title: Psychiatric Impact of Gender-Related Abuse Across the Life Course of Male-to-Female Transgender Persons

abstract: The psychiatric impact of interpersonal abuse associated with an atypical presentation of gender was examined across the life course of 571 male-to-female (MTF) transgender persons from the New York City Metropolitan Area. Gender-related abuse (psychological and physical), suicidality, and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision) major depression were retrospectively measured across five stages of the life course using the Life Chart Interview. Among younger respondents (current age of 19–39), the impact of both types of abuse on major depression was extremely strong during adolescence and then markedly declined during later stages of life. Among older respondents (current age of 40–59), the impact of both types of abuse on major depression was strong during adolescence and then marginally declined during later stages of life. The effects of both types of abuse on suicidality were weaker but more consistently observed across the life course among both the younger and ...


title: Intrusion Detection Techniques in Sensor Networks

abstract: Research has been conducted in wired network Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) for over 25 years. Although there is ongoing research in wired IDS techniques, it is considered a mature technology. Wireless area networks and personal area networks have been the focus of recent research, as they represent new risks and security challenges. Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) have further challenged researchers to develop IDS techniques in an even more challenging environment. The promise of wireless sensor network technology to provide cost-effective monitoring of critical applications ranging from industrial control to border monitoring necessitates new research in the area of wireless sensor network IDS. The unattended nature and the inherent computational and communication limitations of sensor networks make them vulnerable to a broad range of attacks. Given the relative infancy of this new technology, the limited documented cases of actual sensor network attacks, the lack of publicly available network traces of sensor network attacks, most experience in this area is limited to simulations or laboratory emulations, with few approaches having been vetted in the field. This chapter outlines the unique challenges of wireless sensor network IDS and provides a survey of solutions proposed in the research literature.


Quantification method of classification processes: Concept of structural a-entropy


title: Machine Learning for Information Extraction in Informal Domains

abstract: We consider the problem of learning to perform information extraction in domains where linguistic processing is problematic, such as Usenet posts, email, and finger plan files. In place of syntactic and semantic information, other sources of information can be used, such as term frequency, typography, formatting, and mark-up. We describe four learning approaches to this problem, each drawn from a different paradigm: a rote learner, a term-space learner based on Naive Bayes, an approach using grammatical induction, and a relational rule learner. Experiments on 14 information extraction problems defined over four diverse document collections demonstrate the effectiveness of these approaches. Finally, we describe a multistrategy approach which combines these learners and yields performance competitive with or better than the best of them. This technique is modular and flexible, and could find application in other machine learning problems.


Maximum Expected Likelihood Estimation for Zero-resource Neural Machine Translation


title: Very low profile Inverted-F antenna with 2.4/5.8 GHz WiFi for metal-cover tablet computer

abstract: A novel low-profile Inverted-F Antenna (IFA) for tablet computer with complete metal-back cover operating in 2.4 GHz (2412–2472 MHz) and 5.8 GHz (5725–5825 MHz) WiFi bands is presented. The height of the proposed antenna is just 3 mm. Owing to the simplicity if IFA design, the proposed antenna can operate as a quarter-wavelength IFA structure at 2.4 GHz, and a half-wavelength loop structure at 5.8 GHz. Furthermore, high realized gain of approximately 6.8 dBi at 2.4 GHz is also achieved. Due to its low profile characteristic, the proposed dual-band IFA is very promising in metal portal devices.


title: OTrack: Order tracking for luggage in mobile RFID systems

abstract: In many logistics applications of RFID technology, goods attached with tags are placed on moving conveyor belts for processing. It is important to figure out the order of goods on the belts so that further actions like sorting can be accurately taken on proper goods. Due to arbitrary goods placement or the irregularity of wireless signal propagation, neither of the order of tag identification nor the received signal strength provides sufficient evidence on their relative positions on the belts. In this study, we observe, from experiments, a critical region of reading rate when a tag gets close enough to a reader. This phenomenon, as well as other signal attributes, yields the stable indication of tag order. We establish a probabilistic model for recognizing the transient critical region and propose the OTrack protocol to continuously monitor the order of tags. To validate the protocol, we evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness through a one-month experiment conducted through a working conveyor at Beijing Capital International Airport.


title: Automatic program repair with evolutionary computation

abstract: There are many methods for detecting and mitigating software errors but few generic methods for automatically repairing errors once they are discovered. This paper highlights recent work combining program analysis methods with evolutionary computation to automatically repair bugs in off-the-shelf legacy C programs. The method takes as input the buggy C source code, a failed test case that demonstrates the bug, and a small number of other test cases that encode the required functionality of the program. The repair procedure does not rely on formal specifications, making it applicable to a wide range of extant software for which formal specifications rarely exist.


title: Defect inspection of medicine vials using LBP features and SVM classifier

abstract: During the pharmaceutical process, it is inevitable that various defects emerge in the medicine vials which may greatly affect the product quality and reduce the productive efficiency. To address these problems, a method based on feature extraction and machine learning is developed for vial defect inspection. On image preprocessing, we used threshold algorithm to acquire the region of interest (ROI) which is comprised of some small patches obtained through image blocking, exhibiting favorable performances compared to some existing image segmentation methods. In the following computational framework, the LBP descriptors are firstly extracted in the ROI followed by the generation of visual dictionaries through the application of k-means clustering. Since the visual dictionaries can essentially represent the image, we finally employ the support vector machine (SVM) classifier to inspect whether the vials are with flaws. In the procedure of feature extraction, experiments show that the LBP yields superior performances, with (maximum recognition efficiency is about 90%) compared to the others, owing to the extraction of exact texture features.


title: Knowledge translation is the use of knowledge in health care decision making

abstract: Abstract Objective To provide an overview of the science and practice of knowledge translation. Study Design Narrative review outlining what knowledge translation is and a framework for its use. Results Knowledge translation is defined as the use of knowledge in practice and decision making by the public, patients, health care professionals, managers, and policy makers. Failures to use research evidence to inform decision making are apparent across all these key decision maker groups. There are several proposed theories and frameworks for achieving knowledge translation. A conceptual framework developed by Graham et al., termed the knowledge-to-action cycle, provides an approach that builds on the commonalities found in an assessment of planned action theories. Conclusions Review of the evidence base for the science and practice of knowledge translation has identified several gaps including the need to develop valid strategies for assessing the determinants of knowledge use and for evaluating sustainability of knowledge translation interventions.


title: CellTree: an R/bioconductor package to infer the hierarchical structure of cell populations from single-cell RNA-seq data

abstract: Background ::: Single-cell RNA sequencing is fast becoming one the standard method for gene expression measurement, providing unique insights into cellular processes. A number of methods, based on general dimensionality reduction techniques, have been suggested to help infer and visualise the underlying structure of cell populations from single-cell expression levels, yet their models generally lack proper biological grounding and struggle at identifying complex differentiation paths.


title: Assessment of Spaceborne GNSS-R Ocean Altimetry Performance Using CYGNSS Mission Raw Data

abstract: This article assesses the ocean altimetry performance of spaceborne Global Navigation Satellite Systems reflectometry (GNSS-R) by processing the raw data sets collected by the Cyclone GNSS (CYGNSS) constellation. These raw data sets, i.e., the intermediate frequency signal streams before any receiver processing, are processed on the ground with a software receiver, from which the reflected waveforms of GPS L1, Galileo E1, and BeiDou-3 B1 band open service (OS) signals are generated following the conventional GNSS-R approach. By using different retracking algorithms, the bistatic delays of the reflected signals are derived from these waveforms, in which the retracking biases are removed with the specular point (SP) delay and power information computed from the corresponding waveform model. After applying a set of standard delay corrections, the bistatic delay observations are converted into sea surface height (SSH) measurements and compared with the mean SSH model. Both the random error (precision) and systematic effects (accuracy) are characterized with intratrack and intertrack analyses of the bistatic delay measurements. The two-way ranging precision can reach up to 3.9 and 2.5 m with 1-s GPS and Galileo group delay measurement (a factor of ~2 better for altimetry solution), and its evolution with the signal-to-noise ratio shows good consistency with the theoretical model. A significant delay dispersion of 3.0 m between different tracks is found, which is mainly attributed to the receiver orbit error and ionospheric correction residuals. These results can provide useful inputs for the development of future GNSS-R missions dedicated to ocean altimetry applications.


title: MRAS based estimation of stator resistance and rotor flux linkage of permanent magnet generator considering core losses

abstract: For maximization of efficiency of interior permanent magnet generators (IPMSG) and optimization of machine control correct parameters of the machine are needed. Parameters used in advanced control of the machine are stator resistance, magnetic flux linkage and inductances of d and q axes. Alongside them ohmic resistance that represents core losses can be employed to further increase efficiency of control. This work will focus on implementation of MRAS estimator that has adaptive models with and without taking into account core losses. Using Matlab Simulink simulations were conducted and comparison of estimators was made under change of current in d and q axis and different values of resistance that represents core losses. Results show that value of resistance that represents core losses influences estimated values of parameters and that it is beneficial to take into account core losses for efficient control of the machine.


title: Services, Processes and Routines: Literature review and implications

abstract: Service management involves building new services by combining and recombining processes and routines. In this paper, we examine the ontological and epistemological perspectives that inform our understanding of the chunks of functionality that are being recombined. Based on a review of 367 influential articles, we identify two very different sets of assumptions about the nature of processes and routines. We discuss the implications of these divergent assumptions for service management.


