Fast Computation of Graph Kernels. Using extensions of linear algebra concepts to Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS), we define a unifying framework for random walk kernels on graphs. Reduction to a Sylvester equation allows us to compute many of these kernels in O(n) worst-case time. This includes kernels whose previous worst-case time complexity was O(n), such as the geometric kernels of Gärtner et al. [1] and the marginal graph kernels of Kashima et al. [2]. Our algebra in RKHS allow us to exploit sparsity in directed and undirected graphs more effectively than previous methods, yielding sub-cubic computational complexity when combined with conjugate gradient solvers or fixed-point iterations. Experiments on graphs from bioinformatics and other application domains show that our algorithms are often more than 1000 times faster than existing approaches.

Question: What is the computational complexity of the random walk kernel?


Opportunistic Flooding in Low-Duty-Cycle Wireless Sensor Networks with Unreliable Links. Intended for network-wide dissemination of commands, configurations and code binaries, flooding has been investigated extensively in wireless networks. However, little work has yet been done on low-duty-cycle wireless sensor networks in which nodes stay asleep most of time and wake up asynchronously. In this type of network, a broadcasting packet is rarely received by multiple nodes simultaneously, a unique constraining feature that makes existing solutions unsuitable. Combined with unreliable links, flooding in low-duty-cycle networks is a new challenging issue.  In this paper, we introduce Opportunistic Flooding, a novel design tailored for low-duty-cycle networks with unreliable wireless links and predetermined working schedules. The key idea is to make probabilistic forwarding decisions at a sender based on the delay distribution of next-hop nodes. Only opportunistically early packets are forwarded using links outside the energy optimal tree to reduce the flooding delay and redundancy in transmission. To improve performance further, we propose a forwarder selection method to alleviate the hidden terminal problem and a link-quality-based backoff method to resolve simultaneous forwarding operations. We evaluate Opportunistic Flooding with extensive simulation and a test-bed implementation consisting of 30 MicaZ nodes. Evaluation shows our design is close to the optimal performance achievable by oracle flooding designs. Compared with improved traditional flooding, our design achieves significantly shorter flooding delay while consuming only 20% ~ 60% of the transmission energy in various low-duty-cycle network settings.

Question: What is the difference between flooding and opportunistic flooding?


Deep Learning meets Semantic Web: A feasibility study with the Cardiovascular Disease Ontology and PubMed citations. Background: Automatic identification of gene and protein names from biomedical publications can help curators and researchers to keep up with the findings published in the scientific literature. As of today, this is a challenging task related to information retrieval, and in the realm of Big Data Analytics. Objectives: To investigate the feasibility of using word embed-dings (i.e. distributed word representations) from Deep Learning algorithms together with terms from the Cardiovascular Disease Ontology (CVDO) as a step to identifying omics information encoded in the biomedical literature. Methods: Word embeddings were generated using the neural language models CBOW and Skip-gram with an input of more than 14 million PubMed citations (titles and abstracts) corresponding to articles published between 2000 and 2016. Then the abstracts of selected papers from the sysVASC systematic review were manually annotated with gene/protein names. We set up two experiments that used the word embeddings to produce term variants for gene/protein names: the first experiment used the terms manually annotated from the papers; the second experiment enriched/expanded the annotated terms using terms from the human-readable labels of key classes (gene/proteins) from the CVDO ontology. CVDO is formalised in the W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL) and contains 172,121 UniProt Knowledgebase protein classes related to human and 86,792 UniProtKB protein classes related to mouse. The hypothesis is that by enriching the original annotated terms, a better context is provided, and therefore, it is easier to obtain suitable (full and/or partial) term variants for gene/protein names from word embed-dings. Results: From the papers manually annotated, a list of 107 terms (gene/protein names) was acquired. As part of the word embeddings generated from CBOW and Skip-gram, a lexicon with more

Question: What is the feasibility of using word embeddings from deep learning algorithms together with terms from the Cardiovascular Disease Ontology?


Separable spectro-temporal Gabor filter bank features: Reducing the complexity of robust features for automatic speech recognition.. To test if simultaneous spectral and temporal processing is required to extract robust features for automatic speech recognition (ASR), the robust spectro-temporal two-dimensional-Gabor filter bank (GBFB) front-end from Schädler, Meyer, and Kollmeier [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 131, 4134-4151 (2012)] was de-composed into a spectral one-dimensional-Gabor filter bank and a temporal one-dimensional-Gabor filter bank. A feature set that is extracted with these separate spectral and temporal modulation filter banks was introduced, the separate Gabor filter bank (SGBFB) features, and evaluated on the CHiME (Computational Hearing in Multisource Environments) keywords-in-noise recognition task. From the perspective of robust ASR, the results showed that spectral and temporal processing can be performed independently and are not required to interact with each other. Using SGBFB features permitted the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to be lowered by 1.2 dB while still performing as well as the GBFB-based reference system, which corresponds to a relative improvement of the word error rate by 12.8%. Additionally, the real time factor of the spectro-temporal processing could be reduced by more than an order of magnitude. Compared to human listeners, the SNR needed to be 13 dB higher when using Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient features, 11 dB higher when using GBFB features, and 9 dB higher when using SGBFB features to achieve the same recognition performance.

Question: How can the SNR be lowered by 1.2 dB while still performing as well as the GBFB-based reference system?


A Call for the Integration of Trauma-Informed Care Among Intellectual and Developmental Disability Organizations. Research exploring the occurrence of trauma among adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) has grown over the past decade. Yet there is a dearth of literature investigating the impact of organizational factors on the trauma experience despite this population's need for organizational supports. Trauma-informed care (TIC), a systems-focused model for service delivery, is a fast-developing interest among the broader field of trauma in the general population. It recognizes the prevalence and impact of trauma, and creates a culture of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment. The author synthesized relevant literature from both the intellectual and developmental disabilities areas and integrated this with TIC and trauma literature drawn from the general population. Explored are the implications of organizations for service delivery and the potential assimilation of TIC within I/DD organizations. The effectiveness of TIC applications and their potential barriers are discussed and related to the philosophy of quality of life and organizational culture. The author notes that some individuals with I/DD comprise a vulnerable subgroup of the population that in large part relies upon the support of organizational services to foster quality of life. Given the implications of the focus on quality of life, he posits that TIC presents as a viable response for organizations, complimenting and augmenting current efforts.

Question: What is the difference between trauma-informed care and trauma-informed organizations?


Microalgae as a raw material for biofuels production. Biofuels demand is unquestionable in order to reduce gaseous emissions (fossil CO2, nitrogen and sulfur oxides) and their purported greenhouse, climatic changes and global warming effects, to face the frequent oil supply crises, as a way to help non-fossil fuel producer countries to reduce energy dependence, contributing to security of supply, promoting environmental sustainability and meeting the EU target of at least of 10% biofuels in the transport sector by 2020. Biodiesel is usually produced from oleaginous crops, such as rapeseed, soybean, sunflower and palm. However, the use of microalgae can be a suitable alternative feedstock for next generation biofuels because certain species contain high amounts of oil, which could be extracted, processed and refined into transportation fuels, using currently available technology; they have fast growth rate, permit the use of non-arable land and non-potable water, use far less water and do not displace food crops cultures; their production is not seasonal and they can be harvested daily. The screening of microalgae (Chlorella vulgaris, Spirulina maxima, Nannochloropsis sp., Neochloris oleabundans, Scenedesmus obliquus and Dunaliella tertiolecta) was done in order to choose the best one(s), in terms of quantity and quality as oil source for biofuel production. Neochloris oleabundans (fresh water microalga) and Nannochloropsis sp. (marine microalga) proved to be suitable as raw materials for biofuel production, due to their high oil content (29.0 and 28.7%, respectively). Both microalgae, when grown under nitrogen shortage, show a great increase (~50%) in oil quantity. If the purpose is to produce biodiesel only from one species, Scenedesmus obliquus presents the most adequate fatty acid profile, namely in terms of linolenic and other polyunsaturated fatty acids. However, the microalgae Neochloris oleabundans, Nannochloropsis sp. and Dunaliella tertiolecta can also be u

Question: What is the best microalgae for biofuel production?


Parameter tuning or default values? An empirical investigation in search-based software engineering. Many software engineering problems have been addressed with search algorithms. Search algorithms usually depend on several parameters (e.g., population size and crossover rate in genetic algorithms), and the choice of these parameters can have an impact on the performance of the algorithm. It has been formally proven in the No Free Lunch theorem that it is impossible to tune a search algorithm such that it will have optimal settings for all possible problems. So, how to properly set the parameters of a search algorithm for a given software engineering problem? In this paper, we carry out the largest empirical analysis so far on parameter tuning in search-based software engineering. More than one million experiments were carried out and statistically analyzed in the context of test data generation for object-oriented software using the EvoSuite tool. Results show that tuning does indeed have impact on the performance of a search algorithm. But, at least in the context of test data generation, it does not seem easy to find good settings that significantly outperform the "default" values suggested in the literature. This has very practical value for both researchers (e.g., when different techniques are compared) and practitioners. Using "default" values is a reasonable and justified choice, whereas parameter tuning is a long and expensive process that might or might not pay off in the end.

