older theories of phase noise. Fortunately, the noise-to-phase transfer function of oscillators is still linear, despite the existence of the nonlinearities necessary for amplitude stabilization. In addition to providing a quantitative reconciliation between theory and measurement, the time-varying phase noise model presented in this tutorial identifies the importance of symmetry in suppressing the upconversion of 1/f noise into close-in phase noise, and provides an explicit appreciation of cyclostationary effects and AM-PM conversion. These insights allow a reinterpretation of why the Colpitts oscillator exhibits good performance, and suggest new oscillator topologies. Tuned LC and ring oscillator circuit examples are presented to reinforce the theoretical considerations developed. Simulation issues and the accommodation of amplitude noise are considered in appendixes.


A study of phase noise in CMOS oscillators

This paper presents a study of phase noise in two inductorless CMOS oscillators. First-order analysis of a linear oscillatory system leads to a noise shaping function and a new definition of Q. A linear model of CMOS ring oscillators is used to calculate their phase noise, and three phase noise phenomena, namely, additive noise, high-frequency multiplicative noise, and low-frequency multiplicative noise, are identified and formulated. Based on the same concepts, a CMOS relaxation oscillator is also analyzed. Issues and techniques related to simulation of noise in the time domain are described, and two prototypes fabricated in a 0.5m CMOS technology are used to investigate the accuracy of the theoretical predictions. Compared with the measured results, the calculated phase noise values of a 2-GHz ring oscillator and a 900-MHz relaxation oscillator at 5 MHz offset have an error of approximately 4 dB.


On the Logic and Purpose of Significance Testing

There has been much recent attention given to the problems involved with the traditional approach to null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). Many have suggested that, perhaps, NHST should be abandoned altogether in favor of other bases for conclusions such as confidence intervals and effect size estimates (e.g., Schmidt, 1996). The purposes of this article are to (a) review the function that data analysis is supposed to serve in the social sciences, (b) examine the ways in which these functions are performed by NHST, (c) examine the case against NHST, and (d) evaluate interval-based estimation as an alternative to NHST.


Flip-chip interconnection EA-DFB laser module for 100-Gbit/s/λ application

We have developed a flip-chip interconnection technique to solve the problem of the degradation of the modulation bandwidth of an optical transmitter due to the parasitic inductance of bonding wire. And we have fabricated an LE-EA-DFB laser module that has a 3-dB bandwidth of 59 GHz thanks to our flip-chip interconnection technique. The fabricated optical receiver, which includes a wideband electrical amplifier, has a 3-dB bandwidth of 51 GHz. Using these optical modules with a 3-dB bandwidth of more than 50 GHz, we have obtained a bit-error rate of less than 2 × 10-4, which is an error-free condition using KP4 forward error correction, under 53.2-Gbaud 4-level pulse amplitude modulation (4-PAM) operation without an equalizer even after a 2-km transmission through single-mode fiber.


Terrain surface classification for autonomous ground vehicles using a 2D laser stripe-based structured light sensor

To increase autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) safety and efficiency on outdoor terrains the vehicle's control system should have settings for individual terrain surfaces. A first step in such a terrain-dependent control system is classification of the surface upon which the AGV is traversing. This paper considers vision-based terrain surface classification for the path directly in front of the vehicle (≪ 1 m). Most visionbased terrain classification has focused on terrain traversability and not on terrain surface classification. The few approaches to classifying traversable terrain surfaces, with the exception of the use of infrared cameras to classify mud, have relied on stand-alone cameras that are designed for daytime use and are not expected to perform well in the dark. In contrast, this research uses a laser stripe-based structured light sensor, which uses a laser in conjunction with a camera, and hence can work at night. Also, unlike most previous results, the classification here does not rely on color since color changes with illumination and weather, and certain terrains have multiple colors (e.g., sand may be red or white). Instead, it relies only on spatial relationships, specifically spatial frequency response and texture, which captures spatial relationships between different gray levels. Terrain surface classification using each of these features separately is conducted by using a probabilistic neural network. Experimental results based on classifying four outdoor terrains demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.


The microbiota-gut-brain axis: neurobehavioral correlates, health and sociality

Recent data suggest that the human body is not such a neatly self-sufficient island after all. It is more like a super-complex ecosystem containing trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms that inhabit all our surfaces; skin, mouth, sexual organs, and specially intestines. It has recently become evident that such microbiota, specifically within the gut, can greatly influence many physiological parameters, including cognitive functions, such as learning, memory and decision making processes. Human microbiota is a diverse and dynamic ecosystem, which has evolved in a mutualistic relationship with its host. Ontogenetically, it is vertically inoculated from the mother during birth, established during the first year of life and during lifespan, horizontally transferred among relatives, mates or close community members. This micro-ecosystem serves the host by protecting it against pathogens, metabolizing complex lipids and polysaccharides that otherwise would be inaccessible nutrients, neutralizing drugs and carcinogens, modulating intestinal motility, and making visceral perception possible. It is now evident that the bidirectional signaling between the gastrointestinal tract and the brain, mainly through the vagus nerve, the so called "microbiota-gut-vagus-brain axis," is vital for maintaining homeostasis and it may be also involved in the etiology of several metabolic and mental dysfunctions/disorders. Here we review evidence on the ability of the gut microbiota to communicate with the brain and thus modulate behavior, and also elaborate on the ethological and cultural strategies of human and non-human primates to select, transfer and eliminate microorganisms for selecting the commensal profile.


Endurance exercise performance: the physiology of champions.

Efforts to understand human physiology through the study of champion athletes and record performances have been ongoing for about a century. For endurance sports three main factors--maximal oxygen consumption (.VO(2,max)), the so-called 'lactate threshold' and efficiency (i.e. the oxygen cost to generate a given running speed or cycling power output)--appear to play key roles in endurance performance. and lactate threshold interact to determine the 'performance .VO(2)' which is the oxygen consumption that can be sustained for a given period of time. Efficiency interacts with the performance .VO(2) to establish the speed or power that can be generated at this oxygen consumption. This review focuses on what is currently known about how these factors interact, their utility as predictors of elite performance, and areas where there is relatively less information to guide current thinking. In this context, definitive ideas about the physiological determinants of running and cycling efficiency is relatively lacking in comparison with .VO(2,max) and the lactate threshold, and there is surprisingly limited and clear information about the genetic factors that might pre-dispose for elite performance. It should also be cautioned that complex motivational and sociological factors also play important roles in who does or does not become a champion and these factors go far beyond simple physiological explanations. Therefore, the performance of elite athletes is likely to defy the types of easy explanations sought by scientific reductionism and remain an important puzzle for those interested in physiological integration well into the future.


