query: A Protocol for Preventing Insider Attacks in Untrusted Infrastructure-as-a-Service Clouds

positive: Terra: a virtual machine-based platform for trusted computing We present a flexible architecture for trusted computing, called Terra, that allows applications with a wide range of security requirements to run simultaneously on commodity hardware. Applications on Terra enjoy the semantics of running on a separate, dedicated, tamper-resistant hardware platform, while retaining the ability to run side-by-side with normal applications on a general-purpose computing platform. Terra achieves this synthesis by use of a trusted virtual machine monitor (TVMM) that partitions a tamper-resistant hardware platform into multiple, isolated virtual machines (VM), providing the appearance of multiple boxes on a single, general-purpose platform. To each VM, the TVMM provides the semantics of either an "open box," i.e. a general-purpose hardware platform like today's PCs and workstations, or a "closed box," an opaque special-purpose platform that protects the privacy and integrity of its contents like today's game consoles and cellular phones. The software stack in each VM can be tailored from the hardware interface up to meet the security requirements of its application(s). The hardware and TVMM can act as a trusted party to allow closed-box VMs to cryptographically identify the software they run, i.e. what is in the box, to remote parties. We explore the strengths and limitations of this architecture by describing our prototype implementation and several applications that we developed for it.

positive:
Breaking up is hard to do: security and functionality in a commodity hypervisor Cloud computing uses virtualization to lease small slices of large-scale datacenter facilities to individual paying customers. These multi-tenant environments, on which numerous large and popular web-based applications run today, are founded on the belief that the virtualization platform is sufficiently secure to prevent breaches of isolation between different users who are co-located on the same host. Hypervisors are believed to be trustworthy in this role because of their small size and narrow interfaces.
 We observe that despite the modest footprint of the hypervisor itself, these platforms have a large aggregate trusted computing base (TCB) that includes a monolithic control VM with numerous interfaces exposed to VMs. We present Xoar, a modified version of Xen that retrofits the modularity and isolation principles used in micro-kernels onto a mature virtualization platform. Xoar breaks the control VM into single-purpose components called service VMs. We show that this componentized abstraction brings a number of benefits: sharing of service components by guests is configurable and auditable, making exposure to risk explicit, and access to the hypervisor is restricted to the least privilege required for each component. Microrebooting components at configurable frequencies reduces the temporal attack surface of individual components. Our approach incurs little performance overhead, and does not require functionality to be sacrificed or components to be rewritten from scratch.

positive: Principles of remote attestation Remote attestation is the activity of making a claim about properties of a target by supplying evidence to an appraiser over a network. We identify five central principles to guide development of attestation systems. We argue that (i) attestation must be able to deliver temporally fresh evidence; (ii) comprehensive information about the target should be accessible; (iii) the target, or its owner, should be able to constrain disclosure of information about the target; (iv) attestation claims should have explicit semantics to allow decisions to be derived from several claims; and (v) the underlying attestation mechanism must be trustworthy. We illustrate how to acquire evidence from a running system, and how to transport it via protocols to remote appraisers. We propose an architecture for attestation guided by these principles. Virtualized platforms, which are increasingly well supported on stock hardware, provide a natural basis for our attestation architecture.

positive:
seL4: formal verification of an OS kernel Complete formal verification is the only known way to guarantee that a system is free of programming errors.
 We present our experience in performing the formal, machine-checked verification of the seL4 microkernel from an abstract specification down to its C implementation. We assume correctness of compiler, assembly code, and hardware, and we used a unique design approach that fuses formal and operating systems techniques. To our knowledge, this is the first formal proof of functional correctness of a complete, general-purpose operating-system kernel. Functional correctness means here that the implementation always strictly follows our high-level abstract specification of kernel behaviour. This encompasses traditional design and implementation safety properties such as the kernel will never crash, and it will never perform an unsafe operation. It also proves much more: we can predict precisely how the kernel will behave in every possible situation.
 seL4, a third-generation microkernel of L4 provenance, comprises 8,700 lines of C code and 600 lines of assembler. Its performance is comparable to other high-performance L4 kernels.

positive: Linux kernel integrity measurement using contextual inspection This paper introduces the Linux Kernel Integrity Monitor (LKIM) as an improvement over conventional methods of software integrity measurement. LKIM employs contextual inspection as a means to more completely characterize the operational integrity of a running kernel. In addition to cryptographically hashing static code and data in the kernel, dynamic data structures are examined to provide improved integrity measurement. The base approach examines structures that control the execution flow of the kernel through the use of function pointers as well as other data that affect the operation of the kernel. Such structures provide an efficient means of extending the kernel operations, but they are also a means of inserting malicious code without modifying the static parts. The LKIM implementation is discussed and initial performance data is presented to show that contextual inspection is practical

negative: Person Re-Identification by Iterative Re-Weighted Sparse Ranking In this paper we introduce a method for person re-identification based on discriminative, sparse basis expansions of targets in terms of a labeled gallery of known individuals. We propose an iterative extension to sparse discriminative classifiers capable of ranking many candidate targets. The approach makes use of soft- and hard- re-weighting to redistribute energy among the most relevant contributing elements and to ensure that the best candidates are ranked at each iteration. Our approach also leverages a novel visual descriptor which we show to be discriminative while remaining robust to pose and illumination variations. An extensive comparative evaluation is given demonstrating that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on single- and multi-shot person re-identification scenarios on the VIPeR, i-LIDS, ETHZ, and CAVIAR4REID datasets. The combination of our descriptor and iterative sparse basis expansion improves state-of-the-art rank-1 performance by six percentage points on VIPeR and by 20 on CAVIAR4REID compared to other methods with a single gallery image per person. With multiple gallery and probe images per person our approach improves by 17 percentage points the state-of-the-art on i-LIDS and by 72 on CAVIAR4REID at rank-1. The approach is also quite efficient, capable of single-shot person re-identification over galleries containing hundreds of individuals at about 30 re-identifications per second.

negative: Convolutional LSTM Networks for Video-based Person Re-identification In this paper, we study the problem of video-based person re-identification. This is more challenging, and of greater practical interest, than conventional image-based person re-identification. To address this problem, we propose the use of convolutional Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) based networks to learn a video-based representation for person re-identification. To this end, we propose to jointly leverage deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and LSTM networks. Given sequential video frames of a person, the spatial information encoded in the frames is first extracted by a set of CNNs. An encoderdecoder framework derived from LSTMs is employed to encode the resulting temporal of CNN outputs. This approach leads to a refined feature representation that is able to explicitly model the video as an ordered sequence, while preserving the spatial information. Comparative experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves the state-of-the-art performance for video-based person re-identification on iLIDS-VID and PRID 2011, the two primary public datasets for this purpose.

negative: A Review of Ensemble Methods in Bioinformatics Ensemble learning is an intensively studies technique in machine learning and pattern recognition. Recent work in computational biology has seen an increasing use of ensemble learning methods due to their unique advantages in dealing with small sample size, high-dimensionality, and complexity data structures. The aim of this article is two-fold. First, it is to provide a review of the most widely used ensemble learning methods and their application in various bioinformatics problems, including the main topics of gene expression, mass spectrometry-based proteomics, gene-gene interaction identification from genome-wide association studies, and prediction of regulatory elements from DNA and protein sequences. Second, we try to identify and summarize future trends of ensemble methods in bioinformatics. Promising directions such as ensemble of support vector machine, meta-ensemble, and ensemble based feature selection are discussed.