title: THE THEORY OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT: EXPLANATION TO NOVEL METHODS

abstract: In a series of prior papers, the authors have explored the theoretical foundation of project management. In this paper, this theoretical foundation is consolidated and used for explaining the novel features of two project management methods, which radically deviate from the conventional doctrine of project management: Last Planner and Scrum. Both methods have emerged since mid-nineties as practical responses to the failure of conventional project management methods, Scrum in the field of software projects, Last Planner in the field of construction projects. It is shown that both methods reject the underlying theoretical foundation of conventional project management and instead subscribe, implicitly or explicitly, to alternative theories, which better match the situation in question.


title: Scheduling time-triggered traffic in TTEthernet systems

abstract: TTEthernet is one communication protocol of realtime Ethernet that was designed to fully support a timely-determinism property and mixed-criticality applications in a single network infrastructure. In TTEthernet systems, time-triggered (TT) traffic takes precedence over standard-Ethernet traffic. This paper propose a scheduling approach for TT traffic in TTEthernet systems, by which all various TT communication schedules can be obtained. In each schedule, the periods of given time-critical applications are updated into the new calculated ones. With these updated periods, the cluster cycle length is derived by means of Least Common Multiple. The offset form is classified into two offset forms: continuous offset form, and distributed offset form. The dispatching and receiving instants of TT messages of each time-critical application can be calculated using these periods and offsets.


title: A safe, efficient algorithm for regression test selection

abstract: Regression testing is a necessary but costly maintenance activity aimed at demonstrating that code has not been adversely affected by changes. A selective approach to regression testing selects tests for a modified program from an existing test suite. A new technique for selective regression testing is presented. The proposed algorithm constructs control dependence graphs for program versions and uses these graphs to determine which tests from the existing test suite may exhibit changed behavior on the new version. Unlike most previous techniques for selective retest, the algorithm selects every test from the original test suite that might expose errors in the modified program, and does this without prior knowledge of program modifications. The algorithm handles all language constructs and program modifications and is easily automated. >


title: Unseen facial and bodily expressions trigger fast emotional reactions

abstract: The spontaneous tendency to synchronize our facial expressions with those of others is often termed emotional contagion. It is unclear, however, whether emotional contagion depends on visual awareness of the eliciting stimulus and which processes underlie the unfolding of expressive reactions in the observer. It has been suggested either that emotional contagion is driven by motor imitation (i.e., mimicry), or that it is one observable aspect of the emotional state arising when we see the corresponding emotion in others. Emotional contagion reactions to different classes of consciously seen and “unseen” stimuli were compared by presenting pictures of facial or bodily expressions either to the intact or blind visual field of two patients with unilateral destruction of the visual cortex and ensuing phenomenal blindness. Facial reactions were recorded using electromyography, and arousal responses were measured with pupil dilatation. Passive exposure to unseen expressions evoked faster facial reactions and higher arousal compared with seen stimuli, therefore indicating that emotional contagion occurs also when the triggering stimulus cannot be consciously perceived because of cortical blindness. Furthermore, stimuli that are very different in their visual characteristics, such as facial and bodily gestures, induced highly similar expressive responses. This shows that the patients did not simply imitate the motor pattern observed in the stimuli, but resonated to their affective meaning. Emotional contagion thus represents an instance of truly affective reactions that may be mediated by visual pathways of old evolutionary origin bypassing cortical vision while still providing a cornerstone for emotion communication and affect sharing.


title: Two-Phase Lorentz Coils and Linear Halbach Array for Multiaxis Precision-Positioning Stages With Magnetic Levitation

abstract: In this paper, a new framework for linear permanent-magnet (PM) machines with applications in precision motion control is proposed and validated. A single forcer generating two independent force components in two perpendicular directions is the fundamental unit of the framework. Each forcer consists of two planar Lorentz coils separated by a 90° or 270° phase difference and parallel to a Halbach magnet array. Many coil pairs can be assembled to the same platen to move over a common magnet matrix, forming a linear or planar PM motor. Advantages of this framework include a linear system model, the capability to magnetically levitate the mover in multiaxis stages, and that to generate long translational motion range. The framework developed herein is validated by a six-degree-of-freedom magnetically levitated (maglev) stage. The dimension of the moving platen's frame is $\text{14.3}{\,\text{cm}}\times \text{14.3}{\,\text{cm}}$ , and its total mass is 0.75 kg. The achieved positioning resolution in translations along $X,Y$ , and $Z$ is 10 nm. The positioning resolution in out-of-plane rotation is $\text{0.1}\,\mu {\text{rad}}$ , which is a record in the literature. The maximum travel range in $XY$ with laser interferometers is ${\text{56}\,\text{mm}}\times \text{35}\,{\text{mm}}$ , limited by the size of the precision mirrors. With the coils’ total mass of only 0.205 kg, the achieved acceleration is 1.2 m/s2. Experimental results exhibit reduced perturbations in other axes of in-plane motions.


Three-year evaluation of posterior vertical bite reconstruction using direct composite resin – A case series


title: Invited Paper: Profiling Intelligent Systems Applications in Fraud Detection and Prevention: Survey of Research Articles

abstract: This paper surveys intelligent systems (IS) applications using a literature review and classification of articles from 1956 to 2009 with a keyword index and article abstract in order to explore how IS applications in the field of fraud detection and prevention have developed during this period. Based on the scope of 36 articles found from Web of science (SSCI, SCI and A&HCI) database, this paper surveys and classifies IS applications in the fraud detection and prevention using the following three categories of intelligent systems: neural networks, fuzzy ISs, and computational intelligence. Following applications areas were detected and described: telecommunications, insurance, auditing, medical care, credit card transactions, e-business, bid pricing and identity verification.


title: Still Second Class: Sexual Harassment of Graduate Students

abstract: We surveyed 525 graduate students (61.7% females and 38.3% males) regarding their exposure to sexual and gender-based harassing events. Thirty-eight percent of female and 23.4% of male participants self-reported that they had experienced sexual harassment from faculty or staff; 57.7% of female and 38.8% of male participants reported they had experienced sexual harassment from other students. We explored the relation between sexual harassment and negative outcomes (trauma symptoms, campus safety, and institutional betrayal) while also considering associations with other types of victimization (sexual assault, stalking, and dating violence) during graduate school. Our results update and extend prior research on sexual harassment of graduate students; graduate-level female students continue to experience significantly more sexual harassment from faculty, staff, and students than their male counterparts, and sexual harassment is significantly associated with negative outcomes after considering other forms of ...


title: Development of bio-inspired underwater robot with adaptive morphology capable of multiple swimming modes

abstract: Bio-inspired underwater robots have several benefits compared to traditional underwater vehicles such as agility, efficiency, and environmentally friendly body. However, bio-inspired underwater robots developed so far have a single swimming mode, which may limit their capability to perform different tasks. This paper presents a re-configurable bio-inspired underwater robot that can change the morphology to enable multiple swimming modes: octopus-mode and fish-mode. The robot is 60 cm long and 50 cm wide, weighing 2.1 kg, and consists of a re-configurable body and 8 compliant arms that are actuated independently by waterproof servomotors. In the robot, the octopus-mode is expected to perform unique tasks such as object manipulation and ground locomotion as demonstrated in literature, while the fish-mode is promising to swim faster and efficiently to travel long distance. With this platform, we investigate the effectiveness of adaptive morphology in bio-inspired underwater robots. For this purpose, we evaluated the robot in terms of the cost of transport and the swimming efficiency of both the morphologies. The fish-mode exhibited a lower cost of transport of 2.2 and higher efficiency of 1.2 % compared to the octopus-mode, illustrating the effect of the multiple swimming modes by adaptive morphology.


title: Phase retrieval and differential phase-contrast imaging with low-brilliance X-ray sources

abstract: X-ray radiographic absorption imaging is an invaluable tool in medical diagnostics and materials science. For biological tissue samples, polymers or fibre composites, however, the use of conventional X-ray radiography is limited due to their weak absorption. This is resolved at highly brilliant X-ray synchrotron or micro-focus sources by using phase-sensitive imaging methods to improve the contrast. However, the requirements of the illuminating radiation mean that hard-X-ray phase-sensitive imaging has until now been impractical with more readily available X-ray sources, such as X-ray tubes. In this letter, we report how a setup consisting of three transmission gratings can efficiently yield quantitative differential phase-contrast images with conventional X-ray tubes. In contrast with existing techniques, the method requires no spatial or temporal coherence, is mechanically robust, and can be scaled up to large fields of view. Our method provides all the benefits of contrast-enhanced phase-sensitive imaging, but is also fully compatible with conventional absorption radiography. It is applicable to X-ray medical imaging, industrial non-destructive testing, and to other low-brilliance radiation, such as neutrons or atoms


title: Knowledge-driven understanding of images in comic books

abstract: Document analysis is an active field of research, which can attain a complete understanding of the semantics of a given document. One example of the document understanding process is enabling a computer to identify the key elements of a comic book story and arrange them according to a predefined domain knowledge. In this study, we propose a knowledge-driven system that can interact with bottom-up and top-down information to progressively understand the content of a document. We model the comic book's and the image processing domains knowledge for information consistency analysis. In addition, different image processing methods are improved or developed to extract panels, balloons, tails, texts, comic characters and their semantic relations in an unsupervised way.