Breaking Mifare DESFire MF3ICD40: Power Analysis and Templates in the Real World

With the advent of side-channel analysis, implementations of mathematically secure ciphers face a new threat: by exploiting the physical characteristics of a device, adversaries are able to break algorithms such as AES or Triple-DES (3DES), for which no efficient analytical or brute-force attacks exist. In this paper, we demonstrate practical, noninvasive side-channel attacks on the Mifare DESFire MF3ICD40 contactless smartcard, a 3DES-based alternative to the cryptanalytically weak Mifare Classic [9, 25]. We detail on how to recover the complete 112-bit secret key of the employed 3DES algorithm, using non-invasive power analysis and template attacks. Our methods can be put into practice at a low cost with standard equipment, thus posing a severe threat to many real-world applications that employ the DESFire MF3ICD40 smartcard.


A Survey of Algorithms for Keyword Search on Graph Data

In this chapter, we survey methods that perform keyword search on graph data. Keyword search provides a simple but user-friendly interface to retrieve information from complicated data structures. Since many real life datasets are represented by trees and graphs, keyword search has become an attractive mechanism for data of a variety of types. In this survey, we discuss methods of keyword search on schema graphs, which are abstract representation for XML data and relational data, and methods of keyword search on schema-free graphs. In our discussion, we focus on three major challenges of keyword search on graphs. First, what is the semantics of keyword search on graphs, or, what qualifies as an answer to a keyword search; second, what constitutes a good answer, or, how to rank the answers; third, how to perform keyword search efficiently. We also discuss some unresolved challenges and propose some new research directions


Virtual Reality and Education

Virtual Reality (VR), a new computer technology, has incredible potential in the education field. The reason for this assertion is that education is a field that requires the students to understand complex data, particularly in the study of science (see "Why is science hard to learn?" by Millar) and VR makes that task easier. VR presents information in a 3-dimensional form with the participant viewing the world from inside the world (an immersed viewpoint) with the ability to interact with the information or world. People can enter a VR world that is already created or build their own. VR’s style of presentation mimics the ways that we, as humans, have learned to interact with our physical world. The requirement of learning abstract concepts (such as written language or jargon of a particular field) in order to understand data is dramatically reduced. For example, a chemistry world can show participants how electrons hover around a nucleus depending on the amount of energy involved. The abstractness of the subject would not be eliminated, but metaphors could be employed that were based solidly in reality. For instance, in the electron world the color of the world could represent the amount of energy in the system with red representing more energy than blue. For the students, they would be able to relate to hot things looking red and cold things looking blue without the concept of "joules increasing" getting in the way.


Diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine farms.

Antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) are emerging contaminants posing a potential worldwide human health risk. Intensive animal husbandry is believed to be a major contributor to the increased environmental burden of ARGs. Despite the volume of antibiotics used in China, little information is available regarding the corresponding ARGs associated with animal farms. We assessed type and concentrations of ARGs at three stages of manure processing to land disposal at three large-scale (10,000 animals per year) commercial swine farms in China. In-feed or therapeutic antibiotics used on these farms include all major classes of antibiotics except vancomycins. High-capacity quantitative PCR arrays detected 149 unique resistance genes among all of the farm samples, the top 63 ARGs being enriched 192-fold (median) up to 28,000-fold (maximum) compared with their respective antibiotic-free manure or soil controls. Antibiotics and heavy metals used as feed supplements were elevated in the manures, suggesting the potential for coselection of resistance traits. The potential for horizontal transfer of ARGs because of transposon-specific ARGs is implicated by the enrichment of transposases--the top six alleles being enriched 189-fold (median) up to 90,000-fold in manure--as well as the high correlation (r(2) = 0.96) between ARG and transposase abundance. In addition, abundance of ARGs correlated directly with antibiotic and metal concentrations, indicating their importance in selection of resistance genes. Diverse, abundant, and potentially mobile ARGs in farm samples suggest that unmonitored use of antibiotics and metals is causing the emergence and release of ARGs to the environment.


Understanding microblog continuance usage intention: an integrated model

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors affecting users’ continuous microblog usage intention. In recent years, the number of microblog users has gradually declined. This research can reveal microblog users’ needs and provide the improvement direction of microblog services. Design/methodology/approach – By integrating Wixom and Todd’s theoretical framework, the Uses and Gratifications Theory and the DeLone and McLean Information System Success Model, a conceptual model is proposed. In this model, gratification is defined as a kind of behavioral attitude, and satisfaction is viewed as an object-based attitude. The survey data were collected online and analyzed using the partial least squares method. Findings – The results suggest that users’ continuance intention (behavioral intention) is jointly determined by users’ gratification (behavioral-based attitude) and their habitual microblog usage behavior. Likewise, gratification is positively affected by satisfaction (object-based attitude) which is a joint function of system quality and information quality (object-based beliefs). Originality/value – In this research, Wixom and Todd’s principle is applied as the basic theoretical framework; gratification is viewed as a behavior attitude and user satisfaction is identified as an object-based attitude. This research model is a new lens for continuance usage research.


Automatic Seed Classification by Shape and Color Features using Machine Vision Technology

: In this paper the proposed system uses content based image retrieval (CBIR) technique for identification of seed e.g. wheat, rice, gram etc. on the basis of their features. CBIR is a technique to identify or recognize the image on the basis of features present in image. Basically features are classified in to four categories 1.color 2.Shape 3. texture 4. size .In this system we are extracting color, shape feature extraction. After that classifying images in to categories using neural network according to the weights and image displayed from the category for which neural network shows maximum weight. category1 belongs to wheat and category2 belongs to gram. Experiment was conducted on 200 images of wheat and gram by using Euclidean distance(ED) and artificial neural network techniques. From 200 images 150 are used for training purpose and 50 images are used for testing purpose. The precision rate of the system by using ED is 84.4 percent By using Artificial neural network precision rate is 95 percent.


Commentary on Kraus' (2015) "classifying intersex in DSM-5: critical reflections on gender dysphoria".