negative: Integration of independent component analysis and neural networks for ECG beat classification In this paper, we propose a scheme to integrate independent component analysis (ICA) and neural networks for electrocardiogram (ECG) beat classification. The ICA is used to decompose ECG signals into weighted sum of basic components that are statistically mutual independent. The projections on these components, together with the RR interval, then constitute a feature vector for the following classifier. Two neural networks, including a probabilistic neural network (PNN) and a back-propagation neural network (BPNN), are employed as classifiers. ECG samples attributing to eight different beat types were sampled from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database for experiments. The results show high classification accuracy of over 98% with either of the two classifiers. Between them, the PNN shows a slightly better performance than BPNN in terms of accuracy and robustness to the number of ICA-bases. The impressive results prove that the integration of independent component analysis and neural networks, especially PNN, is a promising scheme for the computer-aided diagnosis of heart diseases based on ECG. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

negative: MSc THESIS Hardware Acceleration of BWA-MEM Genome Mapping Application Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science CE-MS-2014 Next Generation Sequencing technologies have had a tremendous impact on our understanding of DNA and its role in living organisms. The cost of DNA sequencing has decreased drastically over the past decade, leading the way for personalised genomics. Sequencers provide millions of fragments of DNA (termed short reads), which have to be aligned aginst a reference genome to reconstruct the full information of the DNA molecule under study. Processing short reads requires large computational resources, with many specialised computing platforms now being used to accelerate software aligners. We take up the challenge of accelerating a well know sequence alignment tool called Burrows Wheeler aligner on the Convey Hybrid Computing platform, which has FPGAs as co-processors. The focus of the research is to accelerate the BWA-MEM algorithm of the Burrows Wheeler aligner on the Convey HC-2 platform. The implementation was carried out using the Vivado HLS tool. The architectures proposed are targeted to overcome the memory bottleneck of the application. Two architectures are proposed, the Base architecture and the Batch architecture meant to address the memory bottleneck. Simulations were performed for the intended platform and it was found that, the Batch architecture is 18% faster than the Base architecture for reads with similar run time characteristics. The architectures provide possibilities of further pipelining and implementation of more cores, which is expected to provide better performance than the current implementation. Hardware Acceleration of BWA-MEM Genome Mapping Application

negative: Union simulation on lower limbs rehabilitation robot based on MATLAB and ADAMS For people who suffers the lower limbs motor dysfunction, using lower limbs exoskeleton rehabilitation devices is a very effective method to restore the motor ability of lower limbs. However, it works only if the device has a suitable mechanical structure and appropriate design parameters for the specific individual. To get this work completed, we carry out the modeling and simulation of a new proposed lower limbs rehabilitation robot with joint help of two kinds of software, i.e. the MATLAB and the ADAMS. Firstly, the three-dimensional model of the robot is created with the SolidWorks software. After importing the model into ADAMS, some essential kinematic pairs are added into the movable joints. Meanwhile, the control system model is established using the MATLAB/SIMULINK software. Then, the union simulation of the lower limbs rehabilitation robot is carried out by using the interface modular ADAMS/CONTROL. The results show that the proposed rehabilitation robot has a good kinematic performance, which means that the device can be used in the actual rehabilitation process. Besides, the results also indicate that the control method is of good trajectory tracking ability. These simulated results will be significant for the development of physical prototype of lower limbs rehabilitation robot.

negative: Efficient and Consistent Flow Update for Software Defined Networks Software defined network (SDN) provides flexible and scalable routing by separating control plane and data plane. With centralized control, SDN has been widely used in traffic engineering, link failure recovery, and load balancing. This work considers the flow update problem, where a set of flows need to be migrated or rearranged due to change of network status. During flow update, efficiency and consistency are two main challenges. Efficiency refers to how fast these updates are completed, while consistency refers to prevention of blackholes, loops, and network congestions during updates. This paper proposes a scheme that maintains all these properties. It works in four phases. The first phase partitions flows into shorter routing segments to increase update parallelism. The second phase generates a global dependency graph of these segments to be updated. The third phase conducts actual updates and then adjusts dependency graphs accordingly. The last phase deals with deadlocks, if any, and then loops back to phase three if necessary. Through simulations, we validate that our scheme not only ensures freedom of blackholes, loops, congestions, and deadlocks during flow updates, but is also faster than existing schemes.

negative: Realization of three-dimensional walking of a cheetah-modeled bio-inspired quadruped robot Adaptability of quadruped animals is not solely reached by brain control, but by the interaction between its body, environment, and control. Especially, morphology of the body is supposed to contribute largely to the adaptability. We have tried to understand quadrupedal locomotion by building a bio-inspired quadruped robot named “Pneupard”, which has a feline-like muscular-skeletal structure. In our previous study, we successfully realized alternative gait of hindlimbs by reflex control based on the sole touch information, which is called an unloading rule, and that of forelimbs as well. In this paper, we finally connect forelimbs and hindlimbs by a rigid spine, and conduct 3D walking experiments only with the simple unloading rule. Through several preliminary experiments, we realize that the touch information on the sole is the most critical for stable 3D walking.

negative: Development of an exoskeleton haptic interface for virtual task training An exoskeleton haptic interface is developed for functional training in virtual environments. A composite control scheme enables a variety of tasks to be implemented, and a “Qt” graphics library is used to generate the virtual environment for the haptic interface at the hand and graphical user interfaces for input and telemetry. Inter-process communications convert telemetry from the exoskeleton into motion commands for objects in the virtual environment. A second haptic interface at the upper arm is used to control the elbow orbit self-motion of the arm during tasks. Preliminary results are reviewed for a wall-painting task in which the virtual wall stiffness and viscosity are generated using an admittance controller.

negative: Superior thermal conductivity of single-layer graphene. We report the measurement of the thermal conductivity of a suspended single-layer graphene. The room temperature values of the thermal conductivity in the range approximately (4.84+/-0.44)x10(3) to (5.30+/-0.48)x10(3) W/mK were extracted for a single-layer graphene from the dependence of the Raman G peak frequency on the excitation laser power and independently measured G peak temperature coefficient. The extremely high value of the thermal conductivity suggests that graphene can outperform carbon nanotubes in heat conduction. The superb thermal conduction property of graphene is beneficial for the proposed electronic applications and establishes graphene as an excellent material for thermal management.

negative: Centrifugal fan design for permanent magnet synchronous motor in a traction application The requirements of high torque density and high efficiency, which are particularly pronounced in electric traction applications, often result in substantial thermal loading of electric machines for driving trams, electric multiple units (EMU) or electric cars. Permanent magnet synchronous machines are suitable candidates for traction applications due to their inherently high torque density and high efficiency. At the same time they are sensitive to temperature rise, especially in permanent magnets, highlighting the need for implementation of efficient cooling system. The performance of the cooling system and its ability to remove heat directly affect the attainable torque and efficiency of the electric machine. In this paper, the selection and sizing of the cooling system for an interior permanent magnet motor designed to drive a low-floor tram is presented. The procedure for selecting the basic dimensions of the centrifugal fan according to the analytical formulas in combination with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis are explained. In addition to the geometry of the centrifugal fan itself, the geometry of the passive system components (e.g. air flow router) which have a significant impact on the performance of the cooling system, are also considered. The results of computer aided CFD analysis, which is taken as a benchmark of system performance in the design stage of the cooling system, have been confirmed with measurements on the machine prototype.

negative: Sentiment Analysis using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks with Distant Supervision Master Thesis This thesis addresses the problem of predicting message-level sentiments of English micro-blog messages from Twitter. Convolutional neural networks (CNN) have shown great promise in the task of sentiment classification. Here we expand the CNN proposed by [31, 32] and perform an in-depth analysis to deepen the understanding of these systems. In a first step we compare the performance of different architectures with focus on deeper architectures. We show how different choices of hyper-parameters impact the results and present the benefits and challenges of using deeper architectures. Second, we introduce the procedure for achieving a high quality initialization of the CNN and show the massive impact it has on its predictive capabilities. This procedure consists of creating custom word embeddings followed by pre-training the network using 90M tweets where the polarity of a tweet is inferred by noisy labels. Third, we present an in-depth analysis of the supervised phase. We show the impact of the pre-training on the supervised phase. We show how the choice of the optimization algorithm and the step size impact the variance of the score during the supervised phase. The analysis is concluded by an inspection of the errors made by the system. This gives us insights into the inner workings of the CNN and hints as to what is needed for further improvement. The CNN presented in this thesis is part of an ensemble which ranked 1st in the SemEval-2016 competition, Task 4a [22]. The task consists of classifying a given tweet as either positive, negative or neutral. This further demonstrates the potential these systems have in the field of sentiment analysis.