title: Machine learning the harness track: Crowdsourcing and varying race history

abstract: Racing prediction schemes have been with mankind a long time. From following crowd wisdom and betting on favorites to mathematical methods like the Dr. Z System, we introduce a different class of prediction system, the S&C Racing system that derives from machine learning. We demonstrate the S&C Racing system using Support Vector Regression (SVR) to predict finishes and analyzed it on fifteen months of harness racing data from Northfield Park, Ohio. We found that within the domain of harness racing, our system outperforms crowds and Dr. Z Bettors in returns per dollar wagered on seven of the most frequently used wagers: Win $1.08 return, Place $2.30, Show $2.55, Exacta $19.24, Quiniela $18.93, Trifecta $3.56 and Trifecta Box $21.05. Furthermore, we also analyzed a range of race histories and found that a four race history maximized system accuracy and payout. The implications of this work suggest that an informational inequality exists within the harness racing market that was exploited by S&C Racing. While interesting, the implications of machine learning in this domain show promise.


title: Complete Coverage D* Algorithm for Path Planning of a Floor-Cleaning Mobile Robot

abstract: Abstract Inspired by the path transform (PT) algorithm of Zelinsky et al. the novel algorithm of complete coverage called complete coverage D* (CCD*) algorithm is developed, based on the D* search of the two-dimensional occupancy grid map of the environment. Unlike the original PT algorithm the CCD* algorithm takes the robot's dimension into account, with emphasis on safety of motion and reductions of path length and search time. Additionally, the proposed CCD* algorithm has ability to produce new complete coverage path as the environment changes. The algorithms were tested on a Pioneer 3DX mobile robot equipped with a laser range finder.


title: Spam, Damn Spam, and Statistics: Using Statistical Analysis to Locate Spam Web Pages

abstract: The increasing importance of search engines to commercial web sites has given rise to a phenomenon we call "web spam", that is, web pages that exist only to mislead search engines into (mis)leading users to certain web sites. Web spam is a nuisance to users as well as search engines: users have a harder time finding the information they need, and search engines have to cope with an inflated corpus, which in turn causes their cost per query to increase. Therefore, search engines have a strong incentive to weed out spam web pages from their index.We propose that some spam web pages can be identified through statistical analysis: Certain classes of spam pages, in particular those that are machine-generated, diverge in some of their properties from the properties of web pages at large. We have examined a variety of such properties, including linkage structure, page content, and page evolution, and have found that outliers in the statistical distribution of these properties are highly likely to be caused by web spam.This paper describes the properties we have examined, gives the statistical distributions we have observed, and shows which kinds of outliers are highly correlated with web spam.


title: MAKE: A framework to enhance metacognitive skills of engineering students

abstract: Metacognition or knowledge of one's own cognitive process, is an important skill for engineering students. Considered to be a surviving tool, metacognition plays a significant role in the self-regulated learning abilities of students. In this paper, the authors have proposed a framework `MAKE - Motivation, Attention, Knowledge, Execution', for enhancing the metacognitive skills of students. This framework can help students and teachers to apply the formats of Active Learning in Engineering. The authors have demonstrated a case study where MAKE was deployed in Samarth Way™ - competency building model - to enhance the productivity of newly inducted employees in a company.


title: Metamaterial inspired dual-band antenna with modified CSRR and EBG loading

abstract: In this paper, a metamaterial-inspired dual-band antenna with modified complimentary split ring resonator and electromagnetic band gap loading is proposed. The newly proposed modified CSRR brings 11.4% miniaturization in area of antenna as compared to conventional CSRR. The proposed antenna has an electrical size of 0.175λ 0 × 0.218λ 0 × 0.014λ 0 and shows dual-band characteristics. The proposed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 3.4% (centered at 2.62 GHz) for the first band and 20.1% (centered at 3.23 GHz) for the second band.


title: Stair ascent assistance for cerebral palsy with robot suit HAL

abstract: Cerebral palsy (CP) patients require a wheelchair for moving when their lower limbs are severely paralyzed. Wheelchair users have issues moving around due to the lack of optimal infrastructure. We achieved a voluntary walking of a CP patient who uses wheelchair by using our developed hybrid assistive limb (HAL). In addition to voluntary walking, if HAL realizes voluntary stair climbing, it is expected that patients will acquire a wider range of activities than using a wheelchair. This study focuses on stair ascent. The purpose of this study is to propose an automatic control method for stair ascent assistance, and to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. In this method, a phase of stair ascent is determined by proposed phase determination based on a height of landing area, CoGRF in sagittal plane and lateral plane. Proposed automatic control generates torque for assisting each phase movement during stair ascent. As an experiment, healthy male subject went through a course including flat area and stairs. As a result, we verified that the phase determination could determine the phase during stair ascent and switch between the walking assistance method and stair ascent assistance method. The proposed automatic control generated torque for assisting movement of each phase. We found this proposed method is applicable to for walking and stair ascent assistance.


title: Design and Implementation of Security Systems for Smart Home based on GSM technology

abstract: Security has becoming an important issue everywhere. Home security is becoming necessary nowadays as the possibilities of intrusion are increasing day by day. Safety from theft, leaking of raw gas and fire are the most important requirements of home security system for people. A traditional home security system gives the signals in terms of alarm. However, the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) based security systems provides enhanced security as whenever a signal from sensor occurs, a text message is sent to a desired number to take necessary actions. This paper suggests two methods for home security system. The first system uses web camera. Whenever there is a motion in front of the camera, it gives security alert in terms of sound and a mail is delivered to the owner. The second method sends SMS which uses GSMGPS Module (sim548c) and Atmega644p microcontroller, sensors, relays and buzzers.


title: Evolution of Networks (2G-5G)

abstract: Mobile and wireless networks have made tremendous growth in the last fifteen years. Today 3G mobile systems are on the ground providing IP connectivity for real-time and non-realtime services. Then, the concepts of 4G is already much discussed and it is almost certain that 4G will include several standards under a common umbrella, similarly to 3G, but with IEEE 802.xx wireless mobile networks included from the beginning. The main contribution of this paper is definition of 5G (Fifth Generation) mobile network concept, which is seen as user-centric concept instead of operator-centric as in 3G or service-centric concept as seen for 4G. In the proposed concept the mobile user is on the top of all. The 5G terminals will have software defined radios and modulation scheme as well as new error-control schemes can be downloaded from the Internet on the run. The development is seen towards the user terminals as a focus of the5G mobile networks. The terminals will have access to different wireless technologies at the same time and the terminal should be able to combine different flows from different technologies. Each network will be responsible for handling user-mobility, while the terminal will make the final choice among different wireless/mobile access network providers for a given service. The proposal in this paper is fundamental shift in the mobile networking philosophy compared to existing 3G and near-soon 4G mobile technologies, and this concept is called here - the 5G.


title: Abdominal muscle recruitment during a range of voluntary exercises.

abstract: Various exercises are used to retrain the abdominal muscles in the management of low back pain and other musculoskeletal disorders. However, few studies have directly investigated the activity of all the abdominal muscles or the recruitment of regions of the abdominal muscles during these manoeuvres. This study examined the activity of different regions of transversus abdominis (TrA), obliquus internus (OI) and externus abdominis (OE), and rectus abdominis (RA), and movement of the lumbar spine, pelvis and abdomen during inward movement of the lower abdominal wall, abdominal bracing, pelvic tilting, and inward movement of the lower and upper abdominal wall. Inward movement of the lower abdominal wall in supine produced greater activity of TrA compared to OI, OE and RA. During posterior pelvic tilting, middle OI was most active and with abdominal bracing, OE was predominantly recruited. Regions of TrA were recruited differentially and an inverse relationship between lumbopelvic motion and TrA electromyography (EMG) was found. This study indicates that inward movement of the lower abdominal wall in supine produces the most independent activity of TrA relative to the other abdominal muscles, recruitment varies between regions of TrA, and observation of abdominal and lumbopelvic motion may assist in evaluation of exercise performance.


title: A Potentially Realizable Quantum Computer

abstract: Arrays of weakly coupled quantum systems might compute if subjected to a sequence of electromagnetic pulses of well-defined frequency and length. Such pulsed arrays are true quantum computers: Bits can be placed in superpositionsof 0 and 1, logical operations take place coherently, and dissipation is required only for error correction. Operated with frequent error correction, such a system functions as a parallel digital computer. Operated in a quantum-mechanically coherent manner, such a device functions as a generalpurpose quantum-mechanical micromanipulator, capable of both creating any desired quantum state of the array and transforming that state in any desired way.


title: Thermodiffusion in positively charged magnetic colloids: Influence of the particle diameter

abstract: The Soret coefficient (ST) of positively charged magnetic colloids was measured as a function of the nanoparticles’ diameter. The Z-scan technique and the generalization of the thermal lens model proved to be a reliabletechniquetomeasure ST.Weshowthat ST isnegativeandincreaseswiththeparticle’sdiameter,beingbest described by a functional dependence of the type ST ∝ d0. Potentiometric and conductometric experiments show that the particle’s surface charge decreases as the temperature increases, changing the electrostatic interaction between the nanoparticles. The temperature gradient imposed in the ferrofluid by the Gaussian laser beam leads to the formation of the particle’s concentration gradient. The origin of this phenomenon is discussed in terms of the decrease of the particle’s surface charge in the hottest region of the sample and the thermoelectric field due to the inhomogeneous distribution of hydrogenous ions present in the colloidal suspension.