A recurrent issue in the more recent editions of the Diagnostic andStatisticalManualofMentalDisorders (DSM)oftheAmerican Psychiatric Association (APA) has been whether patientinitiated gender change and the preceding dissatisfaction with the initially assigned gender (gender dysphoria) should be included as a psychiatric diagnosis and, if yes, whether that diagnosis should be limited to such a presentation shown by persons born with a healthy reproductive system or also be applied if it is shown by persons with congenital somatic intersexuality (in the current medical nomenclature included under disorders of sex development [DSD]) (Hughes, Houk, Ahmed, Lee, & LWPES/ESPE Consensus Group, 2006). DSM-5 stipulates for the diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria (GD)‘‘Specify if: With a disorder of sex development’’ (italics and boldface removed) and adds the‘‘Coding note: Code the disorder of sex development as well as gender dysphoria’’(American Psychiatric Association, 2013, pp. 451–459). In the view of Kraus (2015), GD thereby‘‘subsumes the physical condition under themental ‘disorder’.’’Kraus sees this conceptualization as‘‘the most significant change in the revised diagnosis’’and expresses numerous misgivings. In response, as a member of the respective DSM-5 Work Group (which was dissolved with the publication of DSM-5), I want to clarify the pertinentchangesmadefromDSM-IVandDSM-IV-TR(AmericanPsychiatricAssociation,1994,2000) toDSM-5. In the interest of space, I will only address the most salient ones (for other details, see Zucker et al., 2013). (1) Kraus’ (2015) critique, which culminates in the catchy but misleading phrase,‘‘when the controversial GID diagnosis exits the DSM, disorders of sex development enter’’(p. 1154), appears to be based on a misunderstanding that is already reflected in the titleofherarticle,‘‘ClassifyingIntersex inDSM5.’’ It is not the physical condition ‘‘disorder of sex development’’ (referring here to intersexuality as illustrated by the examples given in the DSM-5 criteria table on p. 453) that is ‘‘classified in DSM-5’’ or ‘‘subsumed’’ under mental disorder. Instead, what DSM-5 categorizes here as GD is a gender identity problem occurring in a person who also has a DSD/intersexcondition,provided therespectivepsychiatric/psychologic DSM-5 criteria for GD are met. The change is not ‘‘fundamental’’as Kraus suggests, because in DSM-IV, people with what then was called‘‘Gender Identity Disorder’’(GID) in association with an intersex condition were categorized as GID Not Otherwise Specified (GIDNOS). Also GIDNOS was a psychiatric diagnosis related to gender identity, just not as stringently defined as GID. Thus, in both DSM-IV and DSM-5, the psychologic/psychiatric condition of GD was/is categorized as a psychiatric diagnosis, not the intersex condition. In this regard, DSM-5 resembles the DSM-III (APA, 1980) and DSM-III-R (APA, 1987) diagnoses of Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood (GIDC) and the DSM-III-R diagnosis of Transsexualism (in adults): they only stipulated to note‘‘physical abnormalities of the sex organs’’(with GIDC) and‘‘physical intersexuality or a genetic abnormality’’(with Transsexualism), if also present, on Axis III (Physical Disorders and Conditions, i.e., not psychiatric diagnostic categories), but not to exclude persons with the combination of GID or Transsexualism and such somatic conditions from the gender identity-related diagnoses on Axis I (Clinical [psychiatric] Syndromes and V Codes]. & Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg meyerb@nyspi.columbia.edu


Path planning using Matlab-ROS integration applied to mobile robots

In this paper the possibilities that Matlab provides to design, implementation and monitoring programs of autonomous navigation for mobile robots, on both simulated and real platforms, through its new toolbox for robotics will be explored. Robotics System Toolbox has established itself as a solid tool of integration between Matlab and robot operating under ROS environment. It will be studied the tools available in this toolbox that allow achieving the connection between the two platforms, in addition to the generation of algorithms of location, path planning, mapping and autonomous navigation.


Microfibrillated cellulose and new nanocomposite materials: a review - DTU Orbit (15/10/2018)

(15/10/2018)  Microfibrillated cellulose and new nanocomposite materials: a review Due to their abundance, high strength and stiffness, low weight and biodegradability, nano-scale cellulose fiber materials (e.g., microfibrillated cellulose and bacterial cellulose) serve as promising candidates for bio-nanocomposite production. Such new high-value materials are the subject of continuing research and are commercially interesting in terms of new products from the pulp and paper industry and the agricultural sector. Cellulose nanofibers can be extracted from various plant sources and, although the mechanical separation of plant fibers into smaller elementary constituents has typically required high energy input, chemical and/or enzymatic fiber pre-treatments have been developed to overcome this problem. A challenge associated with using nanocellulose in composites is the lack of compatibility with hydrophobic polymers and various chemical modification methods have been explored in order to address this hurdle. This review summarizes progress in nanocellulose preparation with a particular focus on microfibrillated cellulose and also discusses recent developments in bio-nanocomposite fabrication based on nanocellulose.


Learning state representation for deep actor-critic control

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) can be used as function approximators in Reinforcement Learning (RL). One advantage of DNNs is that they can cope with large input dimensions. Instead of relying on feature engineering to lower the input dimension, DNNs can extract the features from raw observations. The drawback of this end-to-end learning is that it usually requires a large amount of data, which for real-world control applications is not always available. In this paper, a new algorithm, Model Learning Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (ML-DDPG), is proposed that combines RL with state representation learning, i.e., learning a mapping from an input vector to a state before solving the RL task. The ML-DDPG algorithm uses a concept we call predictive priors to learn a model network which is subsequently used to pre-train the first layer of the actor and critic networks. Simulation results show that the ML-DDPG can learn reasonable continuous control policies from high-dimensional observations that contain also task-irrelevant information. Furthermore, in some cases, this approach significantly improves the final performance in comparison to end-to-end learning.


Forecasting market demand for new telecommunications services: an introduction

The marketing team of a new telecommunications company is usually tasked with producing forecasts for diverse stakeholders with different needs. Consequently, those outside marketing often realize neither the many reasons for developing forecasts nor the marketing theory used and the challenges involved in doing so. Based on our three decades of experience working with telecommunications operators around the world we seek to redress this situation by presenting a discussion of the issues involved in demand forecasting for new communications services. 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.