negative: Climbing gaits of a modular biped climbing robot For high-rise work in fields such as agriculture, forestry and architecture, and inspired by the climbing motion of inchworms, chimpanzees, and sloths, we have developed a biped climbing robot - Climbot. Consisting of five 1-DOF joint modules in series and two special grippers at the ends, Climbot is capable of grasping objects and climbing poles, trees and trusses. In this paper, we first introduce this novel robot, and then present three climbing gaits. We perform simulation to illustrate, verify and compare the proposed climbing gaits.

negative: A Quantitative Comparison of Calibration Methods for RGB-D Sensors Using Different Technologies RGB-D (Red Green Blue and Depth) sensors are devices that can provide color and depth information from a scene at the same time. Recently, they have been widely used in many solutions due to their commercial growth from the entertainment market to many diverse areas (e.g., robotics, CAD, etc.). In the research community, these devices have had good uptake due to their acceptable levelofaccuracyformanyapplicationsandtheirlowcost,butinsomecases,theyworkatthelimitof their sensitivity, near to the minimum feature size that can be perceived. For this reason, calibration processes are critical in order to increase their accuracy and enable them to meet the requirements of such kinds of applications. To the best of our knowledge, there is not a comparative study of calibration algorithms evaluating its results in multiple RGB-D sensors. Speciﬁcally, in this paper, a comparison of the three most used calibration methods have been applied to three different RGB-D sensors based on structured light and time-of-ﬂight. The comparison of methods has been carried out by a set of experiments to evaluate the accuracy of depth measurements. Additionally, an object reconstruction application has been used as example of an application for which the sensor works at the limit of its sensitivity. The obtained results of reconstruction have been evaluated through visual inspection and quantitative measurements.

negative: Interactive ramp merging planning in autonomous driving: Multi-merging leading PGM (MML-PGM) Cooperative driving behavior is essential for driving in traffic, especially for ramp merging, lane changing or navigating intersections. Autonomous vehicles should also manage these situations by behaving cooperatively and naturally. The challenge of cooperative driving is estimating other vehicles' intentions. In this paper, we present a novel method to estimate other human-driven vehicles' intentions with the aim of achieving a natural and amenable cooperative driving behavior, without using wireless communication. The new approach allows the autonomous vehicle to cooperate with multiple observable merging vehicles on the ramp with a leading vehicle ahead of the autonomous vehicle in the same lane. To avoid calculating trajectories, simplify computation, and take advantage of mature Level-3 components, the new method reacts to merging cars by determining a following target for an off-the-shelf distance keeping module (ACC) which governs speed control of the autonomous vehicle. We train and evaluate the proposed model using real traffic data. Results show that the new approach has a lower collision rate than previous methods and generates more human driver-like behaviors in terms of trajectory similarity and time-to-collision to leading vehicles.

negative:
Religious meaning and subjective well-being in late life. OBJECTIVES
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between religious meaning and subjective well-being. A major emphasis is placed on assessing race differences in the relationship between these constructs.

METHODS
Interviews were conducted with a nationwide sample of older White and older Black adults. Survey items were administered to assess a sense of meaning in life that is derived specifically from religion. Subjective well-being was measured with indices of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and optimism.

RESULTS
The findings suggest that older adults who derive a sense of meaning in life from religion tend to have higher levels of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and optimism. The data further reveal that older Black adults are more likely to find meaning in religion than older White adults. In addition, the relationships among religious meaning, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and optimism tend to be stronger for older African Americans persons than older White persons.

DISCUSSION
Researchers have argued for some time that religion may be an important source of resilience for older Black adults, but it is not clear how these beneficial effects arise. The data from this study suggest that religious meaning may be an important factor.

negative: A New Rectenna With All-Polarization-Receiving Capability for Wireless Power Transmission This letter presents a new rectenna with all-polarization-receiving capability for wireless power transmission applications. By utilizing a dual linearly-polarized antenna, the incident wave of arbitrary polarization can be totally collected at its two ports. To be connected with the antenna as a rectenna, a dual-input rectifier is designed so that the RF power supplied by the two ports of the antenna can be efficiently rectified. With a proper polarization of the incident wave, the proposed rectenna exhibits a maximum efficiency of 78% under the input power density of 295.3 μW/cm2. Moreover, under the same power density, the rectenna's efficiency can always stay higher than 61% regardless of the incident wave's polarization.

negative: Linear vs Nonlinear MPC for Trajectory Tracking Applied to Rotary Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles Precise trajectory tracking is a crucial property for Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) to operate in cluttered environment or under disturbances. In this paper we present a detailed comparison between two state-of-the-art model-based control techniques for MAV trajectory tracking. A classical Linear Model Predictive Controller (LMPC) is presented and compared against a more advanced Nonlinear Model Predictive Controller (NMPC) that considers the full system model. In a careful analysis we show the advantages and disadvantages of the two implementations in terms of speed and tracking performance. This is achieved by evaluating hovering performance, step response, and aggressive trajectory tracking under nominal conditions and under external wind disturbances.

negative: Extraction of Multi-word Expressions from Small Parallel Corpora M.Sc. in Computer Science Cum Laude, advised by Shuly Wintner. 2007-2010 • Research topics: semi-supervised multiword expression extraction from parallel and monolingual corpora. • Thesis: “Extraction of Multi-word Expressions from Small Parallel Corpora”. • Awards: Gutwirth award for excellence (awarded top 50 graduate students in Israel); excellence scholarship in honor of Captain Uri Akavia.

negative: Optically transparent conductive polymer RFID meandering dipole antenna In this paper, we present optically transparent flexible conductive polymer antennas for radio frequency identification systems. The designs for these antennas are presented along with simulated and measured results of antenna radiating properties. These conductive polymer antennas are compared to antennas with the same design fabricated out of copper. Finally, we include an analysis of the optical transparency of the conductive polymer antennas.

negative: Cryptonite: a programmable crypto processor architecture for high bandwidth applications Cryptographic methods are widely used within networking and digital rights management. Numerous algorithms exist, e.g. spanning VPNs or distributing sensitive data over a shared network infrastructure. While these algorithms can be run with moderate performance on general purpose processors, such processors do not meet typical embedded systems requirements (e.g. area, cost and power consumption). Instead, specialized cores dedicated to one or a combination of algorithms are typically used. These cores provide very high bandwidth data transmission and meet the needs of embedded systems. However, with such cores changing the algorithm is not possible without replacing the hardware. This paper describes a fully programmable processor architecture which has been tailored for the needs of a spectrum of cryptographic algorithms and has been explicitly designed to run at high clock rates while maintaining a significantly better performance/area/power tradeoff than general purpose processors. Both the architecture and instruction set have been developed to achieve a bits-per-clock rate of greater than one, even with complex algorithms. This performance will be demonstrated with standard cryptographic algorithms (AES and DES) and a widely used hash algorithm (MD5).

negative: Global refinement of random forest Random forest is well known as one of the best learning methods. In spite of its great success, it also has certain drawbacks: the heuristic learning rule does not effectively minimize the global training loss; the model size is usually too large for many real applications. To address the issues, we propose two techniques, global refinement and global pruning, to improve a pre-trained random forest. The proposed global refinement jointly relearns the leaf nodes of all trees under a global objective function so that the complementary information between multiple trees is well exploited. In this way, the fitting power of the forest is significantly enhanced. The global pruning is developed to reduce the model size as well as the over-fitting risk. The refined model has better performance and smaller storage cost, as verified in extensive experiments.

negative: Potentials and Challenges of C-RAN Supporting Multi-RATs Toward 5G Mobile Networks This paper presents an overview of the cloud radio access network (C-RAN), which is a key enabler for future mobile networks in order to meet the explosive capacity demand of mobile traffic, and reduce the capital and operating expenditure burden faced by operators. We start by reviewing the requirements of future mobile networks, called 5G, followed by a discussion on emerging network concepts for 5G network architecture. Then, an overview of C-RAN and related works are presented. As a significant scenario of a 5G system, the ultra dense network deployment based on C-RAN is discussed with focuses on flexible backhauling, automated network organization, and advanced mobility management. Another import feature of a 5G system is the long-term coexistence of multiple radio access technologies (multi-RATs). Therefore, we present some directions and preliminary thoughts for future C-RAN-supporting Multi-RATs, including joint resource allocation, mobility management, as well as traffic steering and service mapping.