Question: How to tune parameters in search algorithms?


On-line fingerprint verification. Fingerprint verification is one of the most reliable personal identification methods. However, manual fingerprint verification is so tedious, time-consuming, and expensive that it is incapable of meeting today's increasing performance requirements. An automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) is widely needed. It plays a very important role in forensic and civilian applications such as criminal identification, access control, and ATM card verification. This paper describes the design and implementation of an on-line fingerprint verification system which operates in two stages: minutia extraction and minutia matching. An improved version of the minutia extraction algorithm proposed by Ratha et al., which is much faster and more reliable, is implemented for extracting features from an input fingerprint image captured with an on-line inkless scanner. For minutia matching, an alignment-based elastic matching algorithm has been developed. This algorithm is capable of finding the correspondences between minutiae in the input image and the stored template without resorting to exhaustive search and has the ability of adaptively compensating for the nonlinear deformations and inexact pose transformations between fingerprints. The system has been tested on two sets of fingerprint images captured with inkless scanners. The verification accuracy is found to be acceptable. Typically, a complete fingerprint verification procedure takes, on an average, about eight seconds on a SPARC 20 workstation. These experimental results show that our system meets the response time requirements of on-line verification with high accuracy. Index Terms —Biometrics, fingerprints, matching, verification, minutia, orientation field, ridge extraction. —————————— ✦ ——————————

Question: What is the difference between minutia extraction and minutia matching?


A Java API and Web Service Gateway for wireless M-Bus. M-Bus Systems are used to support the remote data exchange with meter units through a network. They provide an easy extend able and cost effective method to connect many meter devices to one coherent network. Master applications operate as concentrated data collectors and are used to process measured values further. As modern approaches facilitate the possibility of a Smart Grid, M-Bus can be seen as the foundation of this technology. With the current focus on a more effective power grid, Smart Meters and Smart Grids are an important research topic. This bachelor thesis first gives an overview of the M-Bus standard and then presents a Java library and API to access M-Bus devices remotely in a standardized way through Web Services. Integration into common IT applications requires interoperable interfaces which also facilitate automated machine-to-machine communication. The oBIX (Open Building Information Exchange) standard provides such standardized objects and thus is used to create a Web Service gateway for the Java API.

Question: What is a Java API and Web Service Gateway for wireless M-Bus?


A 5-Gbps CMOS Burst-Mode CDR Circuit With an Analog Phase Interpolator for PONs. This paper presents a 5-Gb/s low-power burst-mode clock and data recovery circuit based on analog phase interpolator for passive optical network applications. The proposed clock recovery unit consists of two double-edge triggered sample-and-holds (DTSHs) and a phase interpolator. The PI instantaneously locks the recovered clock to incoming burst-mode data by coefficients generated at the DT-SHs' outputs. To reduce power dissipation in clock recovery unit, instead of two buffers, only one is utilized for the DT-SH. The proposed PI-based BM-CDR has been designed and simulated in 0.18-μm standard CMOS technology. The Results show that reduction in power dissipation of 40% for the clock recovery unit has been achieved. The proposed BM-CDR circuit retimes data at 5Gb/s for a 210-1 pseudo-random binary sequence within the first UI. The recovered data shows jitter at 14ps (pp). The circuit, including 1:2 data demux, draws 29mW power from a 1.8-V supply.

Question: What is a pseudo-random binary sequence?


The spread of alcohol consumption behavior in a large social network.. Context A person's alcohol use might mirror that of his or her social contacts. Contribution Using the same group of Framingham Heart Study participants who helped to define the associations between social networks and other health behaviors, the researchers found that alcohol use was similar among individuals in a social cluster. Furthermore, changes in a person's alcohol intake over time followed changes in the alcohol intake of their social contacts. Caution Alcohol use was self-reported, and the researchers did not have access to social contacts who were not participating in the study. Implication Changing alcohol use may require intervening with social groups as well as with individuals. The Editors Alcohol use is common in the United States. In 2002, 55% of adults reported having had at least 1 drink in the previous month, and the prevalence of past-month alcohol consumption was somewhat higher for men (62%) than for women (48%) (1). The lifetime prevalence of alcohol use disorders has been measured at 14.6% (1). Excessive alcohol use, either in the form of heavy drinking or binge drinking, increases the risk for numerous health and social problems (2, 3), and approximately 75000 deaths in 2001 were attributable to excessive alcohol use, which makes it the third-leading lifestyle-related cause of death (3). Alcohol consumption behavior has many determinants. Previous studies (3, 4) suggest that biological factors have a significant effect on the progression from experimentation to regular use and that social and cultural factors play a critical role in experimentation with alcohol and the development of drinking patterns over time. Given the social nature of this behavior, it is not surprising that previous work has identified interactions with friends and family members as key factors (48). Although this literature primarily focused on cross-sectional panels, some studies (68) have attempt

Question: What is the difference between a social network and a social cluster?


Adaptive Current Control for Grid-Connected Converters With LCL Filter. This paper presents a discrete-time adaptive current controller for grid-connected pulse width modulation voltage source converters with LCL filter. The main attribute of the proposed current controller is that, in steady state, the damping of the LCL resonance does not depend on the grid characteristic since the adaptive feedback gains ensure a predefined behavior for the closed-loop current control. An overview of model reference adaptive state feedback theory is presented aiming to give the reader the required background for the adaptive current control design. The digital implementation delay is included in the model, and the stability concerning the variation of the grid parameters is analyzed in detail. Furthermore, current distortions due to the grid background voltage are rejected without using the conventional stationary resonant controllers or the synchronous proportional-plus-integral controllers. Simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the analysis and to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed controller for grid-connected converters subjected to large grid impedance variation and grid voltage disturbances.

Question: What is the difference between a grid-connected converter and a battery-connected converter?


High Sensitivity Flexible Capacitive Pressure Sensor Using Polydimethylsiloxane Elastomer Dielectric Layer Micro-Structured by 3-D Printed Mold. 3-D printing is used to fabricate mold for micro-structuring the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomeric dielectric layer in capacitive flexible pressure sensors. It is shown that, despite of the limited resolution of the used commercial 3-D printer for producing the mold, the fabricated sensor with the micro-structured PDMS layers can achieve sensitivity higher than previous work using micro-fabricated silicon wafer molds. The devices also present very low detection limit, fast response/recovery speed, excellent durability and good tolerance to variations of ambient temperature and humidity, which enables to reliably monitor weak human physiological signals in real time. As an application example, the flexible pressure sensor is integrated in a wearable system to monitor wrist pulse.

Question: What is the sensitivity of the sensor?


Shape from shading for the digitization of curved documents. Document digitization is faster and more affordable using digital cameras than scanners. On the other hand, if we aim at extending the basic digital camera functionalities for such a purpose, post-processings will be of first importance, at least to improve the text legibility. In this paper, we address the specific problem of the virtual flattening of curved documents, as for example the pages of an opened book lying on its spine. In order to compute the document shape, we use the shape from shading technique and discuss why, in some cases, it is more suitable than other 3D single-view reconstruction techniques. We extend the seminal work by Wada et al. (Proceedings of the IAPR Workshop on machine vision and applications, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 591–594, 1992) and consecutive papers, reformulating the problem in terms of perspective shape from shading. Finally, we design a complete post-processing algorithm and test it on real images. Even if the documents are much curved, it is shown that the restored images are almost identical to scanned images of the flattened documents.

Question: What is the difference between a digital camera and a scanner?


Human-Like Rewards to Train a Reinforcement Learning Controller for Planar Arm Movement. High-level spinal cord injury (SCI) in humans causes paralysis below the neck. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) technology applies electrical current to nerves and muscles to restore movement, and controllers for upper extremity FES neuroprostheses calculate stimulation patterns to produce desired arm movement. However, currently available FES controllers have yet to restore natural movements. Reinforcement learning (RL) is a reward-driven control technique; it can employ user-generated rewards, and human preferences can be used in training. To test this concept with FES, we conducted simulation experiments using computer-generated "pseudo-human" rewards. Rewards with varying properties were used with an actor-critic RL controller for a planar two-degree-of-freedom biomechanical human arm model performing reaching movements. Results demonstrate that sparse, delayed pseudo-human rewards permit stable and effective RL controller learning. The frequency of reward is proportional to learning success, and human-scale sparse rewards permit greater learning than exclusively automated rewards. Diversity of training task sets did not affect learning. Long-term stability of trained controllers was observed. Using human-generated rewards to train RL controllers for upper-extremity FES systems may be useful. Our findings represent progress toward achieving human-machine teaming in control of upper-extremity FES systems for more natural arm movements based on human user preferences and RL algorithm learning capabilities.

Question: What is the difference between a reinforcement learning controller and a controller that uses a reward function?