A Sharp PageRank Algorithm with Applications to Edge Ranking and Graph Sparsification

We give an improved algorithm for computing personalized PageRank vectors with tight error bounds which can be as small as Ω(n−p) for any fixed positive integer p. The improved PageRank algorithm is crucial for computing a quantitative ranking of edges in a given graph. We will use the edge ranking to examine two interrelated problems – graph sparsification and graph partitioning. We can combine the graph sparsification and the partitioning algorithms using PageRank vectors to derive an improved partitioning algorithm.


Turning telecommunications call details to churn prediction: a data mining approach

As deregulation, stew technologies, and new competitors open up the mobile telecommunications industry, churn prediction and management has become of great concern to mobile service providers: A mobile service provider wishing to retain its subscribers needs to be able to predict which of them may be at-risk of changing services and will make those subscribers the focus of customer retention efforts. In response to the limitations of existing churn-prediction systems and the unavailability of customer demographics in the mobile telecommunications provider investigated, we propose, design, and experimentally evaluate a churn-prediction technique that predicts churning from subscriber contractual information and call pattern changes extracted from call details. This proposed technique is capable of identifying potential churners at the contract level for a specific prediction time-period. In addition, the proposed technique incorporates the multi-classifier class-combiner approach to address the challenge of a highly skewed class distribution between churners and non-churners. The empirical evaluation results suggest that the proposed call-behavior-based churn-prediction technique exhibits satisfactory predictive effectiveness when more recent call details are employed for the churn prediction model construction. Furthermore, the proposed technique is able to demonstrate satisfactory or reasonable predictive power within the one-month interval between model construction and churn prediction. Using a previous demographics-based churn-prediction system as a reference, the lift factors attained by our proposed technique appear largely satisfactory.


The Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression A Meta-Analysis

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Security behaviors of smartphone users

Purpose – This paper aims to report on the information security behaviors of smartphone users in an affluent economy of the Middle East. Design/methodology/approach – A model based on prior research, synthesized from a thorough literature review, is tested using survey data from 500 smartphone users representing three major mobile operating systems. Findings – The overall level of security behaviors is low. Regression coefficients indicate that the efficacy of security measures and the cost of adopting them are the main factors influencing smartphone security behaviors. At present, smartphone users are more worried about malware and data leakage than targeted information theft. Research limitations/implications – Threats and counter-measures co-evolve over time, and our findings, which describe the state of smartphone security at the current time, will need to be updated in the future. Practical implications – Measures to improve security practices of smartphone users are needed urgently. The findings indicate that such measures should be broadly effective and relatively costless for users to implement. Social implications – Personal smartphones are joining enterprise networks through the acceptance of Bring-Your-Own-Device computing. Users’ laxity about smartphone security thus puts organizations at risk. Originality/value – The paper highlights the key factors influencing smartphone security and compares the situation for the three leading operating systems in the smartphone market.


Maximum entropy models for natural language ambiguity resolution

MAXIMUM ENTROPY MODELS FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE AMBIGUITY RESOLUTION Adwait Ratnaparkhi Supervisor Professor Mitch Marcus This thesis demonstrates that several important kinds of natural language ambiguities can be resolved to state of the art accuracies using a single statistical modeling technique based on the principle of maximum entropy We discuss the problems of sentence boundary detection part of speech tagging prepo sitional phrase attachment natural language parsing and text categorization under the maximum entropy framework In practice we have found that maximum entropy models o er the following advantages State of the art Accuracy The probability models for all of the tasks discussed per form at or near state of the art accuracies or outperform competing learning algo rithms when trained and tested under similar conditions Methods which outperform those presented here require much more supervision in the form of additional human involvement or additional supporting resources Knowledge Poor Features The facts used to model the data or features are linguis tically very simple or knowledge poor but yet succeed in approximating complex linguistic relationships Reusable Software Technology The mathematics of the maximum entropy framework


Assessment of computer science learning in a scratch-based outreach program

Many institutions have created and deployed outreach programs for middle school students with the goal of increasing the number and diversity of students who later pursue careers in computer science. While these programs have been shown to increase interest in computer science, there has been less work on showing whether participants learn computer science content.
 We address two questions, one specific, and the other more general: (1) "What computer science did our middle school students learn in our interdisciplinary two-week summer camp?" (2) "How can computer science concepts be assessed in the context of Scratch-based outreach programs"? We address both questions by presenting the design of our summer camp, an overview of our curriculum, our assessment methodology, and our assessment results.
 Though the sample size is not statistically significant, the results show that a two-week, interdisciplinary, non-academic summer camp can be effective not only for engaging students, but also for imparting CS content. In just two weeks, with a curriculum not entirely focused on computer science, students displayed competence with event-driven programming, initialization of state, message passing, and say/sound synchronization. We have employed assessment methodologies that avoid written exams, an approach both outreach and classroom-based programs may find useful.


Evaluation of Computer Games Developed by Primary School Children to Gauge Understanding of Programming Concepts

Under the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) in Scotland, newer approaches such as games-based learning and games-based construction are being adopted to motivate and engage students. Construction of computer games is seen by some to be a highly motivational and practical approach at engaging children at Primary Education (PE) level in computer programming concepts. Gamesbased learning (GBL) and games-based construction both suffer from a dearth of empirical evidence supporting their validity as teaching and learning approaches. To address this issue, this paper will present the findings of observational research at PE level using Scratch as a tool to develop computer games using rudimentary programming concepts. A list of criteria will be compiled for reviewing the implementation of each participant to gauge the level of programming proficiency demonstrated. The study will review 29 games from Primary 4 to Primary 7 level and will present the overall results and results for each individual year. This study will contribute to the empirical evidence in games-based construction by providing the results of observational research across different levels of PE and will provide pedagogical guidelines for assessing programming ability using a games-based construction approach.


Computational thinking

omputational thinking builds on the power and limits of computing processes, whether they are executed by a human or by a machine. Computational methods and models give us the courage to solve problems and design systems that no one of us would be capable of tackling alone. Computational thinking confronts the riddle of machine intelligence: What can humans do better than computers? And What can computers do better than humans? Most fundamentally it addresses the question: What is computable? Today, we know only parts of the answers to such questions.


Scratch: programming for all

"Digital fluency" should mean designing, creating, and remixing, not just browsing, chatting, and interacting.


Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

Design Patterns is a modern classic in the literature of object-oriented development, offering timeless and elegant solutions to common problems in software design. It describes patterns for managing object creation, composing objects into larger structures, and coordinating control flow between objects. The book provides numerous examples where using composition rather than inheritance can improve the reusability and flexibility of code. Note, though, that its not a tutorial but a catalog that you can use to find an object-oriented design pattern thats appropriate for the needs of your particular application--a selection for virtuoso programmers who appreciate (or require) consistent, well-engineered object-oriented designs.


An Evaluation of Model-Based Approaches to Sensor Data Compression

As the volumes of sensor data being accumulated are likely to soar, data compression has become essential in a wide range of sensor-data applications. This has led to a plethora of data compression techniques for sensor data, in particular model-based approaches have been spotlighted due to their significant compression performance. These methods, however, have never been compared and analyzed under the same setting, rendering a "right" choice of compression technique for a particular application very difficult. Addressing this problem, this paper presents a benchmark that offers a comprehensive empirical study on the performance comparison of the model-based compression techniques. Specifically, we reimplemented several state-of-the-art methods in a comparable manner, and measured various performance factors with our benchmark, including compression ratio, computation time, model maintenance cost, approximation quality, and robustness to noisy data. We then provide in-depth analysis of the benchmark results, obtained by using 11 different real data sets consisting of 346 heterogeneous sensor data signals. We believe that the findings from the benchmark will be able to serve as a practical guideline for applications that need to compress sensor data.


A TOR-based anonymous communication approach to secure smart home appliances

Digital information has become a social infrastructure and with the expansion of the Internet, network infrastructure has become an indispensable part of social life and industrial activity for mankind. The idea of using existing electronics in smart home appliances and connecting them to the Internet is a new dimension along which technologies continue to grow, and in recent years mankind has witnessed an upsurge of usage of devices such as smart phone, smart television, home health-care device, smart LED light bulbs system, etc. Their build-in internet-controlled function has made them quite attractive to many segments of consumers and smart phone has become a common gadget for social networking. There are, however, serious challenges which need to be addressed as these tiny devices are designed for specific functions and lack processing capacity required for most security software. This research explores how these internet-enabled smart devices can be turned into very dangerous spots for distributed attacks purposes by cybercriminals for various ill intensions in a pinpointed manner. It then introduces a new approach to deal with such problems by taking advantage of the anonymous communication of the Onion Router (hereafter: TOR). It compares pros and cons of using anonymous communication scheme and justifies it be an efficient countermeasure to most attack scenarios.


A Fully Integrated Digital LDO With Coarse–Fine-Tuning and Burst-Mode Operation

The digital low dropout regulator (D-LDO) has drawn significant attention recently for its low-voltage operation and process scalability. However, the tradeoff between current efficiency and transient response speed has limited its applications. In this brief, a coarse-fine-tuning technique with burst-mode operation is proposed to the D-LDO. Once the voltage undershoot/ overshoot is detected, the coarse tuning quickly finds out the coarse control word in which the load current should be located, with large power MOS strength and high sampling frequency for a fixed time. Then, the fine-tuning, with reduced power MOS strength and sampling frequency, regulates the D-LDO to the desired output voltage and takes over the steady-state operation for high accuracy and current efficiency. The proposed D-LDO is verified in a 65-nm CMOS process with a 0.01-mm2 active area. The measured voltage undershoot and overshoot are 55 and 47 mV, respectively, with load steps of 2 to 100 mA with a 20-ns edge time. The quiescent current is 82 μA, with a 0.43-ps figure of merit achieved. Moreover, the reference tracking speed is 1.5 V/μs.


A comprehensive introduction to differential geometry

Spivak's Comprehensive introduction takes as its theme the classical roots of contemporary differential geometry. Spivak explains his Main Premise (my term) as follows: "in order for an introduction to differential geometry to expose the geometric aspect of the subject, an historical approach is necessary; there is no point in introducing the curvature tensor without explaining how it was invented and what it has to do with curvature". His second premise concerns the manner in which the historical material should be presented: "it is absurdly inefficient to eschew the modern language of manifolds, bundles, forms, etc., which was developed precisely in order to rigorize the concepts of classical differential geometry". Here, Spivak is addressing "a dilemma which confronts anyone intent on penetrating the mysteries of differential geometry". On the one hand, the subject is an old one, dating, as we know it, from the works of Gauss and Riemann, and possessing a rich classical literature. On the other hand, the rigorous and systematic formulations in current use were established relatively recently, after topological techniques had been sufficiently well developed to provide a base for an abstract global theory; the coordinate-free geometric methods of E. Cartan were also a major source. Furthermore, the viewpoint of global structure theory now dominates the subject, whereas differential geometers were traditionally more concerned with the local study of geometric objects. Thus it is possible and not uncommon for a modern geometric education to leave the subject's classical origins obscure. Such an approach can offer the great advantages of elegance, efficiency, and direct access to the most active areas of modern research. At the same time, it may strike the student as being frustratingly incomplete. As Spivak remarks, "ignorance of the roots of the subject has its price-no one denies that modern formulations are clear, elegant and precise; it's just that it's impossible to comprehend how any one ever thought of them." While Spivak's impulse to mediate between the past and the present is a natural one and is by no means unique, his undertaking is remarkable for its ambitious scope. Acting on its second premise, the Comprehensive introduction opens with an introduction to differentiable manifolds; the remaining four volumes are devoted to a geometric odyssey which starts with Gauss and Riemann, and ends with the Gauss-Bonnet-Chern Theorem and characteristic classes. A formidable assortment of topics is included along the way, in which we may distinguish several major historical themes: In the first place, the origins of fundamental geometric concepts are investigated carefully. As just one example, Riemannian sectional curvature is introduced by a translation and close exposition of the text of Riemann's remarkable paper, Über die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde


Autonomy and Reliability of Continuous Active Learning for Technology-Assisted Review

We enhance the autonomy of the continuous active learning method shown by Cormack and Grossman (SIGIR 2014) to be effective for technology-assisted review, in which documents from a collection are retrieved and reviewed, using relevance feedback, until substantially all of the relevant documents have been reviewed. Autonomy is enhanced through the elimination of topic-specific and dataset-specific tuning parameters, so that the sole input required by the user is, at the outset, a short query, topic description, or single relevant document; and, throughout the review, ongoing relevance assessments of the retrieved documents. We show that our enhancements consistently yield superior results to Cormack and Grossman’s version of continuous active learning, and other methods, not only on average, but on the vast majority of topics from four separate sets of tasks: the legal datasets examined by Cormack and Grossman, the Reuters RCV1-v2 subject categories, the TREC 6 AdHoc task, and the construction of the TREC 2002 filtering test collection.