negative: Depth-Based Hand Pose Estimation: Methods, Data, and Challenges Hand pose estimation has matured rapidly in recent years. The introduction of commodity depth sensors and a multitude of practical applications have spurred new advances. We provide an extensive analysis of the state-of-the-art, focusing on hand pose estimation from a single depth frame. To do so, we have implemented a considerable number of systems, and have released software and evaluation code. We summarize important conclusions here: (1) Coarse pose estimation appears viable for scenes with isolated hands. However, high precision pose estimation [required for immersive virtual reality and cluttered scenes (where hands may be interacting with nearby objects and surfaces) remain a challenge. To spur further progress we introduce a challenging new dataset with diverse, cluttered scenes. (2) Many methods evaluate themselves with disparate criteria, making comparisons difficult. We define a consistent evaluation criteria, rigorously motivated by human experiments. (3) We introduce a simple nearest-neighbor baseline that outperforms most existing systems. This implies that most systems do not generalize beyond their training sets. This also reinforces the under-appreciated point that training data is as important as the model itself. We conclude with directions for future progress.

negative: An Overview of Inter-Vehicular Communication Systems, Protocols and Middleware Inter-vehicular communication is an important research area that is rapidly growing due to considerable advances in mobile and wireless communication technologies, as well as the growth of microprocessing capabilities inside today’s cars, and other moving vehicles. A good amount of research has been done to exploit the different services that can be provided to enhance the safety and comfort of the driver. Additional functions provide the car electronics and the passengers with access to the Internet and other core network resources. This paper provides a survey of the latest advances in the area of inter-vehicular communication (IVC) including vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) functions and services. In addition, the paper presents the most important projects and protocols that are involved in IVC systems as well as the different issues and challenges that exist at each layer of the networking model.

negative: Cloud Computing – A Comprehensive Definition Cloud computing is an evolving technology that is consistently generating impact in IT industry and academia. It performs all computational tasks over Internet by using virtualization techniques and remains isolated from intricate vast hardware and software infrastructures. The aim of this paper is to glance through the background and evolutions of cloud computing, its architecture and services to develop cumulative knowledge for future research extension and evaluation.

negative: Smart home and smart city solutions enabled by 5G, IoT, AAI and CoT services In a nearby future 5G technologies will connect the world from the largest megacities to the smallest internet of things in an always online fashion. Such a connected hierarchy must combine the smart cities, the smart homes, and the internet of things into one large coherent infrastructure. This paper suggest a four layer model which join and interfaces these elements by deploying technologies such as 5G, internet of things, cloud of things, and distributed artificial intelligence. Many advantages and service possibilities are offered by this new infrastructure such as interconnected internet of things, smart homes with artificial intelligence, and a platform for new combined smart home and smart city services based on big-data.

negative: Enterprise Database Applications and the Cloud: A Difficult Road Ahead There is considerable interest in moving DBMS applications from inside enterprise data centers to the cloud, both to reduce cost and to increase flexibility and elasticity. Some of these applications are "green field" projects (i.e., new applications), others are existing legacy systems that must be migrated to the cloud. In another dimension, some are decision support applications while others are update-oriented. In this paper, we discuss the technical and political challenges that these various enterprise applications face when considering cloud deployment. In addition, a requirement for quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees will generate additional disruptive issues. In some circumstances, achieving good DBMS performance on current cloud architectures and future hardware technologies will be non-trivial. In summary, there is a difficult road ahead for enterprise database applications.

negative: Service-oriented paradigms in industrial automation This paper outlines opportunities and challenges in the development of next-generation embedded devices, applications, and services, resulting from their increasing intelligence - it plots envisioned future directions for intelligent device networking based on service-oriented high-level protocols, in particular as regards the industrial automation sector - and outlines the approach adopted by the Service Infrastructure for Real-Time Embedded Networked Applications project, as well as the business advantages this approach is expected to provide.

negative: Security challenges in software defined network and their solutions The main purpose of Software Defined Networking (SDN) is to allow network engineers to respond quickly to changing network industrial requirements. This network technology focuses on making network as adaptable and active as virtual server. SDN is physical separation of Control plane from Data plane and control plane is centralized to manage underlying infrastructure. Hence, the SDN permit network administrator to adjust wide traffic flow from centralized control console without having to touch Switches and Routers, and can provide the services to wherever they are needed in the network. As in SDN the control plane is disassociated from underlying forwarding plane, however, susceptible to many security challenges like Denial of Service (DoS) attack, Distributed DoS (DDoS) attack, Volumetric attack. In this paper, we highlight some security challenges and evaluate some security solutions.

negative: Cloud-assisted industrial cyber-physical systems: An insight The development of industrialization and information communication technology (ICT) has deeply changed our way of life. In particular, with the emerging theory of ‘‘Industry 4.0”, the integration of cloud technologies and industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPS) becomes increasingly important, as this will greatly improve the manufacturing chain and business services. In this paper, we first describe the development and character of ICPS. ICPS will inevitably play an important role in manufacturing, sales, and logistics. With the support of the cloud, ICPS development will impact value creation, business models, downstream services, and work organization. Then, we present a service-oriented ICPS model. With the support of the cloud, infrastructure platform and service application, ICPS will promote the manufacturing efficiency, increase quality of production, enable a sustainable industrial system and more environmentally friendly businesses. Thirdly, we focus on some key enabling technologies, which are critical in supporting smart factories. These key enabling technologies will also help companies to realize high quality, high output, and low cost. Finally, we talk about some challenges of ICPS implementation and the future work. 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


query: Head pose estimation based on face symmetry analysis

positive: The CMU Pose, Illumination, and Expression Database In the Fall of 2000 we collected a database of over 40,000 facial images of 68 people. Using the CMU 3D Room we imaged each person across 13 different poses, under 43 different illumination conditions, and with 4 different expressions. We call this the CMU Pose, Illumination, and Expression (PIE) database. We describe the imaging hardware, the collection procedure, the organization of the images, several possible uses, and how to obtain the database.

positive: Combining Models and Exemplars for Face Recognition : An Illuminating Example We propose a modeland exemplar-based approach for face recognition. This problem has been previously tackled using either models or exemplars, with limited success. Our idea uses models to synthesize many more exemplars, which are then used in the learning stage of a face recognition system. To demonstrate this, we develop a statistical shape-fromshading model to recover face shape from a single image, and to synthesize the same face under new illumination. We then use this to build a simple and fast classifier that was not possible before because of a lack of training data.

positive: From Few to Many: Generative Models for Recognition Under Variable Pose and Illumination Image variability due to changes in pose and illumination can seriously impair object recognition. This paper presents appearance-based methods which, unlike previous appearance-based approaches, require only a small set of training images to generate a rich representation that models this variability. Speci cally, from as few as three images of an object in xed pose seen under slightly varying but unknown lighting, a surface and an albedo map are reconstructed. These are then used to generate synthetic images with large variations in pose and illumination and thus build a representation useful for object recognition. Our methods have been tested within the domain of face recognition on a subset of the Yale Face Database B containing 4050 images of 10 faces seen under variable pose and illumination. This database was speci cally gathered for testing these generative methods. Their performance is shown to exceed that of popular existing methods.

positive: Face recognition: A literature survey As one of the most successful applications of image analysis and understanding, face recognition has recently received significant attention, especially during the past several years. At least two reasons account for this trend: the first is the wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications, and the second is the availability of feasible technologies after 30 years of research. Even though current machine recognition systems have reached a certain level of maturity, their success is limited by the conditions imposed by many real applications. For example, recognition of face images acquired in an outdoor environment with changes in illumination and/or pose remains a largely unsolved problem. In other words, current systems are still far away from the capability of the human perception system.This paper provides an up-to-date critical survey of still- and video-based face recognition research. There are two underlying motivations for us to write this survey paper: the first is to provide an up-to-date review of the existing literature, and the second is to offer some insights into the studies of machine recognition of faces. To provide a comprehensive survey, we not only categorize existing recognition techniques but also present detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category. In addition, relevant topics such as psychophysical studies, system evaluation, and issues of illumination and pose variation are covered.