Other minds in the brain: a functional imaging study of "theory of mind" in story comprehension. The ability of normal children and adults to attribute independent mental states to self and others in order to explain and predict behaviour ("theory of mind") has been a focus of much recent research. Autism is a biologically based disorder which appears to be characterised by a specific impairment in this "mentalising" process. The present paper reports a functional neuroimaging study with positron emission tomography in which we studied brain activity in normal volunteers while they performed story comprehension tasks necessitating the attribution of mental states. The resultant brain activity was compared with that measured in two control tasks: "physical" stories which did not require this mental attribution, and passages of unlinked sentences. Both story conditions, when compared to the unlinked sentences, showed significantly increased regional cerebral blood flow in the following regions: the temporal poles bilaterally, the left superior temporal gyrus and the posterior cingulate cortex. Comparison of the "theory of mind" stories with "physical" stores revealed a specific pattern of activation associated with mental state attribution: it was only this task which produced activation in the medial frontal gyrus on the left (Brodmann's area 8). This comparison also showed significant activation in the posterior cingulate cortex. These surprisingly clear-cut findings are discussed in relation to previous studies of brain activation during story comprehension. The localisation of brain regions involved in normal attribution of mental states and contextual problem solving is feasible and may have implication for the neural basis of autism.

Question: What is the difference between theory of mind and contextual problem solving?


Any domain parsing: automatic domain adaptation for natural language parsing. of "Any Domain Parsing: Automatic Domain Adaptation for Natural Language Parsing" by David McClosky , Ph.D., Brown University, May, 2010. Current efforts in syntactic parsing are largely data-driv en. These methods require labeled examples of syntactic structures to learn statistical patterns governing these structures. Labeled data typically requires expert annotators which makes it both time consuming and costly to p roduce. Furthermore, once training data has been created for one textual domain, portability to similar domains is limited. This domain-dependence has inspired a large body of work since syntactic parsing aims to capture syntactic patterns across an entire language rather than just a specific domain. The simplest approach to this task is to assume that the targe t domain is essentially the same as the source domain. No additional knowledge about the target domain is i cluded. A more realistic approach assumes that only raw text from the target domain is available. This a s umption lends itself well to semi-supervised learning methods since these utilize both labeled and unlab eled examples. This dissertation focuses on a family of semi-supervised me thods called self-training. Self-training creates semi-supervised learners from existing supervised learne rs with minimal effort. We first show results on self-training for constituency parsing within a single dom ain. While self-training has failed here in the past, we present a simple modification which allows it to succeed, p roducing state-of-the-art results for English constituency parsing. Next, we show how self-training is be neficial when parsing across domains and helps further when raw text is available from the target domain. On e of the remaining issues is that one must choose a training corpus appropriate for the target domain or perfo rmance may be severely impaired. Humans can do this in some situations, but this

Question: What is the difference between a parser and a syntactic analyzer?


Techniques for Machine Learning based Spatial Data Analysis: Research Directions. Today, machine learning techniques play a significant role in data analysis, predictive modeling and visualization. The main aim of the machine learning algorithms is that they first learn from the empirical data and can be utilized in cases for which the modeled phenomenon is hidden or not yet described. Several significant techniques like Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector Regression, k-Nearest Neighbour, Bayesian Classifiers and Decision Trees are developed in past years to acheive this task. The first and most complicated problem concerns is the amount of available data. This paper reviews state-of-the-art in the domain of spatial data analysis by employing machine learning approaches. First various methods have been summarized, which exist in the literature. Further, the current research scenarios which are going on in this area are described. Based on the research done in past years, identification of the problem in the existing system is also presented in this paper and have given future research directions.

Question: What is the difference between machine learning and data mining?


General multilevel linear modeling for group analysis in FMRI. This article discusses general modeling of multisubject and/or multisession FMRI data. In particular, we show that a two-level mixed-effects model (where parameters of interest at the group level are estimated from parameter and variance estimates from the single-session level) can be made equivalent to a single complete mixed-effects model (where parameters of interest at the group level are estimated directly from all of the original single sessions' time series data) if the (co-)variance at the second level is set equal to the sum of the (co-)variances in the single-level form, using the BLUE with known covariances. This result has significant implications for group studies in FMRI, since it shows that the group analysis requires only values of the parameter estimates and their (co-)variance from the first level, generalizing the well-established "summary statistics" approach in FMRI. The simple and generalized framework allows different prewhitening and different first-level regressors to be used for each subject. The framework incorporates multiple levels and cases such as repeated measures, paired or unpaired t tests and F tests at the group level; explicit examples of such models are given in the article. Using numerical simulations based on typical first-level covariance structures from real FMRI data we demonstrate that by taking into account lower-level covariances and heterogeneity a substantial increase in higher-level Z score is possible.

Question: What is the difference between a mixed-effects model and a general linear model?


Fuzzy Adaptive Sliding Mode Control of 6 DOF Parallel Manipulator with Electromechanical Actuators in Cartesian Space Coordinates. This paper proposes a fuzzy adaptive sliding mode controller in Cartesian space coordinates for trajectory tracking of the 6 DOF parallel manipulator with considering dynamics of electromechanical actuators. The 6-DOF sensors, may be very expensive or impossible to find at the desired accuracies; and also, especially at constant speeds, will contain errors; therefore, it is better to use LVDT position sensors and then, solving the forward kinematics problem using an iterative artificial neural network strategy, Instead of using the Numerical methods such as the Newton-Raphson method, that heavy computational load imposes to the system. This controller consists of a sliding mode control and adaptive learning algorithms to adjust uncertain parameters of system, that relax the requirement of bounding parameter values and not depending upon any parameter initialization conditions, and fuzzy approximators to estimate the plant's unknown nonlinear functions, and robustifying control terms to compensate of approximation errors; so that closedloop stability and finite-time convergence of tracking errors can be guaranteed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed control strategy can achieve favorable control performance with regard to uncertainties, nonlinearities and external disturbances.

Question: How to control a 6 DOF parallel manipulator?


Extracting and Retargeting Color Mappings from Bitmap Images of Visualizations. Visualization designers regularly use color to encode quantitative or categorical data. However, visualizations "in the wild" often violate perceptual color design principles and may only be available as bitmap images. In this work, we contribute a method to semi-automatically extract color encodings from a bitmap visualization image. Given an image and a legend location, we classify the legend as describing either a discrete or continuous color encoding, identify the colors used, and extract legend text using OCR methods. We then combine this information to recover the specific color mapping. Users can also correct interpretation errors using an annotation interface. We evaluate our techniques using a corpus of images extracted from scientific papers and demonstrate accurate automatic inference of color mappings across a variety of chart types. In addition, we present two applications of our method: automatic recoloring to improve perceptual effectiveness, and interactive overlays to enable improved reading of static visualizations.

Question: How do you extract color mappings from bitmap images of visualizations?


Posterior short-segment fixation with or without fusion for thoracolumbar burst fractures. a five to seven-year prospective randomized study.. BACKGROUND The impact of fusion as a supplement to short-segment instrumentation for the treatment of thoracolumbar burst fractures is unclear. We conducted a controlled clinical trial to define the effect of fusion on lumbar spine and patient-related functional outcomes.   METHODS From 2000 to 2002, seventy-three consecutive patients with a single-level Denis type-B burst fracture involving the thoracolumbar spine and a load-sharing score of <or=6 were managed with posterior pedicle screw instrumentation. The patients were randomly assigned to treatment with posterolateral fusion (fusion group, n = 37) or without posterolateral fusion (nonfusion group, n = 36). The patients were followed for at least five years after surgery and were assessed with regard to clinical and radiographic outcomes. Clinical outcomes were evaluated with use of the Frankel scale, the motor score of the American Spinal Injury Association, a visual analog scale, and the Short Form-36 (SF-36) questionnaire. Radiographic outcomes were assessed on the basis of the local kyphosis angle and loss of kyphosis correction.   RESULTS No significant difference in radiographic or clinical outcomes was noted between the patients managed with the two techniques. Both operative time and blood loss were significantly less in the nonfusion group compared with the fusion group (p < 0.05). Twenty-five of the thirty-seven patients in the fusion group still had some degree of donor-site pain at the time of the latest examination.   CONCLUSIONS Posterolateral bone-grafting is not necessary when a Denis type-B thoracolumbar burst fracture associated with a load-sharing score of <or=6 is treated with short-segment pedicle screw fixation.

Question: What is the difference between a Denis type-B thoracolumbar burst fracture and a Denis type-B thoracolumbar burst fracture?


Environmental Sensor Networks : A revolution in the earth system science ?. Environmental Sensor Networks (ESNs) facilitate the study of fundamental processes and the development of hazard response systems. They have evolved from passive logging systems that require manual downloading, into 'intelligent' sensor networks that comprise a network of automatic sensor nodes and communications systems which actively communicate their data to a Sensor Network Server (SNS) where these data can be integrated with other environmental datasets. The sensor nodes can be fixed or mobile and range in scale appropriate to the environment being sensed. ESNs range in scale and function and we have reviewed over 50 representative examples. Large Scale Single Function Networks tend to use large single purpose nodes to cover a wide geographical area. Localised Multifunction Sensor Networks typically monitor a small area in more detail, often with wireless adhoc systems. Biosensor Networks use emerging biotechnologies to monitor environmental processes as well as developing proxies for immediate use. In the future, sensor networks will integrate these three elements (Heterogeneous Sensor Networks). The communications system and data storage and integration (cyberinfrastructure) aspects of ESNs are discussed, along with current challenges which need to be addressed. We argue that Environmental Sensor Networks will become a standard research tool for future Earth System and Environmental Science. Not only do they provide a 'virtual' connection with the environment, they allow new field and conceptual approaches to the study of environmental processes to be developed. We suggest that although technological advances have facilitated these changes, it is vital that Earth Systems and Environmental Scientists utilise them. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Question: What is the difference between environmental sensor networks and environmental sensor networks?