06-025 Multi-agent reinforcement learning : A survey ∗

Multi-agent systems are rapidly finding applications in a variety of domains, including robotics, distributed control, telecommunications, economics. Many tasks arising in these domains require that the agents learn behaviors online. A significant part of the research on multi-agent learning concerns reinforcement learning techniques. However, due to different viewpoints on central issues, such as the formal statement of the learning goal, a large number of different methods and approaches have been introduced. In this paper we aim to present an integrated survey of the field. First, the issue of the multi-agent learning goal is discussed, after which a representative selection of algorithms is reviewed. Finally, open issues are identified and future research directions are outlined. Keywords—multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning, game theory, distributed control


FilterReg: Robust and Efficient Probabilistic Point-Set Registration using Gaussian Filter and Twist Parameterization

Probabilistic point-set registration methods have been gaining more attention for their robustness to noise, outliers and occlusions. However, these methods tend to be much slower than the popular iterative closest point (ICP) algorithms, which severely limits their usability. In this paper, we contribute a novel probabilistic registration method that achieves state-of-the-art robustness as well as substantially faster computational performance than modern ICP implementations. This is achieved using a rigorous yet computationally-efficient probabilistic formulation. Pointset registration is cast as a maximum likelihood estimation and solved using the EM algorithm. We show that with a simple augmentation, the E step can be formulated as a filtering problem, allowing us to leverage advances in efficient Gaussian filtering methods. We also propose a customized permutohedral filter [1] for improved efficiency while retaining sufficient accuracy for our task. Additionally, we present a simple and efficient twist parameterization that generalizes our method to the registration of articulated and deformable objects. For articulated objects, the complexity of our method is almost independent of the Degrees Of Freedom (DOFs), which makes it highly efficient even for high DOF systems. The results demonstrate the proposed method consistently outperforms many competitive baselines on a variety of registration tasks. The video demo and source code are available on our project page.


Taxonomy for description of cross-domain attacks on CPS

The pervasiveness of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in various aspects of the modern society grows rapidly. This makes CPS to increasingly attractive targets for various kinds of attacks. We consider cyber-security as an integral part of CPS security. Additionally, the necessity exists to investigate the CPS-specific aspects which are out of scope of cyber-security. Most importantly, attacks capable to cross the cyber-physical domain boundary should be analyzed. The vulnerability of CPS to such cross-domain attacks has been practically proven by numerous examples, e.g., by the currently most famous Stuxnet attack. In this paper, we propose taxonomy for description of attacks on CPS. The proposed taxonomy is capable of representing both conventional cyber-attacks as well as cross-domain attacks on CPS. Furthermore, based on the proposed taxonomy, we define the attack categorization. Several possible application areas of the proposed taxonomy are extensively discussed. Among others, it can be used to establish a knowledge base about attacks on CPS known in the literature. Furthermore, the proposed description structure will foster the quantitative and qualitative analysis of these attacks, both of which are necessarily to improve CPS security.


Automated 3-D Segmentation of Lungs With Lung Cancer in CT Data Using a Novel Robust Active Shape Model Approach

Segmentation of lungs with (large) lung cancer regions is a nontrivial problem. We present a new fully automated approach for segmentation of lungs with such high-density pathologies. Our method consists of two main processing steps. First, a novel robust active shape model (RASM) matching method is utilized to roughly segment the outline of the lungs. The initial position of the RASM is found by means of a rib cage detection method. Second, an optimal surface finding approach is utilized to further adapt the initial segmentation result to the lung. Left and right lungs are segmented individually. An evaluation on 30 data sets with 40 abnormal (lung cancer) and 20 normal left/right lungs resulted in an average Dice coefficient of 0.975±0.006 and a mean absolute surface distance error of 0.84±0.23 mm, respectively. Experiments on the same 30 data sets showed that our methods delivered statistically significant better segmentation results, compared to two commercially available lung segmentation approaches. In addition, our RASM approach is generally applicable and suitable for large shape models.


Detecting Code-Switching between Turkish-English Language Pair

Code-switching (usage of different languages within a single conversation context in an alternative manner) is a highly increasing phenomenon in social media and colloquial usage which poses different challenges for natural language processing. This paper introduces the first study for the detection of TurkishEnglish code-switching and also a small test data collected from social media in order to smooth the way for further studies. The proposed system using character level n-grams and conditional random fields (CRFs) obtains 95.6% micro-averaged F1-score on the introduced test data set.


Daily Mindful Responding Mediates the Effect of Meditation Practice on Stress and Mood: The Role of Practice Duration and Adherence.

OBJECTIVE
Although meditation practice is an important component of many mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), empirical findings of its effects on psychological functioning are mixed and the mechanisms for the effects remain unclear. Responding with mindfulness (i.e., returning one's attention back to a nonjudgmental, present-oriented awareness) is a fundamental skill practiced in meditations. With repeated meditation practice, this skill is thought to become internalized and be applied to one's daily life. We thus hypothesized that the extent to which individuals responded to daily events with mindfulness would mediate the effects of meditation practice (instance, duration, and adherence to instructions) on psychological well-being.

METHOD
Using a daily diary methodology, we tracked the meditation practice, use of mindful responding during the day, and psychological outcomes (perceived stress, negative and positive affect) of 117 mindfulness-based stress reduction program participants.

RESULTS
We found that on days when participants meditated, they responded with greater mindfulness to daily events, which accounted for the beneficial effects of meditating on psychological outcomes. Furthermore, findings suggest that on meditation days, longer and more closely adhered meditation practices were independently associated with increases in mindful responding, which in turn were associated with better psychological outcomes.

CONCLUSION
These results suggest that regular, longer, and more closely adhered meditation practice is an important component of MBIs, in part because it leads to responding more mindfully in daily life, which promotes well-being.