title: Dual quaternions for rigid transformation blending

abstract: Quaternions have been a popular tool in 3D computer graphics for more than 20 years. However, classical quaternions are restricted to the representation of rotations, whereas in graphical applications we typically work with rotation composed with translation (i.e., a rigid transformation). Dual quaternions represent rigid transformations in the same way as classical quaternions represent rotations. In this paper we show how to generalize established techniques for blending of rotations to include all rigid transformations. Algorithms based on dual quaternions are computationally more efficient than previous solutions and have better properties (constant speed, shortest path and coordinate invariance). For the specific example of skinning, we demonstrate that problems which required considerable research effort recently are trivial to solve using our dual quaternion formulation. However, skinning is only one application of dual quaternions, so several further promising research directions are suggested in the paper.


title: Heterogeneous Multi-Robot System for Mapping Environmental Variables of Greenhouses

abstract: The productivity of greenhouses highly depends on the environmental conditions of crops, such as temperature and humidity. The control and monitoring might need large sensor networks, and as a consequence, mobile sensory systems might be a more suitable solution. This paper describes the application of a heterogeneous robot team to monitor environmental variables of greenhouses. The multi-robot system includes both ground and aerial vehicles, looking to provide flexibility and improve performance. The multi-robot sensory system measures the temperature, humidity, luminosity and carbon dioxide concentration in the ground and at different heights. Nevertheless, these measurements can be complemented with other ones (e.g., the concentration of various gases or images of crops) without a considerable effort. Additionally, this work addresses some relevant challenges of multi-robot sensory systems, such as the mission planning and task allocation, the guidance, navigation and control of robots in greenhouses and the coordination among ground and aerial vehicles. This work has an eminently practical approach, and therefore, the system has been extensively tested both in simulations and field experiments.


title: Extending the lambda calculus to express randomized and quantumized algorithms

abstract: This paper introduces a formal metalanguage called the lambda-q calculus for the specification of quantum programming languages. This metalanguage is an extension of the lambda calculus, which provides a formal setting for the specification of classical programming languages. As an intermediary step, we introduce a formal metalanguage called the lambda-p calculus for the specification of programming languages that allow true random number generation. We demonstrate how selected randomized algorithms can be programmed directly in the lambda-p calculus. We also demonstrate how satisfiability can be solved in the lambda-q calculus.


title: Untraceable electronic mail, return addresses, and digital pseudonyms

abstract: A technique based on public key cryptography is presented that allows an electronic mail system to hide who a participant communicates with as well as the content of the communication - in spite of an unsecured underlying telecommunication system. The technique does not require a universally trusted authority. One correspondent can remain anonymous to a second, while allowing the second to respond via an untraceable return address. The technique can also be used to form rosters of untraceable digital pseudonyms from selected applications. Applicants retain the exclusive ability to form digital signatures corresponding to their pseudonyms. Elections in which any interested party can verify that the ballots have been properly counted are possible if anonymously mailed ballots are signed with pseudonyms from a roster of registered voters. Another use allows an individual to correspond with a record-keeping organization under a unique pseudonym, which appears in a roster of acceptable clients.


title: Hybrid balancing in a modular battery management system for electric-drive vehicles

abstract: A hybrid balancing approach that combines active and passive balancing is presented for a modular battery management system (BMS) in electric-drive vehicles. The hybrid system combines advantages of module-level active balancing with cost-effectiveness of cell-level passive balancing. A module consists of a number of cells connected in series, with cell-level passive balancing performed within a module, together with a module-level dc-dc converter that performs active balancing among the modules. Furthermore, the module-level dc-dc converters also supply auxiliary vehicle loads on the vehicle low-voltage bus, thus removing the need for a separate high-voltage to low-voltage dc-dc converter. System control and communication are shared among active and passive balancing functions, reducing the system complexity. Design details and experimental results are provided for a hybrid balancing system implemented on a lithium-ion battery pack, which consists of eighteen 25 Ah cells grouped in three 6-cell modules, each including a 480 W dc-dc converter supplying power to the vehicle low-voltage bus.


title: THE PERCEPTRON: A PROBABILISTIC MODEL FOR INFORMATION STORAGE AND ORGANIZATION

abstract: The first of these questions is in the province of sensory physiology, and is the only one for which appreciable understanding has been achieved. This article will be concerned primarily with the second and third questions, which are still subject to a vast amount of speculation, and where the few relevant facts currently supplied by neurophysiology have not yet been integrated into an acceptable theory. With regard to the second question, two alternative positions have been maintained. The first suggests that storage of sensory information is in the form of coded representations or images, with some sort of one-to-one mapping between the sensory stimulus


title: Body Space in Social Interactions: A Comparison of Reaching and Comfort Distance in Immersive Virtual Reality

abstract: Background ::: Do peripersonal space for acting on objects and interpersonal space for interacting with con-specifics share common mechanisms and reflect the social valence of stimuli? To answer this question, we investigated whether these spaces refer to a similar or different physical distance. ::: ::: ::: Methodology ::: Participants provided reachability-distance (for potential action) and comfort-distance (for social processing) judgments towards human and non-human virtual stimuli while standing still (passive) or walking toward stimuli (active). ::: ::: ::: Principal Findings ::: Comfort-distance was larger than other conditions when participants were passive, but reachability and comfort distances were similar when participants were active. Both spaces were modulated by the social valence of stimuli (reduction with virtual females vs males, expansion with cylinder vs robot) and the gender of participants. ::: ::: ::: Conclusions ::: These findings reveal that peripersonal reaching and interpersonal comfort spaces share a common motor nature and are sensitive, at different degrees, to social modulation. Therefore, social processing seems embodied and grounded in the body acting in space.


title: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor produces antidepressant effects in behavioral models of depression.

abstract: Previous studies demonstrated that antidepressant treatment increases the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in rat hippocampus. The present study was conducted to test the hypothesis that BDNF in the hippocampus produces an antidepressant effect in behavioral models of depression, the learned helplessness (LH) and forced swim test (FST) paradigms. A single bilateral infusion of BDNF into the dentate gyrus of hippocampus produced an antidepressant effect in both the LH and FST that was comparable in magnitude with repeated systemic administration of a chemical antidepressant. These effects were observed as early as 3 d after a single infusion of BDNF and lasted for at least 10 d. Similar effects were observed with neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) but not nerve growth factor. Infusions of BDNF and NT-3 did not influence locomotor activity or passive avoidance. The results provide further support for the hypothesis that BDNF contributes to the therapeutic action of antidepressant treatment.


title: On the ecological role of insects in Australian eucalypt forests

abstract: If heterotroph grazers act as rate regulators of autotroph processes, the general intensity of grazing probably reflects the necessity for more or less intense rate-regulation. The high rates of insect grazing in eucalypt forests imply that considerably more regulation of eucalypts is necessary than in other forests. After examining the biological adaptations of eucalypts and reviewing nutrient cycling in eucalypt forests, the hypothesis is proposed that the impoverished soils and erratic Australian climate have led to the development of very efficient autotrophic exploitation of the resource base, with associated sensitive and rapid growth responses to favourable conditions and a correspondingly sensitive and intense level of insect grazing. The rate-regulatory activity of the insects ensures that the resource base is not depleted, and it maintains a proportion of the available nutrients in rapid circulation. ::: ::: ::: ::: In addition to the observed pattern of intense insect grazing in eucalypt forests, it is suggested that a two-pathway nutrient cycling system has been developed, with pathways more clearly defined than the anastomosing nutrient-cycling systems in forests elsewhere. A slow nutrient cycle is maintained by the trees while a smaller pool of nutrients is rapidly recycled in the litter and understorey. Insects skim off nutrients from the slow cycle and pass them into the faster cycling pool. This idea is important in relation to the frequency of fire in eucalypt forests and the large inputs into the system of nitrogen from the leguminous shrubs which regenerate after fire.


MIMO Cooperative Spatial Modulation Systems


title: The Online Disinhibition Effect

abstract: While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than they would in person. This article explores six factors that interact with each other in creating this online disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. Personality variables also will influence the extent of this disinhibition. Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying "true self," we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving clusters of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.


title: An improved PageRank algorithm to handle polysemous queries

abstract: With advances in Internet technology, the web structure has become complex, and it has become impossible for search engines to provide a user the relevant information from the web without the use of web mining techniques. In response to a query from the user, the webpages are ranked and listed based on their importance and relevance with respect to the query. Web structure mining is used to analyze the hyperlink structure of the web to determine the importance of webpages. Web Content Mining is used to analyze the content of a webpage with respect to the query. Though many algorithms have been introduced employing both of these methods, not much focus has been laid on how a content should be analyzed in response to a query which contains one or more terms with different meanings/senses. Through the paper, we propose a technique to rank the pages in order of relevance for such queries.