Relational Learning of Pattern-Match Rules for Information Extraction. Information extraction is a form of shallow text processing which locates a specified set of relevant items in natural language documents. Such systems can be useful, but require domain-specific knowledge and rules, and are time-consuming and difficult to build by hand, making infomation extraction a good testbed for the application of machine learning techniques to natural language processing. This paper presents a system, RAPIER, that takes pairs of documents and filled templates and induces pattern-match rules that directly extract fillers for the slots in the template. The learning algorithm incorporates techniques from several inductive logic programming systems and learns unbounded patterns that include constraints on the words and part-of-speech tags surrounding the filler. Encouraging results are presented on learning to extract information from computer job postings from the newsgroup misc. jobs. offered.

Question: What is the name of the algorithm?


Role-Based Access Controls. While Mandatory Access Controls (MAC) are appropriate for multilevel secure military applications, Discretionary Access Controls (DAC) are often perceived as meeting the security processing needs of industry and civilian government. This paper argues that reliance on DAC as the principal method of access control is unfounded and inappropriate for many commercial and civilian government organizations. The paper describes a type of non-discretionary access control role-based access control (RBAC)  that is more central to the secure processing needs of non-military systems than DAC.

Question: What is role-based access control?


Preliminary safety assessment for a sectorless ATM concept. In a sectorless air traffic management concept the airspace is no longer divided into sectors but regarded as one piece. A number of aircraft, not necessarily in the same airspace region, are assigned to each air traffic controller who is then responsible for these aircraft from their entry into the airspace to their exit. These individually assigned flights can be anywhere in the airspace and therefore in different traffic situations. This means that air traffic controllers will manage flights which may not be geographically connected. Such a concept change will necessitate also a significant change in the controllers' routines and the support tools. Naturally, the question of safety arises regarding new procedures and systems. This paper provides a preliminary safety assessment for a sectorless air traffic management concept. The assessment is based on the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) Safety Reference Material which was originally developed for SESAR purposes. This success-based approach stresses the positive contribution of a new concept while traditional approaches mainly consider the negative effect of possible hazards and failures. Based on validation activities including realtime simulations we have developed safety acceptance criteria and safety objectives for a sectorless air traffic management (ATM) concept. Starting from these we have sketched the safety performance requirement model and deduce the first safety requirements for normal conditions, abnormal conditions and in the case of internal system failures.

Question: What is the difference between a sectorless ATM concept and a sectoral ATM concept?


Broadcast news story segmentation using latent topics on data manifold. This paper proposes to use Laplacian Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (LapPLSA) for broadcast news story segmentation. The latent topic distributions estimated by LapPLSA are used to replace term frequency vector as the representation of sentences and measure the cohesive strength between the sentences. Subword n-gram is used as the basic term unit in the computation. Dynamic Programming is used for story boundary detection. LapPLSA projects the data into a low-dimensional semantic topic representation while preserving the intrinsic local geometric structure of the data. The locality preserving property attempts to make the estimated latent topic distributions more robust to the noise from automatic speech recognition errors. Experiments are conducted on the ASR transcripts of TDT2 Mandarin broadcast news corpus. Our proposed approach is compared with other approaches which use dimensionality reduction technique with the locality preserving property, and two different topic modeling techniques. Experiment results show that our proposed approach provides the highest F1-measure of 0.8228, which significantly outperforms the best previous approaches.

Question: How to segment a broadcast news story?


Document Modeling with Gated Recurrent Neural Network for Sentiment Classification. Document level sentiment classification remains a challenge: encoding the intrinsic relations between sentences in the semantic meaning of a document. To address this, we introduce a neural network model to learn vector-based document representation in a unified, bottom-up fashion. The model first learns sentence representation with convolutional neural network or long short-term memory. Afterwards, semantics of sentences and their relations are adaptively encoded in document representation with gated recurrent neural network. We conduct document level sentiment classification on four large-scale review datasets from IMDB and Yelp Dataset Challenge. Experimental results show that: (1) our neural model shows superior performances over several state-of-the-art algorithms; (2) gated recurrent neural network dramatically outperforms standard recurrent neural network in document modeling for sentiment classification.1

Question: What is the difference between gated recurrent neural network and recurrent neural network?


A multistage dataflow implementation of a Deep Convolutional Neural Network based on FPGA for high-speed object recognition. Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have progressed significantly in recent years. Novel DNN methods allow tasks such as image and speech recognition to be conducted easily and efficiently, compared with previous methods that needed to search for valid feature values or algorithms. However, DNN computations typically consume a significant amount of time and high-performance computing resources. To facilitate high-speed object recognition, this article introduces a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) accelerator based on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Our hardware takes full advantage of the characteristics of convolutional calculation; this allowed us to implement all DCNN layers, from image input to classification, in a single chip. In particular, the dateflow from input to classification is uninterrupted and paralleled. As a result, our implementation achieved a speed of 409.62 giga-operations per second (GOPS), which is approximately twice as fast as the latest reported result. Furthermore, we used the same architecture to implement a Recurrent Convolutional Neural Network (RCNN), which can, in theory, provide better recognition accuracy.

Question: What is a deep convolutional neural network?


A Semantic Framework for the Security Analysis of Ethereum smart contracts. Smart contracts are programs running on cryptocurrency (e.g., Ethereum) blockchains, whose popularity stem from the possibility to perform financial transactions, such as payments and auctions, in a distributed environment without need for any trusted third party. Given their financial nature, bugs or vulnerabilities in these programs may lead to catastrophic consequences, as witnessed by recent attacks. Unfortunately, programming smart contracts is a delicate task that requires strong expertise: Ethereum smart contracts are written in Solidity, a dedicated language resembling JavaScript, and shipped over the blockchain in the EVM bytecode format. In order to rigorously verify the security of smart contracts, it is of paramount importance to formalize their semantics as well as the security properties of interest, in particular at the level of the bytecode being executed. In this paper, we present the first complete small-step semantics of EVM bytecode, which we formalize in the F* proof assistant, obtaining executable code that we successfully validate against the official Ethereum test suite. Furthermore, we formally define for the first time a number of central security properties for smart contracts, such as call integrity, atomicity, and independence from miner controlled parameters. This formalization relies on a combination of hyperand safety properties. Along this work, we identified various mistakes and imprecisions in existing semantics and verification tools for Ethereum smart contracts, thereby demonstrating once more the importance of rigorous semantic foundations for the design of security verification techniques.

Question: What is the first large-scale Canadian peacekeeping mission?


(In-)Secure messaging with the Silent Circle instant messaging protocol. Silent Text, the instant messaging application by the company Silent Circle, provides its users with end-to-end encrypted communication on the Blackphone and other smartphones. The underlying protocol, SCimp, has received many extensions during the update to version 2, but has not been subjected to critical review from the cryptographic community. In this paper, we analyze both the design and implementation of SCimp by inspection of the documentation (to the extent it exists) and code. Many of the security properties of SCimp version 1 are found to be secure, however many of the extensions contain vulnerabilities and the implementation contains bugs that affect the overall security. These problems were fed back to the SCimp maintainers and some bugs were fixed in the code base. In September 2015, Silent Circle replaced SCimp with a new protocol based on the Signal Protocol.

Question: What is the Silent Circle instant messaging protocol?


Controversies surrounding nonspeech oral motor exercises for childhood speech disorders.. The use of nonspeech oral motor exercises (NSOMEs) for influencing children's speech sound productions is a common therapeutic practice used by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Reports from these countries have documented that between 71.5% and 85% of practicing clinicians use some type of NSOMEs in therapy to change children's speech productions. NSOMEs can be defined as any therapy technique that does not require the child to produce a speech sound but is used to influence the development of speaking abilities. The National Center for Evidence-Based Practice in Communication Disorders (NCEP) of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) developed this definition: ''Oral-motor exercises are activities that involve sensory stimulation to or actions of the lips, jaw, tongue, soft palate, larynx, and respiratory muscles which are intended to influence the physiologic underpinnings of the oropharyngeal mechanism and thus improve its functions; oral-motor exercises may include active muscle exercise, muscle stretching, passive exercise, and sensory stimulation.'' The term ''oral motor,'' which relates to movements and placements of the oral musculature, is established in the field of SLP. Although the existence and importance of the oral-motor aspects of speech production is well understood, the use and effectiveness of nonspeech oral-motor activities is disputed because of the lack of theoretical and empirical support. To understand more about the use of NSOMEs for changing disordered productions of speech, a colleague and I conducted a nationwide survey of 537 practicing clinicians from 48 states. We found that SLPs frequently used the exercises of blowing, tongue wagging and pushups, cheek puffing, the alternating movement of pucker-smile, ''big smile,'' and tongue-to-nose-to-chin. The clinicians believed thes

Question: What is the difference between a speech therapist and a speech pathologist?