positive: Optical Flow Constraints on Deformable Models with Applications to Face Tracking Optical flow provides a constraint on the motion of a deformable model. We derive and solve a dynamic system incorporating flow as a hard constraint, producing a model-based least-squares optical flow solution. Our solution also ensures the constraint remains satisfied when combined with edge information, which helps combat tracking error accumulation. Constraint enforcement can be relaxed using a Kalman filter, which permits controlled constraint violations based on the noise present in the optical flow information, and enables optical flow and edge information to be combined more robustly and efficiently. We apply this framework to the estimation of face shape and motion using a 3D deformable face model. This model uses a small number of parameters to describe a rich variety of face shapes and facial expressions. We present experiments in extracting the shape and motion of a face from image sequences which validate the accuracy of the method. They also demonstrate that our treatment of optical flow as a hard constraint, as well as our use of a Kalman filter to reconcile these constraints with the uncertainty in the optical flow, are vital for improving the performance of our system.

negative: Visual Semantic Landmark-Based Robust Mapping and Localization for Autonomous Indoor Parking Autonomous parking in an indoor parking lot without human intervention is one of the most demanded and challenging tasks of autonomous driving systems. The key to this task is precise real-time indoor localization. However, state-of-the-art low-level visual feature-based simultaneous localization and mapping systems (VSLAM) suffer in monotonous or texture-less scenes and under poor illumination or dynamic conditions. Additionally, low-level feature-based mapping results are hard for human beings to use directly. In this paper, we propose a semantic landmark-based robust VSLAM for real-time localization of autonomous vehicles in indoor parking lots. The parking slots are extracted as meaningful landmarks and enriched with confidence levels. We then propose a robust optimization framework to solve the aliasing problem of semantic landmarks by dynamically eliminating suboptimal constraints in the pose graph and correcting erroneous parking slots associations. As a result, a semantic map of the parking lot, which can be used by both autonomous driving systems and human beings, is established automatically and robustly. We evaluated the real-time localization performance using multiple autonomous vehicles, and an repeatability of 0.3 m track tracing was achieved at a 10 kph of autonomous driving.

negative: A New Word Language Model Evaluation Metric for Character Based Languages Perplexity is a widely used measure to evaluate word prediction power of a word-based language model. It can be computed independently and has shown good correlation with word error rate (WER) in speech recognition. However, for character based languages, character error rate (CER) is commonly used instead of WER as the measure for speech recognition, although language model is still word based. Due to the fact that different word segmentation strategies may result in different word vocabulary for the same text corpus, in many cases, wordbased perplexity is incompetent to evaluate the combined effect of word segmentation and language model training to predict final CER. In this paper, a new word-based language model evaluation measure is proposed to account for the effect of word segmentation and the goal of predicting CER. Experiments were conducted on Chinese speech recognition. Compared to the traditional word-based perplexity, the new measure is more robust to word segmentation and shows much more consistent correlation with CER in a large vocabulary continuous Chinese speech recognition task.

negative: Joint wavelet-based spectrum sensing and FBMC modulation for cognitive mmWave small cell networks Millimetre-wave (mmWave) 5G communications is an emerging technology to enhance the capacity of existing systems by thousand-fold improvement. Heterogeneous networks employing densely distributed small cells can optimise the available coverage and throughput of 5G systems. Efficiently utilising the spectrum bands by small cells is one of the approaches that will considerably increase the available data rate and capacity of the heterogeneous networks. This challenging task can be achieved by spectrum sensing capability of cognitive radios and new modulation techniques for data transmission. In this study, a wavelet-based filter bank is proposed for spectrum sensing and modulation in 5G heterogeneous networks. The proposed technique can mitigate the spectral leakage and interference by adapting the subcarriers according to cognitive information provided by wavelet packet based spectrum sensing (WPSS) and lowering sidelobes using wavelet-based filter bank multicarrier modulation. The performance improvement of WPSS compared with Fourier-based spectrum sensing is verified in terms of power spectral density comparison and probabilities of detection and false alarm. Meanwhile, the bit error rate performance demonstrates the superiority of the proposed wavelet-based system compared with its Fourier-based counterpart over the 60 GHz mmWave channel.

negative: Model-Driven Game Development Addressing Architectural Diversity and Game Engine-Integration

negative: The NumPy Array: A Structure for Efficient Numerical Computation In the Python world, NumPy arrays are the standard representation for numerical data and enable efficient implementation of numerical computations in a high-level language. As this effort shows, NumPy performance can be improved through three techniques: vectorizing calculations, avoiding copying data in memory, and minimizing operation counts.

negative: Survey of Event Correlation Techniques for Attack Detection in Early Warning Systems In the context of early warning systems for detecting Internet worms and other attacks, event correlation techniques are needed for two reasons. First, network attack detection is usually based on distributed sensors, e.g. intrusion detection systems. During attacks but even in normal operation, the generated amount of events is hard to handle in order to evaluate the current attack situation for a larger network. Thus, the concept of event or alert correlation has been introduced. This survey was motivated by recent work on early warning systems. We summarize and clarify the typical terminology used in this context and present a requirement analysis from an early warning system’s point of view. In the main part of this survey, we summarize and classify event correlation techniques as described in the literature.

negative: Bayesian Optimization Using Domain Knowledge on the ATRIAS Biped Robotics controllers often consist of expert-designed heuristics, which can be hard to tune in higher dimensions. Simulation can aid in optimizing these controllers if parameters learned in simulation transfer to hardware. Unfortunately, this is often not the case in legged locomotion, necessitating learning directly on hardware. This motivates using data-efficient learning techniques like Bayesian Optimization (BO) to minimize collecting expensive data samples. BO is a black-box data-efficient optimization scheme, though its performance typically degrades in higher dimensions. We aim to overcome this problem by incorporating domain knowledge, with a focus on bipedal locomotion. In our previous work, we proposed a feature transformation that projected a 16-dimensional locomotion controller to a 1-dimensional space using knowledge of human walking. When optimizing a human-inspired neuromuscular controller in simulation, this feature transformation enhanced sample efficiency of BO over traditional BO with a Squared Exponential kernel. In this paper, we present a generalized feature transform applicable to non-humanoid robot morphologies and evaluate it on the ATRIAS bipedal robot, in both simulation and hardware. We present three different walking controllers and two are evaluated on the real robot. Our results show that this feature transform captures important aspects of walking and accelerates learning on hardware and simulation, as compared to traditional BO.