Music Genre Classification with the Million Song Dataset 15-826 Final Report


title: Attributed based access control (ABAC) for Web services

abstract: For companies and government agencies alike, the emergence of Web services technologies and the evolution of distributed systems toward service oriented architectures (SOA) have helped promote collaboration and information sharing by breaking down "stove-piped" systems and connecting them via loosely coupled, interoperable system-to-system interfaces. Such architectures, however, also bring about their own security challenges that require due consideration. Unfortunately, the current information security mechanisms are insufficient to address these challenges. In particular, the access control models today are mostly static and coarsely grained; they are not well-suited for the service-oriented environments where information access is dynamic and ad-hoc in nature. This paper outlines the access control challenges for Web services and SOA, and proposes an attribute based access control (ABAC) model as a new approach, which is based on subject, object, and environment attributes and supports both mandatory and discretionary access control needs. The paper describes the ABAC model in terms of its authorization architecture and policy formulation, and makes a detailed comparison between ABAC and traditional role-based models, which clearly shows the advantages of ABAC. The paper then describes how this new model can be applied to securing Web service invocations, with an implementation based on standard protocols and open-source tools. The paper concludes with a summary of the ABAC model's benefits and some future directions.


title: EmailProfiler: Spearphishing Filtering with Header and Stylometric Features of Emails

abstract: Spearphishing is a prominent targeted attack vector in today's Internet. By impersonating trusted email senders through carefully crafted messages and spoofed metadata, adversaries can trick victims into launching attachments containing malicious code or into clicking on malicious links that grant attackers a foothold into otherwise well-protected networks. Spearphishing is effective because it is fundamentally difficult for users to distinguish legitimate emails from spearphishing emails without additional defensive mechanisms. However, such mechanisms, such as cryptographic signatures, have found limited use in practice due to their perceived difficulty of use for normal users. In this paper, we present a novel automated approach to defending users against spearphishing attacks. The approach first builds probabilistic models of both email metadata and stylometric features of email content. Then, subsequent emails are compared to these models to detect characteristic indicators of spearphishing attacks. Several instantiations of this approach are possible, including performing model learning and evaluation solely on the receiving side, or senders publishing models that can be checked remotely by the receiver. Our evaluation of a real data set drawn from 20 email users demonstrates that the approach effectively discriminates spearphishing attacks from legitimate email while providing significant ease-of-use benefits over traditional defenses.


Design of Ku-Band Substrate Integrated Waveguide Phase Shifter


title: Exploiting AUTOSAR Safety Mechanisms to Launch Security Attacks

abstract: Automotive Electronic Control Units (ECUs) rely on both hardware and software mechanisms to ensure safety is maintained in the face of hazards that result from both random and systematic failures. In the presence of a malicious attacker, these safety mechanisms can serve as attack vectors to launch Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. This can be achieved by disabling critical system functions through the malicious creation of safety relevant fault conditions. In this paper, we explore some of the exploitable safety mechanisms within the Automotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR), and we demonstrate two successful attacks on an authenticated CAN FD bus system by introducing safety critical failures.


title: A new model for learning in graph domains

abstract: In several applications the information is naturally represented by graphs. Traditional approaches cope with graphical data structures using a preprocessing phase which transforms the graphs into a set of flat vectors. However, in this way, important topological information may be lost and the achieved results may heavily depend on the preprocessing stage. This paper presents a new neural model, called graph neural network (GNN), capable of directly processing graphs. GNNs extends recursive neural networks and can be applied on most of the practically useful kinds of graphs, including directed, undirected, labelled and cyclic graphs. A learning algorithm for GNNs is proposed and some experiments are discussed which assess the properties of the model.


Bitcoin Covenants


title: A survey and taxonomy on energy efficient resource allocation techniques for cloud computing systems

abstract: In a cloud computing paradigm, energy efficient allocation of different virtualized ICT resources (servers, storage disks, and networks, and the like) is a complex problem due to the presence of heterogeneous application (e.g., content delivery networks, MapReduce, web applications, and the like) workloads having contentious allocation requirements in terms of ICT resource capacities (e.g., network bandwidth, processing speed, response time, etc.). Several recent papers have tried to address the issue of improving energy efficiency in allocating cloud resources to applications with varying degree of success. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no published literature on this subject that clearly articulates the research problem and provides research taxonomy for succinct classification of existing techniques. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to identify open challenges associated with energy efficient resource allocation. In this regard, the study, first, outlines the problem and existing hardware and software-based techniques available for this purpose. Furthermore, available techniques already presented in the literature are summarized based on the energy-efficient research dimension taxonomy. The advantages and disadvantages of the existing techniques are comprehensively analyzed against the proposed research dimension taxonomy namely: resource adaption policy, objective function, allocation method, allocation operation, and interoperability.


title: Game Transfer Phenomena in video game playing: a qualitative interview study

abstract: Video game playing is a popular activity and its enjoyment among frequent players has been associated with absorption and immersion experiences. This paper examines how immersion in the video game environment can influence the player during the game and afterwards (including fantasies, thoughts, and actions). This is what is described as Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP). GTP occurs when video game elements are associated with real life elements triggering subsequent thoughts, sensations and/or player actions. To investigate this further, a total of 42 frequent video game players aged between 15 and 21 years old were interviewed. Thematic analysis showed that many players experienced GTP, where players appeared to integrate elements of video game playing into their real lives. These GTP were then classified as either intentional or automatic experiences. Results also showed that players used video games for interacting with others as a form of amusement, modeling or mimicking video game content, and daydreaming about video games. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate how video games triggered intrusive thoughts, sensations, impulses, reflexes, optical illusions, and dissociations.


title: Authority-shift clustering: Hierarchical clustering by authority seeking on graphs

abstract: In this paper, a novel hierarchical clustering method using link analysis techniques is introduced. The algorithm is formulated as an authority seeking procedure on graphs, which computes the shifts toward nodes with high authority scores. For the authority shift, we adopted the personalized PageRank score of the graph. Based on the concept of authority seeking, we achieve hierarchical clustering by iteratively propagating the authority scores to other nodes and shifting authority nodes. This scheme solves the chicken-egg difficulty in hierarchical clustering by a semiglobal bottom-up approach exploiting the global structure of the graph. The experimental evaluation demonstrates that our algorithm is more powerful compared with existing graph-based approaches in clustering and image segmentation tasks.


title: The S2E Platform: Design, Implementation, and Applications

abstract: This article presents S2E, a platform for analyzing the properties and behavior of software systems, along with its use in developing tools for comprehensive performance profiling, reverse engineering of proprietary software, and automated testing of kernel-mode and user-mode binaries. Conceptually, S2E is an automated path explorer with modular path analyzers: the explorer uses a symbolic execution engine to drive the target system down all execution paths of interest, while analyzers measure and/or check properties of each such path. S2E users can either combine existing analyzers to build custom analysis tools, or they can directly use S2E’s APIs. S2E’s strength is the ability to scale to large systems, such as a full Windows stack, using two new ideas: selective symbolic execution, a way to automatically minimize the amount of code that has to be executed symbolically given a target analysis, and execution consistency models, a way to make principled performance/accuracy trade-offs during analysis. These techniques give S2E three key abilities: to simultaneously analyze entire families of execution paths instead of just one execution at a time; to perform the analyses in-vivo within a real software stack---user programs, libraries, kernel, drivers, etc.---instead of using abstract models of these layers; and to operate directly on binaries, thus being able to analyze even proprietary software.


title: A review on various multipliers designs in VLSI

abstract: In this paper we are going to study Array multiplier, Wallace multiplier, Bypassing multiplier, Modified Booth multiplier, Vedic multiplier and Booth recorded Wallace tree multiplier which have been proposed by different researchers. When the study of the various multipliers have been performed, Array multiplier is found to have the largest delay and large power consumption while Booth encoded Wallace tree multiplier has the least delay though it also have a large area. We also realized that, with proper optimization the performance of the multipliers can be increased significantly, irrespective of the type. Temporal tilling method optimized array multiplier delay and power dissipation is found to increase by 50% and 30% respectively while using the partially guarded technique power consumption is reduced by 10–44% with 30–36% less area overhead. Booth recorded Wallace tree multiplier is found to be 67% faster than the Wallace tree multiplier, 53% faster than the Vedic multiplier, 22% faster than the radix 8 booth multipliers. We also study various optimization techniques for Wallace multiplier, bypassing multiplier, modified booth multiplier and Vedic multiplier.


title: Trajectories of Autism Severity in Children Using Standardized ADOS Scores

abstract: OBJECTIVES: To plot longitudinal trajectories of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) severity from early childhood to early adolescence. In line with reported trajectories in toddlers, we hypothesize that a substantial minority of children will show marked changes in ASD severity over time, with “Improvers” demonstrating the highest mean baseline and rate of growth in verbal IQ (VIQ). METHODS: Patients included 345 clinic referrals and research participants with best-estimate clinical diagnoses of ASD at 1 or more time points, and repeated Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), VIQ, and nonverbal IQ scores. Standardized ADOS severity scores were applied to 1026 assessments collected longitudinally between the ages of 2 and 15 (VIQ at most recent assessment: mean = 58, SD = 35). Scores were fitted for latent severity trajectory classes with and without covariates. Adaptive behavior and VIQ trajectories over time were modeled within each of the best-fit latent classes. RESULTS: A 4-class model best represented the observed data. Over 80% of participants were assigned to persistent (stable) high or moderately severe classes; 2 small classes respectively increased or decreased in severity over time. Age, gender, race, and nonverbal IQ did not predict class membership; VIQ was a significant predictor. Baseline VIQ was highest in the improving and worsening classes; it increased at the greatest rate in the improving class. Adaptive behavior declined in all but the improving class, with consistent impairment in all classes. CONCLUSIONS: If replicated, identified trajectory classes of ADOS severity may contribute to clinical prognosis and to subtyping samples for neurobiological and genetic research.


title: A survey of machine learning for big data processing

abstract: There is no doubt that big data are now rapidly expanding in all science and engineering domains. While the potential of these massive data is undoubtedly significant, fully making sense of them requires new ways of thinking and novel learning techniques to address the various challenges. In this paper, we present a literature survey of the latest advances in researches on machine learning for big data processing. First, we review the machine learning techniques and highlight some promising learning methods in recent studies, such as representation learning, deep learning, distributed and parallel learning, transfer learning, active learning, and kernel-based learning. Next, we focus on the analysis and discussions about the challenges and possible solutions of machine learning for big data. Following that, we investigate the close connections of machine learning with signal processing techniques for big data processing. Finally, we outline several open issues and research trends.