Design, Analysis, and Optimization of Ironless Stator Permanent Magnet Machines. This paper presents a methodology for the design, analysis, and graphical optimization of ironless brushless permanent magnet machines primarily for generator applications. Magnetic flux in this class of electromagnetic machine tends to be 3-D due to the lack of conventional iron structures and the absence of a constrained magnetic flux path. The proposed methodology includes comprehensive geometric, magnetic and electrical dimensioning followed by detailed 3-D finite element (FE) modeling of a base machine for which parameters are determined. These parameters are then graphically optimized within sensible volumetric and electromagnetic constraints to arrive at improved design solutions. This paper considers an ironless machine design to validate the 3-D FE model to optimize power conversion for the case of a low-speed, ironless stator generator. The machine configuration investigated in this paper has concentric arrangement of the rotor and the stator, solenoid-shaped coils, and a simple mechanical design considered for ease of manufacture and maintenance. Using performance and material effectiveness as the overriding optimization criteria, this paper suggests optimal designs configurations featuring two different winding arrangements, i.e., radial and circumferentially mounted. Performance and material effectiveness of the studied ironless stator designs are compared to published ironless machine configurations.

Question: What is the ironless stator generator?


The LOCATA Challenge Data Corpus for Acoustic Source Localization and Tracking. Algorithms for acoustic source localization and tracking are essential for a wide range of applications such as personal assistants, smart homes, tele-conferencing systems, hearing aids, or autonomous systems. Numerous algorithms have been proposed for this purpose which, however, are not evaluated and compared against each other by using a common database so far. The IEEE-AASP Challenge on sound source localization and tracking (LOCATA) provides a novel, comprehensive data corpus for the objective benchmarking of state-of-the-art algorithms on sound source localization and tracking. The data corpus comprises six tasks ranging from the localization of a single static sound source with a static microphone array to the tracking of multiple moving speakers with a moving microphone array. It contains real-world multichannel audio recordings, obtained by hearing aids, microphones integrated in a robot head, a planar and a spherical microphone array in an enclosed acoustic environment, as well as positional information about the involved arrays and sound sources represented by moving human talkers or static loudspeakers.

Question: What is the LOCATA Challenge Data Corpus for Acoustic Source Localization and Tracking?


Water-walking devices. We report recent efforts in the design and construction of water-walking machines inspired by insects and spiders. The fundamental physical constraints on the size, proportion and dynamics of natural water-walkers are enumerated and used as design criteria for analogous mechanical devices. We report devices capable of rowing along the surface, leaping off the surface and climbing menisci by deforming the free surface. The most critical design constraint is that the devices be lightweight and non-wetting. Microscale manufacturing techniques and new man-made materials such as hydrophobic coatings and thermally actuated wires are implemented. Using highspeed cinematography and flow visualization, we compare the functionality and dynamics of our devices with those of their natural counterparts.

Question: What is the smallest water-walking device?


Datalog+/-: A Family of Logical Knowledge Representation and Query Languages for New Applications. This paper summarizes results on a recently introduced family of Datalog-based languages, called Datalog+/-, which is a new framework for tractable ontology querying, and for a variety of other applications. Datalog+/- extends plain Datalog by features such as existentially quantified rule heads and, at the same time, restricts the rule syntax so as to achieve decidability and tractability. In particular, we discuss three paradigms ensuring decidability: chase termination, guardedness, and stickiness.

Question: What is the name of the family of logical knowledge representation and query languages for new applications?


Preliminary, open-label, pilot study of add-on oral Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol in chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.. BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Many patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) achieve but partial remission with current treatments. Patients with unremitted PTSD show high rates of substance abuse. Marijuana is often used as compassion add-on therapy for treatment-resistant PTSD. This open-label study evaluates the tolerance and safety of orally absorbable Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) for chronic PTSD.   METHODS Ten outpatients with chronic PTSD, on stable medication, received 5 mg of Δ(9)-THC twice a day as add-on treatment.   RESULTS There were mild adverse effects in three patients, none of which led to treatment discontinuation. The intervention caused a statistically significant improvement in global symptom severity, sleep quality, frequency of nightmares, and PTSD hyperarousal symptoms.   CONCLUSIONS Orally absorbable Δ(9)-THC was safe and well tolerated by patients with chronic PTSD.

Question: What is the difference between a pilot study and an open-label study?


Quorum responses and consensus decision making.. Animal groups are said to make consensus decisions when group members come to agree on the same option. Consensus decisions are taxonomically widespread and potentially offer three key benefits: maintenance of group cohesion, enhancement of decision accuracy compared with lone individuals and improvement in decision speed. In the absence of centralized control, arriving at a consensus depends on local interactions in which each individual's likelihood of choosing an option increases with the number of others already committed to that option. The resulting positive feedback can effectively direct most or all group members to the best available choice. In this paper, we examine the functional form of the individual response to others' behaviour that lies at the heart of this process. We review recent theoretical and empirical work on consensus decisions, and we develop a simple mathematical model to show the central importance to speedy and accurate decisions of quorum responses, in which an animal's probability of exhibiting a behaviour is a sharply nonlinear function of the number of other individuals already performing this behaviour. We argue that systems relying on such quorum rules can achieve cohesive choice of the best option while also permitting adaptive tuning of the trade-off between decision speed and accuracy.

Question: What is the functional form of the individual response to others' behaviour that lies at the heart of this process?


Echo State Queueing Network: A new reservoir computing learning tool. In the last decade, a new computational paradigm was introduced in the field of Machine Learning, under the name of Reservoir Computing (RC). RC models are neural networks which a recurrent part (the reservoir) that does not participate in the learning process, and the rest of the system where no recurrence (no neural circuit) occurs. This approach has grown rapidly due to its success in solving learning tasks and other computational applications. Some success was also observed with another recently proposed neural network designed using Queueing Theory, the Random Neural Network (RandNN). Both approaches have good properties and identified drawbacks. In this paper, we propose a new RC model called Echo State Queueing Network (ESQN), where we use ideas coming from RandNNs for the design of the reservoir. ESQNs consist in ESNs where the reservoir has a new dynamics inspired by recurrent RandNNs. The paper positions ESQNs in the global Machine Learning area, and provides examples of their use and performances. We show on largely used benchmarks that ESQNs are very accurate tools, and we illustrate how they compare with standard ESNs.

Question: What is a reservoir computing?


Multilabel Sound Event Classification with Neural Networks. TAMPERE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Master's Degree Programme in Signal Processing CAKIR, EMRE: Multilabel Sound Event Classification with Neural Networks Master of Science Thesis, 63 pages October 2014 Major: Signal Processing Examiner: Tuomas Virtanen, Heikki Huttunen

Question: What is the major of the student?


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

Question: How to simulate tactile feedback using a soft finger contact model in GraspIt!


Enhancements in UltraScale CLB Architecture. Each generation of FPGA architecture benefits from optimizations around its technology node and target usage. In this paper, we discuss some of the changes made to the CLB for Xilinx's 20nm UltraScale product family. We motivate those changes and demonstrate better results than previous CLB architectures on a variety of metrics. We show that, in demanding scenarios, logic placed in an UltraScale device requires 16% less wirelength than 7-series. Designs mapped to UltraScale devices also require fewer logic tiles. In this paper, we demonstrate the utilization benefits of the UltraScale CLB attributed to certain CLB enhancements. The enhancements described herein result in an average packing improvement of 3% for the example design suite. We also show that the UltraScale architecture handles aggressive, tighter packing more gracefully than previous generations of FPGA. These significant reductions in wirelength and CLB counts translate directly into power, performance and ease-of-use benefits.

Question: How does the UltraScale CLB architecture compare to previous generations of FPGA?


SoilJ : An ImageJ Plugin for the Semiautomatic Processing of Three-Dimensional X-ray Images of Soils. Noninvasive threeand four-dimensional X-ray imaging approaches have proved to be valuable analysis tools for vadose zone research. One of the main bottlenecks for applying X-ray imaging to data sets with a large number of soil samples is the relatively large amount of time and expertise needed to extract quantitative data from the respective images. SoilJ is a plugin for the free and open imaging software ImageJ that aims at automating the corresponding processing steps for cylindrical soil columns. It includes modules for automatic column outline recognition, correction of image intensity bias, image segmentation, extraction of particulate organic matter and roots, soil surface topography detection, as well as morphology and percolation analyses. In this study, the functionality and precision of some key SoilJ features were demonstrated on five different image data sets of soils. SoilJ has proved to be useful for strongly decreasing the amount of time required for image processing of large image data sets. At the same time, it allows researchers with little experience in image processing to make use of X-ray imaging methods. The SoilJ source code is freely available and may be modified and extended at will by its users. It is intended to stimulate further community-driven development of this software.

Question: What is the source code of SoilJ?