negative: GENDER AND LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR AMONG SENIOR PASTORS Research findings have been equivocal as to the existence of gender difference in leadership across settings. However, some studies based on transformational leadership theory and employing the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire to measure leadership behaviors have indicated a difference in the leadership styles of female and male leaders. This study sought to test whether there were gender differences in the use of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership behaviors by Senior Pastors in an Australian Christian Church. The study did not detect any significant gender differences in leadership behaviors. Gender and Leadership Behavior among Senior Pastors Gender and Leadership Leadership has been typically a male prerogative in most sectors of society, including the corporate, political, military, and church sectors (Eagly & Karau, 2002). However, over the last 30 years women have made steady progress in moving into leadership roles. In 1972, women held 17% of all management and professional positions in Fortune 500 Companies. By 2006, this number had grown to 50.3% (Hoyt, Simon, and Reid, 2009). Women typically tend to occupy lower and middle management ranks while men cluster around the most powerful positions at the top. Women managers still receive significantly less remuneration for their work, with female managers receiving 24 percent less pay than men performing the equivalent function (Haslam and Ryan, 2008). Nonetheless, despite continuing 138 Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 12:2 (2009) inequity, it is clear that women are gradually occupying an increasing number of management and leadership positions. Although women have increasingly gained access to supervisory and middle management positions, they remain quite rare as elite leaders. For example, in 2006 women represented 5.2% of top earners, 14.7% of board members, 7.9% of the highest earners, and less than 2% of CEOs in Fortune 500 Companies (Hoyt, Simon, and Reid, 2009). This phenomenon has been explained by use of the idea of a “glass ceiling” – an invisible barrier preventing the rise of women within leadership ranks (Haslam & Ryan, 2008). Eagly and Karau (2002) describe it as “a barrier of prejudice and discrimination that excludes women from higher leadership positions” (p. 573). It is evident in the lower number of women in leadership positions, and particularly in high-level leadership positions. Yukl (2006) observes that “In the complete absence of sex-based discrimination, the number of women in chief executive positions in business and government should be close to 50 percent” (p. 427). A variety of explanations have been offered for the existence of gender-based discrimination in the appointment of organizational leaders. These include: (1) gender stereotypes suggesting that men are more suited to leadership positions and that women are more suited to support roles (Yukl, 2006); (2) overt sexism in the workplace (Schwartz, 1971); (3) perceived incompatibilities between women’s abilities and the requirements of leadership (Arvey, 1979); (4) women’s competing responsibilities in the home (Schwartz, 1994); and (5) women’s fear of success (Horner, 1972). The explanations are not mutually exclusive and they may combine to create significant barriers to the advancement of women. Martell and DeSmet (2001) found that a contributing reason for the glass ceiling and the continued absence of women in the upper ranks of management is “the existence of gender-based stereotypes in the leadership domain” (p. 1227). Gender stereotypes are “categorical beliefs composed of the traits and behavioral characteristics assigned to women and men only on the basis of the group label” (Martell & DeSmet, 2001, p. 1223). Such stereotypes serve as a type of expectation regarding the likely abilities of group members and, if left unchallenged, can translate into discriminatory behavior. Eagly and Karau (2002) point out that a “potential for prejudice exists when social perceivers hold a stereotype about a social group that is incongruent with the attributes that are thought to be required for success in certain classes of social roles” (p. 574). Prejudice against women as leaders Fogarty, Gender and Leadership 139 “follows from the incongruity that many people perceive between the characteristics of women and the requirements of leader roles” (Eagly & Karau, 2002, p. 574). Gender and Leadership within Christian Churches Within Christian churches gender based discrimination has been reinforced by theological perspectives (Barron, 1990; Bridges, 1998; Franklin, 2008; Scholz, 2005). The case that women are forbidden by scripture and church tradition to assume leadership within the church has been made frequently (Barron, 1990). This exclusion has been predominantly based on two Pauline texts (1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:33-34) and a broader theological position which sees men and women as being ontologically equal but functionally different. Its basic logic is that “God designed women to be subordinate to men in role and function” and therefore “women should not operate in positions of authority over men” (Franklin, 2008, 14). For example, Piper and Grudem (1991) state that “we are persuaded that the Bible teaches that only men should be pastors and elders. That is, men should bear primary responsibility for Christlike leadership and teaching in the church. So it is unbiblical, we believe, and therefore detrimental, for women to assume this role” (p. 60-61). Complementary to this theological position is the suggestion that women do not have the capacity for effective church leadership (Bridges, 1998). Piper (1991) exemplifies this position when he writes: “At the heart of mature masculinity is a sense of benevolent responsibility to lead, provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to a man’s differing relationships” and “At the heart of mature femininity is a freeing disposition to affirm, receive, and nurture strength and leadership from worthy men in ways appropriate to a woman’s differing relationships’ (p. 35-36). The understanding portrayed is that men have the capacity to lead and that women do not. The assumption implicit within this understanding is that leadership does not involve affirming and nurturing behaviors.

negative: A double-tail sense amplifier for low-voltage SRAM in 28nm technology A double-tail sense amplifier (DTSA) is designed as a drop-in replacement for a conventional SRAM sense amplifier (SA), to enable a robust read operation at low voltages. A pre-amplification stage helps reduce the offset voltage of the sense amplifier by magnifying the input of the regeneration stage. The self-timed regenerative latch simplifies the timing logic so the DTSA can replace the SA with no area overhead. A test chip in 28nm technology achieves 56% error rate reduction at 0.44V. The proposed scheme achieves 50mV of VDDmin reduction compared to commercial SRAM with a faster timing option that demonstrates a smaller bitline swing.

negative:
Sampling cube: a framework for statistical olap over sampling data Sampling is a popular method of data collection when it is impossible or too costly to reach the entire population. For example, television show ratings in the United States are gathered from a sample of roughly 5,000 households. To use the results effectively, the samples are further partitioned in a multidimensional space based on multiple attribute values. This naturally leads to the desirability of OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) over sampling data. However, unlike traditional data, sampling data is inherently uncertain, i.e., not representing the full data in the population. Thus, it is desirable to return not only query results but also the confidence intervals indicating the reliability of the results. Moreover, a certain segment in a multidimensional space may contain none or too few samples. This requires some additional analysis to return trustable results.
 In this paper we propose a Sampling Cube framework, which efficiently calculates confidence intervals for any multidimensional query and uses the OLAP structure to group similar segments to increase sampling size when needed. Further, to handle high dimensional data, a Sampling Cube Shell method is proposed to effectively reduce the storage requirement while still preserving query result quality.

negative: Diagnostic assessment of the borg MOEA for many-objective product family design problems The recently introduced Borg multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) framework features auto-adaptive search that tailors itself to effectively explore different problem spaces. A key auto-adaptive feature of the Borg MOEA is the dynamic allocation of search across a suite of recombination and mutation operators. This study explores the application of the Borg MOEA on a real-world product family design problem: the severely constrained, ten objective General Aviation Aircraft (GAA) problem. The GAA problem represents a promising benchmark problem that strongly highlights the importance of using auto-adaptive search to discover how to exploit multiple recombination strategies cooperatively. The auto-adaptive behavior of the Borg MOEA is rigorously compared against its ancestor algorithm, the ε-MOEA, by employing global sensitivity analysis across each algorithm's feasible parameter ranges. This study provides the first Sobol' sensitivity analysis to determine the individual and interactive parameter sensitivities of MOEAs on a real-world many-objective problem.

negative: Foundations of RDF⋆ and SPARQL⋆ (An Alternative Approach to Statement-Level Metadata in RDF) The standard approach to annotate statements in RDF with metadata has a number of shortcomings including data size blow-up and unnecessarily complicated queries. We propose an alternative approach that is based on nesting of RDF triples and of query patterns. The approach allows for a more compact representation of data and queries, and it is backwards compatible with the standard. In this paper we present the formal foundations of our proposal and of different approaches to implement it. More specifically, we formally capture the necessary extensions of the RDF data model and its query language SPARQL, and we define mappings based on which our extended notions can be converted back to ordinary RDF and SPARQL. Additionally, for such type of mappings we define two desirable properties, information preservation and query result equivalence, and we show that the introduced mappings possess these properties.

negative: Learning to Decode for Future Success We introduce a general strategy for improving neural sequence generation by incorporating knowledge about the future. Our decoder combines a standard sequence decoder with a ‘soothsayer’ prediction function Q that estimates the outcome in the future of generating a word in the present. Our model draws on the same intuitions as reinforcement learning, but is both simpler and higher performing, avoiding known problems with the use of reinforcement learning in tasks with enormous search spaces like sequence generation. We demonstrate our model by incorporating Q functions that incrementally predict what the future BLEU or ROUGE score of the completed sequence will be, its future length, and the backwards probability of the source given the future target sequence. Experimental results show that future prediction yields improved performance in abstractive summarization and conversational response generation and the state-of-the-art in machine translation, while also enabling the decoder to generate outputs that have specific properties.