Social Norms and Community Enforcement

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Motion estimation with non-local total variation regularization

State-of-the-art motion estimation algorithms suffer from three major problems: Poorly textured regions, occlusions and small scale image structures. Based on the Gestalt principles of grouping we propose to incorporate a low level image segmentation process in order to tackle these problems. Our new motion estimation algorithm is based on non-local total variation regularization which allows us to integrate the low level image segmentation process in a unified variational framework. Numerical results on the Mid-dlebury optical flow benchmark data set demonstrate that we can cope with the aforementioned problems.


BFSPMiner: an effective and efficient batch-free algorithm for mining sequential patterns over data streams

Supporting sequential pattern mining from data streams is nowadays a relevant problem in the area of data stream mining research. Actual proposals available in the literature are based on the well-known PrefixSpan approach and are, indeed, able to effectively bound the error of discovered patterns. This approach foresees the idea of dividing the target stream in a collection of manageable chunks, i.e., pieces of stream, in order to gain into effectiveness and efficiency. Unfortunately, mining patterns from stream chunks indeed introduce additional errors with respect to the basic application scenario where the target stream is mined continuously, in a non-batch manner. This is due to several reasons. First, since batches are processed individually, patterns that contain items from two consecutive batches are lost. Secondly, in most batch-based approaches, the decision about the frequency of a pattern is done locally inside a single batch. Thus, if a pattern is frequent in the stream but its items are scattered over different batches, it will be continuously pruned out and will never become frequent due to the algorithm’s lack of the “complete-picture” perspective. In order to address so-delineated pattern mining problems, this paper introduces and experimentally assesses BFSPMiner, a Batch-Free Sequential Pattern Miner algorithm for effectively and efficiently mining patterns in streams without being constrained to the traditional batch-based processing. This allows us, for instance, to discover frequent patterns that would be lost according to alternative batch-based stream mining processing models. We complement our analytical contributions by means of a comprehensive experimental campaign of BFSPMiner against real-world data stream sets and in comparison with current batch-based stream sequential pattern mining algorithms.


Treatment of keloids and hypertrophic scars.

Clinicians always find it difficult to treat hypertrophic scars and keloids. Various treatment modalities are available. Intralesional corticosteroids, topical applications, cryotherapy, surgery, laser therapy, and silicone sheeting are the widely used options. Radiation therapy can also help in cases of recalcitrant keloids. Most recently, pulsed-dye laser has been successfully used to treat keloids and hypertrophic scars. There are no set guidelines for the treatment of keloids. Treatment has to be individualized depending upon the distribution, size, thickness, and consistency of the lesions and association of inflammation. A combination approach to therapy seems to be the best option.


Understanding Technology Adoption : Theory and Future Directions for Informal Learning

How and why individuals adopt innovations has motivated a great deal of research. This article examines individuals' computing adoption processes through the lenses of three adoption theories: Rogers's innovation diffusion theory, the Concerns-Based Adoption Model, the Technology Acceptance Model, and the United Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology. Incorporating all three models, this article suggests technology adoption is a complex, inherently social, developmental process; individuals construct unique yet malleable perceptions of technology that influence their adoption decisions. Thus, successfully facilitating technology adoption must address cognitive, emotional, and contextual concerns. This article also focuses specific attention on adoption theory outside of a formal organization and the implications of adoption theory on informal environments. For a crime against the gods—the specifics of which are variously reported—he was condemned to an eternity at hard labor. And frustrating labor at that. For his assignment was to roll a great boulder to the top of a hill. Only every time Sisyphus, by the greatest of exertion and toil, attained the summit, the darn thing rolled back down again.


From natural language requirements to UML class diagrams

Unified Modeling Language (UML) is the most popular modeling language for analysis, design and development of the software system. There has been a lot of research interest in generating these UML models, especially class diagrams, automatically from Natural Language requirements. The interest in class diagrams can be attributed to the fact that classes represent the abstractions present in the system to be developed. However, automated generation of UML class diagrams is a challenging task as it involves lot of pre-processing or manual intervention at times. In this paper, we present dependency analysis based approach to derive UML class diagrams automatically from Natural Language requirements. We transform the requirements statements to an intermediary frame-based structured representation using dependency analysis of requirements statements and the Grammatical Knowledge Patterns. The knowledge stored in the frame-based structured representation is used to derive class diagrams using rule-based algorithm. Our approach has generated similar class diagrams as reported in earlier works based on linguistic analysis with either annotation or manual intervention. We present the effectiveness of our approach in terms of recall and precision for the case-studies presented in earlier works.


On the Construction of Huffman Trees


Health Effects Related to Wind Turbine Noise Exposure: A Systematic Review

BACKGROUND
Wind turbine noise exposure and suspected health-related effects thereof have attracted substantial attention. Various symptoms such as sleep-related problems, headache, tinnitus and vertigo have been described by subjects suspected of having been exposed to wind turbine noise.

OBJECTIVE
This review was conducted systematically with the purpose of identifying any reported associations between wind turbine noise exposure and suspected health-related effects.

DATA SOURCES
A search of the scientific literature concerning the health-related effects of wind turbine noise was conducted on PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar and various other Internet sources.

STUDY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA
All studies investigating suspected health-related outcomes associated with wind turbine noise exposure were included.

RESULTS
Wind turbines emit noise, including low-frequency noise, which decreases incrementally with increases in distance from the wind turbines. Likewise, evidence of a dose-response relationship between wind turbine noise linked to noise annoyance, sleep disturbance and possibly even psychological distress was present in the literature. Currently, there is no further existing statistically-significant evidence indicating any association between wind turbine noise exposure and tinnitus, hearing loss, vertigo or headache.

LIMITATIONS
Selection bias and information bias of differing magnitudes were found to be present in all current studies investigating wind turbine noise exposure and adverse health effects. Only articles published in English, German or Scandinavian languages were reviewed.

CONCLUSIONS
Exposure to wind turbines does seem to increase the risk of annoyance and self-reported sleep disturbance in a dose-response relationship. There appears, though, to be a tolerable level of around LAeq of 35 dB. Of the many other claimed health effects of wind turbine noise exposure reported in the literature, however, no conclusive evidence could be found. Future studies should focus on investigations aimed at objectively demonstrating whether or not measureable health-related outcomes can be proven to fluctuate depending on exposure to wind turbines.