Human Identification From Freestyle Walks Using Posture-Based Gait Feature. With the increase of terrorist threats around the world, human identification research has become a sought after area of research. Unlike standard biometric recognition techniques, gait recognition is a non-intrusive technique. Both data collection and classification processes can be done without a subject's cooperation. In this paper, we propose a new model-based gait recognition technique called postured-based gait recognition. It consists of two elements: posture-based features and posture-based classification. Posture-based features are composed of displacements of all joints between current and adjacent frames and center-of-body (CoB) relative coordinates of all joints, where the coordinates of each joint come from its relative position to four joints: hip-center, hip-left, hip-right, and spine joints, from the front forward. The CoB relative coordinate system is a critical part to handle the different observation angle issue. In posture-based classification, postured-based gait features of all frames are considered. The dominant subject becomes a classification result. The postured-based gait recognition technique outperforms the existing techniques in both fixed direction and freestyle walk scenarios, where turning around and changing directions are involved. This suggests that a set of postures and quick movements are sufficient to identify a person. The proposed technique also performs well under the gallery-size test and the cumulative match characteristic test, which implies that the postured-based gait recognition technique is not gallery-size sensitive and is a good potential tool for forensic and surveillance use.

Question: How to identify a person from his/her gait?


Orthogonal and Idempotent Transformations for Learning Deep Neural Networks. Identity transformations, used as skip-connections in residual networks, directly connect convolutional layers close to the input and those close to the output in deep neural networks, improving information flow and thus easing the training. In this paper, we introduce two alternative linear transforms, orthogonal transformation and idempotent transformation. According to the definition and property of orthogonal and idempotent matrices, the product of multiple orthogonal (same idempotent) matrices, used to form linear transformations, is equal to a single orthogonal (idempotent) matrix, resulting in that information flow is improved and the training is eased. One interesting point is that the success essentially stems from feature reuse and gradient reuse in forward and backward propagation for maintaining the information during flow and eliminating the gradient vanishing problem because of the express way through skip-connections. We empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed two transformations: similar performance in single-branch networks and even superior in multi-branch networks in comparison to identity transformations.

Question: What is the difference between orthogonal and idempotent transformation?


Variational Sequential Monte Carlo. Many recent advances in large scale probabilistic inference rely on variational methods. The success of variational approaches depends on (i) formulating a flexible parametric family of distributions, and (ii) optimizing the parameters to find the member of this family that most closely approximates the exact posterior. In this paper we present a new approximating family of distributions, the variational sequential Monte Carlo (VSMC) family, and show how to optimize it in variational inference. VSMC melds variational inference (VI) and sequential Monte Carlo (SMC), providing practitioners with flexible, accurate, and powerful Bayesian inference. The VSMC family is a variational family that can approximate the posterior arbitrarily well, while still allowing for efficient optimization of its parameters. We demonstrate its utility on state space models, stochastic volatility models for financial data, and deep Markov models of brain neural circuits.

Question: What is a variational family?


A Study on Vehicle Detection and Tracking Using Wireless Sensor Networks. Wireless Sensor network (WSN) is an emerging technology and has great potential to be employed in critical situations. The development of wireless sensor networks was originally motivated by military applications like battlefield surveillance. However, Wireless Sensor Networks are also used in many areas such as Industrial, Civilian, Health, Habitat Monitoring, Environmental, Military, Home and Office application areas. Detection and tracking of targets (eg. animal, vehicle) as it moves through a sensor network has become an increasingly important application for sensor networks. The key advantage of WSN is that the network can be deployed on the fly and can operate unattended, without the need for any pre-existing infrastructure and with little maintenance. The system will estimate and track the target based on the spatial differences of the target signal strength detected by the sensors at different locations. Magnetic and acoustic sensors and the signals captured by these sensors are of present interest in the study. The system is made up of three components for detecting and tracking the moving objects. The first component consists of inexpensive off-the shelf wireless sensor devices, such as MicaZ motes, capable of measuring acoustic and magnetic signals generated by vehicles. The second component is responsible for the data aggregation. The third component of the system is responsible for data fusion algorithms. This paper inspects the sensors available in the market and its strengths and weakness and also some of the vehicle detection and tracking algorithms and their classification. This work focuses the overview of each algorithm for detection and tracking and compares them based on evaluation parameters.

Question: What is the difference between a mote and a sensor?


Acne and Rosacea. Acne, one of the most common skin diseases, affects approximately 85% of the adolescent population, and occurs most prominently at skin sites with a high density of sebaceous glands such as the face, back, and chest. Although often considered a disease of teenagers, acne is occurring at an increasingly early age. Rosacea is a chronic facial inflammatory dermatosis characterized by flushing (or transient facial erythema), persistent central facial erythema, inflammatory papules/pustules, and telangiectasia. Both acne and rosacea have a multifactorial pathology that is incompletely understood. Increased sebum production, keratinocyte hyper-proliferation, inflammation, and altered bacterial colonization with Propionibacterium acnes are considered to be the underlying disease mechanisms in acne, while the multifactorial pathology of rosacea is thought to involve both vasoactive and neurocutaneous mechanisms. Several advances have taken place in the past decade in the research field of acne and rosacea, encompassing pathogenesis and epidemiology, as well as the development of new therapeutic interventions. In this article, we provide an overview of current perspectives on the pathogenesis and treatment of acne and rosacea, including a summary of findings from recent landmark pathophysiology studies considered to have important implications for future clinical practice. The advancement of our knowledge of the different pathways and regulatory mechanisms underlying acne and rosacea is thought to lead to further advances in the therapeutic pipeline for both conditions, ultimately providing a greater array of treatments to address gaps in current management practices.

Question: What is the difference between acne and rosacea?


Daily and compulsive internet use and well-being in adolescence: a diathesis-stress model based on big five personality traits.. This study examined the associations between adolescents' daily Internet use and low well-being (i.e., loneliness, low self-esteem, and depressive moods). We hypothesized that (a) linkages between high levels of daily Internet use and low well-being would be mediated by compulsive Internet use (CIU), and (b) that adolescents with low levels of agreeableness and emotional stability, and high levels of introversion would be more likely to develop CIU and lower well-being. Data were used from a sample of 7888 Dutch adolescents (11-21 years). Results from structural equation modeling analyses showed that daily Internet use was indirectly related to low well-being through CIU. In addition, daily Internet use was found to be more strongly related to CIU in introverted, low-agreeable, and emotionally less-stable adolescents. In turn, again, CIU was more strongly linked to loneliness in introverted, emotionally less-stable, and less agreeable adolescents.

Question: What is the diathesis-stress model based on big five personality traits?


Classification and adulteration detection of vegetable oils based on fatty acid profiles.. The detection of adulteration of high priced oils is a particular concern in food quality and safety. Therefore, it is necessary to develop authenticity detection method for protecting the health of customers. In this study, fatty acid profiles of five edible oils were established by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC/MS) in selected ion monitoring mode. Using mass spectral characteristics of selected ions and equivalent chain length (ECL), 28 fatty acids were identified and employed to classify five kinds of edible oils by using unsupervised (principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis), supervised (random forests) multivariate statistical methods. The results indicated that fatty acid profiles of these edible oils could classify five kinds of edible vegetable oils into five groups and are therefore employed to authenticity assessment. Moreover, adulterated oils were simulated by Monte Carlo method to establish simultaneous adulteration detection model for five kinds of edible oils by random forests. As a result, this model could identify five kinds of edible oils and sensitively detect adulteration of edible oil with other vegetable oils about the level of 10%.

Question: What is the difference between the Canadian Armed Forces and the Canadian Army?


Generating Sequences With Recurrent Neural Networks. This paper shows how Long Short-term Memory recurrent neural networks can be used to generate complex sequences with long-range structure, simply by predicting one data point at a time. The approach is demonstrated for text (where the data are discrete) and online handwriting (where the data are real-valued). It is then extended to handwriting synthesis by allowing the network to condition its predictions on a text sequence. The resulting system is able to generate highly realistic cursive handwriting in a wide variety of styles.

Question: How can recurrent neural networks be used to generate sequences?


Neural Darwinism and consciousness. Neural Darwinism (ND) is a large scale selectionist theory of brain development and function that has been hypothesized to relate to consciousness. According to ND, consciousness is entailed by reentrant interactions among neuronal populations in the thalamocortical system (the 'dynamic core'). These interactions, which permit high-order discriminations among possible core states, confer selective advantages on organisms possessing them by linking current perceptual events to a past history of value-dependent learning. Here, we assess the consistency of ND with 16 widely recognized properties of consciousness, both physiological (for example, consciousness is associated with widespread, relatively fast, low amplitude interactions in the thalamocortical system), and phenomenal (for example, consciousness involves the existence of a private flow of events available only to the experiencing subject). While no theory accounts fully for all of these properties at present, we find that ND and its recent extensions fare well.

Question: What is the dynamic core?


Lagrangian Texture Advection: Preserving both Spectrum and Velocity Field. Texturing an animated fluid is a useful way to augment the visual complexity of pictures without increasing the simulation time. But texturing flowing fluids is a complex issue, as it creates conflicting requirements: we want to keep the key texture properties (features, spectrum) while advecting the texture with the underlying flow-which distorts it. In this paper, we present a new, Lagrangian, method for advecting textures: the advected texture is computed only locally and follows the velocity field at each pixel. The texture retains its local properties, including its Fourier spectrum, even though it is accurately advected. Due to its Lagrangian nature, our algorithm can perform on very large, potentially infinite scenes in real time. Our experiments show that it is well suited for a wide range of input textures, including, but not limited to, noise textures.

Question: How to preserve the spectrum of a texture while advecting it?