negative: Aspect extraction for opinion mining with a deep convolutional neural network In this paper, we present the first deep learning approach to aspect extraction in opinion mining. Aspect extraction is a subtask of sentiment analysis that consists in identifying opinion targets in opinionated text, i.e., in detecting the specific aspects of a product or service the opinion holder is either praising or complaining about. We used a 7-layer deep convolutional neural network to tag each word in opinionated sentences as either aspect or non-aspect word. We also developed a set of linguistic patterns for the same purpose and combined them with the neural network. The resulting ensemble classifier, coupled with a word-embedding model for sentiment analysis, allowed our approach to obtain significantly better accuracy than state-of-the-art methods.

negative: Design, fabrication and preliminary results of a novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics: RCH-1 Among social infrastructure technologies, robot technology (RT) is expected to play an important role in solving the problems of both decrease of birth rate and increase of elderly people in the 21st century, specially but not only in Japan. In order to achieve this objective, the new generation of personal robots should be capable of a natural communication with humans by expressing human-like emotion. In this sense, human hands play a fundamental role in communication, because they have grasping, sensing and emotional expression ability. This paper presents the recent results of the collaboration between the Takanishi Lab of Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, and the Arts Lab of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy, and ROBOCASA. In this paper, the development of a novel anthropomorphic hand for humanoid robotics RCH-1 (ROBOCASA Hand No.1) and its integration into a humanoid robotic platform, named WE-4RII (Waseda Eye No.4 Refined II) is presented.

negative: Educational System for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences for Blind and Handicapped People Based on Google Speech API There is a great need to provide educational environments for blind and handicapped people. There are many Islamic websites and applications dedicated to the educational services for the Holy Quran and Its Sciences (Quran Recitations, the interpretations, etc.) on the Internet. Unfortunately, blind and handicapped people could not use these services. These people cannot use the keyboard and the mouse. In addition, the ability to read and write is essential to benefit from these services. In this paper, we present an educational environment that allows these people to take full advantage of the scientific materials. This is done through the interaction with the system using voice commands by speaking directly without the need to write or to use the mouse. Google Speech API is used for the universal speech recognition after a preprocessing and post processing phases to improve the accuracy. For blind people, responses of these commands will be played back through the audio device instead of displaying the text to the screen. The text will be displayed on the screen to help other people make use of the system.

negative: Comparison of eSports and Traditional Sports Consumption Motives With recognition of the need for studying eSports in this interactive digital communication era, this study explored 14 motivational factors affecting the time spent on eSports gaming. Using a sample of 515 college students and athletic event attendees, we further compared eSports game patterns to their non-eSport or traditional sport involvements (game participation, game attendance, sports viewership, sports readership, sports listenership, Internet usage specific to sports, and purchase of team merchandise). Multiple regression results indicated that competition and skill had a statistically significant impact on the time spent on eSports games while peer pressure had marginal significance. Related to the overall findings, developing tailored messages that drives consumption behaviors of target audiences to specific eSports games will provide a better chance for marketers to fulfill their strategic goals of increased purchasing and larger market shares. Understanding that the interest in competition and skill are critical to eSports gamers may influence marketers to focus on creating games and opportunities for gamers to compete against each other and give tangible rewards to the winner. The use of peer pressure may be another motivational factor for playing. Consequently, those marketing dollars could be spent more on the interactive nature of game design. The subsequent analysis on cross-validation check suggests that the results of the regression analysis could be generalized.

negative: Web 3.0 Emerging While Web 3.0 technologies are difficult to define precisely, the outline of emerging applications has become clear over the past year. We can thus essentially view Web 3.0 as semantic Web technologies integrated into, or powering, large-scale Web applications. The base of Web 3.0 applications resides in the resource description framework (RDF) for providing a means to link data from multiple Web sites or databases. With the SPARQL query language, a SQL-like standard for querying RDF data, applications can use native graph-based RDF stores and extract RDF data from traditional databases.

negative: Multiple Handshakes Security of TLS 1.3 Candidates The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol is by far the most widely deployed protocol for securing communications and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is currently developing TLS 1.3 as the next-generation TLS protocol. The TLS standard features multiple modes of handshake protocols and supports many combinational running of successive TLS handshakes over multiple connections. Although each handshake mode is now well-understood in isolation, their composition in TLS 1.2 remains problematic, and yet it is critical to obtain practical security guarantees for TLS. In this paper, we present the first formal treatment of multiple handshakes protocols of TLS 1.3 candidates. First, we introduce a multi-level&stage security model, an adaptation of the Bellare-Rogaway authenticated key exchange model, covering all kinds of compositional interactions between different TLS handshake modes and providing reasonably strong security guarantees. Next, we prove that candidate handshakes of TLS 1.3 draft meet our strong notion of multiple handshakes security. Our results confirm the soundness of TLS 1.3 security protection design. Such a multi-level&stage approach is convenient for analyzing the compositional design of the candidates with different session modes, as they establish dependencies of multiple sessions. We also identify the triple handshake attack of Bhargavan et al. on TLS 1.2 within our multiple handshakes security model. We show generically that the proposed fixes (RFC 7627) for TLS 1.2 offer good protection against multiple handshakes attacks.

negative: Improving Design of Systems Supporting Creativity-intensive Processes - A Cross-industry Focus Group Evaluation

negative: Exploring Users' Attitudes and Intentions toward the Adoption of Cloud Computing in Saudi Arabia: an Empirical Investigation Over the past few years, cloud computing has evolve d as one of the major advances in the field of Information Technology (IT) utilizing third-party s ervices. Therefore, trust in cloud vendors as well as the determination of potential risks, such as privacy a nd security issues, are crucial for ensuring the su ccessful adoption of an appropriate cloud. Prior research ha ve ddressed the technical aspects of cloud-based environments, such as cloud virtualization, scalabi lity and security. Nevertheless, it is argued that the biggest obstacle of cloud computing is not technolo gical, rather it is perceptual or attitudinal. The adoption of cloud computing has been central to several scho larly research areas, particularly user acceptance. This study presents an extended Technology Acceptance Mo del (TAM), which integrates Trust (TR), Anxiety (ANX) and Perceived Risk (PR), to investigate users ’ attitudes and intentions toward the adoption of c l ud computing. The proposed model was empirically exami ned using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) to analyze data gathered by a survey of both IT profes sionals and end users. The results herein suggested that trust, anxiety and PR can be successfully integrate d within the TAMs. Trust has demonstrated to have a strong positive influence on Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU), but it had no significant effects on Perceived Use fuln ss (PU). Both anxiety and PR were found to have signif icant negative effects on PEOU and PU. In addition, Behavioral Intention (BI) to use the cloud can be p r dicted by trust, attitudes and PU, as PR was show n t have no significant effect on BI. The proposed model, including PR, trust and anxiety , has been demonstrated to be a true predictor of user intentions, toward t he use of cloud computing, within the context of Sa udi Arabia.

negative: Software-Defined LANs for Interconnected Smart Environment In this paper, we propose a solution to delegate the control and the management of the network connecting the many devices of a smart environment to a software entity, while keeping end-users in control of what is happening in their networks. For this, we rely on the logical manipulation of all connected devices through device abstraction and network programmability. Applying Software Defined Networking (SDN) principles, we propose a software-based solution that we call Software-Defined LANs in order to interconnect devices of smart environments according to the services the users are requesting or expecting.We define the adequate virtualization framework based on Virtual Objects and Communities of Virtual Objects. Using these virtual entities, we apply the SDN architectural principles to define a generic architecture that can be applied to any smart environment. Then we describe a prototype implementing these concepts in the home networking context, through a scenario in which users of two different homes can easily interconnect two private but shareable DLNA devices in a dedicated video-delivery SD-LAN. Finally we provide a discussion of the benefits and challenges of our approach regarding the generalization of SDN principles, autonomic features, Internet of Things scalability, security and privacy aspects enabled by SD-LANs intrinsic properties.

negative: Named entity recognition on Indonesian Twitter posts using long short-term memory networks The task of Named-Entity Recognition (NER) can support the higher-level tasks such as question answering, text summarization, and information retrieval. This work views NER on Indonesian Twitter posts as a sequence labeling problem using supervised machine learning approach. The architecture used is Long Short-Term Memory Networks (LSTMs), with word embedding and POS tag as the model features. As the result, our model can give a performance with an F1 score of 77.08%.