A near linear time constant factor approximation for Euclidean bichromatic matching (cost)

We give an NlogO(1) N-time randomized O(1)-approximation algorithm for computing the cost of minimum bichromatic matching between two planar point-sets of size N.


I Can Has Cheezburger? A Nonparanormal Approach to Combining Textual and Visual Information for Predicting and Generating Popular Meme Descriptions

The advent of social media has brought Internet memes, a unique social phenomenon, to the front stage of the Web. Embodied in the form of images with text descriptions, little do we know about the “language of memes”. In this paper, we statistically study the correlations among popular memes and their wordings, and generate meme descriptions from raw images. To do this, we take a multimodal approach—we propose a robust nonparanormal model to learn the stochastic dependencies among the image, the candidate descriptions, and the popular votes. In experiments, we show that combining text and vision helps identifying popular meme descriptions; that our nonparanormal model is able to learn dense and continuous vision features jointly with sparse and discrete text features in a principled manner, outperforming various competitive baselines; that our system can generate meme descriptions using a simple pipeline.


Seeding Deep Learning using Wireless Localization

Build accurate DNN models requires training on large labeled, context specific datasets, especially those matching the target scenario. We believe advances in wireless localization, working in unison with cameras, can produce automated annotation of targets on images and videos captured in the wild. Using pedestrian and vehicle detection as examples, we demonstrate the feasibility, benefits, and challenges of an automatic image annotation system. Our work calls for new technical development on passive localization, mobile data analytics, and error-resilient ML models, as well as design issues in user privacy policies.


Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search

The game of Go has long been viewed as the most challenging of classic games for artificial intelligence owing to its enormous search space and the difficulty of evaluating board positions and moves. Here we introduce a new approach to computer Go that uses ‘value networks’ to evaluate board positions and ‘policy networks’ to select moves. These deep neural networks are trained by a novel combination of supervised learning from human expert games, and reinforcement learning from games of self-play. Without any lookahead search, the neural networks play Go at the level of state-of-the-art Monte Carlo tree search programs that simulate thousands of random games of self-play. We also introduce a new search algorithm that combines Monte Carlo simulation with value and policy networks. Using this search algorithm, our program AlphaGo achieved a 99.8% winning rate against other Go programs, and defeated the human European Go champion by 5 games to 0. This is the first time that a computer program has defeated a human professional player in the full-sized game of Go, a feat previously thought to be at least a decade away.


Clinical spinal instability and low back pain.

Clinical instability is an important cause of low back pain. Although there is some controversy concerning its definition, it is most widely believed that the loss of normal pattern of spinal motion causes pain and/or neurologic dysfunction. The stabilizing system of the spine may be divided into three subsystems: (1) the spinal column; (2) the spinal muscles; and (3) the neural control unit. A large number of biomechanical studies of the spinal column have provided insight into the role of the various components of the spinal column in providing spinal stability. The neutral zone was found to be a more sensitive parameter than the range of motion in documenting the effects of mechanical destabilization of the spine caused by injury and restabilization of the spine by osteophyle formation, fusion or muscle stabilization. Clinical studies indicate that the application of an external fixator to the painful segment of the spine can significantly reduce the pain. Results of an in vitro simulation of the study found that it was most probably the decrease in the neutral zone, which was responsible for pain reduction. A hypothesis relating the neutral zone to pain has been presented. The spinal muscles provide significant stability to the spine as shown by both in vitro experiments and mathematical models. Concerning the role of neuromuscular control system, increased body sway has been found in patients with low back pain, indicating a less efficient muscle control system with decreased ability to provide the needed spinal stability.


A Study on Balancing Parallelism, Data Locality, and Recomputation in Existing PDE Solvers

Structured-grid PDE solver frameworks parallelize over boxes, which are rectangular domains of cells or faces in a structured grid. In the Chombo framework, the box sizes are typically 163 or 323, but larger box sizes such as 1283 would result in less surface area and therefore less storage, copying, and/or ghost cells communication overhead. Unfortunately, current on-node parallelization schemes perform poorly for these larger box sizes. In this paper, we investigate 30 different inter-loop optimization strategies and demonstrate the parallel scaling advantages of some of these variants on NUMA multicore nodes. Shifted, fused, and communication-avoiding variants for 1283 boxes result in close to ideal parallel scaling and come close to matching the performance of 163 boxes on three different multicore systems for a benchmark that is a proxy for program idioms found in Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) codes.


A Survey of the Functional Splits Proposed for 5 G Mobile Crosshaul Networks Line

Pacing the way towards 5G has lead researchers and industry in the direction of centralized processing known from Cloud-Radio Access Networks (C-RAN). In C-RAN research, a variety of different functional splits is presented by different names and focusing on different directions. The functional split determines how many Base Station (BS) functions to leave locally, close to the user, with the benefit of relaxing fronthaul network bitrate and delay requirements, and how many functions to centralize with the possibility of achieving greater processing benefits. This work presents for the first time a comprehensive overview systematizing the different work directions for both research and industry, while providing a detailed description of each functional split option and an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages. This work gives an overview of where the most effort has been directed in terms of functional splits, and where there is room for further studies. The standardization currently taking place is also considered and mapped into the research directions. It is investigated how the fronthaul network will be affected by the choice of functional split, both in terms of bitrates and latency, and as the different functional splits provide different advantages and disadvantages, the option of flexible functional splits is also looked into. Keywords—Functional Split; Crosshaul; X-haul; C-RAN; Fronthaul; standardization; industry; network architecture; Please refer to the list of acronyms provided in the end of the paper, right before the references.


A Prototype Navigation System for Guiding Blind People Indoors using NXT Mindstorms

People with visual impairment face enormous difficulties in terms of their mobility as they do not have enough information about their location and orientation with respect to traffic and obstacles on their route. Visually impaired people can navigate unknown areas by relying on the assistance of canes, other people, or specially trained guide dogs. The traditional ways of using guide dogs and long-cane only help to avoid obstacles, not to know where they are. The research presented in this paper introduces a mobile assistant navigation prototype to locate and direct blind people indoors. Since most of the existing navigation systems developed so far for blind people employ a complex conjunction of positioning systems, video cameras, locationbased and image processing algorithms, we designed an affordable low-cost prototype navigation system for orienting and tracking the position of blind people in complex environments. The prototype system is based on the inertial navigation system and experiments have been performed on NXT Mindstorms platform.