title: Estimating surface normals in noisy point cloud data

abstract: In this paper we describe and analyze a method based on local least square fitting for estimating the normals at all sample points of a point cloud data (PCD) set, in the presence of noise. We study the effects of neighborhood size, curvature, sampling density, and noise on the normal estimation when the PCD is sampled from a smooth curve in R2 or a smooth surface in R3 and noise is added. The analysis allows us to find the optimal neighborhood size using other local information from the PCD. Experimental results are also provided.


title: On the Vulnerabilities of Landmark-Based Data Location Approaches: Threats, Solutions, and Challenges

abstract: Nowadays, many companies, administrations, and individuals are outsourcing the storage of their data to largescale Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). Unfortunately, the modern cloud infrastructure virtualization results in the difficulty or the impossibility for data owners to know the location where their data are stored. Data location verification is required due to legal, privacy, and performance constraints. Recently "Where are my data located in the Cloud?" has become a challenge and solutions have been proposed to verify data location. Even in case of the establishment of a strong Service-Level Agreement, which includes an initial guarantee regarding data location, the CSP may then move the data in another location, like another country, in order to cut the costs or for any other reasons. This paper considers landmark-based verification approaches, which are flexible and low cost compared to other location verification approaches. The objective is the identification of vulnerabilities relating to the main proposed landmark-based location verification approaches when malicious CSPs are involved and the proposal of some countermeasures against CSP's attacks. We present, to the best of our knowledge, the most comprehensive literature survey on vulnerabilities of landmark-based data location approaches.


title: Trypanosoma (Megatrypanum) melophagium in the Sheep Ked Melophagus ovinus from Organic Farms in Croatia: Phylogenetic Inferences Support Restriction to Sheep and Sheep Keds and Close Relationship with Trypanosomes from Other Ruminant Species

abstract: Trypanosoma (Megatrypanum) melophagium is a parasite of sheep transmitted by sheep keds, the sheep-restricted ectoparasite Melophagus ovinus (Diptera: Hippoboscidae). Sheep keds were 100% prevalent in sheep from five organic farms in Croatia, Southeastern Europe, whereas trypanosomes morphologically compatible with T. melophagium were 86% prevalent in the guts of the sheep keds. Multilocus phylogenetic analyses using sequences of small subunit rRNA, glycosomal glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, spliced leader, and internal transcribed spacer 1 of the rDNA distinguished T. melophagium from all allied trypanosomes from other ruminant species and placed the trypanosome in the subgenus Megatrypanum. Trypanosomes from sheep keds from Croatia and Scotland, the only available isolates for comparison, shared identical sequences. All biologic and phylogenetic inferences support the restriction of T. melophagium to sheep and, especially, to the sheep keds. The comparison of trypanosomes from sheep, cattle, and deer from the same country, which was never achieved before this work, strongly supported the host-restricted specificity of trypanosomes of the subgenus Megatrypanum. Our findings indicate that with the expansion of organic farms, both sheep keds and T. melophagium may re-emerge as parasitic infections of sheep.


title: Rendering refraction and reflection of eyeglasses for synthetic eye tracker images

abstract: While for the evaluation of robustness of eye tracking algorithms the use of real-world data is essential, there are many applications where simulated, synthetic eye images are of advantage. They can generate labelled ground-truth data for appearance based gaze estimation algorithms or enable the development of model based gaze estimation techniques by showing the influence on gaze estimation error of different model factors that can then be simplified or extended. We extend the generation of synthetic eye images by a simulation of refraction and reflection for eyeglasses. On the one hand this allows for the testing of pupil and glint detection algorithms under different illumination and reflection conditions, on the other hand the error of gaze estimation routines can be estimated in conjunction with different eyeglasses. We show how a polynomial function fitting calibration performs equally well with and without eyeglasses, and how a geometrical eye model behaves when exposed to glasses.


title: Fast Decoding in Sequence Models using Discrete Latent Variables

abstract: Autoregressive sequence models based on deep neural networks, such as RNNs, Wavenet and the Transformer attain state-of-the-art results on many tasks. However, they are difficult to parallelize and are thus slow at processing long sequences. RNNs lack parallelism both during training and decoding, while architectures like WaveNet and Transformer are much more parallelizable during training, yet still operate sequentially during decoding. Inspired by [arxiv:1711.00937], we present a method to extend sequence models using discrete latent variables that makes decoding much more parallelizable. We first auto-encode the target sequence into a shorter sequence of discrete latent variables, which at inference time is generated autoregressively, and finally decode the output sequence from this shorter latent sequence in parallel. To this end, we introduce a novel method for constructing a sequence of discrete latent variables and compare it with previously introduced methods. Finally, we evaluate our model end-to-end on the task of neural machine translation, where it is an order of magnitude faster at decoding than comparable autoregressive models. While lower in BLEU than purely autoregressive models, our model achieves higher scores than previously proposed non-autoregressive translation models.


title: Into the Colorful World of Webtoons: Through the Lens of Neural Networks

abstract: The task of colorizing black and white images has previously been explored for natural images. In this paper we look at the task of colorization on a different domain: webtoons. To our knowledge this type of dataset hasn't been used before. Webtoons are usually produced in color thus they make a good dataset for analyzing different colorization models. Comics like webtoons also present some additional challenges over natural images, such as occlusion by speech bubbles and text. First we look at some of the previously introduced models' performance on this task and suggest modifications to address their problems. We propose a new model composed of two networks; one network generates sparse color information and a second network uses this generated color information as input to apply color to the whole image. These two networks are trained end-to-end. Our proposed model solves some of the problems observed with other architectures, resulting in better colorizations.


title: View security as the basis for data warehouse security

abstract: Access . permissions in a data warehouse are currently managed in a separate world from the sources’ policies. The consequences are inconsistencies, slow response to change, and wasted administrative work. We present a different approach, which treats the sources’ exported tables and the warehouse as part of the same distributed database. Our main result is a way to control derived products by extending SQL grants rather than creating entirely new mechanisms. We provide a powerful, sound inference theory that derives permissions on warehouse tables (both materialized and virtual), making the system easier to administer and its applications more robust. We also propose a new permission construct suitable for views that filter data from mutually-suspicious parties.


title: Rectification of QR-code images using the parametric cylindrical surface model

abstract: In recent years, QR codes have found a wide range of applications in business and industry. Moreover, their popularity and function are still growing (fast). Therefore, the processing of the images of QR codes is an important task. In this paper, we try to solve a problem encountered in QR decoding when the QR code is printed near the binding edge inside a book or on the surface of a cylindrical container. When a picture is taken on such a QR code, the picture is no longer in a rectangular shape, which is supposedly the “right” shape that any QR code should take, due to warping from the image capturing mechanism by the camera. We refer to such warping as cylinder-to-screen (C2S) warping. This warping translates into serious distortion of the original QR-code image (also referred to as QR image, for short) and thus causes failure in its decoding. In this paper, a mathematical model called the parametric cylindrical surface model (PCSM) is proposed. Then, based on it, a scheme is proposed to rectify C2S-warped QR images. Experiments show that the proposed scheme is effective, in the sense that many failed QR decodings become successful after the rectification.


title: A high PSRR, ultra-low power 1.2V curvature corrected Bandgap reference for wearable EEG application

abstract: A high PSRR, ultra-low power 1.2V voltage supply (V DD ) curvature corrected Bandgap reference for Wearable EEG application is described in this paper. The proposed bandgap reference can operate with supply as low as 1V, and provides a supply regulation of 0.113%/V with V DD range of 1.01–2.62V. Piecewise curvature compensation is employed to reduce the temperature coefficient (TC) of bandgap reference from 22.84ppm /°C to 2.295ppm/°C, with a temperature range −10∼110°C. The bandgap reference circuit was designed in standard 0.18um CMOS technology where a proportional to absolute temperature (PTAT) and a complementary to absolute temperature (CTAT) current generation circuit were used to generate first order bandgap reference. A non-linear current was generated using PTAT current and CTAT voltage generation circuit and a power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) of 84.62dB (at DC) was achieved to reduce the interference from power supply noise, in order to meet the specifications for wearable wireless EEG sensing systems. The total current consumption of the whole bandgap reference including biasing and startup circuit is only 4.691uA which fits the requirement of battery powered wearable wireless sensing applications.


title: The effects of pet therapy on the social behavior of institutionalized Alzheimer's clients

abstract: Twelve (N = 12) Alzheimer's (AD) residents of a Special Care Unit in a large midwest Veterans' Home were observed for the effects of the presence of a pet dog on eight social behaviors: smiles, laughs, looks, leans, touches, verbalizations, name-calling, and others. Observations took place on three separate occasions (absence of dog, temporary presence of the dog, and permanent placement of the dog) in both group and individual settings. The results showed that the presence of the dog …


title: Obscuration-dependent evolution of Active Galactic Nuclei

abstract: We aim to constrain the evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) as a function of obscuration using an X-ray-selected sample of ~2000 AGNs from a multi-tiered survey including the CDFS, AEGIS-XD, COSMOS, and XMM-XXL fields. The spectra of individual X-ray sources are analyzed using a Bayesian methodology with a physically realistic model to infer the posterior distribution of the hydrogen column density and intrinsic X-ray luminosity. We develop a novel non-parametric method that allows us to robustly infer the distribution of the AGN population in X-ray luminosity, redshift, and obscuring column density, relying only on minimal smoothness assumptions. Our analysis properly incorporates uncertainties from low count spectra, photometric redshift measurements, association incompleteness, and the limited sample size. We find that obscured AGNs with N_H > 10^(22) cm^(–2) account for 77^(+4_(-5)% of the number density and luminosity density of the accretion supermassive black hole population with L_X > 10^(43) erg s^(–1), averaged over cosmic time. Compton-thick AGNs account for approximately half the number and luminosity density of the obscured population, and 38^(+8)_(-7)% of the total. We also find evidence that the evolution is obscuration dependent, with the strongest evolution around N_H ≈ 10^(23) cm^(–2). We highlight this by measuring the obscured fraction in Compton-thin AGNs, which increases toward z ~ 3, where it is 25% higher than the local value. In contrast, the fraction of Compton-thick AGNs is consistent with being constant at ≈35%, independent of redshift and accretion luminosity. We discuss our findings in the context of existing models and conclude that the observed evolution is, to first order, a side effect of anti-hierarchical growth.