negative: Scrutinizing WPA2 Password Generating Algorithms in Wireless Routers A wireless router is a networking device that enables a user to set up a wireless connection to the Internet. A router can offer a secure channel by cryptographic means which provides authenticity and confidentiality. Nowadays, almost all routers use a secure channel by default that is based on Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2). This is a security protocol which is believed not to be susceptible to practical key recovery attacks. However, the passwords should have sufficient entropy to avert bruteforce attacks. In this paper, we compose a strategy on how to reverse-engineer embedded routers. Furthermore, we describe a procedure that can instantly gather a complete wireless authentication trace which enables an offline password recovery attack. Finally, we present a number of use cases where we identify extremely weak password generating algorithms in various routers which are massively deployed in The Netherlands. The algorithms are used to generate the default WPA2 password. Such a password is loaded during device initialization and hardware reset. Users that did not explicitly change their wireless password are most likely vulnerable to practical attacks which can recover their password within minutes. A stolen password allows an adversary to abuse someone else’s internet connection, for instance compromising the firewall, making a fraudulent transaction or performing other criminal activities. Together with the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre we have initiated a responsible disclosure procedure. However, since these routers are also used by many other companies in various countries, our findings seem to relate an international industry wide security issue.

negative: A Simplification-Translation-Restoration Framework for Cross-Domain SMT Applications Integration of domain specific knowledge into a general purpose statistical machine translation (SMT) system poses challenges due to insufficient bilingual corpora. In this paper we propose a simplification-translation-restoration (STR) framework for domain adaptation in SMT by simplifying domain specific segments of a text. For an in-domain text, we identify the critical segments and modify them to alleviate the data sparseness problem in the out-domain SMT system. After we receive the translation result, these critical segments are then restored according to the provided in-domain knowledge. We conduct experiments on an English-toChinese translation task in the medical domain and evaluate each step of the STR framework. The translation results show significant improvement of our approach over the out-domain and the naïve in-domain SMT systems. 用於跨領域統計式機器翻譯系統之簡化-翻譯-還原架構

negative: Quaternion-Based Unscented Kalman Filter for Accurate Indoor Heading Estimation Using Wearable Multi-Sensor System Inertial navigation based on micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) inertial measurement units (IMUs) has attracted numerous researchers due to its high reliability and independence. The heading estimation, as one of the most important parts of inertial navigation, has been a research focus in this field. Heading estimation using magnetometers is perturbed by magnetic disturbances, such as indoor concrete structures and electronic equipment. The MEMS gyroscope is also used for heading estimation. However, the accuracy of gyroscope is unreliable with time. In this paper, a wearable multi-sensor system has been designed to obtain the high-accuracy indoor heading estimation, according to a quaternion-based unscented Kalman filter (UKF) algorithm. The proposed multi-sensor system including one three-axis accelerometer, three single-axis gyroscopes, one three-axis magnetometer and one microprocessor minimizes the size and cost. The wearable multi-sensor system was fixed on waist of pedestrian and the quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for heading estimation experiments in our college building. The results show that the mean heading estimation errors are less 10° and 5° to multi-sensor system fixed on waist of pedestrian and the quadrotor UAV, respectively, compared to the reference path.

negative: Coordinate Noun Phrase Disambiguation in a Generative Parsing Model In this paper we present methods for improving the disambiguation of noun phrase (NP) coordination within the framework of a lexicalised history-based parsing model. As well as reducing noise in the data, we look at modelling two main sources of information for disambiguation: symmetry in conjunct structure, and the dependency between conjunct lexical heads. Our changes to the baseline model result in an increase in NP coordination dependency f-score from 69.9% to 73.8%, which represents a relative reduction in f-score error of 13%.

negative: Testing and evaluation of a wearable augmented reality system for natural outdoor environments This paper describes performance evaluation of a wearable augmented reality system for natural outdoor environments. Applied Research Associates (ARA), as prime integrator on the DARPA ULTRA-Vis (Urban Leader Tactical, Response, Awareness, and Visualization) program, is developing a soldier-worn system to provide intuitive ‘heads-up’ visualization of tactically-relevant geo-registered icons. Our system combines a novel pose estimation capability, a helmet-mounted see-through display, and a wearable processing unit to accurately overlay geo-registered iconography (e.g., navigation waypoints, sensor points of interest, blue forces, aircraft) on the soldier’s view of reality. We achieve accurate pose estimation through fusion of inertial, magnetic, GPS, terrain data, and computer-vision inputs. We leverage a helmet-mounted camera and custom computer vision algorithms to provide terrain-based measurements of absolute orientation (i.e., orientation of the helmet with respect to the earth). These orientation measurements, which leverage mountainous terrain horizon geometry and mission planning landmarks, enable our system to operate robustly in the presence of external and body-worn magnetic disturbances. Current field testing activities across a variety of mountainous environments indicate that we can achieve high icon geo-registration accuracy (<10mrad) using these vision-based methods.

negative: Pedestrian intention recognition using Latent-dynamic Conditional Random Fields We present a novel approach for pedestrian intention recognition for advanced video-based driver assistance systems using a Latent-dynamic Conditional Random Field model. The model integrates pedestrian dynamics and situational awareness using observations from a stereo-video system for pedestrian detection and human head pose estimation. The model is able to capture both intrinsic and extrinsic class dynamics. Evaluation of our method is performed on a public available dataset addressing scenarios of lateral approaching pedestrians that might cross the road, turn into the road or stop at the curbside. During experiments, we demonstrate that the proposed approach leads to better stability and class separation compared to state-of-the-art pedestrian intention recognition approaches.

negative: Accurate, Robust, and Flexible Real-time Hand Tracking We present a new real-time hand tracking system based on a single depth camera. The system can accurately reconstruct complex hand poses across a variety of subjects. It also allows for robust tracking, rapidly recovering from any temporary failures. Most uniquely, our tracker is highly flexible, dramatically improving upon previous approaches which have focused on front-facing close-range scenarios. This flexibility opens up new possibilities for human-computer interaction with examples including tracking at distances from tens of centimeters through to several meters (for controlling the TV at a distance), supporting tracking using a moving depth camera (for mobile scenarios), and arbitrary camera placements (for VR headsets). These features are achieved through a new pipeline that combines a multi-layered discriminative reinitialization strategy for per-frame pose estimation, followed by a generative model-fitting stage. We provide extensive technical details and a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis.

negative: Background modelling based on generative unet Background Modelling is a crucial step in background/foreground detection which could be used in video analysis, such as surveillance, people counting, face detection and pose estimation. Most methods need to choose the hyper parameters manually or use ground truth background masks (GT). In this work, we present an unsupervised deep background (BG) modelling method called BM-Unet which is based on a generative architecture that given a certain frame as input it generates as output the corresponding background image — to be more precise, a probabilistic heat map of the colour values. Our method learns parameters automatically and an augmented version of it that utilises colour, intensity differences and optical flow between a reference and a target frame is robust to rapid illumination changes and camera jitter. Besides, it can be used on a new video sequence without the need of ground truth background/foreground masks for training. Experiment evaluations on challenging sequences in SBMnet data set demonstrate promising results over state-of-the-art methods.

negative: A vision-based robotic grasping system using deep learning for 3D object recognition and pose estimation Pose estimation of object is one of the key problems for the automatic-grasping task of robotics. In this paper, we present a new vision-based robotic grasping system, which can not only recognize different objects but also estimate their poses by using a deep learning model, finally grasp them and move to a predefined destination. The deep learning model demonstrates strong power in learning hierarchical features which greatly facilitates the recognition mission. We apply the Max-pooling Convolutional Neural Network (MPCNN), one of the most popular deep learning models, in this system, and assign different poses of objects as different classes in MPCNN. Besides, a new object detection method is also presented to overcome the disadvantage of the deep learning model. We have built a database comprised of 5 objects with different poses and illuminations for experimental performance evaluation. The experimental results demonstrate that our system can achieve high accuracy on object recognition as well as pose estimation. And the vision-based robotic system can grasp objects successfully regardless of different poses and illuminations.