Meditation states and traits: EEG, ERP, and neuroimaging studies.. Neuroelectric and imaging studies of meditation are reviewed. Electroencephalographic measures indicate an overall slowing subsequent to meditation, with theta and alpha activation related to proficiency of practice. Sensory evoked potential assessment of concentrative meditation yields amplitude and latency changes for some components and practices. Cognitive event-related potential evaluation of meditation implies that practice changes attentional allocation. Neuroimaging studies indicate increased regional cerebral blood flow measures during meditation. Taken together, meditation appears to reflect changes in anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal areas. Neurophysiological meditative state and trait effects are variable but are beginning to demonstrate consistent outcomes for research and clinical applications. Psychological and clinical effects of meditation are summarized, integrated, and discussed with respect to neuroimaging data.

Question: What is the difference between meditation and prayer?


Virtual Reality as an Innovative Setting for Simulations in Education. The increasingly widespread use of simulations in education underlines the fact that these teaching tools compared to other methods or media allow students to approach and experience new topics in a more realistic way. This realism enhances their learning and understanding of complex subjects. So far it has been difficult to interactively simulate three-dimensional dynamic learning content. In this field, the continuing development of Virtual Reality (VR) offers new opportunities for educators to convey a wide variety of subjects. It is the aim of this paper to characterize the nature of Virtual Reality as an educational setting for simulations, and to show that Studierstube, our multi-user collaborative Virtual Environment, comprises the necessary features for applying VR-techniques to educational purposes. We further discuss the general applicability of VR to various fields of education and demonstrate its specific application as a tool for teaching elementary three-dimensional geometry.

Question: What is the difference between virtual reality and virtual worlds?


Scaling Reflection Prompts in Large Classrooms via Mobile Interfaces and Natural Language Processing. We present the iterative design, prototype, and evaluation of CourseMIRROR (Mobile In-situ Reflections and Review with Optimized Rubrics), an intelligent mobile learning system that uses natural language processing (NLP) techniques to enhance instructor-student interactions in large classrooms. CourseMIRROR enables streamlined and scaffolded reflection prompts by: 1) reminding and collecting students' in-situ written reflections after each lecture; 2) continuously monitoring the quality of a student's reflection at composition time and generating helpful feedback to scaffold reflection writing; and 3) summarizing the reflections and presenting the most significant ones to both instructors and students. Through a combination of a 60-participant lab study and eight semester-long deployments involving 317 students, we found that the reflection and feedback cycle enabled by CourseMIRROR is beneficial to both instructors and students. Furthermore, the reflection quality feedback feature can encourage students to compose more specific and higher-quality reflections, and the algorithms in CourseMIRROR are both robust to cold start and scalable to STEM courses in diverse topics.

Question: How does CourseMIRROR work?


On the O(1=k) convergence of asynchronous distributed alternating Direction Method of Multipliers. We consider a network of agents that are cooperatively solving a global optimization problem, where the objective function is the sum of privately known local objective functions of the agents and the decision variables are coupled via linear constraints. Recent literature focused on special cases of this formulation and studied their distributed solution through either subgradient based methods with O(1/√k) rate of convergence (where k is the iteration number) or Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) based methods, which require a synchronous implementation and a globally known order on the agents. In this paper, we present a novel asynchronous ADMM based distributed method for the general formulation and show that it converges at the rate O (1=k).

Question: What is the rate of convergence of the asynchronous distributed alternating direction method of multipliers?


Environmental influence in the brain, human welfare and mental health. The developing human brain is shaped by environmental exposures—for better or worse. Many exposures relevant to mental health are genuinely social in nature or believed to have social subcomponents, even those related to more complex societal or area-level influences. The nature of how these social experiences are embedded into the environment may be crucial. Here we review select neuroscience evidence on the neural correlates of adverse and protective social exposures in their environmental context, focusing on human neuroimaging data and supporting cellular and molecular studies in laboratory animals. We also propose the inclusion of innovative methods in social neuroscience research that may provide new and ecologically more valid insight into the social-environmental risk architecture of the human brain.

Question: What is the social environment?


Can you fool AI with adversarial examples on a visual Turing test?. Deep learning has achieved impressive results in many areas of Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing. Among others, Visual Question Answering (VQA), also referred to a visual Turing test, is considered one of the most compelling problems, and recent deep learning models have reported significant progress in vision and language modeling. Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) is getting closer to passing the visual Turing test, at the same time the existence of adversarial examples to deep learning systems may hinder the practical application of such systems. In this work, we conduct the first extensive study on adversarial examples for VQA systems. In particular, we focus on generating targeted adversarial examples for a VQA system while the target is considered to be a question-answer pair. Our evaluation shows that the success rate of whether a targeted adversarial example can be generated is mostly dependent on the choice of the target question-answer pair, and less on the choice of images to which the question refers. We also report the language prior phenomenon of a VQA model, which can explain why targeted adversarial examples are hard to generate for some question-answer targets. We also demonstrate that a compositional VQA architecture is slightly more resilient to adversarial attacks than a non-compositional one. Our study sheds new light on how to build deep vision and language resilient models robust against adversarial examples.

Question: What is the first large-scale Canadian peacekeeping mission?


Modeling Survival Data: Extending the Cox Model. Reading is a hobby to open the knowledge windows. Besides, it can provide the inspiration and spirit to face this life. By this way, concomitant with the technology development, many companies serve the e-book or book in soft file. The system of this book of course will be much easier. No worry to forget bringing the modeling survival data extending the cox model book. You can open the device and get the book by on-line.

Question: What is the book about?


Beamforming for MIMO-OFDM Wireless Systems. The smart antennas are widely used for wireless com munication, because it has a ability to increase th coverage and capacity of a communication system. Smart anten na performs two main functions such as direction of arrival estimation (DOA) and beam forming. Using beam formi ng algorithm smart antenna is able to form main bea m towards desired user and null in the direction of i nterfering signals. In this project Direction of ar rival (DOA) is estimated by using MUSIC algorithm. Receive Beam fo r ing is performed by using LMS and LLMS algorithm .In this Paper, in order to perform secure transmission of signal over wireless communication we have used chaotic sequences. This paper evaluates the performance of B am forming with and without LMS and LLMS algorith m for MIMO-OFDM wireless system. The simulations are carr ied out using MATLAB.

Question: How to perform beamforming in wireless communication?


Architecting the next generation of service-based SCADA/DCS system of systems. SCADA and DCS systems are in the heart of the modern industrial infrastructure. The rapid changes in the networked embedded systems and the way industrial applications are designed and implemented, call for a shift in the architectural paradigm. Next generation SCADA and DCS systems will be able to foster cross-layer collaboration with the shop-floor devices as well as in-network and enterprise applications. Ecosystems driven by (web) service based interactions will enable stronger coupling of real-world and the business side, leading to a new generation of monitoring and control applications and services witnessed as the integration of large-scale systems of systems that are constantly evolving to address new user needs.

Question: What is the next generation of service-based SCADA/DCS system of systems?


Semantics-Aware Machine Learning for Function Recognition in Binary Code. Function recognition in program binaries serves as the foundation for many binary instrumentation and analysis tasks. However, as binaries are usually stripped before distribution, function information is indeed absent in most binaries. By far, identifying functions in stripped binaries remains a challenge. Recent research work proposes to recognize functions in binary code through machine learning techniques. The recognition model, including typical function entry point patterns, is automatically constructed through learning. However, we observed that as previous work only leverages syntax-level features to train the model, binary obfuscation techniques can undermine the pre-learned models in real-world usage scenarios. In this paper, we propose FID, a semantics-based method to recognize functions in stripped binaries. We leverage symbolic execution to generate semantic information and learn the function recognition model through well-performing machine learning techniques.FID extracts semantic information from binary code and, therefore, is effectively adapted to different compilers and optimizations. Moreover, we also demonstrate that FID has high recognition accuracy on binaries transformed by widely-used obfuscation techniques. We evaluate FID with over four thousand test cases. Our evaluation shows that FID is comparable with previous work on normal binaries and it notably outperforms existing tools on obfuscated code.

Question: What is the function recognition model?


Artificial Intelligence in Education. In a life-long learning society, learning scenarios can be categorized into five types, which are "classroom learning", "self-learning", "inquiry learning", "learning in doing" and "learning in working". From a life-wide learning perspective, all these scenarios play vital roles for personal development. How to recognize these learning scenarios (including learning time, learning place, learning peers, learning activities, etc.) and provide the matched learning ways (including learning path, resources, peers, teachers, etc.) are the basis for smart learning environments, however few research could be found to address this problem. In order to solve this problem, we propose a conceptual framework of smart learning engine that is the core of integrated, interactive and intelligent (i) learning environments. The smart learning engine consists of three main functions. The first function is to identify data from student, teacher, subject area, and the environment using wireless sensors, the established learning resources and scenarios, and a learner modeling technology. The acquired data includes prior knowledge, theme-based context, leaner/teacher profile, physical environments, etc. The second function is to compute the best ways of learning based on the learning scenario and learning preference. In detail, this function includes modeling learner's affective data, building knowledge structure, optimizing knowledge module, and connecting learners. The third function is to deploy personalized and adaptive strategy, resources and tools for students and teachers based on the computed results in the second function. Deploy interactive strategies, learning paces, learning resources, and delivery approaches are the core elements for this function.