title: Gait Recognition as a Service for Unobtrusive User Identification in Smart Spaces

abstract: Recently, Internet of Things (IoT) has raised as an important research area that combines the environmental sensing and machine learning capabilities to flourish the concept of smart spaces, in which intelligent and customized services can be provided to users in a smart manner. In smart spaces, one fundamental service that needs to be provided is accurate and unobtrusive user identification. In this work, to address this challenge, we propose a Gait Recognition as a Service (GRaaS) model, which is an instantiation of the traditional Sensing as a Service (S2aaS) model, and is specially deigned for user identification using gait in smart spaces. To illustrate the idea, a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)-based gait recognition service is designed and implemented following the GRaaS concept. Novel tag selection algorithms and attention-based Long Short-term Memory (At-LSTM) models are designed to realize the device layer and edge layer, achieving a robust recognition with 96.3% accuracy. Extensive evaluations are provided, which show that the proposed service has accurate and robust performance and has great potential to support future smart space applications.


An Experimental Evaluation of Apple Siri and Google Speech Recognition


Modelling the evolution of a bipartite graph CS 224 W Project


title: Robotic Automated External Defibrillator Ambulance for Emergency Medical Service in Smart Cities

abstract: Smart cities essentially require the state-of-the-art technologies that can provide smart service in various aspects, and robotic systems are one of the key solutions for such requirements. Time is a critical issue when dealing with people who experience a sudden cardiac arrest that unfortunately could die due to inaccessibility of the emergency treatment. Therefore, an immediate treatment using automated external defibrillator (AED) must be administered to the victim within a few minutes after collapsing. Hence, we have designed and developed the ambulance robot, which brings along an AED in a sudden event of cardiac arrest and facilitates various modes of operation from manual to autonomous functioning to save someones lives in smart cities. The details of the design and development of such robot are presented in this paper.


title: The Complete Visibility Problem for Fat Robots with Lights

abstract: We consider the distributed setting of N autonomous mobile robots that operate in Look-Compute-Move cycles and communicate with other robots using colored lights (the robots with lights model). We study the fundamental problem of repositioning N autonomous robots on a plane so that each robot is visible to all others (the Complete Visibility problem) on this model. We consider obstructed visibility under which a robot cannot see another robot if a third robot is positioned between then on the straight line connecting them. The literature solves this problem on the robots with lights model for point robots. In this paper, we study this problem, for the very first time, on the robots with lights model for fat robots, i.e., the robots which have physical extents. In particular, we present and analyze an algorithm for the fat robots of unit disc size extents that solves Complete Visibility in O(N) time using 9 colors in the fully synchronous setting avoiding robot collisions.


title: The Electromagnetic Compatibility of Integrated Circuits—Past, Present, and Future

abstract: Throughout the decades of continuous advances in semiconductor technology, from the discrete devices of the late 1950s to today's billon-transistor system-on-chip, there have always been concerns about the ability of components to operate safely in an increasingly disruptive electromagnetic environment. This paper provides a nonexhaustive review of the research work conducted in the field of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) at the IC level over the past 40 years. It also brings together a collection of information and trends in IC technology, in order to build a tentative roadmap for the EMC of ICs until the year 2020, with a focus on measurement methods and modeling approaches.


title: Design and Performance Evaluation of Overcurrent Protection Schemes for Silicon Carbide (SiC) Power MOSFETs

abstract: Overcurrent protection of silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) remains a challenge due to lack of practical knowledge. This paper presents three overcurrent protection methods to improve the reliability and overall cost of SiC MOSFET-based converters. First, a solid-state circuit breaker (SSCB) composed primarily by a Si IGBT and a commercial gate driver IC is connected in series with the dc bus to detect and clear overcurrent faults. Second, the desaturation technique using a sensing diode to detect the drain-source voltage under overcurrent faults is implemented as well. Third, a novel active overcurrent protection scheme through dynamic evaluation of fault current level is proposed. The design considerations and potential issues of the protection methods are described and analyzed in detail. A phase-leg configuration-based step-down converter is built to evaluate the performance of the protection schemes under various conditions, considering variation of fault type, decoupling capacitance, protection circuit parameters, etc. Finally, a comparison is made in terms of fault response time, temperature-dependent characteristics, and applications to help designers select a proper protection method.


title: Neuroimaging Biomarkers in Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI)

abstract: Reviewed herein are contemporary neuroimaging methods that detect abnormalities associated with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Despite advances in demonstrating underlying neuropathology in a subset of individuals who sustain mTBI, considerable disagreement persists in neuropsychology about mTBI outcome and metrics for evaluation. This review outlines a thesis for the select use of sensitive neuroimaging methods as potential biomarkers of brain injury recognizing that the majority of individuals who sustain an mTBI recover without neuroimaging signs or neuropsychological sequelae detected with methods currently applied. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides several measures that could serve as mTBI biomarkers including the detection of hemosiderin and white matter abnormalities, assessment of white matter integrity derived from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and quantitative measures that directly assess neuroanatomy. Improved prediction of neuropsychological outcomes in mTBI may be achieved with the use of targeted neuroimaging markers.


title: Gastrectomy plus chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone for advanced gastric cancer with a single non-curable factor (REGATTA): a phase 3, randomised controlled trial

abstract: Summary Background Chemotherapy is the standard of care for incurable advanced gastric cancer. Whether the addition of gastrectomy to chemotherapy improves survival for patients with advanced gastric cancer with a single non-curable factor remains controversial. We aimed to investigate the superiority of gastrectomy followed by chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone with respect to overall survival in these patients. Methods We did an open-label, randomised, phase 3 trial at 44 centres or hospitals in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. Patients aged 20–75 years with advanced gastric cancer with a single non-curable factor confined to either the liver (H1), peritoneum (P1), or para-aortic lymph nodes (16a1/b2) were randomly assigned (1:1) in each country to chemotherapy alone or gastrectomy followed by chemotherapy by a minimisation method with biased-coin assignment to balance the groups according to institution, clinical nodal status, and non-curable factor. Patients, treating physicians, and individuals who assessed outcomes and analysed data were not masked to treatment assignment. Chemotherapy consisted of oral S-1 80 mg/m 2 per day on days 1–21 and cisplatin 60 mg/m 2 on day 8 of every 5-week cycle. Gastrectomy was restricted to D1 lymphadenectomy without any resection of metastatic lesions. The primary endpoint was overall survival, analysed by intention to treat. This study is registered with UMIN-CTR, number UMIN000001012. Findings Between Feb 4, 2008, and Sept 17, 2013, 175 patients were randomly assigned to chemotherapy alone (86 patients) or gastrectomy followed by chemotherapy (89 patients). After the first interim analysis on Sept 14, 2013, the predictive probability of overall survival being significantly higher in the gastrectomy plus chemotherapy group than in the chemotherapy alone group at the final analysis was only 13·2%, so the study was closed on the basis of futility. Overall survival at 2 years for all randomly assigned patients was 31·7% (95% CI 21·7–42·2) for patients assigned to chemotherapy alone compared with 25·1% (16·2–34·9) for those assigned to gastrectomy plus chemotherapy. Median overall survival was 16·6 months (95% CI 13·7–19·8) for patients assigned to chemotherapy alone and 14·3 months (11·8–16·3) for those assigned to gastrectomy plus chemotherapy (hazard ratio 1·09, 95% CI 0·78–1·52; one-sided p=0·70). The incidence of the following grade 3 or 4 chemotherapy-associated adverse events was higher in patients assigned to gastrectomy plus chemotherapy than in those assigned to chemotherapy alone: leucopenia (14 patients [18%] vs two [3%]), anorexia (22 [29%] vs nine [12%]), nausea (11 [15%] vs four [5%]), and hyponatraemia (seven [9%] vs four [5%]). One treatment-related death occurred in a patient assigned to chemotherapy alone (sudden cardiopulmonary arrest of unknown cause during the second cycle of chemotherapy) and one occurred in a patient assigned to chemotherapy plus gastrectomy (rapid growth of peritoneal metastasis after discharge 12 days after surgery). Interpretation Since gastrectomy followed by chemotherapy did not show any survival benefit compared with chemotherapy alone in advanced gastric cancer with a single non-curable factor, gastrectomy cannot be justified for treatment of patients with these tumours. Funding The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan and the Korean Gastric Cancer Association.


title: A protocol for classifying normal- and flat-arched foot posture for research studies using clinical and radiographic measurements

abstract: Background ::: There are several clinical and radiological methods available to classify foot posture in research, however there is no clear strategy for selecting the most appropriate measurements. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a foot screening protocol to distinguish between participants with normal- and flat-arched feet who would then subsequently be recruited into a series of laboratory-based gait studies.


title: Bandwidth-adaptive partitioning for distributed execution optimization of mobile applications

abstract: Mobile applications are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and provide ever richer functionality on mobile devices, while such applications drain increasingly more battery power of mobile devices. Offloading some parts of the application running on mobile devices onto remote servers/clouds is a promising approach to extend the battery life of mobile devices. However, as data transmission of offloading causes delay and energy costs for mobile devices, it is necessary to carefully design application partitioning/offloading schemes to weigh the benefits against the transmission delay and costs. Due to bandwidth fluctuations in the wireless environment, static partitionings in previous work are unsuitable for mobile platforms with a fixed bandwidth assumption, while dynamic partitionings result in high overhead of continuous partitioning for mobile devices. Therefore, we propose a novel partitioning scheme taking the bandwidth as a variable to improve static partitioning and avoid high costs of dynamic partitioning. Firstly, we construct application Object Relation Graphs (ORGs) by combining static analysis and dynamic profiling to propose partitioning optimization models. Then based on our novel execution-time and energy optimization partitioning models, we propose the Branch-and-Bound based Application Partitioning (BBAP) algorithm and Min-Cut based Greedy Application Partitioning (MCGAP) algorithm. BBAP is suited to finding the optimal partitioning solutions for small applications, while MCGAP is applicable to quickly obtaining suboptimal solutions for large-scale applications. Experimental results demonstrate that both algorithms can adapt to bandwidth fluctuations well, and significantly reduce application execution time and energy consumption by optimally distributing components between mobile devices and servers.


title: Risks and risk mitigation in global software development: A tertiary study

abstract: Context There is extensive interest in global software development (GSD) which has led to a large number of papers reporting on GSD. A number of systematic literature reviews (SLRs) have attempted to aggregate information from individual studies. Objective: We wish to investigate GSD SLR research with a focus on discovering what research has been conducted in the area and to determine if the SLRs furnish appropriate risk and risk mitigation advice to provide guidance to organizations involved with GSD. Method: We performed a broad automated search to identify GSD SLRs. Data extracted from each study included: (1) authors, their affiliation and publishing venue, (2) SLR quality, (3) research focus, (4) GSD risks, (5) risk mitigation strategies and, (6) for each SLR the number of primary studies reporting each risk and risk mitigation strategy. Results: We found a total of 37 papers reporting 24 unique GSD SLR studies. Major GSD topics covered include: (1) organizational environment, (2) project execution, (3) project planning and control and (4) project scope and requirements. We extracted 85 risks and 77 risk mitigation advice items and categorized them under four major headings: outsourcing rationale, software development, human resources, and project management. The largest group of risks was related to project management. GSD outsourcing rationale risks ranked highest in terms of primary study support but in many cases these risks were only identified by a single SLR. Conclusions: The focus of the GSD SLRs we identified is mapping the research rather than providing evidence-based guidance to industry. Empirical support for the majority of risks identified is moderate to low, both in terms of the number of SLRs identifying the risk, and in the number of primary studies providing empirical support. Risk mitigation advice is also limited, and empirical support for these items is low.


title: Distributed Optimal Power Flow for Smart Microgrids

abstract: Optimal power flow (OPF) is considered for microgrids, with the objective of minimizing either the power distribution losses, or, the cost of power drawn from the substation and supplied by distributed generation (DG) units, while effecting voltage regulation. The microgrid is unbalanced, due to unequal loads in each phase and non-equilateral conductor spacings on the distribution lines. Similar to OPF formulations for balanced systems, the considered OPF problem is nonconvex. Nevertheless, a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation technique is advocated to obtain a convex problem solvable in polynomial-time complexity. Enticingly, numerical tests demonstrate the ability of the proposed method to attain the globally optimal solution of the original nonconvex OPF. To ensure scalability with respect to the number of nodes, robustness to isolated communication outages, and data privacy and integrity, the proposed SDP is solved in a distributed fashion by resorting to the alternating direction method of multipliers. The resulting algorithm entails iterative message-passing among groups of consumers and guarantees faster convergence compared to competing alternatives.


title: Neither more nor less: optimizing thread-level parallelism for GPGPUs

abstract: General-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) are at their best in accelerating computation by exploiting abundant thread-level parallelism (TLP) offered by many classes of HPC applications. To facilitate such high TLP, emerging programming models like CUDA and OpenCL allow programmers to create work abstractions in terms of smaller work units, called cooperative thread arrays (CTAs). CTAs are groups of threads and can be executed in any order, thereby providing ample opportunities for TLP. The state-of-the-art GPGPU schedulers allocate maximum possible CTAs per-core (limited by available on-chip resources) to enhance performance by exploiting TLP. However, we demonstrate in this paper that executing the maximum possible number of CTAs on a core is not always the optimal choice from the performance perspective. High number of concurrently executing threads might cause more memory requests to be issued, and create contention in the caches, network and memory, leading to long stalls at the cores. To reduce resource contention, we propose a dynamic CTA scheduling mechanism, called DYNCTA, which modulates the TLP by allocating optimal number of CTAs, based on application characteristics. To minimize resource contention, DYNCTA allocates fewer CTAs for applications suffering from high contention in the memory sub-system, compared to applications demonstrating high throughput. Simulation results on a 30-core GPGPU platform with 31 applications show that the proposed CTA scheduler provides 28% average improvement in performance compared to the existing CTA scheduler.


title: Toward "Pseudo-Haptic Avatars": Modifying the Visual Animation of Self-Avatar Can Simulate the Perception of Weight Lifting

abstract: In this paper we study how the visual animation of a self-avatar can be artificially modified in real-time in order to generate different haptic perceptions. In our experimental setup, participants could watch their self-avatar in a virtual environment in mirror mode while performing a weight lifting task. Users could map their gestures on the self-animated avatar in real-time using a Kinect. We introduce three kinds of modification of the visual animation of the self-avatar according to the effort delivered by the virtual avatar: 1) changes on the spatial mapping between the user's gestures and the avatar, 2) different motion profiles of the animation, and 3) changes in the posture of the avatar (upper-body inclination). The experimental task consisted of a weight lifting task in which participants had to order four virtual dumbbells according to their virtual weight. The user had to lift each virtual dumbbells by means of a tangible stick, the animation of the avatar was modulated according to the virtual weight of the dumbbell. The results showed that the altering the spatial mapping delivered the best performance. Nevertheless, participants globally appreciated all the different visual effects. Our results pave the way to the exploitation of such novel techniques in various VR applications such as sport training, exercise games, or industrial training scenarios in single or collaborative mode.


title: Comparative Study of AODV, DSDV and DSR Routing Protocols in MANET Using Network Simulator-2

abstract: Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of wireless mobile nodes that dynamically form a network temporarily without any support of central management. Moreover, Every node in MANET moves arbitrarily making the multi-hop network topology to change randomly at uncertain times. There are several familiar routing protocols like AODV,DSR,DSDV etc… which have been proposed for providing communication among all the nodes in the wireless network. This paper presents a performance comparison and study of reactive and proactive protocols AODV,DSR and DSDV based on metrics such as throughput, control overhead ,packet delivery ratio and average end-to-end delay by using the NS-2 simulator.


title: Indigenous Knowledge for Wikipedia: A Case Study with an OvaHerero Community in Eastern Namibia

abstract: Wikipedia has established itself as the top content site on the World Wide Web and the largest and most successful general reference work. Its vision to provide access to the sum of all Human knowledge, however, is far from being realised. Through its Western focus, its strong alignment with existing encyclopaedias and its Internet-savvy editor base it has not even begun to penetrate knowledge that is not codified purely in writing. This paper presents preliminary results from an empirical experiment of oral information collection in rural Namibia converted into citations on Wikipedia. The intention was to collect information from an indigenous group which is currently not derivable from written material and thus remains unreported to Wikipedia under its present rules. We argue that a citation to an oral narrative lacks nothing that one to a written work would offer, that quality criteria like reliability and verifiability are easily comparable and ascertainable. On a practical level, extracting encyclopaedic like information from an indigenous narrator requires a certain amount of prior insight into the context and subject matter to ask the right questions. Further investigations are required to ensure an empirically sound approach to achieve that. We demonstrate that oral citations are possible and viable additions to Wikipedia as a global knowledge repository.


title: Lanelets: Efficient map representation for autonomous driving

abstract: In this paper we propose a highly detailed map for the field of autonomous driving. We introduce the notion of lanelets to represent the drivable environment under both geometrical and topological aspects. Lanelets are atomic, interconnected drivable road segments which may carry additional data to describe the static environment. We describe the map specification, an example creation process as well as the access library libLanelet which is available for download. Based on the map, we briefly describe our behavioural layer (which we call behaviour generation) which is heavily exploiting the proposed map structure. Both contributions have been used throughout the autonomous journey of the Mercedes Benz S 500 Intelligent Drive following the Bertha Benz Memorial Route in summer 2013.


Diffusion wavelets


title: Detecting Check-worthy Factual Claims in Presidential Debates

abstract: Public figures such as politicians make claims about "facts" all the time. Journalists and citizens spend a good amount of time checking the veracity of such claims. Toward automatic fact checking, we developed tools to find check-worthy factual claims from natural language sentences. Specifically, we prepared a U.S. presidential debate dataset and built classification models to distinguish check-worthy factual claims from non-factual claims and unimportant factual claims. We also identified the most-effective features based on their impact on the classification models' accuracy.