Question: How to recognize learning scenarios?


Complications of botulinum toxin A use in facial rejuvenation.. The esthetic application of botulinum toxin type A (Botox) is a safe treatment modality; nevertheless complications can occur as a result of patient-and physician-related factors. Fortunately, adverse effects and undesirable sequelae after Botox injections are temporary. Complications may be more serious in patients who have more severe rhytids (which require more Botox), previous facial plastic surgery (altered anatomy), and those who have pre-existing neuromuscular disease. The physician can reduce complications by using proper injection techniques, appropriate regional Botox dosing, and by being conservative in the overall approach to Botox-mediated facial rejuvenation.

Question: What are the complications of botulinum toxin A use in facial rejuvenation?


Dynamic ransomware protection using deterministic random bit generator. Ransomware has become a very significant cyber threat. The basic idea of ransomware was presented in the form of a cryptovirus in 1995. However, it was considered as merely a conceptual topic since then for over a decade. In 2017, ransomware has become a reality, with several famous cases of ransomware having compromised important computer systems worldwide. For example, the damage caused by CryptoLocker and WannaCry is huge, as well as global. They encrypt victims' files and require user's payment to decrypt them. Because they utilize public key cryptography, the key for recovery cannot be found in the footprint of the ransomware on the victim's system. Therefore, once infected, the system cannot be recovered without paying for restoration. Various methods to deal this threat have been developed by antivirus researchers and experts in network security. However, it is believed that cryptographic defense is infeasible because recovering a victim's files is computationally as difficult as breaking a public key cryptosystem. Quite recently, various approaches to protect the crypto-API of an OS from malicious codes have been proposed. Most ransomware generate encryption keys using the random number generation service provided by the victim's OS. Thus, if a user can control all random numbers generated by the system, then he/she can recover the random numbers used by the ransomware for the encryption key. In this paper, we propose a dynamic ransomware protection method that replaces the random number generator of the OS with a user-defined generator. As the proposed method causes the virus program to generate keys based on the output from the user-defined generator, it is possible to recover an infected file system by reproducing the keys the attacker used to perform the encryption.

Question: What is the difference between a cryptovirus and a ransomware?


Significant Change Spotting for Periodic Human Motion Segmentation of Cleaning Tasks Using Wearable Sensors. The proportion of the aging population is rapidly increasing around the world, which will cause stress on society and healthcare systems. In recent years, advances in technology have created new opportunities for automatic activities of daily living (ADL) monitoring to improve the quality of life and provide adequate medical service for the elderly. Such automatic ADL monitoring requires reliable ADL information on a fine-grained level, especially for the status of interaction between body gestures and the environment in the real-world. In this work, we propose a significant change spotting mechanism for periodic human motion segmentation during cleaning task performance. A novel approach is proposed based on the search for a significant change of gestures, which can manage critical technical issues in activity recognition, such as continuous data segmentation, individual variance, and category ambiguity. Three typical machine learning classification algorithms are utilized for the identification of the significant change candidate, including a Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbors (kNN), and Naive Bayesian (NB) algorithm. Overall, the proposed approach achieves 96.41% in the F1-score by using the SVM classifier. The results show that the proposed approach can fulfill the requirement of fine-grained human motion segmentation for automatic ADL monitoring.

Question: How to segment the cleaning task?


FUNCTIONAL AND LONGITUDINAL DATA ANALYSIS: PERSPECTIVES ON SMOOTHING. The perspectives and methods of functional data analysis and longitudinal data analysis are contrasted and compared. Topics include kernel methods and random effects models for smoothing, basis function methods, and examination of the relation of covariates to curve shapes. Some directions in which methodology might advance are identified.

Question: What is functional data analysis?


Information rules - a strategic guide to the network economy. Whatever our proffesion, information rules a strategic guide to the network economy can be good source for reading. Locate the existing reports of word, txt, kindle, ppt, zip, pdf, as well as rar in this website. You could completely review online or download this book by here. Currently, never ever miss it. Our goal is always to offer you an assortment of cost-free ebooks too as aid resolve your troubles. We have got a considerable collection of totally free of expense Book for people from every single stroll of life. We have got tried our finest to gather a sizable library of preferred cost-free as well as paid files. Have leisure times? Read information rules a strategic guide to the network economy writer by Why? A best seller book in the world with great value and also content is combined with appealing words. Where? Simply below, in this site you could review online. Want download? Certainly offered, download them also here. Available files are as word, ppt, txt, kindle, pdf, rar, and zip. GO TO THE TECHNICAL WRITING FOR AN EXPANDED TYPE OF THIS INFORMATION RULES A STRATEGIC GUIDE TO THE NETWORK ECONOMY, ALONG WITH A CORRECTLY FORMATTED VERSION OF THE INSTANCE MANUAL PAGE ABOVE.

Question: What is the meaning of the word "information rules"?


Association Rules Mining : A Recent Overview. In this paper, we provide the preliminaries of basic concepts about association rule mining and survey the list of existing association rule mining techniques. Of course, a single article cannot be a complete review of all the algorithms, yet we hope that the references cited will cover the major theoretical issues, guiding the researcher in interesting research directions that have yet to be explored.

Question: What is association rule mining?


Working-memory capacity protects model-based learning from stress.. Accounts of decision-making have long posited the operation of separate, competing valuation systems in the control of choice behavior. Recent theoretical and experimental advances suggest that this classic distinction between habitual and goal-directed (or more generally, automatic and controlled) choice may arise from two computational strategies for reinforcement learning, called model-free and model-based learning. Popular neurocomputational accounts of reward processing emphasize the involvement of the dopaminergic system in model-free learning and prefrontal, central executive-dependent control systems in model-based choice. Here we hypothesized that the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis stress response--believed to have detrimental effects on prefrontal cortex function--should selectively attenuate model-based contributions to behavior. To test this, we paired an acute stressor with a sequential decision-making task that affords distinguishing the relative contributions of the two learning strategies. We assessed baseline working-memory (WM) capacity and used salivary cortisol levels to measure HPA axis stress response. We found that stress response attenuates the contribution of model-based, but not model-free, contributions to behavior. Moreover, stress-induced behavioral changes were modulated by individual WM capacity, such that low-WM-capacity individuals were more susceptible to detrimental stress effects than high-WM-capacity individuals. These results enrich existing accounts of the interplay between acute stress, working memory, and prefrontal function and suggest that executive function may be protective against the deleterious effects of acute stress.

Question: How does stress affect working memory?


Evolutionary algorithms for multiobjective optimization: methods and applications. Many real-world problems involve two types of problem difficulty: i) multiple, conflicting objectives and ii) a highly complex search space. On the one hand, instead of a single optimal solution competing goals give rise to a set of compromise solutions, generally denoted as Pareto-optimal. In the absence of preference information, none of the corresponding trade-offs can be said to be better than the others. On the other hand, the search space can be too large and too complex to be solved by exact methods. Thus, efficient optimization strategies are required that are able to deal with both difficulties. Evolutionary algorithms possess several characteristics that are desirable for this kind of problem and make them preferable to classical optimization methods. In fact, various evolutionary approaches to multiobjective optimization have been proposed since 1985, capable of searching for multiple Paretooptimal solutions concurrently in a single simulation run. However, in spite of this variety, there is a lack of extensive comparative studies in the literature. Therefore, it has remained open up to now: • whether some techniques are in general superior to others, • which algorithms are suited to which kind of problem, and • what the specific advantages and drawbacks of certain methods are. The subject of this work is the comparison and the improvement of existing multiobjective evolutionary algorithms and their application to system design problems in computer engineering. In detail, the major contributions are: • An experimental methodology to compare multiobjective optimizers is developed. In particular, quantitative measures to assess the quality of trade-off fronts are introduced and a set of general test problems is defined, which are i) easy to formulate, ii) represent essential aspects of real-world problems, and iii) test for different types of problem difficulty. • On the basi

Question: What is the difference between a multiobjective optimization algorithm and a single objective optimization algorithm?


Fine-grained Concept Linking using Neural Networks in Healthcare. To unlock the wealth of the healthcare data, we often need to link the real-world text snippets to the referred medical concepts described by the canonical descriptions. However, existing healthcare concept linking methods, such as dictionary-based and simple machine learning methods, are not effective due to the word discrepancy between the text snippet and the canonical concept description, and the overlapping concept meaning among the fine-grained concepts. To address these challenges, we propose a Neural Concept Linking (NCL) approach for accurate concept linking using systematically integrated neural networks. We call the novel neural network architecture as the COMposite AttentIonal encode-Decode neural network (COM-AID). COM-AID performs an encode-decode process that encodes a concept into a vector and decodes the vector into a text snippet with the help of two devised contexts. On the one hand, it injects the textual context into the neural network through the attention mechanism, so that the word discrepancy can be overcome from the semantic perspective. On the other hand, it incorporates the structural context into the neural network through the attention mechanism, so that minor concept meaning differences can be enlarged and effectively differentiated. Empirical studies on two real-world datasets confirm that the NCL produces accurate concept linking results and significantly outperforms state-of-the-art techniques.

Question: What is the difference between the neural network architecture and the traditional machine learning methods?